22 ACCOUNTS, ETC., OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 



unknown, obtained in 1871, the Museum had acquired no 

 Caxton for more than thirty years previous to the Ashburn- 

 ham sale. The purchase of the " Doctrinal " is especially 

 important, as none of the eleven known copies are likely to 

 come at any time into the market. 



II. At the Ashburnham sale was also purchased Chaucer's 

 Troylus and Creseide, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1517, 

 the only important sixteenth century edition of a work of 

 Chaucer's in which the Museum library was still deficient. 



III. In the Malermi Bible, Venice, 1490, the Museum 

 has obtained one of the greatest of bibliographical treasures. 

 This Bible, so called from the name of the translator or editor, 

 was first printed at Venice in 1471. In 1490 it was republished 

 with a very great number of most elegant woodcut illustra- 

 tions, the designs for which have been at different times 

 attributed to various celebrated artists. Some of them were 

 reproduced in the edition of 1492, but the edition of 1490 is 

 the only one fully illustrated, and is a renowned example of 

 Italian design at its best. It is so rare that no copy is known 

 to have previously occurred at any auction sale in England. 



IV. The purchase of a fine vellum copy of the Decretals of 

 Boniface VIII., Petrus Schoefi'er, Mentz, 1476, is of importance 

 as completing the Museum set of the four Mentz editions of 

 the Decretals. Three of these are upon vellum. 



V. There could hardly be a greater contrast in externals 

 than that between the stately Mentz folio and a dingy little 

 tract purchased at the same time, " Michael Howe, the last 

 and worst of the Bushrangers," Hobart Town [1817] ; and 

 yet the latter is the more interesting of the two, for, gazettes 

 and fly sheets apart, it is the first book printed in Australasia. 

 There is a copy in the Bodleian, beyond which none is known 

 to have occurred since the publication of an article in the 

 Quarterly Review for May 1820, when the Reviewer said, 

 " This little book will assuredly be the ' Reynarde the Foxe ' 

 of Australian bibliomaniacs." 



Besides the Malermi Bible the Museum has made an 

 important addition to its biblical collection in the first Polish 

 Roman Catholic version of the New Testament, printed at 

 Cracow in. 1556, in opposition to the Protestant version of 

 1551. Nine copies exist in Polish libraries, but, until the 

 occurrence of the present copy, none is known to have been 

 off'ered for sale out of that country. The diction is regarded 

 as a model of classical Polish. 



The most important Liturgy purchased is a vellum copy 

 of the Hieronymite Missal printed by Georgius Coci at 

 Zaragoza in 1511, a most beautiful book, considered by the 

 printer himself as one of the finest examples of his art, and 

 especially interesting as one of the first instances of music 

 printing in Spain. Only three other copies are known. A 



