Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851, page 19 by Various Authors
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o." Moreover, how did the excellent Fabricius (Bibl. med. et inf. Latin., and also Cod. Pseudepig. V. T., i. 758.) happen to connect Menradus Moltherus with the editio princeps of 1483? It is certain that this writer's letter to Secerius, accompanying a transcript of Bishop Grossetête's version, which immediately came forth at Haguenau, was concluded "postridie Non. Januar. M.D.XXXII."
(49.) (1.) Who was the bibliopolist with whom originated the pernicious scheme of adapting newly printed title-pages to books which had had a previous existence? Sometimes the deception may be discerned even at a glance: for example, without the loss of many seconds, and by the aspect of a single letter, (the long s,) we can perceive the falsehood of the imprint, "Parisiis, apud Paul Mellier, 1842," together with "S.-Clodoaldi, è typographeo Belin-Mandar," grafted upon tome i. {184} of the Benedictine edition of S. Gregory Nazianzen's works, which had been actually issued in 1778. Very frequently, however, the comparison of professedly different impressions requires, before they can be safely pronounced to be identical, the protracted scrutiny of a practised eye. An inattentive observer could not be conscious that the works of Sir James Ware, translated and improved by Harris, and apparently the progeny of the year 1764, (the only edition, and that but a spurious one, recorded in Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica,) have been skilfully tampered with, and should be justly restored--the first volume to 1739, the second to 1745.
(2.) We must admit that a bookseller gifted with mature sapience will very rarely, or never, be such an amateur in expensive methods of bamboozling, as to prefer having recourse to the title-page expedient, if he could flatter himself that his purpose would be likely to be effected simply by doctoring the date; and thus a question springs up, akin to the former one, How great is the antiquity of this timeserving device? At this moment, t