Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21, page 9 by Various Authors
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particular grievance in Alison's History of Europe. I have the first edition, but delay binding it, there being no index. Two other editions have since been published, possessing each an index. Surely the patrons and possessors of the first have a claim upon the Messrs. Blackwood, independent of the probability of its repaying them as a business transaction.
T.S.
* * * * *
Queries.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL QUERIES.
(Continued from p. 441.)
(25.) Has there been but a single effort made to immortalise among printers Valentine Tag? Mercier, Abbé de Saint-Léger, in his Supplément à l'Hist. de l'Imprimerie, by Marchand, p. 111., accuses Baron Heinecken of having stated that this fictitious typographer set forth the Fables Allemandes in 1461. Heinecken, however, had merely quoted six German lines, the penultimate of which is
"An Sant Valantinus Tag,"
intimating only that the work had been concluded on St. Valentine's day.
(26.) Can there be any more fruitful source of error with respect to the age of early printed books than the convenient system of esteeming as the primary edition that in which the date is for the first time visible? It might be thought that experienced bibliographers would invariably avoid such a palpable mistake; but the reverse of this hypothesis is unfortunately true. Let us select for an example the case of the Vita Jesu Christi, by the Carthusian Ludolphus de Saxonia, a work not unlikely to have been promulgated in the infancy of the typographic art. Panzer, Santander, and Dr. Kloss (189.) commence with an impression at Strasburg, which was followed by one at Cologne, in 1474. Of these the former is mentioned by Denis, and by Bauer also (ii. 315.). Laire notes it likewise (Ind. Par., i. 543.: cf. 278.), but errs in making Eggestein the printer, as no account of him is discernible after 1472. (Meerman, i. 215.) Glancing at the misconceptions of Maittaire