—— Another copy, printed on vellum, sold at the Sunderland sale for £194.
Virgilius. Romæ (Sweynheym et Pannartz), 1469 (?). Most valuable of all the first editions. Hopetoun House, 1889, slightly damaged and slightly wormed, £2000. The previous occasion on which a copy was sold was at the La Vallière sale, 1784, when an imperfect copy fetched 4101 francs.
—— Venet. Vindelin de Spira, 1470, folio, first edition with a date, printed on vellum. A copy sold for twenty-five guineas at Consul Smith’s sale, 1773; Sunderland, £810. A copy on paper was sold in 1889. Hopetoun, £590.
—— Venet. in ædibus Aldi, 1501, 8vo, first Aldine edition, and the first book printed with the italic type invented by Aldus. Sunderland, £65; copy printed on vellum (Askew, £74, 11s.) now in the Althorpe library.
Italian Classics
Ariosto. Orlando Furioso. Ferrara, 1516, with William Cecil’s (Lord Burghley) autograph. Sunderland, 1881, £300.
Boccaccio. In the catalogue of the Sunderland library (1881) eight pages are devoted to the description of various editions of his works. One of these, “De la Ruine des Nobles Hommes et Femmes,” Bruges Colard Mansion, 1476, realised £920. An imperfect copy of the celebrated first edition of the “Decameron” (C. Valdarfer, 1471) fetched £585. This was the copy possessed by Lord Blandford when he bought the complete Roxburghe copy. The imperfect copy was afterwards sold in the Lakelands sale (W. H. Crawford) for £230, and is now in the British Museum.
The latter book will always hold a high position in the annals of bibliography, from the fact that when a perfect copy in the Roxburghe