University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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Royal Academy of Science Cmore than one hundred volumesj, those of the Swedish Academy, and of the Royal Academy of Literature, and many collections in documentary history, besides numerous other works. In Spanish and Portugu ese, besides many modern authors, I have numerous old chronicles, such as the Madrid collection of old Spanish chronicles in 7 vols. 4to, the Portuguese Livros Ineditos da Historia Portugueza, 5 vols. folio, Fernam Lopez, de Brito, Duarte Nunez do Liam, Damiam de Goes, de Barros and Couto, Albuquerque, Castanheda, Resende, Andrada, Osorio, also de Menezes, Mariana, Ponz Viage de Espana, Navarrete and others, in Italian, most of the best authors who have acquired a European reputation: several hundred vol- umes of French works, including many of the old chroniclers, a respectable collection in German, including many editions of Reyneke de Vos, the Nibelungen, and other works of the Middle Ages, in classical literature, good editions of the most celebrated Greek and Latin authors, and in English, a respectable collection of the best authors, among which I may notice as rare in this country, many of the old chroniclers Qincluding Lord Berners's Froissartj, Roger Ascham, the Worlcs of King James I, John Smith's Virginia Qedition of 16245, Amadis de Gaul, and Palmerin of England. In Lexicography, I have the best dictionaries and grammars in all the languages of VVestern Europe, and many bio- graphical dictionaries and other works of reference in various lan- guages. I have also many works on astrology, alchemy, witch- craft, and magic, and a considerable collection of Works on the situation of Plato's Atlantis and the Elysian Fields, such as Rud- beck's Atlantica, Goropius Becanus, De Grave Republique des Champs Elysees, Ramus Ulysses et Outinus unus et idem, and others. 4 To represent the accumulations of the succeeding thirty-eight years the above list would need to be greatly extended. Under the single subject of Forestry the catalogue shows 183 titles, and under Catholic Church over half as many. But space fails for more than a mere mention of the distinctively rare books, not I8'

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and travels, and the remaining third as philology, natural science, political economy, theology and works of reference. In August, 1844, Mr. Marsh, in a letter to Charles Lanman, wrote from memory the following description of his library, which is copied, with important typographical corrections, from the Liz'- emry IV01'!ci for October 21, 1882. At the time of this writing Mr. Marsh had published none of his books except the Icelandic Grammar. The list, it will be noticed, gives no hint of the direc- tions taken by his later collecting. ,My library consists of something less than five thousand vol- umes, and is such a heterogeneous collection as of course so small a one, if suited at all to the purposes of a scholar of rather multi- farious than profound reading, necessarily must be. It is meager in all departments except that of Scandinavian literature, in which I suppose it to be more complete than any collection out of the northern kingdoms. In old Northern literature it contains all the Arna-Magnaian editions of the Icelandic Sagas, all those of Suhm, all those of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, and, in fact, all those printed at Copenhagen and Stockholm, as well as in Iceland, with scarcely an exception. I possess also the great editions of Heimskringla, the two Eddas, Kongs-Sknugg-Sio, Konunga Styrilse, the Scriptores Rerum Danicarum, Scriptores Rerum Svecicarum, Dansk Magasin, the two complete editions of Olaus Magnus, Saxo Grammaticus, the works of Bartholinus, Toriaeus, Schoening, Suhm, Pontoppidan, Grundtvig, Petersen, Rask, the Atlantica of Rudbeck, the great works of Sjceberg, Lil- jegren, Geijer, Cronholm, and Strinnholm, all the collections of old Icelandic, Danish, and Swedish laws, and almost all the writers, ancient and modern, who have treated of the language, literature or history of the ancient Scandinavian race. In modern Danish literature, I have the works of I-Iolberg, Ewald, I-Ieiberg, Bag- gesen, CEhlenschlxger, Ingemann, Nyerup, with other celebrated authors, in Swedish, those of Leopold, Qxenstjerna, Bellman, Franzen, Atterbom, Tegner, Frederika Brem er, and indeed almost all the belies Zeffnfs authors of Sweden, the transactions of the I7

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included in the preceding summary. Among such must be included the 1518 edition of Champier's Rosa Gallica, the exist- ence of which was doubted by Allutg a fine copy of the original edition of the King james translation of the Bible, 1611, and a Low-Saxon version of Luther's Bible, printed at Magdeburg in 1545. Among rare specimens of early Eng- lish books may be mentioned two beautiful reprints: Cax- ton's Game of the Chesse, and The Book of Hawking by Juliana Berners, originally printed by Wyiilcyn de W'ordeg The Apo- logye of Sir Thomas More, I533jTy1'1C.l2LlCiS Supper of the Lorde, 1533, Uvicklieffes Wicket, 1548, for reading which 501 persons were condemned to be burnt, Bulleins Bulwarke of Defence, 1562, Phaer and Twyne's Translation of Virgil, 1596g A Rela, tion of a journey, by George Sandys, 1615 5 Godwin's Christ Set forth, I642, Roger VVilliams's Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, 1644, and George Fox's Battle-Door for Teachers to Learn Sin- gular and Plural, 1660. Out of many old and curious German works may be specified Brunschwygk's Liber de Arte Distil- landi, ISOOQ St. Bridget's Das Buch der himlischen Offenbarung, 1502, and two editions of Tauler's Sermons, 1508 and 1523. In French, perhaps the most notable work is Taverniei-'s Les Six Voyages, 1679-92. In Italian, prominent among many rare and valuable works stands IVIanzoni's I Promessi Sposi, the Milan edition of 1825-6, which was suppressed by the author and was for a long time unknown to Italian bibliographers. The library possesses also the rare original edition of AlHeri's Misogallo, pub- lished in London in 1799, and not included in the Florence edi- tion of his works in 1804. Among the most valuable works in the collection is the Historia de las Cosas de Etiopia, by Fran- cisco Alvarez, translated from Portugese into- Spanish, and pub- lished at Antwerp in 1557. A similar copy has been sold in Lon- don for 75120. In concluding this paragraph, we may asso- ciate two works widely separated in time and charater, Robert Flud's Utriusque cosmi historia, I6I7fIQ,-31'1Cl a Confederate I9