hatched sable; name on a plain wavy-edged bracket. And with the name of Fox must close our historic series.

Thus, by the fortuitous survival of a slender link, which is common to them all-namely, the preservation of a label for their respective books-a strange assemblage of stirring names has been brought together within the limits of the present chapter; names representing men of types widely distinct; names suggesting a vast range of intellectual ability.

Let us pass them again in review. Gilbert Burnet, William Penn, Robert Harley, Matthew Prior. These are great shadows of England's Augustan age; they trod the anterooms of Anne and of Dutch William, the deliverer. They have almost past into antiquity. But with the later contingent we have more concern :-Laurence Sterne, David Garrick, Horace Walpole, John Wilkes, Charles James Fox. Our grandfathers talked with these men. They are "old-fashioned," but not yet classical,

MOTTOES CONCERNING BOOKS, OR IN

PRAISE OF STUDY.

WE place at the head of this section a rather solemn denunciation against light literature, taken from a very weird book-plate of about 1750, which no doubt belonged to a theologian. The design is as follows:-A skeleton is seated on an oblong, raised, coffin-shaped, stone tomb. In his right hand are a pair of scales, in which the lighter balance contains a scroll, lettered, Dan. v. 25., Mene Teckel. In his left hand is a scythe. Behind are two other marble monuments; one, a high square family vault with a frieze of festoon work; the other, an urn and pedestal embossed with classical subjects. In the farther background are three Lombardy poplars or cypresses, and a line of remote hills. The whole design is enclosed in a monumental stonework frame, apparently on a church-wall. In a draped medallion above is-E. Bibliotheca Woogiana. Below, on an oblong unshaded slab, occurs this strange device :—

Nominor â libra: libratus ne levis unquam

Inveniar, præsta pondere, Christe, tuo.

And below this, outside the design A. Wernerin del: C. F. Boetius sculp. 6 by 3 in. W.

Now the couplet must be rendered-I, the book (liber) am named, or etymologically derived from a weight (libra); and, lest at any time I should be found light or frivolous in my contents, &c. Of course, there is more punning than

etymology in this connection. But that was the fashion of the day.*

There are five varieties of this ex-libris of the Bibliotheca Woogiana. The larger specimens bear the signatures of the designer and engraver with their initials. The small sizes are signed only-Boetius sc. Some sizes are unsigned. The same play upon liber and libra occurs on this curious example, which is a good pendent to the last ex-libris. Ex libris Petri de Maridat in Magno Regis Consilio Senatoris. Design-a negro in a short apron, otherwise undraped, standing at full length. His right hand rests on an escutcheon. Arms-az. a cross ar. His left hand holds a pair of scales. Above, in a scroll-Curæ numen habet justumque. 4° Æneid. Below the negro is written :—

:

Inde cruce hinc trutina armatus regique deoque

Milito, Disco meis hæc duo nempe libris.

Which may be explained-Armed on this hand with the cross (in the coat of arms); and on this side with the pair of scales, I fight for my King and my God. I learn these two (duties) indeed from my books (or "from my balances," as libris means both). Magni Regis is, of course, the grand Monarque; which dates the book-plate before 1715. W. Here is another ecclesiastical book-plate of M. Gottfried Balthazar Scharff Archidiac. ad SS. Trin. Svidnic.

Sæpe parum juvit tam multos volvere libros ;
Christe, tuum mortem volvere sæpe juvat.
Tot libros inter quantâ versamur in umbrâ!

Hic sine sol umbra splendidus exoritur :

Lectio librorum sine Te labor omnis in umbra est.
In Cruce da lucem cernere, Christe, tuâ.

Design—a table, curtain, drapery, and a back-ground of

*Mr. Carson suggests, that woge may be old German for wage, a balance. If so, the owner of the book-plate, not the book, speaks in the couplet.

library shelves. Affixed to the centre of these, is a square scroll, on which appears a crucifix. Above is writtenSine umbra; below, Bibliotheca Scharfiana. (1750) (Mr. Franks). The city, in which Scharff was Archdeacon, was Suidnitium or Suvidnia, now Schweidnitz, a town of Prussian Silesia, and capital of a principality. Books exist printed there in 1683.*

Let us take yet a third book-plate of a priest, this time quite untinged with any ascetic gloom. For, indeed a charming Flemish interior is presented to us in the ex-libris of Louis Bosch, whose name is given merely in initials on his book-plate, which is engraved by Fruÿtiers, about the same date 1750.† Bosch was the clergyman of Tamise, a village ten English miles south-west of Antwerp. DesignThe priest (perhaps a portrait) in a long cassock and with short rolled back hair, is seated in an arm-chair, writing at a table with a heavy fringed cloth. On the table are books and a large erect crucifix; a curtain and tassels hang above it. Behind the writer is a many-paned window. The rest of the room is completely filled with book-shelves. The initials L. B. occur across a huge folio on the floor. The picture is enclosed all round in an irregular convoluted shell-work frame, at the base of which a ribbon band, stretched across its curves and twists, reads

In tali nunquam lassat venatio sylva.

(A hunt in such a forest wearies never.)

The sylva being the rows and ranks of his reverence's books. In the left corner is L. frujtiers f: We know no other book-plate which is so strictly a picture as this. Perhaps it is copied from L. Bosch's portrait picture in oils by some Flemish artist. (See plate 13.)

* Cotton Typog. Gaz. (First Series) (1831) p. 275.

+ "Louis Bosch, Prêtre de l'Oratoire et curé de Tamise, dont le catalogue fut publié à Louvain, en 1765.”—M. de Reiffenberg, p. 13.

We can now pass to lay book-plates. J. M. Andrade also employs a simile between books and vegetation. He engraves the fruited wild-strawberry, half masked by its leaves, with inter folia fructus inscribed below. Mary Berry also utilizes this same motto and design in England (1810), with perhaps a further play upon the strawberry and her own surname. A third recent German ex-libris, with the initials O. J., repeats the motto, adding a charming design of children under a leafy arbour of vine props, laden with grape-clusters.

The next batch of mottoes all recommend more or less directly a small library, as opposed to a large one. Let citizen Francis Bissari head the list. He exhorts, that no one should collect more tomes than he can read, and rather quaintly insists, on the authority of Nero's tutor, that a multitude of books distracts the mind-Ex libris civis Francisci Bissari. Distrahit animum librorum multitudo, itaque cum legere non possis quantum habueris, sat est habere quantum legas. Senec., Ep. 2. (1750.) In the same spirit B. A. Diesbach a Carrouge (1805) advises Non multa legere sed multum. A recent book-plate, inscribed G. L. D. Bibliotheca, has Pauci sed cari. While ex libris Johannis Loubry (1780) adds-Exiguus nobis, sed bene cultus agermeaning, My library is small but well thumbed. A modern Spanish book-plate, initialed C. M., puts this proverbially, after the manner of that people-Libros y amicos, pogos y bonos.

It is a little singular that so much praise of scanty collections should be found on book-plate mottoes.

Not so the Bibliotheca Cortiniana speaks. There is no fear of heaping up volumes here-Egregios cumulare libros præclara suppellex. They are the best kind of riches, says 7. L. Pettigrew-The wealth of the soul is the only true