PURCHASES:

Deinard collec

tion

Gifts from publishers, including gifts of various imported and other noncopyrighted works, numbered 142 volumes, received as follows: From the George H. Doran company, 48 volumes; E. P. Dutton & company, 18 volumes; the Funk & Wagnalls company, 4 volumes; B. W. Huebsch, I volume; the John Lane company, 42 volumes; Longmans, Green & company, 2 volumes; Plon-Nourrit & cie, 16 volumes; G. P. Putnam's sons, I volume; the Frederick A. Stokes company, 9 volumes; and Frederick Warne & company, 2 volumes.

The three collections of Hebraica and Judaica made by Dr. Ephraim Deinard and now in the possession of the Library have been described in previous reports. In May, 1914, Dr. Deinard, having an expert knowledge of our needs, started for Asia Minor and Palestine to assemble a fourth collection. The material he gathered remained, through the exigencies of war, in Palestine until the beginning of 1919, when it was removed to Cairo and later to Alexandria, and thence transported to the United States. From this collection a selection has been made of about 3,000 volumes, about 20 of them Judaica, about 350 books written in Ladino, and the others in Hebrew. The volumes selected, besides adding to our Semitica many highly desirable titles, serve also, in no few instances, to complete important sets.

The present collection shows practically the features and characteristics of the previous ones. All fields of old and new Hebrew literature are covered: Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, Law, Cabbalah, Homiletics, Liturgy, Philosophy, Philology, History, Belles-Lettres, etc. There are many commentaries and supercommentaries relating to Mishnah and Talmud and to the standard codes of law.

The imprints exhibit a great variety of time and place. The collection includes many first prints and some rare specimens. Especially worthy of note is the large number

of books which come from Russian presses before the establishment of censorship under the Czaristic régime. Hebrew bibliographers attribute to these issues a special value.

Talmudica and Halakah take a prominent place in this collection. There are several important editions of the Mishnah, some containing the text only, others giving text, commentaries, and translation. The folio edition of the Talmud, printed by Menkes and Sprecher in Lemberg, 1860-1865 (30 v.), and the quarto edition published by the same concern (also 30 v.), Lemberg, 1860-1867, are a welcome acquisition. These two complete editions have Isaac Alfasi's Code of Law "Halakoth" with numerous commentaries as an appendix. Furthermore, there are found in this collection 9 tractates of the first Talmud edition by Bomberg (Venice, 1520-1523) and some of the second edition (Venice, 1526–1539); 15 tractates of the rare Giustiniani edition (Venice, 1546-1550); a few of the Constantinople edition which, it appears, was printed in the years 1583-1595; also some of the Cracow edition, 1602-1605. All these tractates will form a valuable addition to the Talmudic material already in possession of the Library.

The Halakah, which treats exclusively of the Mosaic and Talmudic Law, is conspicuously represented by a series of codes of different periods, accompanied by all kinds of commentaries and glossaries. Among them is found Jacob ben Asher's "Arba Turim," printed by Soncino in Fano, 1516. The Responsa of Sephardic and Ashkenasic Talmudists, which are to be specially mentioned in this connection, comprise some unusual specimens.

Among the books which belong to modern Hebrew literature are a great many that have been for some time among our desiderata. Hebrew poetry, both ancient and modern, already well represented in the former Deinard collections, will be considerably enriched by the new accessions. This

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Incunabula

may be also said of the Passower Hagadah collection of the Library, which will gain much by the new additions.

The new Deinard collection contains also 10 Hebrew manuscripts and two parts (Genesis and Exodus) of the fifteenth century edition of Nachmanides' Perush ha-Torah (Commentary on the Pentateuch), Lisbon, 1489.

As a special feature of the new collection may be mentioned the comparatively extensive representation of books written in Judaeo-Spanish, better known as Ladino, which is the vernacular of Jews in the former Turkish Empire and on the Balkan Peninsula. Nearly all the Ladino books contained in this selection were printed in those countries. The majority are bellet tristic and of recent date; only a small number relate to religion and ritual. When consolidated with the Ladino books formerly acquired, the whole will form a substantial group.

In addition to the two parts of the Commentary of Nachmanides, Lisbon, 1489, that have just been mentioned, seven specimens of the work of fifteenth century printers have been added to our possessions of incunabula. Two of them are among the products by which the history of the early press in Spain is traced, one of them a Bull of indulgences, printed in Zaragoza in 1481 by the unknown printer of the "Expositio in psalmos" of Turrecrematą, and the other the "De patre non incarnato" of Juan Roig, issued in Valencia in 1494, also without indication of the printer's name. The Thacher collection contains the works of Sallust, Valencia, 1475, noted by Mr. Thacher, on the occasion of his purchase, as the second book printed in Spain. Other than this, the Library until now has had no incunabula from either Valencia or Zaragoza.

Two other volumes, bound in one, the "De liberorvm edvcatione" of Jacobus [Porcia] Comes Purliliarum, and the "Anterotica: De amoris generibvs" of Petrus Haedus, both "accvratissime impressvm Tarvisii per Gerardvm de

Flandria" in 1492, give us our first possessions of specimens from the fifth press of Gerardus Lisa in Treviso, although in the Thacher collection there is one from the first press, the "De potestate Dei" of Hermes Trismegistus, translated by Marsilius Ficinus, dated December 18, 1471.

Another Italian press is represented by Boccaccio's "Genealogiae deorum gentilium libri XV," Venetiis, Vindilinus de Spira, 1472, with which is bound his "De montibus, sylvis, fontibus, lacubus, fluminibus, . . . liber," published in 1473, also in Venice, by the same printer.

These products of the fifteenth century press are all from the Continent of Europe. The one that remains to be noted is from the press of England's earliest printer. For the first time in the Library's history, it is possible to record the possession of a Caxton, the "Golden legend" of Jacobus de Voragine, translated, with additions from other sources, by William Caxton, and printed by him at Westminster about 1485: "the most laborious, as well as the most extensive, of all Caxton's literary and typographical labours.'

"1

De Ricci in his "Census of Caxtons" has located 33 copies of the first edition of this work. Our copy is number 30 in his list. Only one of the 33 may be regarded as complete, and that because it was supplemented with leaves from other copies. Our copy contains 305 leaves out of the full complement of 447. The printing is in black letter, double columns to the page, with 55 lines to the column, the illustrations being woodcuts portraying religious subjects, especially scriptural, and those relating to events in the lives of the saints. Initials and paragraph marks are, in this copy, supplied in red, by hand, and the volume is bound in red niger morocco, tooled, the leaves with gilt

1 "For lyke as golde passeth in valewe alle other metalles," wrote Caxton, "so thys legende exceedeth alle other bookes wherein ben conteyned all the hygh and grete festys of our Lord, the festys of our Blessed Lady the lyues passyons and myracles of many sayntes and other hystores and actes as al alonge here afore is made mencyon."

Literature

edges. A few of the signatures have the smaller headings that identify them as belonging to the second edition of 1487.

Several accessions in the general field of literature call for special mention.

A complete set of the "Cahiers de la Quinzaine" is an important addition. The place of its editor, Charles Péguy, in contemporary French life and thought, is well known. In the "Cahiers," besides his own contributions, are those of among the most illustrious of the older and newer generations in France. The "Cahiers," in fact, from the date of their establishment by Péguy, in 1900, until their publication ceased upon his death at the Marne in 1914, constitute a primary source for the history of the intellectual movement in France during the period immediately preceding the war.

At the sale of the eighth portion of the Huth library we obtained, among other items, the "Histoire dv noble Tristan, prince de Leonnois, chevalier de la Table Ronde, et d'Ysevlte, princesse d'Yrlande, royne de Cornouaille. Faite François, par Iean Maugin, dit l'Anguenin," A Paris, par Nicholas Bonfons, 1586.

Baskerville's first edition of the "Orlando Furioso" of Ariosto has come to us in the octavo form, there having also been a quarto form. Both were issued by Baskerville in 1773, in four volumes, and both are noted with admiration by Dibdin.

In English literature, one of the most notable accessions as indeed one of the most interesting of all the accessions of the year, is a fine copy of the first edition of the "Areopagitica; a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of Vnlicens'd printing, to the Parliament of England," London, printed in the year 1644. There have also come to the Library Richard Braithwait's "Comment upon the two tales of our ancient, renound, and ever-living poet, Sr.