Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1886 — Some Curiosities About Books. [ARTICLE]

Some Curiosities About Books.

“More celebrity,” says Mr. Tredwell, in his “Plea for Bibliomania,” “has attached to the finder of a literary nugget entombed amid the accumulated dust and filth of ages than the quiet enjoyment of all that is purchasable with the wealth of Crcesus could confer.” It is " notorious that the works of Aristotle, which have had more dnfluence oh the human mind than any other writings except the Holy Scriptures, were lost for 200 years, and then discovered by an old bo-k collector named Apellicon. The credit of unearthing. Quintilian’s “Institutes of the Orator” belongs to" Bracciolini Poggio, one of the revivers of learning who flourished at Florence in the fifteenth century, while Cicero’s “Commentaries” were found under similar circumstances in the sixteenth. These and many other similar discoveries had reference, however, to works in manuscript, which were first given to the world by their indefatigable exhumer. Since the introduction 5f printing, the researches of such collectors as David Wilson, commonly jailed “Snuffy Davy,” have been confined to books of- which whole editions liave passed away, without the possibility of recovering a single copy. Every bibliophile is acquainted with the story of “Snuffy Davy’s” good luck tn finding William Caxton’s “Game of Chesse,” the first book printed in England, upon a bookstall in Holland, and buying it for twopence. This identical copy he sold to Osborne, the London bookseller who advised Dr. Johnson to buy a porter’s knot and eschew literature, for £2O. Osborne, in his turn, sold it to Dr. Anthony Askew for £65, and upon the latter’s .death it was bought for £370 for the Royal Library at Windsor, where it will no doubt remam forever, or at least until one of “The Enemies of Books,” enumerated by Mr. William Blades* in his volume ’ of that name, shall queilch its existence. —London Telegraph.