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sous. It ultimately came to the British Museum, where it lay for long unnoticed, having been entered in the catalogue as printed by A. Ther Hoernen at Cologne, but in 1891 it was recognised as a product of the early Oxford press, and transferred to the select cases.

The next book in this group is a work on Logic, or rather a collection of nineteen logical treatises strung together to form a systematic work. It is generally associated with the name of Richard Swineshede from the occurrence of his name at the end of the seventeenth treatise. He was a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Swineshead in Lincolnshire, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, so that, as is fitting, one of the two known copies of the book is in Merton Library. The other copy is in the library of New College. A considerable number of fragments of this book have been found used in bindings, and there are odd leaves in the University Library and in the libraries of Trinity and St John’s, Cambridge.

The _Constitutiones Provinciales_ with the commentary of William Lyndewode, Wilhelmus de Tylia nemore, as he is called in the text, is by far the largest and most important book issued by the Oxford press, and the first edition of Lyndewode’s great work. It is a large folio of three hundred and fifty leaves, printed in double columns, with forty-six lines of text, or sixty of commentary, to the column. On the verso of the first leaf, missing in the majority of copies, is a woodcut of a doctor seated writing at a desk under a canopy, with a tree on either side. This represents, however, not Lyndewode compiling his commentary, but Jacobus de Voragine at work on the _Golden Legend_, a book which the Oxford press appears to have made some preparations for publishing.

This is the most common of the early Oxford books. Mr Madan enumerates twenty copies, but others have since come to light. One copy is known printed upon vellum. It was purchased at the M’Carthy sale for one hundred francs, and is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. The vellum copy, quoted by Hartshorne, as in the library of St John’s College, does not exist, though that library possesses two on paper. One copy in Cambridge, that in the library at Corpus, is worthy of special mention, as its handsome stamped binding bears every mark of being the work of Caxton.

In 1485 the Phalaris was issued. This is a Latin translation by Franciscus Aretinus of the spurious Letters of Phalaris. At the commencement are some verses by Petrus Carmelianus, the Court poet, and at the end an interesting colophon in twelve lines of Latin verse setting forth that the book was printed by Theodoric Rood of Cologne in partnership with the Englishman, Thomas Hunte. It continues that Jenson taught the Venetians, but Britain has learnt the art for itself and that in future the Venetians may cease from sending their books to us since we are now selling books to others.

It is a curious and amusing coincidence that Jenson should here be mentioned as introducing printing into Venice in place of the real first printer, John of Spire, for Jenson’s often repeated claim to be the first printer of Venice rests upon exactly the same grounds as the Oxford printer’s claim to be the first printer in England, a date in a colophon with a numeral, x, accidentally omitted.

The _Decor Puellarum_ printed at Venice by Jenson, with the date printed 1461 in place of 1471, led many early writers to consider him the first printer of Venice and of Italy, and it is possible that a copy of the book, having found its way to Oxford, deceived the writer of the verses in the Phalaris. If in return a copy of the _Expositio_ could have reached Venice, its “1468” would have just given it the lead of the first Venice book, the _Cicero_ of 1469, by one year.

Another grammar was printed about this time, the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander de Villa Dei, with a commentary. Probably what the Oxford printer issued was not the complete work but the section _De nominum generibus_. Of this