book four
copies are known, but unfortunately there is no copy in Cambridge, the four copies being in the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Lambeth Library, and Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin. The Bodleian copy had belonged to Richard Burton, the author of the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, the Lambeth one to Archbishop Bancroft, so that at any rate for a few years, between 1646 and 1662, this latter copy was with the rest of the Archbishop’s books upon the shelves of the University Library.
About April, in 1521, according to Bradshaw’s calculation, Siberch’s second book appeared, the sermon of Augustine, _De miseria ac brevitate vitæ_, a book of twelve leaves. The printer had added a little to his stock of type, for there is a Greek motto on the title-page which is also enclosed between two border-pieces.
This type is interesting as the first genuine moveable Greek type used in England. A year or two earlier W. de Worde had introduced a few words of Greek into an edition of one of Whitinton’s Grammars, but the words were roughly cut on wood. Pynson did not begin to use Greek until 1524 in a work by Linacre, and in the preface he offers a curious apology for its imperfections, praying the reader to pardon missing breathings or accents, since he had but recently cast the Greek types and had not prepared a supply sufficient to finish the work completely.
The amount of Greek printing in all Siberch’s books put together is very small, hardly enough to call for the cutting of a special fount, for it must be borne in mind that a Greek fount is infinitely larger and more complex than a Roman. One specially complicated fount used at Venice in 1486 contained about 1350 sorts. It seems probable therefore that we must look to some foreign source for this type, and its identification might throw some further light on Siberch’s business career.
The two border side-pieces, each containing three small scenes in canopied compartments relating to the Last Judgment, evidently form part of a set for use in a _Book of Hours_. These identical border-pieces have not been found used elsewhere, but are evidently copied from, and resemble in every detail, two of a set used in a _Book of Hours_ printed at Kirchheim. Very little, however, can be deduced from similarity of design, for printers copied designs which pleased them from any source, and often with such extraordinary accuracy as to require very careful scrutiny to distinguish the copy from the original.
This is the rarest of all Siberch’s books, for only one copy is known, now in the Bodleian. It formerly belonged to John Selden and went with the rest of his books to Oxford by bequest in 1659.
Of the next