an Englishman, John of Salisbury. It is now accepted by Sabbadini, who originally had some doubts, founded on the character of the writing. The only clue which we possess as to its vicissitudes between 1423 and 1650 is furnished by some verses on the last page addressed to a person named Leo, who seems to have been a pawnbroker, and if we may judge from his name, a Jew.

'Omnia deposui, superest hec sola lacerna

Quae rogo sit curae nunc tibi, blande Leo.
Non ut conserves caries ne devoret illam,
Sed potius pestis ne tua fenus edat.'

The last line appears to mean, but rather that your plaguey interest will eat it up '.

It may be useful to give a list of classical works which have come to us from a single manuscript, with their provenance and the name of the discoverer.

Ammianus Marcellinus, Fulda (Poggio).

Apuleius, Monte Cassino (Boccaccio).

Asconius, St. Gall (Poggio).

Catullus, Verona (known to the author of Flores Morales in 1329).

Cicero, Brutus, Lodi (Landriani).

Sex. Rosc., Murena, Cluni (Poggio).

Rosc. Com., Rab. perd., Rab. Post., Cologne (Poggio). Cluent. §§ 102-7, 127–32, 149–54, 176–82, 192-end, Cluni (Poggio). Font. in Vat. H. 25, used by Poggio about 1425.

Flacc. § 75-83 (Rorarius of Friuli).

De re publica, Bobbio (Mai). Other fragments of Cicero come from the same source, e. g. portions of the speeches pro Tullio and pro Scauro come from two Bobbio palimpsests, some of them being preserved by one only. Epp. ad Brutum ii, Lorsch (Sichardus).

Gratius, Cynegeticon, France (Sannazaro).

Livy xli-xlv, Lorsch (Grynaeus).

Ovid, Halieutica, France (Sannazaro).

Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis, England (Poggio).

Pliny, Epp. ad Traianum, France (Jocundus).

Statius, Silvae, Switzerland (Poggio).

Suetonius, de grammaticis et rhetoribus, Hersfeld (Enoch). Sulpicia, Bobbio (Galbiate).

Tacitus, Annals i-vi, Corvei; Annals xi-xvi and Hist., Monte Cassino (Boccaccio); Agricola, Germania, Dialogus, Hersfeld (Enoch).

Varro, de re rustica, Monte Cassino (Boccaccio).

Velleius Paterculus, Murbach (Rhenanus).

To these may be added Valerius Flaccus, since the manuscript discovered by Poggio at St. Gall can be shown to be itself descended from the ninth-century manuscript at Rome (Vat. 3277). I have not included the grammatical works discovered by Galbiate and Parrhasius at Bobbio, e.g. Arusianus Messius, Charisius, Claudius Sacerdos, Terentianus Maurus, Velius Longus.

There is no manuscript of Velleius in existence except a sixteenth-century transcript of the lost Murbach MS. The second book of Cic. ad Brutum, the letters of Pliny to Trajan, the satire of Sulpicia, and Terentianus Maurus are not found in any extant manuscript.

THE INITIAL LETTERS AND FACTOTUMS USED BY JOHN FRANCKTON, PRINTER IN DUBLIN (1600-18)

I

By E. R. McC. DIX

Na short paper accepted by the Society and appearing in its Transactions (vol. viii, pp. 221-7) for the sessions 1904-6, I drew attention to the ornaments and head and tail pieces used by John Franckton in his press at Dublin and exhibited facsimiles of them, referring to the books from which they were taken. I promised a further contribution of the initial letters and factotums used by Franckton and, though after a long interval, I now fulfil my promise.

Franckton was the third known printer in Dublin (1600-18). He settled down there and married, and we have the names of his wife and children, and incidents of his life and business, lacking wholly as regards his two known predecessors in the Printing Art-Humphrey Powell and William Kearney. Hence Franckton is a more real and living personage and so more interesting in a way, and it is well to study carefully all his work and to note anything likely to identify any output of his Press which may turn up in imperfect or fragmentary forms. Hence I have had facsimiles made of many (if not all) of the initial letters he used and also of some of his factotums, of which six specimens are given. There being no other printer in Dublin at the time, as far as at present known, it can only be by comparing such initial letters with those used by contemporary English or foreign printers that we can form a fair conclusion of the source whence Franckton obtained his founts of type. Hence expert knowledge of the founts used by, say, the then printers of London, and the

Low Countries, is necessary. Indeed, some of the initials are so worn that it would even seem probable that Franckton may have acquired them second-hand, and that they should have dated from much earlier than his own time.

Group I. The initial letters of which I show facsimiles are nearly all taken from the Irish version of the Book of Common Prayer printed by Franckton in 1608-a volume rich in such letters, and in ornaments.

The factotums vary in size from quite small to fairly large, and are divergent in character and style.

Group II. The eight large initial letters now shown, are clearly of the same fount or set, though each has a different design.

Group III. The six smaller initial letters are also of one set, and lack any border lines such as appear in the larger initials.

Group IV. Two specimens of a still smaller set, quite different in form and style, are there given in which the whole background is black.

Group V. Lastly I give four isolated or separate specimens of initial letters, one such large, and one very small and worn. The smaller initial 'A', though used by Franckton in the Irish version of the New Testament printed by him in 1602, is really a survival from Humphrey Powell's Press at Dublin in 1551, and will be found in the Book of Common Prayer printed there by Powell in that year; so it was probably over 50 years old when Franckton used it in 1602. I do not know what the life of such a letter would be.