manded by his task. His mission | was arranged with all the importance of a royal embassy. All the details of his embarkation and voyage, the reception to be accorded to him by the University of Louvain, the municipality of Antwerp, and the Viceroy himself-were carefully defined by Philip. His voyage was interrupted by a storm, which cast the vessel in which he sailed upon the west coast of Ireland, and he had to cross both that country and England before he could again embark for Antwerp, which he reached May 18, 1568. At this moment Plantin had gone to Paris to purchase paper, but he hurried back to meet the welcome stranger. His anxieties, however, were not yet ended. Arias brought | with him letters of credit from the Court of Spain, and a promise from Philip to contribute 12,000 florins to the work; but he required an undertaking from Plantin to repay three-quarters of the loan in copies of the Polyglot, and to give immediate security for the remainder. Compliance with this last condition was impossible. So universal was the feeling of insecurity and distrust, that "a father would not even be responsible for his son." After much discussion it was proposed that the proof-sheets, as they were printed, should be placed under the custody of Curiel, the royal factor, and Arias Montanus, and that, until the work was complete, Plantin's house, all his property, and his person should be pledged for whatever restitution the King should demand. Hard as were these conditions-for Plantin valued his printing establishment at more than 20,000 florins -they were not accepted without hesitation, and after special reference to the Spanish Court. Arias well knew the thrift of Philip. His own annual stipend as a royal chaplain was about £100, and this allowance was increased during his sojourn at Antwerp to a sum equivalent to £152 a year of our money. The archives of the Musée Plantin supply minute details of the daily progress of the work. Five learned collaborateurs, besides Raphelengien, his second self, worked under the direction of Arias. There were the texts of the different versions and their several Latin translations to be carefully revised. There were Hebrew, Syro-Chaldæan, Syriac, and Greek dictionaries and grammars to be compiled. There was a vast Apparatus Sacer to be written. M. Rooses enumerates these among the principal additions made by Arias to the Complutensian Polyglot-besides which he added the Bible of Pagnino, the treatises in the last volume, the Syriac text of the New Testament and the Chaldee paraphrase for the whole of the Old Testament, which Ximenes had only given in his first volume. He also added the accents to the Hebrew texts. We are not giving a critical account of the work, but enough has been said to prove that the editor's labor must have been almost incredible. For four years he plied his task, Sundays not excepted, for eleven hours a day. His efforts were assiduously supported by Plantin. By the middle of May, 1570, four presses were incessantly and exclusively devoted to the royal Polyglot, and a ternion, and sometimes a sheet more, was struck off daily. "Forty craftsmen were constantly at work,' says Arias, "each in his own department, and no intelligent person passes through Antwerp without coming to see the order and activity which reign through the factory and the skill with which the work is carried on." Universal interest was awakened in the success of so great an undertaking. Princes begged to have vellum copies, and Cardinals vied with one another in their efforts to render them complete. The theologians of Spain and the Netherlands proffered their manuscripts and their learning. Cardinal Spinoza,at Philip's elbow, stimulated his zeal in the cause. Cardinal Sirlet labored to supply an exact text, and furnished various readings for the Psalms. Cardinal Granvelle's hearty co-operation has been already mentioned. He eagerly looked for the proof-sheets which were posted to him at Naples, as well as to his royal master at Madrid, as fast as they were printed. Despite such distinguished patronage, Plantin was almost crushed under the costs of his enterprise. In December, 1569, he tells Granvelle that but for the sale of his Breviaries he would have been ruined by his outlay, which exceeded the value of all that he possessed. As time wore on, Philip became more exacting He would allow no one to have a single vellum copy but himself, and he should require, not six, but thirteen. The Duke of Bavaria had bespoken and paid for one a year before, but Philip was inexorable. He was far less prompt in providing funds for his printer, who was distracted at the cost of 1,600 dozen skins, for which Curiel supplied him with less than half the price. To complete his task Plantin became seriously in volved in debt. By the time that the several versions of the text and the Bible of Pagnino were in the press, his resources were so exhausted that he could purchase no more parchment. The remaining volumes, comprising the Apparatus Sacer, had all to be printed on paper, and the first edition limited to 600 copies, or less than half the number of the impressions of the text. At length, after five years of unwearied labor and unceasing anxiety from August 2, 1568, to Angust 18, 1573-the work was completed. Our space forbids more than a cursory description of its appearance and contents. The type, style and finish are magnificent. In the volumes of the Old Testament, cach opening of two pages contains, in four parallel columns, the Hebrew text with Jerome's translation, the Greek Septuagint, and the Vulgate, and below them the Chaldee paraphrase and its Latin rendering. The New Testament comprises the Syriac, Greek, and Latin versions. Each book is headed by a preface from the pen of Arias Montanus, and by the prolegomena of Jerome. An abundance of engravings and maps increase the beauty and value of the edition. Besides various dictionaries and grammars the "Apparatus" contains a vast mass of information, such as schedules of various readings, explanation of idiomatic phrases, brief annotations upon obscure passages. A series of treatises, distributed under ten fanciful titles, such as Nehemiah, Tubal Cain, etc., explains the geography of the sacred volume and the antiquities of the chosen people. A quaint peculiarity is the occasional occurrence of a brief admonition А from the publisher to the reader, printed on the title page, of which the following is a specimen: "Let him who would understand the arrangement and the full purport of this work, and of all things which are contained in this 'Apparatus,' read attentively the preface immediately following, as well as all the prefaces of the same Montanus annexed to the several books. No one will ever regret this truly insignificant labor." A similar preface to the book entitled Joseph, sive de arcano Sermone, states that it contains a clear explanation of more than eleven thousand passages, and if taken with the following section will form a continuous commentary upon the Scriptures. Needless to say that modern research has superseded much of the learning of Montanus. We may smile at the assertion, that the Hebrew of the Old Testament is the one primæval language, spoken by our first parents, of which God Himself was the author, and in which He delivered the Law on Mount Sinai. This fact, it is added, is not merely established by broken tradition and admitted even by those who decry the Eastern languages (apud ipsos linguarum detractores,) but proved by monuments left in the desert by Israel during the forty years' wandering. Despite all such imperfections, the work was to the date of its appearance, an unparalleled achievement, such as entitles Plantin to the highest honor, and goes far to justify the hyperbole which declared Arias Montanus to be the wonder of his age. The edition consisted of 1,213 copies, of which 960 were on grand royal paper de Troyes, 200 on paper au raisin de Lyon, 30 on imperial paper à l'aigle, and 10 on grand imperial paper d'Italie. These last were not offered for sale, but were reserved as presents for distinguished persons, and Plantin assured the Duke of Bavaria that they even surpassed in beauty and splendor the copies on vellum. Of the 13 royal examples upon parchment, six were sent to the library of the Escurial, one was presented to the Pope, and another to the Duke of Savoy. The destination of a third has special interest for the English reader. The period of the publication of the Polyglot synchronizes with Alva's government of the Netherlands. While the best blood of the country was flowing like water; while the heads of Horn and Egmont were quivering on the scaffold; while the most odious and unrelenting cruelty was rampant, most unblushing in audacity, now veiled under the more hateful guise of unfathomable treachery, the proof-sheets of the gospel of the Prince of Peace and Love were passing to and fro between Antwerp and Madrid, it may be not infrequently by the same post which bore tidings to Philip of the work of the Blood Council, and carried back royal instructions or approval to his ruthless representative. What reward more fitting as a mark of royal favor to the terrible viceroy than a vellum copy of the royal Polyglot! We have been unable to trace its subsequent history. But among the choicest treasures of the British Museum, its pages as spotless, its very ink as brilliant as when it issued three centuries ago from Plantin's printing house, the visitor may gaze upon the splendid folios which Arias Montanus presented in his master's name to Alva, and may read that it was designed as an eternal monument of Alva's piety, "from the best of monarchs to the best of ministers."'* While the latter portion of the Polyglot was yet in preparation, Philip dispatched instructions to his ambassador at Rome to solicit the "approbation and privilege" of the Pope. It was urged that the orthodoxy of the work was indisputable, that it was guaranteed by the censorship of Louvain and the imprimatur of the Sorbonne, that it was under the special patronage of the most Catholic king. To the dismay of all concerned in the work, Pius V. sternly refused. In vain did Zuniga, the Spanish envoy, endeavor to obtain even the concession to Plantin of copyright within the Papal States. The impossibility of compliance was shown by a long list of reasons. First, the grant of copyright would tacitly imply approbation, and the Apostolic See could not approve what it had not seen. Second, there had been some change in the Latin version of the New Testament, which the Pope had not sanctioned and which might be the work of Erasmus or some other novel interpreter. Third, the Pope did not know whether the Syriac text omitted the Apocalypse and the Second Epistle of St. Peter, whose authenticity was disputed by certain heretics. Fourth, it was necessary to examine whether some of the treatises were not cabalistic. Fifth, it was impossible to adopt without examination the modifications introduced into the translation of Pagnino. Sixth, it was said that the Talmud and other condemned books were quoted. Lastly, scandal was occasioned, in that Arias had invoked the aid of Masius, a scholar who only bore a doubtful reputation. So formidable an array of difficulties, however, was dissolved a few months later by the death of Pius V. and the election of the more accommodating Gregory XIII. The approbation of the Pope was speedily followed by that of the Catholic theologians of Germany and Spain. During the progress of the royal Polyglot through the press, Plantin received a mark of the King's favor which he would gladly have been spared. The famous edict of 1550 had failed adequately to restrain heretical and seditious opinions, and it was determined to subject all who were engaged in the art of printing to severer scrutiny. By the first clause of an ordinance dated May 19, 1570, the office of royal "prototypographus" was created, whose duty should be to carry out the minute and vexatious regulations which subsequent articles of the same edict prescribed. The foremost of these was to examine and approve all master and journeymen printers throughout the King's dominions in the Low Countries, and to furnish The entire dedication runs as follows:-them with letters of "identity," acEx Philippi II. Catholici mandato Ilmo. Alba Duri Ferdinando, quod compositis in cording to their capacity; which Belgia belli ac pacis reb. religione instaurata letters were then to be presented to the bonis artibus locum servavit. Benedict. sovereign or his lieutenant-general Arias Montanus sacra causa legatum sanc- for confirmation, before they could tum Bibliorum opus eadem tempestate feli-practice their art. Application to cissime excusum. In eternum pietatis monumentum optimi regis optimo ministro detulit." the prototypographus was not to be made until each master-printer had fied on its first or last page. An extract from the Notarial Act, in Plantin's own hand-writing, authorizing one Jacques Roschart, of Douay, to exercise the métier of a printer, will cast additional light upon the execution of the ordi nance: observe, point by point, the ordinances "He also has promised, and promises, to made, or hereafter to be made, by his Majesty on the subject of printing. Also, to print whatever he shall carry out, correctly, clearly, on serviceable paper with ample margins, and that he will not attempt to print anything in which he is not expert, under the penalty that what he has vice-printed shall be priced only as waste paper, to be sold to the apothecaries and buttermen; and, moreover, if he should the matter of printing, that he will warn learn that any one commits any abuse in him duly and in good faith to abandon it, in default whereof he will inform the visitors, as the case requires. magistrate, the prototypographus, or the spondence." Corre obtained from his diocesan or from the inquisitor a first certificate of orthodoxy and good conduct, as well as a second one from the magistrate, testifying to his life and reputation. It was further enacted that he should swear true obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff, and acceptance of all the doctrines taught by the Holy Roman Church, as defined and declared by sacred canons and general councils, especially the Holy Synod of Trent. The same conditions were required of a journeyman before he could be admitted to a workshop. Yet this fourfold scrutiny of bishop and magistrate, prototypographus and roy, did not exhaust the paternal care of the Government. The new official was to have power to inspect printing houses, to test the capacity of "correctors" and their acquaintance with the languages they professed to understand, to keep a reg-. ister of all printers, with their names and those of their parents, the places It was in vain that Plantin enof their business and their births, deavored to decline the royal nomtheir mode of life, and "the quality ination to so invidious a position. of their persons. A supervision, He pleaded his ini perfect knowledge no less microscopic, followed every of Flemish, and the overwhelming issue from the press. The day and pressure of work occasioned by the year of its commencement, and the Polyglot. He was more anxious, date of its completion, were to be he said, for means to discharge his scrupulously recorded. As soon as debts than to increase his dignities. the impression had been taken of a He was peculiarly sensitive to illwork, previously approved by the will, and had a superstitious dread of censors, a copy was to be furnished envy. Caution and conscience comto the King's commissioners, that it bined to make him deprecate any might be carefully collated with the titular distinction. In reply to the original manuscript. This ordeal congratulations and compliments of surmounted, the work was to be of friends, he always expresses a wish submitted to the Governor-General to be regarded and addressed as a or the Privy Council, who should simple merchant and citizen; but he decide on the advice of the prototy- was constrained to accept the "honpographus the reasonable price ators, rights, pre-eminences, franchises which it should be sold, and which price was in every case to be speci and liberties" assigned to his office. These high-sounding advantages |