Many of the publications of Dr. Dibdiu have already been enume rated, but it will be necessary to recur to some of them to afford a 'idler notion of their character. The most important is the ' Typo ;raphical Antiquities of Great Britain.' The meritorious work of Ames on that subject, professing to give an account of all the works printed in England from the introduction of the art to the year 1600, had been expanded from one volume to three by Herbert, who made such extensive additions that the work might justly be regarded as so longer Amets'e, but his own. There was still room for extensive improvement on Herbert—a very simple alteration even in the arrangement would have much increased its value to nearly all who consulted it. The titles of the books are disposed under the names of the printers: had they been disposed instead, according to Panzer's plan, in his Annals of German Literature,' in the plain order of date, a host of particulars would have presented themselves in combination which are now scattered and inaccessible. It would have been far from uninteresting to observe what books issued from the press in England during the year in which Henry broke up the monasteries, in which Mary lighted the firers of Smithfield, or in which Shakspere first came to London. Dibdin has preserved the old arrangement, and has so much augmented the matter that the four volumes of his edition, which was left imperfect, carry the record no further than the middle of the second volume of Herbert's three. Some of the matter which he has added is of interest, in particular his more minute account of the productions of Caxton, but much is mere idle surplusage— biographies of book-collectors of the 18th century, illustrated with their portraits, which have nothing whatever to do with the history of printing iu the 15th and 16th centuries. Much too of the additional matter for which be has obtained credit is taken from the manuscript notes which Herbert had prepared for a second edition, and inserted in a copy of his work which is now iu the British Museum. It is to be hoped that the whole subject will be resumed ere long by some competent scholar, with the numerous additional materials now at his command in our public libraries, when, with some industry and intelligence, a work may be produced which will interest not only the bibliographer but all who have a tincture of feeling for literary matters. The ' Bibliotheca Spenceriana,' from its containing parti
culars of many books not accessible to the public in general, is often used as a work of reference; but those who have consulted it the oftenest regard it with the most distrust. Such was Dr. Dibdin's habit of inaccuracy, that iu two accounts of the origin of the Roxburgho Club, to him a matter of great importance and interest, given in two of his works, the dates aro utterly irreconcileable. In the' Decameron' (voL iii., p. 69), he distinctly states that the dinner at which he proposed it was on the 4th of June ; in the' Reminiscences' (p. 367),he states no less distinctly that it was " on the evening before the sale of the 'Boccaccio' of 1471, which took place on the 17th of June 1812." It may easily he conceived that his accounts of the dates of rare books are not to be depended on till after they have been verified. It may be remarked also that his way- of describing a book has too little of the scholar and the man of letters, and too much of the bookseller and the bookbinder. The width of the margin, and the kind of leather in which a book is coated, attract as much of his attention as the particulars which all copies of the book have in common. The ' Tours ' are a singular compound of anecdotes of rare interest mixed up with the most idle and irrelevant matter. The Decameron' is by far the best of Dr. Dibdin's works, as comprising the least of detail and the most of anecdote ; and it is written in many portions with a degree of care and spirit often wanting in his other works. The Reminiscences' afford singular proof that, although the author of an Introduction to the Classics,' his acquaintance with some of them was more than usually deficient. On tho whole, though his bibliographical works abound with much that the reader wishes away, they are indispensable in any large library of English literature. His other productions, which are numerous, will be found mentioned in his own ' Reminiscences,'