Calendar Of The Shakespearean Rarities, Drawings And Engravings

THE following extract is from p. 84 of “A Calendar of the Shakespearean Rarities, Drawings, and Engravings preserved at Hollingbury Copse, Brighton, that quaint wigwam on the Sussex Downs which has the honour of sheltering more record and artistic evidences connected with the personal history of the Great Dramatist than are to be found in any other of the World’s libraries.... For special circulation and for presents only, 1887." This is the work in which is set out a detailed list of the rarities to be offered to the corporation of Birmingham for 7,000l. under the will of the late Mr. J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, and the extract I think may interest not only your last week's correspondent, Mr. Robert Roberts, but also Shakspearean students generally: “283. England's Parnassus, or the choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets, with their Poeticall Conparisons, Descriptions of Bewties, Personages, Castles, Pallaces, Mountaines, Groues, Seas, Springs, Rivers, &c. Whereunto are annexed other various discourses, both pleasaunt and profitable. Imprinted at London for N. L., C. B., and T. H. , 1600 — small octavo. An interesting collection that includes numerous extracts from the works of Shakespeare. This copy, which belonged successively to Theobald and Oldys, is perhaps unique in one small matter, the two fly-leaves of sheet A preceding the title-page. In common with two other copies in the British Museum, it has not the verses commencing ‘Fame's windy trump,’ which have been said, I am sure erroneously, to form a genuine portion of the work." The late Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps also had in his library, and I, as the legatee thereof, now have on my shelves, a gorgeously bound portion of the book the subject of this letter, and inside the cover he had pasted a memorandum as follows: “There is already a perfect copy of this book in my collection, No. 283. The present fragment, taken from a very imperfect copy, contains the whole of the last sheet with the blank last leaf, the latter being important as showing that the verses commencing ‘Fame’s windy trump' could never have formed part of the original work.” I do not make any remarks relative to these extracts, for they speak for themselves, and any notes of mine would be needless and wearisome. They only show that Mr. Roberts has been forestalled in his claim to uniqueness for his copy. —The Athenæum: A Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Volume 1 [1889]