The March issue of the Library, incorporating the Transactions of
the Bibliographical Society (H. Milford, 5s. net), contains an excellent account by Mr. C. W. James of the manuscripts in the library at Holkham—one of the few great private libraries that remain intact in England. Nothing has been added to it for a century, but the collection of MSS. begun by Chief Justice Coke and greatly enlarged by the Thomas Coke who• died in 1759 is one of the most important, for its size, in Europe. Thomas Coke acquired many of his finest books from monasteries at Lyons and Padua and from the Giustiniani family in Venice. We may name among them a Libro della Nature by Leonardo, a ninth-century Cicero from Cluny and an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the Gospels which once belonged to the Lady Judith, wife of Tosti and sister-in-law of King Harold. Mr. James has much to say of these and many other treasures.
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