CAMBRIDGE FACSIMILES.
The Book of Curtesye. Printed at Westminster by William Caxton about the year 1477.-Sermo die lune in ebdomada Pasche. By Richard Fitz-James. Printed at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde about the year 1495. (Cambridge University Press. 10s. and 15s. net.)-These form the final instalment of the series of facsimiles of early English printed books in the University Library at Cambridge. The; Book of Courtesy or Little John, a poetical pamphlet of twenty-five pages, is again from the precious volume once in the possession of Bishop Moore of Ely. The Easter Monday sermon by Bishop Fitz-James printed by de Worde was among the books bequeathed in 1894 by Samuel Sandars, to whose generosity the library is so deeply indebted. On the first leaf occurs a woodcut representing the journey to Emmaus which belongs to the same series as that in the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, previously published, a series originally cut for Caxton's Speculum Vitae Christi. The falling off in the technical execution of the facsimiles at which we hinted in noticing the two previous volumes of the series has become much more marked in the two now under review. Not only does the ground of pages, which exhibit . no difference of colour in the original, vary in the facsimile from pure white to dark grey, but what is of even greater importance, marks in the original have been freely expunged and non-existent corners of damaged leaves inserted in the facsimile. Since the value of such work depends entirely on its absolute fidelity to the original, to tamper with it in this manner is to render it practically useless. The final issues of the series, therefore, cannot be said to reflect credit on those responsible for their production, and the sum of the criticism is that Monsieur Dujardin's photogravure is distinctly inferior to English collotype.
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