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so expired at last in harness, "like a valiant man of Spain".

Or what more likely, since here is the book in England, than that some English soldier brought it over? Some friend or follower of Sir Philip Sidney or of the fighting Veres? or of that Robert Stuart famous in Netherland story, who on an occasion-it was the first of August and hot-took off not only his armour, but his very shirt, and fought, as the chronicler puts it, "in the costume of his ancestors, the ancient Picts"? Or did Mr. Leyton, the Queen's envoy at Brussels, bring it over? It is possible; for here the book is, and all these men lived and moved on the troubled stage of the Netherlands, when it was young and its paper still unfaded.

Of that stage no part was more troubled than Antwerp. We are told that on the abdication of Charles the Fifth in 1555, this city was the second in Europe in population-Paris ranking first-and that in mercantile importance it had no rival. Its streets were lined with stately buildings and thronged with passengers from morning to evening; its marts were the markets of the world; the ships that passed in and out of its harbour were counted by hundreds weekly. It was free, rich, proud; and then the Spaniard came with his Inquisition and laid a paralysing hand upon it. Yet in 1574, the year of the book's birth, much of Antwerp's wealth and greatness still survived. Alva was gone, and his Blood-Council had almost ceased to act; and men were breathing again and looking forward to better things.

But it is more easy to inaugurate the reign of cruelty than to close it. Between 1574 and 1585 the ruin of Antwerp was completed. First, in 1574-perhaps while Plantin's compositors were at work on these very pages-the Spanish soldiery mutinied, their pay being in arrear; and marching to Antwerp, seized the city and encamped in the square. Once there they requisitioned vast sup

plies, until this burden and the fear of a sack induced the Municipality to pay the arrears due; and so for that time the danger was averted.

It recurred only too soon. Two years later the same causes led to more dreadful results. The troops assigned to the defence of the huge, peaceful, timid city turned upon it, and sacked it with every horrible form of outrage and cruelty. The Spanish Fury ranks in history by the side of the Sicilian Vespers and the Parisian Matins. No town captured by storm, and given over to the soldiers-no Magdeburg or San Sebastian-ever suffered more dreadful things. Motley has told but a few of the horrors of those three days, yet the reader turns from the page on which they are described with loathing and a shudder. On re-perusing the book he will skip that chapter; he has no need to read it again, for its contents are printed on his memory in blood-red letters.

Those three days in effect destroyed Antwerp. Yet a spiteful fortune had not yet done with the ill-fated city. Six years later Alençon, the brother and heir of Henry the Third of France, was in the Netherlands by the invitation of the Dutch. Residing at Antwerp, but having his troops outside the walls, he formed a treacherous plot to bring them in and seize the city. He went out one day to review his army, and on a given signal ordered it to surprise the city by a gate which had been entrusted to him. The soldiers eager for booty rushed in with shouts of Tuez! tuez! Ville gagnée! Vive la Messe as if this had indeed been a hostile fortress taken by assault. For a time it looked as if they would be successful, and as if the horrors of the Spanish Fury would be re-enacted. But Alençon had counted literally without his host. There was one in Antwerp this time whose watchfulness was never at fault, and whose secrecy had earned him an undying nickname. William the Silent had foreseen the treachery and guarded

against it.

Presently the French found themselves opposed by lines of ordered pikes; brought to a stand they were soon driven back through the streets and finally expelled from the gates. In an hour the thing was over, and the French traitor had his lost honour and baffled spite for his only reward. Perhaps the most curious account of this incident is to be found in the memoirs of Sully, afterwards the great minister of Henry the Fourth of France. He was in Alençon's train at the time, but not being in the plot had remained in the city. As a Frenchman he found himself in danger there from the enraged Flemings, while as a Protestant he would have run much risk had he joined the French-full, at the moment of assault and fanaticism. He was delivered from this peril by William the Silent himself, who met him in the street, and sent him for safety to his own lodgings.

Finally in 1585-the eleventh year of our book-Antwerp was besieged by the Prince of Parma, and gallantly defended for some months by its citizens. It surrendered at length, not having the good fortune of Leyden. But it did enjoy this modified good luck, that it was admitted to terms and spared further horrors. The days of its prosperity, however, were over then, and the city was but the ghost of its former self.

Such was the world of strife and contention in which this Greek Testament was printed; a world in which the old order of things struggled vainly but fiercely with the new; in which despotism strove to crush freedom, and dogmatism to choke private judgment. And at the time at least the battle did not seem to go all one way. If Leyden escaped, Antwerp fell. If England triumphed, the Huguenots went backward. If Essex burned Cadiz, Tilly presently sacked Magdeburg; and Protestant Germany suffered long and bitterly. But time was on the side of the angels; first the Dutch Republic appeared, then the

Greater England, and New England; then the kingdom of Prussia. Finally a new Europe with science and learning and freedom of research, and that idea of human dignity which is much in favour now.

But we have wandered-perhaps too far-from our tiny duodecimo. Let us look now within its covers. The text is of that kind which is called, I believe, a script; that is to say, the type imitates handwriting-is a sort of stereotype of it, and lacks much of the regularity and stiffness of ordinary printed characters. The page is full of pretty curves and flourishes and dots. Many words are written currente calamo, the pen never leaving the paper; abbreviations occur in every line, and are often very puzzling. That which stands for the common Greek word ouros for instance, almost defies conjecture, the middle letter-in the script it appears last-being the only one decipherable at sight. Arbitrary signs, too, represent many short particles; and there are in a single page as many as five different ways of forming the same letter. Occasionally the end of a word is scamped, being indicated by a mere curve or dash, such as a careless writer makes when his pen leaves the paper, or is written above the line. And sometimes two letters-s and t for instance, or o and u when together-appear as one. with all these flourishes and elaborations and abbreviations, each upstroke and downstroke, thick or thin, of the handwriting appears perfectly printed though wonderfully minute; and the whole is instantly decipherable by any one acquainted with the method used. No one can doubt that the founding of type such as this was a patient labour of love. The tiny woodcuts, too, which adorn the head-letters of the Gospels, of the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation, are quaint and lively. They are illustrations for the most part of birds and animals, such as the stork and tortoise, the fox and dog, or of chubby little children who climb pleasantly about the trellis-work

Yet

of big E, and lean placidly against the comfortable sloping sides of great A. The O of one epistle however contains a Madonna and child-less than a threepenny bit in size-which bears some resemblance to the Madonna di Seggiola, and the P so often repeated imprisons not St. Paul but a gentleman who would have been more in place-I really fear I discern horns and hoofs about him -had he adorned the fourth letter of the alphabet.

At the end appears a notice in Latin. It warns the public that the exclusive right to print "the royal Holy Bible after the Complutensian model printed at Antwerp" is vested in Christopher Plantin, and that whoever prints one or part of one without his permission, or imports one, or sells one, will be punished by the confiscation of the books and a fine of five hundred florins to be paid into the Royal Treasury; as is more fully laid down, it continues, in the grant given at Brussels in the Privy Council on Jan. 10th, 1570, and confirmed in the Council of Brabant on Feb. 12th in the same year. The wording of this notice is strangely modern; it is difficult while reading it to remember the circumstances attending it, or that the grantor of the license here referred to was Philip of Spain. Many will wonder perhaps what the Complutensian model here mentioned was. And the answer is not without interest. The first time that the New Testament was printed in Greek it appeared as a part of the first great modern Polyglot. This Polyglot, or many-tongued Bible, was printed between 1513 and 1517 at Alcala in Spain, of which place Complutum is the old Roman name. It was prepared at the expense and under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, one of the greatest of Spaniards, the

conqueror of Oran from the Moors and for some time Regent of Spain. Yet notwithstanding this high authority, the appearance of the book was delayed by the jealous suspicions of the Papal Court; and so, though the Greek Testament was first printed in this Complutensian Polyglot, the first Greek edition actually published was that of Erasmus, which was brought out at Basle about 1516, being prepared in haste with the express purpose of forestalling the Alcala edition. This

of Alcala, 1517, then, is what is called the Complutensian version proper. The next great Polyglot of modern times was the one published at Antwerp by Plantin, also under Spanish patronage, in 1572. This is commonly called the Antwerp Polyglot. But as it was a revised Complutensian-the Alcala version being its basis-I think it is the one styled in our notice, "The Complutensian printed at Antwerp"; and that the text of our Greek Testament would be found to agree with it, rather than with the older Complutensian. For this reason: the famous disputed passage, 1 St. John v. 8, did not appear in the Alcala Polyglot, but did appear in the Antwerp Polyglot. And it is to be found in the little copy before me, as also in our ordinary Bible, but not in our Revised Version.

I might proceed, starting from this, to single out slight points of variance between a text so old as this before me and that of the modern Greek version, points very minute and for the most part immaterial. But to do so would be tedious and not very interesting. There is moderation in all things, and doubtless the reader will have had enough by this time of my old Greek Testament.

STANLEY J. WEYMAN.

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What's the feast whereto you're bidden?
This may be no longer hidden.
Venus floats between the tides,
And her genial month divides,
And this day is April-Ides,-
Day for me of duteous mirth,
Holier than my day of birth!
From this dawn my master dear
Rangeth each ingathered year.

Come, dear, and be at home with us.
You are no match for Telephus,
You are forestalled! A lady bright,
With graces and with gold bedight,
Holds him in bondage soft and tight.
Aspire not wildly! Muse upon
The scorching of fond Phaeton :
Think how the winged courser threw
His earth-born rider; and eschew
A love that's set too high for you.

Come, my last flame! None else shall make
The heart that glows for Phyllis ache.
Here, from the best beloved of throats,
Give back thy minstrel's words and notes.
Sing thou with me,-by song we'll rout
Those dusky imps, Distress and Doubt!

OFELLUS.

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