those twelve hundred and odd pages of dark stately type, the deep black of the ink, the broadness of the margins, the glossy crispness of the paper, may have been equalled, but they have never been surpassed; and in its very cradle, the printer's art, thanks to the Gutenberg Bible, shines forth indeed as an art as much and more than as a craft. Last but not least, the Gutenberg Bible is the first edition of the Book of Books. The mere fact that in the Rhine valley in 1450 the first book to be printed should have been the Bible, tells its own story. While Gutenberg and Fust were actually at work, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 announced the end of an old world and the dawn of modern thought. The whole of the Reformation has the printed Bible as its background. Did Gutenberg realize that by setting up the Holy Text in type he was heralding one of the greatest movements of human thought in the history of the civilized world? ¶ THE GUTENBERG BIBLE IS ONE OF THE RAREST BOOKS IN EXISTENCE. IT IS FOUR TIMES AS SCARCE AS THE FIRST FOLIO OF SHAKESPEARE. SOME FORTY-FIVE COPIES ARE KNOWN, OF WHICH MORE THAN TWENTY ARE IMPERFECT. ONLY FOUR OTHER COPIES (AND TWO SINGLE VOLUMES) ARE STILL IN PRIVATE HANDS: ONE OF THESE IS IMPERFECT, AND TWO OTHERS ARE PRACTICALLY PROMISED TO PUBLIC LIBRARIES. TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, THIS AND ONE OTHER COPY ARE THE ONLY PERFECT EXAMPLES OF THE GUTENBERG BIBLE WHICH ARE EVER LIKELY TO COME ON THE MARKET. ¶ No bibliographical treasure has been more ardently coveted in the past than the Gutenberg Bible. Since the eighteenth century all the great libraries of the world, all the great private collections, have endeavored to secure a copy, and whenever they have succeeded, it has been considered their choicest possession. It is thus that the extant copies have been one by one locked up in the great literary and artistic repositories of Europe, in the British Museum, the Bodleian, the John Rylands Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, the Vatican, the libraries of Berlin, Leipzig, Munich and Vienna. Great collectors of the past such as Grenville, Lord Spencer, Sykes, Perkins, Lord Ashburnham, Lord Crawford, Lord Carysfort, Henry Huth, and in this country, J. Pierpont Morgan, Robert Hoe and Henry E. Huntington, have all felt that a Gutenberg Bible was the real cornerstone of a great library. For every collector, for every museum, for every cathedral, for every individual or body of individuals with a soul, the sale of the Melk copy of the Gutenberg Bible is the unique opportunity of keeping safe for posterity one of the noblest and most inspiring achievements of the human hand. 3 |