Note 110 — The Cabinet.

"Scripsit et Erycius Puteanus librum De Usu Bibliothecæ et quidem speciatim Bibliothecæ Ambrosianæ Mediol., in 8vo., 1606, editum, aliumque, cui titulus Auspicia Bibliothecæ Lovaniensis, an. 1639, in 4to." Morhof. "It is true," says Baillet, "that this Puteanus passed for a gossipping sort of writer, and for a great maker of little books, but he was, notwithstanding, a very clever fellow." Jugemens des Savans, vol. ii., 150. In the Bibl. Crev., vol. v., 311, will be found one of his letters, never before published. He died in 1646. Possevinus published a Bibliotheca selecta and Apparatus sacer—of the former of which, the Cologne edition of 1607, folio, and of the latter, that of 1608, are esteemed the most complete. The first work is considered by Morhof as less valuable than the second. The "Apparatus" he designates as a book of rather extraordinary merit and utility. Of the author of both these treatises, some have extolled his talents to the skies, others have depreciated them in proportion. His literary character, however, upon the whole, places him in the first class of bibliographers. Consult the Polyhist. Literar., vol. i., 175. He was one of the earliest bibliographers who attacked the depraved taste of the Italian printers in adopting licentious capital-initial letters. Catherinot, in his Art d'imprimer, p. 3, makes the same complaint: so Baillet informs us, vol. i., pt. i., p. 13, edit. 1725: vol. iii., pt. 1, p. 78. Schottus's work, de Bibl. claris Hispaniæ viris, France, 1608, 4to., is forgotten in the splendour of Antonio's similar production; but it had great merit in its day. Jugemens des Savans, vol. ii., pt. 1, 132, edit. 1725.