Note 132 — The Cabinet.

From the Latin life of Le Long, prefixed to his Bibliotheca Sacra, we learn that he was an adept in most languages, ancient and modern; and that "in that part of literature connected with Bibliography (Typographorum et Librorum Historia), he retained every thing so correctly in his memory that he yielded to few literary men, certainly to no bookseller." Of the early years of such a man it is a pity that we have not a better account. His Bibliotheca Sacra, Paris, 1725, folio, has been republished by Masch and Boerner, in four volumes, 4to., 1778, and enriched with copious and valuable additions. This latter work is quite unrivalled: no young or old theologian, who takes any interest in the various editions of the Holy Scriptures, in almost all languages, can possibly dispense with such a fund of sacred literature. The Bibliothéque Historique de la France, 1719, folio, by the same learned and industrious bibliographer, has met with a fate equally fortunate. Fontette republished it in 1768, in five folio volumes, and has immortalized himself and his predecessor by one of the most useful and splendid productions that ever issued from the press. De Bure used to sell copies of it upon large paper, in sheets, for 258 livres: according to the advertisement subjoined to his catalogue of Count Macarty's books in 1779, 8vo. The presses of England, which groan too much beneath the weight of ephemeral travels and trumpery novels, are doomed, I fear, long to continue strangers to such works of national utility.