VOLUME III SLICE VII Bible to Bisectrix (continued 6)

From the above it appears that the actual work of revision occupied about two years and nine months, an additional nine months being required for the final preparation for press. The edition appeared at length in 1611, the full title being as follows: The Holy Bible, conteyning the Old Testament, and the New: Newly Translated out of the Originall tongues, & with the former Translations diligently compared and reuised, by his Maiesties speciall comandement. Appointed to be read in Churches. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings most Excellent Maiestie. Anno Dom. 1611.45 Since that time many millions of this revised translation have been printed, and the general acceptance of it by all English-speaking people of whatever denomination is a testimony to its excellence.

Still the work of improving and correcting went on through the centuries, and a modern copy of the Authorized Version shows no inconsiderable departures from the standard edition of 1611. Dr Scrivener imputes some of those differences “to oversight and negligence ... but much the greater part of them” he holds to be “deliberate changes, introduced silently and without authority by men whose very names are often unknown.”

(A. C. P.)

More ambitious attempts at amending the new version were not lacking, but they all proved fruitless, until in February 1870 the Convocation of Canterbury appointed a committee to consider the subject of revision. The report of The Revised Version. this committee, presented in May, was adopted, to the effect “that Convocation should nominate a body of its own members to undertake the work of revision, who shall be at liberty to invite the co-operation of any eminent for scholarship, to whatever nation or religious body they may belong”; and shortly afterwards two companies were formed for the revision of the Authorized Version of the Old and New Testaments.

These companies consisted of the following:—1. For the Old Testament:—(α) Appointed by Convocation.—Connop Thirlwall, bishop of St David’s (d. 1875); Alfred Ollivant (1798-1882), bishop of Llandaff; E. Harold Browne (1811-1891), bishop of Ely; Christopher Wordsworth, bishop of Lincoln; and Lord Arthur Hervey (1808-1894), bishop of Bath and Wells; Archdeacon H.J. Rose (d. 1873); William Selwyn (1806-1875), canon of Ely and Lady Margaret professor at Cambridge; Dr John Jebb (1805-1886), canon of Hereford; and Dr William Kay (1820-1886). (β) Invited.—Dr William Lindsay Alexander (1808-1884), congregational minister; Thomas Chenery (1826-1884), professor of Arabic at Oxford, and afterwards (1877) editor of The Times; Frederick Charles Cook (1810-1889), canon of Exeter; Professor A.B. Davidson; Dr Benjamin Davies (1814-1875), professor of oriental and classical languages at Stepney Baptist College; the Rev. A.M. Fairbairn, congregationalist; the Rev. Frederick Field (1801-1885), fellow of Trinity, Cambridge; Dr C.D. Ginsburg; the Rev. Dr Gotch of Bristol; Archdeacon Benjamin Harrison (1808-1887), Hebraist; the Rev. Stanley Leathes (1830-1900), professor of Hebrew at King’s College, London; Professor M’Gill; Canon Robert Payne Smith (1819-1895), regius professor of divinity at Oxford, dean of Canterbury (1870); Professor J.J.S. Perowne, afterwards bishop of Worcester; the Rev. Edward Hayes Plumtre (1821-1891), professor of exegesis at King’s College, London, afterwards dean of Wells; Canon E. Bouverie Pusey; William Wright (1830-1889), the orientalist; W. Aldis Wright, Cambridge. Of these Canons Cook and Pusey declined to serve, and ten members died during the progress of the work. The secretary of the company was Mr W. Aldis Wright, fellow of Trinity, Cambridge.

2. For the New Testament:—(α) Appointed by Convocation.—Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Winchester; Charles J. Ellicott, bishop of Gloucester and Bristol; and George Moberly, bishop of Salisbury; Dr Edward Bickersteth (1814-1892), prolocutor of the lower house of convocation; Henry Alford, dean of Canterbury, and Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, dean of Westminster; Joseph Williams Blakesley (1808-1885), canon of Canterbury, and (1872) dean of Lincoln. (β) Invited.—The Rev. Dr Joseph Angus, president of the Stepney Baptist College; Dr David Brown; Richard Chenevix Trench, archbishop of Dublin; the Rev. Dr John Eadie (1810-1876), Presbyterian; the Rev. F.J.A. Hort; the Rev. W.G. Humphry (1815-1886), vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London; the Rev. Benjamin Hall Kennedy, canon of Ely; William Lee (1815-1883), archdeacon of Dublin, and professor of ecclesiastical history in the university; J.B. Lightfoot, afterwards bishop of Durham; Professor William Milligan; the Rev. William Fieldian Moulton (1835-1898), Wesleyan biblical scholar; Dr J.H. Newman; the Rev. Samuel Newth (1821-1898), congregationalist, professor of ecclesiastical history at, and afterwards president of, New College, London; Dr A. Roberts; the Rev. G. Vance Smith; Dr Robert Scott; the Rev. F.H.A. Scrivener (1813-1891), rector of St Gerrans, Cornwall; Charles Wordsworth, bishop of St Andrews; Dr W.H. Thompson; Dr S.P. Tregelles; Dr C.J. Vaughan; Canon Westcott. Of these, Dr Thompson and Dr Newman declined to serve. Dean Alford, Dr Tregelles, Bishop Wilberforce and Dr Eadie were removed by death. Only the first vacancy was filled up. Dean Merivale was co-opted, and on his resignation Professor, afterwards Archdeacon, Edwin Palmer. The Rev. J. Troutbeck, minor canon of Westminster, acted as secretary.

Negotiations were opened with the leading scholars of the Protestant denominations in America, with the result that similar companies were formed in the United States. The work of the English revisers was regularly submitted to their consideration; their comments were carefully considered and largely adopted, and their divergences from the version ultimately agreed upon were printed in an appendix to the published work. Thus the Revised Version was the achievement of English-speaking Christendom as a whole; only the Roman Catholic Church, of the great English-speaking denominations, refused to take part in the undertaking. The Church of England, which had put forth the version of 1611, fitly initiated the work, but for its performance most wisely invited the help of the sister churches. The delegates of the Clarendon Press in Oxford, and the syndics of the Pitt Press in Cambridge, entered into a liberal arrangement with the revisers, by which the necessary funds were provided for all their expenses. On the completion of its work the New Testament company divided itself into three committees, working at London, Westminster and Cambridge, for the purpose of revising the Apocrypha.

The work of the Old Testament company was different in some important respects from that which engaged the attention of the New Testament company. The received Hebrew text has undergone but little emendation, and the revisers had before them substantially the same Massoretic text which was in the hands of the translators of 1611. It was felt that there was no sufficient justification to make any attempt at an entire reconstruction of the text on the authority of the versions. The Old Testament revisers were therefore spared much of the labour of deciding between different readings, which formed one of the most important duties of the New Testament company. But the advance in the study of Hebrew since the early part of the 17th century enabled them to give a more faithful translation of the received text. The value of their work is evident, especially in Job, Ecclesiastes and the prophetical books.

It is the work of the New Testament committee which has attracted most attention, whether for blame or praise. The critical resources at the disposal of scholars in 1611 were very meagre, and the few early manuscripts with which they were acquainted failed to receive the attention they deserved. The results of modern critical methods could not fail to make the incompleteness of the “Received Text,” and of the “Authorized Version,” which was based on it, obvious. It had long been the opinion of all competent scholars that a thorough revision was necessary. A proposal in favour of this course was made in Convocation in 1856, but it was not until fourteen years later that the committee was appointed to undertake the work. The revisers’ first task was to reconstruct the Greek text, as the necessary foundation of their work. In this difficult duty they were no doubt influenced by Westcott and Hort’s edition of the New Testament. These two scholars were members of the committee which prepared the Revised Version, and on the question of various readings they appear to have exercised a predominating influence. The revisers were privately supplied with instalments of Westcott and Hort’s text as their work required them. But it is scarcely necessary to say that the Revised Version is not the work of one or two scholars. Different schools of criticism were represented on the committee, and the most careful discussion took place before any decision was formed. Every precaution was taken to ensure that the version should represent the result of the best scholarship of the time, applied to the work before it with constant devotion and with the highest sense of responsibility. The changes in the Greek text of the Authorized Version when compared with the textus receptus are numerous, but the contrast between the English versions of 1611 and 1881 is all the more striking because of the difference in the method of translation which was adopted. The revisers aimed at the most scrupulous faithfulness. They adopted the plan—deliberately rejected by the translators of 1611—of always using the same English word for the same Greek word. “They endeavoured to enable the English reader to follow the correspondences of the original with the closest exactness, to catch the solemn repetition of words and phrases, to mark the subtleties of expression, to feel even the strangeness of unusual forms of speech.”

The revision of the New Testament was completed in 407 meetings, distributed over more than ten years. It was formally presented to Convocation on May 17, 1881. The revision of the Old Testament occupied 792 days, and was finished on June 20, 1884. The revised Apocrypha did not make its appearance until 1895.

The text of the Revised Version is printed in paragraphs, the old division of books into chapters and verses being retained for convenience of reference. By this arrangement the capricious divisions of some books is avoided. Various editions of the New Version have been published, the most complete being the edition of the whole Bible with marginal references. These references had their origin in the work of two small subcommittees of the revisers, but they received their present form at the hands of a specially appointed committee. The marginal references given in the original edition of the Authorized Version of 1611 have been retained as far as possible.

The work of the revisers was received without enthusiasm. It was too thorough for the majority of religious people. Partisans found that havoc had been played with their proof texts. Ecclesiastical conservatives were scandalized by the freedom with which the traditional text was treated. The advocates of change were discontented with the hesitating acceptance which their principles had obtained. The most vulnerable side of the revision was that on which the mass of English readers thought itself capable of forming a judgment. The general effect of so many small alterations was to spoil the familiar sonorous style of the Authorized Version. The changes were freely denounced as equally petty and vexatious; they were, moreover, too often inconsistent with the avowed principles of the revisers. The method of determining readings and renderings by vote was not favourable to the consistency and literary character of the Version. A whole literature of criticism and apology made its appearance, and the achievement of so many years of patient labour seemed destined to perish in a storm of resentments. On the whole, the Revised Version weathered the storm more successfully than might have been expected. Its considerable excellences were better realized by students than stated by apologists. The hue and cry of the critics largely died away, and was replaced by a calmer and juster appreciation.

The work of the revisers has been sharply criticized from the standpoint of specialists in New Testament Greek. Dr Rutherford stated the case briefly and pointedly in the preface to his translation of the Epistle to the Romans (London, 1900). He maintains that “the Greek of the New Testament may never be understood as classical Greek is understood,” and accuses the revisers of distorting the meaning “by translating in accordance with Attic idiom phrases that convey in later Greek a wholly different sense, the sense which the earlier translators in happy ignorance had recognized that the context demanded.”

The use of the new Version has become general. Familiarity has mitigated the harshness of the revisers’ renderings; scholarship, on the whole, has confirmed their readings. The Version has been publicly read in parish churches both in London and in the country. In Canterbury cathedral and Westminster Abbey it has definitely displaced the older Version. Bishops have acquiesced and congregations approved. It is no longer possible to maintain the plausible and damaging contention that the Revised Bible is ill suited for public use. The Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury in May 1898 appointed a committee to consider the expediency of “permitting or encouraging” the use of the Revised Version in the public services of the Church.

(H. H. H.*)

Bibliography.—The principal works dealing with the separate versions have been referred to in the text of the article. The following authorities may also be cited:

For the version as a whole: J.R. Dore, Old Bibles (2nd ed., 1888); J. Eadie, The English Bible: an External and Critical History of the various English Translations of Scripture (2 vols., 1876: the most complete account); A. Edgar, The Bibles of England (1889); H.W. Hoare, The Evolution of the English Bible (2nd ed., 1902: gives historical setting of the Versions); F.G. Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1895); J.H. Lupton, article on “English Versions,” in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible (extra vol.); R. Lovett, The Printed English Bible, 1525-1885 (1894); G. Milligan, The English Bible, a Sketch of its History (1895); J.I. Mombert, English Versions of the Bible (1883); F. Moulton, The History of the English Bible (2nd ed., 1884); T.H. Pattison, History of the English Bible (1894); J. Stoughton, Our English Bible, its Translations and Translators [1878].

For the earlier history: J. Lewis, History of English Translations of the Bible (1818); the historical accounts prefixed to Bagster’s issue of The English Hexapla and of Forshall and Madden’s edition of the Wycliffite Versions (Oxford, 1850). These are all to a great extent antiquated, their errors being repeated in almost all subsequent accounts of the subject. The only trustworthy authority on the Anglo-Saxon Bible is A.S. Cook’s “Introduction on Old English Translations of the Bible,” in Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose-writers.

For the 14th and 15th centuries: See A.C. Paues, The Bible in the Fourteenth Century.

For the early printed Bibles: H. Cotton, List of Editions of the Bible (1852), Rhemes and Doway (1855); F. Fry, The Bible by Coverdale (1867); Description of the Great Bible, 1539 (1865); Bibliographical Descriptions of the Editions of the New Testament (1878); N. Pocock, “On the Bishops’ and Genevan Bible,” (Bibliographer, vols. i.-iv.); Prime Wendell, Fifteenth-Century Bibles (1888); John Wright, Early Bibles of America (1893).

For the Authorized Version: F.H.A. Scrivener, The Authorized Edition of the English Bible (1884). See also R. Gell, Essay toward the Amendment of the Authorized Version (1659); W. Kilburne, Dangerous Errors in ... Bibles (1659); R.C. Trench, On the Authorized Version of the New Testament in connexion with some recent proposals for its revision (2nd ed., 1859).

For the Revised Version: J.B. Lightfoot, On a Fresh Revision of the English New Testament (London, 1871; 3rd ed. 1891); Westcott, Some Lessons of the Revised Version (London, 1897); Kennedy, Ely Lectures on the Revised Version (London, 1882). The Revisers fully explained their principles and methods in the Preface. The American Committee of Revision issued an historical account of their work (New York, 1885). The case against the Revisers is ably stated in The Revision Revised, by Dean Burgon (London, 1883). The literary defects of the Version are elaborately exhibited by G. Washington Moon in two works: The Revisers’ English (London, 1882), and Ecclesiastical English (London, 1886). See also Some Thoughts on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, by G. Salmon, D.D. (London, 1897); Bishop Ellicott’s Charge (1901). The Greek Text of the New Testament adopted by the Revisers was edited for the Clarendon Press by Archdeacon Palmer (Oxford, 1881). Parallel editions of the Bible, showing both the Authorized and Revised Versions, a large-type edition for public use, a reference edition, and (1900) a “Two Version” edition, have been issued by one or both the University Presses.

(A. C. P.; H. H. H.*)

1 See A.S. Cook, Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose Writers, with an introduction on Old English Biblical Versions (London, 1898-1903), vol. i. pp. xxvi. ff.; H. Sweet, The Vespasian Psalter in “Oldest English Texts” (E.E.T.S., No. 83, London, 1885); F. Harsley, Eadwine’s Canterbury Psalter (E.E.T.S., No. 92, London, 1892); John Spelman, Psalterium Davidis Latino-Saxonicum Vetus (London, 1640); Fr. Roeder, Der altengl. Regius Psalter (Reg. II. B. 5, Halle, 1904).

2 Benjamin Thorpe, Libri Psalmorum versio Antiqua Latina cum paraphrasi Anglo-Saxonica (Oxford, 1835); cf. J.D. Bruce, The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Book of Psalms ... known as the Paris Psalter (Baltimore, 1894).

3 K.W. Bouterwek, Die vier Evangelien in alt-nordh. Sprache (Gütersloh, 1857), id. Screadunga (Elberfeld, 1858, prefaces to the Gospels); J. Stevenson and E. Waring, The Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels (Surtees Soc., 1854-1865); W.W. Skeat, The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian Versions (Cambridge, 1871-1887).

4 See Stevenson, Waring and Skeat, op. cit.

5 W.W. Skeat, The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, &c. (Cambridge, 1871-1887); J.W. Bright, The Gospel of Saint Luke in Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1893); for earlier editions see Cook, op. cit, p. lx.

6 C.W.M. Grein, Ælfrik de vetero et novo Testamento, &c.—Bibl. d. Angels. Prosa (Cassel and Göttingen, 1872), p. 6; E. Thwaites, Heptateuchus, Liber Job, et Evangelium Nicodemi; Anglo-Saxonice (Oxon., 1698).

7 K.D. Bülbring, The Earliest Complete English Prose Psalter (E.E.T.S., No. 97), part i. (London, 1891); cf. A.C. Paues, A Fourteenth-Century Engl. Bibl. Version (Upsala Diss.) (Cambridge, 1902), p. lvi.

8 H.R. Bramley, The Psalter and Certain Canticles... by Richard Rolle of Hampole (Oxford, 1884); cf. H. Middendorff, Studien uber Richard Rolle van Hampole unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Psalmen-Commentare (Magdeburg, 1888).

9 A.C. Paues, A Fourteenth-Century English Biblical Version (Cambridge, 1904), pp. xxiv. ff.

10 See Paues, op. cit. p. 210.

11 For a different view as to the authorship of the Wycliffite versions, see F.A. Gasquet, The Old English Bible and Other Essays (London, 1897), pp. 102 ff.

12 Sir F. Madden and Rev. J. Forshall, The Holy Bible... made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers (4 vols., Oxford, 1850), pp. xix., xxiv.

13 Cf. A.C. Paues, The English Bible in the Fourteenth Century.

14 See Foxe, Acts and Monuments, iv. 135 ff. (ed. Townsend, 1846).

15 Wilkin’s Concilia, iii. 317.

16 T.G. Law, The New Testament in Scots, being Purvey’s Revision of Wycliffe’s version turned into Scots by Murdoch Nisbet, c. 1520 (Scot. T.S., Edinburgh, 1901-1905).

17 B.F. Westcott, History of the English Bible (3rd ed.), revised by W. Aldis Wright (London, 1905), p. 25.

18 Pref. to Genesis, p. 396 (Parker Soc.).

19 Photo lithographed by Edw. Arber (London, 1871).

20 Reprinted by G. Offor (London, 1836); reproduced in facsimile by Francis Fry (Bristol, 1862).

21 Reprinted with an introduction by J.T. Mombert (New York, 1884).

22 Reproduced in facsimile by Francis Fry (1863).

23 Cf. H. Bradshaw, Bibliographer (1882-1881), i. 3 ff. (reprinted 1886).

24 See F. Jenkinson, Early English Printed Books in the Univ. Libr. Cambridge, iii. (1730).

25 See Biographical Description of the Editions of the New Testament, Tyndale’s Version, in English (1878).

26 Epistle to the Reader in the New Testament of 1526, reprinted by G. Offor; cf. Parker Soc. (1848), p. 390.

27 Westcott, op. cit. p. 57 note.

28 See Dr Ginsburg’s information to Mr Tedder, D.N.B. xii. 365.

29 Cf. H. Stevens, Catalogue of the Caxton Exhibition (1877) p. 88.

30 Remains, Parker Soc., pp. II f.

31 Westcott, op. cit. p. 172 note.

32 Cranmer’s Works, letter 194 (Parker Soc.).

33 See examples in Westcott, op. cit. pp. 208 f.

34 Burnet’s Ref., ed. Pococke, 1865.

35 Westcott, op. cit. pp. 180 f.

36 Remains (Parker Soc.), p. 493; cf. J.A. Kingdon, Incidents in the Lives of Thomas Poyntz and Richard Grafton (1895).

37 Cf. Burnet’s Ref. i. 584.

38 Printed in Bagster’s Hexapla, 1841, reprinted separately in 1842.

39 See “Address to the Reader.” The division into verses of the New Testament was first found in R. Stephanus’ Greek-Latin New Testament (4th ed., 1551), whereas these divisions already existed in the Hebrew Old Testament.

40 See T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical Catal. of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Libr. of the Brit, and Foreign Bible Soc. (London, 1903).

41 See J.G. Carleton, The Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible (Oxford, 1902).

42 Barlow, Sum and Substance of the Conference ... in Cardwell’s History of Conferences, pp. 187 f.

43 Compiled chiefly from the list found in Cardwell’s Synodalia (ed. 1844), ii. 145-146, a reprint from Burnet’s Doc. Annals, ii. 106 ff., “who himself took his list from a copy belonging originally to Bishop Ravis.” The list is correct for the year 1604; cf. Westcott, op. cit. pp. 112 f.

44 Quoted from G. Burnet’s Hist. of Reformation, ii. p. 368 (1861).

45 A reprint of this edition has been published by the Clarendon Press (Oxford, 1833).

BIBLE CHRISTIANS, one of the denominations now merged in the United Methodist Church (see United Methodists), so called because its early preachers appealed solely to the Bible in confirmation of their doctrines. The denomination arose in the agricultural districts and fishing villages of north Cornwall and Devon; a district only slightly influenced by John Wesley and the original Methodist movement. The founder was William O’Bryan (afterwards Bryant), a Methodist lay preacher of Luxillian, Cornwall. Finding that the people had no evangelical preaching he began an itinerary to supply the need. The coastmen were expert smugglers and wreckers, the agriculturists were ignorant and drunken, the parish clergy were slothful, in many cases intemperate, and largely given to fox-hunting. Only in a parish or two was there any approach to religious ministry. O’Bryan commenced his labours in north Devon, and in 1815 a small society was formed at Lake Farm, Shebbear. The movement had the seeds of great vitality in it. In 1819 the first conference was held at Launceston. There were present besides O’Bryan one accepted minister—James Thorne—fourteen ministers on trial and fifteen women preachers, a class that was always conspicuous in the denomination. At that conference the work had spread from Ring’s Ash in Devon to Morrah, a lonely and desolate parish in west Cornwall. In 1820-1821 Kent, Northumberland, the Scilly and Norman (i.e. Channel) Islands appeared on the list of stations. Then came a serious break. In 1829 there was a severance between the larger part of the new body and O’Bryan, who had claimed to be perpetual president, and to have all property vested in him personally. He tried to establish a separate conference, but failed, and in 1836 there was a reunion. O’Bryan left England for America, where he remained for the rest of his life, and his contingent (numbering 565 members and 4 ministers) returned to the original conference. The growth continued. In 1831 agents were sent to Canada and Prince Edward’s Island, in 1850 to South Australia, in 1855 to Victoria, in 1866 to Queensland, in 1877 to New Zealand and in 1885 to China, so that the original O’Bryan tradition of fervid evangelism was amply maintained.

On O’Bryan’s departure, James Thorne, the first fully recognized minister, at whose father’s farm the connexion started, became its leader. Although reared as an ordinary farm lad, he proved to be a man of singular devotion and spiritual genius. He laid the foundations broadly in evangelism, finance, temperance and education, founding in the latter connexion a middle-class school at Shebbear, at which generations of ministers’ sons and numerous students for the ministry have been educated. James Thorne was five times president of the conference and fifteen times secretary. He died in 1872. In this period there was much persecution. Landowners refused sites, and in the Isle of Wight the people worshipped for many months in a quarry. The preachers were sometimes imprisoned and many times assaulted. The old Methodist body even excommunicated persons for attending “Bryanite” meetings. Partly co-operative with James Thorne and at his death independently, the Church was favoured with the influence of Frederick William Bourne. He was a minister for fifty-five years, and served the Bible Christians as editor, missionary treasurer, book steward and three times president of conference. With him will always be associated the name of Billy Bray, an illiterate but inimitable Cornish evangelist, a memoir of whom, written by Bourne, exerted a great influence in the religious life of the denomination.

In doctrine the Bible Christians did not differ from the other Methodists. In constitution they differed only slightly. There was an annual conference with full legislative power, and ability to hold and dispose of property, composed of an equal number of lay and ministerial representatives meeting together. The local churches were grouped into circuits governed representatively by a quarterly meeting. The quarterly or circuit meetings were in turn organized into twelve districts, eleven in England and one in China. In 1906 the statistics showed 218 ministers, 32,549 members and 652 chapels, with 47,301 scholars in Sunday-schools. These figures include nearly 1400 full and probationary members in the China mission, the first-fruits of two years’ labour amongst the Miao tribe. In the various colonial Methodist unions the Bible Christians have contributed a total of 159 ministers, 14,925 members and 660 chapels.

The community supported a regular ministry from the beginning. Its members have been keen evangelists, trusting largely to “revivals” for their success, staunch Radicals in politics and total abstainers to a man. Both ministers and people entered with interest and sympathy into the scheme for union between themselves, the Methodist New Connexion and the United Methodist Free Church, which was successfully accomplished in 1906. See Methodism.

BIBLE SOCIETIES, associations for translating and circulating the Holy Scriptures. This object has engaged the attention of the leaders of Christendom from early times. In an extant letter, dated A.D. 331, the emperor Constantine requested Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, to provide him with fifty copies of the Old and New Testaments for use in the principal churches in Constantinople. In 797 Charlemagne commissioned Alcuin to prepare an emended text of the Vulgate; copies of this text were multiplied, not always accurately, in the famous writing-schools at Tours. The first book printed in Europe was the Latin Bible, and Copinger estimates that 124 editions of the Vulgate had been issued by the end of the 15th century. The Italian Bible was printed a dozen times before A.D. 1500, and eighteen editions of the German Bible had already been published before Luther’s version appeared.

The Reformation quickened men’s interest in the Scriptures to an extraordinary degree, so that, notwithstanding the adverse attitude adopted by the Roman Church at and after the council of Trent, the translation and circulation of the Bible were taken in hand with fresh zeal, and continued in more systematic fashion.

Thus, the Revised French Geneva Bible of 1588, which was issued in folio, quarto and octavo, and became a standard text, bears the following note on the verso of the title: “Les frais de cet ouvrage, imprimé en trois diuerses formes en mesme temps, pour la commodité et contentement de toutes sortes de personnes, ont esté liberalemet fournis par quelques gens de bien, qui n’ont cherché gagner pour leur particulier, mais seulement de servir à Dieu et à son Église.” The Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England (founded in 1649) bore the expense of printing both the New Testament and the Bible as a whole (Cambridge, Mass., 1663—the earliest Bible printed in America), which John Eliot, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, translated into “the language of the Massachusetts Indians,” whom he evangelized. In Arnauld’s Defence (1669) of the famous Port Royal version of the New Testament in French (issued, 1667), he states that it had been printed in many forms and sizes, including very cheap editions for the poor, and goes on to describe how its circulation was promoted by “les sacrifices que s’imposaient les pieux solitaires pour faire participer les plus indigents au bienfait de leur entreprise. Dès que leur traduction fut prête, ils envoyèrent de Paris un grand nombre de colporteurs chargés de la vendre au prix de revient et même, dans certaines circonstances, à des prix réduits; et ils couvrirent la dépense par des dons volontaires” (E. Pétavel, La Bible en France, p. 152).

To meet the cost of publishing the Finn Bible in 1685, the editor, J. Gezelius, bishop of Åbo, obtained an order from the Swedish government for the appropriation of certain corn-tithes, still known as Bibel Tryck-Tunnan. When the Finnish Bible Society began to publish editions of the Scriptures, the tsar Alexander I. contributed 5000 roubles from his privy purse, and ordered that these corn-tithes should again be appropriated to this purpose for five years from 1812. In 1701 at Frankfort-On-Main there appeared a quarto edition of the Ethiopic Psalter, whose editor, H. Ludolf, writes in his preface: “Quamobrem nullum gratius officium Christianae huic nationi a me praestari posse putavi, quam si Psalterium Aethiopicum, quod apud illos non aliter quam in membrana manuscriptum habetur, et caro satis venditur, typis mandari, ejusque plurima exemplaria nomine Societatis Indicae in Habessinia gratis distribui curarem.”

In 1719 appeared the first of numerous editions of the French New Testament, connected with the name of the Abbé de Barneville, a priest of the Oratory at Paris. Impressed by the popular ignorance of the Scriptures, he himself translated, or caused others to translate, the New Testament into French from the Vulgate, and formed an association to distribute copies systematically at low prices. The prefaces to his various editions contain details as to the methods of this association, and repeatedly insist on the importance of reading the Scriptures. (On this Société biblique catholique française see O. Douen, Histoire de la société biblique protestante de Paris, Paris, 1868, pp. 46-51.)

Christian missionaries to non-Christian lands have naturally been among the most skilful translators and the most assiduous distributors of the Bible. The earliest complete Arabic Bible was produced at Rome in 1671, by the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. Protestant missionary societies have engaged energetically in the task not only of translating, but of printing, publishing and distributing the Scriptures. Thus the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (founded 1698), besides its other activities, has done much to cheapen and multiply copies of the Scriptures, not only in English and Welsh, but in many foreign languages. Early in the 18th century it printed editions in Arabic, and promoted the first versions of the Bible in Tamil and Telugu, made by the Danish Lutheran missionaries whom it then supported in south India. The earliest New Testament (1767) and Old Testament (1783-1801) in Gaelic were published by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (founded 1709). The S.P.C.K. now publishes versions of the Scriptures (either complete, or in part) in 38 different languages (without reckoning versions of the Prayer Book in 45 other languages); and during 1905-1906 the S.P.C.K. issued in England 116,126 Bibles and 17,783 New Testaments.

The earliest noteworthy organization, formed for the specific purpose of circulating the Scriptures, was the Canstein Bible Institute (Bibelanstalt), founded in 1710 at Halle in Saxony, by Karl Hildebrand, baron von Canstein (1667-1719), who was associated with P.J. Spener and other leaders of Pietism in Germany. He invented a method of printing, perhaps somewhat akin to stereotyping—though the details are not clearly known,—whereby the Institute could produce Bibles and Testaments in Luther’s version at a very low cost, and sell them, in small size, at prices equivalent to 10d. and 3d. per copy, respectively. In 1722 editions of the Scriptures were also issued in Bohemian and Polish. At von Canstein’s death he left the Institute to the care of his friend August Hermann Francke, founder in 1698 of the famous Waisenhaus (orphanage) at Halle. The Canstein Institute has issued some 6,000,000 copies of the Scriptures.

In England various Christian organizations, which arose out of the Evangelical movement in the 18th century, took part in the work. Among such may be mentioned the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge among the Poor (1750); and the Society for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday Schools (1785). An institution was founded in 1780 under the name of the Bible Society, but as its sphere was restricted to soldiers and seamen the title was afterwards changed to the Naval and Military Bible Society. The first ship among whose crew it distributed the Scriptures was the “Royal George,” which had 400 of this society’s Bibles on board when it foundered at Spithead on the 29th of August 1782. The French Bible Society, instituted in 1792, came to an end in 1803, owing to the Revolution.

The British and Foreign Bible Society.—In 1804 was founded in London the British and Foreign Bible Society, the most important association of its kind. It originated in a proposal made to the committee of the Religious Tract Society, by the Rev. Thomas Charles of Bala, who found that his evangelistic and philanthropic labours in Wales were sorely hindered by the dearth of Welsh Bibles. His colleagues in the Religious Tract Society united with other earnest evangelical leaders to establish a new society, which should have for its sole object “to encourage a wider circulation of the Holy Scriptures, without note or comment.” This simplicity of aim is combined with a catholicity of constitution which admits the co-operation of all persons interested in the society’s object. The committee of management consists of thirty-six laymen, six of them being foreigners resident in or near London, while of the remaining thirty, half are members of the Church of England, and half are members of other Christian denominations.

Supported by representative Christian leaders, such as Granville Sharp, Zachary Macaulay, William Wilberforce, Charles Grant and Henry Thornton, with Lord Teignmouth, ex-governor-general of India, as its first president, and Dr Porteus, bishop of London, as its friendly counsellor, the new society made rapid progress. It spread throughout Great Britain, mainly by means of auxiliaries, i.e. local societies, affiliated but self-controlled, with subsidiary branches and associations (these last being often managed by women). Up to 1816-1817 the parent society had received from its auxiliaries altogether £420,000. This system continues to flourish. In 1905-1906 the society had about 5800 auxiliaries, branches and associations in England and Wales, and more than 2000 auxiliaries abroad, mainly in the British Colonies, many of which undertake vigorous local work, besides remitting contributions to London.

The society’s advance was chequered by several controversies. (a) Its fundamental law to circulate the Bible alone, without note or comment, was vehemently attacked by Bishop Marsh and other divines of the Church of England, who insisted that the Prayer Book ought to accompany the Bible. (b) Another more serious controversy related to the circulation—chiefly through affiliated societies on the continent—of Bibles containing the Deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament. In 1826 the society finally resolved that its fundamental law be fully and distinctly recognized as excluding the circulation “of those Books, or parts of Books, which are usually termed Apocryphal.” This step, however, failed to satisfy most of the society’s supporters in Scotland, who proceeded to form themselves into independent organizations, grouped for the most part round centres at Edinburgh and Glasgow. These were finally amalgamated in 1861 into the National Bible Society of Scotland. (c) A third dispute turned upon the admissibility of non-Trinitarians to the privilege of co-operation. The refusal of the society to alter its constitution so as formally to exclude such persons led to the formation (1831) of the Trinitarian Bible Society, which is still in existence. (d) A fourth controversy arose out of the restrictive renderings of the term “baptize” and its cognate terms, adopted by William Carey and his colleagues in their famous “Serampore Versions,” towards publishing which the society had contributed up to 1830 nearly £30,000. Protests from other Indian missionaries led the society to determine that it could circulate only such versions as gave neutral renderings for the terms in question. As a sequel, the Bible Translation Society was founded in 1839 to issue versions embodying distinctively Baptist renderings.

By one of its original laws the British and Foreign Bible Society could circulate no copies of the Scriptures in English other than King James’s Version of 1611. In 1901 this law was widened to include the Revised English Version of 1881-1885.

From its foundation the society has successfully laboured to promote new and improved versions of the Scriptures. In 1804 the Bible, or some part of it, had been printed in about fifty-five different tongues. By the year 1906 versions, more or less complete, had been published in more than 530 distinct languages and dialects, and in 400 of these the work of translation, printing or distribution had been promoted by the society. Translations or revisions in scores of languages are still being carried on by companies of scholars and representative missionaries in different parts of the world, organized under the society’s auspices and largely at its expense. New versions are made, wherever practicable, from the original Hebrew or Greek text, and the results thus obtained have a high philological value and interest. The society’s interdenominational character has commonly secured—what could hardly otherwise have been attained—the acceptance of the same version by missions of different churches working side by side. The society supplies the Scriptures to missions of every Reformed Communion on such terms that, as a rule, the books distributed by the missions involve no charge on their funds. Except under special circumstances, the society does not encourage wholesale free distribution, but provides cheap editions at prices which the poorest can pay. On the whole it receives from sales about 40% of what it expends in preparing, printing and circulating the books.

During the year 1905-1906 the society’s circulation reached the unprecedented total of 5,977,453 copies, including 968,683 Bibles and 1,326,475 Testaments. Of the whole 1,921,000 volumes were issued from the Bible House, London, and 1,331,000 were in English or Welsh, circulating chiefly in England and the British colonies. The other main fields of distribution were as follows:—France, 203,000 copies; Central Europe, 679,000; Italy, 117,000; Spain and Portugal, 120,000; the Russian empire, 595,000; India, Burma and Ceylon, 768,000; Japan, 286,000; and China, 1,075,000 (most of these last being separate gospels).

The society spends £10,000 a year in grants to religious and philanthropic agencies at home. Outside the United Kingdom it has its own agencies or secretaries in twenty-seven of the chief cities of the world, and maintains depots in 200 other centres. It employs 930 Christian colporteurs abroad, who sold in 1905-1906 over 2,250,000 volumes. It supports 670 native Christian Bible-women in the East, in connexion with forty different missionary organizations. The centenary festival in 1904 was celebrated with enthusiasm by the Reformed Churches and their foreign missions throughout the world. Messages of congratulation came from the rulers of every Protestant nation in Christendom, and a centenary thanksgiving fund of 250,000 guineas was raised for extending the society’s work. During the year 1905-1906 the society expended £238,632, while its income was £231,964 (of which £98,204 represented receipts from sales). Up to the 31st of March 1906 the society had expended altogether £14,686,072, and had issued 198,515,199 copies of the Scriptures—of which more than 78,000,000 were in English.

In Scotland the Edinburgh Bible Society (1809), the Glasgow Bible Society (1812), and other Scottish auxiliaries, many of which had dissociated themselves from the British and Foreign Bible Society after 1826, were finally incorporated (1861) with the National Bible Society of Scotland, which has carried on vigorous work all over the world, especially in China. During 1905, with an income of £27,108, it issued 1,590,881 copies, 907,000 of which were circulated in China. Its total issues from 1861 to 1906 were 26,106,265 volumes.

In Ireland the Hibernian Bible Society (originally known as the Dublin Bible Society) was founded in 1806, and with it were federated kindred Irish associations formed at Cork, Belfast, Derry, &c. The Hibernian Bible Society, whose centenary was celebrated in 1906, had then issued a total of 5,713,837 copies. It sends an annual subsidy to aid the foreign work of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Other European Societies.—The impulse which founded the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804 soon spread over Europe, and, notwithstanding the turmoils of the Napoleonic wars, kindred organizations on similar lines quickly sprang up, promoted and subsidized by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Many of these secured royal and aristocratic patronage and encouragement—the tsar of Russia, the kings of Prussia, Bavaria, Sweden, Denmark and Württemberg all lending their influence to the enterprise.

Within fourteen years the following Bible societies were in active operation: the Basel Bible Society (founded at Nuremberg, 1804), the Prussian Bible Society (founded as the Berlin Bible Society, 1805), the Revel Bible Society (1807), the Swedish Evangelical Society (1808), the Dorpat Bible Society (1811), the Riga Bible Society (1812), the Finnish Bible Society (1812), the Hungarian Bible Institution (Pressburg, 1812), the Württemberg Bible Society (Stuttgart, 1812), the Swedish Bible Society (1814), the Danish Bible Society (1814), the Saxon Bible Society (Dresden, 1814), the Thuringian Bible Society (Erfurt, 1814), the Berg Bible Society (Eberfeld, 1814), the Hanover Bible Society (1814), the Hamburg-Altona Bible Society (1814), the Lübeck Bible Society (1814), the Netherlands Bible Society (Amsterdam, 1814). These were increased in 1815 by the Brunswick, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, Strassburg and Eichsfeld (Saxony) Bible Societies, and the Icelandic Bible Society. In 1816-1817 came the Norwegian Bible Society, the Polish Bible Society and ten minor German Bible Societies. Twelve cantonal societies had also been formed in Switzerland.

Up to 1816-1817 these societies had printed altogether 436,000 copies of the Scriptures, and had received from the British and Foreign Bible Society gifts amounting to over £62,000. The decision of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1826 with regard to circulating the Apocrypha (see above) modified its relations with the most influential of these continental societies. Some of them were ultimately dissolved or suppressed through political or ecclesiastical opposition, the Roman Church proving especially hostile. But many of them still flourish, and are actively engaged in their original task.

The circulation of the Scriptures by German Bible Societies during 1905 was estimated as follows:—The Prussian Bible Society (Berlin), 182,000 copies; the Württemberg Bible Institute (Stuttgart), 247,000; the Berg Bible Society (Eberfeld), 142,000; the Saxon Bible Society (Dresden), 44,000; the Central Bible Association (Nuremberg), 14,000; the Canstein Bible Institute (Halle), the Schleswig-Holstein Bible Society, the Hamburg-Altona Bible Society and others, together 56,000.

During 1905, nine cantonal Bible societies in Switzerland circulated altogether 71,000 copies; the Netherlands Bible Society reported a circulation of 54,544 volumes, 48,137 of which were in Dutch; the Danish Bible Society circulated 45,289 copies; the Norwegian Bible Society circulated 67,058 copies; and in Sweden the Evangelical National Society distributed about 110,000 copies.

In Italy, by a departure from the traditional policy of the Roman Church, the newly formed “Pious Society of St Jerome for the Dissemination of the Holy Gospels” issued in 1901 from the Vatican press a new Italian version of the Four Gospels and Acts. By the end of 1905 the society announced that over 400,000 copies of this volume had been sold at 2d. a copy.

In France, the Société biblique protestante de Paris, founded in 1818, with generous aid from the British and Foreign Bible Society, had a somewhat restricted basis and scope. In 1833 the Société biblique française et étrangère was formed on wider lines; after its dissolution in 1863, many of its supporters joined the Société biblique de France, which dates from 1864, and represents chiefly members of the Église libre, and kindred French Evangelicals. During 1905 its issues were 34,475 copies, while the Société biblique protestante de Paris issued 8061 copies.

Of these non-British societies the most noteworthy was established in Russia. In December 1812, while “the last shattered remnants of Napoleon’s Grand Army struggled across the ice of the Niemen,” the tsar Alexander I. sanctioned plans for a Bible society, which was promptly inaugurated at St Petersburg under the presidency of Prince Galitzin. Through the personal favour of the tsar, it made rapid and remarkable progress. Nobles and ministers of state, with the chief ecclesiastics not only of the Russian Church but of the Roman, the Uniat, the Armenian, the Greek, the Georgian and the Lutheran Churches, found themselves constrained to serve on its committees. By the close of 1823 the Russian Bible Society had formed 289 auxiliaries, extending eastwards to Yakutsk and Okhotsk; and had received altogether £145,640. In 1824, however, Prince Galitzin ceased to be procurator of the Holy Synod, and Seraphim, metropolitan of St Petersburg, became president of the Russian Bible Society. And in 1826, soon after his accession, the tsar Nicholas I. issued a ukase suspending the society’s operations—after it had printed the Scriptures in thirty different languages, seventeen of which were new tongues, and had circulated 600,000 volumes from the Caucasus to Kamchatka. In 1828 Nicholas I. sanctioned the establishment of a Protestant Bible Society, which still exists, to supply the Scriptures only to Protestant subjects of the tsar (cf. Th. Schiemann, Geschichte Russlands unter Nikolaus I. vol. i. chap. ix.). In 1839 St Petersburg became the headquarters of an agency of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which enjoys special facilities in Russia, and now annually circulates about 600,000 copies of the Scriptures, in fifty different languages, within the Russian empire.

In America the earliest Bible society was founded at Philadelphia in 1808. Six more societies—including those of New York and of Massachusetts—were formed during 1809, and other societies, auxiliaries and associations quickly followed. In 1816 a convention of delegates representing 31 of these institutions met at New York and established the American Bible Society, with Elias Boudinot as president. All kindred organizations in the states gradually became amalgamated with this national body, and the federation was completed in 1839 by the adhesion of the Philadelphia Society (which now changed its name to the Pennsylvania Bible Society). Not a few noteworthy versions of the Bible, such as those in Arabic, 15 dialects of Chinese, Armenian, and Zulu, and many American Indian, Philippine, and African languages have appeared under the auspices of the American Bible Society. Turkish, classical Chinese, and Korean versions have been made by the American and British societies jointly. The society’s foreign agencies extend to China, Japan, Korea, the Turkish empire, Bulgaria, Egypt, Micronesia, Siam, Mexico, Central America, the South American republics, Cuba and the Philippines. In the year ending March 31st 1909 the income of the Society was $502,345, and it issued 2,153,028 copies of the Scriptures, nearly half of which went to readers outside the United States. The total distribution effected by the American Bible Society and its federated societies had in 1909 exceeded 84,000,000 volumes, in over a hundred different languages.

Authorities.—Besides the published reports of the societies in question, the following works may be mentioned: J. Owen, History of the First Ten Years of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1816-1820); G. Browne, History of the Bible Society (London, 1859); Bertram, Geschichte der Cansteinschen Bibelanstalt (Halle, 1863); E. Pétavel, La Bible en France (Paris, 1864); O. Douen, Histoire de la société biblique protestante de Paris (Paris, 1868); G. Borrow, The Bible in Spain (London, 1849); W. Canton, The History of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London, 1904 foll.); J. Ballinger, The Bible in Wales (London, 1906); T.H. Darlow and H.F. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture (London, vol. i. 1903, vol. ii. 1908).

(T. H. D.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOLOGY. The word βιβλιογραφία was used in post-classical Greek for the writing of books, and as late as 1761, in Fenning’s English Dictionary, a bibliographer is defined as “one who writes or copies books.” The transition from the meaning “a writing of books” to that of “a writing about books,” was accomplished in France in the 18th century—witness the publication in 1763 of the Bibliographie instructive of de Bure. In England the new meaning seems to have been popularized by the Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin early in the 19th century, while Southey preferred the rival form bibliology, which is now hardly used. Present custom inclines to restrict the province of bibliography to printed books as opposed to manuscripts, and on the other hand recognizes as coming within its scope almost everything in which a book-loving antiquary can be interested, including the history of printing (see Typography), book-binding (q.v.), book-illustration (see Illustration) and book-collecting (q.v.). The present article is only concerned with bibliography as the art of the examination, collation and description of books, their enumeration and arrangement in lists for purposes of information, and further with the literature of this subject, i.e. with the bibliography of bibliography.

Examination and Collation.—Books are submitted to examination in order to discover their origin, or to test statements concerning it which there is reason to doubt, or to ascertain if they are perfect, and if perfect whether they are in their original condition or have been “made up” from other copies. The discovery of where, when and by whom a book, or fragment of a book, was printed, is the most difficult of these tasks, though as regards books printed in the 15th century it has been much facilitated by the numerous facsimiles enumerated under Incunabula (q.v.). In the article Book (q.v.) a sketch is given of the chief external characteristics of books in each century since the invention of printing. Familiarity with books of different ages and countries soon creates a series of general ideas as to the dates and places with which any combination of these characteristics may be connected, and an experienced bibliographer, more especially if he knows something of the history of paper, will quickly narrow down the field of inquiry sufficiently to make special search possible.

As regards the correction of mis-statements in early books as to their place and origin, glaring piracies such as the Lyonnese counterfeits of the octavo editions of the classics printed by Aldus at Venice, and the numerous unauthorized editions of works by Luther, professing to be printed at Wittenberg, have long ago been exposed. A different variety of the same kind of puzzle arises from the existence of numerous original editions with fictitious imprints. As early as 1499 a Brescia printer, in order to evade the privilege granted to Aldus, gave to an edition of Politian the spurious imprint “Florentiae,” and in the 16th century many controversial books printed in England purported to have been issued in German towns, or with pleasant humour, “at Rome before the castle of S. Angel at the sign of S. Peter.” Only a knowledge of the general characteristics which a book printed at such a place and such a time should possess will secure avoidance of these traps, but when suspicion has been aroused the whole story will often be found in such books as Weller’s Die maskirte Literatur der älteren und neueren Sprachen (1856-1867), and Die falschen und fingirten Druckörte (1864), Brunet’s Imprimeurs imaginaires et libraires supposés (1866), de Brouillant’s La Liberté de la Presse en France; Histoire de Pierre du Marteau, imprimeur à Cologne, &c. (1888); in the various bibliographies of Erotica and in Brunet’s Manuel de l’Amateur and other handbooks for the use of collectors. A special case of this problem of piracies and spurious imprints is that of the modern photographic or type-facsimile forgery of small books possessing a high commercial value, such as the early editions of the letter of Columbus announcing his discovery of the New World. Bad forgeries of this kind can be detected by the tendency of all photographic processes of reproduction to thicken letters and exaggerate every kind of defect, but the best of these imitations when printed on old paper require a specific knowledge of the originals and often cause great trouble. The type-facsimile forgeries are mostly of short pieces by Tennyson, George Eliot and A.C. Swinburne, printed (or supposed to have been printed—for it is doubtful if some of these “forgeries” ever had any originals) for circulation among friends. These trifles should never be purchased without a written guarantee.

When the edition to which a book belongs is known, further examination is needed to ascertain if it is perfect and in its original state. Where no standard collation is available, this can only be ascertained by a detailed examination of the quires or gatherings of which it is made up (see below). In the earliest books these are often very irregular. A large book was usually printed simultaneously in four or six sections on as many different presses, and the several compositors, if unable to end their sections at the end of a complete quire, would insert a single leaf to give more space, or sometimes leave a blank page, or half page, for lack of matter, occasionally adding the note “Hic nullus est defectus.” A careful examination of the text, a task from which bibliographers often shrink, and a comparison with other editions, are the only remedies in these cases.

If a copy contains the right number of leaves, the further question arises as to whether any of these have been supplied from other copies, or are in facsimile. Few collectors even now are educated enough to prefer copies in the condition in which the ravages of time have left them to those which have been “completed” by dealers; hence many old books have been “made up” with leaves from other copies, or not infrequently from other editions. These meddlings often defy detection, but proof of them may be found in differences in the height and colour of the paper, in the two corresponding leaves at either end of a folio quire both possessing a watermark, or in their wiremarks not corresponding, or (in very early books) by the ornamentation added by hand being in a different style.

When it has been ascertained that a copy contains the right number of leaves and that all these leaves are original, the last point to be settled is as to whether it differs in any respect from the standard collation. Owing to the extreme slowness of the presswork for the first two centuries after the invention of printing, there were more opportunities for making small corrections while an old book was passing through the press than there are in the case of modern ones, and on the other hand the balls used for inking the type sometimes caught up words or individual letters and these were replaced by the compositors as best they could. The small variations in the text noticed in different copies of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare, and again of Milton’s Paradise Lost, are probably to be explained by a mixture of these two causes. Where a serious error was discovered after a sheet had been printed off, the leaf on which it occurred was sometimes cut out and a new leaf (called a “cancel”) printed to replace it and pasted on to the rest of the sheet. Variations between different copies of the first edition of Herrick’s Hesperides which have puzzled all his editors are due to the presence of several of such cancels. Lastly, a printer when he had printed part of a book might wish to increase the size of the edition, and the leaves already printed off would have to be reprinted, thus causing a combination of identical and different leaves in different copies. The famous 42-line Bible of c. 1455, variously attributed to Gutenberg and to Fust and Schoeffer, and the Valerius Maximus printed by Schoeffer in 1471, are instances of editions being thus enlarged while passing through the press. As each book was set up simultaneously on several different presses, the reprinted leaves occur at the beginning of each of the sections.

It should be mentioned that there are books of which it is difficult to find two copies in exact agreement. Either to quicken presswork or to comply with trade-regulations made in the interest of compositors, in some books of which large numbers were required, e.g. the Paraphrases of Erasmus, the First Prayer-book of Edward VI., and the “Songs and Sonnets” known as Tottell’s Miscellany, each forme was set up two or more different times. The formes were then used at haphazard for printing, and both at this stage and when the printed sheets came to be stitched almost any number of different combinations might be made. The books named were all printed in the middle of the 16th century, but probably later instances could be produced.

Description.—The ideal towards which all bibliographical work should be directed is the provision in an accessible form of a standard description of a perfect copy of every book of literary, historical or typographical interest as it first issued from the press, and of all the variant issues and editions of it. When such standard descriptions shall have been made, adequately checked and printed, it will be possible to describe every individual copy by a simple reference to them, with a statement of its differences, if any, and an insistence on the points bearing on the special object with which it is being re-described. Only in a few cases has any approach been made to a collection of such standard descriptions. One instance which may be cited is that of the entries of the 15th century books in the Repertorium Bibliographicum of Ludwig Hain (1826-1838), which the addition of an asterisk marks as having been examined by Hain himself in the copies in the Royal library at Munich. The high standard of accuracy of these asterisked entries (save for the omission to note blank leaves at the beginning or end) has been so well established, and the Repertorium is so widely known, that in many catalogues of incunabula the short title of the book together with the number of Hain’s entry has been usefully substituted for a long description. Books printed at Oxford up to 1640 can be equally well described by their short titles and a reference to Mr Falconer Madan’s Early Oxford Press published in 1895. At present the number of works which can thus be taken as a standard is only small, owing partly to the greater and more accurate detail now demanded, partly to the absence of any system of co-operation among libraries, each of which is only willing to pay for catalogues relating exclusively to its own collections. It may be hoped that through the foundation of bibliographical institutes more work of this kind may be done.

A standard description of any book must, as a rule, consist of the following sections, though in the case of works which have no typographical interest, some of the details may be advantageously omitted:—(a) A literal transcript of the title-page, also of the colophon, if any, and of any headings or other portions of the book serving to distinguish it from other issues; (b) Statements as to the size or form of the book, the gatherings or quires of which it is made up, with the total number of leaves, the measurement of an uncut copy or of the type-page, a note of the types in which different parts of the book are printed, and a reference to any trustworthy information already in print; (c) A statement of the literary contents of the book and of the points at which they respectively begin; (d) A note giving any additional information which may be needed.

(a) In transcribing the title-page and other parts of the book it is desirable not to omit intermediate words; if an omission is made it should be indicated by three dots placed close together. The end of a line should be indicated by an upright stroke.1 It is a considerable gain to indicate to the eye in what types the words transcribed are printed, i.e. whether in roman, gothic letter, or italic, and in each case whether in majuscules or minuscules (“upper or lower case”). To do this, however, adds greatly not only to the cost of printing, but also to the liability of error. If roman minuscules are used throughout, or roman for the text and italic for the imprint of colophon, the method of transliteration which the printer himself would have used should be adopted. Many of the best modern catalogues and bibliographies are disfigured by the occurrence in them of such forms as “qvinqve,” “qveen,” “Evrope,” due to an unintelligent transliteration of the forms QVINQVE, QVEEN, EVROPE, as they occur on title-pages at a date when “V” was the majuscule form of both “v” and “u.” If it is desired to retain the V forms the words should be printed in majuscules. If minuscules are used, the words should be transliterated as quinque, queen, Europe, according to the practice of the old printers themselves.

A troublesome question often arises as to what notice should be taken in reproducing the misprints which frequently occur in the original titles. Bibliographers who have satisfied themselves (and their readers) of their own accuracy may reproduce them in silence, though it will need constant watchfulness to prevent the printer from “setting them right.” Transcribers of only average accuracy will consult their happiness by indicating the misprint in some way, and the frequent use of (sic), more especially when printed in italics, or of the German (!), being ugly, probably the simplest plan is to add a note at the end stating that the misprints in question occur in the original.

(b) The “size” of a book is a technical expression for the relation of the individual leaves to the sheet of paper of which they form a part. A book in-folio means one in which the paper has been folded once, so that each sheet has made two leaves. In a book in-quarto, each sheet has been folded twice so as to make four leaves. In an octavo another fold has produced eight leaves, and so on for books in 16mo, 32mo and 64mo. For books in twelves, twenty-fours, &c., the paper has at some stage to be folded in three instead of in two, and there will be some difference in form according to the way in which this is done. The size of a book printed on handmade paper “is very simply recognized by holding up a page to the light. Certain white lines, called wire-lines, will be noticed, occurring as a rule about an inch apart, and running at right angles to the fine lines. These wire-lines are perpendicular in a folio, octavo, 32mo, and horizontal in a quarto and 16mo. In a 12mo, as the name implies, the sheet is folded in twelve; and in the earlier part at least of the 16th century this was done in such a way that the wire-lines are perpendicular, the height of the sheet forming two pages, as is the case in an octavo, while the width is divided into six instead of into four as in an octavo. The later habit has been to fold the sheet differently, the height of the sheet forming the width of four pages, and the width of the sheet the height of three pages, consequently the wire-lines are horizontal” (E.G. Duff, Early Printed Books, pp. 206-207).

The recognition of what is meant by the size of a book has been obscured by the erroneous idea that the quires or gatherings of which books are made up necessarily consist of single sheets.2 If this were so all folios would be in gatherings of two leaves each; all quartos in gatherings of four leaves; all octavos in gatherings of eights. In the case of books printed on handmade paper, this is generally true of octavos, but to reduce the amount of sewing the earliest folios were usually arranged in tens, i.e. in gatherings of five sheets or ten leaves, while in Shakespeare’s time English folios were mostly in sixes. In the same way quartos are often found made up in eights, and on the other hand the use of a half-sheet produces a gathering of only two leaves.

When a manuscript or early printed book was being prepared for binding, it was usual for the order in which the quires or gatherings were to be arranged to be indicated by signing them with the letters of the alphabet in their order, the alphabet generally used being the Latin, in which I stands for both I and J; V for both U and V, and there is no W. If more than twenty-three letters were needed the contractions for et, con, rum and (less often) that for us, were used as additional signs, and for large books minuscules were used as well as majuscules, and the letters were doubled. In 1472 printed signatures came into use. If the quires or gatherings in the book to be described are signed in print, the signatures used should be quoted without brackets. If they are not signed, the order of the gatherings should be noted by the letters of the alphabet in square brackets. In each case the number of leaves in each gathering should be shown by index-figures. Thus, six gatherings of eight leaves followed by one of four should be represented by the symbols A-F8 G4. The “make-up” of an old book in original binding is usually sufficiently shown by the strings in the middle of each quire. In books which have been rebound help may sometimes be obtained from the fact that between (roughly) 1750 and 1850, a period during which there was much rebinding of early books, the gatherings before being put into their new quires were mostly separately pressed, with the result that the outer pages of each gathering are much smoother than the rest. But the only safe guide to the make-up of an old book without printed signatures is a collation by means of the watermarks, i.e. the devices with which the papermaker as a rule marked each sheet (see Paper). In a folio book one of every pair of leaves should have a watermark in the middle of the paper. In a quarto some pairs of leaves will have no watermark; in others it will be found divided by the fold of the paper. As the great majority of books without printed signatures are in folio or quarto, the sequence of watermarked and un-watermarked leaves, if carefully worked out, will mostly reveal the “make-up” of the successive gatherings.

After the size and sequence of the gatherings has been stated, the total number of leaves should be noted, with a mention of any numeration of them given in the book. Any discrepancy between the total of the leaves assigned to the successive gatherings and the total as separately counted of course points to an error, and the reckonings must be repeated till they tally. Errors in the printed enumeration of the leaves of old books are common, and it is seldom necessary to point them out in detail. When reference has to be made to a particular page of an old book, the printed signatures offer the readiest means, an index number placed below the letter indicating the number of the leaf in the gathering and the addition of “recto” or “verso” marking the upper or under page of the leaf. Thus “X4 recto” (some bibliographers prefer the rather clumsier form “X 4 recto”) stands for the first page of the fourth leaf of the gathering signed X. Where there are no printed signatures the leaf-number may be given, the letters “a” and “b” above the numeral taking the place of “recto” and “verso” (leaf 99a). Where some leaves of a book are numbered and others not, if the reference is to the printed numeration this should be stated. Printed leaf numeration is found as early as 1470, and became common about ten years later. Printed pagination did not become common till nearly the middle of the 16th century.

The foregoing details are all directed to showing which leaves of a book would be printed by the same pull of the press, how it was made up for binding, and how imperfections in any copy may be detected. They give little or no indication of the dimensions of the book. In the case of modern editions this may be done by adding one of the trade epithets, pott, foolscap, crown, &c., to the name of the size, which when thus qualified denotes paper of a particular measurement (see Paper). As, however, these measurements are not easily remembered, it is better to give the actual measurements in inches or millimetres of a page of an uncut copy. In old books uncut copies are not easily found, and it is useful instead of this to give the measurement in millimetres of the printed portion of the page (technically called the “type-page”), although this is subject to a variation of about 3% in different copies, according to the degree to which they were damped for printing. To this is added a statement of the number of lines in the page measured. The character of the type (roman, gothic or italic) is next mentioned, and in the case of 15th-century books, its number in the sequence of founts used by the printer (see Incunabula). Finally a reference to any authoritative description already printed completes this portion of the entry. Thus the description of the collation of the first-dated book printed at Augsburg, the Meditationes of S. Bonaventura, printed by Günther Zainer in 1468, should read: Folio (a10, b-d8, e-g10, h8) 72 leaves. Type-page (3) 202 × 120 mm.; 35 lines. Type 1 (gothic letter). Hain 3557.

(c) While many books, and this is especially true of early ones, contain little or nothing beyond the bare text of a well-known work, others are well provided, not only with commentaries which are almost sure to be mentioned on the title-page, or in the colophon (which the editor himself often wrote), but also with dedicatory letters, prefaces, complimentary verses, indexes and other accessories, the presence of which it is desirable to indicate. In these cases it is often convenient to show the entire contents of the book in the order in which they occur, noting the leaves or pages on which each begins. Thus in the first edition (1590) of the first three books of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the literary contents, their order, and the space they occupy can be concisely noted by taking the successive gatherings according to their signatures and showing what comes on each page. Thus: A1, recto, title; verso, dedication, “To the Most Mightie and Magnificent Empresse Elizabeth”; A2-Oo8, text of books i.-iii.; Pp1, letter dated the 23rd of January 1589 [1590] to Sir Walter Raleigh expounding the intention of the work; Pp3 verso, commendatory verses signed W. R[aleigh], Hobynoll (Gabriel Harvey), R.S., H.B., W.L. and Ignoto; Pp5-8, complimentary sonnets severally inscribed to Sir C. Hatton, the earls of Essex, Oxford, Northumberland and Ormond, Lord Ch. Howard, Lord Grey of Wilton and Sir W. Raleigh, and to Lady Carew and to the Ladies in the Court; and “Faults escaped in the print”; Qq1-4, fifteen other sonnets.

Some bibliographers prefer to reverse the order of notation, (title, A1, recto; dedication, A1, verso, &c.), and no principle is sacrificed in doing so, though the order suggested usually works out the more neatly.

Enumeration and Arrangement.—In the 18th and early 19th centuries there was a tendency, especially among French writers, to exaggerate the scope of bibliography, on the ground that it was the duty of the bibliographer to appraise the value of all the books he recorded, and to indicate the exact place which each work should occupy in a logical classification of all literature based on a previous classification of all knowledge. Bibliographers are now more modest. They recognize that the classification of human knowledge is a question for philosophers and men of science, that the knowledge of chemistry and of its history needed to make a good bibliography of chemistry is altogether extrinsic to bibliography itself; that all, in fact, to which bibliography can pretend is to suggest certain general principles of arrangement and to point out to some extent how they may be applied. The principles are neither numerous nor recondite. To illustrate the history of printing, books may be arranged according to the places and printing-houses where they were produced. For the glorification of a province or county, they are sometimes grouped under the places where their authors were born or resided. For special purposes, they may be arranged according to the language or dialect in which they are written. But, speaking generally, the choice for a basis of arrangement rests between the alphabetical order of authors and titles, a chronological order according to date of publication, a “logical” or alphabetical order according to subjects, and some combination of these methods. In exercising the choice the essential requisite is a really clear idea of the use to which the bibliography, when made, is to be put. If its chief object be to give detailed information about individual books, a strictly alphabetical arrangement “by authors and titles” (i.e. by the names of authors in their alphabetical order, and the titles of their books in alphabetical sequence under the names) will be the most useful, because it enables the student to obtain the information he seeks with the greatest ease. But while such an alphabetical arrangement offers the speediest access to individual entries, it has no other merit, unless the main object of the bibliography be to show what each author has written. If it is desired to illustrate the history and development of a subject, or the literary biography of an author, the books should be entered chronologically. If direction in reading is to be given, this can best be offered by a subject-index, in which the subjects are arranged alphabetically for speedy reference, and the books chronologically under the subject, so that the newest are always at the end. Lastly if the object is to show how far the whole field has been covered and what gaps remain to be filled, a class catalogue arranged according to what are considered the logical subdivisions of the subject has its advantages. It is important, however, to remember that, if the bulk of the bibliography is very large, a principle of arrangement which would be clear and useful on a small scale may be lost in the quantity of pages over which it extends. An arrangement which cannot be quickly grasped, whatever satisfaction it may give its author, is useless to readers, the measure of its inutility being the worn condition of the alphabetical index to which those who cannot carry a complicated “logical” arrangement in their heads are obliged to turn, in the first instance, to find what they want. It should be obvious that any system which necessitates a preliminary reference to a key or index rests under grave suspicion, and needs some clear counterbalancing gain to justify the loss of time which it entails. The main classification should always be that which will be most immediately useful to readers of the books. To throw light on the history of a subject and to indicate how far the field is covered are honourable objects for compilers, but should mostly be held subordinate to practical use. It is noteworthy also that they may often be better forwarded by means of an index or table than by the main arrangement. The history of Hain’s Repertorium Bibliographicum, which enumerates in an alphabetical arrangement of authors and titles some 16,000 books printed in the 15th century, is a good example of this. For sixty-five years it was of the utmost use for its accurate descriptions of individual books, but threw practically no light on the history of printing. In 1891 Dr Konrad Burger published an appendix to it containing an Index of Printers, since greatly enlarged in his index to Dr Copinger’s Supplement to Hain (1902). The form of the index enables each printer’s work to be seen at a glance, and the impetus given to the study of the history of printing was very great. But if the book had originally been arranged under Printers instead of Authors, it would have been far more difficult to use; its literary value would have been halved, and the record of the output of each press, now instantly visible, would have been obscured by the fuller entries causing it to extend over many pages.

The Bibliography of Bibliography.—The zeal of students of early printing has provided the material for an almost exhaustive list (see Incunabula) of the books printed in the 15th century still extant. Of those printed in the years 1501-1536 there is a tentative enumeration in the continuation of Panzer’s Annales Typographici (1803), and materials are gradually being collected for improving and extending this. But the projects once formed for a universal bibliography have dwindled in proportion as the output of the press has increased, and the nearest approaches to such a work are the printed catalogue of the library of the British Museum, and that of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, now in progress. Of books of great rarity unrepresented in these catalogues a fairly sufficient record exists in Brunet’s Manuel du libraire, the bibliographical collections of Mr W.C. Hazlitt, the Bibliographer’s Manual by Lowndes, and the other bibliographical works enumerated in the article on book-collecting (q.v.). When a universal bibliography was recognized as an impossibility, patriotism suggested the compilation of national bibliographies, and the Bibliotheca Britannica of Robert Watt (Edinburgh, 1824) remains an extraordinary example of what the zeal of a single man could accomplish in this direction. Quérard’s La France littéraire (Paris, 1827-1839), while it gives fuller titles, is much less comprehensive, embracing mainly books of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and only such of these as appeared to the compiler to be written by “savants, historiens, et gens de lettres.” In the works of Heinsius (Allgemeines Bücherlexikon, 1700-1815, Leipzig, 1812-1817), and Kayser (Bücherlexikon, 1750, &c., Leipzig, 1834, &c.) Germany possesses a fine record of her output of books during the last two centuries, and since the organization of the book-trade, contemporary lists of books, with résumés and indexes issued at intervals, exist for most European countries. For the period before these became of importance in England much bibliographical material has been collected in the Catalogues of English Books printed up to the end of the year 1640, issued by the British Museum in 1884, by the John Rylands library, Manchester, in 1895, and by the University library, Cambridge, in 1900-1906. A similar record of the rich English collections in the Bodleian library, Oxford, remains a great desideratum. While these substitutes for a universal author catalogue have gradually been provided, similar contributions to a universal subject catalogue have been made in the form of innumerable special bibliographies compiled by students or bookmen interested in special subjects or departments of literature. The most important of these are enumerated in the bibliographical notes appended to articles in this Encyclopaedia, but many attempts have been made to compile separate catalogues of them.

The most recent of these bibliographies of bibliographies naturally take over all that is of any value in their predecessors, and it may suffice therefore to make special mention of the following:—Bibliotheca bibliographica. Kritisches Verzeichniss der das Gesammtgebiet der Bibliographie betreffenden Litteratur des In- und Auslandes, in systematisches Ordnung bearbeitet von Dr Julius Petzholdt. Mit alphabetischen Namen und Sachregister (Leipzig, 1866), 8vo, pp. xii. 940; Manuel de bibliographie générale, par Henri Stein (Paris, 1898), 8vo, pp. xx. 896; Manuel de bibliographie historique, par Ch. V. Langlois (Paris, 1901), 12mo, pp. xi. 623; A Register of National Bibliography. With a selection of the chief bibliographical works and articles printed in other Countries, by W.P. Courtney (London, 1905), 8vo, pp. viii. 631.

It should also be noted that the List of Books of Reference in the Reading-Room of the British Museum, first published in 1889, and the Subject-index of the Modern Works added to the Library of the British Museum in the years 1881-1900, edited by G.K. Fortescue (supplements published every five years), include entries of a vast number of bibliographical works, and that an eclectic list, with a valuable introduction, will be found in Professor Ferguson’s Some Aspects of Bibliography (Edinburgh, 1900).

(A. W. Po.)

1 Some bibliographers prefer to use double strokes to avoid confusion with the old-fashioned long commas. Others use a single stroke to indicate the space between two lines and increase the number of strokes where the space left is wider than this.

2 It may be noted that some confusion is caused in descriptions of books by the word “sheet,” which should be restricted to the original sheet of paper which by folding becomes folio, quarto, &c., being applied also to the double-leaf of four pages. A word specially appropriated to this is greatly needed, and as gatherings of two, three, four, &c., of such double-leaves are known technically as duernions, ternions, quaternions, &c., the double-leaf itself might well be called a “unit.”

3 Here specify the page measured.

BIBLIOMANCY (from the Gr. βιβλίον, a book, and μαντεία, prophecy), a form of divination (q.v.) by means of the Bible or other books. The method employed is to open the Bible haphazard and be guided by the first verse which catches the eye. Among the Greeks and Romans the practice was known under the name of sortes Homericae or sortes Virgilianae, the books consulted being those of Homer or Virgil.

BIBRACTE, an ancient Gaulish town, the modern Mont Beuvray, near Autun in France. Here, on a hilltop 2500 ft. above sea-level, excavation has revealed a vast area of 330 acres, girt with a stone and wood rampart 3 m. long, and containing the remains of dwelling-houses, a temple of Bibractis, and the workshops of iron and bronze workers and enamellers. It was the capital of the Aedui in the time of Julius Caesar. Later on Augustus removed the inhabitants to his new town Augustodunum (Autun), to destroy the free native traditions. Another far more obscure town in Gaul, near Reims, also bore the name.

See Bulliot, Fouilles de Beuvray; Déchelette, Oppidum de Bibracte; also references s.v. Aedui.

BIBULUS, a surname of the Roman gens Calpurnia. The best-known of those who bore it was Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, consul with Julius Caesar, 59 B.C. He was the candidate put forward by the aristocratical party in opposition to L. Lucceius, who was of the party of Caesar; and bribery was freely used, with the approval of even the rigid Cato (Suetonius, Caesar, 9), to secure his election. But he proved no match for his able colleague. He made an attempt to oppose the agrarian law introduced by Caesar for distributing the lands of Campania, but was overpowered and even personally ill-treated by the mob. After making vain complaints in the senate, he shut himself up in his own house during the remaining eight months of his consulship, taking no part in public business beyond fulminating edicts against Caesar’s proceedings, which only provoked an attack upon his house by a mob of Caesar’s partisans. His conduct gave rise to the jest, that Julius and Caesar were consuls during that year. When the relations of Caesar and Pompey became strained, Bibulus supported Pompey (Plutarch, Cato Minor, 41) and joined in proposing his election as sole consul (52 B.C.). Next year he went to Syria as proconsul and claimed credit for a victory gained by one of his officers over the Parthians, before his own arrival in the province. After the expiration of his term of office, Pompey gave him command of his fleet in the Ionian Sea. He proved himself utterly incapable; his chief exploit was the burning of thirty transports on their return from Epirus whither they had succeeded in conveying Caesar and some troops from Brundusium. He died soon afterwards (48) of fatigue and mortification (Caesar, Bell. Civ. iii. 5-18; Dio Cassius xli. 48). Although not a man of great importance, Bibulus showed great persistency as the enemy of Caesar. Cicero says of him that he was no orator, but a careful writer. By his wife Porcia, daughter of Cato, afterwards married to Brutus, he had three sons. The two eldest were murdered in Egypt by some of the soldiery of Gabinius; the youngest, Lucius Calpurnius Bibulus, fought on the side of the republic at the battle of Philippi, but surrendered to Antony soon afterwards, and was by him appointed to the command of his fleet. He died (about 32) while governor of Syria under Augustus. He wrote a short memoir of his step-father Brutus, which was used by Plutarch (Appian, B.C. iv. 136; Plutarch, Brutus, 13. 23).

BICE (from Fr. bis, a word of doubtful origin, meaning dark-coloured), a term erroneously applied in English to particular shades of green or blue pigments from the French terms vert bis and azur bis, dark green or blue. These colours are generally prepared from basic copper carbonates, but sometimes from ultramarine and other pigments.

BICESTER, a market town in the Woodstock parliamentary division of Oxfordshire, England, 12 m. N.N.E. of Oxford by a branch of the London & North-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3023. It lies near the northern edge of the flat open plain of Ot Moor, in a pastoral country. The church of St Eadburg, the virgin of Aylesbury, is cruciform, with a western tower, and contains examples of Norman and each succeeding style. There is, moreover, in the nave a single rude angular arch considered to be Saxon. Incorporated with a farm-house, scanty Perpendicular remains are seen of an Augustinian priory founded at the close of the 12th century. Bicester has considerable agricultural trade and a brewing industry. It is a favourite hunting centre.

The termination cester, commonly indicating Roman origin, does not do so here, and is perhaps copied from Alchester and Chesterton, 2 m. west of Bicester, where there is a small Roman site, probably a wayside village, at the meeting of roads from the south (Dorchester), west, north-east and east.

Bicester (Berncestre, Burencestre, Bissiter), according to the Domesday survey, was held by Robert d’Oily. In 1182 Gilbert Basset founded here an Augustinian priory, which from that date until its dissolution in 1538 became the centre of the industrial life and development of the town. In 1253 William Longspey obtained a grant of a fair at the feast of St Edburg, and a Friday market is mentioned in the 14th century. Richard II. granted a Monday market and a fair at the feast of St James the Apostle, and in 1440 an additional market was granted to be held in that part of the town called Bury-End, from this date known as Market-End. Bicester never possessed any manufactures of importance, but the fairs and markets were much frequented, and in the 16th century the cattle market was especially famous.

See J.C. Blomfield, History of the Deanery of Bicester (London, 1882-1894); John Dunkin, History of Bicester (London, 1816).

BICHAT, MARIE FRANÇOIS XAVIER (1771-1802), French anatomist and physiologist, was born at Thoirette (Jura) on the 14th of November 1771. His father, a physician, was his first instructor. He entered the college of Nantua, and afterwards studied at Lyons. In mathematics and the physical sciences he made rapid progress, but ultimately devoted himself to the study of anatomy and surgery, under the guidance of M.A. Petit (1766-1811), chief surgeon to the Hôtel Dieu at Lyons. The revolutionary disturbances compelled him to fly from Lyons and take refuge in Paris in 1793. He there became a pupil of P.J. Desault, who was so strongly impressed with his genius that he took him into his house and treated him as his adopted son. For two years he actively participated in all the labours of Desault, prosecuting at the same time his own researches in anatomy and physiology. The sudden death of Desault in 1795 was a severe blow to Bichat. His first care was to acquit himself of the obligations he owed his benefactor, by contributing to the support of his widow and her son, and by conducting to a close the fourth volume of Desault’s Journal de Chirurgie, to which he added a biographical memoir of its author. His next object was to reunite and digest in one body the surgical doctrines which Desault had published in various periodical works. Of these he composed Œuvres chirurgicales de Desault, ou tableau de sa doctrine, et de sa pratique dans le traitement des maladies externes (1798-1799), a work in which, although he professes only to set forth the ideas of another, he develops them with the clearness of one who is a master of the subject. In 1797 he began a course of anatomical demonstrations, and his success encouraged him to extend the plan of his lectures, and boldly to announce a course of operative surgery. In the following year, 1798, he gave in addition a separate course of physiology. A dangerous attack of haemoptysis interrupted his labours for a time; but the danger was no sooner past than he plunged into new engagements with the same ardour as before. He had now scope in his physiological lectures for a fuller exposition of his original views on the animal economy, which excited much attention in the medical schools at Paris. Sketches of these doctrines were given by him in three papers contained in the Memoirs of the Société Médicale d’Émulation, which he founded in 1796, and they were afterwards more fully developed in his Traité sur les membranes (1800). His next publication was the Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et sur la mort (1800), and it was quickly followed by his Anatomie générale (1801), the work which contains the fruits of his most profound and original researches. He began another work, under the title Anatomie descriptive (1801-1803), in which the organs were arranged according to his peculiar classification of their functions, but lived to publish only the first two volumes. It was completed on the same plan by his pupils, M.F.R. Buisson (1776-1805) and P.J. Roux (1780-1854).

Before Bichat had attained the age of eight-and-twenty he was appointed physician to the Hôtel Dieu, a situation which opened an immense field to his ardent spirit of inquiry. In the investigation of diseases he pursued the same method of observation and experiment which had characterized his researches in physiology. He learned their history by studying them at the bedside of his patients, and by accurate dissection of their bodies after death. He engaged in a series of examinations, with a view to ascertain the changes induced in the various organs by disease, and in less than six months he had opened above six hundred bodies. He was anxious also to determine with more precision than had been attempted before, the effects of remedial agents, and instituted with this view a series of direct experiments which yielded a vast store of valuable material. Towards the end of his life he was also engaged on a new classification of diseases. A fall from a staircase at the Hôtel Dieu resulted in a fever, and, exhausted by his excessive labours and by constantly breathing the tainted air of the dissecting-room, he died on the 22nd of July 1802. His bust, together with that of Desault, was placed in the Hôtel Dieu by order of Napoleon.

BICHROMATES AND CHROMATES. Chromium trioxide dissolves readily in water, and the solution is supposed to contain chromic acid, H2CrO4; the salts of this acid are known as the chromates. In addition to these normal salts, others exist, namely bichromates, trichromates, &c., which may be regarded as combinations of one molecular proportion of the normal salt with one or more molecular proportions of chromium trioxide. The series will thus possess the following general formulae:—

M2CrO4 M2Cr2O7 M2Cr3O10 &c. (M = one atom of a

normal chromate bichromate trichromate monovalent metal.)

Chromates.—The alkaline chromates are usually obtained by fusion of a chromium compound with an alkaline carbonate and an oxidizing agent, such for example as potassium nitrate or chlorate. The native chrome-ironstone (Cr2O3·FeO) may be used in this way as a source of such compounds, being fused in a reverberatory furnace, along with soda-ash and lime, the oxidizing agent in this case being atmospheric oxygen. They may also be prepared by oxidizing chromium salts (in alkaline solution) with hydrogen peroxide, chlorine, bleaching powder, potassium permanganate and manganese dioxide. The majority of the chromates are yellow in colour, and many of them are isomorphous with the corresponding sulphates. The alkaline chromates are soluble in water, those of most other metals being insoluble. By the addition of mineral acids, they are converted rapidly into bichromates. They are easily reduced in acid solution by sulphuretted hydrogen, and also by sulphur dioxide to chromium salts. The chromates are stable towards heat; they are poisonous, and may be recognized by the yellow precipitates they give with soluble barium and lead salts.

Potassium chromate, K2CrO4, may be prepared by neutralizing a solution of potassium bichromate with potassium carbonate or with caustic potash. It crystallizes in yellow rhombic prisms, and is readily soluble in water, the solution having a bitter taste and an alkaline reaction. When heated in a current of sulphuretted hydrogen, or carbon bisulphide, it yields a mixture of chromium sesquioxide and sulphide. When heated with sulphur it yields chromium sesquioxide. Sodium chromate, Na2CrO4·10H2O, forms pale yellow crystals isomorphous with hydrated sodium sulphate, Na2SO4·10H2O. It is deliquescent, and melts at 23° C. (M. Berthelot). By evaporation of its aqueous solution at temperatures above 30° C. it may be obtained in the anhydrous condition. Lead chromate, PbCrO4, occurs native as the mineral crocoisite, and may be obtained as an amorphous pale yellow solid by precipitating a soluble lead salt by an alkaline chromate. It is used as a pigment under the name “chrome yellow.” When digested for some time with a caustic alkali it is converted into a basic salt, PbCrO4·PbO, a pigment known as “chrome red.” It melts readily, and on cooling resolidifies to a brown mass, which at moderately high temperatures gives off oxygen and leaves a residue of a basic lead salt; for this reason fused lead chromate is sometimes made use of in the analysis of organic compounds. Silver chromate, Ag2CrO4 is a dark red amorphous powder obtained when silver nitrate is precipitated by an alkaline chromate. It is decomposed by the addition of caustic alkalis, forming silver oxide and an alkaline chromate.

Bichromates.—The bichromates are usually of a red or reddish-brown colour, those of the alkali metals being readily soluble in water. They are readily decomposed by heat, leaving a residue of the normal chromate and chromium sesquioxide, and liberating oxygen; ammonium bichromate, however, is completely decomposed into chromium sesquioxide, water and nitrogen. Sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphur dioxide reduce them in acid solution to the condition of chromium salts.

Potassium bichromate, K2Cr2O7, is obtained by fusing chrome ironstone with soda ash and lime (see above), the calcium chromate formed in the process being decomposed by a hot solution of potassium sulphate. After the calcium sulphate has settled, the potassium chromate solution is converted into bichromate by the action of sulphuric acid, and the salt is allowed to crystallize. It forms large triclinic prisms of specific gravity 2.6-2.7, which are moderately soluble in cold water and readily soluble in hot water. The solution is strongly acid in reaction and is very poisonous. Potassium bichromate finds extensive application in organic chemistry as an oxidizing agent, being used for this purpose in dilute sulphuric acid solution, K2Cr2O7 + 4H2SO4 = KaSO4 + Cr2(SO4)3 + 4H2O + 3O. On the addition of concentrated sulphuric acid to a cold saturated solution of the salt, red crystals of chromium trioxide, CrO3, separate (see Chromium), whilst when warmed with concentrated hydrochloric acid and a little water, potassium chlorochromate is produced. When heated with phosphorus trichloride in a sealed tube to 160° C., potassium chlorochromate, phosphorus oxychloride, potassium chloride, and a complex chromium oxide (possibly Cr3O6) are produced (A. Michaelis, Jour. prak. Chem., 1871, ii. 4, p. 452). Potassium bichromate finds application in photography, in calico-printing and in the preparation of bichromate cells. Sodium bichromate, Na2Cr2O7·2H2O, may be obtained by the addition of the requisite quantity of chromium trioxide to a solution of sodium chromate. It crystallizes in hyacinth-red prisms, which are very hygroscopic and melt at 320° C.