Note 201 — Part II. THE EARLY DESCRIPTIONS OF AMERICA AND COLLECTIVE ACCOUNTS OF THE EARLY VOYAGES THERETO.

The earliest description of a set of De Bry of any bibliographical moment is that of the Abbé de Rothelin, Observations et détails sur la collection des voyages, etc. (Paris, 1742), pp. 44 (Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 473), which is reprinted in Lenglet du Fresnoy’s Méthode pour étudier la géographie (1768), i. 324. Gabriel Martin, in his catalogue of the library of M. Cisternay du Fay, had somewhat earlier announced that collector’s triumph in calling a set in his catalogue (no. 2,825) “exemplum omni genere perfectum,” when his copy brought 450 francs. The Abbé de Rothelin aimed to exceed Cisternay du Fay, and did in the varieties which he brought together. The next description was that of De Bure in his Bibliographie instructive (vol. i. p. 67), printed 1763-1768; but the German editions were overlooked by De Bure, as they had been by his predecessors. The Carter-Brown Catalogue (vol. i. no. 473) shows Sobolewski’s copy of De Bure with manuscript notes. A lifetime later, in 1802, A. G. Camus printed at Paris his Mémoire sur les grands et petits voyages [de De Bry] et les voyages de Thevenot. As a careful and critical piece of work, this collation of Camus was superior to De Bure’s. A description of a copy belonging to the Duke of Bedford was printed in Paris in 1836 (6 pp.). Weigel, in the Serapeum (1845), pp. 65-89, printed his “Bibliographische Mittheilungen über die deutschen Ausgaben von De Bry,” which was also printed separately. It described a copy now owned in New York. Muller, in his Catalogue (1872), p. 217, indicates some differences from Weigel’s collations. The copy formed by De Bure fell into Mr. Grenville’s hands, and was largely improved by him before he left it, with his library, to the British Museum. The Bibliotheca Grenvilliana describes it, and Bartlett (Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 321) thinks it the finest in Europe. Cf. Dibdin’s description, which is copied in the American Bibliopolist (1872), p. 13. The standard collation at present is probably that of Brunet, in his Manuel du libraire, vol. i. (1860), which was also printed separately; in this he follows Weigel for the German texts. This account is followed by Sabin in his Dictionary (vol. iii. p. 20), whose article, prepared by Charles A. Cutter, of the Boston Athenæum, has also been printed separately. The Brunet account is accompanied by a valuable note (also in Sabin, iii. 59), by Sobolewski, whose best set (reaching one hundred and seventy parts) was a wonderful one, though he lacked the English Hariot. This set came to this country through Muller (cf. his Catalogue, 1875, p. 387), and is now in the Lenox Library. Sobolewski’s second set went into the Field Collection, and was sold in 1875; and again in the J. J. Cooke sale (Catalogue, iii. 297) in 1883. Cf. Catalogue de la collection de feu M. Serge Sobolewski de Moscou, prepared by Albert Cohn. The sale took place in Leipsic in July, 1873. Brunet and Sobolewski both point out the great difficulties of a satisfactory collation, arising from the publisher’s habit of mixing the sheets of the various editions, forming varieties almost beyond the acquisition of the most enthusiastic collector, “so that,” says Brunet, “perhaps no two copies of this work are exactly alike.” “No man ever yet,” says Henry Stevens (Historical Collections, vol. i. no. 179), “made up his De Bry perfect, if one may count on the three great De Bry witnesses,—the Right Honorable Thomas Grenville, the Russian prince Sobolewski, and the American Mr. Lenox,—who all went far beyond De Bure, yet fell far short of attaining all the variations they had heard of.” The collector will value various other collations now accessible, like that in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, vol. i. no. 396 (also printed separately, twenty-five copies, in 1875); that printed by Quaritch, confined to the German texts; that in the Huth Catalogue, ii. 404; and that in the Sunderland Catalogue, nos. 2,052, 2,053.