Note 322 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

Vol. III. p. 345. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, iii. 79. Typographical errors in the book are very numerous, as Mather did not have a chance to correct the type. A page of “errata” was printed, but is found in few copies. Some copies have been completed by a fac-simile of the page, which Mr. Charles Deane has caused to be made. Some copies of the book exist on large paper. (Hist. Mag., ii. 123; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., ii. 37.) The Hartford ed. of 1820 was printed from a copy without this list of errata, and so preserves the original crop of errors. So did the edition of 1853; but the sheets of this, with a memoir by S. G. Drake added, were furnished with a new title in 1855, in which it is professed that the errors have been corrected; but the profession is said not to be true. (Hist. Mag., i. 29.) An exceptionally fine copy of the original edition, well bound, will bring $40 to $50. Holmes (Amer. Annals, 2d ed., i. 544) says of the Magnalia that its “author believed more and discriminated less than becomes a writer of history.”