brought $1600; and unquestionably as years roll on, and the number of persons who have the means and the leisure to devote themselves to literary pursuits increases, while the early imprints through absorption by public libraries and in other ways become more inaccessible, the market value of these volumes will immeasurably enhance. Up to the present time the noblest specimen of American colonial bibliography has remained utterly unknown to the most learned of our bibliophiles. There is no reference to it in the appendix to Thomas on Printing, published by the American Antiquarian Society, whose purpose was to give all the pre-revolutionary publications of America. So far as can be learned no copy of it has ever appeared at a book-sale or been in the hands of an American bookseller.[1] Though printed within a comparatively short distance of Philadelphia, until within the last year the librarian of the Philadelphia Library had never heard of its existence; and Sabin, whose knowledge of Americana is unsurpassed, was equally in the dark. It is to call the attention of those who love our literature to this very remarkable work, and to give its points and history so that it may no longer lurk in obscurity, that this article is written.
Men, communities, and nations have their origin, development, and fruition. So have books. In Holland, in the year 1562 there appeared a duodecimo of about two hundred and fifty leaves in the Dutch language called Het offer des Heeren. This was the germ.[2] It contained
- ↑ Since this was written a copy was secured by a publishing house in Philadelphia, and was sold for $120.
- ↑ Still earlier were fugitive broadsides and pamphlets, printed secretly by the friends of the martyrs. Naturally nearly all of these have disappeared, but it is well known that they existed and were widely circulated. A few of them are preserved in the library of the Mennonite College at Amsterdam. I have one giving details of the burning of Frantz and Niclaus Thiessen, in Brabant in 1556, which came from the library of Count Zinzendorf. It is at least possible that the Tysons who settled in Germantown were of the same family.
