The

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of St. Luke, but shortly after removed to Burlington Bruges, where he bought the right of citiMagazine, zenship and settled definitely. He also purNumber chased the freedom of the town of Valenciennes in 1498, in which year, if not previously, he married Joan de Quaroube, a well-to-do elderly lady, who, after twentyfive years of wedded life, had in 1489 been left a widow by the celebrated painter and miniaturist Simon Marmion. She died in 1506. Prevost, who married again three times, died in January 1529. The only picture proved by documentary evidence to be by him is the Last Judgement (167), painted in 1525 for the town hall, lent by the museum where it is now kept. An earlier representation of the same subject, said to have been painted by him for the Dominicans of Bruges (169), was lent by Viscount de Ruffo Bonneval. A third, lent by Mr. E. F. Weber (168), attributed to him by M. Hulin,' appears to me to be the work of an imitator. It is not only inferior in drawing and execution, but the treatment of the subject—the risen are bringing account books which the angels are verifying-is childish. M. Hulin enumerates eleven other pictures as being certainly, and three more as possibly, by Prevost. Four of these were in the exhibition (109, 157, 189, and 342); a fifth, the Blessed Virgin and Child in an aureole surrounded by angels, with the prophets and sibyls, at St. Petersburg, which he believes to be the picture painted in 1524 for the altar of St. Daniel in the church of St. Donatian at Bruges. The other six are SS. Antony of Padua and Bonaventure, in the Brussels gallery; an Adoration of the Magi, at Berlin; the Blessed Virgin and Child, in the National gallery (No. 713, attributed to Mostaert); another with SS. Benedict and Bernard, at Windsor castle; another with a carthusian, exhibited as by

Quelques Peintres Brugeois de la première moitié du XVIe siècle-I. Jan Prevost. Gand, 1902, 38 pp. and 4 phototypes. This master was a Walloon, born at Mons. It is not only more correct to write his family name as he himself and his forbears wrote it, but it is important to do so as the forms De la Pasture, Gossart, Prevost etc., remind the reader that the Walloons had a considerable share in the development of the Netherlandish school, far greater than the Flemings.

Isenbrant at the Burlington club in 1892; and a Virgin and Child, at Carlsruhe, where it is attributed to Gossart. The three which he thinks may be attributed to him are the heads of Christ and the Blessed Virgin (193 and 194), and the charming picture of St. Francis renouncing the world(150),belonging to Mr. Sutton Nelthorpe. Few indeed are those who write on the early masters who can resist the temptation of attributing to them a goodly list of works. Much may be learnt when, as in the present case, serious arguments are started which can be discussed, and no harm can result so long as the attributions are not accepted as certainties by museum authorities. ¶The other master, Albert Cornelis, who died in 1532, is still only known by one remarkable picture (170), the Coronation of the B. Virgin. A painting of the Mater dolorosa (105), formerly in the church of the Austin friars, lent by the cathedral, is said to be a copy of a miraculous picture in the church of Ara caeli at Rome, of which other copies were formerly at Abbenbroek and Romerswale in Zealand, and a third, if not one of these two, is now in the gallery at Munich. The copy exhibited was traditionally attributed to John van Eyck, and the cipher in the corner, supposed to be his, was adduced as a proof. This cipher, retouched by the restorer who re-gilt the background, is certainly that used as a signature by John van Eecke or van Eeckele, a painter who settled in Bruges and was admitted as free-master into the gild of St. Luke in September 1534, and worked there until his death in November 1561. A panel lent by the museum of Tournay (106), representing the vision of St. Bernard with other episodes in the life of that saint in the landscape background, is an original work of the master signed with his cipher. ¶A panel (250) lent by the Black Sisters represents St. Nicolas of Tolentino, and on the exterior an Austin friar, Roger De Jonghe (born 1482, died 1579), kneeling at a prayer desk on which is an open book.

N November 8, 1623, Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard obtained the licence of the Stationers' company for the publication, in the first folio edition of Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies, of sixteen plays, not before printed. Some 265 years later the late Mr. Bernard Quaritch, in cataloguing a good copy of the completed work, directed attention to the fact that, based on the then value of the quartos, the twenty Shakespearian plays actually printed for the first time in the folio of 1623-for as many were included-would, as first editions, have a money-worth of from £3,500 to £4,000. All question of the quartos apart, however, a fine copy of the book, originally procurable for £1, might now realize from £2,000 to £3,000; indeed, the mean between these two sums is said to have been privately offered for a particularly well-known example. No printed book, apart from about a dozen monuments of typography from fifteenthcentury presses, has fetched so much at auction as the £1,720 realized at Christie's in 1901 for the Dormer-Hunter first folio, now in the possession of Mr. Charles Scribner of New York, albeit a few weeks previously £1,475 was the amount paid on behalf of a transatlantic collector for the scarcer Bunyan's' Pilgrim's Progress,' in first edition, said to have been issued at Is. 6d. ¶That there was ample warrant for the publication of a new facsimile is acknowledged on all hands; and the folio recently produced by the Clarendon press has failed in few respects only to satisfy the most exigent of connoisseurs. The hypercritical observe that the plate-mark measures no more than 121 in. by 7 in., as against 13 in. by

8 in., the actual size of the pages of the duke of Devonshire's copy at Chatsworth, on which the facsimile is based. On the whole, however, the volume has been cordially welcomed, and that welcome is merited. Interest and value are enhanced, of course, by the scholarly introduction and the census of known extant copies from the pen of Mr. Sidney Lee. Under his guidance we are enabled to take a bird's-eye view of all relevant facts pertaining to the volume which constitutes the greatest contribution yet made to English literature.' Oversights and inaccuracies must of necessity have crept into the census, for Mr. Lee has been compelled to rely to a considerable extent, of course, on information supplied to him by owners and others. But who would have been prepared to undertake a like task, who would have been able to carry it to a more successful issue? Mr. Lee conjectures that the edition of the first folio consisted of 600 copies, of which not far short of one-third, in varying states, probably still exist. In 1616 and 1647 respectively there appeared the collected works of Ben Jonson and of Beaumont and Fletcher, each issued, he thinks, in about the same number of copies and at the same price of £1. At the sale of Sir Kenelm Digby's library in April 1680 the Beaumont and Fletcher volume fetched 13s. 6d. ; the Ben Jonson, with the folio of 1640 added, 17s. 6d. As most collectors are aware, the earliest record of the sale by auction of a first folio Shakespeare is of that in the library of Sir William and the Hon. Henry Coventry, dispersed in the Haymarket by W. Cooper on May 19, 1687; but, unfortunately, there is no mention of the sum realized. Mr. Lee states that the first priced record

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The belongs to 1756, when the Martin Folkes Burlington example, now in the Rylands library, was Magazine, sold to George Steevens for 3 guineas. On Number the other hand, it has been affirmed that in an anonymous collection of books dispersed in 1687-8 a first folio fetched no more than 14s. It is felt that in one direction Mr. Sidney Lee might with advantage have taken a further step. He has gathered together the material necessary for making, not only a geographical analysis of the copies traced, but an analysis which shall show, too, the approximate condition of those to be found here or there. Of the 600 copies conjectured to have been printed in 1623, Mr. Lee mentions the present owners of 144, leaving the possessors of 14, whose particulars do not agree with those of any others, untraced. The total of 160, including the two copies named in the postscript, is made up by mention of an example stated to have been lost in the S.S. Arctic, 1854, and of that said to have been destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871. In order to understand the table that follows, it is necessary in the first place to transcribe details of the four main classifications into which Mr. Lee divides the copies he has traced :

ΙΟ 2

12

Total 160

The accompanying table is an attempt to show at a glance the geographical distribution of the copies named by Mr. Lee. His estimate of condition has been scrupulously followed, even with regard to the first folio in the royal library at Berlin. In the Vossische Zeitung of February 10, and in The Times of the following day, there appeared a statement to the effect that a careless or malicious reader had mutilated this Berlin copy, which was bought of Joseph Lilly in 1858 and presented by the then prince - regent, afterwards Emperor William I., to the royal library, and that the whole of the Comedy of Errors' had been cut out. I communicated with the director of the library on this subject, and he courteously informs me that the statement, happily, is based on a misapprehension. The folio of 1623 is in the same condition as when presented forty-five years ago; on the other hand, the facsimile of 1806 has been robbed of eight leaves, including those on which the 'Comedy of Errors' is printed. As to distribution, I have assumed that the five copies sold in the United States during the past few years have there remained; of the three examples which occurred at Sotheby's in 1902 I chance to know that one has gone to America, another is still in London; while since January copies LXXVIIIa, LXXX, and LXXXVI have been sold at auction and are entered under 'London, private owners.' It is worthy of remark that the three first folios in British colonies are presentations from public-spirited men: those at Capetown and Auckland are the gift of Sir George Grey; that at Sydney of Sir Richard Tangye.