imposes, every barrier, it places between the people and their own books."

Up to now I know of fifteen English public ratesupported libraries allowing open access to the shelves of the lending library. They are Brighouse, Bournemouth, Clerkenwell, Darwen, Hornsey, Huddersfield, Kettering, Kingston, Rothwell, Southport, Widnes, Worcester, and our three at Croydon. When one thinks of man's natural conservatism, whose highest expression is in the wellknown phrase of the greatest of poets-"'Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of❞—when one thinks of man's natural laziness, which was never better put than in the favourite rejoinder of the Queen's first Premier-"Can't you let it alone?"—when one thinks of the united twenty-vestryman-power of those, who in all municipalities "sit upon the rates" and object to any avoidable expenditure on the principle of the boy who refused to learn A lest he should have to learn B-when one thinks of all these and countless other forms of the great goddess Inertia, all dragging with a hundred hands upon the car of progress, one is amazed, not that so few, but that so many towns have already changed their library-system. The actual new expense is not much, but the waste of costly indicators and counters, the expenditure of time in rearrangement of the books on some logical or ordered basis, and the overthrow of the habits of long years, these make librarians and committees pause. But every now and then a new room has to be built, a new arrangement has perforce to be made, a new librarian is appointed, or some other radical change is necessary. Seize these opportunities, as we at Croydon did, and you will then rejoice in your inestimable gain, as we at Croydon rejoice.

It seems to me that this dozen or so of public librarians who have adopted open access are at the same time well to the front in all other departments. Some of the best methods now largely in use I think I can trace to the

inventiveness of one or the other of them: so true is it that progress in one way leads inevitably to advance in another also. But I will not speak further of what I know little about. This is, however, certain: open access will be a thorn in the flesh to the lazy librarian. His clumsy catalogue, his higgledy-piggledy piles of heterogeneous volumes, placed on the shelves in the order they are bought, his neglect to procure the latest and best books, will not stand the actual scrutiny of his natural enemy, the genuine reader. His "hout, hout, hout" will no longer serve to drive away that importunate person. He will have to adopt a real classification, whether Dewey's or some other. He will be perpetually asked to prove that a volume is in or out by these pestilent bores, who really want it and cannot find it on the shelf. No turning of a packet red-side out and blue-side in will suffice. He will be plagued and pestered, his pet sins will be found out, his slumbers disturbed, his deficiencies exposed; and indeed, if he cannot contrive to stifle open access and its results, he will have to . . . go!

H. KEATLEY MOORE.

THE NEWLY DISCOVERED "MISSALE SPECIALE."

HE announcement last year of the discovery of a Missal, printed by Gutenberg before 1457, was received with great interest by bibliographers, especially in GerHaving, by the kindness of its

many.

owner, the well-known Munich bookseller, Mr. Ludwig Rosenthal, been allowed to examine the volume at my leisure and to compare it with the Missals in the British Museum and with others in private collec

tions, and having read the arguments for and against its claim to be the earliest printed book yet discovered, I confess that I have not been able to arrive at a decided opinion on the subject.' But as I am assured that the points noted by me may interest the readers of this review, and perhaps be of some use in aiding them to form an opinion, I venture to communicate them.

It may be as well, by way of introduction, to say a few words as to the contents of a Missal and the signification of the qualifying adjective speciale. A Missal, as most educated people nowadays know, is a book containing the complete text of the service for Mass throughout the year. This is always arranged in seven sections as follows: (1) The Kalendar, General Rubrics, and Prayers before and after Mass; (2) The Proper of the Season from Advent to Holy Saturday, i.e., the Introits, Collects, Lessons, Epistles, Graduals, Tracts, Gospels, Offertories, Secrets, Communions, and Post-communions appointed for the Sundays and weekdays in that part of the year; (3) The Ordinary, Prefaces, and Canon; (4) The Proper of the Season from Easter Day to Advent; (5) The Proper of Saints, i.e., the Introits, etc.,

1 The following pamphlets on the Missale have already appeared: FALK (F.). Ein neu aufgetauchter Fust-Schöfferscher Druck. In the Literary Supplement to "Germania" of November 5th, 1896.

HUPP (Otto). Ein Missale speciale Vorläufer des Psalteriums von 1457. München-Regensburg, 1898. 4to. 30 pp. with facsimiles. STEIN (Henri). Une production inconnue de l'atelier de Gutenberg. In "Le Bibliographe moderne," ii, 297-306. Paris, 1898. SCHMIDT (Adolf). Ein Missale speciale Vorläufer des Psalteriums von 1457. In "Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen," xvi, 65-68.

Leipzig, 1899.

HUPP (Otto). Ein Missale speciale Vorläufer des Psalters von 1457. In "Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen," xvi, 361-368. Leipzig, 1899.

SCHMIDT (Adolf). Das Missale speciale L. Rosenthals. In "Centralblatt," xvi, 368-372.

MISSET (Ed.). Le premier livre imprimé connu. Un Missel spécial de Constance œuvre de Gutenberg avant 1450. Etude liturgique et critique. (Extract from "Le Bibliographe moderne.") Paris, 1899. 39 pp. and 2 facsimiles.

as above, for the festivals of saints; (6) The Common of Saints, i.e., the Introits, etc., common to those saints of each class Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, and Virgins, for whom no particular Introit, etc., is appointed, the service on the anniversary of the Dedication and Votive Massesall these identical in every Missal'-and, lastly, Masses for local festivals, these varying according to the country or diocese in which the volume is intended to be used.

In early times there was no one manuscript corresponding to the Missal. The Sacramentary contained-besides matter relating to other Sacraments-the Collects, Secrets, Prefaces, Canons, and Post-communions, and to it, from the end of the seventh century, was given the name of Missal. Other volumes contained the Lessons and Epistles, the Gospels, and the choral portions of the Mass: Introits, Graduals, Tracts, Offertories, and Communions, to which, later on, were added the Proses, though these often formed a separate volume. But in the thirteenth century most or all were often included in one volume called a "Missale Plenarium "-full or complete Missal-the qualifying adjective falling into disuse when this became general.

own.

Formerly not only did every diocese have its own Missal, varying more or less from the Roman, but in many dioceses there were churches which had uses of their Missals were either written for a particular church or for general use in a diocese; in the latter case the Mass for any festival peculiar to the particular church for which it was acquired would be added at the end of the volume, or, as is often the case, on the margin at its date. The Proper for newly-instituted festivals would be added in the same manner. The locality for which the book was written and its date may often be determined by these additions. Thus any book with an office of St. Bernardin of Siena (May 20th) would be posterior to his canoniza

1 That is, in every Roman Missal. The Ambrosian and Mozarabic Missals, and those of a few religious orders such as the Carthusians and Dominicans, are exceptions.

tion in 1450, or if with an office of St. Vincent Ferrer (April 5th), to 1455. The absence of either from the original text of a Roman Missal would prove the volume to have been written prior to those years. The absence of the first from a Franciscan Missal would prove it to be anterior to 1450, and of the second from a Dominican Missal would in like manner prove it to be anterior to 1455.

The manuscript and early printed Missals were volumes of considerable size, costly and not very portable. In Germany and Switzerland there were many chapels in which Mass was only said on Sundays and on the principal festivals, and so it was found convenient to have smaller volumes containing only the text of the Masses for those days. To these abridgments the name of "Missale Speciale" was given. The oldest (6 Specialia" were written for use in one diocese only, and they contained at least the service for all Sundays and holy days of obligation, i.e., all those days on which people were bound to assist at Mass; generally they contained, in addition, the service for festivals of second rank, popularly called holy days of devotion. When printing was introduced, it was soon found advantageous to issue Missals for use in two or more dioceses, when the variations in the services were slight; and this especially was the case with the "Specialia," the contents of which were the portions of the Missal least subject to

variation.

The contents of a "Speciale" were about half those of a complete Missal, as the Masses for week-days and minor festivals were omitted. The Augsburg Missal of 1496 consists, roughly speaking, of 516 pages of 2 columns with 41 lines of, on an average, 25 letters; the "Speciale" of 1505, of 208 such pages; both were printed by Erard Ratdolt. The Würzburg Missal of 1493 has 748 pages of 2 columns with 32 lines of 20 letters, about 957,440 letters; the "Speciale" of 1495, 498 pages of 2 columns with 25 lines of 20 letters, about 498,000 letters.