FAMOUS LIBRARY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 51, 30 January 1932, Page 7

FAMOUS LIBRARY.

MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN’S COLLECTION.

NEW YORK, Jan. 28. Two of the most famous items of English .incunabula were sold to-day to Americans in the auction of the library of the Marquess of Lothian here.

< The Tikytt Psalter brought 61,000 dollars, and Blickling Homilies 55,000.

The library of the Marquess of Lothian, a cousin of the Duke of Norfolk, comes from the two residences of the Marquess, Blioklinfr Hall, Norfolk, England, and Newbattle Abbey, Midlothian, Scotland, and has been described as “the choicest collection of illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, and early printed books ever to come up at auction in America.” The tenth-century Anglo-Saxon ‘‘Blickling Homilies,” skid to be the only AngloSaxon manuscript in the United States at the time of its arrival for the' sale, is a small compact book of 149 leaves of vellum, the writing probably that of monks. It belonged at one time to the city of Lincoln, and from the thirteenth century until 1609 Lincoln mayors and sheriffs Bcribbled records of their nomination or election on its margins. The existence of the Blickling Homilies is recorded in standard works on early English literature. . . Among other early manuscripts in the collection are the eighth century Lincoln Psalter’ and the Tikytt, or Tikyll. Psalter, from Wyrkosopp in Nottinghamshire. The former, which is in Latin and covers leaves of vellum, is thought to have been written at.. Canterbury. Between the ljnes appear a number of annotations in several- hands, apparently of the ninth century to' the eleventh, some in Anglo-Saxon and some in Latin. The Tikytt, or Tikyll, Psalter written and illuminated on vellum, in England, about 1300, bears illuminations on more that 200 pages and was penned by Brother John Tikytt, or Tikyll, prior of the Augustinian Monastery of Wyrkesopp, now Radnor, in Nottinghamshire. Among the other important works in the collection are the illuminated Roccaccio • manuscript, “Des .. Cas des Nobles Hommes et Femmes;” on -vellum, written about 1430 in France, arid -St. Augustin’s “The City of "God.” ; • 'U •, The news of the sale caused some wonderment in London among dealers, who felt that the reason for sending.the library to New York could ■ not be, that it would be better catalogued there than in England, for. the reverse is held, to be the case. Auction charges are far higher ond more 'elastio in New York than in London, while those who study the markets on both sides of the Atlantio contend that- London and Paris now are bettercentres for disposal than. New York.