Between this date and the year 1640, there was very little either of interest or value that came from the English press. The memory of rare Ben Jonson induced Henry Seile, of the Tiger's Head in Fleet Street, to publish in 1638 a quarto with the title _Jonsonus Virbius: or the Memory of Ben Jonson. Revived by the friends of the Muses_, and among the contributors were Lord Falkland, Sir John Beaumont the younger, Sir Thomas Hawkins, Henry King, Edmund Waller, Shackerley Marmion, and several others. The printer's initials are given as E. P., but these do not suit any of those who were authorised under the decree of the year before, and they may refer to Elizabeth Purslowe. That there was a considerable number of persons who, in spite of the Puritan tendencies of the age, loved a good play, is clearly seen from the number turned out during the years 1638, 1639, and 1640 by Thomas Nabbes, Henry Glapthorne, James Shirley, and Richard Brome. These of course were mostly quartos, very poorly printed, and chiefly from the presses of Richard Oulton, John Okes, and Thomas Cotes. Of collected works, there came out in small octavo form the _Poems_ of Thomas Carew from the press of John Dawson in 1640, and a collection of Shakespeare's Poems from the press of Thomas Cotes in the same year. There were also published in 1640 from the press of Richard Bishop, who had succeeded to the business of William Stansby, Selden's _De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta disciplinam Ebræorum_, in folio, and William Somner's _Antiquities of Canterbury_, one of the earliest and best of the contributions to county bibliography. Having now brought the record of the London press down to the time when it became engulphed in the chaos of civil war, it is time to turn to the University presses of Oxford and Cambridge. Since the year 1585, these were the only provincial presses allowed by law, and removed as they were from the turmoil of conflicting parties, and the severity of trade competition, in which the London printers lived, their work showed more uniformity of excellence, and on the whole surpassed that of the London printers. Down to the year 1617 Oxford appears to have had but one printer, John Barnes; but in that year we find two at work, John Lichfield and William Wrench, the latter giving place the following year to James Short. In 1624 the two Oxford printers were John Lichfield and William Turner--the second, as we have seen, being notorious as the printer of unlicensed pamphlets for Michael Sparke the London publisher; but in spite of this we find him holding his position until 1640, though in the meantime John Lichfield had been succeeded in business by his son, Leonard. In the introduction to his bibliography of the Oxford Press, Mr. Falconer Madan has given a list of the most important books printed at Oxford between 1585 and 1640, which we venture to reprint here with a few additions:--