Much more might be said about the old printer as revealed by the colophon—his trade jealousies, his disposition to monopolize, his deference to patrons, his joy at having carried his work through the press, his conviction that his labors have not been unattended by the divine blessing. That inferior person, the author, too, occasionally gets a good word, especially when his authorship assumes the form of translation or commentary. But our business is mainly with the colophon in its literary and bibliographical aspects, and it is time to make way for Mr. Pollard, whose monograph upon it will, we believe, be found the fullest, the most entertaining, and the most accurate extant. R. GARNETT. AN ESSAY ON COLOPHONS [Illustration] I THE COLOPHON’S REASON FOR EXISTENCE The interest of individual colophons in early printed books has often been noted. The task which, under the kind auspices of the Caxton Club, is here to be assayed is the more ambitious, if less entertaining, one of making a special study of this feature in fifteenth-century books, with the object of ascertaining what light it throws on the history of printing and on the habits of the early printers and publishers. If, instead of studying each colophon singly for the sake of the information it may give us as to the book which it completes, or for its own human interest,—if it chance to have any,—we compare the same printer’s colophons in successive books, and the colophons of different printers in successive editions; if we group those which have similar characteristics, and glance also at the books which have no colophons at all, or quite featureless ones, then if there is anything to be learnt from colophons, we ought to be by way of learning it; and if there is only very little to be learnt, that also is a fact to be noted.