‘The History of the British Empire, and whatever could illustrate any of its different portions, were the subject of Mr. GRENVILLE’S unremitting research, and he allowed nothing to escape him deserving to be preserved, however rare and expensive. Hence his collection of works on the Divorce of HENRY VIII; that of Voyages and Travels, either by Englishmen, or to countries at some time more or less connected with England, or possessed by her; that of contemporary works on the gathering, advance, and defeat of the “Invincible Armada;” and that of writings on Ireland;—are more numerous, more valuable, and more interesting, than in any other collection ever made by any person on the same subjects. Among the Voyages and Travels, the collections of DE BRY and HULSIUS are the finest in the world; no other Library can boast of four such fine books as the copies of HARIOT’S _Virginia_, in Latin, German, French, and English, of the DE BRY series. And it was fitting that in Mr. GRENVILLE’S Library should be found one of the only two copies known of the first edition of this work, printed in London in 1588, wherein an account is given of a colony which had been founded by his family namesake. Sir Richard GRENVILLE. ‘Conversant with the Language and Literature of Spain, as well as with that of Italy, the works of imagination by writers of those two countries are better represented in his Library than in any other out of Spain and Italy; in some branches better even than in any single Library in the countries themselves. No Italian collection can boast of such a splendid series of early editions of ARIOSTO’S _Orlando_, one of Mr. GRENVILLE’S favourite authors, nor, indeed, of such choice Romance Poems. The copy of the first edition of ARIOSTO is not to be matched for beauty; of that of Rome, 1533, even the existence was hitherto unknown. A perfect copy of the first complete edition of the _Morgante Maggiore_, of 1482, was also not known to exist before Mr. GRENVILLE succeeded in procuring his. Among the Spanish Romances, the copy of that of _Tirant lo Blanch_, printed at Valencia, in 1490, is as fine, as clean, and as white, as when it first issued from the press; and no second copy of this edition of a work professedly translated from English into Portuguese, and thence into Valencian, is known to exist except in the Library of the Sapienza, at Rome.