[1] The title pages of these old books should by no means be overlooked, as they are often full of interest and meaning. In the one before us we have at the top the Hebrew name for Jehovah within an equilateral triangle, and this again within a circle of rays. On one side is the sun shining in full splendour, on the other the moon and stars. From the triangle issues a narrow track that broadens as it goes, and finally returns to the triangle, its point of emergence being marked Alpha and the point of re-entry Omega. In the centre of this track is the world being rolled along by the foot of Time. On one side is a sitting figure, Theologia, book on knee, and having the tables of the law in one hand, and in the other a lantern, and on the other we find “Philosophia” with globe and compasses. [2] The titles of many of these old books are sufficiently quaint and striking. Sometimes a spade is called a spade with the most startling directness; while at others the title is a mystical conceit that needs interpretation. The following are some few that we have come across:—“The flaming sword of Justice unsheathed,” “Matches lighted at the Divine Fire,” “The shop of the Spiritual Apothecary,” “The Scraper of Vanity, a Spiritual Pillow necessary to exterpate Vice and to plant Virtue.” There would appear to be here some little confusion of metaphor: anyone desiring to plant anything would scarcely find a pillow a serviceable tool for the purpose. [3] Culver is derived from the Anglo-Saxon culfre, a pigeon. The Culver cliffs in the Isle of Wight are so called from the great numbers of wild pigeons that nest there, while the Columbine, Lat. Columba, a pigeon, so named from the resemblance of its flowers to a ring of birds, is also known as the Culverwort. [4] Thus we find a Strasburg copy dated 1484; Bologna, 1488; Venice, 1491; Florence, 1492; Antwerp, 1494; Venice again, 1496; Milan, 1497; another Bologna edition, 1497; and so on. [5] The Emperor Titus Vespasian, to whom the book was dedicated. [6] “I conceive it,” he says, “to be courteous, and to indicate an ingenious modesty, to acknowledge the source whence we have derived assistance, and not act as most of those have done whom I have examined. For I must inform you that in consulting various authors I have discovered that some of the most grave and of the latest writers, have transcribed word for word, from former works without making any acknowledgment.” [7] He only used one pen throughout, a circumstance which he deemed sufficiently remarkable to be celebrated in these lines which are prefixed to his book:— “With one sole pen I wrote this book, Made of a grey goose quill. A pen it was when I it took, A pen I leave it still.”