Our Oriental manuscripts include a magnificent _Koran_ from the Library of Tippoo, presented by the East India Company; also a very fine copy of the _Shâh Nâmeh_ from the same library, likewise presented by the Company; some beautiful books from the Royal Library at Shiraz, presented, with other Oriental MSS., by W. Digges Latouche; and many fine Persian MSS., purchased from Sir W. Ouseley. An interesting and important Syriac MS. has been lately identified by Prof. Gwynn. It contains, besides a treatise of Ephraim Syrus, those parts of the New Testament which are not found in the _Peshitto_ or Syriac Vulgate; and Dr. Gwynn has demonstrated that it is the actual MS. referred to by De Dieu and Walton as belonging to Ussher, and usually described erroneously as containing the whole New Testament. This is the MS. from which De Dieu, and subsequently Walton, printed the _Pericopa de Adultera_.[132] To come to printed books. We have but one example of a block book--the _Ars Moriendi_--and that imperfect. So far as it goes, it agrees with the British Museum copy published by Mr. Rylands. We have a copy of the first German Bible [1466]; a single leaf (on vellum) of the famous Mazarin Bible; and a copy of the Latin Bible printed at Cologne by Nic. Goetz de Schletzstadt [1474]. The Quin collection includes the first edition of Petrarch: _Sonetti e Trionfi_ (1470); the first of the _Divina Commedia_ (1472), and the first of Boccaccio’s _Theseide_ (1475), very rare; also a splendid copy, on vellum, of the second edition of _Virgil_ (Venice: Vindelin de Spira, 1470); also, _Ystoria de re Karlo Imperatore_ (1473), exceedingly rare; the only known vellum _Elsevir_ (Heinsius: _De Contemptu Mortis_, 1621); _Dita Mundi_, by Fazio degl’ Uberti; and the _Adventures of Tewerdanck_, on vellum (Nuremberg, 1517), a magnificent specimen of printing. In the Fagel Library is an extremely fine Latin Plutarch, also on vellum (Jenson, 1478). We have only one Caxton: _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_ (1477); unless we reckon a single leaf (an _Indulgence_), which Mr. Bradshaw considered to be from Caxton’s press. Amongst rare books may be enumerated--a Sarum _Horae_ (Paris: Poitevin, about 1498, unique); a Sarum _Breviary_ (Paris: Levet. 1494, unique), which seems to have been in early times mistaken for a manuscript, and is consequently kept and catalogued among the MSS. We have a copy of Werner Rolevinck’s _Fasciculus Temporum_ in Dutch, printed at Utrecht by Veldener, 1480--one of the earliest books with woodcuts in the text (coloured).