and the other, without mark of his hand, is from different type. In another instance [27.17], a first and second volume of the same work, both bearing the same date of purchase, 1740, have different plates, one a blank filled in by a hand, not Prince's, by "said Prince to remain therein forever"; and the other is the completed print. Many of the blank plates are not filled in at all; and, when filled in, if not in Prince's hand, it is usually in one of two hands, and to the effect that the volume in question was a gift of Prince by bequest. There is no more reason, however, to believe in such case that the plate was itself put in subsequently to Prince's death, than in the case of those which have no completion of the record in the blank. This statement of the testamentary gift is filled in the plate of some of the earliest acquired of all the books, as in that given by his mother in 1697. The plate is usually pasted on the reverse of the title, but, when that page is occupied, it is put on the inside of the cover. When several tracts are bound together, it is attached usually to the first only. A copy of Hubbard's Narrative seems to be the only book with evidence to enable us to approximate to the time of affixing the plate. In this volume it could not have been pasted before 1741, as an attestation of that date, signed by the Clerk of the Court, showing it to be the identical volume introduced in court in a boundary question with Rhode Island, so covers the page that, to avoid concealing the writing, the plate was put in one corner. There are among the books, however, many without the plate, and which even have the plate of others. Some have neither plate nor autograph of Prince. A considerable number, which have on them the name of some one of the Sewalls, are of this last class; and though the autograph would necessarily be absent, the plate might be looked for in those volumes, which seem to have been added to the collection after Prince's death, as indicated by the imprint, but in all or nearly all cases it is wanting. One book has not only the full printed plate, but the following is written above it in Prince's hand: "T. Prince, Boston. For the N. Eng. Library." This last particular points to a distinction in the composition of his library, which is indicated by another kind of book-plate, as follows: -: This Book belongs to The South-Church-Library in Boston, Begun to be collected by Thomas league Pastor with the Rev. Mr. Joseph These are sometimes completed in Prince's own hand, to read "the gift of sd Prince to sa library, for the use of their ministry for ever." Others are filled out in Prince's hand as "the gift of sd Sewall to sa library for the use of their ministry for ever." There are still others in which, in another's hand, often Mr. Sewall's, the record is completed that the gift came from Prince by bequest. Then again there are others which are printed throughout, and necessarily inserted after Prince's death, as they state that the book was "given by said Prince in his last Will, Oct. 2, 1758, for the use of their ministry forever." It was, therefore, at the time of his matriculation, in the sixteenth year of his age, that Prince systematically laid the foundation of a collection of books and manuscripts, a large share of which relate to the civil and religious history of New England, and which, with unfailing zeal and under the most favorable opportunities, in this country and in Europe, he cherished and enriched during his long life. At the time of his death, the New England Library, we may well believe, was the most extensive of its kind that had ever been formed. It contains in its depleted state, as represented in the first section of this catalogue, not much short of fifteen hundred books and tracts relating to America. During the period of our colonial history, the Mather family and Governor Hutchinson are alone to be compared with Prince as collectors of books and manuscripts. Their labors in this direction avail us little now, for the Governor's collection was scattered by a mob, while the Mathers' has been gradually dispersed. When Prince made his will, twenty days before his death, he had no heir living to inherit his name and receive his books, if that had been his wish. His son had died at the age of twenty-six. Of his four daughters, only one was living, Sarah, subsequently the wife of Lieutenant-Governor Gill, and she died childless in August, 1771. His widow survived till June 1, 1766. That instrument, dated October 2, 1758, makes disposition, first of the South Church collection, and then of the New England Library, in the following words: "First, I give to the old South Church in Boston, all my Books that are in Latin, Greek, & in the Oriental Languages, to be kept, & remain in their Public Library for ever and I hereby desire y s Church to make a [blank] and order that the Key of s Library shall always be kept by one of y Pastors." - "Item, Whereas I have been many Years collecting a Number of Books, Pamphlets, Maps, Papers in Print, & Manuscript, either published in New England, or pertaining to its History, & Public Affairs, to wch Collection I have given the Name of y. New Engla Library, & have deposited it in the Steeple Chamber, in the old South Church - And as I made the Collection from a public View, & Desire that the Memory of many important Transactions might be preserved, wch otherwise [would] be lost, I hereby bequeath all y s Collection to y s old South Church foreverBut to the end, that the same may be kept entire, I desire that this Collection may always be kept in a different Apartment from the other Books, & that it may be so made, that no Person shall borrow any Book, or Paper therefrom, but that any Person whom the Pastors & Deacons of s Church for the Time being shall approve of may have access thereto, & take Copies therefrom." The books and papers were deposited on shelves, and in boxes and barrels in a room in the steeple of the church, under the belfry, which according to tradition had been Prince's study. There this valuable deposit was left for many years without care, and subject to many vicissitudes. During the siege of Boston in 1775-6, the Church, being used as a ridingschool by the British troops, was often frequented by idle spectators, who must have had access to the collection, and may be responsible for some of the loss it has sustained. In heating the building, it is known that the pulpit and pews were consumed, and the parsonage which stood adjoining and had been the mansion of Winthrop, the first B governor of the Colony, was demolished to keep up the fires during the long winter. In the kindling of these fires, it has always been believed many of these precious books and papers were used by the soldiers. A fragment of the letter-book of Governor Bradford, of Plymouth Colony, was found, in the latter part of the last century, in a grocer's shop in Halifax, N. S.; and the portion thus rescued was printed in the third volume of the Massachusetts Historical Society's Collections, in 1794. This manuscript was known to have been in the New England Library; and it was reasonably thought that others, of equal or even greater value, had gone beyond recovery, without the chance of a favorable accident to indicate any traces of them. We have, however, reason to be grateful that the cupidity of some of the more cultivated depredators saved to the world, if not to this library, another of its greatest treasures. The manuscript history of Plymouth Colony, written by its governor, Bradford, and deposited with the Prince Library, if not belonging to it, may have been carried away to England at this time by some one cognizant of its value; though another solution of the loss is, that Governor Hutchinson had had it in his possession, so that it might have been among his papers when scattered by the mob, or was by him preserved and carried to England. At all events, after being lost to the world for many years, it was, in 1855, curiously discovered to be in the library of the Bishop of London, at Fulham. In the same place are two manuscript volumes, written by Nathan Prince, a brother of Thomas Prince, -one a commonplace book, and the other a Dictionary of Authors. Each has the book-plate of the New England Library, with a manuscript addition to it in the hand of Thomas Prince, almost identical with that borne on the plate of a companion volume, which will be found mentioned in the third part of the following Catalogue. When Mr. Charles Deane, who edited the printed volume of the Bradford History, was in England, in 1866, he saw the manuscript, and found, in Prince's hand, the following note, upon a flyleaf: "But Major Bradford tells me & assures me that He only lent this Book of his Grandfather's to Mr Sewall, & that it being of his Grandfather's own handwriting, He had so high a value for it, that he would never Part with ye Property, but would lend it to me, & desired me to get it, which I did, & write down this so that Major Bradford and his Heirs may be known to be the Right own ers." This note was written on the opposite leaf to that which contained another note in Prince's band, and the one already quoted is seemingly in qualification of this other, wherein it is stated that Prince, calling June 4, 1728, on Major Bradford, at Kingston, near Plymouth, had obtained his permission to get the book, then in Judge Sewall's hands. The memorandum still continues: "I also mentioned to him my Desire of lodging this History in y New England Library of Prints and Manuscripts, we I had been then collecting for 23 years, to w He signified his willingness — only yt he might have yo perusal of it while he lived." The manuscript, however, has also upon it the Prince bookplate, which may, perhaps, be taken as proof that Prince became, subsequently to the time of the note, the lawful owner of the book; and the affixing it, if done by him, may have been deemed equivalent to a suitable qualification of the later note. See Mass. Hist. Society's Collections, 4th series, Vol. III. (1856). † Mass. Hist. Society's Collections, 4th Series, Vol. III., page 11. In view of the graceful surrender of some valuable documents of the British archives, which has been made within a few years to the English government by the Library Company of Philadelphia, it is to be hoped, that, by the reciprocal courtesy of those in authority where these waifs are now lodged, they may be returned to be forever kept where, if they do not absolutely belong, they most properly can be retained. In December, 1813, a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society, consisting of the Rev. Abiel Holmes, D.D., the Rev. Aaron Dexter, D.D., and Alden Bradford, Esquire, made application to the Trustees of the New England Library for a deposit of the same in the Society's room, as appears by an account printed in Vol. VII. of the second series of that Society's Collections. In December, 1814, the Rev. Joshua Huntington was put at the head of a committee to make a selection for such deposit, and in the subsequent transfer the Church reserved the right to recall them at will. The books thus removed numbered two hundred and sixty-one bound volumes, besides twelve volumes of manuscripts, namely, seven of the Mather papers, three of the Hinckley, one of the Rhode Island Church case, and one of Winthrop's Journal. The history of the last is somewhat curious. It is known that Prince had in his hands, in 1754, the three volumes of Governor Winthrop's manuscript journal, covering the history of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, down to within ten days of Winthrop's death, in 1649. The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop believes the volumes to have been borrowed from the family, and not to have been a part of the New England Library; and that Prince, for some reason, failed to return the last part to the elder branch of the Winthrop family, which had the other two parts in their possession in Connecticut, down to the outbreak of the Revolution, and it was probably by them believed that the two constituted the entire manuscript. At this time Governor Trumbull procured the volumes, and, with the assistance of his secretary, Mr. John Porter, copied somewhat inaccurately a considerable part; and, after his death, Noah Webster, in 1790, printed the work from a copy of this copy, after Mr. Porter had collated it with the original. At or about the time of this tranfer to the Historical Society, a third part was found among the Prince papers, buried beneath a mass of pamphlets and manuscripts, and was included in the deposit, though, on representation, the claim of the church to its possession was abandoned. When Mr. Savage prepared his complete edition of the Journal, he had at hand this re-discovered record of the last four years of Winthrop's life, as well as the two earlier volumes. Before his labors were done, the second volume was burned, Nov. 10, 1825, in a fire in Court Street, where his office was situated. The other two are now deposited in a cabinet in the library of the Historical Society. After this transfer in 1814, the remainder of the collection was removed to the house of the pastor, where it remained for many years, until a room was fitted for the reception of the whole library in the Old South Chapel in Spring Lane. The preparation of a catalogue was intrusted to Mr. G. II. Whitman, who printed in 1846, in octavo, 112 pages, what is a mere list, often extremely incorrect, with no arrangement by authors or subjects. The books and papers still in the keeping of the Historical Society formed a separate section, for they were not reclaimed by the church till 1859. Since the date of this catalogue not many books seem to have been lost, only five, if Whitman's list can be depended on. Dr. Wisner mentions a copy of the Bay Psalm Book, used by *Pages 179-185. Prince in his revision of that work, and containing his manuscript annotations, which has disappeared. Three other copies of this same book, noted in Whitman's catalogue, have also passed into private hands. To account for the great number of Prince's books, scattered about the country, all containing his well-known autograph, and many having the book-plate of the New England Library, bequeathed to the Old South Church, not a few of which can be traced in well-known collections, and as having passed through dealers' hands, it has been suggested that Prince possibly made another collection, which he sold; but the only known authority for this theory is the following advertisement, which (as quoted by Mr. Samuel G. Drake) appeared in the "New England Weekly Journal," in October, 1728: "A Farm of 100 acres of choice land in Leicester, to be sold. Inquire of the Rev. Mr. Prince in Boston, & know further. Who also intending to Dispose of his Library, desires those who have borrowed Books of Him to return them quickly." Many of the books in the present collection, bearing date of acquisition prior to 1728, were certainly not disposed of at that time; and there is no known record of any sale, public or private; besides, the word "Dispose" in the advertisement very likely signified such a disposition as that made subsequently by will, which at this period, "as the collection was made from a public view," he may have intended perfecting in his lifetime. Mr. Moses Gill, a nephew of Lieutenant-Governor Gill, presented to the Historical Society, in 1815, a MS. catalogue of books in Prince's handwriting, which is in two divisions, one entitled "New-english Books & Tracts Colle[c]ted by Thomas Prince, of Boston, N. E."; the other, "New-English Pamphlets, belonging to Thomas Prince of Boston." The latest imprint in either of these lists is 1750, earlier than which the manuscript was not probably made, and it has been supposed to be a list of the New England Library as it was a few years before he bequeathed it. The difference, in Prince's mind, between a "tract" and a "pamphlet" is not obvious, except it be that the former represents the latter as bound. In both lists the titles are grouped by dates under the designations folio, quarto, and octavo. Whether or not these lists represent the New England Library of 1750, or thereabouts, a comparison of them with the following Catalogue shows variations not easily. explained, besides exhibiting in a melancholy light the losses which the collection must have sustained, as for instance the publications of Cotton Mather are about twice as many in them as in the catalogue here printed. When thrown into one alphabetical arrangement by authors, about one title in seven or eight remains anonymous, and the consoli dated list shows 1,916 titles; while the American Part of the present catalogue, aiming to represent the New England Library as nearly as may be, contains 1,528. There are also in the American Part, as here printed, seventy-eight works having an imprint subsequent to the date of Prince's death (1758); and of these twenty-three bear date after 1766, when Prince's widow died. In the Foreign Part there are four of a date after 1758; and of these, two are subsequent to 1766. It was not possible to determine accurately the line of demarcation, as Prince drew it, between the South Church Library and the New England Library, either as to particular works, since some of the books are without plates; or as to classes, for Prince seems to have included in the latter some books for very indifferent reasons, as, for instance, Ames's "Catalogus Librorum," "bec He intended for N E"; Robinson's works, for a like reason; and the works of some others, for no apparent reason, one would |