THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS.* la a small volume, remarkable for
the beauty of its typography and illustrations, Mr. Roberts has related the history of the
Cambridge University Press, which had its beginnings just four hundred years ago. Oxford had led the way. In 1478, only a year after Caxton setup his press in the Almonry at Westminster and issued his Dicke or Sayengis of the Philosophers, Theodore Rood, of Cologne, was printing at Oxford a commentary on St. Jerome. The early Oxford press of Rood and his English partner, Hunt, ceased work about 1485, but a now press was set up in 1517 by a certain John Scolar, who printed a few books and then disappeared. From 1519 to 1585, no far as is known, there was no printing in Oxford. The first Cambridge printer, like Rood at Oxford, came from the Rhineland. John Lair of Siberch or Siboreh was apparently a native of Siegburg, near Cologne, and was a friend of Erasmus, who doubtless introduced him to the Cambridge authorities and especially to Richard Croke, who had succeeded Erasmus as Reader in Greek. Siberch was probably living in Cambridge in 1520 when he had Croke's Greek grammar printed for him at Cologne, no doubt because there was as yet no Greek type in English printing offices. Tho University advanced him £20, perhaps to help him to buy a press. Iii February, 1521, Siberch printed a Latin oration made by Dr. Henry Bullock in honour of Cardinal Wolsey, who had visited Cambridge in the previous autumn. He printed at least eight other books, including a short treatise by Erasmus in that year and the next, and then he seems to have left Cambridge. No more printing was done until 1583, but the University received from Henry the Eighth in 1534 a charter empowering it to appoint three printers and " to print all manner of books approved of by the Chancellor or his vicegerent and three doctors," and to sell the books anywhere in England.
When Cambridge in 1583 appointed Thomas Thomas, Fellow of King's College, as University printer and encouraged him to produce books, there was a great outcry from the 'Stationers' Company of London, who claimed a monopoly, and who had the support of Archbishop Whitgift and of Cecil himself. Henry the Eighth's charter could not be ignored or cancelled, but for many years the University Press was sorely hampered by the jealousy of the London printers, who did not scruple to pirate * Viftory of the Cambri4ge thtiversity Praia, 1521-1921. By S. C. Roberta. CamWdja at the 145/versity Prem. 17e. 04. net.] any learned works produced at Cambridge, including a notable Latin dictionary which Thomas compiled and printed in 1587. When Legate, the next University printer, produced an English Bible, of the Genevan Version, in 1591, he was accused of infring- ing the monopoly of Barker and Day, who held the Royal licence for printing the Scriptures. It is noteworthy that the Authorized Version of 1611 was, apparently, not printed at Cambridge until 1629. The London booksellers boycotted Cambridge books, and the University for its part forbade the sale of London books competing with its own, such as grammars and almanacks. As the law did not recognize copyright, except in so far as the Stationers' Company could enforce the right acquired by a publisher who entered a book in the company's register, the dispute was interminable. The University Press, however, grew slowly, and the two Bucks, who were printers from 1625 to 1668, made an agreement to supply school books to their London rivals, which abated the quarrel for a time. Thomas Buck and his brother had the honour of printing the first edition of George Herbert's The Temple in 1633, and the first edition (1638) of Milton's Lycidas, disguised, as students know, under the title Df Jvsta Edouardo King . . . Obse,guies, etc., as it formed part of a memorial volume. Mr. Roberts gives a facsimile of a page from the precious copy in the University Library, with correc- tions in Milton's own neat writing. Bucks' printing-house, it may be noted, was used in June, 1647, as a lodging for King Charles, who was then a prisoner in the hands of Cromwell and the Army ; it was not, as Mr. Roberts inadvertently says, " the headquarters of the King's army," which had vanished.
The establishment of the University Press as a definite part of the University, controlled by it and devoted primarily to the promotion of learning, came about in 1698, nominally at the instance of the Chancellor, the Duke of Somerset, but actually through the efforts of Richard Bentley. That formidable scholar bought new founts of type in Holland, and reorganized the Press, which was henceforth managed by delegates, appointed monthly by the heads of houses and the professors. Bentley's famous edition of Horace (1711) was one of the fine books which did credit to the Cambridge Press at this time. Mr. Roberts mentions the brief appearance of Baskerville as a University printer in the year 1758-63. Baskerville, who was moved by a real love of his art and by a passion to excel in it, must have lost heavily by his bargain with the University ; but his Prayer- books of 1760 and Bible of 1763 were volumes of which Cambridge might be proud, although Baskerville's type was not so good as that of the brothers Foulis. In 1775 the Universities were given by statute perpetual copyright in schoolbooks bequeathed to them. On the other hand they lost, by a legal decision, their assumed privilege of printing almanacks and thus could not enforce a long standing agreement with the Stationers' Company, who paid them each £500 a year in satisfaction of any claims to copyright in schoolbooks, almanacks and psalters. Parliament, to compensate the Universities, in 1781 granted them each £500 a year, and this annual grant was assigned at Cambridge to the Syndics of the Press for the publication of learned works. In 1804-5 Cambridge acquired at a very high price the secret of the stereotype process invented by that erratic genius, the third Earl Stanhope. The next important event was the erection of the Pitt Press building in 1831-33, mainly at the cost of the Committee under Lord Camden, which was formed to establish a memorial to the younger William Pitt. The business of the Press expanded under J. W. Parker, as printer and as London 'agent, between 1836 and 1854. But it grew far more rapidly when the late Mr. C. J. Clay succeeded Parker in 1854, and especially since 1872, when the Syndics opened their own publishing house in London. Mr. Roberts merely outlines in half a dozen pages the progress of the Cambridge University Press in the last half-ceniury. He feels, no doubt, that its good work speaks for itself. We need only say here that for enter- prise, for scholarship, and for good printing the Press has no superior the world over. It is a credit to the University and to our country.
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