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The Edinburgh Edition of Sidney's SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA." 195 recurrent expenses, which other systems do not If public convenience counterbalances these faults, well and good. But it has yet to be shown that borrowers are, as a matter of faft, and apart from all sentiment, better served by going to the shelves than by using a library that is fully and intelligently catalogued. The general sense of librarians agrees that a good general catalogue is preferable to the class-lists which apparently are thought sufficient for open- access libraries. And this view must be strengthened if the catalogues pay due attention to subject-headings and are annotated. This point is striftly cognate to the argu- ment ; for the counter-contention to the new scheme is that a properly conducted lending library, using an ap- proved method for the issue of books, and with a ju- diciously annotated catalogue, gives at least equal satis- fa&ion to its patrons, is safer, cleaner, and less costly than safeguarded open access. W. E. DOUBLEDAY. THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA." N the year 1598 William Ponsonby, at that time the most important of English publishers, issued a third edition or Sir Philip Sidney's " Arcadia," of which he held the exclusive copyright. The new edition was one of the chief issues of that year. The announcement that it had been revised by the Countess of Pembroke gave the text the stamp of correctness, and there was also added to it for the first time sundry other pieces of Sidney's: u The De- fence of Poesie," "Astrophel and Stella," some other sonnets, and the May Day masque. Like its immediate predecessor, this third edition of the "Arcadia" was i96 THE EDINBURGH EDITION a folio and a very handsome one. The title-page an- nounced that it was printed for William Ponsonby, but by whom we are left to guess. Fortunately, there are plenty of printers' ornaments about it by which to iden- tify it, notably a certain woodcut block, used as a tailpiece, which we recognize as having at one time been in the pos- session of Thomas Vautrollier, a printer of Blackfriars. Upon Vautrollier's death his business was taken over by his apprentice, Richard Field, a fellow-townsman of Shakespeare's, who cut off the letters T. V., which had pre- viously formed part of this block, and continued to use it in all his books until it was worn out. No other printer had a similar block, though some unsuccessful attempts were made to copy it; and the presence of this block in the " Arcadia," as well as of other blocks and initial letters that are found in books printed by Field, make it safe to say that it came from his press. Of how many copies the edition consisted we do not know ; but Ponsonby priced them at nine shillings apiece, which in money of our day would be equivalent to at least three pounds. On September ist in the following year, 1599, a cer" tain Rowland White, confidential agent to Robert Sidney, brother of the dead poet, wrote to his patron from Lon- don : " The ' Arcadia' is now printed in Scotland, ac- cording to the best edition, which will make them good cheap, but is very hurtful to Ponsonbye, who held them at a very high rate. He must sell as other men do, or they will lye upon his hands." This was not idle gossip. Another edition, also calling itself the third, had indeed appeared in the market, and was selling for six shillings a copy. Like Ponsonby's, it was a folio, and it bore upon its title-page the imprint: " Edinburgh. Printed bv Robert Waldegrave. Printer to the Kings Majestie, Cum Privi- legiu Regio, 1599." Ponsonby at once insti'.'itxd in- q;:;ries into this act of piracy and seized all the copies th-.r. remained unsold. Later, on November 2jrd, he OF SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA." 197 entered an action in the High Court of Star Chamber against John Legatt, a printer of Cambridge, William Scarlett, a bookbinder in the same town, Richard Banck- worth and John Flaskett, citizens and drapers of London, and Paul Lynley and John Harrison the younger, citizens and stationers of London, for ha\'ing, " since your Majes- ties last general pardon " (i.e., 1597), printed or caused to be printed " divers of the said books called Arcadia," either at Cambridge, London, or some other place within the kingdom, and also for having put a false imprint on the title-page to the effect that the book was printed in Edin- burgh, with the intention of evading the decrees of the Star Chamber concerning unlawful printing. Some of the documents of this lawsuit are still in existence at the Public Record Office.1 In addition to Ponsonby's petition just recited, there is the reply of the defendants, which was short and simple. They gave an emphatic denial to the whole charge and threw themselves upon the justice of the court. There is also a list of cer- tain questions put on behalf of Ponsonby to one of the defendants, William Scarlett, and his replies to them. There should be a similar list addressed to Legatt, but these last are, most unfortunately, missing. The questions put to Scarlett are very interesting, as they show us the line followed by the prosecuting counsel as instructed by Ponsonby. Scarlett was asked whether or not it was by his procurement and at his charge that this Edinburgh edition of " Arcadia " was printed ; where it was printed ; if in England, whether at Cambridge; if out of England, in what place ? Had he sold any copies of the books ; if so, how many ; and did he know of any others that had sold copies; and how many copies did he suppose had been sold altogether ? Were the books wholly printed in Edinburgh, or only partially so; and was not the title-page printed at Cambridge or London ? 1 Star Chamber Proc, Eliz^ P. Bun. 5-6. 198 THE EDINBURGH EDITION Did he know when the printing was begun and when it was finished ? Was he not sent into Scotland by the other defendants for the express purpose of getting Waldegrave to print this book, and did he not receive a sum of money for his pains ? He was pressed to give the names of all those for whom he had acted, the number of copies that were printed, and how and by whom they were brought into England. Finally, Scarlett was asked whether he was his own man, what he was doing for a living, and whom he had served previously. Scarlett's answers to these questions were provokingly guarded. Most of the insinuations conveyed in them he strongly denied. He declared that he had not been paid by the defendants, or any other stationers in London or elsewhere, to go to Scotland for the purpose of getting Waldegrave to print an edition of the " Arcadia," though he admitted that he was in Edinburgh " this tyme two yere," and that Waldegrave had then told him he intended to print the " Arcadia ' " with more additions." He also admitted having sold twenty copies of the pirated edition, for the use and on behalf of John Legatt, the Cambridge printer, eighteen of which he sold to Banckworth and two to Cuthbert Burby. Another twenty copies, which were in his possession, had been seized by Ponsonby. He had also seen six copies in Legatt's shop at Cambridge. But he knew nothing whatever about the printing, and " verily thought" that the whole book was printed at Edinburgh. Neither could he give any in- formation as to the number of copies printed, nor as to the way in which the books had been smuggled into England, the only thing he could say being that he had heard that John Harrison the younger had brought some of them by sea. To the question of his employment he answered that he had at one time been servant to John Legatt, but was then, i.e., at the time of his examination, acting as butler and caterer to Trinity Hall in Cam- bridge. OF SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA." 199 This lawsuit, as usual, dragged on for some considerable time, as Collier, in his researches through the Registers of the Stationers' Company, came upon an entry dated July 11st, 1601, stating that John Harrison the younger had confessed to having had five pounds' worth of Walde- grave's " Arcadia."1 Whether the eminent publisher won his case or not can never be known, as all the judgments of the Court of Star Chamber are lost beyond nope of recovery. This is all the more disappointing to me, as my discovery of these documents naturally gave me a new interest in this pirated edition of the "Arcadia." From wondering whether Pon- sonby was right in his statement that the title-page was printed at Cambridge, and how much more Scarlett knew than he chose to reveal, I soon found myself instinctively trying the issue afresh by the light of such evidence as re- mains after the lapse of three hundred years. Here are some of my results. To begin with, Scarlett's admission that he was in Edin- burgh about two years before the date of his examination is worth looking into. These depositions, to use the legal phrase, were taken in "February, 42nd Eliz.," which would mean February, 1600; and therefore the date of Scarlett's visit to Scotland was somewhere about February, 1598. Waldegrave was just then finishing his folio edition of the " Ads of the Parliament of Scotland," the title-page of which is dated March 15th, 1597.
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