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SCHOEFFER’S CATALOGUE.

In or about 1469, Schœffer printed a most interesting document, a catalogue of books for sale by himself or his agent. It is printed on one side of a sheet, and was meant to be fixed up as an advertisement in the different towns visited, the name of the place where the books could be obtained being written at the bottom. There are altogether twenty-one books advertised, three of which were not printed by Schœffer, but probably by Gutenberg; and there are also in the list three unknown books. Nearly all the important works from the press are in it, the 1462 Bible on vellum, the Psalter of 1459, the Decretals, the Cicero, and others. At the foot of the list is printed in the large Psalter type, ‘Hec est littera psalterii,’ so that the sheet is the earliest known type-specimen as well as catalogue.

The three books which are unknown, at any rate as having been printed by Schœffer, are the Consolatorium timorate conscientie and the De contractibus mercatorum, both by Johann Nider, a famous Dominican, and the Historia Griseldis of Petrarch.