SOME PRE-PRINTING ERA BOOKS IN N.Z. LIBRARIES

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27860, 7 January 1956, Page 5

SOME PRE-PRINTING ERA BOOKS IN N.Z. LIBRARIES

(Reviewed by

AR.)

The Oldest Manuscripts in New Zealand. By David M. Taylor. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. 232 pp. In content this book is quite unlike tn y other book so far published in New Zealand for it deals, not with explorers’ diaries or other manuscripts of early pioneers of this country, but with the very oldest books housed in our more important libraries. How old are “the very oldest books” in New Zealand? When Mr Taylor began inviting interested people to give him information concerning the nature and whereabouts of very old books, he received letters from people who owned Bibles published in the late eighteenth or even early nineteenth century which they considered extremely old. In fact —and this may surprise some people —the oldest books in this country belong, with two or three exceptions, to the pre-printing era and were produced before 1500 A.D. Although written on fine vellum and often illustrated by hand, these manuscripts are. for the most part, bound in vellum or in boards covered with some kind of leather and must therefore be treated as books. In form Mr Taylor’s book is a singularly informative catalogue of the manuscripts to be found in the four main cities. Apart from his scholarly introduction and his concluding chapter. "The Transition to Printing,” and the notes given in his appendices. Mr Taylor devotes a chapter to the manuscripts housed in each centre. Since Auckland possesses nearly twice as many as the rest of New Zealand put together, two chanters are given to the various manuscripts to be found there —one deals with those in the Sir George Grey collection which Grey presented to the people of Auckland over forty years after he arrived to take up his residence there as governor of the young colony, the other deals with the Henry Shaw Collection and the manuscripts in the Trinity Methodist Theological College and in the possession of Dr. V. Heine. In all, so far as Mr Taylor has been able to discover, there are seventy-seven early manuscripts in New Zealand. Of these forty-eight are in Auckland, thirteen in Wellington, one in Christchurch and fifteen in Dunedin. In his examination of each of these seventy-seven manuscripts, Mr Taylor gives a detailed and usually very interesting description of the work, its nature and subject matter, the category or general group in which it must be placed, its peculiarities or points of particular interest. The illustrations which, apart from the frontispiece, are in black and white, are of pages from manuscripts. Mr Taylor gives the text of the plate, usually in Latin since only two of the manuscripts are in Greek, and then an English translation. Wherever possible he gives some historical account of the life of the manuscript from the time of its preparation onwards. It will be readily understood, however, that in many cases only fragmentary records concerning these manuscripts have come down to us. Mr Taylor’s purpose in preparing this book has been a noble one worthy of the treasures he has been handling. He has been concerned with describing the manuscripts and with inspiring others to take the study of them further. He is confident that in New Zealand we must make the best possible use of such old manuscripts if we wish to see history in its right perspective. He says: ‘The study of our older volumes W'ill help us in many ways. Students of medieval and renaissance history will gain much from personally handling, examining. and. if possible, reading some of the z very manuscripts which our forefathers in the British Isles read 400 or more years ago. Students of the Greek and Latin classics will see for themselves how these were copied with great labour before the invention of movable type.

HoiST " h< s e special interest lies in reh! 1 V matters will catch the spirit of * °l. Wl "ch Showed itself in beautifully illuminated manuscripts. Those wno are concerned to see how the Holy Bible was preserved down the ages will l’i.ilt as *. be able t 0 see the care with which it was copied at the end of the Pfe-Reiormation period. . . . And those who are fascinated by the processes of bookmaking will be able to watch the development from medieval times in the monasteries through the transition period to the days when printing by machines superseded copying by hand.”

While it may be expected that those yC"°_ are listed in this quotation from Mr Taylor’s introduction will have a special interest in his book, others will his descriptions interesting in themselves and an invaluable guide to the manuscripts themselves. Although he himself is a classical scholar of high quality, Mr Taylor has obtained the assistance of such scholars as Professors H. D. Broadhead, H. A. Murray, and S. Musgrove and officers of the British Museum's Department of Manuscripts in his attempt to fossick out interesting or important items of information concerning the manuscripts. A reply to an inquiry addressed to the University Librarian at Istanbul illustrates how easy it is to make mistakes about dating copies of the Koran. The copy in question had been declared in 1939 to belong to the twelfth century. The Istanbul authority declared that examination of photographs of eight pages sent to him showed that the work belonged to the eighteenth century, which was the twelfth century of the Hegira (or Mohammedan era reckoned from the prophet Mohammed’s flight from Mecca to Medina). Mr Taylor has not written for the specialist but, as he himself says, ‘‘for those intelligent New Zealanders who are largely unfamiliar with the subject of manuscripts.” His book should lead to a much wider and deeper interest being taken in these manuscripts. Readers of this book will be encouraged to seek out and examine the manuscripts for themselves. They will acquire a new respect for scholars - both for the scholars who lived in medieval times and prepared manuscripts of learning and of beauty, and for the modern scholars, of whom Mr Taylor is one, who examine and comment on the manuscripts to the edification and enlightenment of others. If Canterbury readers find cause for regret in the paucity of early manuscripts to be found in this province, they can take pride in the fact that Mr Taylor is a graduate from Canterbury University College who served as a minister of the Church of England in various Canterbury parishes before becoming Vice-Principal of College House. Christchurch. Mr Taylor and his publishers are to be congratulated on this important and scholarly work, the publication of which will redound to their credit for years to come.