The first edition was printed at Geneva in 1560 and copies in good condition are scarce and valuable. In fact, they are really worth more than the price they sell for to-day. It was for years the household Bible of the English race. Although translated by the English exiles at Geneva during Queen Mary’s reign, it was dedicated “To the Moste Vertuous and Noble Quene Elisabet, Quene of England, France, and Ireland.”

At least two hundred editions of the Bible and New Testament were issued before 1630, consequently for centuries it was in almost every home. The later editions of this Bible have therefore become the bête noir of every bookseller. They turn up everywhere, their proud possessors asking fortunes for copies hardly worth the value of old paper. The copies published after 1600 are the worst offenders. It is a pity, for the peace of mind of the booksellers, that they were not all destroyed in the Great Fire of London. They still exist to torment the souls of bookmen, and although the language of the Genevan Bible has always been considered good, homely English, the language of the biblio-fiend, when he receives one on approval, with charges collect, is certainly more vigorous and expressive.

Not long ago a woman came to my Philadelphia library with a Breeches Bible. True, it was rather ancient, authentically dated 1629. From the moment I met her I realized she suffered from suppressed emotions of some sort. Although I am accustomed to prospective sellers with queer symptoms, I was rather alarmed. Her hands shook violently, she was deadly white one moment and a flaming pink the next. When I inquired what she wanted for her Bible she replied in quick, nervous tones, “Fifty thousand dollars!” Now I am always amazed at these grand ideas of value evinced by the layman. I hope I do not always show my surprise. Indeed, some people accuse me of having a poker face. This Bible was certainly worth no more than twenty dollars. But before I apprised her of the distressing news, which I always hate to impart, I was cautious enough to call in one of my assistants to aid me should she collapse on my hands.

It is to the eternal credit of bookmen that the sense of humor has been the ruling passion with them all. They all see the joyous, the fantastic, the capricious side. They are never sérieux, never unduly bowed down with the gravity of their calling. Although they are ardent, nay, passionate lovers, they always remain gay and debonair. The history of old Bibles bears eloquent witness on this point. Why do Bug Bibles, Vinegar Bibles, Wicked Bibles, tickle the fantasy of collectors? For instance, Matthew’s Bible of 1551 contains the reading in Psalm xci, 5: “So that thou shalt not nede to be afraid for any bugges by nighte, nor for the arrow that flyeth by day.” Or think how the Christian world would have been disrupted if it had followed the Commandments of the 1631 Bible, which leaves out entirely the “not” in the Seventh. This terrible, wicked book reads: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Only four copies escaped the public executioner, and the poor printer was fined £300 by Archbishop Laud.

Baskett’s Oxford Bible of 1717 is a mine of magnificent errors, the most amusing being that of “the parable of the vinegar,” instead of “vineyard.”

There are three tremendously important American Bibles: the Eliot Indian Bible, the Saur, and the Aitken Bible. John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians, translated the Bible into their language and had it printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1661-63. Thus the first Bible issued on this continent was, appropriately, in the tongue of its natives. And the second was in German, the first in a European language printed in America, from the press of Christopher Saur, at Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1743. The third, at last in English, was printed in 1782 by R. Aitken “at Pope’s Head, three doors above the Coffee House, in Market Street,” Philadelphia. The great demand for early Americana will surely raise these three treasures to heights at present undreamed of in the bookman’s philosophy.