I  believe,  as  I  have  already  said,  that  none  of  the  biblio-
graphers whose  works  I  have  had  the  means  of  consulting,  had
ever  seen  this  edition,  for,  in  the  few  cases  in  which  they
mention  it,  they  give  "  Vera,"  instead  of  "  Rara,"  in  the  title ;
which  any  one  of  them,  really  copying  the  large  plain  gothic
type,  could  scarcely  have  done.  In  a  paper  on  the  Lollards
which  I  published  in  the  British  Magazine,  for  July,  1842,  I
gave  some  account  of  this  work,  which  has  a  curious  relation
to  that  subject,  from  its  giving  two  woodcuts  of  a  Lollard,
which  I  caused  to  be  copied,  and  as  I  have  the  blocks  which
were  then  used,  I  here  repeat  them.  The  first  of  these  occurs
near  the  beginning  of  the  work,  the  author  having  in  his  pre-
face stated  that  God  has  given  to  men  three  ways  of  arriving
at  knowledge  respecting  futurity.  First,  by  long  experietlce ;
secondly,  by  the  stars;  thirdly,  by  direct  revelation.  As
instances  of  persons  by  whom  some  insight  into  futurity
had  been  possessed,  he  names  Ptolemy,  Aristotle,  the
Sibyll,  St.  Bridget,  and  Reynhard  Lollard.  These  are  repre-
sented in  the  first  cut  The  shape  of  it  in  the  original  quarto
volume  would  not  have  allowed  the  whole  cut  to  be  copied  on
an  octavo  page ;  and  the  lines  which  in  this  copy  appear  to
rise  from  the  head  of  each  figure,  are,  in  fact,  the  extremities
of  rays  issuing  from  a  representation  of  the  Almighty,  which
occupies  the  upper  part  of  the  cut  in  the  original.  The  second
cut  is  at  the  end  of  the  book,  and  does  not  seem  to  have  any
immediate  connexion  with  anything  in  it.  The  point  which
seems  worthy  of  notice  is,  that  in  each  case  the  Lollard  is
represented  as  a  mendicant  friar.
