details and perhaps more mistakes than a modern bibliographer. We can easily pardon minor troublesome mistakes in alphabetization. In an index according to Christian names it is not fatal to have the last name of Christophorus Ferg misspelled Freg.[65] Labbé should have eliminated many duplications like those of Christophorus Giarda and Christophorus a Giarda or Philibertus Fezaius and Philibertus Fresalius (the latter is an error).

A comparison of Labbé's text with the indexes discloses serious discrepancies that reduce the value of his book. One can usually go from the indexes to the text without much trouble, although a few references lack the name needed as a guide.[66] A reverse comparison of the text with the indexes is much less satisfactory and shows that Labbé added names to the text after he had made the indexes.[67]

We can justly object to Labbé's inclusion of subject entries in an alphabet of authors.[68] Had he given more thought to them, he would no doubt have hit upon the idea of a dictionary catalogue of authors and subjects and might have simplified the complicated indexes. His plan required him to put subjects into the indexes, but he had no good place to put an article "Bibliothecae." This contains a classified list of catalogues and libraries that I shall discuss in the next chapter. He put it in its alphabetical place, in a list of names. A curious bibliography of fictitious bibliographies is entered under "Fictae Bibliothecae." When Labbé put a bibliography of guides to university studies at the end of his alphabet of authors, he showed his realization of the fact that he had no place for it.

As all bibliographers have at one time or another, Labbé included some titles that had little to do with his task. The differentiation of biography and bibliography was perhaps less clear then than now, and general treatises on scholarly matters probably seemed more closely akin to bibliographies than we find them to be. Honoratus Montecalvus, Speculum tragicum Regum, Principum & Magnatum superioris seculi celebriorum ruinas exitusque calamitosos breviter complectens, which is adequately described by its long title, is not a bibliography but one of many accounts of the mishaps that have befallen great men. Jacobus Gretser, De jure et more prohibendi, expurgandi et abolendi libros haereticos et noxios is obviously a book about books, but it is scarcely a bibliography. Although Jacobus Middendorpius's famous treatise on universities is a general account of its subject, Labbé is probably too generous in admitting it. These examples suggest some laxity in Labbé's definition of bibliography.

In its conception and execution the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum is excellent. Although rarely consulted, it is still valuable for reference purposes. An occasional difficulty will arise, but a modern reader must not object to Labbé's short titles.[69] Theatri, which was then immediately understood as a citation of Theodor Zwinger, the Elder (ed.), Theatrum vitae humanae, a standard sixteenth-century encyclopedia, was then no more difficult to understand than The New International might be today.[70] Labbé is a good bibliographer because he cites pertinent references to non-bibliographical books.[71] He is careful to indicate whether he has seen the book he is citing[72] and occasionally comments on its bibliographical value.[73]

In brief, Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum is well conceived, neatly arranged, and relatively accurate in details. In plan and arrangement it surpasses, for example, such a modern work of similar size and purpose as A Bibliography of Bibliographies that the famous bibliographer Joseph Sabin published in 1877. As I have already said, the references are as accurate as those to be found in three of the bibliographies of bibliographies published in the last seventy years. His choice of an arrangement according to authors' names has been adopted only by Joseph Sabin (1877) and Léon Vallée (1883-1887). Unpopular as it has been, it nevertheless seems to me a good method of dealing with intractable material. A classified bibliography requires both an index of subjects and an index of authors. An alphabetical index of subjects requires cross-references and an index of authors. Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum needs only a new index of subjects to become a reference work useful to a modern scholar.

The time was not ripe for a bibliography of bibliographies and Labbé's contemporaries and immediate successors neither perceived the novelty of his idea nor fully appreciated its value. Contemporary recommendations of the book have a perfunctory flavor. Valentin Heinrich Vogler, who wrote an admirable survey of scholarly books entitled Introductio universalis in notitiam cuiuscunque bonorum scriptorum (Helmstadt, 1670), is representative. He passed a judgment on a book that he had not seen. When Heinrich Meibom made a new edition of Vogler's handbook in 1691, he summarized Vogler's comment and having seen Labbé's book, added some characteristic and interesting remarks of his own:

Vogler did not see it [the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum]. Nevertheless, with only a few excerpts available to him, he did not use bad judgment in saying that it offers only a brief review of authors arranged according to their names[74] and makes no comments on the way in which these men have dealt with their materials. Still, the work is very useful (Utilis tamen valde labor est), although I have found many authors cited, of whom some have no pertinence and others tell the lives of men who are famous for their reputations and deserts rather than in literary endeavors and writing. From not a few entries it would also appear that he has often not seen the books, but, deceived by the title, he has nevertheless cited them. This is, for example, the case