class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[23]"/> and so on."[60] Jodocus a Dudinck had a very good eye for opportunities in the bibliographical field. He announced a general treatise on libraries[61] and both a bibliography of the Virgin Mary and an account of the places associated with her.[62] No one has even seen any of Dudinck's books, but the fact that books on all these subjects were written by other hands within a generation shows his ingenuity and judgment as a bibliographer. Nothing appears to be known about Dudinck beyond what Valerius Andreas has to say. He was a priest in a small village in the Rhineland, "multae vir lectionis."

Ten years after the announcement of Dudinck's book Philip Labbé (1607-1667) printed a bibliography of bibliographies as a supplement to his Novae bibliothecae specimen (1653).[63] He seems to have regarded this later as a separate publication and has caused some confusion by doing so. On its separate title page the date of this supplement is 1652, but the supplement does not appear to have been issued separately and the title page of the book bears the date 1653. This bibliography of bibliographies is entitled: "Supplementum novae bibliothecae, sive speciminis antiquarum lectionum, coronis libraria. Hoc est, Bibliotheca Bibliothecarum, & Catalogus Catalogorum, Nomenclatorum, Indicum, Elenchorum, &c. quibus Scriptores in quavis arte & professione praecipui, &c. libri ferme omnes, partim editi, partim inediti repraesentantur." Here Labbé has defined the proper contents of a bibliography of bibliographies. He has included very few inappropriate titles in his list of nearly three hundred separately published bibliographies, bibliographies that were still in manuscript, and bibliographies published in non-bibliographical works. There are very few examples of the last category. He is careful about his work. For example, he cites a manuscript biobibliographical dictionary by Alfonsus Ciaconius (Alfonso Chacón, 1540-1599) and gives his authority in Antonio Possevino, Apparatus sacer (Cologne, 1608). Chacón's dictionary was not printed until 1731, and then only as a fragment. Labbé knows Alfonso Barvoet's catalogue of manuscripts in the Escorial; Alfonso García's list of famous Spaniards; Ambrosio Gozzi's biobibliographical dictionary of Dominicans; Andreas Quercetanus's (André Duchesne, 1584-1640) bibliography of French history (three editions are cited); autobibliographies like "Index librorum F. Angeli Rochensis. Romae 1611"; national bibliographies like that for France by Antoine du Verdier; and a classical miscellany like Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, which scholars then regarded as a bibliography. In other words, Labbé has named examples of varieties of bibliographies that we now recognize. Although he mentions a publisher's catalogue (which he has not seen), he seems doubtful about its pertinence to the task. He comments, for example, on a collective volume in the De Thou library that contained catalogues issued by Plantin, Froschauer, Wechel, and other publishers and says that he is not including it. Labbé's comments are abundant and informative. This first independent bibliography of bibliographies is a commendable piece of work.

Labbé realized that he had hit upon a new and important idea and worked diligently to improve and enlarge his collections. In 1662 he published a sample of his plans for several bibliographies under the title of Sexdecim librorum initia. This consisted of the first eight pages of each of ten bibliographies on which he was working and discussions of six more that he expected to write. The first eight pages of the bibliography of bibliographies extend to Antonius Possevinus (inclusive). A comparison of the complete list of 1653, the sample of 1662, and the book that was finally printed in 1664 is necessarily limited to a portion of the alphabet. In 1653 he cited fourteen names (some of these authors were responsible for several bibliographies), in 1662 he cited thirty-three names, and in 1664 he cited sixty-eight names (including the additions made in a supplementary alphabet). In 1653 he regretted his inability to find a publisher's catalogue issued by Aldus Manutius. In 1662 he reported that he had not found it. In 1664 he cited publishers' catalogues issued by both Aldus Manutius and Aldus Manutius, Junior. In both 1662 and 1664 he made additions to the titles listed under various names, introduced new cross-references, and made improvements in details. As an example of an improvement, note his correction of the name Antonius Bumaldus to Joannes Antonius Bumaldus. This apparently minor change is important because Labbé's arrangement of authors according to their Christian names required him to transfer the name from the letter "A" to the letter "J."

Although Labbé greatly improved his book between 1653 and 1664, he nevertheless published it without incorporating all the additions into the main alphabet and without making full and accurate indexes. Subsequent editions did not completely remedy these serious defects. In 1672, when Labbé had been dead for five years, an anonymous editor combined the additions with the main alphabet, but did not correct errors in the text or improve the indexes. In 1678, the unsold sheets of the 1672 edition were issued with a new title page and a brief appendix containing John Selden's numismatic bibliography. The last edition of the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum was printed at Leipzig in 1682. It is called "enlarged (auctior)," but in a rather extensive comparison I have found only one new title. The German editor removed some of Labbé's comments on Protestant writers but did little more.

Labbé's Bibliotheca bibliothecarum is an alphabetical list according to first names of some eight hundred authors of bibliographies. According to Besterman, it includes about fifteen hundred titles. Labbé's arrangement according to first names causes no difficulty to a modern user because he provides an index of family names. Unfortunately, however, this index of family names is incomplete, and the lack of care in its preparation is evidence that Labbé hurried to get his book to the printer.

Eight subject indexes—only the fourth is not alphabetical—make the Bibliotheca bibliothecarum fully usable. When the reader has familiarized himself with them (and apparently very few have done so), he can understand the book and its value to a scholar. In working with the indexes he will discover that Labbé did not make them complete and reliable. Part of the difficulty in understanding and using the indexes arises from Labbé's old and unfamiliar classification according to men instead of subjects. This classification was firmly established when Labbé wrote and he probably never thought of any other. St. Jerome had called his book by the alternative title "De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis," that is to say, "Ecclesiastical Writers," but it was a bibliography of ecclesiastical literature. A bibliography of astrology was, in Labbé's conception, a list of men who wrote on astrology. He soon ran