itinton,
entitled _Editio de concinnitate grammatices et constructione noviter
impressa_, with the date December 20th, 1516, and a woodcut that had
belonged to Wynkyn de Worde.

The second Oxford press began about 1517. In that year there appeared,
_Tractatus expositorius super libros posteriorum Aristotelis_, by Walter
Burley, bearing the date December 4th, 1517, without printer's name, but
ascribed from the appearance of the types to the press of John Scolar,
whose name is found in some of the similar tracts that appeared the
following year. These included _Questiones moralissime super libros
ethicorum_, by John Dedicus, dated May 15, 1518. On June 5th was issued
_Compendium questionum de luce et lumine_, on June 7th Walter Burley's
_Tractatus perbrevis de materia et forma_, on June 27th Whitinton's _De
Heteroclitis nominibus_. The latest book, dated 5th February 1519,
_Compotus manualis ad usum Oxoniensium_, bore the name of Charles
Kyrfoth, but nothing further is known of any such printer.

No more is heard of a press at Oxford until nearly the close of the
sixteenth century, a gap of nearly seventy years, and a strange and
unaccountable interval. At any rate, the next Oxford printed book, so
far as is at present known, was John Case's _Speculum Moralium
quaestionum in universam ethicen Aristotelis_, with the colophon,
'Oxoniae ex officina typographica Josephi Barnesii Celeberrimae Academiae
Oxoniensis Typographi. Anno 1585.'

Joseph Barnes, the printer, had been admitted a bookseller in 1573, and
on August 15th, 1584, the University lent him L100 with which to start a
press. During the time that he remained printer to the University, his
press was actively employed, no less than three hundred books, many of
them in Greek and Latin, being traced to it. In 1595 appeared the first
Welsh book printed at the University, a translation into Welsh by Hugh
Lewis of O. Wermueller's _Spiritual and Most Precious Pearl_, and in
1596 two founts of Hebrew letter were used by Barnes, but the stock of
this letter was small.

In 1528, John Scolar, no doubt the same with the Oxford printer, is
found at Abingdon, where he printed a _Breviary_ for the use of the
abbey there; only one copy has survived, and is now at Emmanuel College,
Cambridge.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Device of Joseph Barnes.]

The first Cambridge printer was John Siberch, whose history, like that
of so many other early printers, is totally unknown. Nine speci