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Also in the collection is an edition of Proclus’ commentaries on Plato’s Timaeus and<br />
Republic printed in Basel in 1534 and edited by Simon Grynaeus (1493-1541). The<br />
famous bibliophile Thomas Dibdin reports that Grynaeus visited England, staying<br />
with Sir Thomas More, and during that visit came to Oxford where he was shown<br />
manuscripts of Proclus’ commentaries and was given permission to take them away<br />
so he could publish them. This edition also contains some fine woodcut initials that<br />
were produced by Hans Holbein, who was active in Basel at the time as a designer<br />
of engravings, title pages and initials.<br />
Woodcut initial by Hans Holbein<br />
Other books in the collection and put on display include an edition of the complete<br />
works of Plato from 1556, and a copy of the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (1536).<br />
The Parisian printer Robert Estienne is represented by his large four-volume folio<br />
edition of Cicero, printed in 1538, and Wolfson also has a copy of his edition of<br />
Virgil (1532). Both are especially fine examples of early printing and typography.<br />
The final book included in the display was an edition of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura<br />
printed in Paris in 1514. The edition is noteworthy for containing the first modern<br />
commentary on Lucretius, although Lucretius’s modern bibliographer Cosmo<br />
Gordon has noted that ‘collectors have not been eager to acquire its pages, where a<br />
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