Bibliography
the science or knowledge of books, their authorship, the dates of their first publication, and of the several editions they have gone through, with all other points requisite for literary history. This, it will be perceived, is not the meaning of the word in Greek. The Greek term generated the French bibliographie, with the meaning (identical with neither the Greek nor the English one) of acquaintance with ancient writings and skill in deciphering them. About A. D. 1752 the modern sense of the word was arising, though the old one still held its ground. Finally, in 1763, the publication of De Bure's "Bibliographie Instructif" established the new me meaning, and gave the deathblow to the old one. It was not the first book which had appeared on literary history, Conrad Gesner's "Bibliotheca Universalis," containing a catalogue of all the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin books he knew, had long preceded it, having appeared in 1545.