2 6                               Roland Baughman

in Mr. Engel's establishment after his death came to Columbia
University as an anonymous gift, in tribute to his memory. Only
the most cursory kind of estimate has so far been possible, but it is
likely that at least 10,000 pieces are included. It may well be that,
because of this gift, Columbia can be ranked among the leading
repositories of this fascinating but fragile resource for research in
the graphic arts.

Of very special significance in this connection is another anony¬
mous gift of a highly selective collection of literary and artistic
posters, numbering a little over five hundred pieces. This is a
most exceptional group, the individual items having been carefully
picked for their condition and merit. More than four hundred, for
example, were chosen to represent the work of such artists as
Abbey, Beardsley, Bradley, Kemble, Outcault, Parrish, Penfield,
Pennell, Pyle, Remington, Rogers, and their peers. Among them is
a series of bills prepared by various artists some fifty years ago to
advertize the American editions of some of Kipling's best-known
works. The balance of the collection is made up of English and
American posters of World War I, and a small selection of rail¬
roading prints and views of our national parks.

During the past year there have been repeated occasions for re¬
porting gifts by Mr. Harry G. Friedman, a member of the Friends.
Scarcely an issue of the columns has been without mention of
some presentation he has made—now a medieval liturgical manu¬
script, now an early edition of Tasso, again an important colonial
Boston imprint, or a collection of the I7th/i8th-century muni¬
cipal records of a suburb of Rome.

This issue will mark no exception. Mr. Friedman's most recent
gift is a two-volume set of Campegius Vitringa's commentaries on
the prophet Isaiah, printed in the German city of Herborn in
1722. Vitringa was one of the Pietists of the early i8th century,
notable for his influence in overcoming the Lutheran objections to
the Adventists—who held the belief, recurrent throughout medi¬
eval and renaissance times, and supported by such eminent men