Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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A Variorum is a work that collates all known variants of a text. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variorum
Re the Variorum Pepys owned
30 July 1663, Pepys picks up a *five* vol. set bound in his “common binding instead of the other which is more gaudy”. L&M are *ve uncertain about the identity of this Variorum, but suggest a *six*-vol. set bound [later] in *red morocco* of *Biblia sacra polyglotta, complectentia textus originales, Hebraicum, cum Pentateucho Samaritano, Chaldaicum, Graecum,* [edited by Brian Walton], Londini: Imprimebat Thomas Roycroft, 1657. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/library/speccoll/religion/lpoly.html
veriorum is the genitive plural of varius
meaning:(of) various commentators or editors. The word is used often used on 16th. & C 17th. title pages mainly describing editions the of the texts of the classical authors. Hence Alexander Pope’s elaborate joke producing a “Dunciad with notes Variorum …,” (1729) the text of the Dunciad itself being a parody of Virgil.
The modern use as a scholarly shorthand expression for a collection of all known textual variants appears to date from admiration for the work of Furness Sr. in his first “variorum Shakespeare” of 1871; itself not the first edition of Shakespeare produced under that title.