who, in the preface of a work published by himself, ever used such language as the following:--nihil unquam memini me legere deterius, lectuque minus dignum. Such are the terms in which he refers to the Life of Apollonius by Philostratus; but he hastens to add that, as an antidote to the poison, he publishes in the same volume the refutation by Eusebius, translated by the friend to whom he dedicates the work. In the twenty-one years between 1494 and 1515, Aldus produced no less than twenty-seven editiones principes of Greek authors and of Greek works of reference'. By the date of his death in 1515, all the principal Greek Classics had been printed. Before 1525 the study of Greek had begun to decline in Italy, but meanwhile an interest in that language had happily been transmitted to the lands beyond the Alps. Paolo Manuzio (1512-1574), the youngest son of Aldo, was educated by his grandfather Andrea, who carried on the business till his death in 1529, when Andrea was succeeded by his sons, with whom Paolo was in partnership from 1533 to 1540. From that date forward, Paolo published on his own account a series of Ciceronian works, beginning with the complete edition of 1540-6, and including commentaries on the Letters to Atticus (1547), and to Brutus and Quintus (1557), and on the Pro Sextio (1556). One of the daintiest products of his press is the text of Cicero's De Oratore, Brutus and Orator, printed in Italic type, with his own corrections, in 1559. He published his Italian Letters in 1556-60, and his Latin Epistolae et Praefationes in 1558. He had a branch house in Rome, on the Capitol, and it was mainly in Rome that he lived from 1561 till his death in 1574, producing scholia on the Letters Ad Familiares (1571) and on the Pro Archia (1572). At Venice and Rome he published several works on Roman Antiquities, while

Paulus Manutius

1 Nine of these 27 'editions' included two or more works, 69 in all besides the 27, making a total of 96.

2 On Aldus Manutius, see Didot's Alde Manuce, 1875; Renouard, Annales de l'imprimerie des Aldes (1803-12; ed. 2, 1834); and Omont, Catalogue...en phototypie, 1892. Cp. A. Schück, A. M. u. seine Zeitgenossen (1862); and Symonds, ii 368-391. Portrait, published in Rome, probably by Antoine Lafrery, now in Library of San Marco, Venice, copied by Phil. Galleus, Effigies, ii (1577) 32, and in frontispiece to Didot's Alde Manuce, reproduced on p. 94. Portraits of all the three Aldi in Cicero, ed. 1583.

his comments on Cicero's Speeches were posthumously printed in 1578-9, and his celebrated commentarius on the Letters Ad Familiares in 1592'. Tiraboschi, who refers to the eulogies paid him by Muretus and others, happily describes him as having been worthy of a far longer life, and still more worthy of immortal remembrance2.

.

Aldus Manutius II

Paolo bequeathed his business to his son Aldo Manuzio the younger (1547-1597), who held a professorship in Venice before succeeding Sigonius in Bologna and Muretus in Rome. At the age of eleven, he had produced a treatise on the 'Elegancies of the Tuscan and Latin languages', and, at fourteen, a work on Orthography founded on the study of inscriptions (1561). The second edition of the latter (1566) contains the earliest copy of an ancient Roman calendar of B.C. 8—A.D. 3 discovered by his father in the Palace of the Maffei and now known as the Fasti Maffeiani. His other publications include a volume of antiquarian miscellanies entitled De Quaesitis per Epistolam (1576). He is somewhat severely denounced by Scaliger as 'a wretched and slow wit, the mimic of his father". After little more than a century of beneficent labour in the cause of classical literature the great house of printers came to an end when the younger Aldus died in Rome without issue in 1597". The vast library which had descended to him from his father and his grandfather was dispersed, but the productions of the Aldine press are still treasured by scholars in every part of the civilised world..

1 Ed. Richter, 1779f; 'optimi etiamnunc interpretis' (Orelli's Cicero, ed. 1845, 111 p. xxxv f).

vii 208 f; cp. Epp. 1581, ed. Krause, 1720; Epp. Sel. (Teubner, 1892), Lettere Volgari, 1560, Renouard, Lettere di P. M. (Paris, 1834). Portrait in his Liber de Comitiis (1585), and in Phil. Galleus, ii 33, and Boissard's Icones, VIII mmm 2.

3 Cp. C. I. L. i pp. 303-7; J. Wordsworth, Fragments...of Early Latin, 266 f, 539.

Scaligerana, 149. 'P. Manucius quidquid scrípsit bonum fuit, magno labore scribebat epistolas. Aldus filius miserum ingenium, lentum; quae dedit valde sunt vulgaria: utrumque novi; Patrem imitabatur, solas epistolas bonas habet; sed trivit Ciceronem diu. Insignis est Manucii commentarius in Epistolas ad Atticum et Familiares. Manucius non poterat tria verba Latine

dicere, et bene scribebat....'

Portrait in Eleganze (1580), and in Cicero, ed. 1583.

102

Editiones principes

GERMANY, ITALY, FRANCE.

[CENT. XV f

The present chapter may fitly close with a chronological conspectus of the editiones principes of the Greek and Latin Classics. The list is mainly confined to the principal classical authors, with the addition of the two earliest texts of the Greek Testament (1516-7) and of the Latin Fathers (1465), but to the exclusion of translations, grammars, and minor bibliographical curiosities. Not unfrequently an editio princeps comes into the world without any note of time or place, and without the name of any editor or printer, and the determination of these points is often a matter of considerable difficulty. Possibly the unique Batrachomyomachia in the Rylands Library, Manchester (ascribed by Proctor to Ferrandus of Brescia, c. 1474), and the rare copies of Virgil (Mentelin, Strassburg, c. 1469), Juvenal (Ulrich Hahn, Rome, c. 1470), and Martial (Rome, c. 1471), are earlier than those entered in the list; and it is uncertain whether the editio princeps of Curtius (c. 1471) is that of G. Laver, Rome, or Vindelin de Spira, Venice. In the list, approximate dates are (as here) distinguished by the usual abbreviation for circiter; and conjectural names of printers, or of places of publication, are enclosed within parentheses. For all these details the best bibliographical works have been consulted1. The name of the editor' has been added, wherever it can be inferred either from the colophon or title-page, or from the preface or letter of dedication. It will be seen how large a part of the editorial work was done, in the case of Latin authors, by Giovanni Andrea de' Bussi, bishop of Aleria, and, in the case of Greek, by Janus Lascaris, and Aldus Manutius (with or without the aid of Musurus). Besides frequently indicating the names of the editors, the Aldine prefaces are full of varied interest. Thus Aldus laments that his work as a printer is interrupted by wars abroad and by strikes at home, and by difficulties in procuring trustworthy MSS. But he exults in the fact that Greek is being studied, not in Italy alone, but also in France and Hungary and Britain and Spain". A Greek scholar at Milan begins the editio princeps of the great lexicon of Suïdas with an adroit advertisement in the form of a lively dialogue between the bookseller and the student, who finally produces three gold pieces and buys the book.

'Dibdin's Introduction, ed. 4 (London, 1827); Panzer, Annales Typographici, ad ann. 1536, 11 vols. (Nürnberg, 1793—1803); Hain, Repertorium Bibliographicum, ad ann. 1500, 2 vols. in 2 parts each (Stuttgart, 1826-38; now in course of reprinting), with Indices and Register (Leipzig, 1891), Copinger's Supplement, 3 vols. (London, 1898), and Reichling's Appendices (Munich, 1905-); R. Proctor, Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum to 1500, 2 vols. (London, 1898), Germany, in 1501-20 (1903), and The Printing of Greek in the xvth cent. (Bibliographica, Dec. 1900); Renouard, Annales des Imprimeries des Aldes, 3 vols. ed. 3 (Paris, 1834); Didot, Alde Manuce (Paris, 1875); Botfield, Praefationes et Epp. (London, 1861); R. C. Christie, Chronology of the Early Aldines (1894), in Selected Essays (London, 1902), 223-246; and H. Guppy, The John Rylands Library (Manchester, 1906), 49-78.

2 Plato, 1513.

Aristotle, i 2, and iv 1495–8.

3 Prudentius, 1502 N. S.

5 Aristotle, i 2 (init.); Steph. Byz.