Priscian, Sallust, Catullus, Tibullus, and Properlius. From Brescia came Lucretius, from Vicenza, Claudian ; Ferrara and Naples gave birth to Martial and Seneca. In Ger many, France, and the Low Countries, on the other hand, the progress at first was slow. Few classics were printed out of Italy before 1 480, or, indeed, until the last ten years of that century. The De Offidis of Cicero, it is true, had appeared at Mentz in 14G5, the first portion of any classical work committed to the press, unless precedence is given to the De Oratore of Sweynheini and Pannavtz at Subiaco. But with that exception the first impressions of Terence and Valerius Haximus at Strasburg, and of Sallust, and, perhaps, Florus at Paris, are all that Cis alpine presses contributed of that kind within the period under review. The first appearance of Vdleim Pater- culus at Basel and of Anacreon and Menander at Paris was not until the next century was well advanced. In Spain the first classical book was a Sallust of 1475. In Eng.and, the earliest was a Terence, printed by Pynson in 1497; but, besides that, Virgil, Sallust, and Cicero s Ojfaes, together with two Greek books, were the only classics published down to 1540. A complete edition of Cicero, printed in 1585 at London, was the chief Latin work up to that date. A neat edition of Homer s Iliad appeared in 1591, and the first impression of Herodotus in this country cama out in the same year at Cambridge. Our early printers were content with French translations for their versions and abridgments ; and Gawin Douglas, in the preface to his translation of Virgil, records his indig nation at the injustice done to the " divine poet " by the
second-hand translation of Caxton.Most of the Latin classics had appeared in print before the art was employed on any Greek author. This was due rather to the want of adequate editorship than to any indifference to Greek in Italy ; for the taste for that language had steadily increased since the arrival of the le.irned Greeks from Constantinople, and the want of printed editions became general before the close of the 15th century. To Aldus belongs the glory of ministering to that "desire, by publishing, in quick succession and with singular beauty and correctness, almost all the principal authors in that tongue. Beginning in 1494 with Musosus s Hero and Leander, he printed before 151 G, the year of his death, upwards of sixty considerable works in Greek litera ture. The list includes the first impressions of Aristophanes, Herodotus, Theocritus, Sophocles, Tkucydides, Euripides, Demosthenes, Pindar, and Plato. The editio princeps of Aristotle is the finest of his productions. Himself, in several cases, editor as well as printer, he had the assist ance of the most learned scholars of the day; and the handy size of his octavos, which he substituted for the more cumbrous quartos after his removal from Venice, added to the popularity of his editions. Within two years after Aldus commenced his labours, Greek printing began at Florence with the works of Callimachus,[1] Apollonius Rhodius, and Lucian ; at Rome, however, the earliest work was the Pindar of Calliergus in 1515.[2] At Paris the first Greek press of importance was established in 1507 by Gourmont, but the days of its chief celebrity date from his successors Colines and Stephens. Aldus, though the most prolific, was not the earliest Greek printer. The first entire work in that language was the Grammar of Con stantino Lascaris, printed by Zarot at Milan in 1476. Homer s Batrachomyomachia was the earliest printed Greek classic; his complete works first appeared in the Florence Homer of 1488, a volume which, Gibbon observes, "displays all the luxury of the typographical art." Besides these works, the Orations of Isocrates had appeared in 1493. Aldus has been unduly eulogized by his biographer, M. llenouard,[3] who has represented him as having given an entirely new direction to the art of printing, and indeed to the literary taste of Europe. His taste for Greek he had imbibed from the age : he saw that there was a great and growing want of Greek books, and his peculiar praise lies in this, that he applied himself to supply it with much more constancy and skill and with much more learning than any other printer of that period. His preface to Aristotle s Organon, published in 1595, amply recognizes the demand for Greek books. "Those," he says, "who cultivate letters must be supplied with books necessary for that purpose ; and till this supply is obtained I shall not be at rest."[4]
is difficult to determine with precision. They have been much prized by collectors, especially during last century, though their price has fluctuated considerably at different times. The date of some, as for instance, of Juvenal, Q. Curtius, and Horace, is conjectural ; and the last-named is one of four classics, Lucan, Plutarch, and Florus being the other three, of which the printer is unknown. The Naples edition of Horace of 1 474 is called by Dibdin[5] the " rarest classical volume in the world," and it was chiefly to possess this book that Earl Spencer bought the famous library of the duke of Cassano. Of the first edition of Lucretius only two copies are believed to exist ; and not one in its integrity of Azzoguidi s editio princeps of Ovid. On the other hand, there are several classical authors, of whom the second and even later impressions are far the most valuable and scarce. The intrinsic merit of the cditiones principes of the classics is too unequal to admit of any general description. Their chief value, in a literary sense, consists in the security afforded by printing against the further progress of transcriptional error ; but it would be a great mistake to imagine that the text was then finally established. Maittaire gives precedence to their authority as equivalent to that of the MSS. from which they were taken, but the question obviously turns on the character of those MSS. themselves. Later discoveries and the progress of critical research confirm the testimony of many of the first editors, in their prefaces,[6] regarding the insufficiency and mutilated character of their materials. Thus Graevius observes of the celebrated editio princeps of Cicero s De Ojficiis by Fust, that it was printed from a very inaccurate manuscript. Schelhorn, in his Amcenitates Literarice, insists, with good reason, on the want of collation among the first editors. Frequently the first manuscript that offered itself was hastily committed to the press, in order to take advantage of the recent discovery ; and fragments of different manuscripts were patched together to form Opera Omnia editions, without regard to the relative authority of their contents. On the other hand there are first editions which represent a single lost archetype, and
whose value, therefore, cannot be exaggerated, while others- ↑ This editio princeps is among the scarcest of Greek capital letter productions.
- ↑ Roscoe s Leo X., ii. 257-8. Greek types, according to Panzer, had first been used in a treatise of Jerome, printed at Rome in 14G8 ; and detached passages are found in some of the first copies of Latin authors.
- ↑ Annalcs de r Imprimcrie des Aides, Paris, 1825, and third edition in 1834. Renouard afterwards published a similar work on the family of the learned printers, Robert and Henry Stephens, Annales de i Imprimerie des Estiennes, Paris, 1837, 2 vols. 8vo.
- ↑ The preface is translated in Roscoe s Leo X., i. 110.
- ↑ The bibliography of first editions of the classics is treated copiously by this writer in his Introduction to the Classics, his Bibl. Spenccriana, and his Catalogue of the Cassano Collection. The prices of many valuable first editions at a sale in London in 1821 are given at the end of the last-mentioned work. See also a curious chapter ou " First Editions" in Marchand s Ilistoire de V Imprimerie.
- ↑ These prefaces have been edited by Botfield, with an introduction of some merit.
