The passage of the earliest printed books through the press was naturally extremely slow, as compared with the rapid production of the present day. The result was that the printer had leisure to make occasional alterations, so that different copies belonging actually to the same edition sometimes show slight variations. The bibliographer has thus to deal with an additional element of confusion.
Text-fig. 4. “Aristolochia longa” [Herbarius Moguntinus, 1484].
As far as the works now under consideration are concerned, however, much of the obscurity has been removed by the late Dr Payne, to whom we owe a very lucid memoir on the various editions of the Latin and German Herbarius and the Hortus Sanitatis, based in part upon the researches of Dr Ludwig Choulant. Free use has been made of his account in the present chapter.
3. The Latin Herbarius.
The work to which we may refer for convenience as the Latin Herbarius is also known under many other titles—‘Herbarius in Latino,’ ‘Aggregator de Simplicibus,’ ‘Herbarius Moguntinus,’ ‘Herbarius Patavinus,’ etc. It was originally printed at Mainz by Peter Schöffer in 1484, in the form of a small quarto. It is interesting to recall that the earliest specimen of printing from movable type known to exist was produced in the same town thirty years before.
