Here uncorrupted Cicero you shall find.
Glory of heaven, Christ’s mother, holiest maid,
Ever to thee, with him, all praise be paid.
25 March, 1472.
Even better than this, however, is the colophon to the Brescia Lucretius, in which we see the editor dismayed at first by the obvious defects of his copy, but resolving at length to print it on the ground that his inability to find any other was the best proof of its rarity.
Titi Lucretii Cari finis. Lucretii unicum meas in manus cum pervenisset exemplar de eo imprimendo hesitaui: quod erat difficile unico de exemplo quae librarii essent praeterita negligentia illa corrigere. Verum ubi alterum perquisitum exemplar adinuenire non potui, hac ipsa motus difficultate unico etiam de exemplari volui librum quam maxime rarum communem multis facere studiosis: siquidem facilius erit pauca loca uel aliunde altero exemplari extricato uel suo studio castigare et diligentia: quam integro carere uolumine. Presertim cum a fabulis quae uacuas (ut inquit poeta) delectant mentes remotus Lucretius noster de rerum natura questiones tractet acutissimas tanto ingenii acumine tantoque lepore uerborum ut omnes qui illum secuti poete sunt: eum ita suis in descriptionibus imitentur, et Virgilius presertim, poetarum princeps, ut ipsis cum uerbis tria interdum et amplius metra suscipiant. Thoma Ferando auctore.
The end of Titus Lucretius Carus. When a single copy of Lucretius came into my hands I hesitated as to printing it, because it was difficult from a single copy to correct the slips due to the carelessness of the copyist. But when by diligent search I could find no second copy, moved by this very difficulty I was minded even from a single copy to make a book of the greatest rarity common to many scholars, since it will be easier to correct a few places, either by a second copy unearthed from another quarter or by one’s own study and diligence, than to lack a whole volume. Especially since, far removed from the fables which (as the poet says) delight empty minds, our Lucretius handles the keenest questions concerning the nature of things with so much intellectual acumen and verbal elegance that all the poets who have followed him imitate him so in their descriptions, more especially Virgil, the prince of poets, that with his very words they sometimes make three lines and more. Thomas Ferrandus.
The name of Lucretius seldom appears in any of the medieval catalogues, and the number of manuscripts of his “De Rerum Natura” now extant is so small that his first printer’s plea may well be received. Even in comparatively modern books, indeed, a satisfactory text was not always to be obtained for the asking. Chaucer has had no more devout lover than William Caxton, and yet when Caxton printed the “Canterbury Tales” he only succeeded in obtaining a manuscript of the worst class to work from, and when a friend offered him a better text for his second edition the improvement was very slight. In the same way we find the anonymous Florentine editor of two tracts of Domenico Cavalca (we cannot be wrong in assuming that the same editor worked on both) apologizing for the bad text from which he printed the first few pages of the “Frutti della Lingua,” and telling how in the case of the “Specchio di Croce” he had to collate a number of copies in order to replace them by a good printed edition.
(i) Frutti della Lingua.