In reliquis sit quanta uides spes, lector, habenda,
Quom labor hic primus calami superauerit artem.
M.CCCC.LXVIIII.
In Adria’s town, one John, a son of Speier,
First printed books by means of forms of brass.
And for the future shall not hope rise higher
When the first fruits the penman’s art surpass?
1469.
Of this first Venetian edition of Cicero’s letters we know from a subsequent colophon that only one hundred copies were printed, one twenty-fifth part of the whole edition now being preserved in the four copies at the British Museum. It was obviously sold out very rapidly, and in some three or four months’ time the printer had got out a second edition, to which he added a new colophon.
