To Venice now ’twas John of Speier restored me,
And made recording brass unfold my tale.
Let rest the tired hand, let rest the reed:
Mere toil to zealous wits the prize must cede.
1469.
The aspersion on the scribes was undeserved. If truth be told, either because they used too thin an ink, or else from too slight pressure, the early Venetian printers seldom did full justice to their beautiful types; and though their vellum copies are really fine, those on paper are no easier to read than the average fifteenth-century manuscripts which they imitated. We must, however, forgive John of Speier his little boastings, as this was the last colophon he was to print; and our next, which comes at the end of S. Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei,” contains his epitaph:
Qui docuit Venetos exscribi posse Ioannes
Mense fere trino centena uolumina Plini
Et totidem magni Ciceronis Spira libellos,
Ceperat Aureli: subito sed morte peremptus