With skill equipped, his brother, in his room
Means to take Adria’s city for his home.
1470.
The business which thus passed into his hands was certainly carried on by Wendelin vigorously, for during the next three years he turned out over a dozen folios or large quartos a year. He seems, indeed, to have outrun his resources, for as early as 1471 his colophons tell us that some of his books were financed for him by John of Cologne, and after the summer of 1473 his type passed into the possession of this John and his “very faithful partner, Johann Manthen.” As Wendelin’s name disappears from colophons for three years, it is probable that his services were taken over with his types; in 1470, however, he was his own master and the object of much praise from his colophon-writer. In his Sallust of this year we read:
Quadringenta dedit formata volumina Crispi
Nunc, lector, Venetis Spirea Vindelinus.
Et calamo libros audes spectare notatos
Aere magis quando littera ducta nitet?
To Venice Wendelin, who from Speier comes,