Has given of Sallust twice two hundred tomes.
And who dare glorify the pen-made book,
When so much fairer brass-stamped letters look?
The Livy of the same year ends with a poem of forty-six lines, which praises Wendelin for bravely rescuing such of Livy’s Decads as remained, “saevis velut hostibus acri Bello oppugnatas,” and by multiplying copies saving them from the fate which had befallen the rest. A poem like this, however, must be reckoned rather with congratulatory verses than as a colophon, though the line in these Venetian books is not always easy to draw. Two more of Wendelin’s publications in 1470 may be pressed into our service—a Virgil and a Petrarch. Of these the Virgil ends:
Progenitus Spira formis monumenta Maronis
Hoc Vindelinus scripsit apud Venetos.
Laudent ergo alii Polycletos Parrhasiosue
Et quosuis alios id genus artifices:
Ingenuas quisquis Musarum diligit artes
In primis ipsum laudibus afficiet: