To be held in everlasting remembrance was the reward that Marino Sanudo ardently coveted; and though never appreciated by his contemporaries, and utterly forgotten by the whole world for hundreds of years, he is now respected and valued, and that eterna memoria, to earn which he valued no toil, at last is his.
It remains to speak of Theobaldo Mannucci, or Manutio, familiarly called Messer or Ser Aldo, best known to us as Aldus, the great printer of Venice, whose house may still be seen, in the Campo San Agostino, near the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, near by the spot on which stood the house of the gran cavaliere, Bajamonte Tiepolo. Aldus was not a Venetian, having first seen the light in Bassiano, near Rome. The history of his earlier years is indistinct; but this much seems to be true, that, being a great scholar and student, he had also been a tutor in the family of the Pii, princes of Carpi. He was also the friend of Count Giovanni Pico at Mirandola, one of the most scholarly men of his age.
At length, for one reason and another, too many and too involved to be given here, he decided to go to Venice, and begin that making of books which in his hands became such an honor and advantage to that city; and in this he was much encouraged, and probably substantially aided, by Count Pico. Thus a Florentine and a Roman brought to this Mistress of the Sea a kind of prestige which no son of hers had given. Aldus probably knew that foreign printers, of whom we have spoken, had been encouraged to do their work at Venice; but he was no mere printer, and although it is by that name that he is most frequently spoken of, he was a scholar before he was a printer, and became a printer because of his scholarship. He had found how meagre and incorrect were the text-books of his time; and to supply these defects and give to the world books free from blemishes in substance and form, was his untradesmanlike motive.
It is believed that he went to Venice about 1488, and his first publication appeared six years later. Meantime he had prepared the manuscripts he wished to print, and had drawn around him a large number of men, old and young, from senators and priests to the youths who sought learning, to listen to his reading and exposition of the Greek and Latin authors. The Neacademia of Aldo became a most important factor in Venetian life. To quote Mrs. Oliphant:—
"Sabellico, the learned and eloquent historian, with whose work Venice was ringing; Sanudo, our beloved chronicler, then beginning his life-long work; Bembo, the future cardinal, already one of the fashionable semi-priests of society, holding a canonicate; the future historian who wrote no history, Andrea Navagero, but he in his very earliest youth; another cardinal, Leandro, then a barefooted friar,—all crowded about the new classical teacher. The enthusiasm with which he was received seems to have exceeded even the ordinary welcome accorded in that age of literary freemasonry to every man who had any new light to throw upon the problems of knowledge. And while he expounded and instructed, the work of preparation for still more important labors went on. It is evident that he made himself fully known, and even became an object of general curiosity, one of the personages to be visited by all that were on the surface of Venetian society, and that the whole of Venice was interested and entertained by the idea of the new undertaking.... It was a labor of love, an enterprise of the highest public importance, and as such commended itself to all who cared for education or the humanities, or who had any desire to be considered as members or disciples of that highest and most cultured class of men of letters, who were the pride and glory of the age."
His house, though "far from the busy haunts," was soon a gathering-place and centre for such men as were seriously interested in what was there transpiring; and Aldus skilfully employed all who could and would aid him in the preparation of the almost indecipherable manuscripts, in proof-reading, and in many matters which demanded keen intelligence and infinite patience.
The picture of his busy shops, to which these men turned and where they labored, leaving the fascinations of the Piazza and the exciting life of Venice at her best, makes one of the most interesting of the many remarkable scenes of that unique and marvellous city. And it is curious to note how in the lives of men like Aldus in the present day his vexations are repeated, reminding us that there is nothing new under the sun. He complains that if he attempted to answer the letters he receives, both night and day would be too little for the task; and troublesome visitors were as numerous then as now, wherever great men live. He humorously wrote of these:—
"Some from friendship, some from interest, the greater part because they have nothing to do,—for then 'Let us go,' they say, 'to Aldo's.' They come in crowds and sit gaping,—
'Non missura cutem, nisi plena cruoria hirudo.'
I do not speak of those who come to read me either poems or prose, generally rough and unpolished, for publication, for I defend myself from these by no answer or else a very brief one, which I hope nobody will take in ill part, since it is done, not from pride or scorn, but because all my leisure is taken up in publishing books of established fame. As for those who come for no reason, we make bold to admonish them in classical words in a sort of edict placed over our door, 'WHOEVER YOU ARE, Aldo requests you, if you want anything, ask it in few words and depart, unless, like Hercules, you come to lend the aid of your shoulders to the weary Atlas. Here will always be found in that case something for you to do, however many you may be.'"