Integer in Latium, Quintiliane, redis;
Et te, Lucreti, longo post tempore, tandem
Civibus et Patriæ reddit habere tuæ.”
Poggio sent the newly-discovered treasure to Niccolo Niccoli, who kept the original MS. fourteen years. Poggio earnestly demanded it back, and at length ob[pg A-33]tained it; but before it was restored, Niccoli made from it, with his own hand, a transcript, which is still extant in the Laurentian library[611].
The edition published at Verona, 1486, which is not a very correct one, was long accounted the Editio Princeps of Lucretius. A more ancient impression, however, printed at Brescia, 1473, has recently become known to bibliographers. It was edited by Ferrandus from a single MS. copy, which was the only one he could procure. But though he had not the advantage of collating different MSS., the edition is still considered valuable, for its accuracy and excellent readings. There are, I believe, only three copies of it now extant, two of which are at present in England. The text of Lucretius was much corrupted in the subsequent editions of the fifteenth century, and even in that of Aldus, published at Venice in 1500, of which Avancius was the editor, and which was the first Latin classic printed by Aldus[612]. This was partly occasioned by the second edition of 1486 being unfortunately chosen as the basis of all of them, instead of the prior and preferable edition, printed at Brescia. In a few, but very few readings, the second edition has improved on the first, as, for example, in the beautiful description of the helplessness of a new-born infant—
“Navita, nudus humi jacet infans, indigus omni
Vitali auxilio,” ——
where the Brescian edition reads indignus, instead of indigus. And again, in the fifth book—
“Nec poterat quenquam placidi pellacia ponti,
Subdola pellicere in fraudem, ridentibus undis,”