We might have been engaged about three weeks in copying the MS., sending the pages copied during the day to Messrs. Cotta, at Stuttgard, to be printed, when we were surprised one morning by a visit in the Vatican from M. de L’Epinois. He told us that he had been two months at Rome, and had undertaken a correction of Berti’s book from the original. We informed him of our enterprise, which he spoke of as “quite a different thing”; and when we returned his call, he again spoke of a correction of Berti, and regretted that he had not copied the whole MS. Of any intention of publishing it complete he said not a word. We therefore contentedly went on with our work; the copying was nearly finished and the printing in progress, when one afternoon on our return from the Vatican we found a letter from Epinois, in which he said that he had not had time to call on us again, and informed us of the speedy appearance of his complete publication of the Vatican MS., and that we should receive a copy in a few days. This announcement was most surprising. We went at once to seek M. de L’Epinois, but learnt that he had left Rome early that morning.
Our work was too far advanced to be given up, and so we went on, in the hope that even now there might be some little place in the world for it. By the time Epinois’s book reached us the copying was finished, and we were correcting the proofs by the originals. It was not without value, even for our enterprise, for we compared our proofs with it line by line and word by word, made notes of deviations, and then went to the Vatican to see which was right. We readily acknowledge that in this way we discovered and corrected many errors which had crept into our copy. The variations which still exist are all well known to us, and are left, either because Epinois is mistaken, or we consider our reading to be the best. This is not the place for a criticism of his work; we will only bear witness, after comparing it with the original, to its accuracy.
II.
DESCRIPTION OF THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT.
The Acts of the two trials of Galileo, of 1615-16 and 1632-33, which are stitched together, and to which several other documents are added relating to the surveillance of Galileo until his death, and the erection of his monument, form a pretty thick quarto volume, twenty-two centimeters broad and thirty high.
It is done up in a loose sheet of white paper, which can lay no claim to veneration from age, and is in an equally loose green pasteboard cover, which may boast of historic antiquity, as may also the faded and frail red strings by which the volume is fastened. The cover is too short and too narrow, so that the edges get mercilessly rubbed. In this way, unfortunately, many a letter, word and even signature in these precious papers have been lost, and it is high time to protect them from further injury.
The documents are only slightly fastened together in places, and you can see from the outside how far the Acts of the first trial extend. This slight fastening also enables you to see that all the blank pages, of which there are 194, are partly reverse sides, partly second pages of documents, and it may easily be discovered to which document each blank page belongs. In some cases these second pages have been cut away, as appears from the broad piece left. The suspicion from this that important documents have been withdrawn seems inadmissible, for the pages cut out, as is seen from those left, which correspond with the rest, belonged to finished documents, and the abstraction of a document would certainly not have been betrayed by leaving a broad strip behind.
The paging is in the greatest confusion. On the title page, in the right hand corner, are the figures 949, and under them 336. The historical introduction, by an unknown hand, prefixed to the papers, is numbered 337-340. The first document bears the double paging
| 950 |
| 341, |