at any subsequent period, except for the few years during which wits and scholars gathered around Leo X. Before leaving the subject, nevertheless, a tribute should be paid to the merits of Joannes Philippus de Lignamine, a native of Messina, apparently a man of good family, and not improbably the first native Italian to exercise the typographic art, in whose productions may be traced rudimentary ideas of a higher order than were vouchsafed to his mercantile contemporaries. It can hardly be by accident that the same man who in 1472 prints the first vernacular book that had appeared in Rome, should in the same year publish, although in Latin, the first biography of an Italian contemporary, his own memoir of his own sovereign, Ferdinand of Naples; should in 1473 issue the vernacular poetry of Petrarch; and in 1474 a book of such national interest as the "Italia Illustrata" of Flavio Biondo. His publications are always of high quality, and it would be interesting to learn more respecting him. He is described as a member of the Pope's household, and was certainly something more than a professional printer.
The establishment of printing at Rome had naturally ensued upon the migration of the printers from the small adjoining town of Subiaco, and the choice of the latter place as the cradle of Italian typography had probably been determined by the German nationality of the majority of the inmates of its celebrated monastery. The introduction of printing into Venice, two years
after Rome, was probably less the effect of accident. Joannes de Spira, who, as we have seen, so promptly secured a monopoly of so much value as the exclusive exercise of printing for five years, must have been an enterprising and far-seeing man, to whom the opulence and comparative freedom of Venice would offer greater attractions than the doubtful patronage of an Italian despot. This view of his character is confirmed by the boldness of his first undertakings. Before obtaining any privilege he had produced two of the most voluminous works of antiquity then accessible—Pliny's Natural History and Cicero's Epistolæ ad Familiares. The soundness of his judgment was evinced by the demand for a second edition of his Cicero within four months, an unusual occurrence in the history of early printing. Tacitus followed, and the German printer's patriotism is indicated by his description of the Germania as "libellus aureus." His brother and successor, Vindelinus, displays even greater energy, producing fifteen books within the year 1470, among them so important a work as Livy's History, and gaining especial honour as the first printer of Petrarch. The rest are almost entirely classical, and so are the few books printed in this year by his rival, Nicolas Jenson, the most elegant of all the Italian printers. In 1471 Venetian printing takes a wider range; law books increase; Jensen produces books of morals and of religious edification in the vernacular; Christopher Valdarfer publishes the Decameron of Boccaccio. More important still is the appearance of two
independent Italian translations of the Bible, one from the press of Vindelinus, one without name of printer. As no other Italian city emulated the example of Venice, an example frequently repeated by her before the close of the century, we are justified in assuming that in no other Italian city could such a thing be done. Interesting too is a vernacular translation of Cardinal Bessarion's exhortation to the Italian princes to take arms against the Turk, showing a public for productions of contemporary interest, outside the ranks of those who could read Latin. In the following year, 1472, printed editions of no fewer than six classical authors make their appearance at Venice, Cicero's Tusculan Questions; Catullus, with Tibullus and Propertius, and the Silvæ of Statius; Ausonius, with a considerable appendix of minor poets; Macrobius's commentary on the "Somnium Scipionis," and the authors of "De Re Rustica." Although some of the cities dependent upon Venice—Padua, Treviso, Verona—were beginning to have printing-presses, their typographers were not equal to such undertakings, and Venice must have been the headquarters of production and distribution for her extensive and opulent territory, and probably for many of the neighbouring states. Her abundant capital and industry, liberal administration in non-political matters, and the confluence of strangers must be reckoned among the principal causes of this activity, to which Mr. Horatio Brown adds another, the abundance and excellence of paper, which the Venetian senate
had protected a century before by prohibiting the export of rags from their dominions.
The extent and growth of the Venetian book-trade will appear by the following notice of the number of works printed from 1469 to 1486, which would be considerably augmented if dates could be safely assigned to undated books:—
| 1469 | 4 | books. |
| 1470 | 22 | books. |
| 1471 | 48 | books. |
| 1472 | 36 | books. |
| 1473 | 28 | books. |
| 1474 | 40 | books. |
| 1475 | 37 | books. |
| 1476 | 52 | books. |
| 1477 | 55 | books. |
| 1478 | 64 | books. |
| 1479 | 16 | books. |
| 1480 | 71 | books. |
| 1481 | 79 | books. |
| 1482 | 74 | books. |
| 1483 | 104 | books. |
| 1484 | 66 | books. |
| 1485 | 84 | books. |
| 1486 | 71 | books. |
By 1495 the number of publications has risen to 119, the general character of the books remaining much as before. The productions of the Venetian press from 1469 to 1500 occupy more space in Panzer's catalogue than those of Rome, Florence, Naples, Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Ferrara, Padua, Parma, and Treviso put together.
Space allows only a brief glance at the typographical productions of the five most important of the seven Italian cities which possessed printing-presses by 1471—Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Milan and Naples. Bologna, as might be expected in a university city, especially produces erudite books, particularly in philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. Petrarch and Boccaccio, however, relieve the general aridity, and there is a fair
sprinkling of classics. Ferrara's taste lies much in the same direction, but it is remarkable for a school of Hebrew printing, and does itself honour by the editio princeps of Seneca's tragedies, and even more so by that of Boccaccio's "Teseide," the first publication of an Italian epic poem other than the "Divina Commedia." Florence appears more tardy in developing the new art than might have been expected under Medicean rule; and her early productions would seem comparatively unimportant but for Bettini's "Monte Sancto di Dio" (1477), the first example of a printed book containing copperplate engraving, and the famous Dante of 1481, partly illustrated in the same manner. The artistic eminence of Florence renders the production of this work within her precincts especially significant; and in 1490 a school of wood-engraving arises which surpasses the Venetian, and often confers great artistic value upon typographical productions otherwise of little account. Another interesting feature of Florentine typography, from about 1480 until the end of the century, is the number of original publications by native men of letters, such as Politian, the Pulcis, and, in quite a different manner, Savonarola. Florence understood the duty of encouraging contemporary talent better than any other Italian city; yet, although she was the Athens of Italy, and possessed its Pericles, the comparison between the extent of her typographical production and that of Venice shows that the public is the better patron. When, at a much later period, wealth and