REVERSE OF TITLE OF NOS. V. AND VI.
VI. Epistola de insulis noviter repertis, etc. Small quarto, four leaves, gothic, 39 lines; woodcut on verso of first leaf. Guiot Marchant, of Paris, printer. Addressed to Sanxis. Cosco is called Aliander. Ferdinand only named.
This is Major’s sixth edition; Harrisse (Notes on Columbus, p. 122; Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 6) and Lenox (Scyllacius, p. xlvii) also place it sixth. There are fac-similes of the engraved title in Harrisse, Lenox, and Stevens’s American Bibliographer, p. 66.
There are copies in the Carter-Brown, Bodleian (Douce), and University of Göttingen libraries; one is also shown in the Murphy Catalogue, no. 630.
John Harris, Sen., made a fac-simile edition of five copies, one of which is in the British Museum.
VII. Epistola Cristophori Colom, etc. Small quarto, four leaves, gothic, 38 lines. Addressed to Sanxis. Th. Martens is thought to be the printer.
This edition has only recently been made known. Cf. Brunet, Supplément, col. 276. The only copy known is in the Bibliothèque Royale at Brussels.
The text of all these editions scarcely varies, except in the use of contracted letters. Lenox’s collation was reprinted, without the cuts, in the Historical Magazine, February, 1861. Other bibliographical accounts will be found in Graesse, Trésor; Bibliotheca Grenvilliana, i. 158; Sabin, Dictionary, iv. 274; and by J. H. Hessels in the Bibliophile Belge, vol. vi. The cuts are also in part reproduced in some editions of Irving’s Life of Columbus, and in the Vita, by Bossi.[181]
In 1494 this Cosco-Sanchez text was appended to a drama on the capture of Granada, which was printed at Basle, beginning In laudem Serenissimi Ferdinandi, and ascribed to Carolus Veradus. The “De insulis nuper inventis” is found at the thirtieth leaf (Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 15; Lenox’s Scyllacius, p. xlviii; Major, no. 7; Carter-Brown Catalogue, no. 13). There are copies in the Carter-Brown, Harvard College, and Lenox libraries.[182]
By October, in the year of the first appearance (1493) of the Cosco-Sanchez text, it had been turned into ottava rima by Guiliano Dati, a popular poet, to be sung about the streets, as is supposed; and two editions of this verse are now known. The earliest is in quarto, black letter, two columns, and was printed in Florence, and called Questa e la Hystoria ... extracte duna Epistola Christofano Colombo. It was in four leaves, of coarse type and paper; but the second and third leaves are lacking in the unique copy, now in the British Museum, which was procured in 1858 from the Costabile sale in Paris.[183]