Pedeponti
vulgo
STADT AM HOF
Sumptibus JOANNIS GLASTL, Bibliopolæ
Previously it may be as well to observe, that Stadt am Hof is a town bordering on the imperial city of Ratisbon, at or near the court, and Latinized Pedepons as being at the foot of the bridge over the Danube at that part. This book is evidently the identical counterfeit before described, with the mask cast aside by a new title-page, and newly printed prefatory matter, in consequence of a proposal fairly and literally to reprint the first genuine Roman edition. I will just mention one proof of the identity of this and the previous copy in the body of the book. It occurs in the last line of p. 239., where the word Iunij has a stroke, by fault of the type, immediately after the word, thus Iunij[|]; and this is found in both. This is an accidental coincidence, not to be classed with the purposed retention of false spelling.
The Bergomi edition of 1608 is not in my possession; but I am well acquainted with it by actual inspection. My first sight of it was afforded by my friend the Rev. Richard Gibbings, who has published a new edition of it, with an elaborate and very finished preface, in 1837.[4] I have likewise seen it at Mr. Pickering's, a copy which I presume came from the dispersed library of the late Rev. H. F. Lyte. That in the Bodleian I did not feel it necessary to examine. I do, however, possess, though not the original, a very correct, as appears, fac-simile of that volume, whether it was intended as a counterfeit or not. The title, without any addition, agrees exactly with that of the original, as given by your Oxford correspondent. I conclude it to be not the original, from a distinct recollection that the engraving on the title-page there is more rude and broken than in my copy; and, in the body of the work, some parts do not perfectly agree with Mr. Gibbings's reprint, not in the contents of the pages, in some instances in the middle portion, and in the frequent substitution of the m and n for the superscript bar, signifying one or other of those letters. My copy likewise is bound together in vellum, with the Notitia Ind. Lib. Expurg. of Zobelius, Altorfii, 1745. And, by the bye, I should like to know whether, and where, there is another copy of that treatise of eighty pages in England?
[4] Copies may be had at Mr. Petheram's, 94. High Holborn, London.
I am happy in the present opportunity of recommending to the attention of such students as U. U. in the New World, a work of so much real value and interest as Mr. Gibbings's edition of the Bergomi edition of the Brasichellian Index; and flatter myself that, by their aid and example, an end will be put in the mother country to the incorrigible though simple practice of calling every catalogue of condemned books expurgatory, when the accuracy of the title, as far as Rome is concerned, hangs upon the single thread of one imperfect and withdrawn instance; the not easily numbered remainder being exclusively and expressly prohibitory.
The reason for the suppression of the work here examined is, in part at least, correctly expressed by Papebrochius: