EI TVI ET SVI AD IOANNEM TORTELLIVM ARETINVM PER
ME M. NICOLAVM IENSON VENETIIS OPVS FELICITER IMPRESSVM EST. M.CCCCLXXI.
_Fol. 201, 202, blank._

Quarto. Quires [1^8, 2^{12}, 3-4^{10}, 5^{12}, 6-7^{10}, 8^{12},
9^{14}, 10-11^{10}, 12^{12}, 13^8, 14^6, 15-19^{10}, 20^8], 202
leaves, the last two blank, roman letter, 39 lines to the page,
without signatures, catchwords or pagination. Two- to six-line
spaces left for capitals and spaces also for Greek words, to be
supplied in manuscript. Two pinholes on side. The type is Jenson's
first font. Hain 15802. Proctor 4071.

At the head of the first page is a large initial of the interlaced vine
pattern in gold and colors, with a border of the same pattern enclosing
the entire page. The remaining five books, the prefatory epistle and the
supplement _De ego, mei et sui_ are introduced by initials of the same
size and style. Alternate red and blue capitals at the head of chapters,
paragraph-marks also in red and blue.

A few of the spaces left for Greek words are filled in manuscript, but
more are left vacant. When Jenson later in the same year printed
Cicero's Letters, he was provided with Greek type. The blank fol. 9^a is
occupied by a transcript in an early hand of the greater part of lib. i,
cap. iv (_De ficu_), from a MS. the readings of which differ materially
from the printed text.

For the purposes of the index the six books have been divided into a
continuous series of 479 chapters, designated in the margins of the text
by manuscript roman numerals, but in the index by printed numerals. The
references are not, as in later editions, to book and chapter, but to
chapters only. The index, alphabetized by the first letter of the word
only, printed on different paper and forming a separate quire, is here
placed at the beginning of the volume; but traces of earlier manuscript
signatures still remaining, bear witness to a former order in which the
text preceded the index, as is still the case in some copies of this
edition.

Most of Jenson's early books were folios. But notwithstanding the size
of the leaf (13 x 8 in.), this is a quarto, as both the direction of the
chain-lines and the position of the water-mark prove. However, because
of the limitations of the early presses, it was doubtless printed on
half-sheets, folio-wise, two pages at most at one impression.

Of the twenty-four 15th-century editions of the _Elegantiae_ the three
ear