t not one of them contains a
copy of the _Florentine Pandects_, in three folio {422} volumes,
"magnifice, ac pereleganter, perque accurate impressis," as Fabricius
speaks? (_Bibl. Graec._ xii: 363.) This statement, which may be but a libel,
is found in Tilgner (_Nov. lib. rar. Collect._ Fascic. iv. 710.), Schelhorn
(_Amaen. Lit._ iii. 428.), Vogt (_Catal._ p. 562. Hamb. 1738), and Solger
(_Biblioth._ i 163.). According to the last writer, the edition in
question, Florent. 1553, (for a fac-simile of the letters of the original
MS. see Mabillon's _Iter Italicum_, p. 183.) is,--"splendidissima, et
stupendae raritatis, quae in tanta est apud Eruditos aestimatione ut pro 100
Imperialibus saepius divendita fuerit." Would that the race of such
purchasers was not extinct! In Gibbon's notice of this impression (_Decline
and Fall_, iv. 197. ed. Milman), there are two mistakes. He calls the
editor "Taurellus" instead of _Taurellius_; and makes the date "1551", when
it should have been 1553. These errors, however, are scarcely surprising in
a sentence in which Antonius Augustinus is named "Antoninus." The
Archbishop of Tarragona had received a still more exalted title in p. 193.,
for there he was styled "Antoninus Augustus." Are these the author's
faults, or are they merely editorial embellishments?

(14.) In what year was the improved woodcut of the _Prelum Ascensianum_
used for the first time? And has it been observed that the small and
separated figures incised on the legs of this _insigne_ of Jodocus Badius
may sometimes be taken as a safe guide with reference to the exact date of
the works in which this mark appears? As an argument serving to justify the
occasional adoption of this criterion I would adduce the fact, that the
earliest edition of Budaeus _De Contemptu Rerum fortuitarum_ is believed to
have been printed in 1520 (Greswell's _Parisian Greek Press_, i. 39.), and
this year is accordingly visible in the title-page on the print of the
_Prelum Ascensianum_. That recourse must, however, be had with caution to
this method of discovering a date, is manifest; from the circumstance, that
1521, or perhaps I should say an injured 1520, appears on the Badian Device
in the third impression of the same treatise (the second with the
_expositio_), though it was set forth "postridie Cal. April 1528."

(15.) Is it owing to the extreme rarity of copies of the first edition of
the Pagninian version of the Scriptures that so many writers