nd, what is better, a pair
_editionum principum_,--the first Sophocles and the first Thucydides.
Both have the proper attestation at the end that they come from the Aldi
in Venice in the year 1502,--the Thucydides in May, and the Sophocles in
August; hence the former has not the Aldine anchor at the extreme end.
Both are in exquisitely clean condition; but the Sophocles, though
taller than other known copies of the same edition, has suffered from
the knife of a modern binder, who otherwise has done his work with the
greatest elegance and judgment. The Thucydides has a grand page, over
twelve inches by eight; the Sophocles is about seven by four. The type
of both is small, and, though distinct, especially the Thucydides, not
at all what we should call elegant. In fact, elegant Greek type is a
very late invention. There is, I believe, no claim to textual criticism
in these early Aldines; the publishers printed from such manuscripts as
they could get. The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to
a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction. But it is, at
any rate, most curious to consider that these two writers, who stand at
the very head of Greek, or at least Attic, prose and verse, both for
matter and style, should not have found a printer till the fifteenth
century was long past, and then in a style which, for the Sophocles, can
only be called neat. The Thucydides is handsome, but far inferior to the
glory of the _princeps_ Homer. And to own them--for a maniac--O, it is
glorious!

Last comes my special treasure,--my fifteener,--my book as old as
America,--my darling copy of my darling author. Here, at the culmination
of my madness, my friends, especially my brother Henry, are all ready to
say at once what author I mean. For it has been my special mania for
twenty years--thereby causing the deepest distress to nearly all my
friends, even those who have been thought fellow-lunatics, except
one,[D] who is for me about the only sane man alive--to prefer VIRGIL to
all authors, living or dead, and to seek to accumulate as many different
editions and copies of him as possible. I have in these pages chronicled
two. My library holds twelve more, besides two translations, and I
consider myself very short; for to my mind no breadth of paper, no
weight of binding, no brilliancy of print, no delicacy of engraving, no
elaboration of learning, can ever do honor enough to the last and best
of the ancients, who