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Notes
The substance of this paper was read to the Bibliographical Society, London, on 15 December 1987. On a number of points it has benefited by the discussion with those then present.
The letter came to my notice through some queries relating to its meaning from a good friend and colleague, the historian E. H. Waterbolk, then quite unaware of the signal service he was thus doing to the history of printing. The status of the text is uncertain. It was in the last of a set of four folio volumes numbered V, VI, VII, VIII, of which only VI had a title. This stated that its contents were descriptœ ex minutis per Feijonem Snecanum a. 1560; and the same may have held for the other three. How it came to Louvain is unknown; the Viglian College did at one time possess, through his bequest, folio volumes of drafts taken down from Viglius' dictation and generally checked and sometimes signed by him, but by 1743 many of these had already disappeared. The situation is fully described by Hoynck van Papendrecht, who gives evidence of having been a precise scholar (transcribing a MS title on *2v of vol. II.i, he refuses to expand but has the printer make shift to insert the marks of abbreviation of the original). The full (Latin) text of the letter is printed below as an appendix; there are no indications that it was manipulated in other respects than in the minutiae of presentation (such as the use of accents on some vowels).
I am most grateful to my colleagues Drs L. J. Engels and B. L. Hijmans, both skilled in Renaissance Latin, for thorough help over my English rendering, as also to Dr F. Akkerman for his opinion on a further point. The ultimate responsibility naturally remains mine.
A New Introduction to Bibliography, 1972, 49, note 32. The last sentence of the Latin needs no sic. The method appealed to Zeltner because it imposed a set speed and eliminated daydreaming.
La Première et la Seconde Partie des Dialogues François pour les Jeunes Enfans, section L'Imprimerie: 'Ie laisse ce que nous auons de commun auec l'écriuain, comme le papier & l'encre, encore que nostre encre soit semblable à la sienne.'—'Quelle difference y a-il?'—'La difference est, que la nostre est faite de tormentine, huile, & fumée: aussi est-il necessaire qu'elle le soit.'
Reproduced by J. W. Enschedé, 'De drukpersafbeeldingen in Ampzing en Scriverius 1628', Tijdschrift voor Boek- en Bibliotheekwezen, 6 (1908) 265-268. This sequel to his substantial study of two years earlier in the same journal was unfortunately missed by Dr Gaskell. To the reference in his New Introduction, p. 123, note 3, should also be added pp. 262-277.
Konrad Haebler, Handbuch der Inkunabelkunde (1925), 65-67, 76-78; Paul Needham, 'Division of Copy in the Gutenberg Bible: Three Glosses on the Ink Evidence', PBSA 79 (1985), 411-426, p. 426.
The precise fault quoted here is interpretation. Plantin was dissatisfied with his work and told him so. He claimed the paper was insufficiently sized, so Plantin gave him good Troyes paper, with which he could do no better. He lasted almost four months in 1564, having started up the third press. (Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus, MS 31, Journal des Ouvriers 1563-74, fol. 3v.)
New Introduction, 42 and note 9; the reference must be to II, 303, where Dr Voet deals with this matter. Dr Gaskell then only knew his book in proof. A fuller discussion of this and some related points is in my 'Plantin aan het werk—Het tweede begin,' Het oude en het nieuwe boek, De oude en de nieuwe bibliotheek: Liber Amicorum H. D. Vervliet, Kapellen (1988), 115-127.
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