- Browse Repository
- Case Western Reserve University Special Collections
- Kelvin Smith Library
- Manuscript Collections
- The Otto F. Ege Collection
- Seasons -- Poetry (x)
- eng (x)
- Original Leaves from Famous Books
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Show moreCaption: "Desiderius Erasmus' travels and writings made him the great international humanist of his day. To a profound and extensive learning Erasmus joined a refined taste and a delicate wit. He was an extraordinary linguist, a textual scholar, and a fine Latin stylist, and therefore was able to render invaluable service to the great printers of his day, Aldus and Venice and Froben of Basle. Although he was favorably impressed with the Reformation he remained with the Catholic church, hopping to correct some of it's fault. With this in mind he wrote Adages, a collection of Latin phrases and allusions designed to polish and enrich the sermons of the priests, and more significantly to illustrate the fusion of Christianity and Humanism. After the invention of printing, Erasmus was probably the first author who profited by the opportunity for wide circulation, 3200 copies for the Adages, which was in his day even more popular than the now famous Praise of Folly. The first issue of the Adages, a small volume was hastily prepared, was printed by Aldus in the year 1500, while Erasmus was in Paris and apparently in need for money. In 1520, it was reprinted by Aldus ? son, Paul, but issued as the work of a certain "certain Hollander," because of the increasing hostility of the church against Erasmus. This edition of the Adages was nearly finished when Erasmus' friend, the famous printer and scholar of Basle, John Froben, died. "A truer friend that Forben I could not wish from the gods," Erasmus said of this generous patron. This work was completed by Forben's son, Jerome."
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show more"Francis Bacon presents a paradox. He is celebrated by many as the earliest thinker to grasp the implication of the scientific method. Bacon nevertheless rejected the most celebrated scientific discoveries of his own time and opposed the Copernican system with particular severity. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, remarked that Bacon wrote science more like a Lord Chancellor than a scientist. Bacon, however, persistently attacked scholasticism, for he wished to deliver the world from Aristotelianism, and did much with his persuasive writing to substitute for it the inductive method. The De Augmentis Scientiarum is an expansion of Bacon's earlier work, The Advancement of Learning, first published in 1605. It was part of a tremendous project, The Great Renewal, which was left far from complete. In the preface Bacon wrote, "I have propounded my opinion, naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgment by confutations." The New Atlantis,written in 1627 is a scientific Utopia; the central establishment was the so-called House of Solomon, the laboratory of co-operating scientists honored above all other men. In Wisdom of the Ancients, he tries to explain ancient fables by ingenious allegories. Bacon polished all his prose sentences until they reached a "shining beauty that was most poetic." His purpose was "teaching men to think more wisely" and his motto was, "discriminate". This work was printed by John Haviland. The title page was composed in Latin to conform with the text. Restrictions on book printing were so stringent at this time that the period has been called the darkest in the history of English printing". (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "In the year 1540, at the age of twenty-five, Andreas Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, planned this work on anatomy, generally known as the Fabrica from the title De Humani Corporis. This title was given this study because Vesalius considered "the human body a perfect fabric conceived by the creator and achieved by the supreme artist, Nature." "Here are collected," states Dr. Arturo Castiglioni, "the experiences of a teacher who understands the necessity of performing dissections accurately, not according to classical books, but according to critical observations and individual findings." Vesalius, the gallant fighter, courageously attacked the scholastic doctrines from the time of Galen to his own teacher, Sylvius. After this book was issued, a physician no longer had to be a philosopher, able to discuss health and disease in syllogistic form and with the help of classic quotations. Vesalius, enlisted the service of Titian's brilliant pupil Stephen van Calcar, also an ardent anatomist. Calcar's illustrations are the finest that have appeared in any medical book and have only been excelled by the anatomical drawings od Leonardo da Vinci. The delightful woodcuts initials, with the animated putti, in a subtle way supplement the anatomic plates. These initials are also supposed to have been designed by the celebrated Calcar. The printer Johannes Oporinus, who assumed this Latin name from the German "Herbst," was one of the most brilliant scholars of his time. His folio editions of the Fabrica, (the first issued in 1543, and this second edition in 1555); are master pieces of printing. The second edition, printed in a larger font of Garamond type, with added illustrations, is considered as finer issue of "one of the greatest book of Renaissance" for the text as well as format."
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "The Books of Hours, the outcome of changes in the society in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are the best known as well as the most artistic of all the theological volumes of the Middle Ages. With the general acceptance of the Christianity throughout Europe by the year 1300, a general prayer book for the wealthy laity was needed, and these Books of Hours, Horae, Offices, or Hours of the Virgin, as they are called, filled that they want. In general, they contain sixteen sections, including the calendar, with the Saint Days; the Gospels of the Nativity ; the eight hours of the virgin, the most important part; and the Service of the Dead. The Books of the Hours were deemed so essential a means of salvation and of obtaining indulgences that it is probable that there were few families of wealth or nobility who did not posses a copy. Emperors, dukes and merchant princes frequently ordered richly illuminated and illustrated copies as betrothal gifts. Pilgrims usually returned home from their journey to a shrine with as fine a copy as they could afford. Books of Hours were usually produced in the medieval scriptoriums with the patience engendered in a sheltered life and the skill fostered by religious devotion. All materials used, parchment, ink, colors, and quills, were prepared within monastic walls. The monastic book hands (or styles of writing), for long periods of time, were crystallized, so it is possible to allocate an example to a particular country and century, even when there is no mention in the text as to where the book was written." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "This Chronycle of Englande with the "fruyte of times," a compilation of the chronicles of Nennius, Douglas of Glastonbury, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, begin with the creating of the world and ends in the region of Henry VI. It is also know as the Chronicle of Brute, so-called from the opening chapter dealing with the story of Albina and her twenty-eight sisters, daughters of a king in Greece, who discovered Britain and called it Albion. They consorted with Incumbi and bore a race of giants which held the island until the coming of Brut, the grandson of Aeneas, who became the first king of Britain. Two pages tell us "how Kynge Lear was driven out of his londe through his folks, and how Cordeill his youngest doughter help hyme in his need." This story was accepted as authentic until the seventeenth century. The Chronycle also introduces us to the immortal King Arthur, and to Lancelot, Tristan and Perceval. The work was publicly read at the court of the Norman Kings so as to inspire the young squires with emulation. Fair ladies recited it at the bedside of wounded knights to assuage their pain. Julian Notary, who printed from the year 1498 until his death in 1520, is considered as one of the four most important early printers in England, taking his place with Caxton, De Worde, and Pynson, and this edition of the Chronycle is one of the most important issues from his press."
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Thomas Aquinas, born 1227, entered a Dominican monastery but was soon released from his vows and sent to Cologne to attend the lectures of Albertus Magnus. Here this taciturnity, as well as his overweight, made him known among the students as the "great dumb ox of Sicily." His teachers, however, added, "This ox will one day fill the world with his bellowings". His first great book was this Book of Sentences, a commentary on the work of Peter Lombard, which closely followed the original but is ten times as extensive with ratiocinations and distinctions, thus producing a maze of new shades and thoughts. Aquinas great contribution was the reconciliation of reason with revelation, the natural with the supernatural, as the Greek philosophy, at it?s highest point, established the relation of continuity between the spiritual and the material. This Book of Sentences was universally used as a textbook until the end of the Middle Ages and was the inspiration for thousands of doctor?s dissertations. Vaughan, in a recent biography, states that Thomas Aquinas "was a man endowed with the characteristics notes of the three great Fathers of Greek Philosophy. He possessed the intellectual honesty and precision of Socrates, the analytical keenness of Aristotle and the yearning after wisdom which was the distinguishing mark of Plato". This fine book-hand was a revival of the characters used in the scriptoriums founded by Charlemagne around the year 800 and became the inspiration for the first roman type of the fifteenth century printers." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show more"Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch are the triumvirate who in the brilliant fourteenth century, ushered in the Renaissance and founded modern literature. "Boccaccio" to quote Symonds, "was the first to substitute a literature of the people for the literature of the learned classes and the aristocracy,... he delineated the world as he found it". The hundred stories in The Decameron are told by seven young ladies and three-gentlemen while taking refuge from a plague which raged in Florence in the year 1348. They are enclosed in a clever framework. On each of ten successive days, one of the story tellers is appointed king or queen, and under his or her direction each member contributes his narrative, one frequently suggesting the next. These stories in The Decameron, written between the years 1348-1358, cover every phase of human life- the pathetic, the humorous, the base and the noble. Certain of the stories were later retold by Chaucer, other by Lessing, Longfellow and Tennyson. Many other writers come under the spell of Boccaccio, the consummate narrator. The Ashendene Press, perhaps the greatest private press of all time, was founded in 1894 by St. John Hornby and occupied the leisure time of this busy man for forty years. It followed a middle course between the decorative magnificence of Morris' Kelmscott Press and the classic severity of Cobden Sanderson's Doves Press. The type used in this work is "Subiaco" and is based on the type face used by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Subiaco, Italy, in 1465. This large folio, which was in process of printing for seven years, is considered one of the great achievements of the Ashendene Press." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Dante Alighieri, the supreme exponent of the Middle Ages, is, according to Ruskin, "the central of all the world as representing in perfect balance the imaginative, moral and intellectual faculties, all at their highest." Dante's great work, the Divine Comedy, is an original creation. It is explained in his own words: "The subject of the whole work, taken literally, is the state of souls after death, regarded as fact. Taken allegorically, its subject is man, insofar as by merit or demerit, in the exercise of free will, he is exposed to the reward or punishment of justice." In the narrative of his journey, which was inspired by a vision in 1300, Dante is accompanied by two guides, "Virgil, who stands for human reasons,... And Beatrice, who symbolizes divine grace." Virgil cannot lead the poet beyond Purgatory, while Beatrice lifts him through the spheres of Paradise by contemplation. The last line symbolizes the new "love which moves the sun and other stars." The magnitude of Dante's conception is no more wonderful than the composition and form in which he expressed it with metrical virtuosity through the hundred cantos. The lasting popularity of the work is evident from the vast critical literature that has been written concerning this work. This edition of Commedia, printed in Venice, 1491, by Petrus de Piasio of Cremona, is one of the best known of all the numerous fifteenth century editions. For several years, (1480-4183), de Piasio was in partnership with A. Torresanus, into whose hand the equipment of Jenson had fallen after the latter's death." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show more"Miguel de Cervantes, poet, novelist, and dramatist, was endowed with a rich imagination, keen wit, penetrating intellect and great knowledge of life and mankind. Poverty had forced him to enlist in war service against the Turks and African Corsairs. He has captured and enslaved for seven years before being ransomed. These experiences seemed to strengthen the natural faculties of Cervantes. In 1605, when the author was fifty-eight years of the age, the first part of Don Quixote, the work that immortalized his name, appeared. Havelock Ellis in his easy on Don Quixote writes, "It leads into an atmosphere in which the ideal and the real are at home. It blends together the gravest and gayest things in the world... It is a story that a child may enjoy a tragic comedy that only the wisest can understand... It has entered into the lives of the people of every civilized land; it has become part of our human civilization". Don Quixote, 'the most cosmopolitan, the most universal of books', has six-hundred and sixty-seven other personages in addition to the two famous characters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Not one of them is a villain. It is a coincidence that a Shakespeare's King Lear appeared the same year as Cervantes' Don Quixote- and that both these authors died on the same day in 1615. This third Madrid edition, printed in 1608 by Juan de la Cuesta, is a known as the first "Academic" edition since the Madrid Academy considered it of great textual importance. Printing was at a ebb at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Margaret Stillwell, commenting on this facts, adds, "If Cervantes had been born when the Spanish states were in ascendency, who knows what stunning format some sixteenth century printer might have produced for Don Quixote!". (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Aristotle, who lived in the fourth century B.C., had a profound effect on medieval thought. He became "the philosopher" and his word became to be regarded as comparable in weight to the Bible. Papal prohibitions against "reading" the treatises in the universities were disregarded and later withdrawn. Soon an intimate knowledge of Aristotelian writings frequently became the only requirement for the degree of Master of Arts. Of these works by one of the world?s greatest thinkers the Nicomachean Ethics has the greatest value to us today and is the most likely to survive. This masterpiece of Greek literature, named after the son of the philosopher to whom it was dedicated, offers logical explanation of all aspects of human behavior. In it Aristotle maintains that the chief human good and the end of life is happiness, (well being), and that this consists in virtuous activity, the highest form of which is contemplation. This manuscript page was written in Erfrut, Germany, in the year 1365 A.D., thirteen years before the great university was founded in that small city. This university of Erfrut was the first in Germany to introduce into its curriculum the study of classic literature and the humanities. The casual and natural cursive writing, done hastily, no doubt by a secular writer, is in sharp contrast to the handsome and leisurely executed book hands we usually find in the work of the monastic scribes." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa (1292-1298), composed The Golden Legend with the object to write not a collection of lives and legends of the saints for the learned, but a book of devotion for the common people. The stories tell of the struggle of several hundred saints with the devil, who appears in every possible form, bird, beast, reptile, and particularly woman. The saints always triumph. It became one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century, more than seventy editions were printed in Latin, eight in Italian, fourteen in Dutch, three in English. Caxton wrote of this work, "Forlyke as gold passeth in value all other mettalles, so thys legend exceeded all other books". Luther denounced the work as immoral, and preachers in the Reformation period called the tales "Legends of Iron", for, they said, they were written by "a man with an iron mouth and leaden heart." This particular edition, an incunabulum, was printed in Venice in 1480 by Antonio de Strata of Cremona, who became noted for the textual accuracy of his publications. This renown was due the editing and the proofreading by the great scholar, Vittorio de Pisa. This Golden Legend was the first publication of the de Strata press." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Herodotus read his immortal History in Athens about 477 B.C. It had won such popular approval from the Athenians that two years later, by a decree, the author was awarded a literary prize of ten talents ($120,000 to $150,000). As a youth, Herodotus apparently had sufficient means to travel for almost twenty years. His insatiable curiosity led him to converse with priests, merchants, farmers in the field, and even women in their spinning wheels. His easy graceful style, together with his delightful stories, won for him the titles of "prince of story-tellers" and "the first great prose writer." The lt;i>Historylt;/i> of Herodotus deals with a Persian wars of invasion. It is divided into nine books. The first six of these are filled with the migration, commerce, arts, and religious beliefs of the Greeks. It is told as a fascinating narrative and is filed with human sympathy, so that there is, even to this day, no complaint of this method of writing, nor of the long introduction. This edition, the first printed in Greek, uses the famous Greek type of Aldus. The characters, with the numerous ligatures and contractions, were based, it is said, on the handwriting of Aldus' friend, the great scholar Musurus. This History was issued as "the book of the month" for September, 1502, by the Aldine Academy, "Neacademia." This was founded in 1500 by Aldus and his many scholar friends. Their ambition was to edit and print one classic every month, in an edition of one thousand copies. George Haven Putman states, "This list of undertakings (by the Academy) is in my judgment by far the greatest and most honorable in the whole history of publishing." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Livy's great work, Ab Urbe Condita Libri, covers the period from the foundation of Rome in 753 B.C. to the year 9 B.C. or up to twenty years before his death. In fine oratorical language, Livy expresses his burning desire to inculcate again, in his decadent era, the virtues and patriotism of the earlier great Romans. His "pictured page", with vividness of detail, graphic portrayal of events, "reporting" of fine speeches of his heroes, was the inspiration for the painters and writers of historical themes in the Renaissance. This work of Livy's is still the chief source of knowledge of the period with which it deals. However, it ignores the origin and development of the Roman constitution and shows little interest in military art. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the universities if Italy and the court schools introduced the study of the humanities. To meet the increased demand for more numerous and cheaper copies of the Greek and Roman writers, the secular scribes developed the semi-cursive character of the revived Carolingian handwriting, Shading of the strokes disappeared for the first time in centuries, and the writing developed a slope. Book hands of this type became the model for italic types." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreOdyssey , a sequel, which deals with the marvelous, the romantic and the domestic, was written for women. These works were existent as early as 1000 B.C. and were handed down for several hundred years by public reciters until reduced to writing under Pisistratus (605-527 B.C.). There are many famous translation made by men who were poets in their own right; Chapman 1614, Pope 1725, Bryant 1871, Morris 1887. Prose translations are also numerous, the latest being that of the Odyssey by the famous English soldier T.E. Lawrence. He attempted to instill new vigor into the old story by a striking modernization of the language,an example of the fine art of translation". Odyssey" (Ege, Otto F.).
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Justinian's greatest accomplishment was the codification of the Roman law now known as "The Justinian Code." This was done under the direction of Justinian by his principal law officer, Tribonian, assisted by ten learned civilians, between the year 529 and 533 A.D. The formulation of Roman law has often been acclaimed the greatest triumph of the ancient world. Its reorganization and transmission in the Justinian Code was one of the greatest gifts of the Middle Ages to the western world. Roman law established man's rights in regard to his labor and property. It was a useful tool in the struggle between the secular rulers and the potentates of the church. The code stresses the principal of representative government. This, together with the ideas of justice and equality which it embodies, is now part of our American government. Meynial summarizes well the force of the Corpus Juris of Justinian when he writes, "Fourteen hundred years old in its latest recension, eighteen hundred years in the majority of its fragments, it has continued to rule the world through the greatest political and social upheavals ever known, and has outlived by all these long centuries the civilization which gave it birth." Thielman Kerver started printing in Paris in 1497. He was one of the few French printers who continued to print in Gothic manuscript tradition well into the sixteenth century. Kerver was famous for his excellent work in red and black as well as his beautiful designed Books of Hours. After his death in 1522, the press was continued for a quarter of a century longer by his widow, Yolande Bonhomme." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show more"Paulus Jovis, the author of the Lives of illustrious Men, was befriended by Pope Leo X, and made a Bishop by Clement VIII, but because of his scandalous living was retired by Paul III. This work is his most important writing, done in excellent "law style". It consists of nearly two hundred biographical sketches. The contemporary characters selected as candidates for his early "Who's Who" were approached for financial contributions by Jovius almost in the guise of a blackmailer, for "no man ever asked for a present with less reserve than he did". One cardinal presented him with two houses; a villain, for whom Jovius invented a most noble and ancient lineage, gave him a princely gift. For Don Juan III of Portugal, at a price, Jovius added several additional victories. For these he used his "pen of gold", for other who refused his demands he used his "pen of iron". To Jovius, the historian of his age, we are indebted for much information regarding the personal lives of the great who lived in and molded that great half century from 1500 from 1550. In this book we have, in a number of instances, the only surviving portraits of some of these famous people. The finer of these portrait wood engravings are by Tobias Stimmer and Christopher Sichem. The family of Petri is famous in the annals of printing. Andrew, the father of Henri, was formerly associated with Froben, and a relative of Henri had printed a number of works for Luther. Henri himself was knighted by Emperor Rudolf II. Generally, the works of German printers of the late sixteenth century "are discouraging as typographical productions", but these of Petri, using the Roman or "antiqua" letter which condensed italics, give the pages a distinction about equal to that of Estienne in France and the Aldine works in Italy which are produced at the same time" (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers is a collection of eighty-two sketches, divided into ten books. It is the only extant work of this third century biographer. Although full of anecdotes and highly colored narratives, it is still the chief source of information concerning the history of Greek philosophy and the private lives and habits of the most eminent philosophers of antiquity. There are also many valuable quotations from lost works included in the compilation. This translation of The Lives of the Philosophers was made by the brilliant Ambrogio Traversari, the only great monastic scholar of the Renaissance. Jenson, the most noted of all fifteenth century printers, produced about one hundred and fifty books in about ten years. Updike, in his monumental volumes Printing Types, states, "Jenson's roman type have been accepted models for roman letters ever since he made them, and, repeatedly copied in our day, have never been equaled". Our contemporary types which have been inspired by the Jenson letter include the "Golden" type of William Morris, the "Doves" type of Sir Emery Walker and T.J Cobden Sanderson, and the "Montaigne" and "Centaur" types by Bruce Rogers. Jenson's successor, Herbort, in a broadside, extols the virtues of these types in the following glowing phrases. "(They) ought to ascribe (this design) rather to divine than to human wit... His books do not produce weariness but rather give delight by their exactness and precision; they do not harm one?s eye but rather help them and do them good?, hence our debt to that excellent man, Master Nicolas Jenson, is great indeed"." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "The great value of Suctonius' account of the Lives of the Twelve Roman Emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, lies in the information it gives on the manners and customs of that period. This work, written about the year 100 A.D. is a racy biography, filled with anecdotes, gossip and scandal which has "influenced posterity's evaluation of his subjects." As secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, Suetonius no doubt has access to secret sources. He regarded the world with disillusioned eyes after discovering that many "idols had feet of clay." He gave us what he saw. Robert Estienne, in the year 1524, at the age of twenty-one, established his press in Paris. He was the great scholar in a famous family of printers, and a close personal friend, of his patron, Francis I, who gave him the title "Printer to the King." Francis frequently had to come to his friend's rescue when the troublesome theological censors ransacked his home and press. Associated with Estienne was the famous type cutter, Claude Garamond, to whom the italic type used in his book has been attributed. Daniel Berkeley Updike says of his types that they "...have a delightful unconventionality of design, free and spirited, yet noble; full of contrast and movement, yet with elegance and precision of line that marks them as French."
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Under the patronage of Emperor Augustus poetry reached a high level. The three great poets in Augustan Age, 43 B.C. to 14 A.D., were Virgil, Horace and Ovid. The greatest work of Ovid is the longest poem of 11,000 hexameters, Metamorphoses. It is highly imaginative collection of Greek and Gerco-German myths. It sets forth the change of form which people and things had undergone from the creation of world to his day. Julius Caesar changes into a star! Love is the dominant theme in the collection of stories, some great, some trivial. All are written with a cold cynicism, are lively in imagination, and are most ingeniously linked together like the tales of the Arabian Nights. The Metamorphoses has had an immense influence on modern literature. Meres, in praising Shakespeare for his comedies and tragedies, wrote in the year, 1598, "The sweete wittie soul of Ovid liues in mellifluous and honey tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis." The name of the printer, Helizabeth, indicates that the widow of de Rusconibus continued the printshop after her husband's death. The woodcuts, rather primitive, follow the usual custom of having the character indicated by letter or name inside the frame. They also occasionally portray more than one incident in the same setting."
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less
Show moreCaption: "Pliny the Elder, the busy state official and naval officer, spent his nights and all his spare time in the acquisition of scientific data. He had tracts read to him while he ate and often dictated from his bath. His Natural History appeared about 77 A.D. This digest of over two thousand books is a "great storehouse of misinformation as well as information; legend and magic are intermingled with historical fact and ancient science." The thirty-six books cover such miscellaneous subjects as ancient painting, geography of the Roman Empire, gladiatorial contests, industrial processes, Mediterranean trade, mining in ancient Spain, fluctuation of prices in antiquity, nature of ancient beverages, the pagan attitude towards immortality. This work "was ransacked for more than a thousand years by every important searcher for scientific data." This is the first edition of Pliny edited by the great scholar Erasmus and the first to appear under the title of Historia Mundi instead of Historia Naturalis. It was sumptuously printed by Forben, the noted printer of Basle, who was a friend and patron of Erasmus, the scholar, as well as Holbein, the artist. He established his press in 1491 and continued printing until he died in 1527. In this long period he printed no less than two-hundred and fifty-seven works. Nearly all were large volumes of distinctive importance for scholars. Forben's imprint appears in no book printed in German. Many of the texts which were printed in Latin, Greek or Hebrew were edited and proofread by the printer himself."
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
Show less