Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/149

Rh originals, indeed more valuable, because of the inaccessibility of the originals.

Of the original of Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle Isole Nuovamente trovate in Quattro Suoi Viaggi, the famous Soderini Letter, probably printed not later than January, 1506, there are but five known copies, one only of which is in the United States. This last, formerly the Quaritch and Kalbfleisch copy, has been reproduced in photographic facsimile several times, so that the actual document has been fairly accessible. The Soderini Letter was also published, but not in photographic facsimile, by Bandini (1745), Canovai (1817), and Varnhagen (1865), but each of these editions contains serious faults. There is also the wellknown Latin version by Martin Waldseemüller, Cosmographiae Introductio (St. Dié, 1507), with its many reissues and translations. The jumbled Ramusio version is rather a curiosity than a thing of permanent value, when compared with other versions of the letter. The many English translations are a further proof of the lasting interest of Vespucci to the historian. The Princeton facsimile of this letter is above criticism except in one point—and this is true of the other facsimiles made from the same copy of the original—namely the blemish in the types on page 10. The same blemish—the smashing or dropping out of several letters, so that two words are illegible—may or may not occur in the other four known copies of the original. If it does, a note should have been added to the volume. If not, that page or a portion of it should have been photographed from one of the other copies, and a note added in regard to it—which could have been inserted at the end or in a preface without destroying the unity of the old print. The same criticism might be offered in regard to the facsimile of the compilation of voyages, Sensuyt le Nouveau Monde. Pages 171 and 182 should each have been photographed from one of the other original copies, in case one be whole, in order to preserve the four obliterated lines of the Princeton copy. The above book is the French translation of the Paesi Novamente Ritrovati, a compilation of early voyages by Montalboddo Fracazio, among the narratives being a version of the Mundus Novus of Vespucci. The three facsimiles would have been improved, so far as their use is concerned, had they been accompanied by bibliographies. It has evidently been the aim of the editors to issue the facsimiles, as far as possible, exactly in their old form without extraneous matter, and it may be the intention to present a complete Vespucci bibliography before the end of the series is reached, as well as the announced bibliography of the Mundus Novus. It is hoped that this will be done, for the Vespucci bibliography is as yet by no means complete, despite the researches of Varnhagen, Harrisse, and others.

The other two volumes, both translations by Professor George Tyler Northup, of Toronto University, will undoubtedly have a wider use than the facsimiles, for the majority of historians, as well as of other people, will go to a good translation rather than to the original. Those few