Page:Essays in librarianship and bibliography.djvu/174

154 after Rome, was probably less the effect of accident. Joannes de Spira, who, as we have seen, so promptly secured a monopoly of so much value as the exclusive exercise of printing for five years, must have been an enterprising and far-seeing man, to whom the opulence and comparative freedom of Venice would offer greater attractions than the doubtful patronage of an Italian despot. This view of his character is confirmed by the boldness of his first undertakings. Before obtaining any privilege he had produced two of the most voluminous works of antiquity then accessible–Pliny's Natural History and Cicero's Epistolæ ad Familiares. The soundness of his judgment was evinced by the demand for a second edition of his Cicero within four months, an unusual occurrence in the history of early printing. Tacitus followed, and the German printer's patriotism is indicated by his description of the Germania as "libellus aureus." His brother and successor, Vindelinus, displays even greater energy, producing fifteen books within the year 1470, among them so important a work as Livy's History, and gaining especial honour as the first printer of Petrarch. The rest are almost entirely classical, and so are the few books printed in this year by his rival, Nicolas Jenson, the most elegant of all the Italian printers. In 1471 Venetian printing takes a wider range; law books increase; Jensen produces books of morals and of religious edification in the vernacular; Christopher Valdarfer publishes the Decameron of Boccaccio. More important still is the appearance of two