The Times/1892/Letter to the Editor/The first Spanish letter of Christopher Columbus

THE FIRST SPANISH LETTER OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES

Sir,—As everyone is interested in the correction of error, will you allow me to reply to Miss Rae's letter in this day's issue? She believes that the Elis Elvey quarto is a genuine 15th century impression, and her belief is shared by some others. That is a point requiring the decision of experts, is not be settled by an interchange of affirmation and denial. But she also assumes that the Ellis-Elvey quarto is older than the Ambrosian quarto, and that it is, therefore, the first edition. This is imperfect logic, There are three claimants for he honour o primacy—the Ellis-Elvey quarto, the Ambrosian quarto, and the Quaritch folio. A single instance will illustrate the position of each. There is a passage in the text in which the word "although" (aunque) is used, and is required by teh sense. I find it in the Quaritch folio abbreviated it eh form haū que (—i.e. hauque for aunque). I see that in the Ambrosian text the word is given as hauer que,, and it is at once obvious that the printer of the latter misunderstood the abbreviation and extended it into nonsense. This seems to me to be fairly sufficient argument for the anteriority of the folio to the quarto. The Ellis-Elvey quarto exhibits the same nonsensical reading as the Ambrosian, and could not, there, be the first edition. Its true position in the trio will be defined by the bibliographical observer who notices the frequent arbitrary omission or addition of letters at the line-endings—curious indications of an attempt to reproduce the Ambrosian quarto line by line typographically.