THE

ALDINE MAGAZINE

Biography, Bibliography, Criticism, and the Arts.

DECEMBER 1, 1838.

For the Accomodation of Subscribers in the Country, and Abroad, the Weekly Numbers of The Aldine Magazine are re-issued in Monthly Parts, and forwarded with the other Magazines.-Orders received by all Booksellers, Newsvenders, &c.

LETTERS TO MY SON AT ROME. That work, with my retrospection, crude as it

(And lastly, though not least, in fame,) Although you are now treading on classic 3rd. To those sordid and malevolent BOOK- ground, you are aware that I left a country SELLERS, whether they resplendent live in state-school at twelve years of age; and was engaged, ly mansions, or in wretched huts of dark and grovelling obscurity; to whom he says

4th. The Letters of Ignatius Sancho, (could I happily follow his diction,) a black, vulgarly called a negro, or negur, whose freedom of style often gratified me.

From these chambers my letters will be conveyed to you as "part and parcel" of "The ALDINE MAGAZINE."

It is from this port, or harbour, that the 5th. The powerful Letters of Paul to his Aldine vessel is to get under weigh weekly and Kinsfolk; and

monthly, with its cargo of literary merchan

6th. The playful Letters of Peter to his dize, as stated in its original MANIFEST; and Kinsfolk.

Surely then there can be no impropriety in my thus addressing my lucubrations to you. My dear Son, I am,

Your affectionate Father,
AN OLD BOOKSELLER,

LETTER I.

Aldine Chambers, Paternoster Row,
London, Oct. 24, 1838.

MY DEAR SON,

as I have changed my position in the land ser-
vice of others, in the language of Dryden, to
"You authentic witnesses I bring
Of this my manifest, that never more
My hand shall combat on the crooked shore."

I rest my hope on the Aldine anchor, and its little bark, which will ever be freighted with VARIETY. On the arrival of its contents at Rome, I have to request you will return an exchange of commodity, acceptable and interesting to the literary world.

The booksellers and bookish world have al

I date this from a spot of classic name: to you, who are luxuriating in a region of classic glory -upon the very hood of Bassiano and the Pontine Marshes, Aldus Manutius drew his earliest breath. I was glad to hear that you had quitted Rome for a time, and again sojourned at Florence, that city of palaces, and which appears to have gratified you more than Pisa. Your return, however, to the Eternal City was requisite; and the kind attention paid you by the venerable Thorwaldsen, (that heaven-inspired sculptor,) --by your brother artists, architects as well as painters and sculptors,-and by the British nobility,-will, I trust, enable you at some future day to become the architect of your own fortune. At all events, this attention and your letters are eminently gratifying to an old man, hastening on to the septuagenarian.

ready anticipated the objects of the Aldine soil on which, in your neighbour-its favour. Some, well acquainted with the subMagazine, and express themselves warmly in ject, observe that no publisher, or wholesale or retail bookseller, or his assistants, should be without it as it passes through the press.

To return to the Aldine Chambers, and early associations. Nearly fifty four years have elapsed since I first beheld Mr. Stanley Crowder on these premises, surrounded by his dozen clerks, and double that number of black leather water buckets, hung around his warehouse in case of fire. This impressed me with an idea of his respectability and consequence. He was, indeed, one of the most eminent booksellers of that day. He graduated with the celebrated Sir James Hodges, bookseller, at the sign of the Looking Glass, on Old London Bridge, and who made himself conspicuous in voting the freedom of the city to the late Earl Chatham.

The present proprietor of the Aldine Chambers is Mr. Bagster, the printer and publisher of the exquisite Polyglotts, in various sizes, of the "Comprehensive book of Holy Writ;" a performance that will render his name as imperishable as the name of Aldus, after whom he has appropriately designated the property.

sister Mrs. C., and nine of my grandchildren
Yesterday was my birthday. Your dear
affectionate mother and me. They were all in
out of fifteen, spent the day with your aged and
in the morn." I regretted that my great grand-
ruddy health, and, like Aurora, they " ushered
children also were not with me; but they are
still in Warwickshire, reclining on the banks of
the Avon. I must rest upon my oars, for
"The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve,"
and apprised me that I must conclude.

Your affectionate Father,

AN OLD BOOkseller.

P.S. After the biographical sketch of the Aldine Triumvirate, will be given memoirs of the most eminent persons connected with literature in the olden times, with their various marks, &c.; and, what will create considerable interest in the present race, anecdotes of some of the most respectable booksellers and others of our own time and their ancestors, for three, four, and even five generations.

THE ALDINE TRIUMVIRATE. THE " invention of printing" is a subject which has exercised many pens, and has elicited volumes upon volumes of controversy. Mr. Timperley, in his very useful" Biographical, Chronological, and Historical Dictionary of the Most Remarkable Persons and Occurrences

at this period that Aldus first conceived the idea of establishing a printing office. About the year 1488 he is believed to have taken up his residence at Venice, as a spot eligible for maturing his plans; and in 1494, or 1495, he sent forth the first production of his press.

connected with the Art of Typography," after citing more than one hundred arguments and opinions on the priority of claims to the invention, draws this conclusion :- "That to JOHN GUTENBERG is due the appellation of the Father of Printing; to PETER SCHOEFFER, that of Father of Letter-founding; and to JOHN FAUST, In the course of the ensuing twenty years that of the Generous Patron, by whose means Manutius printed the works of the most ancient the wondrous discovery of the art of Printing Latin and Greek authors, as well as many was brought rapidly to perfection." productions of his contemporaries. Whilst he At a future season it is our intention to pre-paid the most sedulous attention to the affairs sent the readers of THE ALDINE MAGAZINE with notices of the early printers; and, of the more eminent, to insert their distinctive monograms and private marks. In the case immediately before us the name and fame of Aldus were so nearly coeval with the first exercise of the noble art, and were at an early period so inseparably associated with the most elegant productions of the press, that we prefer plung-racterised by profound learning and an extening at once, in medias res, and gleaning, from various sources, a concise account of the Aldine Triumvirate-father, son, and grandson-by whom, for more than a century, the business of typography was carried on with a degree of success never yet surpassed, or even rivalled.

of his printing office, he carried on a very extensive correspondence with the literati of Europe; he established an academy in his own house, delivered lectures, and explained the classics to a numerous auditory of students; and even found time to compose a Latin Grammar, a Treatise on the Metres of Horace, a Greek Dictionary, and several other works cha

sive variety of knowledge. So absorbed was Aldus in his professional duties, that, having ordered his other essentially necessary affairs, it was his custom to shut himself up in his study, and there to employ himself in revising his Greek and Latin manuscripts, in reading the letters which he received from the learned in all parts of the world, and in writing answers to them. To prevent interruption by impertinent visits, he caused the following inscription to be placed over the door of his sanctum :—

"Whoever you are, ALDUS earnestly entreats you to dispatch your business as soon as possible, and then depart; unless you come hither, like another Hercules, to lend him some friendly assistance; for here will be work sufficient to employ you, and as many as enter this place."

According to Renouard (in his Annales de l'imprimerie des Aldes), Tiraboski,* the Biographie Universelle, and other authorities, Aldus Manutius was born at Bassian, or Bassiana, a little town in the duchy of Lermonetta, in the Roman territory, about the year 1446 or 1447. He is thought to have been of Jewish extraction. His christian name, Aldus, was a contraction of Theobaldus: his surname was Manutius, or Manuzzio, to which he sometimes added the appellation of Pius, or Bassianus, or Romanus. The first of these appellatives was assumed by Aldus in 1509, from his having been the tutor of Albertus Pius, a prince of the noble house of Carpi, and to whom the Aldus Manutius was the inventor of the grateful printer dedicated the Organon of Aris-italic, or cursive character, which was first cut, totle, in 1495; the second was derived from under his instructions, by Francesco of Bohis birth-place.

The education of Aldus Manutius was received at Rome and at Ferrara: in the latter town he learned Greek under Baptista Guarino. As indicated above, he became tutor to Albertus Pius, Prince of Carpi. In 1482 he left Ferrara, with his noble pupil, to reside at Mirandola, with the celebrated Pius Mirandola. It was

This inscription was afterwards adopted, for a similar purpose, by the learned Oporinus, a printer, of Basil.

another admirable Crichton. He was born in 1463. At the age of eighteen he is said to have been master of eighteen languages, and was accounted a prodigy of erudition. Master of all the liberal arts, an admirable poet, and a skilful disputant, he, in 1486, went to Rome, where he published a challenge, offering to dispute on nine hundred propositions on different subjects. Instead, however, of being answered as he expected, a charge of heresy was brought against him, and he was compelled to leave the eternal city. Settling at Florence, on an estate given to him by Lorenzo de Medici, he devoted his latter years to the study of theology. He died in 1496. It may not be thought unamusing to add, that his works were printed at Strasburgh, in the year 1507, by a printer named Knobloch; when the errata of a single volume occupied fifteen folio pages!