The aspersion on the scribes was undeserved. If truth be told, either because they used too thin an ink, or else from too slight pressure, the early Venetian printers seldom did full justice to their beautiful types; and though their vellum copies are really fine, those on paper are no easier to read than the average fifteenth-century manuscripts which they imitated. We must, however, forgive John of Speier his little boastings, as this was the last colophon he was to print; and our next, which comes at the end of S. Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei,” contains his epitaph: Qui docuit Venetos exscribi posse Ioannes Mense fere trino centena uolumina Plini Et totidem magni Ciceronis Spira libellos, Ceperat Aureli: subito sed morte peremptus Non potuit ceptum Venetis finire uolumen. Vindelinus adest, eiusdem frater et arte Non minor, Adriacaque morabitur urbe. M.CCCC.LXX. John, who taught Venice there might written be A hundred Plinys in months barely three, And of great Cicero as many a book, Began Augustine, but then death him took, Nor suffered that he should Venetians bless Finishing his task. Now Wendelin, no less With skill equipped, his brother, in his room Means to take Adria’s city for his home. 1470. The business which thus passed into his hands was certainly carried on by Wendelin vigorously, for during the next three years he turned out over a dozen folios or large quartos a year. He seems, indeed, to have outrun his resources, for as early as 1471 his colophons tell us that some of his books were financed for him by John of Cologne, and after the summer of 1473 his type passed into the possession of this John and his “very faithful partner, Johann Manthen.” As Wendelin’s name disappears from colophons for three years, it is probable that his services were taken over with his types; in 1470, however, he was his own master and the object of much praise from his colophon-writer. In his Sallust of this year we read: Quadringenta dedit formata volumina Crispi Nunc, lector, Venetis Spirea Vindelinus. Et calamo libros audes spectare notatos Aere magis quando littera ducta nitet? To Venice Wendelin, who from Speier comes, Has given of Sallust twice two hundred tomes. And who dare glorify the pen-made book, When so much fairer brass-stamped letters look? The Livy of the same year ends with a poem of forty-six lines, which praises Wendelin for bravely rescuing such of Livy’s Decads as remained, “saevis velut hostibus acri Bello oppugnatas,” and by multiplying copies saving them from the fate which had befallen the rest. A poem like this, however, must be reckoned rather with congratulatory verses than as a colophon, though the line in these Venetian books is not always easy to draw. Two more of Wendelin’s publications in 1470 may be pressed into our service—a Virgil and a Petrarch. Of these the Virgil ends: