Student, you oft must see a printed book And think how well upon your shelves ’twould look: The print of shining black, the page pulled clean, A worthy text, and misprints nowhere seen! Where Wenssler’s skilful hand the work has printed I’ll die for it if of these charms you’re stinted; For throughout all this book no single letter Has ’scaped his reader’s care to make it better. The notable and most celebrated work of Boniface VIII, which is called the Sixth of the Decretals, printed in the renowned city of Basel by the skill and art of Michael Wenssler, by the favor of the glorious God, marked with the printer’s shields, has come happily to an end, in the year of the Lord 1477, on December 12. [Illustration: Fasciculus Temporum. Louvain: Veldener, 1476.] [Illustration: Ioh. Faber. Breuiarium super codice. Louvain: John of Westphalia, c. 1475.] So, in 1475, Sensenschmidt and Frisner at Nuremberg issued their Latin Bible “suis signis annotatis”; and at Cologne, in 1476, Conrad Winters ends an edition of the “Fasciculus Temporum”: “Impressum per me Conradum de Hoemberch meoque signeto signatum” (printed by me, Conrad de Hoemberch, and signed with my signet); and in the same year we find Veldener at Louvain using nearly the same phrase (proprio signeto signata) in his edition of the “Fasciculus Temporum.”[7] As an amusing variation on this we have the custom adopted by John and Conrad of Westphalia, in some of the books they printed at Louvain, of placing their own portraits after their colophons and referring to them as their “solitum signum.” Thus in an edition of Laet’s “Pronosticationes euentuum futurorum anni lxxvi” John of Westphalia writes in this very interesting fashion: Hec ego Ioannes de Paderborne in Westfalia, florentissima in uniuersitate Louaniensi residens, ut in manus uenerunt imprimere curaui: nonnullorum egregiorum uirorum desideriis obsecutus, qui prenominatum pronosticantem futura uere, inculto quamuis stilo, compluribus annis prenunciasse ferunt. Non reuera quo utilitatem magnam ipse consequerer (utilius enim opus eam ob rem suspendi) sed quo simul plurimorum comodis ac uoluptati pariter inseruiens, stilum meum nouum, quo posthac maiori et minori in uolumine uti propono, signi mei testimonio curiosis ac bonarum rerum studiosis palam facerem.