The end of Titus Lucretius Carus. When a single copy of Lucretius came into my hands I hesitated as to printing it, because it was difficult from a single copy to correct the slips due to the carelessness of the copyist. But when by diligent search I could find no second copy, moved by this very difficulty I was minded even from a single copy to make a book of the greatest rarity common to many scholars, since it will be easier to correct a few places, either by a second copy unearthed from another quarter or by one’s own study and diligence, than to lack a whole volume. Especially since, far removed from the fables which (as the poet says) delight empty minds, our Lucretius handles the keenest questions concerning the nature of things with so much intellectual acumen and verbal elegance that all the poets who have followed him imitate him so in their descriptions, more especially Virgil, the prince of poets, that with his very words they sometimes make three lines and more. Thomas Ferrandus. The name of Lucretius seldom appears in any of the medieval catalogues, and the number of manuscripts of his “De Rerum Natura” now extant is so small that his first printer’s plea may well be received. Even in comparatively modern books, indeed, a satisfactory text was not always to be obtained for the asking. Chaucer has had no more devout lover than William Caxton, and yet when Caxton printed the “Canterbury Tales” he only succeeded in obtaining a manuscript of the worst class to work from, and when a friend offered him a better text for his second edition the improvement was very slight. In the same way we find the anonymous Florentine editor of two tracts of Domenico Cavalca (we cannot be wrong in assuming that the same editor worked on both) apologizing for the bad text from which he printed the first few pages of the “Frutti della Lingua,” and telling how in the case of the “Specchio di Croce” he had to collate a number of copies in order to replace them by a good printed edition. (i) Frutti della Lingua. Impresso in Firenze con somma diligentia emendato e correcto, excepto alcuni fogli del principio di decto tractato: e tale defecto non da nostra inaduertentia, ma da una copia o uero exemplo tutto corropto e falsificato, impresso per lo adrieto in firenze per un altro non diligente impressore procedette. Onde noi cio conoscendo, inuestigando altra copia emendatissima, secondo quella, quanto ledebole forze del nostro ingegno ci hanno porto, habbiamo imposto emendato fine al presente tractato.