_Totus es in librorum mercatura, sed in lectura mallem. Quid enim prodest libros quotidie, nunc emere, nunc vendere, legere vere nunquam!_ (You are completely absorbed in the occupation of trading books, but I should choose that of reading them. For what does it profit you to buy and sell books every day if you never have time for their perusal.) And again in 1441: _Sed ex tua ista taberna libraria nullus unquam prodit codex, nisi cum quæstu._[355] (No book ever leaves your book-shop, except at a profit to you.) The publishing undertakings of Aurispa were devoted almost entirely to works of classical literature. Among the authors whose names appear either in the lists of books offered by him or in the correspondence of his friends and clients, are as follows: Philo Judæus, Strabo, Theophrastus, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Proculus, Homer, Aristarchus, Athenæus, Sophocles, Æschylus, Pindar, Oppian, Proclus, Eusebius, Gregory, Aristotle, Plutarch, Plotinus, Lucian, Dio Cassio, Diodorus, and other Greek authors. The Latin writers included Cicero (of necessity), Virgil, Pliny, Quintilian, Macrobius, Apicius, and Antonius. Aurispa seems to have enjoyed the confidence and friendship of all the noted Italian scholars of his time, and the letters of his correspondents speak with very cordial appreciation as well of the importance of his services to literature, as of the extent of the accuracy of his own scholarship. The only correspondent with whom he appears to have had any trouble was Filelfi, but if Filelfi had not managed to have friction with Aurispa, the bookseller would have been an exception among the contemporaries of this irritable and self-sufficient scholar. In 1450, being then well advanced in years, Aurispa gave up his business undertakings, took priestly orders, and lived thereafter as a _scriba apostolicus_, dividing his time between Ferrara and Rome. He declined tempting offers, made through his friend Panormita, to join the literary circle of King Alphonso which had been brought together about the Court in Naples. After Aurispa’s death, Filelfo gave to his son-in-law, Sabbatinus, a very cordial word of appreciation of the services and of the character of the publisher. A portion of the manuscripts belonging to Aurispa’s collection was purchased in 1461 by Duke Borso of Ferrara for two hundred ducats. A large collection of manuscripts was, however, in Aurispa’s possession at the time of his death, and these were taken charge of by Bartholomæus Facius, and, after various vicissitudes, many of them have since found place in existing collections of Florence, Venice, Vienna, Paris, and London. A selection of the letters between Aurispa and his near friend Camaldulensis has also been preserved.