Vespasiano’s scholarly knowledge and his special experience in palæography were utilised by such clients as Nicholas V., Cosimo de’ Medici, Frederick of Urbino, and other lovers of literature, in the formation of and development of their libraries. Vespasiano united, therefore, the functions of a scholarly editor and commentator, a collector, a book-manufacturer, a publisher and a bookseller, a series of responsibilities which called for a wide range of learning, accomplishments, and executive ability. It is evident from his career and from the testimony of his friends and clients (terms in this case practically identical) that he was devoted to literature for its own sake. He accepted the rewards secured by his skill and enterprise, and promptly expended these in fresh efforts for the development and extension of liberal scholarship. Vespasiano may be called the last, as he was probably the greatest of the book-dealers of the manuscript period. Born in 1421 and living until 1498, he witnessed the introduction of printing into Italy, and may easily have had opportunities of handling the earlier productions of the Venetian printing-press. Vespasiano was a fitting successor of Atticus and a worthy precursor of Aldus, whose work in the distribution of scholarly literature was, in fact, a direct continuation of his own. As before mentioned, the trade in the production of manuscript copies went on for a number of years after the introduction of printing. The noblemen and wealthy scholars who had inherited, or who had themselves brought together, collections of famous works in manuscript, were for some time, not unnaturally, unwilling to believe that ordinary people could, by means of the new invention, with a comparatively trifling expenditure secure perfect and beautiful copies of the same works. Before the death of Vespasiano, in 1498, however, the work of the printing-press had come to be understood and cordially appreciated by book-buyers and students of all classes, and the trade of the copyists and of the manuscript-dealers had, excepting for newly discovered texts, practically come to an end. The career of Vespasiano belongs strictly to the chapter on the publishers of manuscripts, of whom he was the most important. The man himself, however, through his character and services, belongs essentially to the movement of the Renaissance, of which movement he was at once a product and a leader.