that any known Italian text antedates the Latin, yet to be mentioned. This Italian text is called _Lettera di Amerigo Vespucci delle isole nuovamente trovate in quattro suoi viaggi ... Data in Lisbona a di 4 di Septembre, 1504_. It is a small quarto of sixteen leaves.[543] Varnhagen does not question that the early Italian print is the better text, differing as it does from Bassin’s Latin; and he follows it by preference in all his arguments. He complains that Bandini and Canovai reprinted it with many errors. Ramusio in his first volume had reprinted that part of it which covers the third and fourth voyage; and it had also been given in French in the collection of Jean Temporal at Lyons in 1556, known otherwise as Jean Leon’s (Leo Africanus) _Historiale description de l’Afrique_, with a preface by Ramusio.[544] It is Major’s belief that the original text of the abstract intended for Soderini was written in a sort of composite Spanish-Italian dialect, such as an Italian long in the service of the Iberian nations might acquire,[545] and that a copy of it coming into the possession of Vespucius’ countryman, Giocondo, in Paris, it was by that architect translated into French, and at Ringmann’s suggestion addressed to René and intrusted to Ringmann to convey to the Duke, of whom the Alsatian felt proud, as an enlightened sovereign whose dominions were within easy reach of his own home. Major also suggests that the preliminary parts of the narrative, referring to the school-day acquaintance of Vespucius with the person whom he addressed, while it was true of Soderini,[546] was not so of René; but, being retained, has given rise to confusion.[547] Lud tells us only that the letters were sent from Portugal to René in French, and Waldseemüller says that they were translated from the Italian to the French, but without telling us whence they came. We know, at all events, that Ringmann returned to the Vosges country, and was invited to become professor of Latin in the new college, where he taught thereafter, and that he had become known, as was the fashion, under the Latin name of Philesius, whose verses have already been referred to. The narrative of Vespucius, whether Ringmann brought it from Paris, or however it came, was not turned from the French into Latin by him,[548] but, as Lud informs us, by another canon of the Cathedral, Jean Bassin de Sandacourt, or Johannes Basinus Sandacurius, as he appears in Lud’s Latin. Just before this, in 1504, there had joined the college, as teacher of geography, another young man who had classicized his name, and was known as Hylacomylus. It was left, as has been mentioned, for Humboldt (_Examen critique_, iv. 99) to identify him as Martin Waltzemüller,—who however preferred to write it Waldseemüller.