The Venetians were great bibliophiles and readers. Soon after the discovery of the art of printing, Venice became its most important centre in Italy. By the end of the fifteenth century more books had been published in Venice than in Rome, Milan, Florence and Naples put together. In 1469 the Senate authorised John of Spires to print books for a period of five years. In 1470 Nicolo Jansen was issuing the Latin classics; in 1471 he published an Italian translation of the whole Bible, and in 1476 an edition of Pliny in the vulgar tongue. In 1490 the great humanist, Teobaldo Pio Manuccio of Rome (Aldus Manutius, or, as he wrote himself, Aldus Romanus), chose Venice as the most appropriate city for the achievement of his stupendous design of editing and printing the whole of the Greek classics. He gathered round him the greatest scholars of the age. Cretan Greeks were employed as designers of his types and compositors. Latin and Italian classics were printed in the type first used in the Virgil of 1501 and known as italics or _aldino_. It is said to have been modelled on Petrarch’s handwriting and executed by Francia. Erasmus acted for a short time as editor and reader, and the great Dutch humanist had his translations of Euripides and his _Adagia_ printed there. Erasmus and Aldus were good friends and would have been better if the fare provided at dinner had been less Lenten. The scholar’s heart to-day warms to Aldus, whose steady, glowing enthusiasm carried him through his great task amid all the stress of the wars of the League of Cambrai. He founded at his house the famous _Accademia di Aldo_, where a symposium of humanists met for the study and emendation of the Greek classics. The rules were drawn up and the discussions conducted in Greek. Before Aldus died, in 1515, he had published twenty-eight _editiones principes_ of the Greek masterpieces. He was the first of modern publishers, the first to break down the monopoly of the rich in books. His charming little octavo volumes with their familiar device of the anchor and the dolphin, so precious to the modern bibliophile, were sold at prices averaging about two shillings of our money. They were well read, for of the 24,000 copies printed of Erasmus’ “Praise of Folly,” only one copy has survived, and that in an imperfect state. He died a poor man and his kinsmen and descendants carried on the good work for a century.