Bonjour, Nicolas. This is about half of Chapter Four. There are a lot of things to consider here. It is long, but it is very important. I'll resume tomorrow. A Bientôt. Rob

Chapter Four, "The Chances Of Business" (Pages 109-179).

Page 109 -- Aldus came to Venice [in 1490 at age 38] with a strong sense of purpose. Five years of preparation brought him to a position where he could enjoy some freedom to translate his ideals into reality: but he was never free from the obligation of showing his partners that those ideals were also commercially practicable. How far did he succeed in combining, and in attaining, these two aims? Across four and a half centuries, his achievement looks so triumphant as to need no further justification: around 130 editions in twenty years; some thirty first editions of the Greek literary and philosophical texts in whose value Aldus so passionately believed; a number of unquestionably successful popular works, such as Bembo's "Asolani" and Erasmus' "Adagia"; and two experiments in book-production -- the octavo-sized volume and the italic script -- which were immediately and almost universally adopted in contemporary Europe. ...

We can also be certain that what Aldus planned during the 1490s and what he eventually published were very different things. As early as 1497 he was promising an edition of Plato which did not appear for nearly two decades, and another of Galen which was printed only after his death. For years he dreamed vainly of producing a Bible in all three of the ancient languages.

Page 110 -- Though the business of publishing was making great strides, and though Aldus was leading the way, he still lived in a world of stops and starts, of frantic improvisation, and of desperate last-minute expedients. It is misleading even to treat his career as a unit, since it was frequently interrupted and divides into at least four fairly well defined phases, each with its own features and its own problems.

The first, lasting roughly from 1495 to 1501, is a time of preparation and consolidation, marked chiefly by the development of different types and by a heavy concentration on Greek material. The next three years are a period of exuberant fulfilment, producing most of the achievements for which Aldus is now remembered: the large octavo edition as a medium for literary texts; the italic type; a range of publication which covers every contemporary field of interest in classical and Italian vernacular literature; and the apparent attempt to harness intellectual activity to the service of the press.

Then, at a moment which is hard to pinpoint precisely, signs of difficulty appear. Publications decline in number during 1504 and 1505, then cease altogether. A brief flutter of activity between 1507 and 1509 is immortalised by Erasmus, but cut off by the ruinous wars of Venice with the League of Cambrai: there are even some signs that Aldus intended to abandon printing entirely. Finally, after an interval of more than three years, work starts again and continues beyond Aldus' death in 1515. Superficially, there is a return to the rhythm of 1501-3, but in fact policy is far more cautious. At the end of his life Aldus was a crushed and disillusioned man, tragically unable to see the successes that are so obvious to us today.

Page 111 -- The number of leaves [pages, feuilles? = the "f" in the list that I sent earlier?] printed in Greek totals 4,212, more than double the 1,807 printed in Latin. The five volumes of Aristotle alone cover 1,792 large folio leaves, excluding introductory material: this almost equals the total output of Latin in number, and far exceeds it in overall quantity since most of the Latin texts were published in fairly small quartos.

But the strength of Hellenism can be traced beyond mere statistics, for several of the Latin editions seem also to have been intended by Aldus as satellites to his Greek programme. The edition of Iamblichus which he published in 1497 was a full series of short works by various Neoplatonist writers, translated and revised personally by the Florentine philosopher Marsiglio Ficino, and clearly considered by Aldus as a part of the scheme which he proclaimed in the same year: that of printing "all the works of the divine Plato, and all the surviving commentaries upon him". A substantial part of the astronomical writings printed in 1499 consisted of Latin versions of the Greek originals of Aratus, Theon and Proclus. Even the Lucretius of 1500 was dedicated to Alberto Pio as an exposition of the Greek philosophy of Epicurus, not as a work of Latin literature. When discussing his programme in prefaces and dedications, Aldus was constantly stressing Greek texts: and when he applied for copyright protection in 1496 and 1498, he mentioned only Greek editions.

[COMMENT: Next follows a discussion of the various books that are listed in the 1494-1500 table that I sent in the other email. The next few remarks concern the books in that table.]

Pages 114-115 -- The seasoning of literary works is largely composed of recommended introductions to Greek language and style, some of them dedicated to contemporary teachers on the express understanding that they will be used in the classroom. The most interesting of these is the edition of Theocritus, Hesiod and selections from the Greek gnomic poets. Relatively short, containing a wide variety of linguistic forms, and packed with mythological or moralising passages, these works were obvious favourites for the educationalist, had been strongly recommended by Battista Guarino, and had already received a certain amount of attention from Aldus' predecessors. It was Guarino who suggested them to Aldus, and the dedication was addressed to him. ... This entire sector of Aldus' publications has a strongly programmatical character, and such evidence as we have suggests that the books found a market chiefly amongst the students for whom they were obviously intended.

Page 115 -- But two vague and slightly threatening features lurk, almost indistinguishable in the background of this bright picture. First, it seems certain that Aldus was not progressing nearly as fast as he had originally planned. We have already seen some signs of this in the unfulfilled promises of his introductions, and there is further proof in his second application for copyright, which was presented to the senate on 6 December 1498. The document lays stress on plans for the publication of medical works, names a number of literary and philosophical texts -- the Suda, Demosthenes, Hermogenes, Plutarch Dioscurides, Stephanus, and the commentators on Aristotle -- then peters out with the ominous words "Let no more be written." Only Stephanus and Dioscurides had appeared within the next four years.

Second, these Greek texts were exceedingly expensive. This follows naturally from what has already been said about the difficulty and cost of working with Greek types, but Aldus has such a reputation as a publisher of cheap editions that it is as well to establish the point beyond doubt by comparing the prices quoted in the catalogue which he brought out in 1498 with those charged by his predecessor Francesco da Madiis during the 1480s.

[COMMENT: Aaaahhh! Voici! Aldus made a second petition for a copyright in 1498, listing some books that he planned to publish; but he published only two of those he listed. His official list did not include Philostratus or Rhetores Graeci, but Life of Apollonius was the first Greek book published in the second period of the copyright. Was he trying to hide his intention to publish Philostratus? He published different books than those he named in his application. Also, even if it was so expensive to publish in the Greek font, nevertheless he chose Philostratus ahead of Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Sophocles, Herodotus, Dante, Ovid, Euripides, Xenophon, Homer, Aesop, Plutarch and others. So, technically first or not first, in 1501 Aldus obviously considered the publication of Philostratus more important than any of the other more famous writers who followed. WHY???!!!

[Let's think about this logically. Aldus was a scholar and a friend of many "men of letters" who owned prestigious libraries. Aldus obviously was fluent in Italian, Latin and Greek. He was an obsessive linguist (like I am). He taught Greek to men like Alberto Pio. So, his first priority from 1495-1500, as noted above in Lowry, was to provide some Greek grammar books and little "readers' digests" to primarily students, so that they could progress on to the more difficult Greek volumes like Aristotle, WHICH HE DID PUBLISH AHEAD OF APOLLONIUS; so these students could read them in Greek, because they hadn't yet been translated and published in Latin. Obviously a lot of students in Europe wanted to be able to read the Greek classics. Aldus' first copyright expired, and he applied for a second one. His second phase of publishing began in 1501, with a booklet on Christian poetry followed immediately by Life of Apollonius, which had not been mentioned in the application for the copyright.

[Why did he do this? If he wrote that he hated the book himself, as I quoted yesterday, then someone "pressured" him to publish Apollonius along with Eusebius -- FOR A REASON! If Aldus himself didn't like the book, then he wouldn't have published it first, in front of all the other famous writers. THIS WAS A PLOT TO GET THAT BOOK PUBLISHED LEGALLY AND DISTRIBUTED WIDELY BEFORE IT COULD BE OSTRACIZED AGAIN! And it worked! Even when the book was printed in English by Charles Blount 180 years later and Blount was threatened by the Church of England, "the cat was out of the bag" and the Germans and the French were publishing it -- to hell with the Church of England. And the Vatican couldn't really say anymore or condemn it BECAUSE IT ALSO CONTAINED THE TREATISE OF BISHOPageEUSEBIUS! THE PERFECT PLOT!

[So -- who was "the mystery man" behind this plot? There is a very peculiar paragraph that follows in the text. It concerns the Italian-language book "Hypnerotomachia Polifili" which was published in 1499 at the end of Phase One. And I am not sure what that means in English, as I just looked up some equivalent types of words in the Italian dictionary, like "hypnotism". This was one of the last three in Phase One and only 3 books ahead of Philostratus in Phase Two. At any rate the narrative continues.]

Pages 118-119 -- During this first period of his printing career, Aldus published only two editions in Italian, both appearing within a single year. But one of these books, the "Hypnerotomachia Polifili", has generated more controversy than the rest of Aldus' publications combined. Whole books have in their turn been devoted to it, and learned studies beyond counting have left its problems still unsettled. Who wrote it? Why did he play hide-and-seek with his readers? Who was the illustrator, where did he get his ideas, and how wide an effect did they have on the art of the time? What part did Aldus play in the whole scheme? Where much is uncertain and space is limited, the razor must be applied; this is a study of Aldus, and we shall confront only the questions which relate immediately to him. The issue of authorship I believe to have been settled at least beyond reasonable doubt. The identity of the illustrator seems to me to present problems which are insoluble without further documentary evidence, and in the meantime are best left to art-historians competent to deal with them. Aldus' part I believe, however unfashionably, to have been fairly slight: great enough to provide illustrations of the tensions and embarrassments into which a printer could run, but quite insufficient to allow any argument about his own views on Italian literature.

[COMMENT: This is slow work, but I have plenty of time. Next there follows a very interesting story about this illustrated "erotic novel", which is what this book turns out to have been. But since it is such a strange set of circumstances, and since it precedes Philostratus by only 2 years, it is definitely worth considering all these small details. To continue.]

Pages 119-125 -- The first link in the chain of events, though apparently irrelevant, is at least securely documented. On 10 May 1498 the Senate resigned itself to the fact that there was a plague in the city. The proveditori sopra la sanità [overseers of public health] took prompt measures to prevent large gatherings, and the outbreak was contained with merciful speed. But one of its victims was Aldus. He cannot have been desperately ill, since work was going ahead in the print-shop by June, but the horror of death cut deeply into his sensitive and religious temperament, inducing him to vow that he would become a priest if he recovered.

Having done so, he promptly appealed to Rome for a dispensation on the grounds that he was very poor and his trade was his only means of support: a somewhat disingenuous plea, one feels, since he was not really poor, he had other means of support in his teaching skills, and he must have been perfectly well aware that his colleague Bonetus Locatellus had been both priest and printer for many years.

Alexander VI [Rodrigo Borgia] issued the dispensation, but suggested to the Patriarch that Aldus should be turned towards "other works of charity". Besides his own conscience, Aldus was now subject to definite moral obligations, possibly even checks, since the Patriarch Tomaso Donà had recently been taking an interest in improper publications, and the influential canon-lawyer Cardinal Felino Sandeis of Lucca had noted in his copy of the Aldine Iamblichus that there was "much in this book which a Christian should not read". He had read it himself with great absorption, but that was not the point.

[COMMENT: Okay. Let's assume that this is all true. It was the middle of 1498, just 2-3 years prior to Philostratus/Eusebius. Aldus became a "priest"; and Rodrigo Borgia suggested that he "tone down" the "radical" nature of the subject matter that he was printing, even telling the Patriarch to keep an eye on Aldus. Aldus had to be "a good boy" now, or he would risk having his "copyright" privileges taken away from him, which would have shut him down, right? But then only a short 2-3 years later he dared to publish Philostratus, a book that he personally didn't like in the first place, the publication of which could have easily offended the Pope and other officials. And another Patriarch had already commented that Iamblichus should not be read by Christians! Aldus was definitely under suspicion, right? Now, let's see what happened next!]

The required dispensation came through on 11 August 1498, and it cannot have been long afterwards that Aldus received one of those visitors whom he came to dread in later life: a literary dilettante with a manuscript which he wished to have published. In this case the man concerned was Leonardo Crasso, a well connected Veronese gentleman whose brother was an officer in the Venetian army and who had just secured his own doctorate of Law on the way to becoming an Apostolic protonotary. The work he had to offer was an amorous romance in two distinct but loosely associated versions. ...

[COMMENT: Then follows a description of the "amorous" story, which I'll omit here.]

This was a linguistic and literary debauch, choked with recondite imagery, erudite periphrases, and exotic verbiage: a work so bizarre that many critics have felt a certain uneasiness at Aldus' agreeing to print it. He is reputed, after all, to have been a man of good taste, and his handling of Maioli and Celtis shows that he was quite capable of saying "No" to a work he considered unsuitable. But I doubt if Aldus was inclined, or able, to feel such scruples in this case. For all its weird form, "Polifilo" contained much to interest him. The linguistic experiments must have intrigued a man who had pointed, only two years earlier, to the analogy between the rich pattern of Greek literary dialects and the variations in Italian local usage. Aldus, along with all his close friends, was passionately involved in the study of the antique remains described. He may have felt challenged by the technical difficulties of printing and illustrating such a work. He may even have been mildly titillated by a story which set the same value as he had done on a vow taken during a dangerous illness. And though the "high fantasies" contained in the book may be utterly alien to our own empirically minded age, they were acceptable to Rabelais and were thought worthy of Sir Philip Sidney's circle by an anonymous English translator.

But all such aesthetic considerations probably weighed less than the stern dictates of business and public relations: Crasso's brother Francesco was an associate of the influential doctor Benedetti, whose account of the French invasion Aldus had published two years before, and who could exert a strong leverage through his own friendship with Giorgio Valla. "Polifilo" almost certainly arrived at the print-shop with the backing of literary friends whom Aldus neither dared nor wished to offend. It also offered a commission worth several hundred ducats, which after a period of enforced idleness he could ill afford to refuse.

What Aldus may not have understood at once is the nature of the author and the full significance of his work. We can be certain that he soon knew who the author was, for a large part of the text described buildings, inscriptions, triumphs and sacrifices in a detail which demanded illustration, and the programme of illustration which resulted was so closely integrated with the text and the design of individual pages that it could hardly have been carried out unless the author, the illustrator, and the printer had sat together in consultation. Aldus must also have been one of the first to realise a fact which other readers soon discovered -- that the initial letters of each succeeding chapter concealed the author's name in the acrostic "Poliam Frater Franciscus Columna Peramavit". Some copies actually carried the same name -- Francesco Colonna -- in a short introductory poem, and since Francesco seems to have borrowed money from his Provincial to help with the financing of the project, it is probable that Aldus also had business dealings with him.

At first sight, Fra Francesco must have seemed respectable enough. He was a Dominican, attached to the famous Venetian house of San Giovanni e Paolo, and he was esteemed by Benedetti, who commissioned him to say masses for his soul. He may have been a "sfratato" -- a member of an unreformed Order living half in, half out of his community -- but even in the time of Giordano Bruno, such people could often find a comfortable niche in Venetian society. Aldus' associates Fra Urbano and Fra Giocondo fell into the same general category, and were accepted everywhere. It could have taken the printer some time to discover that Fra Francesco was a more than usually vicious character, who had twice been called before the highest authorities of his Order and once expelled from Venice on so many charges that the senior members of his community had also been held under threat.

[COMMENT: "Sfratato" -- what is that? It looks like a "brotherhood" title related to the word "fratello" for brother.]

Though he was by this time in his late sixties -- he was born in 1433 -- Colonna's cup of iniquity was still far from full. In 1516 he was at the centre of a scandal which split San Giovanni e Paolo from top to bottom, involving both the Venetian Council of Ten and the General of the Dominican Order. Fra Francesco accused several of his superiors of sodomy, then retracted and was himself accused and convicted of seducing a young girl. Banished yet again from Venice, he still managed to return -- apparently something of a legend by this time, for when he finally died in 1527, full of years and sin, his misdeeds were enshrined in a novel by Matteo Bandello. ...

Whether or not some real love-intrigue lay behind the story [Polifilo], Fra Francesco's character would have excited far more suspicion in his ecclesiastical contemporaries than it does in us. He was not the best of associates for Aldus, who in 1498 had special reasons to be discreet. ...

[COMMENT: Even Lowry recognizes that Aldus had to be "discreet" at this time, as I mentioned above. He must have been under a lot of "local pressure" to publish this "amorous" book, which I would love to see and which I am going to search for on the Internet eventually. Certainly the publication of this book, right around the renewal of Aldus' copyright, would have seemed more "scandalous" than the forthcoming Apollonius, which he had to be careful about as well. This is curious, n'est-ce pas? To continue.]

This book [Polifilo] was a sensuous wallowing in the revived glories of the pagan past, stripped by the force of its illustration of any real pretence to moral symbolism. The illustrations in Rubeo's edition of the "Metamorphoses", to which the Patriarch of Venice had objected only two years earlier, are by comparison indifferent in execution and innocuous in content, even when they deal with scenes such as the love of Ares and Aphrodite, which had attracted censorious attention since Plato's time.

We can now appreciate the artistry without fear of the paganism, and there were a number of contemporaries -- mostly rather disreputable painters, like Giorgione, his pupil Tiziano Vercellio, and a mysterious German visitor named Albrecht Dürer -- who were prepared to accept both elements together. But the bulk of steady and orthodox opinion, which Aldus needed to conciliate, will have found the work an obscene, heathen carnival.

The particular circumstances in which "Polifilo" actually appeared gravely aggravated the moral difficulties already inherent in the text. Throughout the spring of 1499 there were rumours of war, confirmed in July as a mighty Turkish armada put to sea and sailed west. It was met off the Peloponnesus by the most formidable fleet Venice had ever assembled, but the running fight which followed during August failed to prevent the Turks breaking into the Gulf of Lepanto and seizing the Venetian fortress. The feeling of disillusion was profound, and public opinion snarled for scapegoats. The fleet-commander Antonio Grimani narrowly escaped execution. Other prosecutions followed during the winter months, and, when the war went no better next year and the vital town of Modon was lost, Venice was gripped by one of those spasms of collective self-reproach which blamed defeat on the just anger of the Almighty.

An unsigned letter to the doge denounced public venality and private immorality, calling for repentance before the tide of Turkish success could be checked. It was read aloud in the council-chambers, and published by the vigilant Patriarch Donà. Venice was embarking on a moral, as well as a military crusade: and, by a stroke of disastrous timing which can rarely have been equalled in the annals of publishing, "Polifilo" appeared in December 1499, just as the agitation was getting under way.

Aldus was plainly uneasy about "Polifilo" well before copies were actually on the bookstalls. He printed his own name only in small type, at the bottom of a page of corrections, and a number of surviving copies have the less discreet sections inked out in a style so uniform as to suggest that it was done before the books left the workshop. But since he rarely signed commissioned work at all, it is hard to resist a suspicion that Aldus was also fascinated by the technical virtuosity which he and his collaborators had achieved. We do not know whether there were any direct repercussions. Possibly this was one of the occasions on which high connections could help. Very probably the obscurity and expense of the book, which cost a ducat, scared off the usual buyers of Italian romances, kept the sales at the low level later deplored by Crasso, and so averted the scandal which gathered round a popular edition like Rubeo's "Metamorphoses". But considering his own circumstances and the atmosphere in Venice, it is hard to believe that Aldus did not feel some need to vindicate his reputation and his abandoned vocation.

[COMMENT: That is the end of this long section. Now a couple of pages of miscellaneous history follow, and the narrative resumes. I am reading this at the same time that I am transcribing it; and in looking ahead, I can see that there is coming a lot of irrelevant information, at least as far as we are concerned.]

Pages 126-128 -- In Venice itself a renegade associate named Gabriel of Brasichella made a direct attempt to undermine Aldus. Zacharias Callierges was cooperative and tactful, avoiding any infringement of the Aldine patents, sharing editors, possibly even concerting plans to some degree. But there was more than an implied threat in the Cretans' comparison of their type-face to Aldus', and in the fact that they could produce four superb folio editions in sixteen months. When Aldus complained about the disasters of the age, he can hardly have known that, in weeding out these various rivals, war and economic catastrophe were being no bad friends to him.

Lorenzo de'Alopa's organisation seems to have died of slow starvation rather than sudden misfortune, though its affairs have not been fully investigated. Its last publications were two volumes of the Platonic commentaries of Marsiglio Ficino, which appeared at the very end of 1496: by this time, Ficino was sick and disillusioned; Lascaris had been tempted away by the conquering French, and his satellites had dispersed. The driving-force had simply vanished.

In contrast to this, the story of Gabriel of Brasichella has an intriguing flavour of drama and espionage. In 1497 he is honourably mentioned by Aldus as a collaborator: on 7 March of the following year he obtained a ten-year copyright on his own projected editions of Pollux, PHILOSTRATUS, the Letters of Brutus and Phalaris, and the Fables of Aesop; but on 20 May he felt it wise to seek confirmation of his privilege, hinting darkly that his plans were suspected "by those who are too devoted to their own advantage". The new concession was granted, and the Letters of Brutus and Phalaris appeared in June, printed in a type which bore a dangerous resemblance to the Aldine cursive -- itself protected by the privilege of 1496.

Gabriel [the publishing company] disappeared from sight immediately and irrevocably. In September, Alberto Pio was inquiring about Aldus' "lawsuit with the men of Carpi", and we can reasonably infer what this means from the fact that Gabriel's collaborators, Benedetto de Manzi and Giovanni Bissolo, both of Carpi, had been obliged to leave Venice for Milan by the following spring. There must have been a head-on collision between two irreconcilable copyrights, with the victory going to the party with the greater influence: and that issue at least can never have been in doubt.

Bissolo and de Manzi did not forgive Aldus, and devoted the next few years to a vain quest for revenge: in 1499 they formed a company with Demetrius Chalcondylas to print the "Suda", only to have their enterprise snuffed out by the Franco-Venetian invasion of Milan; and in 1506 de Manzi made a brief appearance in Carpi, where he printed two editions with a blatant imitation of the Aldine Italic fount. On this occasion, Aldus does not appear to have taken any serious action. The facts suggest that, of the three men involved, Gabriel of Brasichella may have been a sinister industrial spy of the kind we met in the first chapter: Bissolo and de Manzi were probably no more than victims of a system which was still to vague to realise the implications of the numerous copyrights it was granting.

[COMMENT: First, Gabriel had the "copyright" to Philostratus in 1498. Then Aldus apparently put them out of business because of some sort of technical violation of plagiarism, connected with the "stolen" font being used by Gabriel. Then 3 years later, Aldus (already under "suspicion" as a result of publishing "Polifilo" and being watched by the Patriarch and the Pope) "stole" or "usurped" the copyright for Philostratus <?> from Gabriel. To continue.]

The press of Zacharias Callierges appears to have been engulfed, along with an unknown number of others, in the widespread commercial crisis which convulsed Venice at the very end of the fifteenth century. In early 1499 the business-community was shaken to its foundations by a series of bankruptcies: from 1500 the number of presses and publications declined steeply. We cannot link cause and effect precisely, but we can be sure that war lay at the origins of the disaster.

Page 129 -- But few economic crises blow nobody any good. In this case the strangest beneficiary was probably the disgraced captain-general Antonio Grimani, who was awaiting trial for his life while his company, which controlled the only available supplies of spice, made 40,000 ducats out of a shortage created partly by the naval incapacities of its own manager. Similarly, Aldus' fortunes appear to have advanced in step with the general recession in printing. In a preface of 1502 he wholly abandoned his usual lugubrious tone and expressed delight at the expansion of the taste for good literature, and at the way in which his labours were being rewarded. Such figures as we have appear to justify his confidence. He printed eleven or twelve editions in 1501; seventeen in 1502, the highest total he ever achieved; eleven again in 1503. Overall, his output over the three years more than doubles that of printers such as de Gregoriis and Tacuinus who had been close competitors only a few year earlier.

Luck was probably the main ingredient of success. As was mentioned in the previous chapter, Aldus had exceptionally strong financial backing, and his company's moneys were channelled through the bank of Mafio Agostini, one of the two which survived the catastrophe of 1499. By 1500, the chances of war and politics had pruned away his rivals. It cannot be shown in detail that the labour-force of Callierges and Gabriel of Brasichella passed into Aldus' workshop, but it is certainly true that Greek scholars now devoted their editorial skills exclusively to the only man who was printing Greek texts, and it is likely that compositors will have done the same thing.

[COMMENT: Next follows 4-5 pages of miscellaneous information, such as publishing techniques, type fonts, etc. This goes back to the original theme of the book, which is a discussion of the early history of printing in Venice. The modern-day computer program "Aldus Pagemaker" is named after Aldus Manutius and contains a number of his variety of font styles. To continue.]

Page 134 -- The library of Giorgio Valla, which played an unspecifiable but definite part in Aldus' editorial plans and was later purchased by his patron Alberto Pio, was composed largely of manuscripts written in a similar [Greek] style. Men like these provided the market Aldus had to satisfy. In commissioning Francesco Griffo to cut four different and increasingly modest versions of the cursive onto punches, he cannot be blamed any more than can a chameleon for turning green against a background of thick jungle foliage.

[COMMENT: Then there is another 7 pages of technical information. On page 141 Lowry returns to a discussion of the origins of manuscripts and related material, starting in 1501. More tomorrow, as usual. Roberto]