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THE DEVENTER LETTER-BOOK 607 was inserted by Hovius in Oct. 1518, and there the volume ends abruptly. The same considerations mark the limits within which the 30 letters of doubtful date may be placed. Those of Erasmus himself almost certainly lie between July 1517 and Oct. 1518; the letters to Erasmus, except the one from England, may be assigned to the years 1514-8, with considerable probability in favour of 1516-7. It would appear that four leaves of the Roman alphabet and at least two of the Greek have disappeared. In the latter & and q were not included, since both e and 7 end in the middle of letters which are continued on ¢ and p; but the letter on p breaks off abruptly at the foot of the page, so that at least one leaf must be lost and perhaps more. A leaf is missing also between ff. 28, 9, as de la Faye noted in his App. 296, near the end of Hovius’ work. Thus before the letter-book came into the hands of the person, probably de la Faye, who gave it its latest numbering, from 1-238, it had already lost 34 leaves at least, some of which were doubtless filled with letters printed in D and E, whilst a few may have been blank, like some of those still included. Leclerc added to it a few autographs, which were in his possession, but since the title-page already mentioned was written 2 leaves—ff. 225, 6—and 9 of the autographs have disappeared, Spiegel’s letter in Ferdinand’s name, which is numbered 238, apparently not being considered an autograph. The manuscript has also suffered in the hands of de la Faye, who after preparing it for publication sent it down to the press to be set up ; a proceeding which reflects great credit on the compositors who deciphered the abbreviations of sixteenth-century Latin, but exhibits also the carelessness of the age in dealing with manuscripts °. His task was on the whole well done. He took the pains to collate such of the letters in the book as were already in print, and gave some of the more notable differences in his Addenda. In the new letters the text was carefully edited and printed; there are very few misprints, and the number of serious errors is small. And though he defaced the manuscript by underlining the words he wished printed in italics, by transforming the names of places whence the letters were written from the locative case to the ablative, and the dates from the Roman to the modern fashion, not always correctly, by altering the spelling of Latin words and names to that current in his own day, often really obliterating the text by the emendations he wrote over it, we should have little quarrel with him, since the superiority of the older ink has asserted itself and enables the underlying words to be read in nearly all cases. But in two matters he betrayed his trust as an editor; in inserting titles to letters, where they were wanting, and in adding dates of time and sometimes of place, without indicating that he was acting on his own authority. The cases in which titles are attributed are fortunately few, but the number of letters to which he added year-dates forms about one half of the total, and of these a considerable number are wrong. He was evidently encouraged to some licence in emendation by 13 Dr, P.C. Molhuysen in his Geschied. the press by Vulcanius (+1614) and d. Universiteits- bibliotheek te Leiden, 1905, P. Burmann (} 1741), both citizens of Pp- 36, 7, gives instances of manuscripts. Leiden. The practice was doubtless being similarly prepared and sent to widespread.
