Page 643 [643]
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 in¬
cluded, 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 auto¬
graph. 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.