only, printed on different paper and forming a separate quire, is here
placed at the beginning of the volume; but traces of earlier manuscript
signatures still remaining, bear witness to a former order in which the
text preceded the index, as is still the case in some copies of this
edition.

Most of Jenson's early books were folios. But notwithstanding the size
of the leaf (13 × 8 in.), this is a quarto, as both the direction of the
chain-lines and the position of the water-mark prove. However, because
of the limitations of the early presses, it was doubtless printed on
half-sheets, folio-wise, two pages at most at one impression.

Of the twenty-four 15th-century editions of the _Elegantiae_ the three
earliest, one of which was Jenson's, were printed in 1471.

Although the tradition that Nicolas Jenson, master of the mint at Tours,
was sent by Charles VII. in 1458 to Mainz to learn the secrets of the
newly discovered art of printing is otherwise unsupported and, in view
of the manner in which the invention was afterwards carried to France as
well as to other countries by private initiative, improbable, he was
already a master of the art, wherever and however acquired, when he
established in 1470 the press which held the leading place at Venice
until his death in 1480.

The present exceptionally fine copy of the _Elegantiae_, bound in citron
morocco, with gold borders and gilt edges, is the Wodhull copy, bought
in 1786 of Payne for £10.10s.


11. PLINIUS SECUNDUS, C. Naturalis historia. Venetiis, Nicolaus Jenson,