DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.30697#0071
Without Date.]
DONATUS.
63
555. Donatus. Without Name ofPrinter, Place,
or JDate. Folio.
It is supposed that the printing of the Eight Parts of Speech, by
DoNATUs,formed the first typographical effort of the presses of Guten-
berg, Coster, and Sweynheym and Pannartz. Fust and Sclioeffer also
lay claim to a very early impression of this once popular work. We
may consider the impressions of each of these printers by way of an
introduction to the present article.
Seiz, the resolute ehampion for the Haarlem press, says, that in 1435
Coster printedthe Donatus with wooden blocks ; but in 1439 he printed
it ‘ meliori modo, iis instrumentis, quse paraverat, &c.’ Annus Tert.
Scec. lnvent. Art. Tijpog. 1741, 8vo. p. 156. This, it must be confessed,
is a very bald and confused testimony. Meerman, in his xvtli and vith
plates of the Orig. Typog., gives engraved fac-similes of the Haarlem
Donatus, which approach nearer to the fac-simile of the third edition of
Donatus, by Gutenberg, than to tlie first or second edition by the same
printer—according to the engraved fac-similes of tlie latter, in Fischer’s
Typographischen Seltenheiten, pt. i. p. 86. But the types of the second
edition of Donatus, by Gutenberg, in the latter work, strongly resemble
those which tlie same author has introduced in his Essai sur les Monumens
Typographiques de Gutenberg, p. 6S, and are rather similar to the tha-
racters with which the present edition is executed. One thing is
certain: neither of the editions mentioned by Fischer, in his ‘ Essai/
accord, in description, with the present: nor is this the same impression
as the one of which Fleinecken and De Bure give fac-similes: Ide'e
Generale, fyc. p. 257: Cat. de la Valliere, vol. ii. p. 8-10.
That Sweynheym and Pannartz printed this work, we have their own
positive testimony: see vol. i. p. 160: and tliat such impiession of it
was most probably executed in the Soubiaco monastery, ’there is every
reason to conclude—since it is mentioned the first in order in the list
of their works. Yet no copy of this Donatus has been described by
any bibliographer of the last or of the preceding century. Nor has
better success attended the search after the Donatus printed by Fust
and Schoefler; as the three editions of it, by these printers, wliich
are described by Panzer, vol. ii. p. 139, are supported only by con-
jectural evidence. Wiirdtwein cbserves a prudent silence upon the
subject. We come therefore to the copy now under consideration.
DONATUS.
63
555. Donatus. Without Name ofPrinter, Place,
or JDate. Folio.
It is supposed that the printing of the Eight Parts of Speech, by
DoNATUs,formed the first typographical effort of the presses of Guten-
berg, Coster, and Sweynheym and Pannartz. Fust and Sclioeffer also
lay claim to a very early impression of this once popular work. We
may consider the impressions of each of these printers by way of an
introduction to the present article.
Seiz, the resolute ehampion for the Haarlem press, says, that in 1435
Coster printedthe Donatus with wooden blocks ; but in 1439 he printed
it ‘ meliori modo, iis instrumentis, quse paraverat, &c.’ Annus Tert.
Scec. lnvent. Art. Tijpog. 1741, 8vo. p. 156. This, it must be confessed,
is a very bald and confused testimony. Meerman, in his xvtli and vith
plates of the Orig. Typog., gives engraved fac-similes of the Haarlem
Donatus, which approach nearer to the fac-simile of the third edition of
Donatus, by Gutenberg, than to tlie first or second edition by the same
printer—according to the engraved fac-similes of tlie latter, in Fischer’s
Typographischen Seltenheiten, pt. i. p. 86. But the types of the second
edition of Donatus, by Gutenberg, in the latter work, strongly resemble
those which tlie same author has introduced in his Essai sur les Monumens
Typographiques de Gutenberg, p. 6S, and are rather similar to the tha-
racters with which the present edition is executed. One thing is
certain: neither of the editions mentioned by Fischer, in his ‘ Essai/
accord, in description, with the present: nor is this the same impression
as the one of which Fleinecken and De Bure give fac-similes: Ide'e
Generale, fyc. p. 257: Cat. de la Valliere, vol. ii. p. 8-10.
That Sweynheym and Pannartz printed this work, we have their own
positive testimony: see vol. i. p. 160: and tliat such impiession of it
was most probably executed in the Soubiaco monastery, ’there is every
reason to conclude—since it is mentioned the first in order in the list
of their works. Yet no copy of this Donatus has been described by
any bibliographer of the last or of the preceding century. Nor has
better success attended the search after the Donatus printed by Fust
and Schoefler; as the three editions of it, by these printers, wliich
are described by Panzer, vol. ii. p. 139, are supported only by con-
jectural evidence. Wiirdtwein cbserves a prudent silence upon the
subject. We come therefore to the copy now under consideration.