ERASMUS.

DE DUPLICI COPIA, VERBORUM AC RERUM COMMENTARIJ DUO. AB AUTHORE IPSO DILIGENTISSIME RECOGNITI, & EMACULATI ATQUE IN PLERIQUE LOCIS AUCTI. ITEM. EPISTOLA ERASMI ROTERODAMI, AD IACOBUM WIMPHELINGIUM SELESTANUM. ANTWERP, JEAN THIBAULT, 1514.

      4to. Modern cloth. With title within richly ornamental woodcut borders. (6), 66, (3) lvs. Newly revised and enlarged edition of a famous treatise by Erasmus on a richer Latin, intended to provide his students with a wide range of Latin words and expressions. In the years from 1495 to 1499, Erasmus lived in Paris, studying, but also teaching Latin in order to support his studies. For the benefit of his pupils he prepared several Latin pieces designed to aid them in acquiring a basic competence in classical Latin grammar and provide them at least with some ability in employing the language. Erasmus had long planned to write a book like the present, and a start was made with the "Colloquia Familiaria", which also contained a "Brevis de Copia praeceptio". But only in 1512 the book was ready and first published by Badius Ascentius at Paris. Erasmus had the later later, from 1514 on, published by Schuerer at Strasbourg. The third corrected and slightly changed authorized edition was published in 1517 at Basel by Frobenius, and in 1534 followed the last authorized edition, also by Froben. This formed the basis for the scholarly text edition in the Amsterdam "Opera Omnia" of 1988. By 1540 no less than 134 editions had been published, making the school book to one of the bestsellers of the first half of the sixteenth century. The present edition is based on the Schuerrer-edition of 1514, and starts with the letter by Erasmus to Schuerer at Strassburg, dated at Basel, October 1514. After the index follows another letter by Erasmus to Johannes Coletus, Dean of St. Paul's in London, dated at London, May 1512. At the end a letter to Jacob Whimpeling is added, dated October 11, 1514, followed by a ten-line poem by Erasmus in praise of Sebastiaan Brand. The book is nicely printed in a small "lettre batarde", with large black initials for the numerous chapters into which the two "Books" are divided. The colophon is found at the bottom of leaf LXVI, before the added letter to Jacob Whimpeling. The present edition seems to be extremely rare, Nijhoff-Kronenberg listing 2 copies only, one in the Cambridge University Library, and one in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. Good copy with ample margins.- (Last leaf lacking; few old ms. notes on verso title and in the margins; few sm. wormholes; some sl. staining and thumbing; corner of one leaf rep.; lvs. n1 and n2 misbound). Nijhoff-Kronenberg 2913; not in Vander Haeghen, or Erasmus Collection of the City Rotterdam, etc.; cf. Erasmus, Opera Omnia, Ed. Betty I Knott, Amsterdam, 1988, Vol. I, 6.