it seems that the copyists needed correction more than the compositors. But the correctors were not always equal to the task. Some of them were grossly incompetent, and still further corrupted the texts they undertook to improve.[1] Considering the difficulties the early printers encountered in getting correct copies and competent readers, it is surprising that their books are not more full of faults. The errors of early printed books have been frequently commented on, but the remarks of Prosper Marchand are, perhaps, the most emphatic:
It is a prejudice altogether too common, a prejudice which dealers in old books have kept alive and profited from, to think that the editions of the fifteenth century are more accurate because they were printed from manuscript copies. Many of these editions were printed from faulty texts, picked up by chance, or selected without judgment by printers who were unable to see their faults, and were still further corrupted by the ignorance and rashness of their editors and correctors. I know that this is a kind of literary blasphemy, but it is warranted by respectable authority. … They are deceived who think that books are accurate in proportion to their age. For the most part, the older they are, the more inaccurate they are.[2]
- ↑ Marchand quotes at length an author who says that John Andrew, the corrector for Sweinheym and Pannartz, was a very presumptuous meddler with texts. When he met a word he did not understand, he printed it in Latin, or put in words at a venture, often making the text more unintelligible than ever. Another ecclesiastical reader, Bishop Nicholas Perotti, was quite as great an offender.
- ↑ Marchand, Histoire de l'imprimerie, vol. i, pp. 97-103, and notes. In support of this assertion he cites the opinions of Schelhorn, Maittaire, Naudé, and other eminent bibliographers, and gives many specifications of the inaccuracies of the early printers from Fust and Schœffer to Froben. Not even Aldus Manutius escapes, for Marchand quotes at length the accusation of Erasmus that the Homer, Cicero, and Plutarch of Aldus were depravatissima. This criticism is hardly warranted by the errors of these editions, and is decidedly unjust in its reflection on a printer whose industry and carefulness as an editor have never been surpassed, and who, in his edition of Plato of 1513, offered a gold coin for every mistake that should be discovered. This damaging accusation would probably never have been made if Erasmus had not quarreled with Aldus, and had not thought it necessary to deny with much asperity that he had served as a corrector of the press in the Aldine office. As a corrector, Erasmus was not beyond reproach, as will be more clearly seen in his reading of the Greek Testament. Froben's lamentation over the two pages of errata in this book (published by him, but corrected by Erasmus) shows how much easier it is to discover errors after commission than it is to correct them in time. Stung by the taunts of critics, Erasmus said that if the Devil did not preside over typography, there must have been a diabolical malice on the part of the compositors.
