Note 384 — Chapter III

This very rare book, unnoticed by most bibliographers, is of some importance in the history of literature. It is a small quarto tract, entitled, Conjugations verborum Græcæ, Daventriæ noviter extremo labore et impressæ. No date or printer’s name appears. A copy is in the British Museum, and another in Lord Spencer’s library. It contains nothing but the word τυπτω in all its voices and tenses, with Latin explanations in Gothic letters. The Greek types are very rude, and the characters sometimes misplaced. It must, I should presume, seem probable to every one who considers this book, that it is of the fifteenth century, and consequently older than any known Greek on this side of the Alps; which of itself should render it interesting in the eyes of bibliographers and of every one else. But fully disclaiming all such acquaintance with the technical science of typographical antiquity, as to venture any judgment founded on the appearance of a particular book, or on a comparison of it with others, I would, on other grounds, suggest the probability that this little attempt at Greek Grammar issued from the Deventer press about 1480. It appears clear that whoever collected with extreme labour these forms of the verb τυπτω, had never been possessed of a Greek and Latin grammar. For would it not be absurd to use such expressions about a simple transcription? Besides which, the word is not only given in an arrangement different from any I have ever seen, but with a nonexistent form of participle, τετυψαμενος for τυψαμενος, which could not surely have been found in any prior grammar. Now the grammar of Lascaris was published with a Latin translation by Craston in 1480. It is indeed highly probable that this book would not reach Deventer immediately after its impression; but it does seem as if there could not long have been any extreme difficulty in obtaining a correct synopsis of the verb τυπτω.