Note 27 — Chapter I

Eden’s Decades, fol. 318, corrected by the original. [The first edition of Gomara is a rare book, and a copy has been lately priced by Quaritch at £36. It proved to be one of the most popular of all the books of that century on the New World; and, as we count, including varieties of titles, there were more than a score of editions in fifty years, so that his statements became widely known. There were seven such issues in Spanish, either in Spain or in Flanders, in two years, when the demand for it seems to have failed in its original tongue, and was transferred to Italy, where at Rome and Venice there were six editions in twenty years (1556 to 1576). Sabin says eighteen in that interval, but I fail to find them. There was a seventh near the end of the century (1599). In 1568 or 1569 there seem to have been three issues of the first French translation, and six others followed, from 1577 to 1597. These statements are based chiefly on the lists of editions given in Sabin, vii. 306 (said to have been drawn up by Mr. Brevoort); in the Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 169; and Leclerc’s Bibliotheca Americana, No. 143.—Ed.]