Aldine Editions, the name given to the works that issued (1490-1597) from the press of Aldo Manuzio and his family in Venice. Recommended by their intrinsic value, as well as by their handsome exterior, they have been highly prized by the learned and by book-collectors. Many of them are the first editions (editiones principes) of Greek and
Roman classics; others contain corrected texts of modern classic writers, as of Petrarch, Dante, or Boccaccio, carefully collated with the MSS. All of them are distinguished for the remarkable correctness of the typography; the Greek works, however, being in this respect somewhat inferior to the Latin and Italian. The editions published by Aldo Manuzio (1450-1515), the father, form an epoch in the annals of printing, as they contributed in no ordinary measure to the perfecting of types. No one had ever before used such beautiful Greek types, of which he got nine different kinds made, and of Latin as many as fourteen. It is to him, or rather to the engraver, Francesco of Bologna, that we owe the types called by the Italians Corsivi, and known to us as Italics, which he used for the first time in the 8vo edition of ancient and modern classics, commencing with Virgil (1501). Manuzio's impressions on parchment are exceedingly beautiful; he was the first printer who introduced the custom of taking some impressions on finer or stronger paper than the rest of the edition—the first example of this being afforded in the Epistolæ Græcæ (1499). From 1515 to 1533 the business was carried on by his father- and brothers-in-law, Andrea Torresano of Asola, and his two sons—the three 'Asolani.' Paolo Manuzio (1512-74), Aldo's son, possessed an enthusiasm for Latin classics equal to that of his father for Greek; and he was succeeded by his son, the younger Aldo (1547-97). The printing establishment founded by Aldo continued in active operation for 100 years, and during this time printed 908 different works. The distinguishing mark is an anchor, entwined by a dolphin, with the motto either of Festina lente or of Sudavit et alsit. The demand which arose for editions from this office, and especially for the earlier ones, induced the printers of Lyons and Florence, about 1502, to begin the system of issuing counterfeit Aldines. The Aldo-mania has considerably diminished in later times. Among the Aldine works which have now become very rare, may be mentioned the Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis of 1497, the Virgil of 1501, and the Rhetores Græci; not to mention all the editions, dated and undated, from 1490 to 1497, which are now extremely rare. See Renouard's Annales de l'Imprimerie des Aldes (1834), and Didot's Alde Manuce (1873).