Minor Queries.
93. _Frederick Egmont; Peter (Egmont?)._--They appear as booksellers
merely and only, so far as I can make out, because the _promptorius
puerorum_, or _medulla grammaticæ_, printed by Pynson, in 1499, is said,
in the colophon, to be at their expense. Neither Ames nor Dibdin gives
any further evidence. The following is therefore worth a Note. It is
from the _ad lectorem_ (or rather, the _adolescentibus studiosis_) of
the _Multorum Vocabulorum equivocorum interpretatio Magistri Johannes de
garlandia_: Paris, 1502, 4to.
"Sed nihil tam arduum tamque difficile fuit quod labor improbus
non vicerit. Ut videlicet mei amicissimo Fredericho Egmont morem
gererem optatissimus: qui cum in vestra excellentissima anglie
patria. Et librorum sit fidelissimus mercator et amicorum suorum
amantissimus, nullum unque librum ex officina sua nisi perquam
castigatus emittet."
Query, was F. Egmont a printer as well as a bookseller? Granting that
_officina_ means a shop, how can a mere bookseller sell none but
correctly printed works? The writer of the above was himself a
bookseller (Joh. Ant. Venetus).
Of Peter above-mentioned, or rather of his name, the following is the
history:--The colophon of the _promptorius_, of which there is a copy in
the Grenville Library, runs as follows "... in expensis virtuosorum
virorum Frederici Egmont et Petri post pascha, anno domini MCCCC
nonagessimo nono, decima v'a die mensis Maii." Hence Hain and others
have entered Peter post Pascha as an English bookseller, presuming that
the words _post pascha_ cannot belong to the date, because the more
definite day, "May 15," follows. But surely, among the varieties of the
time when every man did what seemed good in his own eyes as to titles,
colophons, &c., it may easily have happened that a double description of
a part of the date may have occurred, one description containing more
than the other. Query, Can any other instance be produced of this
hypertautology?[6] At any rate, such a thing is more likely than that a
bookseller should have been called _Peter After-Easter_. At the same
time such whimsical things were done in the Latinization of names, both
by their owners and by others for them, that no certain conclusion can
be drawn. For example, more atrocious changes have been made than would
be that of Easterby into _post pascha_.