Henrici Stephani Epistola, qua ad multas multorum amicorum respondet, de suae typographiae statu, nominatimque de suo Thesauro linguae graecae. In posteriore autem ejus parte, quam misera sit hoc tempore veterum scriptorum conditio, in quorundam typographorum prela incidentium, exponit. Index librorum qui ex officina ejusdem Henrici Stephani hactenus prodierunt

HENRICI STEPHANI

I reject. For βάλλειν cannot by itself declare νοεῖν to think, but only when joined with ἐν θυμῷ in the heart, or ἐν φρεσὶ in the wits, or something else of this kind. As if you should say ἐν νῷ or ἐν νοὶ βάλλειν to place in the mind, there would be no doubt that βάλλειν is simply εἶναι to be, since we have the compound word νουθετεῖν to admonish made from it. By this form, they are spoken of by Virgil: Mente alta repostum Stored deep in the mind, and, Sensibus imis reponas You might store in the deepest senses. Furthermore, Homer uses the passive voice βάλλεσθαι more frequently (if I remember correctly) than the active in this kind of speaking, etc. For it would be a long task to transcribe the rest, and therefore I will reserve it for that time when the whole work is given to the light.

But how greatly they are deceived who expect nothing from me other than one of those common lexicons, but much richer, can be conjectured even from those two places which I have already brought forward. But how, furthermore, that labor is unworthy of me, and alien to the paternal fidelity—the heir of which I thought I was most especially left by him (fidelity, I say, in those things which pertain to the typographical art)—I will make you understand openly. A certain monk, brother Ioannes Crastonus, a Carmelite from Piacenza, first laid his hand to the Greek-Latin lexicons that are circulated: but since he was content with sparse expositions (in which he sometimes uses the vernacular language, that is, Italian), and likewise indicated the constructions of verbs in a perfunctory manner, bringing forth no places from authors from which those might be known as well as their meanings, many later competed to insert many things here and there without any selection or judgment. Until at last, as ignorant typographers competed among themselves to increase the bulk of the lexicons and proposed rewards to those who would achieve it, what had previously been sparse and (if I may speak so) emaciated expositions, were rendered so fat and gross that in them we recognize nothing here and there other than a Boeotian swine.