Conrad Gessner's Private Library

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Notes

¹The only blemishes in this beautifully produced book concern the English language. Four helpers are thanked in the Preface, but they have not distinguished themselves. In Leu's Introduction there are several literal transliterations from the German (‘Neoplatonics’, ‘Chrysipp’), superfluous uses of the definite article, (‘to describe the nature’; ‘discovered… the reproduction of the ferns’), incorrect verb tenses (‘all the professors… were using this library’; ‘the numbers are referring to numbers of the catalogue’), superfluous prepositions (‘despite of the’), and the erroneous use of ‘much’ instead of ‘many’ (‘owned much more works’), among other grammatical mistakes. But there are few misprints: ‘mathemtcs’ (p. 30 n. 67); ‘worte’ (p. 33), and in the Catalogue I noted only one (possible) error, ‘Thronodia’ for ‘Threnodia’ in item 299, Poemata (Basel, 1544). These are trifling errors, but Gessner deserves better.