Aldus**, the first of those celebrated Venetian printers who were as illustrious for their learning as for uncommon skill in their profession. He was born at Baffano in Italy about the middle of the 15th century; and hence is sometimes called Baffianus, though generally better known by the name of Aldus. He was the first who printed Greek neatly and correctly; and acquired so much reputation by it, that whatever was finely printed was proverbially said to have "come from the press of Aldus." We have a kind of Greek grammar of his; with Notes upon Homer, Horace, &c. He died at Venice, where he exercised his profession, in 1516.

**Manutius, Paulus**, son of the former, was brought up to his father's profession. He was more learned than he; and he acquired, by continual reading of Tully, such a purity in writing Latin, as even Scaliger allows a Roman could not exceed. Pope Pius IV. placed him at the head of the apostolical press, and gave him the charge of the Vatican library. His Epistles are infinitely laboured, and very correct; but, as may be said of most of the Ciceronians, they contain scarcely any thing but mere words. This constant reading of Tully, however, together with his profound knowledge of antiquity, qualified him extremely well for an editor of Tully; whose works he accordingly published, with Commentaries on them, in 4 vols folio, at Venice in 1523. He died in 1574.

**Manutius, Aldus**, the Younger, the son of Paulus, and the grandson of Aldus, was esteemed one of the greatest geniuses and most learned men of his time. Clement VIII. gave him the direction of the Vatican printing house; but probably the profits of that place were very small, since Manutius was obliged, for his subsistence, to accept of a professor of rhetoric's chair, and to sell the excellent library that was in his family, which his father, his uncle, and his great-uncle, had collected with extraordinary care, and which it is said contained 80,000 volumes. He died at Rome in 1597, without any other recompense than the praises due to his merit. He wrote, 1. Commentaries on Cicero. 2. A Treatise on Orthography. 3. Three books of Epistles; and other works in Latin and Italian, which are esteemed.