1540 PHILIP MELANCHTHON. Original Handwritten Manuscript Fragment - Finely Provenanced!

What a delightful little item, and perhaps the only affordable authentic pieces of manuscript by Philip Melanchthon we'll ever handle. The fragment itself is comprised of a total of 28 Latin words and abbreviations in the hand of German Reformer, Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) (21 words recto, 7 words verso.) The manuscript is currently embedded within the third blank page of a 2pp autograph letter signed by  one of the most important American autograph collectors of the 19th century, Rev. William Buell Sprague (1795-1876). Sprague was noted for assembling some of the finest collections of early American manuscripts extant and his assurance of the authenticity of the fragment is about as good as it gets.  The Sprague letter discusses the fragment and indicates that it was excised from margin notes in Melanchthon's copy of Plutarch's "Lives of the Nobel Greeks and Romans." Born Philipp Schwartzerdt, Melanchthon adopted the scholarly name of Philip Melanchthon (a translation of his surna