Our illustration gives a reduced representation of a page from the second edition of the Biblia Pauperum, dating from about 1450. The middle panel shows Christ rising from the tomb, and the wonder and fear of the Roman guards; the left-hand panel shows Samson carrying off the gates of the city of Gaza, and the right-hand panel the disgorging of Jonah by the whale. The upper part of the text shows how that Samson and Jonah were types of Christ, and the four little figures represent David, Jacob, Hosea, and Siphonias (Zephaniah), the texts on the scrolls being quotations from their words.

The accompanying rhymes are as follows:—

(In the midst of crowds, Samson removes the gates of the city. The anointed Jesus, whom the stone covered, rises from the tomb. This man [Jonah] rising from the tomb, denotes Thee, O Christ!)

Another very popular block-book, of German origin, was the curious compilation known as Ars Moriendi—the Art of Dying—or, as it is sometimes called, Temptationes Demonis, or Temptation of Demons. It describes how dying persons are beset by all manner of temptations, the final triumph of the good, and the sad end of the wicked, with suitable emotions on the part of the attendant angels, and the hideous demons by which the temptations are personified. This work was greatly in vogue in the fifteenth century, and after the invention of type-printing was reproduced in various parts of France, Italy, Germany and Holland.

The only block-book without illustrations was the Donatus de octibus partibus orationis, or Donatus on the Eight Parts of Speech, shortly known as Donatus. It was the Latin grammar of the period, and was the work of Donatus, a famous Roman grammarian of the fourth century. Large numbers were printed both from blocks and from type, but xylographic fragments are scarce, and none are known of any date before the second half of the fifteenth century. Yet it is believed that probably more copies of this work were printed than of any other block-book whatever. Besides its lack of illustrations, the xylographic Donatus is unique among block-books from the fact that it was printed on vellum and not on paper, and (another unusual feature) on both sides of the leaf. Vellum was dear, and had to be made the most of, and no doubt was used only because a paper book would have fared badly at the hands of the schoolboys.

Only one block-book is known to have been printed in France, and that is Les Neuf Preux, or the Nine Champions. The nine champions are divided into three groups: first, classical heroes—Hector, Alexander and Julius Cæsar; next, Biblical heroes—Joshua, David and Judas Maccabæus; and lastly, heroes of romance—Arthur, Charlemagne and Godefroi of Boulogne. The portraits of these celebrities are accompanied by verses. This block-book dates from about 1455.

Other block-books were the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, the Apocalypse of St John, the Book of Canticles, Defensorium Inviolatæ Virginitatis Beatæ Mariæ Virginis, Mirabilia Romæ; various German almanacks, and a Planetenbuch, this last representing the heavenly bodies and their influence on human life. The last of the block-books, so far as is known, was the Opera nova contemplativa, which was executed at Venice about 1510.

From one point of view the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, or Mirror of Salvation, is the most curious of its kind. It is looked upon as the connecting link between block-books proper and type-printed books. Its purpose seems to have been to afford instruction in the facts and lessons of the Christian religion, beginning with the fall of Satan. It is founded on an old and once popular manuscript work sometimes ascribed to Brother John, a Benedictine monk of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Four so-called “editions” of the Speculum are known, two of which are in Latin rhyme, and two in Dutch prose, all four having many points in common and standing apart from the later and dated editions afterwards produced in Germany, Holland, and France.

In these early copies the body of the work consists of a text printed from moveable types, with a block-printed illustration at the head of each page. But one of the Latin editions is remarkable for having twenty pages of the text printed from wood blocks. How and why these xylographic pages appear in a book whose remaining forty-two pages are printed from types is a mystery. They are inserted at intervals among the other leaves, and for this and other reasons it is considered improbable that they were printed from blocks originally intended for a block-book, to help to eke out a not very plentiful stock of type. Moreover, no entirely xylographic Speculum exists to lend colour to such a theory.

The time and place of origin of the Speculum are unknown, and bibliographers are not agreed as to the order in which the several “editions” appeared. But such evidence as exists points to Holland as the home of the printed Speculum, and those who believe that Coster of Haarlem invented typography, credit him with having produced it.

Block-books are nearly all of German, Dutch, or Flemish workmanship. As a rule the illustrations are roughly coloured by hand. The method by which they were printed is generally supposed to have been that of laying a dampened sheet of paper on the inked block, and rubbing it with a dabber or frotton until the impression was worked up. But De Vinne, in his History of Printing, says that there are practical reasons against the correctness of this view, and considers it more probable that a rude hand-press was used.

Those who wish to see some modern examples of block-printing may be referred to the books printed by the late William Morris at the celebrated Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith. The title-pages and initial words of these volumes were executed by means of wood blocks, and are as beautiful examples of block-printing as the texts of the works they adorn are of typography. All the Kelmscott printing, whose history, though most interesting, is nevertheless outside the present subject, was done by hand presses.

CHAPTER VII

WHO INVENTED MOVEABLE TYPES?

The wood-block, however, was merely a stepping-stone to the greatest of all events in the history of printing, the invention of moveable types; that is, of letters formed separately, which, after being grouped into words, and sentences, and paragraphs, could be redistributed and used again for all sorts of books. Here once more our Chinese friends were ahead of the rest of the world, for, more than four centuries before German printers existed, Picheng, a Chinese smith, had shown his countrymen how to print from moveable types made of burnt clay. But the process which was to prove of such untold value to those who employed the simple Roman alphabet was almost useless to the Chinese, since the immense number of their characters rendered the older method the less tedious and cumbersome of the two. In China and Japan, therefore, the use of moveable types was of short duration. In Europe, however, when the art of printing from moveable types once became known, the case was very different.

Once upon a time, as a magnate of the city of Haarlem was walking in a wood near the city, he idly cut some letters on the bark of a beech tree. It then suddenly occurred to him that these letters might be impressed upon paper; whereupon he made some impressions of them for the amusement of his grandchildren. This, we have learned from our youth up, is how the art of printing came to be discovered. But unfortunately, this legend is not to be relied upon. As a matter of fact, the first inventor of printing is unknown, and even as regards moveable types it is impossible to say with absolute certainty when or by whom the idea was first conceived. Daunon, in his Analyse des Opinions diverses sur l'origine de l'Imprimerie, tells us that no less than fifteen towns claim to be the birthplace of printing, and that a still larger number of persons have been put forward as its inventors, from Saturn, Job, and Charlemagne downwards. The arguments for or against the pretensions of Saturn, Job, and Charlemagne, and, indeed, of the majority of the personages whose names have been mentioned in this connection, do not call for notice. For although the first printer is not known, many believe that they can point him out with tolerable certainty, and in the fierce battle which has raged round the question of the identity of the inventor of moveable types, two names alone have been used as the respective war-cries of the opposing armies. One is Johann Gutenberg of Mentz, and the other, Laurenz Coster of Haarlem.

Although the balance of opinion is now, and always has been, in favour of Gutenberg, the battle has been long and furious. The diligence of the disputants in collecting data in support of their theories has been equalled only by the vigour and ferocity with which some of their number have maintained their opinions. Each side has charged the other with forging evidence, and ink and abuse have been freely poured out in the cause of typographical truth. Yet though sought for during several centuries, no conclusive proof has been discovered by either side; typographical truth remains in her well, and the identity of the inventor of moveable types seems almost as hard to determine as that of the man in the iron mask or the writer of the letters of Junius. The partisans of Coster have been as eminent and as able as those of Gutenberg, and thus the unlearned enquirer finds it difficult to declare for one rather than the other, without investigating for himself all the ins and outs of this involved subject. Even then, without some previous bias in one or the other direction, he would probably find himself halting between two opinions. Such an investigation is obviously out of the question here, and even were it practicable it could hardly be lipped that where so many doctors disagree our modest effort would produce any valuable result. We shall therefore do no more than briefly set forth some of the chief arguments on either side as fairly as may be, but without attempting an exhaustive examination of the evidence, first, however, declaring ourselves as followers of the majority and partisans of Gutenberg, by way of sheet anchor.

Those who advocate the claims of Holland against Germany largely base their belief on the existence of various printed books and fragments of Dutch origin, undated, and affording no clue to the time and place at which they were printed, or to their printer, whether Coster or another. It is much more likely, they say, that these were the first rude attempts at typography, and that they gave the idea to the Mentz printers, who forthwith improved upon it, than that the Mentz printers should have given the idea to the Dutch, who, so far from improving upon it, produced these clumsy imitations of fine German work. And Mr Hessels, who made a complete examination of the evidence in favour of Gutenberg, was unable to say either that Gutenberg invented type-printing, or that he did not invent it. On the other hand, “it is certainly possible,” say the writers of the Guide to the British Museum, “that actual printing may have been previously executed in Holland; although, to our minds, the improbability of the printers who are asserted to have produced Donatus and the Speculum from moveable types ten years before Gutenberg having produced nothing but the like kind of work for nearly twenty years after him outweighs all the arguments which have been advanced in support of their claim. It is at all events certain that, without some very direct and positive evidence on the other side, mankind will continue to regard Gutenberg as the parent of the art, and Mainz as its birthplace.”

Within recent years a claim for the honour of the invention has been put forward on behalf of quite another part of the world. Some early fifteenth century documents discovered at Avignon make unmistakable references to printing, and not to xylography, and from them we learn that Procopius Waldfoghel, a silver-smith of Prague, was engaged in printing at Avignon in 1444, and had undertaken to cut a set of Hebrew types for a Jew whom he had previously instructed in the art of printing. No specimens of his work are known, and it is therefore impossible to say exactly to what process these records refer, but it has been conjectured that it may have been some method of stamping letters from cut type, and not from cast type by means of a press.

Since Coster is the hero of the well-known story quoted above, and since as regards our present purpose there is less to be said of him than of Gutenberg, we will briefly recapitulate what is known about him, and the foundations on which his fame as a typographer rests, before dealing more at length with Gutenberg and the Mentz press.

It does not seem easy to account for the existence of what the partisans of Gutenberg contemptuously term the Coster legend. It has been conjectured, somewhat plausibly, that Haarlem's jealousy of the superiority and fame of Mentz and its printers began very early, and arose from the narrow vanity of those Haarlemers who imagined that the first printing press in Haarlem must necessarily be the first printing press in the world. However this may be, the legend arose, and waxed strong, and many believed in it.

Laurenz Janssoen, or Coster, was born in Haarlem about 1370. He is said to have held various high offices, such as sheriff, treasurer, officer of the city guard, and especially that of Coster to the great church of Haarlem. Coster means sacristan or sexton, but the position was one of far greater honour than is now associated with it. But another account, which is supported by all the available records, represents him as a tallow-chandler, and subsequently as an innkeeper, and if he had anything at all to do with the great church, it was only that he supplied it with candles. But whether chandler or coster, nothing is heard of him as a printer until 1568, more than a hundred years after his alleged success in printing from types—in itself a strange fact, since if Coster were the inventor, why were the Mentz printers allowed to appropriate all the credit to themselves, unchallenged by Coster's kinsfolk or countrymen, and supported by the opinions of sixty-two writers, including Caxton, the chronicler Fabian, Trithemius, and the compilers of the Cologne and Nuremberg chronicles? It is true that “few sometimes may know when thousands err,” but silence is no proof of truth, and if Coster's representatives possessed the truth, how came they to withhold it from a deluded world?

Although Coster is not named till 1568, the claims of Haarlem to be the birthplace of printing had been put forward (for the first time) some years earlier by Jan Van Zuyren in a work on the Invention of Typography, of which only a fragment remains. The claims of Haarlem, he says, “are at this day fresh in the remembrance of our fathers, to whom, so to express myself, they have been transmitted from hand to hand from their ancestors.” Thus, though probably writing in all good faith, Van Zuyren bases his statements on nothing better than tradition. “The city of Mentz,” he goes on to say, “without doubt merits great praise for having been the first to publish to the world, in a becoming garb, an invention which she received from us, for having perfected and embellished an art as yet rude and imperfect.… It is certain that the foundations of this splendid art were laid in our city of Haarlem, rudely, indeed, but still the first.”

Coornhert, an engraver, and a partner of Van Zuyren, repeats the same statements, and on the same basis, in the preface to a translation of Cicero which he published in 1561, but is acute enough to see that the case for Haarlem is nearly hopeless. “I am aware,” he says, “that in consequence of the blameable neglect of our ancestors, the common opinion that this art was invented at Mentz is now firmly established, that it is in vain to hope to change it, even by the best evidence and the most irrefragable proof.” He proceeds to declare his conviction of the justice of Haarlem's claim, because of “the faithful testimonies of men alike respectable from their age and authority, who not only have often told me of the family of the inventor, and of his name and surname, but have even described to me the rude manner of printing first used, and pointed out to me with their fingers the abode of the first printer. And therefore, not because I am jealous of the glory of others, but because I love truth, and desire to pay all tribute to the honour of our city which is justly her due, I have thought it incumbent upon me to mention these things.” Yet it is strange that he did not think it incumbent upon him to mention the name and surname of the inventor, since he had been told them so often.

Hadrian Junius, said to have been the most learned man in Holland after Erasmus, is the first to give to the world the fully-developed legend of Coster. This he does in his Batavia, which was finished in 1568 and published posthumously twenty years later. It is he who first mentions Coster by name, and gives the story of the walk in the woods. He relates how Coster devised block-printing, and calling in the help of his son-in-law, Thomas Peter, produced the block-book Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, and then advanced to types of wood, then to types of lead, and finally to types of lead and tin combined. Prospering in his new art, he engaged numerous workmen, one of whom, probably named Johann Faust, as soon as he had mastered the process of printing and of casting type, stole his master's types and other apparatus one Christmas Eve, and fled to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and finally to Mentz. For all this Junius also adduces no better authority than hearsay, but nevertheless it is his statements which have brought Coster to the front and given him such reputation as he now enjoys.

No books bearing Coster's name are known, though this in itself is no argument against him, for the name of Gutenberg himself is not found in any of his own productions. It is not only highly improbable that Coster was the first printer, but also doubtful whether he printed anything at all. But those who think otherwise consider that the idea of printing occurred to him about 1428 or 1430, and that he executed, among other books, the Biblia Pauperum, the Speculum, the Ars Moriendi, and Donatus.

The people of Holland still retain their faith in Coster. Statues have been erected, medals struck, tablets put up, and holidays observed in his honour.

CHAPTER VIII

GUTENBERG AND THE MENTZ PRESS

Johann or Hans Gutenberg was born at Mentz in or about the year 1400. His father's name was Gensfleisch, but he is always known by his mother's maiden name of Gutenberg or Gutemberg. It was customary in Germany at that time for a son to assume his mother's name if it happened that she had no other kinsman to carry it on. Of Gutenberg's early life, of his education or profession, we know nothing. But we know that his family, with many of their fellow-citizens, left Mentz when Gutenberg was about twenty years of age, on account of the disturbed state of the city. They probably went to Strasburg, but this is uncertain. In 1430 Gutenberg's name appears among others in an amnesty, granted to such of the Mentz citizens as had left the city, by the Elector Conrad III., but apparently he continued to live in Strasburg. Two years later he visited Mentz, probably about a pension granted by the magistrates to his widowed mother. This is practically all that is known of the earlier part of Gutenberg's life.

It is curious that nearly all the recorded information concerning Gutenberg is in connection either with lawsuits or with the raising of money. From the contracts for borrowing or repaying money into which he entered, we gather that he was always hard pressed, and that his invention ran away with a good deal of gold and paid back none. Gutenberg cast his bread on the waters, and it is we who have found it.

The first known event of his life which directly concerns our subject is a lawsuit brought against him by Georg Dritzehn. Mr Hessels implies, though he does not actually state, that he suspects the authenticity of the records of this trial. But no proof of their falsity can be adduced, and the integrity of the documents otherwise remains unquestioned. They cannot now, however, be subjected to further examination, for they were burnt in 1870 at the time of the siege of Strasburg.

The action in question was brought against Gutenberg in 1439 by Georg Dritzehn, the brother of one Andres Dritzehn, deceased, for the restitution of certain rights which he considered due to himself as his brother's heir. From the testimony of the witnesses as set down in the records of the trial, we gather that Gutenberg had entered into partnership with Hans Riffe, Andres Dritzehn, and Andres Heilmann; and one of the witnesses deposed that Dritzehn, on his death-bed, asserted that Gutenberg had concealed “several arts from them, which he was not obliged to show them.” This did not please them, so they made a fresh arrangement with Gutenberg and further payments into the exchequer, to the end that Gutenberg “should conceal from them none of the arts he knew.”

Again, Lorentz Beildeck testified that after Andres Dritzehn's death, Gutenberg sent him to Claus, Andres' brother, to tell him “that he should not show to anyone the press which he had under his care,” but that “he should take great care and go to the press and open this by means of two little buttons whereby the pieces would fall asunder. He should, thereupon, put those pieces in or on the press, after which nobody could see or comprehend anything.”

Besides this, Hans Niger von Bischoviszheim said that Andres Dritzehn applied to him for a loan, and when witness asked him his occupation, answered that he was a maker of looking-glasses. Later on, a pilgrimage “to Aix-la-Chapelle about the looking-glasses” is mentioned.

By these records, from Mr Hessels' translation of which the above quotations are taken, two things at least are made clear. First, that Gutenberg was in possession of the knowledge of an art unknown to his companions, which he was desirous of keeping to himself, and which those not in the secret wished to learn; and secondly, that a press containing some important and mysterious “pieces,” which was not to be exhibited to outsiders until the pieces had been separated, played a prominent part in this secret work. The “looking-glasses,” apparently, were imaginary, and intended for the misleading of too curious enquirers. But it has been ingeniously suggested that the word spiegel, or looking-glass, was a cryptic reference to the Spiegel onser Behoudenisse, or Mirror of Salvation, and that Gutenberg and his assistants were engaged in preparing the printed Speculum for sale at the forthcoming fair held on the occasion of the pilgrimages to Aix-la-Chapelle in 1439. This part of his plan, however, was frustrated by the postponement of the fair for a year.

It is hardly to be doubted that the researches privately conducted in the deserted convent of St Arbogastus, where Gutenberg dwelt, concerned the great invention usually linked with his name. Were this probability an absolute certainty, then Strasburg might successfully dispute with Mentz the title of birthplace of the art of printing. But to what stage Gutenberg carried his labours in the old convent, or how far he proceeded towards the goal of his ambition, is not known, though it has been conjectured that possibly he and those in his confidence got as far as the making of matrices for types, and that perhaps even the types used for the earliest extant specimens of type-printing were cast there, although not used until Gutenberg had returned to Mentz. On the other hand, there are many who think that matrices and punches are due to the ingenuity of Peter Schoeffer, to whom reference is made below.

When Gutenberg left Strasburg for Mentz is not known, but he was in the latter city in 1448, as is testified by a deed relating to a loan which he had raised. His constant pecuniary difficulties resulted in his entering into partnership, in 1450, with the goldsmith Johann Fust, or Faust, a rich burgher of Mentz, who contributed large loans towards the working expenses, and was evidently to share in the profits of the press. Fust or Faust, the printer of Mentz, has sometimes been identified with the Faust of German legend. The dealings in the black art related of the one have also been ascribed to the other by various story-tellers, some of whom say that in Paris Faust the printer narrowly escaped being burnt as a wizard for selling books which looked like manuscripts, and yet were not manuscripts. The first printed letters, it should be observed, were exactly copied from the manuscript letters then in vogue.

The first really definite recorded event in the history of Gutenberg's printing was a lawsuit brought against him by Fust, in 1455, when Gutenberg had to give an account of the receipts and expenditure relating to his work, and to hand over to Fust all his apparatus in discharge of his debt. The partnership was of course dissolved, Gutenberg left Mentz, and Fust continued the printing assisted by Peter Schoeffer. Schoeffer was a servant of Fust's, who had further associated himself with the establishment by marrying Fust's daughter, and to him some attribute the improvement of the methods then employed by devising matrices and punches for casting metal types. It has even been suggested that this device of his, communicated to Fust, induced the latter to rid himself of Gutenberg by demanding repayment of his advances when Gutenberg was unable to meet the call, and that having gained possession of his partner's apparatus, he was able, with the help of Schoeffer and his inventions, to carry on the work to his own profit and glory. But it is difficult to know whether to look upon Fust as a grasping and treacherous money-lender, or as a prudent and enterprising man of business. However this may be, at the time of the lawsuit the work of years was already perfected, printing with moveable types was now an accomplished thing, and the great Mazarin Bible, if not finished, was at any rate on the point of completion.

The earliest extant specimens of printing from types, however, are assigned to the year 1454. These are some Letters of Indulgence issued by Pope Nicholas V. to the supporters of the King of Cyprus in his war with the Turks. They consist of single sheets of vellum, printed on one side only, and measuring c. 11 x 7 inches. They fall into two classes, of each of which there were various issues; that is to say, (1) those containing thirty lines, and (2) those containing thirty-one lines. The thirty-line Indulgence is printed partly in the type used for the Mazarin Bible. The thirty-one-line Indulgence is partly printed in type which is the same as that used for books printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg, and for a Bible which disputes with the Mazarin Bible the position of the first printed book. Who printed these Indulgences is not certainly known. Both emanated from the Mentz press, and it is not unreasonable to believe that both were executed by Gutenberg, since the Mazarin Bible is most probably his work, and since the types used by Pfister were perhaps at one time possessed by Gutenberg. Still, the point is not clear, and the more general view is that they were the work of two different printers. Some attribute the thirty-line Indulgence to Schoeffer, on the ground that some of its initial letters are reproduced in an Indulgence of 1489 known to be of Schoeffer's workmanship. Yet there seems no reason why Schoeffer in 1489 should not have made use of Gutenberg's types—indeed, it is very probable that he had every chance of doing so, as may be seen from the above account of the dissolution of partnership between Gutenberg and Fust.

The next production of the Mentz press, as is generally believed, is the beautiful volume known as the Gutenberg Bible, or the Mazarin Bible, because it was a copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarin which first attracted attention and led bibliographers to enquire into its history. It illustrates a most remarkable fact—that is, the extraordinary degree of perfection to which the art of printing attained all but simultaneously with its birth. Even though we cannot tell how long Gutenberg experimented before producing this book, it is none the less amazing that as a specimen of typographic art the Mazarin Bible has never been excelled even by the cleverest printers and the most modern and elaborate apparatus. It was probably not begun before 1450, the year when Gutenberg and Fust joined forces, and was completed certainly not later than 1456. This latter date is fixed by a colophon written in the second volume of the copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, which informs us that “this book was illuminated, bound, and perfected by Heinrich Cremer, vicar of the collegiate church of St Stephen in Mentz, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, in the year of our Lord 1456. Thanks be to God. Hallelujah.” A similar note is affixed to the first volume.

It is believed by competent authorities that this and all very early printed books were printed one page at a time, owing to an inadequate supply of type, a process exceedingly slow and productive of numerous small variations in the text. The work of printing the Mazarin Bible was in all probability interrupted to allow of the execution of the more immediately needed Letters of Indulgence, in certain parts of which, as we have said, some of the types used in the Mazarin Bible are employed.

We must not omit to mention here another Bible issued from Mentz about this time. It has thirty-six lines to a column, and is therefore known as the thirty-six line Bible, in distinction to the forty-two line or Mazarin Bible. It exhibits a larger type, and is regarded by some as the first book printed at the Mentz press, and, for all that can be proved to the contrary, it is so. Although the point is still undecided, this volume may at any rate be safely regarded as contemporary with the Mazarin Bible.

The Mazarin Bible is in Latin, and printed in the characters known as Gothic, or black letter. These were closely modelled on the form of the handwriting used at that time for Bibles and kindred works. It is in two volumes, and each page, excepting a few at the beginning, has two columns of forty-two lines, and each is provided with rubrics, inserted by hand, while the small initials of the sentences have a touch of red, also put in by hand. Some copies are of vellum, others of paper. But henceforward the use of vellum declines.

“By the assistance of the Most High, at Whose will the tongues of children become eloquent, and Who often reveals to babes what He hides from the wise, this renowned book, the Catholicon, was printed and perfected in the year of the Incarnation 1460, in the beloved city of Mentz (which belongs to the illustrious German nation, whom God has consented to prefer and to raise with such an exalted light of the mind and free grace, above the other nations of the earth), not by means of reed, stile, or pen, but by the admirable proportion, harmony, and connection of the punches and types.” A metrical doxology follows.

A few other and smaller works have also been believed to have been executed by Gutenberg at this time, but with no certainty.

In 1465 Gutenberg was made one of the gentlemen of the court to Adolph II., Count of Nassau and Archbishop of Mentz, and presumably abandoned his printing on acceding to this dignity. In 1467 or 1468 Gutenberg died, and thus ends the meagre list of facts which we have concerning the life and career of the first printer.

To nearly every question which we might wish to ask about Gutenberg and his work, one of two answers has to be given—“It is not known,” or “Perhaps.” He does not speak for himself, and none of his personal acquaintance, or his family, if he had any, speak for him. We have no reason to believe that his work brought him any particular honour, and certainly it brought him no wealth. It has been suggested, however, that the post offered to him by the Archbishop was in recognition of his invention, since there is no other reason apparent why the dignity was conferred. But we may well conclude this account of Gutenberg with De Vinne's words, that “there is no other instance in modern history, excepting, possibly, Shakespeare, of a man who did so much and said so little about it.”

Fust, the former partner of Gutenberg, died in 1466, leaving a son to succeed him in the partnership with Schoeffer, and Schoeffer died about 1502. Of his three sons (all printers), the eldest, Johann, continued to work at Mentz until about 1533.

The most notable books issued by Fust and Schoeffer were the Psalter of 1457, and the Latin Bible of 1462. The Bible of 1462 is the first Bible with a date. The Psalter of 1457 is famous as being the first printed Psalter, the first printed book with a date, the first example of printing in colours, the first book with a printed colophon, and the first printed work containing musical notes, though these last are not printed but inserted by hand.[2] The colour printing is shown by the red and blue initials, but by what process they were executed has been the subject of much discussion. They are generally supposed to have been added after the rest of the page had been printed, by means of a stamp. The colophon is written in the curious Latin affected by the early printers, and Mr Pollard offers the following as a rough rendering:—

“The present book of Psalms, adorned with beauty of capitals, and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing and stamping, and to the worship of God diligently brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mentz, and Peter Schoffer of Gernsheim, in the year of our Lord, 1457, on the Vigil of the Feast of the Assumption.”

These two printers also produced, in 1465, an edition of the De Officiis of Cicero, which shares with the Lactantius, printed in the same year at Subiaco, near Rome, by Sweynheim and Pannartz, the honour of exhibiting to the world the first Greek types, and with the same printers' Cicero De Oratore, that of being the first printed Latin classic, unless an undated De Officiis, printed at Cologne by Ulrich Zel about this time, is the real “first.”

CHAPTER IX

EARLY PRINTING

Wherever typography originated, it was from Mentz that it was taught to the world. The disturbances in that city in 1462 drove many of its citizens from their homes, and the German printers were thus dispersed over Europe. Within a little more than twenty years from the time of the first issue from the Mentz printing-press, other presses were established at Strasburg, Bamberg, Cologne, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Spires, Ulm, Lubeck, and Breslau; Basle, Rome, Venice, Florence, Naples, and many other Italian cities; Paris and Lyons; Bruges; and, in 1477, at Westminster.

Before the end of the fifteenth century eighteen European countries were printing books. Italy heads the list with seventy-one cities in which presses were at work, Germany follows with fifty, France with thirty-six, Spain with twenty-six, Holland with fourteen; and after these England's four printing-places—Westminster, London, Oxford, and St Albans—make a somewhat small show. Some other countries, however, had but one printing-town. With the possible exception of Holland, England and Scotland are the only countries which are indebted to a native and not (as in every case save that of Ireland) to a German for the introduction of printing.

The early printers were more than mere workmen. They were usually editors and publishers as well. Some of them were associated with scholars who did the editorial work: Sweynheim and Pannartz, for instance, the first to set up a press in Italy, had the benefit of the services of the Bishop of Aleria, and their rival, Ulric Hahn, enjoyed for a while the assistance of the celebrated Campanus. Aldus Manutius, too, the founder of the Aldine press at Venice, though himself a literary man and a learned editor, availed himself of the help of several Greek scholars in the revising and correcting of classical texts. The exact relations of these editors to the printers, however, is not known. The English printer, Caxton, who also was a scholar, usually, though not invariably, edited his publications himself.

The first printers were also booksellers, and sold other people's books as well as their own. Several of their catalogues or advertisements still exist. The earliest known book advertisements are some issued by Peter Schoeffer, one, dating from about 1469, giving a list of twenty-one books for sale by himself or his agents in the several towns where he had established branches of his business, and another advertising an edition of St Jerome's Epistles published by Schoeffer at Mentz in 1470. An advertisement by Caxton is also extant, and being short, as well as interesting, may be quoted here. It is as follows:—

If it plese ony man spirituel or temporel to bye ony pyes,[3] of two and thre comemoracios of salisburi vse enpryntid after the forme of this preset lettre whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come to westmonester in to the almonesrye at the reed pale and he shal haue them good chepe.

Supplico stet cedula.

The date of this notice is about 1477 or 1478. Other extant examples of early advertisements are those of John Mentelin, a Strasburg printer, issued about 1470, and of Antony Koburger, of Nuremberg, issued about ten years later. In 1495 Koburger advertised the Nuremberg Chronicle.

Early printed books exhibit a very limited range of subject, and were hardly ever used to introduce a new contemporary writer. Theology and jurisprudence in Germany, and the classics in Italy, inaugurated the new invention, and lighter fare was not served to the patrons of printed literature until a later date. Italy made the first departure, and took up history, romance, and poetry. France began with the classics, and then neglected them for romances and more popular works, but at the same time became noted for the beautifully illuminated service-books produced at Paris and Rouen, and which supplied the clergy of both France and England. England, who received printing twelve years after Italy and seven years after France, made more variety in her books than any. Caxton's productions consist of works dealing with subjects of wider interest, even if less learned and improving—romances, chess, good manners, Æsop's Fables, the Canterbury Tales, and the Adventures of Reynard the Fox.

From what sort of type the Bible usually considered to be the first printed book was produced is not known. Some competent authorities think that wooden types were used. Others are in favour of metal, and like the late Mr Winter Jones, scout the notion of wooden types and consider them “impossible things.” But Skeen, in his Early Typography, declares that hard wood would print better than soft lead, such as Blades hints that Caxton's types were made of, and to illustrate the possibility of wooden types prints a word in Gothic characters from letters cut in boxwood. The objections made to types of this nature are that they would be too weak to bear the press, could never stand washing and cleaning, and would swell when wet and shrink when dried. Some have thought that the early types were made by stamping half-molten metal with wooden punches, and so forming matrices from which the types were subsequently cast.

As we have already noticed in connection with the Mazarin Bible, the forms of the types were copied from the Gothic or black letter characters in which Bibles, psalters, and missals were then written. When Roman type was first cut is uncertain. The “R” printer of Strasburg, whose name is unknown, and whose works are dated only by conjecture, may have been the first to use it. It was employed by Sweynheim and Pannartz in 1467, and by the first printers in Paris and Venice. It was brought to the greatest perfection by Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman working in Venice. Caxton never employed it, and it was not introduced into England until 1509. In that year Richard Pynson, a London printer and a naturalised Englishman, though Norman by birth, used some Roman type in portions of the Sermo Fratris Hieronymi de Ferrara, and in 1518 he produced Oratio Ricardi Pacaei, which was entirely printed in these characters.

Had the idea of the title-page, in the modern sense of the term, a very obvious idea, as it seems to us, occurred to the first printers, we should not have to sharpen our wits on the hundred and one doubtful points with which the subject of early bibliography bristles. To-day, the title-page not only introduces the book itself, but declares the name of the writer and the publisher, and the time and place of publication. But during the first sixty years of printing title-pages were rare, and the old methods followed by the scribes in writing their manuscript books still obtained. The subject matter began with “Incipit” or “Here beginneth,” etc., according to the language in which the work was written, and such information as the printer considered it desirable to impart was contained in the colophon, or note affixed to the end of the book.

More often than not these colophons are irritatingly reticent, and withhold the very thing we want to know. At other times they are informing, and in some cases amusing. Dr Garnett has suggested that as a literary pastime some one might do worse than collect fifteenth-century colophons into a volume, for the sake of their biographical and personal interest, but I am not aware that his idea has been carried out. Two colophons have already been quoted here, the first printed colophon (see p. 103) and one which is possibly from the pen of Gutenberg (see p. 101). A quaint specimen found in a volume of Cicero's Orationes Philippicæ, printed at Rome by Ulrich Hahn, about 1470, descends to puns. It is in Latin verse, and supposed by some to have been written by Cardinal Campanus, who edited several of Hahn's publications. It informs the descendants of the Geese who saved the Capitol, that they need have no more fear for their feathers, for the art of Ulrich the Cock (German Hahn = Latin Gallus = English Cock) will provide a potent substitute for quills. A colophon to Cicero's Epistolæ Familiares, printed at Venice in 1469 by Joannes de Spira, declares with pardonable pride that he had printed two editions of three hundred copies in four months.

The first book with any attempt at a title-page is the Sermo ad Populum Predicabilis, printed at Cologne in 1470 by Arnold Therhoernen, but a full title-page was not generally adopted till fifty years later. The first English title-page is very brief, and reads as follows:—

A passing gode lityll boke necessarye & behouefull agenst the Pestilence.

This gode lityll boke, written by Canutus, Bishop of Aarhaus, was printed in London about 1482 by Machlinia. A later development of the title-page was a full-page woodcut, headed by the name of the work, as in the Kynge Richarde cuer du lyon, printed in 1528 by Wynkyn de Worde. The same woodcut does duty in another of the same printer's books for Robert the Devil.

Early title-pages in Latin sometimes render the names of familiar places of publication in a very unfamiliar form. London may appear as Augusta Trinobantum, Edinburgh as Aneda, Dublin as Eblana. Some towns are easily recognised by their Latin names, such as Roma or Venetiæ; others are less obvious, such as Moguntia, or Mentz; Lutetia, or Paris; Argentina, or Strasburg. Several places had more than one Latin form of name. London, for example, was also Londinum, and Edinburgh, Edemburgem.

Pagination, or numbering of the pages, was first introduced by Arnold Therhoernen, in the same book in which he gives us the first title-page, and to which reference has already been made. He did not place the figures at the top corner, however, but in the centre of the right hand margin.

The practice of printing the first word of a leaf at the foot of the leaf preceding, as a guide for the arrangement of the sheets, was first employed by Vindelinus de Spira, of Venice, in the Tacitus which he printed about 1469.

CHAPTER X

EARLY PRINTING IN ITALY AND SOME OTHER COUNTRIES

The new invention found more favour in Italy than in any other country, for more presses were established there than anywhere else. The printers, however, were all Germans, and before 1480 about 110 German typographers were at work in twenty-seven Italian cities. They kept the secrets of their trade well to themselves, and not till 1471 was any printing executed by an Italian. In May of that year the De Medicinis Universalibus of Mesua was executed at Venice by Clement of Padua, who accomplished the truly wonderful feat of teaching himself how to print. Another Italian, Joannes Phillipus de Lignamine, printed at Rome some time before July 26, 1471, and it is therefore uncertain whether he or Clement of Padua was the first native printer of Italy.

The first press established in Italy was that set up in the Benedictine monastery of St Scholastica at Subiaco, a few miles from Rome, by two German typographers, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz. There they issued Cicero's De Oratore in 1465, the first book printed in Italy. In their petition to the Pope, referred to below, they say that they had printed a Donatus, presumably before the Cicero, but no such work is known, and some have thought it was only a block-book. In the same year they issued the works of Lactantius, “the Christian Cicero,” the first dated book executed in Italy. It is also one of the earliest books to adopt a more elaborate punctuation than the simple oblique line and full stop in general use. The Lactantius has a colon, full stop, and notes of admiration and interrogation. Both these books are printed in a pleasing type which is neither Gothic nor Roman, but midway between the two.