XV The Works and Workmanship of an Unknown Printer.

IF the printer of the Speculum was the rightful inventor of typography, his workmanship, as shown in the different editions of the book, clearly proves that he had passed the shoals of experiment, and was on the broad sea of successful practice. We can see, even without the help of the legends or chronicles, that he cut punches, made moulds and founded types of different faces and bodies; that he compounded ink in a proper manner, and printed his types upon a press constructed for the needs of his work; that he was successful both as a publisher and a printer. He practised printing not for amusement, nor in the way of scientific experiment, but as a business. Rude as his workmanship may appear, it fairly included all departments of the art: it was not experimental, but practical typography. p283

With these facts before us, it would seem proper to pass at once to the examination of the statements that have been made about the supposed printer of the book. But an examination at this point would be premature, for we have not, as yet, all the facts that are required. The four editions of the Speculum do not furnish enough evidence. It is not reasonable to suppose that two or three distinct fonts of type were made for no other purpose than the printing of four editions of this book. It is probable that the printer printed other books. But the early chronicles of Dutch printing tell us very little about these books. They are not only meagre in their recital of the more important facts connected with the invention, but are notoriously incorrect in their description of the minor details. They are unsafe guides. The books themselves, which reveal, to some extent, the process by which they were printed, are now regarded as of higher authority. We can accept the chronicles only so far as they corroborate the internal evidences of the books. It is proper that the books should be examined first.

The number of these books is greater than has been supposed, even by those who have favored the Dutch version of the invention of typography. Forty-three editions of twelve different works, printed from eight faces of types, are now attributed to the unknown printer of the Speculum or to his successors. In eleven works, the types resemble those of the Speculum, but the books are different as to character. They are in the form of small quarto or octavo, and are entirely destitute of illustrations. They are without name or place of printer, and, with one exception, are without date; they have no literary and no historical value; they differ but little, in a mechanical point of view, from numerous undated works of similar nature that have been assigned by bibliographers to the latter part of the fifteenth century. The places where these books or their fragments were found, and some of their peculiarities of workmanship, furnish evidences of value in an inquiry concerning their printer. p284

These books have been carefully classified according to their types, by J. H. Hessels, the translator in English of Van der Linde’s Haarlem Legend, from which work the classification following has been copied. The types have been specified by numbers, and have been arranged according to the order in which they are described by Holtrop in his Monuments typographiques. It is not pretended that the order of these numbers indicates the order in which the types were made; numbers have been assigned to them only for convenience in reference and for the purpose of accurate classification.

TYPE I. In this character144 the four notable editions of the Speculum were printed. In the same character were found the relics of six editions of the Donatus. The single leaf by which one edition of this book was identified, was pasted in a volume which once belonged to Sion Convent, at Cologne, and which contained several treatises printed by Ulric Zell, of Cologne. One of these treatises is dated 1467. Another leaf, now in the city hall of the city of Haarlem, was found in the original binding of an account book for the year 1474, which book was kept in the cathedral of that city. The account books of this church for the years 1476, 1485 and 1514, contain cuttings of leaves from the same edition. The first entry in the record of 1474 is to this effect: “Item. I have paid six Rhine florins to Cornelis the binder, for the binding of books.”145 Fragments of other little books printed in the types of the Speculum have been found:

An abridgment of the Liturgy, then known as the Little Book of the Mass,146 a small quarto, with pages of twelve lines. p285

A Dutch version of the Seven Penitential Psalms, in the form of a very small quarto, containing but eleven lines to the page, printed on vellum, on one side only of the leaf. The only known copy of this work was found in Brussels.

Fragments on vellum of three editions of the Doctrinal of Alexander Gallus, a Latin grammar in rhyme, noticed by Van der Linde as the shabby compilation, by a priest of Brittany who lived in the thirteenth century, of the old Latin grammar of Priscianus. One of these fragments was found within the lining of a book printed at Deventer in 1495.

Four leaves of the Couplets of Cato, a small quarto which was then very popular in the schools.

TYPE II. The Dutch edition of the Speculum, which is described in this book as the third, contains, on pages 49 and 60, types which resemble those of other editions, and which seem to be the workmanship of the same letter-cutter. As these types are of a smaller face and body, they must have been founded in another mould. No fragments of any book in this smaller type have been found.

TYPE III. The types of this face are newer, but they resemble those of Type II; some capitals are identical, but others have differences which establish it as a distinct face. As it is of a larger body, it must have been founded in a p286 different mould. A book which contains the Fables of Lorenzo Valla and the Witty Speeches of Great Men, two little works of some popularity in the fifteenth century, is the only known specimen of this type. The paper of this book, which is like that of the Speculum, contains many of the strange blemishes, previously described, of useless letters embossed in the white lines and near the margins. As the written preface of the author is dated May, 1438, it is apparent that the book must have been printed subsequently to this date.

TYPE IV. Of this face, the frag­ments of four copies, and pre­sum­ably of four dis­tinct edi­tions, of the Dona­tus have been found. This type, which does not close­ly re­sem­ble the faces previously described, was founded on a body a little larger than Paragon. The largest book in this type is a treatise on the Roman Law, apparently an abridg­ment of the fifth book of the Pan­dects of Jus­tin­ian. It is described in the pre­face as The Peculiar­i­ties of Crim­i­nal Law, by Lewis of Rome. This treatise, which con­sists of forty-four pages, is printed in the form of small folio, twenty-six lines to the page. It was the largest book and contains the largest type of the unknown printer.

TYPE V. The forty-fifth page and all sub­se­quent pages of the book previous­ly des­cribed are de­voted to a Treatise and Epitaphs by Pope Pius II, and a Eulogy on Lorenzo Valla. In these names we find sure indi­ca­tions of the proba­ble age of the book: Car­di­nal Pic­co­lo­mini or Æneas Sylvius was made Pope Pius II in the year 1458; Lorenzo Valla died in 1457. The book must have been written and printed after these dates. The work­man­ship of this part of the book is of superior character: the types were fairly founded on a body about the size of Great-primer; they were decently printed in good black ink and on both sides of the paper, but the remarkable defect of embossed letters which has been noticed as one of the blemishes of the Speculum is also noticeable in this book.

This Type V seems to have been more frequently used than any other type in the list, but it was always on petty books or pamphlets. One book printed in it has only twenty-four pages, but it is made up of four distinct tracts: William of Saliceto on the Health of the Body; Torquemada on the Health of the Soul; A Treatise on Love, etc., by Pope Pius II; The Iliad of Homer, or more definitely, a commendation of the Iliad. Two editions of this book have been discovered. A fragment of one edition was found in the binding of a work printed by Jan Andrieszoon, of Haarlem, in the year p288 1486. Another book in the same type, which consists of ten leaves, contains an abridgment or an epitome of the Iliad, with a preface by Pius II in praise of Homer. Of this book two editions were printed. Six editions of the Donatus, four editions of the Doctrinal of Alexander Gallus, and one edition of the Couplets of Cato were also printed in this type.

TYPE VI. An edition of the Donatus, twenty-seven lines to the page, is the only known book in this type, which was founded on Great-primer body.

TYPE VII. Four leaves of a Donatus on vellum, taken from the binding of a book printed in Strasburg in the year 1493, and belonging to a convent in North Brabant, are all that is known of this type, which closely resembles the character described as Type V.

TYPE VIII.147 Impressions from this face of type have been found in the fragments of only two books. Two broad bands of parchment printed upon one side only with the text of a p289 Donatus, which were discovered in the cover linings of a manual of devotion, printed at Delft in 1484, are the only known relics of one of these books. The types are barbarous, of singularly ungraceful cut, of uneven height and out of line, evidently founded by a man who had no skill in type-founding. They are printed in pale ink which is readily removed by the application of water. The presswork is as slovenly as the type-founding, but the composition was done with some care and intelligence. The lines of type are nearly even as to length, and the words, when broken, are properly divided in syllables. It is evident that the compositor knew how to space and divide words, but the font of type that he used was not provided with hyphens or marks of punctuation. The fashion of the letter is in the Dutch style as may be seen in the final t with the perpendicular bar.

The other fragment in this type is a little pamphlet of eight pages, printed on parchment and upon one side only. It is described by some as a Horarium, or a little book of prayers; by others as an Abecedarium, or a child’s primer. It contains the Alphabet (all the small letters but not the capitals), the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostles’ Creed, and two prayers. The Alphabet has the k, a letter that was not used in the Latin language; it has no w, this letter being formed by the union of the two characters v. Holtrop says that the types seem to have been made for the Dutch language.

The “turning upside down” of four letters on the second page of this little work proves that the letters are impressions from movable types.

This little tract was discovered in 1751 by the celebrated type-founder Enschedé, of Haarlem, in a manuscript breviary of the fifteenth century, among the books of the descendants of John Van Zuren, a printer of Haarlem in 1561.

If bar­barous type-found­ing and shab­by print­ing could be accepted as con­clu­sive evi­dence of the superior an­ti­qui­ty of p290 the book in which these faults occur, the Abecedarium should be the ol­dest piece of prin­ted mat­ter. One can­not ima­gine a print­ed book with more slo­ven­ly work­man­ship. Its types present all the ir­reg­ular­i­ties of the Donatus pre­vious­ly de­scribed. The pages have but nine lines of types to each page, yet they are very crooked. This crook­ed­ness was partial­ly pro­duced by an un­skill­ful fas­tening, or locking-up of the types, but it is plain that the types were of ir­reg­ular size as to body, and that the let­ters were badly ad­just­ed upon the bodies. Some types are high and others low to paper, and there are types that are legible at one end of the face and not at the other. The press­work is wretched: we see the evi­dences of too weak and badly dis­tri­but­ed ink and of un­even impres­sion. The text shows many faults of com­po­si­tion in the di­vi­sion of syl­lables. To the ob­ser­ver who is not an expert in typo­graphy, the work­man­ship of the book seems that of a man who had no ex­per­ience in any de­part­ment of print­ing: the faults do not ap­pear to be those of a badly taught printer, but those of an ex­per­i­ment­er.

For this reason the Abecedarium has been claimed by the Dutch historians of typography as the first production of the inventor of the art. They say that it was printed before any edition of the Speculum, and probably in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. A closer p291 examination of the book does not lead to this conclusion: the printer of the book was, no doubt, a careless workman, but he had been taught the trade. The fragments of the tract are in four pieces, but they were printed in one form of eight pages, and by one impression. This artificial arrangement of the pages, in the arbitrary position which allows them to be folded together in regular order, reveals an expertness in little technicalities on the part of this early printer which is somewhat unexpected. The method of printing sheets imposed in forms of eight pages was not in fashion before it was adopted by Aldus Manutius, of Venice, in his edition of Virgil dated 1501. It is not an invention of the first, but of the last quarter of the fifteenth century, to which period this book belongs.148

The types of the book were not set up by an experimenter or ignoramus. The comparatively even outline to the right of every page shows that the compositor tried to space out his lines and to give every page an appearance of uniform squareness. As full and even-spaced lines are not to be found in any edition of the Speculum, nor in any of the first books of the early printers, we may conclude that the Abecedarium was printed at a later date, when this improvement had been adopted by all printers.

It has been maintained that the book must be very old, because it is printed on one side only, after the fashion of the block-printers. This is an improper inference, for each fragment has the appearance of a spoiled impression which was rejected before the sheet had been perfected by printing on the other side. The unfilled space for the initial letter shows that the work on the sheet was never completed. p292

The eight faces of types show their relation to each other, not only by common features, but by the occasional appearance of two faces in one book. That they were never used by any printer of Germany, nor by any known printer of the Netherlands, is acknowledged even by those who dispute their age. That they were founded and used in the Netherlands, and probably in Holland, may rightfully be inferred from the language of two editions of the same book, from the Dutch fashion of the letters in all the books, and from the fact that all existing copies or fragments of works in these types have been discovered in the Netherlands. That they were the work of one printer, or of the successors of that printer, is highly probable. But this admission involves difficulties. These eight faces of types were founded on as many different bodies: four of these faces are on bodies nearly the size of English; two of them are on bodies about the size of Great-primer. The modern printer is at a loss to imagine why his unknown predecessor should have cut so many punches and made so many fonts of types with faces closely resembling each other, yet so unlike that they could not be used together. His perplexity is increased when he discovers, after careful measurement, that each face on English body and each face on Great-primer body was cast in a new or different mould. It would seem that the unknown printer of the Speculum not only incurred the needless expense of cutting new punches and making new moulds for every new font of types, but that he intentionally introduced in his printing office bodies so nearly alike that they could not, in the shape of single types, be distinguished apart.

The questions at once arise, Why were so many faces and bodies of types that could be readily mistaken for each other, and were so liable to be mixed together, allowed in one office? Why were so many punches cut for such trivial differences of face, and so many moulds made for such slight differences of body? These questions can be answered only by conjectures fairly derived from the remarkable workmanship of the books. p293 The harsh indentation of the types in the paper shows very clearly that the types were roughly used, and that they wore out rapidly. We can see, also, that the method of making types was as imperfect as the method of obtaining impression. It is possible that the matrices and moulds wore out as fast as the types, but they could not have been renewed if they had not been made by a much quicker and cheaper method than that of modern type-founders. It is not at all probable that these different types were in use together. We may suppose that as soon as a font of types was worn out, it was replaced by another font, which may have been cast from new matrices and a new adjustment of mould. A new font made in imitation of the old one, but made without scientific method, and without regard to exact accuracy, would show the difference in face and body which seems so strange to the modern printer.

These eight fonts of type seem all the more unnecessary when we consider the trivial nature of the unknown printer’s works.149 The Speculum is the only book of respectable size; the others are so diminutive that they could be classified as pamphlets. They were cheaply made, adapted, apparently, to the wants of school-boys, and were probably sold for small sums. It is evident that the books met with ready sale. We find four editions of the Speculum in two faces of type and in two languages; nineteen editions of the Donatus in six faces of type; six editions of the Doctrinal in two faces; and twelve editions of other books.

From the character of the books, one might judge that they had been printed for the use of some school, and at the suggestion, or under the direction, of the authorities of the church. The Abecedarium was a primer for small children. The books most frequently published, the Donatus and the Doctrinal, were those most needed by very young scholars. p294 The Couplets of Cato, the curt treatise on the Roman Law, and the Praise of the Iliad, are, in size and subject, the books that would be suitable for a boy’s school in the middle ages. The Treatises of Saliceto and Torquemada, the Witty Sayings of Great Men and the Eulogy of Pope Pius II, may also be included in the list of books that were intended to be used in schools for the teaching of morals. The character of these works is more juvenile than that of any other typographic printer of that century. Whoever compares them with the ponderous theological works that were printed by Mentel, Gutenberg and Schœffer, and by numerous printers in Germany, and subsequently in the Netherlands, will at once see that this unknown printer made books for boys where other printers made books for men. Probably he could secure no other buyers. His workmanship was so rude that it could not be sold to an intelligent or critical reader. His process was suitable only for the cheapest work and the simplest tastes.

It is unnecessary to prove that the types of these books, like the types of the Speculum, were founded in a mould. They show the same features, and must have been made by the same process. It is, however, necessary to show that neither these types, nor p295 any types made in the infancy of the art, could have been cut on wood or metal. There is a tradition, which has found its way in many popular treatises on typography, and even in encyclopædias, that the first types were cut or sawed out of wood. We are told that separate letters, drawn at graduated distances, were engraved on blocks of wood, and that a saw cutting through the intervening spaces separated the fixed letters and made movable types. According to Meerman, the uncouthness of the types of the Abecedarium is fully explained by the acceptance of this tradition. It is necessary, at the outset, to show the impracticability of these imaginary types of wood. This can be done in no better way than by presenting the illustrations of Leon De la Borde, one of the most eminent defenders of the theory. In these engravings, we see how the letters were drawn on the blocks, how lines were marked out to guide the saw that cut them apart, and how the dissected letters were recombined in new positions. But this illustration really proves the reverse of what was intended: it proves that types may be cut out of wood, but that they cannot be used after they have been cut. In this third illustration, the lines of type are separated by leads,151 but the types stand more unevenly in line than the letters of any xylographic book. It is obvious to every printer that they could not have been printed at all, if they had not been p296 leaded. As an imitation, the illustration is of no value, for it illustrates a method of arranging types which was never practised by the unknown printer, whose types were always composed without leads. This pretended demonstration must be put aside as a complete failure.152

Those who have written in defense of types of wood have failed to see that the cutting of the faces is the least difficult part of the work. The real difficulty is in the cutting of the bodies—in making bodies so accurate that they can be interchanged with facility, in all kinds of combinations, without showing distortion in the line of the face. In small types made of wood this accuracy is not possible. Even if it were possible to cut them, it would be impossible to use them. No care could keep them from warping. Types must be wet with ink, and they must be cleansed with lye or water; they must be exposed to changes from heat to cold, from dampness to dryness. Under these influences, the little skewers of wood, for so they must be regarded, would soon be twisted out of shape, and unfitted for future service. It is in this liability to warp that types of wood fail most signally. It is not enough that they can be made to serve for one experiment; the only demonstration of practicability that a printer can accept is p297 that of repeated distribution and recomposition, a feat which has never been done. That types of wood were tried by the inventor of typography is probable; that single leaves were printed, experimentally, is possible; but the statement that any printer used them repeatedly in the printing of books, cannot be admitted. No book was ever printed in Europe with small types of wood. It is time, says Van der Linde, that criticism made a bonfire of these imaginary types.153

The hypothesis of types of wood has been given up reluctantly. It was considered that the singular variety of letters, so noticeable in all the books of the unknown printer, and so contrary to the usage of the modern type-founder, could have been produced only by engraving the types. A demonstration of the impracticability of bodies of wood seemed to p298 destroy with it the only reasonable explanation of the greatest peculiarity of these types. To place this imaginary method of making types on unassailable ground, Meerman offered a modification of the theory. He supposed that the first printers of Germany founded little cubes of metal, with truly squared bodies, upon one end of which the faces were subsequently engraved. The misconstruction of the language of a chronicler of the sixteenth century—who, in trying to explain the process of making types, carelessly placed the cutting of the punch after the founding of the type—seemed a full warrant for this conjecture. It is, however, but a conjecture: there is no credible authority for the statement that the printers first cast the bodies and then cut the faces. Cut types, if made at all, were made only in the way of preliminary experiment. The method is as impracticable as it is absurd. “He must have been an imbecile,” says Bernard, “who could not see that the process of founding in a mould which made the body would also make the face.”

The allusions to letter-cutting that are so frequent in all the earlier notices of type-making can be readily explained. The cutting is not that of types used for printing, but of the punches by which the printing types were made. The types of the early printers were made by two classes of workmen: he who poured the melted metal was the founder; he who made the model letters was the cutter. Performing the more artistic and the more difficult part of the work, the punch-cutter was properly regarded as the maker of the types.

The variety of faces in the types of the unknown printer can be explained in a much more satisfactory manner than by attributing them to the accidental slips or deviation of the graving tool. The letters of the manuscript books of that century were not uniform; it was not necessary that printed letters should be uniform. The fashion of the day did not require it. On the contrary, it did seem desirable that the letters should be printed with the variety of shapes to which readers were accustomed. Whether this variety of shape in p299 type was the result of design, of accident, or of necessity need not now be considered; in this place it is enough to say that all the early printers made many varieties of the letters which they most frequently used.154 It should, however, be noticed that this apparent taste for variety of form was confined to the small or lower-case letters. Two forms of a capital letter are rarely found in the same book, but the same form of capital is occasionally used with two faces of lower-case types that are decidedly different.

The dissimilarity of the small types has been made greater by faults of type-founding and of presswork. In all copies of the Speculum the careful observer will see the impressions of types with imperfect faces. There are many half-formed letters, with little peculiarities of appearance which can be satisfactorily explained only by the conjecture that the types in leaving the mould, carried with them the impress of defects in the matrices. We can see that the types were unequal in height, and that the over-high types have been flattened out under impression. This flattening-out of the soft metal has produced a strange appearance of compactness, making letters that were really separate seem connected. The ink, which p300 was sometimes thin and gray and sometimes thick and strong black, was applied by an imperfect method which has filled the counters of some letters until they are almost illegible, while it has not fairly covered the faces of other letters. The singular irregularities of a collection of types, apparently new on one page and worn-out on another, which have provoked the astonishment of many critics, are chargeable, not to the condition of the types, but to faulty methods of inking and impression. Few persons have a proper notion of the changes that can be given to the appearance of the best modern types by substituting wet for dry paper, hard for light impression, and thin for thick ink.155

How the types of these and of other early books were founded cannot be learned from the vague descriptions of the early chroniclers of typography. We have to conjecture the process from the workmanship of the books. The discrepancies in the bodies and the imperfections of the faces indicate that the process was rude and unscientific, and that the mould was not of metal. It is possible that the maker of these types followed the example of other founders in metals, and made types in moulds of sand.156 There are some peculiarities in his types which almost confirm this conjecture. The difficulty encountered in fitting matrices to these moulds, or in adjusting the mould of the face of the letter in proper position on the body, a difficulty that calls for no explanation, may be the reason why the types are so often out of line, crookedly set on body and of irregular height to paper. The feebleness of the sand mould, its liability to damage, and the necessity for its frequent renewal are, possibly, the reasons why we find in the p301 impressions of the unknown printer types of so many bodies, and with such singular defects.157 The rounded edges, spotted stems and deficient lines of many of the letters seem the faults of types unskillfully founded in moulds of sand, from metal insufficiently hot, poured in without the force that is needed to make it penetrate all the finer lines of the matrix.158

Koning, the author of a prize essay on the invention of typography by Coster, expresses his belief in the theory that the types of the Speculum were made from punches of wood and were founded in matrices of lead. His belief in the use of these rude implements is based on the well known fact that matrices of lead were frequently used by the earlier German and Dutch printers. Enschedé of Haarlem had in his type-foundry matrices of lead, which he claimed were used by Peter Schœffer in the fifteenth century. Firmin-Didot, the eminent p302 type-founder of Paris, says that punches of wood and matrices of lead were used in his type-foundry for the casting of large ornamental types even as late as the beginning of the present century. His description is as curious as it is instructive.

. . . I have often made use of this process, . . . which is to sink in lead, a character cut on wood, at the instant when, melted by heat, the lead is about to harden. Matrices of lead made by this process are subsequently justified for height and for lining, like other matrices. Then, by the ordinary process of stereotyping, one may take from this matrix, a duplicate in metal, which, after having been dressed, is replaced in the matrix in lead, and fitted up to a mould. The melted metal poured in this mould, not only makes the body of the type, but at the same time solders itself to the stereotype [nested in the matrix] which makes the face of the type. By this process one may take from a matrix in lead, a type as perfect as that which is obtained in the ordinary manner. But these matrices in lead will only make a limited number of stereotypes. . . . By taking the precaution to cool occasionally a matrix in lead, one can obtain from sixty to eighty types, without being obliged to re-enter the old matrix with the punch of wood, or to make a new matrix from the same punch. For vowels, and for the letters that are more frequently used, it is necessary to increase the number of matrices. But whenever the punch re-enters the matrix, the form of the punch undergoes some alteration from the effects of the pressure and the heat. It often happens that the punch is burned during the little time that it is buried in the hot metal. It then becomes necessary to re-engrave the punch. These are the reasons why differences in shape are to be found in the letters that are most frequently used.159

Whether the types of the unknown printer were founded entirely in sand, or in matrices of lead, cannot be positively determined from the appearance of the letters, for it seems that either method of founding would produce types showing similar defects. It is probable that the punches were cut on wood, and sunk in hot metal as described by Didot, and that the types of the Speculum were not only cast in lead matrices, but that the matrices were sometimes conjoined, and that two or more letters were cast together on one body. There is a closeness of fitting in some of the words which cannot be p303 explained with entire satisfaction by the hypothesis that this closeness is the result of flattening out under pressure. One is strengthened in this belief when he discovers that it was not an uncommon practice in the type-foundries of the fifteenth century to join the matrices. Six of the matrices owned by Enschedé, and by him attributed to Schœffer, were made to be combined. These leaden matrices were pierced through their sides with a gimlet-hole, in which an iron wire was inserted to bind them together, and keep them securely on the mould. The method was faulty, for it could not keep the matrices in proper position; it could not produce types uniform as to height and true as to line.160

The thick faces and flattened lines of the types in many of the unknown printer’s books show that his types were of very soft metal, probably of pure lead. To satisfy his doubts on this subject, Enschedé cast in some of his antique moulds types composed almost entirely of lead. The experiment succeeded: he was convinced that practical types of lead could be founded in matrices of lead.161 Blades carried this experiment to a more successful conclusion, for he put the types to practical use. He had cast for him a collection of types in p304 “unmixed lead,” with which he printed five hundred impressions on rough and dry paper. He says that the types showed no appreciable wear; but this is not surprising, for we have evidences that they were printed by an expert pressman on an iron press provided with every appliance requisite for a nice adjustment of the impression.

It is not at all probable that the press of the unknown printer had these handy appliances. All the printing presses made before the nineteenth century had wooden frames, with beds of slate or stone, and platens or pressing surfaces of wood. Impression was given by the direct action of a screw, the force applied being regulated only by the discretion of the pressman. Knight, in his essay on Caxton, says the press of that printer was a modification of the cheese-press, provided with an attachment that permitted the form of types to be moved in and out of the press. German authors say that the first printing press was a modification of the wine-press. Bernard says it was, probably, an improved form of coining or stamping press. But these are only conjectures. We can find no engraving nor any verbal description of the form of the printing press in use during the fifteenth century. The general neglect by all artists and writers of this important auxiliary to printing is an indication that no importance was attached either to the mechanism of the press or to the principle of impression. It seems to have been generally understood that, whatever merit there might have been in the invention of printing, no noteworthy inventive skill had been shown in the construction of the press. It was not only a rude but an old contrivance.

We have many evidences that the press of the unknown printer was of the rudest construction. Some pages have the marks of strong pressure in one corner and of weak impression in another—manifestly the result of the printer’s inability to regulate or control the force he exerted. The margins of the Speculum are of unequal width; the type-work is rarely ever parallel with the engraving at the head or at a proper p305 distance from it. On some pages, the types overlap or bite on the wood-cuts; on other pages they are too near or too far from them. One of the reasons why the Speculum was printed on one side only was the deficiency in this press of any contrivance for determining the proper position of the sheet before the impression was taken. The pressman could not print one page truly and squarely on the back of another page. Koning says that the printer did not have the least idea of the means to be used for accomplishing this result.162 This defect of the press can be seen in the pages of the small books without illustrations: they were printed on both sides, but the modern printer would condemn the work as seriously out of register.

The most remarkable peculiarity in the presswork of the Speculum is the embossed letters at the ends of the short lines.163 They are most noticeable in the two Latin editions, which contain lines of unequal length. To the modern printer the purpose to be accomplished by the use of the old and worn types that produced these embossed letters is apparent at a glance. They served as bearers or guards to shield newer and better types in exposed positions from an impression which p306 could not be regulated. This exposed position was at the ends of the long lines; the types that projected beyond their fellows received the hardest impression, and the printer knew no better method of shielding them than by the insertion of worn types at the ends of the shorter lines above and below.164

This expedient was insufficient. On the margins of many copies of the Speculum can be detected (for the grain of wood is unmistakable) the marks of impressions against wood. It seems that the pages of types were fastened in a mortised block of wood of the same height as the types. This block of wood not only served as a chase to hold the types, but as a bearer to shield the types from uneven impression. It steadied the descent of the platen, and diffused the impression equally over the entire surface. These bearers shielded the types from undue impression, but they made a new difficulty, for they were of the same height as the types. The inking of a form so constructed must have blackened with equal impartiality the types of the text, the worn types used as bearers, and the wooden chase. To lay a sheet of white paper over such a form would smear and blacken it at the ends of short lines and in the margins where no color was required. It became necessary to put a mask over these bearers, so that the ink on the bearers would not be transferred to the paper.

This mask was substantially the same contrivance which modern printers call the frisket. It shielded the white sheet from contact with ink where ink was not required, but could not shield it from impression. It really strengthened and deepened the impression, producing the embossed letters in the short lines and the marks of wood in the margins. On p307 some pages the slipping or displacement of this paper mask caused the false letters to be printed in black; on one other page the mask slipped so trivially that one-half of the false types was printed in black, while the other half was embossed in white; on another page the mask slipped over the text type, and obscured the end of the line. These were exceptional errors; the general execution of this part of the work shows that the printer was a man of some intelligence, and that with imperfect materials he performed a very difficult task.