TRIUMPHS OF TYPOGRAPHY

In gathering together his book treasures, a collector naturally approaches the adventure from a personal standpoint. First editions may particularly appeal to him, or Americana, or his bibliomania may take the form of subject collecting. I once had a friend who concentrated on whales and bees! My hobby has been to acquire, so far as possible, volumes that represent the best workmanship of each epoch, and from them I have learned much of fascinating interest beyond the history of typography. A book in itself is always something more than paper and type and binder’s boards. It possesses a subtle friendliness that sets it apart from other inanimate objects about us, and stamps it with an individuality which responds to our approach in proportion to our interest. But aside from its contents, a typographical monument is a barometer of civilization. If we discover what economic or political conditions combined to make it stand out from other products of its period, we learn contemporaneous history and become acquainted with the personalities of the people and the manners and customs of the times.

No two countries, since Gutenberg first discovered the power of individual types when joined together to form words down to the present day, have stood pre-eminent in the same epoch in the art of printing. The curve of supremacy, plotted from the brief triumph of Germany successively through Italy, France, the Netherlands, England, France, and back again to England, shows that the typographical monuments of the world are not accidental, but rather the natural results of cause and effect. In some instances, the production of fine books made the city of their origin the center of culture and brought luster to the country; in others, the great master-printers were attracted from one locality to another because of the literary atmosphere in a certain city, and by their labors added to the reputation it had already attained. The volumes themselves sometimes produced vitally significant effects; sometimes their production was the result of conditions equally important.

The first example I should like to own for my collection of typographical triumphs is, of course, the Gutenberg Bible (opp. page); but with only forty-five copies known to be in existence (of which twelve are on vellum), I must content myself with photographic facsimile pages. The copy most recently offered for sale brought $106,000 in New York in February, 1926, and was later purchased by Mrs. Edward S. Harkness for $120,000, who presented it to the Yale University Library. This makes the Gutenberg Bible the most valuable printed book in the world,—six times as precious as a Shakespeare first folio. Fortunately, the copies are well distributed, so that one need not deny himself the pleasure of studying it. In America, there are two examples (one on vellum) in the Pierpont Morgan Library, in New York; another in the New York Public Library, and still another in the library of the General Theological School; while the private collections of Henry E. Huntington and Joseph E. Widener are also fortunate possessors. In England, one may find a copy at the British Museum or the Bodleian Library; on the Continent, at the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, at the Vatican Library in Rome, or in the libraries of Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, or Vienna. Over twenty of the forty-five copies are imperfect, and only four are still in private hands. Of these four, one is imperfect, and two are already promised to libraries; so the copy sold in New York may be the last ever offered.

The copy I love best to pore over is that bound in four volumes of red morocco, stamped with the arms of Louis XVI, in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This perhaps is not so historical as the one De Bure discovered in the library of Cardinal Mazarin in Paris in 1763,—three hundred years after it was printed, and until then unknown; but the dignity of those beautifully printed types on the smooth, ivory surface of the vellum possesses a magnificence beyond that of any other copy I have seen. Also at the Bibliothèque Nationale is a defective paper copy in two volumes in which appear rubricator’s notes marking the completion of the work as August 15, 1456. Think how important this is in placing this marvel of typography; for the project of printing the Bible could not have been undertaken earlier than August, 1451, when Gutenberg formed his partnership with Fust and Schoeffer in Mayence.

To a modern architect of books the obstacles which the printer at that time encountered, with the art itself but a few years old, seem insurmountable. There was the necessity of designing and cutting the first fonts of type, based upon the hand lettering of the period. As is always inevitable in the infancy of any art, this translation from one medium to another repeated rather than corrected the errors of the human hand. The typesetter, instead of being secured from an employment office, had to be made. Gutenberg himself perhaps, had to teach the apprentice the method of joining together the various letters, in a roughly made composing stick of his own invention, in such a way as to maintain regularity in the distances between the stems of the various letters, and thus produce a uniform and pleasing appearance. There existed no proper iron chases in which to lock up the pages of the type, so that while the metal could be made secure at the top and bottom, there are frequent instances where it bulges out on the sides.

From the very beginning the printed book had to be a work of art. The patronage of kings and princes had developed the hand-lettered volumes to the highest point of perfection, and, on account of this keen competition with the scribes and their patrons, no printer could afford to devote to any volume less than his utmost artistic taste and mechanical ingenuity. Thus today, if a reader examines the Gutenberg Bible with a critical eye, he will be amazed by the extraordinary evenness in the printing, and the surprisingly accurate alignment of the letters. The glossy blackness of the ink still remains, and the sharpness of the impression is equal to that secured upon a modern cylinder press.

It has been estimated that no less than six hand presses were employed in printing the 641 leaves, composed in double column without numerals, catch words, or signatures. What binder today would undertake to collate such a volume in proper sequence! After the first two divisions had come off the press it was decided to change the original scheme of the pages from 40 to 42 lines. In order to get these two extra lines on the page it was necessary to set all the lines closer together. To accomplish this, some of the type was recast, with minimum shoulder, and the rest of it was actually cut down in height to such an extent that a portion of the curved dots of the i’s was clipped off.

Monographs have been written to explain the variation in the size of the type used in different sections of this book, but what more natural explanation could there be than that the change was involuntary and due to natural causes? In those days the molds which the printer used for casting his types were made sometimes of lead, but more often of wood. As he kept pouring the molten metal into these matrices, the very heat would by degrees enlarge the mold itself, and thus produce lead type of slightly larger size. From time to time, also, the wooden matrices wore out, and the duplicates would not exactly correspond with those they replaced.

In printing these volumes, the precedent was established of leaving blank spaces for the initial letters, which were later filled in by hand. Some of these are plain and some elaborate, serving to make the resemblance to the hand-lettered book even more exact; but the glory of the Gutenberg Bible lies in its typography and presswork rather than in its illuminated letters.

Germany, in the Gutenberg Bible, proved its ability to produce volumes worthy of the invention itself, but as a country it possessed neither the scholars, the manuscripts, nor the patrons to insure the development of the new art. Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century, had become the home of learning, and almost immediately Venice became the Mecca of printers. Workmen who had served their apprenticeships in Germany sought out the country where princes might be expected to become patrons of the new art, where manuscripts were available for copy, and where a public existed both able and willing to purchase the products of the press. The Venetian Republic, quick to appreciate this opportunity, offered its protection and encouragement. Venice itself was the natural market of the world for distribution of goods because of the low cost of sea transportation.

I have a fine copy of Augustinus: De Civitate Dei (page 205) that I discovered in Rome in its original binding years ago, printed in Jenson’s Gothic type in 1475. On the first page of text, in bold letters across the top, the printer has placed the words, Nicolaus Jenson, Gallicus. In addition to this signature, the explicit reads:

Jenson was a printer who not only took pride in his art but also in the country of his birth! He was a Frenchman, who was sent to Mayence by King Charles VII of France to find out what sort of thing this new art of printing was, and if of value to France to learn it and to bring it home. Jenson had been an expert engraver, so was well adapted to this assignment. At Mayence he quickly mastered the art, and was prepared to transport it to Paris; but by this time Charles VII had died, and Jenson knew that Louis XI, the new monarch, would have little interest in recognizing his father’s mandate. The Frenchman then set himself up in Venice, where he contributed largely to the prestige gained by this city as a center for printing as an art, and for scholarly publications.

Jenson had no monopoly on extolling himself in the explicits of his books. The cost of paper in those days was so high that a title page was considered an unnecessary extravagance, so this was the printer’s only opportunity to record his imprint. In modern times we printers are more modest, and leave it to the publishers to sound our praises, but we do like to place our signatures on well-made books!

The explicit in the hand-written book also offered a favorite opportunity for gaining immortality for the scribe. I once saw in an Italian monastery a manuscript volume containing some 600 pages, in which was recorded the fact that on such and such a day Brother So-and-So had completed the transcribing of the text; and inasmuch as he had been promised absolution, one sin for each letter, he thanked God that the sum total of the letters exceeded the sum total of his sins, even though by but a single unit!

Among Jenson’s most important contributions were his type designs, based upon the best hand lettering of the day. Other designers had slavishly copied the hand-written letter, but Jenson, wise in his acquired knowledge, eliminated the variations and produced letters not as they appeared upon the hand-written page, but standardized to the design which the artist-scribe had in mind and which his hand failed accurately to reproduce. The Jenson Roman (page 22) and his Gothic (page 205) types have, through all these centuries, stood as the basic patterns of subsequent type designers.

Jenson died in 1480, and the foremost rival to his fame is Aldus Manutius, who came to Venice from Carpi and established himself there in 1494. I have often conjectured what would have happened had this Frenchman printed his volumes in France and thus brought them into competition with the later product of the Aldine Press. The supremacy of Italy might have suffered,—but could Jenson have cut his types or printed his books in the France of the fifteenth century? As it was, the glories of the Aldi so closely followed Jenson’s superb work that Italy’s supreme position in the history of typography can never be challenged.

For his printer’s mark Aldus adopted the famous combination of the Dolphin and Anchor, the dolphin signifying speed in execution and the anchor firmness in deliberation. As a slogan he used the words Festina lente, of which perhaps the most famous translation is that by Sir Thomas Browne, “Celerity contempered with Cunctation.” Jenson’s printer’s mark (page 203), by the way, has suffered the indignity of being adopted as the trademark of a popular brand of biscuits!

The printing office of Aldus stood near the Church of Saint Augustus, in Venice. Here he instituted a complete revolution in the existing methods of publishing. The clumsy and costly folios and quartos, which had constituted the standard forms, were now replaced by crown octavo volumes, convenient both to the hand and to the purse.

“I have resolved,” Aldus wrote in 1490, “to devote my life to the cause of scholarship. I have chosen, in place of a life of ease and freedom, an anxious and toilsome career. A man has higher responsibilities than the seeking of his own enjoyment; he should devote himself to honorable labor. Living that is a mere existence can be left to men who are content to be animals. Cato compared human existence to iron. When nothing is done with it, it rusts; it is only through constant activity that polish or brilliancy is secured.”

The weight of responsibility felt by Aldus in becoming a printer may be better appreciated when one realizes that this profession then included the duties of editor and publisher. The publisher of today accepts or declines manuscripts submitted by their authors, and the editing of such manuscripts, if considered at all, is placed in the hands of his editorial department. Then the “copy” is turned over to the printer for manufacture. In the olden days the printer was obliged to search out his manuscripts, to supervise their editing—not from previously printed editions, but from copies transcribed by hand, frequently by careless scribes. Thus his reputation depended not only on his skill as a printer, but also upon his sagacity as a publisher, and his scholarship as shown in his text. In addition to all this, the printer had to create the demand for his product and arrange for its distribution because there were no established bookstores.

The great scheme that Aldus conceived was the publication of the Greek classics. Until then only four of the Greek authors, Æsop, Theocritus, Homer, and Isocrates, had been published in the original. Aldus gave to the world, for the first time in printed form, Aristotle, Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, Herodotus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Lysias, Æschines, Plutarch, and Pindar. Except for what Aldus did at this time, most of these texts would have been irrevocably lost to posterity.

When you next see Italic type you will be interested to know that it was first cut by Aldus, said to be inspired by the thin, inclined, cursive handwriting of Petrarch; when you admire the beauty added to the page by the use of small capitals, you should give Aldus credit for having been the first to use this attractive form of typography. Even in that early day Aldus objected to the inartistic, square ending of a chapter occupying but a portion of the page, and devised all kinds of type arrangements, half-diamond, goblet, and bowl, to satisfy the eye.

To me, the most interesting book that Aldus produced was the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,—“Poliphilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream.” It stands as one of the most celebrated in the annals of Venetian printing, being the only illustrated volume issued by the Aldine Press. This work was undertaken at the very close of the fifteenth century at the expense of one Leonardo Crasso of Verona, who dedicated the book to Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino. It was written by a Dominican friar, Francesco Colonna, who adopted an ingenious method of arranging his chapters so that the successive initial letters compose a complete sentence which, when translated, read, “Brother Francesco Colonna greatly loved Polia.” Polia has been identified as one Lucrezia Lelio, daughter of a jurisconsult of Treviso, who later entered a convent.

The volume displays a pretentious effort to get away from the commonplace. On every page Aldus expended his utmost ingenuity in the arrangement of the type,—the use of capitals and small capitals, and unusual type formations. In many cases the type balances the illustrations in such a way as to become a part of them. Based on the typographical standards of today, some of these experiments are indefensible, but in a volume issued in 1499 they stand as an extraordinary exhibit of what an artistic, ingenious printer can accomplish within the rigid limitations of metal type. The illustrations themselves, one hundred and fifty-eight in number, run from rigid architectural lines to fanciful portrayals of incidents in the story. Giovanni Bellini is supposed to have been the artist, but there is no absolute evidence to confirm this supposition.

Some years ago the Grolier Club of New York issued an etching entitled, Grolier in the Printing Office of Aldus (page 208). I wish I might believe that this great printer was fortunate enough to have possessed such an office! In spite of valuable concessions he received from the Republic, and the success accorded to him as a printer, he was able to eke out but a bare existence, and died a poor man. The etching, however, is important as emphasizing the close relation which exited between the famous ambassador of François I at the Court of Pope Clement VII, at Rome, and the family of Aldus, to which association booklovers owe an eternal debt of gratitude. At one time the Aldine Press was in danger of bankruptcy, and Grolier not only came to its rescue with his purse but also with his personal services. Without these tangible expressions of his innate love for the book, collectors today would be deprived of some of the most interesting examples of printing and binding that they count among their richest treasures.

The general conception that Jean Grolier was a binder is quite erroneous; he was as zealous a patron of the printed book as of the binder’s art. His great intimacy in Venice was with Andrea Torresani (through whose efforts the Jenson and the Aldus offices were finally combined), and his two sons, Francesco and Federico, the father-in-law and brothers-in-law of the famous Aldus. No clearer idea can be gained of Grolier’s relations at Casa Aldo than the splendid letter which he sent to Francesco in 1519, intrusting to his hands the making of Budé’s book, De Asse:

What better conception of a book, or of the responsibility to be assumed toward that book, both by the printer and by the publisher, could be expressed today!

The early sixteenth century marked a crisis in the world in which the book played a vital part. When Luther, at Wittenberg, burned the papal bull and started the Reformation, an overwhelming demand on the part of the people was created for information and instruction. For the first time the world realized that the printing press was a weapon placed in the hands of the masses for defence against oppression by Church or State. François I was King of France; Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire; and Henry VIII, King of England. Italy had something to think about beyond magnificently decorated volumes, and printing as an art was for the time forgotten in supplying the people with books at low cost.

François I, undismayed by the downfall of the Italian patrons, believed that he could gain for himself and for France the prestige which had been Italy’s through the patronage of learning and culture. What a pity that he had not been King of France when Jenson returned from Mayence! He was confident that he could become the Mæcenas of the arts and the father of letters, and still control the insistence of the people, which increased steadily with their growing familiarity with their new-found weapon. He determined to have his own printer, and was eager to eclipse even the high Standard the Italian master-printers had established.

Robert Étienne (or Stephens), who in 1540 succeeded Néobar as “Printer in Greek to the King,” while not wholly accomplishing his monarch’s ambitions, was the great master-printer of his age. He came from a family of printers, and received his education and inspiration largely from the learned men who served as correctors in his father’s office. François proved himself genuinely interested in the productions of his Imprimerie Royale, frequently visiting Étienne at the Press, and encouraging him by expending vast sums for specially designed types, particularly in Greek. The story goes that on one occasion the King found Étienne engaged in correcting a proof sheet, and refused to permit the printer to be disturbed, insisting on waiting until the work was completed.

For my own collection of great typographical monuments I would select for this period the Royal Greeks of Robert Étienne. A comparison between the text page, so exquisitely balanced (page 222), and the title page (page 220), where the arrangement of type and printer’s mark could scarcely be worse, gives evidence enough that even the artist-printer of that time had not yet grasped the wonderful opportunity a title page offers for self-expression. Probably Étienne regarded it more as a chance to pay his sovereign the compliment of calling him “A wise king and a valiant warrior.” But are not the Greek characters marvelously beautiful! They were rightly called the Royal Greeks! The drawings were made by the celebrated calligrapher Angelos Vergetios, of Candia, who was employed by François to make transcripts of Greek texts for the Royal Collection, and whose manuscript volumes may still be seen in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Earlier fonts had been based upon this same principle of making the Greek letters reproductions as closely as possible of the elaborate, involved, current writing hand of the day; but these new designs carried out the principle to a degree until then unattained. The real success of the undertaking was due to the skill of Claude Garamond, the famous French punchcutter and typefounder. Pierre Victoire quaintly comments:

Of course, they were too beautiful to be practical. In the Roman letters typecutters had already found that hand lettering could no more be translated directly into the form of type than a painting can be translated directly into a tapestry, without sacrificing some of the characteristic features of each. With the Greek letters, the problem was even more difficult, and the Royal Greeks offered no end of complications to the compositors, and added disastrously to the expense of the production. When Plantin came along, he based his Greek type upon Étienne’s, but his modifications make it more practical. Compare the Royal Greeks with Plantin’s Greek on page 231 and see how much beauty and variety was lost in the revision.

François I found himself in an impossible position between his desire to encourage Étienne in his publications and the terrific pressure brought to bear by the ecclesiastical censors. Just as the people had awakened to the value of books, not to put on shelves, but to read in order to know, so had the Church recognized the importance of controlling and influencing what those books contained. Throughout Robert Étienne’s entire tenure of office there raged a conflict which not only seriously interfered with his work, but distinctly hampered the development of literature. Had François lived longer, Étienne’s volumes might have reached a level equal to that attained by his Italian predecessors, but Henri II was no match for the censors. In 1552 Robert Étienne, worn out by the constant struggles, transferred his office to Geneva, where he died seven years later. His son Henri continued his work, but except for his Thesaurus produced little of typographical interest.

Had it not been for this bitter censorship, France might have held her supremacy for at least another half-century; but with the experiences of Robert Étienne still in mind, it is easily understood why the Frenchman, Christophe Plantin, in whom surged the determination to become a master-printer, sought to establish himself elsewhere.

By the middle of the sixteenth century Antwerp had assumed the proud position of leading city of Europe. The success that came to the Netherlanders in commerce as a result of their genius and enterprise later stimulated their interest in matters of religion, politics, and literature. Just as the tendencies of the times caused the pendulum to swing away from Italy to France, so now it swung from France toward the Netherlands. I had never before realized that, with the possible exception of certain communities in Italy, where the old intellectual atmosphere still obtained, there was no country in the world in which culture and intelligence were so generally diffused during the sixteenth century. How much more than typography these volumes have taught me!

It was inevitable that the art of printing should find in Belgium its natural opportunity for supreme expression. At the time Plantin turned his eyes in the direction of Antwerp, one entire quarter of that city was devoted to the manufacture of books. This apparently discouraged him, for at first he established himself as a bookbinder a little way out of the city. Later he added a shop for the sale of books; but in 1555 he moved boldly into Antwerp, becoming a full-fledged printer and publisher, soon demonstrating his right to recognition as the master-printer of his time.

By this time the words of Luther had attracted the attention of the Christian world more particularly than ever to the Bible. The people considered it the single basis of their faith, and upon their familiarity with it depended their present and future welfare. It was natural that they should attach the greatest importance to the possession of the most authentic edition of the original text. What more glorious task, then, could a printer take upon himself than to provide correct texts, to translate them with scrupulous exactitude, and to produce with the greatest perfection the single book upon which was based the welfare of men and of empires!

This was the inspiration that came to Christophe Plantin, and which gradually took form in the Biblia Polyglotta, the great typographic achievement of the sixteenth century. On the left-hand page should appear the original Hebrew text, and in a parallel column should be a rendering into the Vulgate (page 230). On the right-hand page the Greek version would be printed, and beside it a Latin translation (page 231). At the foot of each page should be a Chaldean paraphrase.

Antwerp was then under Spanish domination. Plantin at once opened negotiations with Philip II of Spain, and was finally successful in securing from that monarch an agreement to subsidize the undertaking,—a promise which unfortunately was never kept. It is probable that the King was influenced toward a favorable decision by the struggle that occurred between Frankfort, Heidelberg, and even Paris, for the honor of being associated with the great work. Philip subscribed for thirteen copies upon parchment, and agreed to pay Plantin 21,200 florins. He stipulated, however, that the work should be executed under the personal supervision of one Arias Montanus, whom he would send over from Spain. Plantin accepted this condition with some misgivings, but upon his arrival Montanus captivated all by his personal charm and profound learning.

In February, 1565, Plantin employed Robert Grandjon, an engraver of Lyons, to cut the Greek characters for the work, basing his font upon the Royal Greeks. They are still beautiful because they are still unpractical, but they cannot compare with their models any more than later fonts of Greek, cut with the rigid requirements of typography in mind, can compare with these. Grandjon also supplied Plantin with all his Roman, and part of his Hebrew types, the balance being cut by Guillaume Le Bé, of Paris, Hautin of Rochelle, Van der Keere of Tours, and Corneille Bomberghe of Cologne.

The eight massive parts of the Biblia Polyglotta appeared during the years 1568 to 1573. The first volume opens with a splendid engraved title, representing the union of the people in the Christian faith, and the four languages of the Old Testament (opp. page). In the lower, right-hand corner appears the famous Plantin mark. Immediately following are two other engraved plates (page 232), illustrative as well as decorative in their nature. One of these pages gives to the faithless Philip an undeserved immortality. There are also single full-page engravings at the beginning of the fourth and fifth volumes. Twelve copies were printed on vellum for King Philip. A thirteenth copy on vellum was never completed. In addition to these, ten other copies were printed on large Italian imperial paper, and were sold at 200 florins per copy. There were 300 copies on imperial paper at 100 florins, and 960 printed on fine royal Troyes paper, which were offered to the public at 70 florins each, with ten florins discount to libraries. One of the vellum copies was presented by the King to the Pope, another to the Duke of Alba, and still a third to the Duke of Savoy, the remaining copies being left in the library of the Escurial.

King Philip was so pleased with the volumes that he created Plantin Prototypographe, ruler over all the printers in the city,—a polite and inexpensive way of escaping his obligations. The world acclaimed a new master-printer; but these honors meant little to pressing creditors.

What a series of misfortunes Plantin endured! Stabbed by a miscreant who mistook him for some one else; hampered by censorship in spite of previous assurances of liberty in publications; his property wiped out again and again by the clashes of arms which finally cost Antwerp her pre-eminence; forever in debt, and having to sell his books below cost, and to sacrifice his library to meet pressing financial obligations;—yet always rising above his calamities, he carried on his printing office until his death in 1589, when he left a comfortable fortune of above $200,000.

Historically, Plantin’s contribution to the art of printing can scarcely be overestimated, yet technically he should be included in the second rather than the first group of early master-printers. The century that had elapsed since Gutenberg had removed many of the mechanical difficulties which had been obstacles to his predecessors. The printer could now secure printed copy to be edited and improved. Scholars were easily obtainable from the universities for editing and proofreading. Printing machinery could be purchased instead of being manufactured from original models. The sale of books had been greatly systematized. A printer could now devote himself to his art without dividing himself into various semi-related parts. Plantin proved himself a business man. Who else ever established a printing or publishing business on such an enduring basis that it continued for three hundred years! In bequeathing it to his daughter and his son-in-law, Moretus, Plantin made the interesting injunction that the printing office was always to be maintained by the son or successor who was most competent to manage it. If no son qualified, then the successor must be selected outside the family. Fortunately, however, there were sons who, each in his generation but with diminishing ability, proved his right to assume the responsibility, and the business was actually continued in the family down to 1867. A few years later the property was purchased by the city of Antwerp for 1,200,000 francs, and turned into a public museum.

I never visit the Plantin Museum at Antwerp without feeling that I have come closer to the old master-printers and their ideals. Here is the only great printing establishment of the past that time and the inroads of man have left intact. The beauty of the building, the harmony of the surroundings, the old portraits, the comfort yet the taste shown in the living-rooms,—all show that the artist-printer sought the same elements in his life that he expressed in his work. Entering from the Marché du Vendredi, I find myself face to face with a small tablet over the door on which is the device of Christophe Plantin, “first printer to the King, and the king of printers.” Here the familiar hand, grasping a pair of compasses, reaches down from the clouds, holding the compasses so that one leg stands at rest while the other describes a circle, enclosing the legend Labore et Constantia. Within the house one finds the actual types, and presses, and designs by Rubens and other famous artists, that were employed in making the Plantin books. The rooms in which the master printer lived make his personality very real. In those days a man’s business was his life, and the home and the workshop were not far separated. Here the family life and the making of books were so closely interwoven that the visitor can scarcely tell where one leaves off and the other begins.

In the vocabulary of booklovers, the name Elzevir suggests something particularly choice and unique in the making of books. These volumes cannot compare favorably with many products of the press which preceded and followed them, yet the prestige which attended their publication has endured down to the present day. The original popularity of the Elzevirs was due to the fact that after a century of degradation, some one at last undertook to reclaim printing from the depths.

Printing, after reaching such heights so soon after its beginnings, had steadily declined. The art may really be said to have had its origin in Italy, as the work from Gutenberg’s office, while extraordinary and epoch-making, could not rank with the best of the fifteenth-century Italian productions. The French volumes of the early sixteenth century were splendid examples of typography and presswork, but they did not equal those of their Italian predecessors. Christophe Plantin’s work in Antwerp was typographically unimportant except for his Biblia Polyglotta; and after Plantin, which takes us to the end of the sixteenth century, printing passed from an art into a trade. The Elzevirs were craftsmen rather than artists, but the best craftsmen of their period.

All this was a natural reaction. The book-buying public had come to demand the contents of the book at a cheaper price rather than volumes of greater technical excellence at a correspondingly higher cost. As we have seen, Sweynheim and Pannartz had ruined themselves by their experiments in Greek; the Aldine Press was saved from bankruptcy only by the intervention of Grolier. Henri Étienne, son of the great Robert Étienne, who endeavored to emulate his father’s splendid work, came to financial grief in producing his Thesaurus; and Plantin could not have withstood the drain of his Biblia Polyglotta had it not been that he was commercially far-sighted enough to turn his plant over to the manufacture of inexpensive and less carefully made books.

By the end of the sixteenth century cheaper paper, made in Switzerland, came into the market, and this inferior, unbleached product largely replaced the soft, fine paper of Italian and French manufacture which had contributed in no small part to the beauty of the printed pages. Ink manufacturers had learned how to produce cheaper and poorer ink, and the types themselves, through constant use, had become worn down to such an extent that real excellence was impossible.

Holland was the natural successor to Belgium in the supremacy of printing. The devastations of war had brought trade to a standstill in the Netherlands, while the city of Leyden had won the attention and admiration of the world for its heroic resistance during the long Spanish siege. To commemorate this event, William of Orange, in 1575, founded the University of Leyden, which quickly took high rank among scholars, and became the intellectual and literary center of Europe.

Thither the battle-scarred Plantin betook himself at the suggestion of Lipsius, the historian, who was now a professor in the new University. In Leyden, Plantin established a branch printing office. He was made Printer to the University, and for a time expected to remain here, but the old man could not bring himself to voluntary exile from his beloved Antwerp. Plantin’s Leyden printing office had been placed in charge of Louis Elzevir, and when the veteran printer determined to return to Antwerp it would have seemed natural for him to leave it in Louis Elzevir’s hands instead of turning it over to his son-in-law, Raphelengius. This Elzevir, however, although the founder of the great Elzevir house, was not a practical printer, being more interested in bookselling and publishing; so distinction in printing did not come to the family until Isaac, Louis Elzevir’s grandson, became Printer to the University in 1620. Fifteen years later, Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevir made the name famous through their editions of Terence, Cæsar, and Pliny.

Up to this time the favorite format had been the quarto volume, running about 12 by 18 inches in size. The Elzevirs boldly departed from the beaten path, and produced volumes running as small as 2 by 4 inches. They cut types of small size, showing no special originality but based on good Italian models, and issued editions which at first met with small favor. “The Elzevirs are certainly great typographers,” the scholar Deput wrote to Heinsius in 1629. “I can but think, however, that their reputation will suffer in connection with these trifling little volumes with such slender type.”

Contrary to this prediction, the new format gradually gained favor, and finally became firmly established. The best publisher-printers in France and Italy copied the Elzevir model, and the folios and the quartos of the preceding ages went entirely out of style.