in rolls, called in Latin _volumina_, whence our English word "volume."
Chinese paper, made from the bark of the bamboo, the mulberry, or the
khu-ku tree, and so extremely thin that it can only be used on one side,
is supposed to have been invented fifty years before the Christian era
or earlier. Chinese rice-paper is made from the stems of the bread-fruit
tree, cut into slices and pressed. The skins of all kinds of animals
are used--among them the African skin, of a brown color, upon which the
Hebrew Pentateuch and service-books used in the Jewish synagogues were
formerly written. Silk-paper was prepared for the most part in Spain
and its colonies, but was never brought to much perfection. Asbestos, a
fibrous mineral, was made into paper, tolerably light and pliant, which,
being incombustible, was denominated "eternal paper." Herodotus tells
us that cloth was made of asbestos by the Egyptians; and Pliny mentions
napkins made of it in A.D. 74. We know by tradition that the intestines
of a serpent served for Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_; and that the
_Koran_ was written in part on shoulder-bones of mutton, kept in a
domestic chest by one of Mahomet's wives.
We now come to the great period of writing-papers made from cotton and
linen rags, as used at the present day, and which from the first were
so perfect that they have since undergone no material improvement.
Cotton-paper was an Eastern invention, probably introduced in the ninth
century, although not generally used in Europe till about the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. Greek manuscripts are found upon it of the earlier
period, and Italian manuscripts of the later. It seems to have prevailed
at particular periods, in particular countries, according to the
facilities for procuring it, as it now does almost exclusively in
America. Linen paper, the most valuable and important of all the bases
available for writing or printing, is likewise supposed to have been
introduced into Europe from the East, early in the thirteenth century,
although not in general use till the fourteenth.
Before the end of the fourteenth century, paper-mills had been
established in many parts of Europe, first in Spain, and then
successively in Italy, Germany, Holland, and France. They seem to have
come late into England, for Caxton printed all his books on paper
imported from the Low Countries; and it was not till Winkin de Worde
succeeded him, in 1495, that paper was manufactured in England. The
Chinese are supposed to have used it for centuries before, and appear to
have the best title to be considered the inventors of both cotton and
linen paper.
Paper may be made of many other materials, such as hay, straw, nettles,
flax, grasses, parsnips, turnips, colewort leaves, wood-shavings, indeed
of anything fibrous; but as the invention of printing is not concerned in
them, I see no occasion to consider their merits.
Before I pass from paper, it may not be irrelevant to say a word or
two on the names by which we distinguish the sorts and sizes. The
term "post-paper" is derived from the ancient water-mark, which was a
post-horn, and not from its suitableness to transport by post, as many
suppose. The original watermark of a fool's cap gave the name to that
paper, which it still retains, although the fool's cap was afterward
changed to a cap of liberty, and has since undergone other changes. The
smaller size, called "pot-paper," took its name from having at first
been marked with a flagon or pot. Demy-paper, on which octavo books
are usually printed, is so called from being originally a "demi" or
half-sized paper; the term is now, however, equally applied to hard or
writing papers. Hand-cap, which is a coarse paper used for packing, bore
the water-mark of an open hand.
I will now say a few words about pens and ink, for without them we could
neither have had printing nor books. Pens are of great antiquity, and are
frequently alluded to in the Bible. Pens of iron, which may mean styles,
are mentioned by Job and Jeremiah. Reed pens are known to have been in
common use by the ancients, and some were discovered at Pompeii. Pens of
gold and silver are alluded to by the classical writers, and there
is evidence of the use of quills in the seventh century. Of whatever
material the pen was made, it was called a _calamus_, whence our familiar
saying, "_currente calamo_" ("with a flowing pen"). The use of styles, or
iron pens, must have been very prevalent in ancient days, as Suetonius
tells us that the emperor Caligula incited the people to massacre a Roman
senator with their styles; and, previous to that, Caesar had wounded
Cassius with his style.
The next, and not the least important, ingredient in writing and printing
is ink. Staining and coloring matters were well known to the ancients at
a very early period, witness the lustrous pigments on Etruscan vases more
than two thousand years ago; and inks are often mentioned in the Bible.
Gold, silver, red, blue, and green inks were thoroughly understood in
the Middle Ages, and perhaps earlier; and the black writing-ink of the
seventh down to the tenth century, as seen in our manuscripts, was in
such perfection that it has retained its lustre better than some of
later ages. Printing-ink, by the time it began to be currently used for
book-printing in the fifteenth century, had attained a perfection which
has never been surpassed, and indeed scarcely equalled.
Paper and ink being at their highest point, we will now consider the
advances which had in the mean time been made in engraving and type or
letter cutting. It will be seen that the material elements of printing
were by degrees converging to a culminating point. The evidences of
engraving, both in relief and intaglio, are of very ancient date. I need
hardly remind you of the exquisite workmanship on coins, cameos, and
seals, many centuries before the Christian era, to illustrate the high
state of cultivation at which the arts must then have arrived. The art of
casting and chasing in bronze was extensively practised in the twelfth
century, and I have seen a specimen with letters so cut in relief that
they might be separated to form movable type. The goldsmiths were
certainly among the greatest artists of the early ages, and were
competent to execute forms or moulds of any kind to perfection.
In the British Museum is a brass signet stamp, more than two thousand
years old, on which two lines of letters are very neatly engraved
in relief, in the reversed order necessary for printing; and as the
interstices are cut away very deeply and roughly, there is little doubt
but that this stamp was used with ink on papyrus, parchment, or
linen, for paper was not then known. Indeed, the experiment of taking
impressions from it in printing-ink has been tried, and found to answer
perfectly. A large surface so engraved would at once have given to the
world an equivalent to what is now regarded as the most advanced state of
the art of printing; that is, a stereotype plate. Vergil mentions brands
for marking cattle with their owner's name; probably this kind of brass
stamp, but larger.
I could cite many more examples of ancient engraving which would yield
impressions on paper, either by pressure or friction. But our business is
with printing rather than engraving; I will, therefore, go back to the
subject, and cite a very early and interesting example of stamping
engraved letters on clay. I mean the Babylonian bricks, supposed to be
four thousand years old, mostly sun-baked, but some apparently kiln-burnt
almost to vitrification. Of these there are now many examples in England,
added to our stores by the indefatigable researches of Layard, Rawlinson,
and others. These bricks, which are about a foot square and three inches
thick, are on one side covered with hieroglyphics, evidently impressed
with a stamp, just as letters are now stamped on official papers.
Another evidence of the same kind, and of about the same age, is the
famous Babylonian cylinder found in the ruins of Persepolis, and now
preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is about
seven inches high, barrel-shaped, and covered with inscriptions in the
cuneiform character, disposed in vertical lines, and affording a positive
example of an indented surface produced by mechanical impression. Such
cylinders are supposed to have been memorials of matters of national or
family importance, and were in early ages, as we know by tradition, very
numerous. Stamped or printed blocks of lead, bearing the names of Roman
authorities, are to be found in the British Museum.
Printing on leather was practised by the Egyptians, as we discover from
their mummies, which have bandages of leather round their heads, with the
name of the deceased printed on them. And in Pompeii a loaf was found on
which the name of the baker and its quality were printed. Among ancient
testimonies, one of the most interesting is that afforded by Cicero in
his _de Natura Deorum_. He orders types to be made of metal, and calls
them _forma literarum_--the very words used by our first printers; and in
another place he gives a hint of separate cut letters when he speaks of
the impossibility of the most ingenious man throwing the twenty-four
letters of the alphabet together by chance, and thus producing the famous
_Annals_ of Ennius. He makes that observation in opposition to the
atheistical argument of the creation of the world by chance.
We have besides, in what is generally classed as a manuscript, a
reasonable although disputed evidence of an elementary stage of printing;
I mean the _Codex Argenteus_ (or _Silver Book_) of Upsala, which contains
a portion of the gospels in Mesogothic, supposed to be of the fourth or
fifth century, the work of Ulfilas. In this codex the first lines of each
gospel and of the Lord's Prayer are in large gold letters, apparently
printed by a stamp, in the manner of a bookbinder, as there are
indentations on the back of the vellum. The small letters are written in
silver. The whole is on a light purple or violet colored vellum.
Having said enough, I think, of the ancients' knowledge of type-forms and
printing materials, I pass on to the recognized establishments of the art
in the fifteenth century; for, whatever knowledge the ancients had
of printing, it would appear to have yielded no immediate fruits to
posterity.
But before I proceed to modern times, I am bound to note that the
Chinese, who seem to have been many centuries in advance of Europe in
most of the industral arts, are supposed to have practised
block-printing, just as they do now, more than a thousand years ago. Nor
does the complicated nature of their written language, which consists of
more than one hundred thousand word-signs, admit of any readier mode. But
they print, or rather rub off, impressions with such speed--seven
hundred sheets per hour--that, until the introduction of steam, they far
outstripped Europeans. Gibbon, it will be remembered, regrets that the
emperor Justinian, who lived in the sixth century, did not introduce the
art of printing from the Chinese, instead of their silk manufacture.
Block-printing ushered in the great epoch; and the first dawn of it
in Europe seems to have been single prints of saints and scriptural
subjects, with a line or two of description engraved on the same wooden
plate. These are for the most part lost; but there is one in existence,
large and exceedingly fine, of St. Christopher, with two lines of
inscription, dated 1423, believed to have been printed with the ordinary
printing-press. It was found in the library of a monastery near Augsburg,
and is therefore presumed to be of German execution. Till lately this was
the earliest-dated evidence of block-printing known; but there has since
been discovered at Malines, and deposited at Brussels, a wood-cut
of similar character, but assumed to be Dutch or Flemish, dated
"MCCCCXVIII"; and though there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness
of the cut, it is asserted that the date bears evidence of having been
tampered with.
There is a vague tradition, depending entirely on the assertion of a
writer named Papillon, not a very reliable authority, which would give
the invention of wood-cut-printing to Venice, and at a very early period.
He asserts that he once saw a set of eight prints, depicting the deeds
of Alexander the Great, each described in verse, which were engraved in
relief, and printed by a brother and sister named Cunio, at Ravenna,
in 1285. But though the assertion is accredited by Mr. Ottley, it is
generally disbelieved.
There is reason to suppose that playing-cards, from wooden blocks, were
produced at Venice long before the block-books, even as early as 1250;
but there is no positive evidence that they were printed; and some insist
that they were produced either by friction or stencil-plates. It seems,
however, by no means unlikely that cards, which were in most extensive
use in the Middle Ages, should, for the sake of cheapness, have been
printed quite as early, if not earlier, than even figures of saints; and
the same artists are presumed to have produced both.
From single prints, with letter-press inscriptions, the next stage, that
of a series of prints accompanied by letter-press, was obvious. Such are
our first recognized block-books, among which are the Apocalypse, and the
_Biblia Pauperum_ (or _Poor Man's Bible_), supposed to have been printed
at Haarlem by Laurence Koster, between 1420 and 1430; I say supposed,
because we have no positive evidence either of the person, place, or
date; and Erasmus, who was born at Rotterdam in 1467, and always ready
to advance the honor of his country, is silent on the subject. We rely
chiefly upon the testimony of Ulric Zell, an eminent printer of Cologne,
who is quoted in the _Cologne Chronicle_ of 1499, and Hadrian Junius, a
Dutch historian of repute, who wrote in the next century. Both agree in
ascribing the invention of book-printing from wooden blocks, as well as
the first germ of movable wood and metallic type printing, to Haarlem;
and Junius adds the name of Laurence Koster. His surname of Koster is
derived from his office, which was that of custodian, sexton, or warden
of the Cathedral Church of Haarlem. The story told of the accident by
which the discovery was made is as follows:
Koster, as he was one day walking in a wood adjoining the city, about the
year 1420, cut some letters on the bark of a beech tree, from which he
took impressions on paper for the amusement of his brother-in-law's
children. The idea then struck him of enlarging their application;
and, being a man of an ingenious turn, he invented a thicker and more
tenacious ink than was in common use, which blotted, and began to print
figures from wooden tablets or blocks, to which he added several lines of
letters, first solid, and then separate or movable. These wooden types
are said to have been fastened together with string.
One thing seems pretty clear, which is, that, whether or not Koster was
the printer, the first block-books were produced somewhere in Holland, as
several are in Dutch, a language seldom, if ever, printed out of its own
country. They were generally printed in light-brown ink, like a sepia
drawing, which, I think, was adopted with a view to their being
colored--a condition in which we find the greater part of them. When
these prints were colored they presented very much the appearance of the
Low Country stained-glass windows.
Block-books continued to be printed and reprinted, first in Holland and
afterward in Germany, with considerable activity, for twenty or thirty
years, during which period we had several editions of the _Biblia
Pauperum_, the _Ars Moriendi_ (or _Art of Dying),_ the _Speculum Humanae
Salvationis_, and many others, chiefly devoted to the promulgation of
scripture history. The earliest ones are printed, or rather transferred
by friction--and therefore on one side only of the paper--entirely from
solid blocks; later on, some portions were printed with movable types of
wood; and at last the letter-press was entirely of movable metal types.
Junius says that Koster by degrees exchanged his wooden types for leaden
ones, and these for pewter; and I will add that it is not unlikely they
may have been cast in lead or pewter plates from the wooden blocks, as
metal-casting was well understood at the time.
The pretensions of Haarlem and Koster have for more than a century been a
matter of fierce controversy; and there have been upward of one hundred
and fifty volumes written for or against, without any approach to a
satisfactory decision. This one thing is certain, that, whether or not we
owe the first idea of movable type to Laurence Koster or to Haarlem, we
do not owe to the period any very marked use of it; that was reserved for
a later day.
There is a story current, dependent on the authority of Junius, that
Koster's principal workman, assumed to be Hans or John Faust--and some,
to reconcile improbabilities, even say John Gutenberg--who had been sworn
to secrecy, decamped one Christmas Eve, after the death of Koster, while
the family were at church, taking with him types and printing apparatus
and, after short sojourns at Amsterdam and Cologne, got to Mainz or
Mayence with them, and there introduced printing. He is said by Junius
to have printed, about the year 1442--that is, two years after Koster's
death--the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander Gallus and the _Tracts_ of Peter of
Spain, with the very types which Koster made use of in Haarlem; but as no
volume of this kind has ever been discovered, nor any trace of one, the
entire story is generally regarded as apocryphal. Laurence Koster died
in 1440, at the age of seventy; therefore any printing attributed to him
must be within that period.
What has hitherto been advanced proves only that mankind had walked for
many centuries on the borders of the two great inventions, chalcography
and typography, without having fully and practically discovered either of
them.
We now come to the great epoch of printing--I mean the complete
introduction, if not actually the first invention, of movable metal
or fusile types. This took place at Mainz, in or before 1450, and the
general consent of Europe assigns the credit of it to Gutenberg. Of a man
who has conferred such vast obligations on all succeeding ages, it may be
desirable to say a few words.
John Gutenberg was born at Mainz in 1397, of a patrician and rather
wealthy family. He left his native city, it is said, because implicated
in an insurrection of the citizens against the nobility, and settled
at Strasburg, where, in 1427, we find him an established merchant, and
sustaining a suit of breach of promise brought against him by a lady
named Ann of the Iron Door, whom he afterward married. While resident
here, and before 1439, his attention appears to have been actively
directed to the art of printing, as we learn by a legal document of the
time, found of late years in the archives of Strasburg. He is there
stated to have entered into an engagement with three persons, named
Dreizehn, Riffe, and Heilmann, to reveal to them "a secret art of
printing which he had lately discovered," and to take them into
partnership for five years, upon the payment of certain sums.
The death of Dreizehn before he had paid up all his instalments led to a
suit on the part of his relations, which ended in Gutenberg's favor. In
the course of the evidence one of the witnesses, a goldsmith, deposed to
having received from Gutenberg three or four years previously--that
is, about 1435--upward of three hundred florins for materials used in
printing. Other witnesses proved the anxiety that Gutenberg had shown to
have four pages of type distributed which appear to have been screwed up
in chase, and lying on a press on the deceased's premises.
This would be evidence that Gutenberg had arrived at a knowledge of
movable types, either of wood or metal, and probably of both, before
1440; and, had it not been for the rupture of the partnership before
anything had been printed by the new process, Strasburg might have
claimed the honor which is now given to Mainz.
Soon after this--it is supposed in 1444--Gutenberg returned to his native
city, by leave of the town council, which he was obliged to ask, bringing
with him all his materials. In 1446 he entered into a partnership with
John Faust--a wealthy and skilful goldsmith and engraver--who
engaged, upon being taught the secrets of the art and admitted into a
participation of the profits, to advance the necessary funds, which he
did to the extent of two thousand two hundred florins. Goldsmiths, it
should be borne in mind, were then the great artists in all kinds of
metal work, and extremely skilful in modelling, engraving, and casting,
which were exactly the arts required for type-founding.
The new partnership immediately commenced operations, hired a house
called Zumjungen, and took into their employ Peter Schoeffer, who had
been Faust's apprentice, as their assistant. Faust is supposed to have
employed himself in cutting the type, which is an extremely slow process,
till Peter Schoeffer, afterward his son-in-law, suggested an improved
mode of casting it in copper matrices struck by steel punches, pretty
much in the same manner as was till recently practised throughout Europe.
The firm had for some time previously adopted a method of casting type in
moulds of plaster, which was a tedious process, as every letter required
a new mould.
Although to Gutenberg are undoubtedly due all the main features of
metal-type printing, yet we owe, perhaps, to the practical skill of
Faust, and the taste of Schoeffer, who was an accomplished penman, the
exquisite finish and perfection with which their first joint effort came
forth to the world. This was a Latin Vulgate, printed in a large cut
metal type, and commonly called the Mazarin Bible, because the first copy
known to bibliographers was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin.
It consists of six hundred and forty-one leaves, forming two, sometimes
four, large volumes in folio; some copies on paper of beautiful texture,
some on vellum. It was without date or names of the printers, as it was
evidently intended to present the appearance of a manuscript; but it is
supposed, on good evidence, to have been printed between 1450 and 1455,
and it is not improbable the volumes were all that time, that is,
five years, and some say more, at press; for we know, by certain
technicalities, that every page was printed off singly.
These precious volumes, as splendid as they are wonderful, have excited
the admiration of all beholders. The sharpness and elegant uniformity of
the type, the lustre of the ink, and the purity of the paper leave that
first great monument of the typographic art unsurpassed by any subsequent
effort; nor could it be exceeded with all the appliances of the present
day.
"It is a striking circumstance," says Mr. Hallam, "that the high-minded
inventors of this great art tried, at the very outset, so bold a flight
as the printing of an entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing
success. It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength and
radiant armor, ready, at the moment of her nativity, to subdue and
destroy her enemies."
There is a curious story current about this Bible, which, as it is
connected with a popular fiction, I will venture to repeat. It is that
Faust went to Paris with some of his Bibles for sale, one of which,
printed on vellum and richly illuminated, he sold to the King for seven
hundred and fifty crowns, and another to the Archbishop of Paris for
three hundred crowns, and to the poorer clergy and the laity copies on
paper as low as fifty crowns, and even less. Faust does not appear to
have disclosed the secret of how they were produced, and probably let it
be supposed that they were manuscript; for the aim of the first printers
was to make their books equal in beauty to the finest manuscripts, and
as far as possible undistinguishable from them, to which end the large
capitals and decorations were filled in by hand.
The Archbishop, proud of his purchase, showed it to the King, who,
comparing it with his own, found with surprise that they tallied so
exactly in every respect, excepting the illuminated ornaments, as
convinced them that they were produced by some other art than
transcription; and on further inquiry they found that Faust had sold
a considerable number exactly similar. Orders, therefore, were given
without delay to apprehend and prosecute him as a practitioner of the
black art in multiplying Holy Writ by aid of the devil. Hence arose the
popular fiction of the Devil and Dr. Faustus, which, under different
phases, has found its way into every country in Europe, and probably gave
rise to Goethe's celebrated drama.