year, Faust separated from Gutenberg, and successfully instituted
proceedings against him for money advanced. Gutenberg, who had exhausted
all his means in bringing his invention to maturity, was obliged to
mortgage and in the end surrender all his materials, and, it should seem,
his printed stock. His impoverishment may easily be accounted for when we
are told, as a received fact, that before the first four sheets of his
Bible were completed he had already expended four thousand crowns upon
it--a large sum in those days. Of this his then wealthier partner reaped
all the subsequent advantage.
After this period, Faust, and his son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer, in
possession of the materials, printed on their own account, and, within
eighteen months of their separation from Gutenberg, produced the
celebrated Latin Psalter of 1457, the first book in any country which
bears a complete imprint--that is, the name of the printer, place, and
date. This magnificent volume, of which the whole edition was printed on
vellum, is now even rarer than the Mazarin Bible, and of extraordinary
value; the letters are very large and bold, cast in metal type, and the
ornamental initials are beautifully cut in wood.
Two years later, that is, in 1459, Faust and Schoeffer produced an
almost fac-simile reprint of the Psalter, and in the same year _Durandi
Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, the latter with an entirely new font of
metal type--the first cast from Schoeffer's punches--which some, in the
erroneous belief that the Psalter was printed from wooden types, have
asserted to be the first dated book printed with metal type. Then
followed, in 1460, the _Constitutiones Clementis V_, a handsome folio,
and in 1462 their famous Latin Bible, the first one with a date.
In the mean time, Gutenberg, undaunted by the loss of all that had cost
him so many years of unremitted application and his whole fortune, began
afresh; and this time, it should seem, with better success, as we find
him, in 1459, undertaking to present, for certain considerations, all the
books he had then printed, or might thereafter print, to a convent where
his sister was a nun. No book, however, has yet been discovered bearing
the name of Gutenberg; and we can only guess what came from his press by
a peculiarity of type, of which, after the first Bible, the most marked
is the famous _Catholicon_, dated 1460--a kind of universal dictionary,
the germ of all future cyclopaedias, and which became so popular that
more than forty editions were printed of it in as many years. In 1465
Gutenberg retired from printing, being appointed to a lucrative office at
the court of the Archbishop of Mainz, and in 1467 he died.
And here we take leave of Gutenberg, with admiration for his patience,
his perseverance, and his self-sacrifice in a cause which has produced
such glorious fruits. He was one of those noble spirits who are endowed
with a perception of what is good, and pursue it independent of worldly
considerations. Posterity has done him tardy justice in erecting a marble
monument to his memory and establishing a jubilee, which gave rise to one
of the most touching of Mendelssohn's compositions.
By this time the secret had transpired to the neighboring states, and
Mentelin, of Strasburg, and Pfister, or Bamberg, were, before the
beginning of 1462, in full activity. Indeed, Pfister is, by some, thought
to have printed before 1460; and his finely executed Latin Bible, in cast
type, was for many years regarded as the first.
At this critical period, when the art was reaching its zenith, the
operations of the Mainz printers were suddenly brought to a standstill
by the siege and capture of the city in 1462. The occasion of this was a
fierce dispute between the Pope and the people as to who had the right of
appointment to the archbishopric, lately become vacant. The original hive
of workmen dispersed to other states, and by degrees the mysteries of the
art became spread over the civilized world. Such, indeed, was the fame
printing had acquired, and its manifest importance, that every crowned
head sought to introduce it into his kingdom, and welcomed the fugitives.
Within a few years of this period the art had been carried by the
scattered German workmen into Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland; and
before the close of the fifteenth century it was practised in more than
two hundred twenty different places.
Before entering upon the history of printing in England, I will take
leave to call your attention to a few prominent facts connected with its
progress abroad, as well as to some points of its early condition which
could not be conveniently introduced in chronological order. All the
books printed previously to 1465 are in the Gothic, or black letter,
which still remained the favorite in Germany and the Low Countries long
after the Italians introduced their beautiful Roman letter. The first
books in which any Greek type occurs are Cicero's _Offices_, printed
by Faust and Schoeffer in 1465, directly after the resumption of their
establishment; and _Lactantius_, printed the same year by Sweynheim and
Pannartz, in the monastery of Soubiaco at Rome. The first book printed
entirely in Greek was Constantine Lascar's _Greek Grammar_, Milan, 1476.
One of the earliest of the Italian books, and, to use the words of
Dr. Dibdin, perhaps the most notorious volume in existence, was the
celebrated Boccaccio, printed at Venice by Valdarfer in 1471. This book
deserves particular mention, because of an extraordinary contest which
once took place for its possession between two wealthy bibliomaniacs. It
was a small black-letter folio, in faded yellow morocco, and supposed
to be unique. Its history is this: In the early part of the eighteenth
century it had come accidentally into the possession of a London
bookseller, who successively offered it to Harley, Earl of Oxford, and
to Lord Sunderland; then the two principal collectors, for one hundred
guineas; but both were staggered at the price and higgled about the
purchase. An ancestor of the late Duke of Roxburghe, whom nobody dreamed
of as a collector, hearing of the book, secured it, and then invited the
two noblemen to dinner, with the view of parading his trophy. In due
course he led the conversation to the book, and, after letting them
expatiate on its rarity, told them he thought he had a copy in his
bookcase, which they emphatically declared to be impossible, and
challenged him to produce it. On producing the book, about the purchase
of which they had only been temporizing, they were not a little
chagrined.
This same copy made its appearance again, half a century later, at the
Duke of Roxburghe's sale in 1812, a time when bibliomania was at its
height. Loud notes of preparation foretold that it would sell for a
considerable sum; five hundred and even one thousand guineas were
guessed, as it was known that Lord Spencer, the Duke of Devonshire, and
the Marquis of Blandford were all bent on its possession, but nobody
anticipated the extravagant sum it was to realize. After a very spirited
competition, it was knocked down to the Marquis of Blandford for two
thousand sixty pounds. This book was resold at the Marquis of Blandford's
sale, in 1819, for eight hundred seventy-five guineas, and passed to Lord
Spencer, in whose extraordinary library it now reposes.
Before the commencement of the sixteenth century, that is, within forty
or fifty years of the invention of printing with movable type, upward of
twenty thousand volumes had issued from at least a thousand different
presses. All the principal Latin classics, many of the Greek, and upward
of two hundred fifty editions of the Bible, or parts of the Bible, had
appeared.
One of the most active and enterprising of the early printers was Anthony
Koburger of Nuremberg, an accomplished scholar, who began there in 1472,
and before the year 1500 had printed thirteen large editions of the Bible
in folio, and a prodigious number of other books. He kept twenty-four
presses at work, employing one hundred workmen, and had sixteen shops for
the sale of books in the principal cities of Germany, besides factors
and agents all over Europe. He printed, in 1493, that grand volume, the
_Nuremberg Chronicle_, which is illustrated with upward of one thousand
woodcuts by Michael Wohlgemuth, the master of Albert Dürer, and is
curious as being one of the first books in which cross-hatchings occur in
wood-engraving.
The sixteenth century opened with another invention in type, the Italic,
which was beautifully exemplified in a pocket edition of Vergil, the
first of a portable series of classical works commenced in 1501 at Venice
by the celebrated Aldus Manutius, who, after some years of preparation,
had entered actively on his career as a printer in 1494, and deservedly
ranks as one of the best scholars of any age.
Then came the Giunti, the learned family of the Stephenses, of whom
Robert is accredited as the author of the present divisions of our
New Testament into chapters, and Henry, author of the great Greek
_Thesaurus_, the most valuable Greek lexicon ever published. To the
opprobrium of the age, he died in an almshouse.
Among many others immortalized by their successful contributions to the
great cause we must not forget the Plantins, whose memories are still so
cherished at Antwerp that their printing establishment remains to this
day untouched, just as it was left two centuries ago, with all the
freshness of a chamber in Pompeii, the type and chases of their famous
Polyglot lying about, as if the workmen had but just left the office.
The accordance of the art of printing with the spirit of the times which
gave it birth must be regarded as singularly providential. The Protestant
Reformation in Germany was brought about by Luther's accidentally
meeting, in a monastic library, with one of Gutenberg's printed Latin
Bibles, when at the age of twenty. "A mighty change," says Luther, "then
came over me," and all his subsequent efforts are to be attributed to
that event. His recognition of the importance of printing is given in
these words: "Printing is the best and highest gift, the _summum et
postremum donum_ by which God advanceth the Gospel. Thanks be to God that
it hath come at last. Holy fathers now at rest would rejoice to see this
day of the revealed Gospel."
William Caxton, by common consent, is the introducer of the art of
printing into England. He was born about 1422, in Kent, and received
what was then thought a liberal education. His father must have been in
respectable circumstances, as there was at that time a law in full force
prohibiting any youth from being apprenticed to trade whose parent was
not possessed of a certain rental in land. In his eighteenth year Caxton
was apprenticed to Robert Large, an eminent London mercer, who in 1430
was sheriff and in 1439 Lord Mayor of London. At his death, in 1441,
he bequeathed Caxton a legacy of twenty marks--a large sum in those
days--and an honorable testimony to his fidelity and integrity. Soon
after this the Mercers' Company appointed him their agent in the Low
Countries, in which employment he spent twenty-three years.
In 1464 he was one of two commissioners officially employed by Edward IV
to negotiate a commercial treaty with Philip of Burgundy; and in 1468,
when the King's sister, Margaret of York, married Charles of Burgundy,
called "the Bold," he attached himself to their household, probably
in some literary capacity, as in the next year we find him busied in
translating at her request. During the greater part of this long period
he was residing or travelling in the midst of the countries where the new
art of printing was the great subject of interest, and would naturally
take some measures to acquaint himself with it. Indeed, it has been said
that he had a secret commission from Edward IV to learn the art, and to
bribe some of the foreign workmen into England. Be this as it may, we
know that Caxton acquired a complete knowledge of it while abroad, for
he tells us so, and that he had printed at Cologne the _Recueil des
Histoires de Troye_ (or _Romance History of Troy_), in 1465, and in 1472
an English edition of the same, translated by himself. These two early
productions are remarkable as being the first books printed in either the
French or English language[26]. The English edition was sold at the Duke
of Roxburghe's sale for one thousand sixty pounds, and is now in the
possession of the Duke of Devonshire.
Caxton returned to England about 1474, bringing with him presses and
types, and established himself in one of the chapels of Westminster
Abbey, called the Eleemosynary, Almondry, or Arm'ry, supposed to have
been on the site of Henry VII's chapel. A printer would naturally resort
to the abbey for patronage, as in those days it was the head-quarters
of learning as well as of religion. Before the foundation of grammar
schools, there was usually a _scholasticus_ attached to the abbeys and
cathedral churches, who directed and superintended the education of the
neighboring nobility and gentry. He was, besides, one of the members of
the _scriptorium_, a large establishment within the abbey, where school
and other books used to be written.
The first book Caxton printed, after he returned to England and
established himself at the Almonry, is supposed to be _The Game and Play
of Chesse_, dated 1474. But some have raised doubts whether this was
printed in England, as there is no actual evidence of it. One of the
arguments is that the type is exactly the same as what he had previously
used at Cologne; but this is no evidence at all, as both the type and
paper used in England for many years came from Cologne, and there is no
doubt that Caxton brought some with him. A second edition of the book of
chess, with woodcuts, was printed two or three years later, and this is
generally admitted to have been printed in England.
The first book with an unmistakable imprint was his _Dictes and Sayings
of Philosophers_, which had been translated for him by the gallant but
unfortunate Lord Rivers, who was murdered in Pomfret castle by order of
Richard III. The colophon of this states that it was printed in the Abbey
of Westminster in 1477. He appears to have printed but one single volume
upon vellum, which is _The Doctrynal of Sapience_, 1489, of which a copy,
formerly in the King's Library at Windsor, is now in the British Museum.
This is a very interesting work as connected with Caxton, being entirely
translated by himself into English verse. It is an allegorical fiction,
in which the whole system of literature and science comes under
consideration.
Caxton died in 1491, after having produced, within twenty years of his
active career, more than fifty volumes of mark, including Chaucer, Gower,
Lydgate, and his own _Chronicle_ of England. Before Caxton's time the
youths of England were supplied with their school-books and their
reading, which was necessarily very limited, by the Company of
Stationers, or text-writers, who wrote and sold, by an exclusive royal
privilege, the school-books then in use. These were chiefly the A B Cs,
(called _Absies_), the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the address to the
Virgin Mary, called _Ave Maria_.
The location of these stationers was in the neighborhood of St. Paul's
Cathedral, whence arose the names Paternoster Row, Creed Lane, Amen
Corner, and Ave Maria Lane. Manuscripts of a higher order, that is, in
the form of books, were mostly supplied by the monks, and were scarcely
accessible to any but the wealthy, from their extreme cost. Thus, a
Chaucer, which may now be bought for a few shillings, then cost more than
a hundred pounds; and we read of two hundred sheep and ten quarters of
wheat being given for a volume of homilies.
Minstrels, instead of books, were in early times the principal medium of
communication between authors and the public; they wandered up and down
the country, chanting, singing, or reciting, according to the taste of
their customers, and had certain privileges of entertainment in the halls
of the nobility.
It may be wondered that Caxton, like many of the foreign printers, did
not begin with, or at least some time during his career print, the
Scriptures, especially as Wycliffe's translation had already been made.
But there were good reasons. Religious persecution ran high, and the
clergy were extremely jealous of the propagation of the Scriptures among
the people. Knighton had denounced the reading of the Bible, lamenting
lest this jewel of the Church, hitherto the exclusive property of the
clergy and divines, should be made common to the laity; and Archbishop
Arundel had issued an enactment that no part of the Scriptures in English
should be read, either in public or private, or be thereafter translated,
under pain of the greater excommunication. The Star Chamber, too, was big
with terrors. A little later, Erasmus' edition of the New Testament was
forbidden at Cambridge; and in the county of Surrey the Vicar of Croydon
said from the pulpit, "We must root out printing, or printing will root
out us."
Winkin de Worde, who had come in his youth with Caxton to England and
continued with him in the superintendence of his office to the day of his
death, succeeded to the business, and conducted it with great spirit
for the next forty years. He began by entirely remodelling his fonts
of Gothic type, and introduced both Roman and Italic; became his own
founder, instead of importing type from the Low Countries; promoted the
manufacture of paper in this country; and such was his activity that he
printed the extraordinary number of four hundred eight different works.
He deserves, perhaps, more praise than he has ever received for the
important part he played in establishing and advancing the art in
England.
But no one of our early printers deserves more grateful remembrance than
Richard Grafton, who, in 1537, was the first publisher of the Bible in
England. I say in England, because the first Bible, known as Coverdale's,
and several editions of the Testament, translated by Tyndale, had been
previously printed abroad in secrecy. Grafton's first edition of the
Bible was a reprint of Coverdale and Tyndale's translation, with slight
alterations, by one who assumed the name of Thomas Matthew, but whose
real name was John Rogers, then Prebendary of St. Paul's, and afterward
burned as a heretic in Smithfield. Even this was printed secretly abroad,
nobody yet knows where, and did not have Grafton's name attached to it
till the King had granted him a license under the privy seal. Though this
year, 1537, has by the annalists of the Bible been called the first year
of triumph, on account of the King's license, yet Bibles were still apt
to be dangerous things to all concerned; and what was permitted one day
was not unlikely, by a change in religion or policy, to be interdicted
the next with severe visitations.
Although Henry VIII had recently completed his breach with Rome and
been excommunicated, he alternately punished the religious movements of
Protestants and Catholics, according to his caprice; and it was but a few
years previously that the reading of the Bible had been prohibited by
act of parliament, that men had been burned at the stake for having even
fragments of it in their possession, and that Tyndale's translation of
the new Testament had been bought up and publicly burned (1534) by order
of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London; and even as late as May, 1536,
the reading of the sacred volume had been strictly forbidden.
Grafton, therefore, must have been a bold man to face the danger. Thus,
in 1538, when a new edition of the Bible, commonly called the "Great
Bible," afterward published in 1539, was secretly printing in Paris at
the instance of Lord Cromwell, under the superintendence of Grafton,
Whitchurch, and Coverdale, the French inquisitors of the faith
interfered, charging them with heresy, and they were fortunate in making
their escape to England.
Shortly after the death of Caxton's patron, Lord Cromwell, Grafton was
imprisoned for the double offence of printing Matthew's Bible and the
Great Bible, notwithstanding the King's license; and though after a while
released, he was again imprisoned in the reign of Philip and Mary on
account of his Protestant principles; and, after all his services to
religion and literature, died in poverty in 1572.
Printing was now spreading all over England. It had already begun at
Oxford in 1478--some say earlier--at Cambridge soon after, although the
first dated work is 1521; at St. Albans in 1480; York in 1509; and other
places by degrees.
Printing did not reach Scotland till 1507, and then but imperfectly, and
Ireland not till 1551, owing, it is said, to the jealousy with which it
was regarded by the priesthood.
We will now take a rapid survey of the vast strides printing has made of
late years in England, and therewith close. The principal movements have
been in stereotyping, electrotyping, the improvement of presses, and the
application of steam power. Stereotyping is the transfer of pages of
movable type into solid metal plates, by the medium of moulds formed of
plaster of Paris, _papier-mâché,_ gutta-percha, or other substances. This
art is supposed to have been invented, in or about 1725, by William Ged,
a goldsmith of Edinburgh. A small capitalist, who had engaged to embark
with him, withdrawing from the speculation in alarm, he accepted
overtures from a Mr. William Fenner, and in 1729 came to London. Here
he obtained three partners, in conjunction with whom he entered into a
contract with the University of Cambridge for stereotyping Bibles and
prayer-books. But the workmen, fearing that stereotyping would eventually
ruin their trade, purposely made errors, and, when their masters were
absent, battered the type, so that the only two prayer-books completed
were suppressed by authority, and the plates destroyed. Upon this the
art got into disrepute, and Ged, after much ill-treatment, returned to
Edinburgh, impoverished and disheartened. Here his friends, desirous that
a memorial of his art should be published, entered into a subscription to
defray the expense; and a Sallust, printed in 1736, and composed and cast
in the night-time to avoid the jealous opposition of the workmen, is now
the principal evidence of his claim to the invention.
But the time had not come; for without a very large demand, such as could
not exist in those days, stereotyping would be of no advantage. Books
which sell by hundreds of thousands, and are constantly reprinting, such
as Bibles, prayer-books, school-books, Shakespeares, Bunyans, Robinson
Crusoes, Uncle Toms, and very popular authors and editions, will pay for
stereotyping; but for small numbers it is a loss. After the invention had
been neglected long enough to be forgotten, Earl Stanhope, who had for
several years devoted himself earnestly to the subject, and made many
experiments, resuscitated it, in a very perfect manner, in 1803; and his
printer, Mr. Wilson, sold the secret to both universities and to most of
the leading printers. To the art of stereotyping the public is mainly
indebted for cheap literature, for when the plates are once produced the
chief expense is disposed of.