CHAPTER IX.

LIBRARIES 290

INDEX 305

THE PRINTED BOOK.

CHAPTER I.

14.. TO 1462.

Origin of the Book--Engravers in relief--The St. Christopher of

1423--Origin of the Xylographs--The Xylographs, _Donatus_, and

_Speculum_--The Laurent Coster legend--From block books to movable

characters--John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg--The Strasbourg

trial--Gutenberg at Mayence--Fust and Schoeffer--The letters of

indulgence--The Bible--The Catholicon--The Mayence Bible--Causes of

the dispersion of the first Mayence printers--General

considerations.

Like its forerunner, Painting, the Book has ever been the most faithful

reflection of the times when it was written and illustrated. Natural and

genuine from the first, and simply embellished with crude illustrations,

it assumed in the sixteenth century the grand airs of the Renaissance,

gay or serious according to circumstances, decked in what were then

called _histoires_--that is to say, wonderful engravings--and daintily

printed in Gothic, Roman, or choice Italic characters. But at the close

of the century it had already abandoned _wood_ for line engravings,

heightening its mysticism or its satire at the whim of passing politics

and religious wranglings. Then, under the influence of the painters and

courtiers of the _Grand Monarque_, it becomes completely transformed,

donning the peruke, so to speak, indulging in allegory and

conventionalities, pompous and showy, tricking itself out in columns and

pilasters instead of the old arabesques and scroll work of the

Renaissance, thus continuing amid the coquetries of the regency, the

pastorals and insipidities of the following reigns, until at last it

suddenly assumes with the heroes of the Revolution the austere mien and

airs of classic art. The Book has always been as closely connected with

the manners of our predecessors as art itself. The artist submits more

than he thinks to the tendency of his surroundings; and if he at times

makes his taste appreciated, it is because he has more or less received

his first influence from others.

In the sixteenth century the fashion of emblematic representation placed

under the portrait of Gaston de Foix a figure of a young plant in full

bloom; and the inscription in Latin was "Nascendo maturus"--"Mature at

birth." The Book deserves the same device; from its first day up to now

it is a marvel of simplicity and harmony. The tentative efforts which

preceded the discovery of printing were but few; it may be said that

from the moment that Gutenberg conceived the idea of separating the

characters, of arranging the words in the forme, of inking them, and of

taking a proof on paper, the Book was perfect. At best we see in

following times some modifications of detail; the art of printing was

mature, mature from its birth.

But before arriving at the movable type placed side by side, and forming

phrases, which appears to us to-day so simple and so ordinary, many

years passed. It is certain that long before Gutenberg a means was found

of cutting wood and metal in relief and reproducing by application the

image traced. Signs-manual and seals were a kind of printing, inasmuch

as the relief of their engraving is impressed upon a sheet by the hand.

But between this simple statement and the uncritical histories of

certain special writers, attributing the invention of engraving to the

fourteenth century, there is all the distance of legendary history.

Remembering that the numerous guilds of _tailleurs d'images_, or

sculptors in relief, had in the Middle Ages the specialty of carving

ivories and of placing effigies on tombs, it can be admitted without

much difficulty, that these people one day found a means of multiplying

the sketches of a figure often asked for, by modelling its contour in

relief on ivory or wood, and afterwards taking a reproduction on paper

or parchment by means of pressure. When and where was this discovery

produced? We cannot possibly say; but it is certain that playing cards

were produced by this means, and that from the year 1423 popular figures

were cut in wood, as we know from the St. Christopher of that date

belonging to Lord Spencer.

It is not our task to discuss this question at length, nor to decide if

at first these reliefs were obtained on wood or metal. It is a

recognised fact that the single sheet with a printed figure preceded the

xylographic book in which text and illustration were cut in the same

block. This process did not appear much before the second quarter of

the fifteenth century, and it was employed principally for popular works

which were then the universal taste. The engraving also was nothing more

than a kind of imposition palmed off as a manuscript; the vignettes were

often covered with brilliant colours and gold, and the whole sold as of

the best quality.

The first attempts at these little figures in relief discovered by the

image-makers and diffused by the makers of playing cards were but

indifferent. The drawing and the cutting were equally unskilful, as may

be seen in the facsimiles given by M. H. Delaborde in his _Histoire de

la Gravure_. An attempt had been made to put some text at the foot of

the St. Christopher of 1423, and the idea of giving more importance to

the text was to the advantage of the booksellers. At the mercy of the

writers who fleeced them, obliged to recoup themselves by the

exaggerated prices of the most ordinary books, they hoped to turn

engraving to account in order to obtain on better terms the technical

work needed for their trade. At the epoch of the St. Christopher, in

1423, several works were in vogue in the universities, the schools, and

with the public. Among the first of these was the Latin Syntax of Ælius

Donatus on the eight parts of speech, a kind of grammar for the use of

young students, as well as the famous _Speculum_, a collection of

precepts addressed to the faithful, which were copied and recopied

without satisfying the demand.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Part of a _Donatus_ taken from a xylograph, the

original of which is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale.]

To find a means of multiplying these treatises at little cost was a

fortune to the inventor. It is to be supposed that many artisans of the

time attempted it; and without doubt it was the booksellers themselves,

mostly mere dealers, who were tempted to the adventure by the sculptors

and wood-cutters. But none had yet been so bold as to cut in relief a

series of blocks with engravings and text to compose a complete work.

That point was reached very quickly when some legend was engraved at the

foot of a vignette, and it may be thought that the _Donatus_ was the

most ancient of books so obtained among the "Incunabuli," as we now call

them, a word that signifies origin or cradle.

The first books then were formed of sheets of paper or parchment,

laboriously printed from xylographic blocks, that is to say wooden

blocks on which a _tailleur d'images_ had left in relief the designs and

the letters of the text. He had thus to trace his characters in reverse,

so that they could be reproduced as written; he had to avoid faults,

because a phrase once done, well or ill, lasted. It was doubtless this

difficulty of correction that gave the idea of movable types. If the

cutter seriously erred, it was necessary to cancel altogether the faulty

block. This at least explains the legend of Laurent Coster, of Haarlem,

who, according to Hadrian Junius, his compatriot, discovered by accident

the secret of separate types while playing with his children. And if the

legend of which we speak contains the least truth, it must be found in

the sense above indicated, that is in the correction of faults, rather

than in the innocent game of a merchant of Haarlem. However, we shall

have occasion to return to the subject of these remarks. It should be

well established that engraving in relief on wood alone gave the idea of

making xylographic blocks and of composing books. Movable type, the

capital point of printing, the pivot of the art of the Book, developed

itself little by little, according to needs, when there was occasion to

correct an erroneous inscription; but, in any case, its origin is

unknown. Doubtless to vary the text, means were found to replace entire

phrases by other phrases, preserving the original figures; and thus the

light dawned upon these craftsmen, occupied in the manufacture and sale

of their books.

According to Hadrian Junius, Laurent Janszoon Coster (the latter name

signifying "the discoverer") published one of the celebrated series of

works under the general title of _Speculum_ which was then so popular

(the mystic style exercising so great an attraction on the people of the

fifteenth century), the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_. Written before

the middle of the fifteenth century, made popular by manuscripts, in

spite of its fantastic Latinity and of its false quantities, this

ascetic and crude poem was easy of access to the xylographists. Junius,

as we see, attributes to Laurent Coster the first impression of the

_Speculum_, no longer the purely xylographic impression of the _Donatus_

from an engraved block, but that of the more advanced manner in movable

types. In point of fact, this book had at least four editions, similar

in engravings and body of letters, but of different text. It must then

be admitted that the fount was dispersed, and typography discovered,

because the same cast of letters could not be adapted to different

languages. On the other hand, the vignettes do not change, indicating

sufficiently the mobility of the types. In comparison to what may be

seen in later works, the illustrations of the _Speculum_ are by no means

bad; they have the appearance, at once naïve and picturesque, of the

works of Van Eyck, and not at all of the style of the German

miniaturists; properly illuminated and gilded, they lent themselves to

the illusion of being confounded with the _histoyres_, drawn by the

hand, and this is what the publisher probably sought.

All the xylographic works of the fifteenth century may be classed in two

categories: the xylographs, rightly so called, or the block books, such

as the _Donatus_, and the books with movable types, like the _Speculum_,

of which we speak. This mystic and simple literature of pious works for

the use of people of modest resources found in printing the means of

more rapid reproduction. Then appeared the _Biblia Pauperum_, one of the

most celebrated and the most often reproduced, and the _Ars Moriendi_, a

kind of dialogue between an angel and a devil at the bedside of a dying

person, which, inspired no doubt by older manuscripts, retained for a

long time in successive editions the first tradition of its designs. On

labels displayed among the figures are found inscribed the dialogue of

the demons and angels seeking to attach to themselves the departing

soul, the temptations of Satan on the subject of faith, and the

responses of the angel on the same subject.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Xylographic figure from the _Ars Moriendi_,

copied in reverse in the _Art au Morier_.]

We can see what developments this theme could lend to the mysticism of

the fifteenth century. Composed in eleven designs, the _Ars Moriendi_

ran up to eight different editions. From the middle to the end of the

fifteenth century, the text was in Latin, then in French, under the

title _L'Art au Morier_. In the French edition will be found the blocks

that served for the second impression of the work. About 1480, more than

fifty years after the first essays, the _Ars Moriendi_ enjoyed so much

vogue that it employed all the resources of typography as much as in its

earliest days. The original subjects, copied in a very mediocre manner,

adorned the text, which was composed in Gothic letters, with a new and

more explicit title: _Tractatus brevis ac valde utilis de Arte et

Scientia bene moriendi_ (4to, s.l.n.d.), but the order is inverted,

figure 5 of the xylograph becoming No. 3 of the edition of 1480.

The _Ars Memorandi_, another xylographic work, of which the subject,

taken from the New Testament, was equally well adapted to the

imagination of the artists, had also a glorious destiny. The work

originally comprised thirty blocks, the fifteen blocks of text facing

the fifteen engravings. The designs represented the attributes of each

of the Evangelists, with allegories and explanatory legends. Thus, in

that which relates to the Apostle Matthew,

No. 1 represents the birth and genealogy of Jesus Christ,

No. 2 the offerings of the Magi,

No. 3 the baptism of St. John,

No. 4 the Temptation of Christ,

No. 5 the Sermon on the Mount,

No. 6 the parable of the birds.

The angel that supports the whole is the emblem of St. Matthew the

Evangelist.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Figure of the school of Martin Schongauer, taken

from the _Rationarium Evangelistarum_ of 1505, and copied from the

corresponding plate of the _Ars Memorandi_.]

This mnemonic treatment of the Gospels began with symbols of which we

have no means of finding the origin, but which without doubt were

employed many centuries earlier. However that may be, their success was

as great as that of the already-quoted works. In 1505 a German publisher

put forth an imitation, under the title of _Rationarium Evangelistarum_;

and this time the copier of the illustrations, retaining the tradition

of the first xylographers, no less reveals an artist of the first order,

at least a pupil of Martin Schongauer. Some of the conceptions of the

_Rationarium_ recall exactly the engravings of the great German master,

among others that of the Infant Jesus (plate 12), which nearly

approaches the style of the Infant Jesus of Schongauer; besides, the

principal figures leave but little doubt on the subject. The same wings

are on the angels and on the eagles, the same coiffures on the human

characters, often the same attitudes.

From the preceding can be judged the extraordinary favour these

productions enjoyed. From their origin they were diffused through the

whole of Europe, and attracted the attention of excellent artists.

Nevertheless their beginnings were difficult. The movable types used,

cut separately in wood, were not constituted to give an ideal

impression. We can understand the cost that the execution of these

characters must have occasioned, made as they were one by one without

the possibility of ever making them perfectly uniform. Progress was to

substitute for this irregular process types that were similar,

identical, easily produced, and used for a long time without breaking.

Following on the essays of Laurent Coster, continuous researches bore on

this point; but as the invention was said to be his, and it being of

importance to him not to divulge it, so that he should not lose his

profit, much time was lost over it in his workshop without much success.

Here history is somewhat confused. Hadrian Junius positively accuses one

of Laurent Coster's workmen of having stolen the secrets of his master

and taken flight to Mayence, where he afterwards founded a printing

office. According to Junius, the metal type was the discovery of the

Dutchman, and the name of the thief was John. Who was this John? Was it

John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg, or possibly John Fust? But it is

not at all apparent that Gutenberg, a gentleman of Mayence, exiled from

his country, was ever in the service of the Dutch inventor. As to Fust,

we believe his only intervention in the association of printers of

Mayence was as a money-lender, from which may be comprehended the

unlikelihood of his having been with Coster, the more so as we find

Gutenberg retired to Strasbourg, where he pursued his researches. There

he was, as it were, out of his sphere, a ruined noble whose great

knowledge was bent entirely on invention. Doubtless, like many others,

he may have had in his hands one of the printed works of Laurent Coster,

and conceived the idea of appropriating the infant process. In 1439 he

was associated with two artisans of the city of Strasbourg, ostensibly

in the fabrication of mirrors, which may be otherwise understood as

printing of _Speculums_, the Latin word signifying the same thing. These

men needed to surround themselves with precautions; printing was as yet

only a practical means of multiplying manuscripts, to impose a little on

the innocent, and fortune awaited him who, without saying anything, made

this invention serve him. The following will prove this, as well as its

tendency.

A legal document discovered in 1760 by Wencker and Schoepflin in the

Pfennigthurm of Strasbourg, and afterwards translated into French by

M. Leon de Laborde, makes us at length acquainted with the work of

Gutenberg and of his associates Andrew Dritzehen and Andrew Heilmann.

Apparently these three men were, as we have said, _Spiegelmacher_,

that is makers of mirrors. They had jointly entered into a deed by

the terms of which, if one of the partners died in the course of

their researches, his heirs would have no rights beyond an indemnity

corresponding to the amount invested by him. It happened that

Andrew Dritzehen did die, and that one of his brothers aspired to

occupy his place in the partnership. The dead man left debts behind

him; he had squandered his florins by hundreds in his experiments.

Gutenberg having offered to pay the amounts expended, the heirs of

Dritzehen, who wanted more, summoned him before the courts to show

why he should not make place for them in the work of experiments and

making of mirrors. The witnesses in their testimony before the court

told what they knew of the inventions of the partnership. One among

them deposed that after the death of Dritzehen, Gutenberg's servant

went to the workshop and begged Nicholas Dritzehen, brother of the

deceased, to displace and break up four formes placed in a press.

A second testified that the works of Andrew had cost him at the

least three hundred florins, an enormous sum for those days. Other

witnesses painted Gutenberg in a curious light: they made him out

to be a savage, a hermit, who concealed from his associates certain

arts of which the deed stipulated nothing. One fact proved that the

experiments referred to the manufacture of metallic characters. A

goldsmith, named Dünne, maintained that he had received more than a

hundred florins for printing material "das zu dem trucken gehoret."

"Trucken!"--"Typography!" The word was found, and from that day usage

has consecrated it.

Before 1439, then, John Gaensefleisch, or Gutenberg, was devoted to the

art of reproduction of texts, and had consecrated his life and feeble

resources to it. Three problems presented themselves to him. He wanted

types less fragile than wooden types and less costly than engraving. He

wanted a press by the aid of which he could obtain a clear impression on

parchment or paper. He desired also that the leaves of his books should

not be anopistograph, or printed only on one side. There were many

unknown things to vex his soul, of which he himself alone could have a

presentiment. Until then, and even long after, the xylographs were

printed _au frotton_ or with a brush, rubbing the paper upon the forme

coated with ink, thicker than ordinary ink. He dreamed of something

better.

In the course of his work John Gutenberg returned to Mayence. The idea

of publishing a Bible, the Book of books, had taken possession of his

heart. The _Spiegelmacher_ of Strasbourg was on the road to loss. The

cutting of his types had ruined him, and on his arrival in his native

town, his stock in trade, transported by him, was of no great weight:

some boxes of type, an inconvenient forme, and perhaps an ordinary

press, a wine-maker's press, with a wooden screw. The idea of using this

unwieldy instrument for the impression of his formes had already

occurred to him; but would not the _frotton_ serve still better? The

force of the blow from the bar would break the miserable type, the

raised parts of which could not resist the repeated strokes. In this

unhappy situation, Gutenberg made the acquaintance of a financier of

Mayence, named Fust, who was in search of a business, and who put a sum

of eleven hundred florins at his disposal to continue his experiments.

Unfortunately this money disappeared, it melted away, and the results

obtained were absolutely ludicrous.

It is certain that John Fust did not enter on the engagement without

protecting himself. From the first he bound his debtor in a contract for

six per cent. interest, besides a share in the profits. In addition he

stipulated repayment in case of failure. Gutenberg, improvident, as is

the way of inventors, had signed away all that he possessed to procure

funds. It is presumed, besides, that during the continuance of his

investigations, he composed some current books with the resources at his

disposal, that served a little to lighten his debts. But the printing

house of the Zum Jungen at Mayence was far from shining in the world,

because the association of Fust concerned itself only with the

publication of a Bible, and not at all with the _Speculums_ and

_Donatuses_ that were so much in vogue at this time. Besides, the

money-lender made a point of pressing his debtor, and did not allow him

any leisure to labour outside the projected work. About this time a

third actor enters on the scene. Peter Schoeffer, of Gernsheim, a

writer, introduced into the workshop of Gutenberg to design letters,

benefited by the abortive experiments, and taking up the invention at

its deadlock, conducted it to success. John of Tritenheim, called

Trithemius, the learned abbot of Spanheim, is the person who relates

these facts; but as he got his information from Schoeffer himself, too

much credence must not be given to his statements. Besides, Schoeffer

was not at all an ordinary artisan. If we credit a Strasbourg manuscript

written by his hand in 1449, he was a student of the "most glorious

university of Paris." In the workshop of Gutenberg, his industrious and

inventive intellect found a fecund mine, and this caligraphist dreamt

of other things than shaping letters for the use of wood engravers.

Gutenberg, arrested in his career by the wants of life, the worries of

business, and perhaps also the fatigues of his labours, may have let the

new-comer know something of his experiences. One cannot know, but it is

certain that, shortly after, John Fust was so fascinated by Schoeffer,

so attracted by his youth and his application, that he resolved to put

new capital into the business. He did more: to permanently attach him,

he gave him his grand-daughter in marriage, not his daughter, as was

thought until M. Auguste Bernard rectified this mistake.

We have now come to 1453, the year preceding the first dated monument of

printing in movable types: _the letters of indulgence_. It may be

acknowledged that the sudden affection of Fust for his workman depended

on some interested motive, and not at all on attraction of the heart.

Had this former student of the university of Paris found the means of

rapidly founding metallic types, the search for which had cost Gutenberg

many sleepless nights? Had he completed it by applying to it the matrix

and punch which had then and for centuries served the makers of seals

and the money-coiners? Perhaps, as was most probable, the two associates

had agreed, and putting their experiences together, had conquered

hitherto insurmountable difficulties.

The year 1454 witnessed the diffusion throughout Christendom of letters

of indulgence, accorded by Pope Nicholas V., who wished to aid in funds

the King of Cyprus against the Turks. These circular letters, scattered

by thousands to every corner of the world, employed numerous copyists.

Arrived at Mayence, the distributers found a workshop ready prepared to

furnish copies in the shortest possible time. They set to work and

brought together all the type they possessed, cast or engraved, to set

up these famous letters. Among the impressions was that of which we give

a reproduction, which belongs to the edition called that of thirty-one

lines. The original was delivered for a consideration to Josse Ott von

Mospach on the 31st of December, 1454.

It is not without interest, for the history of the Book and of printing,

to note here that these letters of indulgence, the clandestine traffic

in which was largely accelerated by rapidity of production and the small

cost of each copy, formed one of the causes of the religious reform of

Martin Luther. They afforded a means of raising money, and were so

generally resorted to that in the register of the Hotel de Ville of

Paris preserved in the Archives Nationales (H 1778) it may be seen that

the sheriffs requested the Pope to allow them to employ them in the

reconstruction of the bridge at the Hotel de Ville.

The ice once broken, Fust and Schoeffer found it hard to nourish a

useless mouth. For them Gutenberg was more of a hindrance than a profit,

and they sought brutally to rid themselves of him. Fust had a most easy

pretext, which was to demand purely and simply from his associate the

sums advanced by him, and which had produced so little. Gutenberg had

probably commenced his Bible, but, in face of the claims of Fust, he had

to abandon it altogether, types, formes, and press.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Letters of indulgence, from the so-called

edition of thirty-one lines, printed at Mayence in the course of 1454.]

In November, 1455, he had retired to a little house outside the city,

where he tried his best, by the aid of foreign help, to establish a

workshop, and to preserve the most perfect secrecy. Relieved of his

company, Fust and Schoeffer were able to take up the impression of the

Bible and to complete it without him. If matters did so happen, and

Schoeffer had not the excuse that he had previously discovered the

casting of type, there is but one word to designate his conduct:

robbery, and moral robbery, the worst of all. But what can be said

to-day of these people?

One thing is certain: that the Bible of Schoeffer, commenced by

Gutenberg or not, put on sale by Fust and Schoeffer alone about the end

of 1455 or beginning of 1456, proves to be the first completed book.

Retired to his new quarters, Gutenberg was taking courage, so as not

to appear too much behindhand, but the reconstitution of his workshop

cost him enormous time. And, besides, he missed the letter-maker

Schoeffer, his own Gothic letters, engraved on steel with a punch, not

having the same elegance. When his work appeared, it could not sustain

comparison. The Bible of Schoeffer was more compact, the impression was

more perfect, the ink better, the type less irregular. The original

inventor, in his business with Fust, made an unhappy competition for

himself. We give here a fragment of this celebrated book, a kind of

mute witness of the science and mortifications of the first printer.

It is now called the Mazarine Bible, from the fact that the copy in

the Mazarin Library was the first to give evidence concerning it. The

book was put on sale at the end of 1455 or beginning of 1456, for a

manuscript note of a vicar of St. Stephen at Mayence records that

he finished the binding and illuminating of the first volume on St.

Bartholomew's Day, 1456, and the second on the 15th of August. St.

Bartholomew's Day is the 13th of June, and not the 24th of August, as

the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale has it.

[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Fragment of the Mazarine Bible, printed in two

columns. Beginning of the text in the second column; original size.]

All these remarks show that the printers did not proclaim themselves,

and were making pseudo-manuscripts. They did not make known their names

or address. The rubricators sided with them, for many of the copies are

illuminated with as much care and beauty as if they were the finest

manuscripts.

There is no record extant of the number of copies printed, but it was

done on both vellum and paper. Copies are by no means uncommon, most of

the great libraries having one, and many are in private collections. One

is shown among the typographical monuments in the King's Library of the

British Museum, and there is a finely illuminated copy in the show-room

of the Bibliothèque Nationale. From its very great importance as the

first book that is known to have been printed, its value has a constant

increase. Of the copies recently sold, one at the Perkins sale in 1873

on vellum sold for £3,400, another on paper at the same sale fetched

£2,900, while one on paper in the Syston Park Library sold in December,

1884, for £3,900. It has been asserted that the copies on paper were the

first issued by Gutenberg and his partners, and those on vellum

subsequently printed by Fust and Schoeffer, after they had obtained

possession of the inventor's stock.

But so many copies absolutely similar in aspect, and of so regular a

style, put in the market from day to day by Fust and Schoeffer, gave

rise to protests from the caligraphists. Criticism always attends upon

success, but having obtained the result, the two associates did not

hesitate to proclaim themselves the printers of the Bible. On the

publication of the Psalter, which followed the Bible at a year's

interval, they gave their names and added a date, 1457, the first

instance of a date being recorded in a book. This second work was of so

skilful a typography, that it might have been shown as the work of an

expert penman; the faults remarked in the letters of indulgence are no

longer seen; type had attained perfection; in two years printing had

reached its culminating point.

In spite of his disappointments, Gutenberg did not rest idle. If he had

seen his two enemies rob him of his claim of priority in the invention,

he had to show that, reduced to his own exertions and to the restricted

means furnished him by charitable people, he also could print well. Two

years after the Bible a dated book, composed in Gothic letters, appeared

at Mayence; this was the _Catholicon_ of John Balbus, of Genoa. It had

not yet occurred to these first printers to exercise their art otherwise

than on religious works. It is admitted by general opinion that the

_Catholicon_ issued from the press of Gutenberg; on the other hand, M.

Bernard believes that it ought to be attributed to a printer of Eltvil,

who published in 1467 a vocabulary called the _Vocabularium ex quo_ with

the same types. The former theory may be sustained by the words of the

colophon of the book, which is a sort of hymn to God and a recognition

of the city of Mayence without any mention of the name of the printer.

Now in the situation in which Gutenberg found himself, in the face of

his rivals, had he not some claim to regard the great discovery as his

own? But if M. Bernard is mistaken, and if our supposition has no

foundation, what a beautiful act of humility, what a noble idea of his

character, Gutenberg gives us in writing, "With the aid of the Most

High, Who releases the tongues of infants and often reveals to babes

that which is sealed to learned men, this admirable book the

_Catholicon_ was finished in the year of the incarnation of our Saviour

MCCCCLX. in the mother-country of Mayence, famous city of Germany, which

God, in His clemency, has deigned to render the most illustrious and the

first of cities; and this book was perfected without the usual help of

pen or style, but by the admirable linking of formes and types"!

[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Colophon of the _Catholicon_, supposed to have

been printed by Gutenberg in 1460.]

The history of these men, it is easy to understand, has to be regarded

with caution, people of so little consequence then that the authentic

documents relating to them have for ever disappeared. If we except that

of the Pfennigthurm of Strasbourg, of which we have before spoken, and

the deed of claim for money from Fust to Gutenberg dated 1455, we are

forced to quote from authors living long afterwards, who submitted,

without knowing better, to the miserable errors of oral tradition. It is

nearly always the same with men who have occupied a large place in the

history of art; posterity only knows of their genius at the time when no

one knows anything of them. For Gutenberg the situation was still more

terrible; a rival, Peter Schoeffer, survived him, and he did not for his

own reputation care to preserve his rival's memory; and if, as is

believed, Gutenberg left pupils and heirs, Henry Bechtermuncze, Ulrich

Zell, and Weigand Spyes, his misfortune is crowned by Bechtermuncze

being now reputed to be the printer of the _Catholicon_, of which we

have just given the history. Even Albert Pfister, one of his workmen,

dismissed at the end of his work, having obtained from his master some

rejected types, was presumed later to have invented printing. We find

this artisan established at Bamberg about 1460, composing Bibles in

movable types, the first known being that published in 1461. But Albert

Pfister showed that he was not at all an inventor by the mediocrity of

his work, and more by the old types that he used. If he had known the

secret of engraving the punches, he would have cast new letters and have

given a better aspect to his work.

[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Colophon of the Bible printed in 1462 by Fust

and Schoeffer, which is the first dated Bible. There are two different

editions with this signature. The above is from the second edition.]

In these statements all is supposition and contradiction. That which is

certain--and the dates are there to prove it--is the enormous progress

in the productions of Peter Schoeffer. In 1459 he published his third

book, Durand's _Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, in folio. As in the

Psalter, Schoeffer employed initial letters printed in red, which the

rival workshop could not do in the _Catholicon_, the rubrics of which

are painted by hand, as in manuscripts. In time he put forth a second

edition of the Psalter, always with Fust's name joined to his own. A

great number of types were broken at the beginning, but he dreamed of

doing yet better. In 1460 he gave the _Constitutiones_ of Pope Clement

V., with a gloss and commentaries by John André; here was the first

example of a process much employed in manuscripts, but of which the

typographical composition was very difficult. Again, in 1462 a new Latin

Bible issued from their workshops in two folio volumes. It is the first

dated edition. The first volume has two hundred and forty-two folios in

double columns, the second two hundred and thirty-nine. It commences

with an epistle of St. Jerome, and on the last leaf of the second volume

is the colophon on the preceding page.

This book, one of the first worthy of the name, and which is called by

preference the Mayence Bible, appeared in one of the most troubled

epochs that the episcopal city had had to go through. Subject to its

archbishops, who were at the head of all the lay lords and fighting men,

the city found itself in 1462 the prey of two prelates of equal title

who refused to give way to one another: Thierry of Isembourg and Adolph

of Nassau-Wiesbaden. Adolph surprised Mayence on the 27th October, 1462,

pursuing his adversary, who scaled the walls with a rope to escape

quicker, and the city was sacked and pillaged from its foundations. In

the middle of this turmoil, what became of the obscure persons who were

then the printers of the Bible? Doubtless their insignificance saved

them from disaster, but as it was long before peace was re-established,

and the entire edition of their last volume could not be kept back, we

incline to believe that they were for a time going about the country as

itinerant booksellers. Paris was to them a well-indicated point of

travel--Paris, toward which all German commerce tended. The university

where Peter Schoeffer was instructed in letters, and that truly passed

for the first in Europe, appeared to them a market of the first order.

If we may believe Walchius (_Decas fabularum generis humani_:

Strasbourg, 1609, 4to, p. 181), John Fust himself went to that city,

where he put books on sale from sixty crowns a copy, then fifty, then

forty, according to the prevailing system in matters of discount. Fust

was above all things a merchant; he led it to be believed that he had

the marvellous establishment of a copyist beyond the Rhine, and he had

disposed of many copies, when the corporate scribes of the university,

becoming aware of the imposition, cried out furiously and declared it a

diabolical invention. We may now take this tale of Walchius as a fable,

as the registers of Parliament, on being consulted, rest silent on the

proceedings instituted against the "magician" of Mayence. Only we must

not lose sight of the fact that the booksellers had their masters, their

syndicate, if we may use the modern word, charged to prohibit fraudulent

publications. They were too much interested in the suppression of

printed books to judge the matter coldly. The Parliament had nothing to

see to in this.

The revolution of Mayence had otherwise great results, which were not

affected by these minor reverses. The printing workshops, or at least

the successors of Gutenberg, began to be dispersed, and Fust and

Schoeffer having established a school of printers in the city, their

trade was no longer secret. Deprived of their liberties by the new

Archbishop, many of them expatriated themselves. We shall take occasion

later to name some of these exiles, through whom the art of printing

spread itself almost simultaneously throughout the world: to Cologne and

Strasbourg, to Italy and Spain, without reckoning Holland, France,

Switzerland, and the country around Mayence. We have before named the

episcopal city of Bamberg; it had the singular fortune to be the second

city to possess a printing office, but it disappeared as quickly as it

was established, with Albert Pfister, without leaving the least trace;

we do not find printing there again before 1480, more than twenty years

later.

Gutenberg was dead before 1468. He was interred in the Church of the

Récollets of Mayence, by the pious care of a friend, who attributed the

invention of printing to him on his tomb.

We may begin to comprehend the influence of this man upon the discovery

of which all the world was then talking, but the troubles of the

archiepiscopal city hampered the respective merit of the inventors.

Peter Schoeffer and John Fust were not much affected by the political

crisis. After two years' suspension, they reappeared with a Cicero, _De

Officiis_, 1465, quarto, always at work and always surpassing

themselves. This time they freely gave up religious publications, and,

still more extraordinary, they employed Greek types.

Such is, detached from the incredible contradictions of writers on art,

and sketched solely on its main lines, the origin of printing as it is

established at this day. First came the image engraved in relief, which

we have not gone to China to find, with some of our predecessors. Upon

this image were often cut, by the same economical process, legends of

explanation that presented the idea of imitation of manuscript; and the

xylographs appeared with or without illustrations. Then from the

correction of errors in these books followed the discovery of movable

characters. This wooden type, possible when it was used with a _frotton_

for printing, would quickly break under the press, the idea of which was

gained from the common press of the wine-makers. Then a kind of metallic

type had to be found which would run in a mould struck by a punch. This

punch was not invented for the purpose; it served previously for the

makers of coins and seals. The fabrication of type from the matrix was a

simple adoption. The lead thrown into the matrix gave the desired type.

Thus were made the first books, of which we have briefly related the

composition.

As to the proportion of glory due to each one of the first printers, it

is necessary equally, to guard against error on one side or the other.

We have sought to separate from the heap of publications probable

opinions or those based on certain documents. That the origin of the

_Donatus_, the block books, was Dutch would be puerile to deny, because,

on one side, the engravings on blocks are surely of the school of Van

Eyck, and, on the other hand, Ulrich Zell, who inspired the "Cologne

Chronicle" of 1499, assigned positively to Holland the cradle of the

_Donatus_. At any rate, it was a pupil of Gutenberg, a question we have

discussed. After that we will trouble ourselves but little about Laurent

Coster. The name makes no difference in a matter of this kind.

As to Gutenberg, we have not been able to go as far as M. E. Dutuit, who

in his _Manuel a'Estampes_ (vol. i., p. 236, etc.) doubts Gutenberg's

right to the title of inventor. It is stated that in a letter of William

Fichet, prior of the Sorbonne, of whom we shall have more to say

presently, to Robert Gaguin, which M. A. Claudin found at the beginning

of a work entitled _Gasparim Pergamensis orthographiæ liber_, published

in 1470, nearly twenty years after the first work at Mayence, Gutenberg

is proclaimed the inventor of printing. Without any other, this

testimony of a _savant_ who was the first to bring the German printers

to Paris appears to us well nigh irrefutable.

As to John Fust and his grandson by marriage, Peter Schoeffer, they are

so well defended by their works, that there is no more to say here;

doubtless grave presumptions arise as to the delicacy of their conduct

with Gutenberg, but we are not so bold as to censure them beyond

measure. We know nothing precise either of the time or of the men.

Let us now imagine humble workmen, the most simple of _gens de

mestiers_, to employ the French expression then in use, shut up in a

kind of dark workshop, like a country forge, formed in little groups of

two or three persons, one designing and the other cutting the wood,

having near them a table, on which is held the engraved block after its

reliefs have been rubbed with sombre ink, who afterwards, by means of

the _frotton_, apply the damped paper to the raised parts of the block;

we shall have without much stretch of thought all the economy of the

xylographic impression. If we add to this primitive workshop the matrix

in which the types are cast, the box in which they are distributed, the

forme on which they are arranged to compose the pages, and a small

hand-press, with blacker ink and paper damped to permit the greasy ink

to take better, we have a picture of the work-room of Gutenberg, Fust,

and Schoeffer, and of the first printers with movable types.

Thus typography was born of painting, passing in its infancy through

wood-cutting, revolutionising ideas and somewhat the world. But the

mighty power of the new art was not confined to itself; it extended the

circle of engraving, which till then had suffered from the enormous

difficulties of reproduction. As if the time were ripe for all these

things, nearly at the moment when the first printers were distinguishing

themselves by serious works, a Florentine goldsmith accidentally

discovered the cutting of cast metal.[A] What would have become of this

new process if the presses of Gutenberg had not brought their powerful

assistance to the printing of engravings? It will be found then that

printing rendered a hundredfold to engraving for that which it received

from it and bore it along with its own rapid advance.

Then reappeared, following the new processes, the figures somewhat

abandoned by the Mayence workmen during the period of transformation.

Our object is to speak at length of the Book ornamented and illustrated

according to the means of relief-cutting or casting; to demonstrate the

influence of painting, of sculpture, of art, on the production of the

Book; and thus to help the reader at the same time to understand the

almost sudden and irresistible development of typography, and to mention

its foremost representatives.

[Footnote A: The opinion that Finiguerra was the unconscious inventor of

casting engravings is now abandoned.]

CHAPTER II.

1462 TO 1500.

The Book and the printers of the second generation--The German

workmen dispersed through Europe--Caxton and the introduction of

printing into England--Nicholas Jenson and his supposed mission to

Mayence--The first printing in Paris; William Fichet and John

Heinlein--The first French printers; their installation at the

Sorbonne and their publications--The movement in France--The

illustration of the Book commenced in Italy--The Book in Italy;

engraving in relief and metal plates--The Book in Germany: Cologne,

Nuremberg, Basle--The Book in the Low Countries--French schools of

ornament of the Book; Books of Hours; booksellers at the end of the

fifteenth century--Literary taste in titles in France at the end of

the fifteenth century--Printers and booksellers' marks--The

appearance of the portrait in the Book--Progress in England--Caxton

and his followers.

Considering the influence of printing on the book trade of the fifteenth

century, as referred to in the preceding pages, the dealers in

manuscripts were not disposed to give way at the first blow. An entire

class of workmen would find themselves from day to day without

employment if the new art succeeded; these were the copyists, miserable

scribes, who for meagre remuneration frequented the shops of the

merchants, where they transcribed manuscripts by the year. Before

printing the publication of books was so effected, and the booksellers

were rather intermediaries between the copyist and the buyer, than

direct dealers having shops and fittings complete. It is evident that

they would not provide themselves with these costly books long in

advance without being sure of disposing of them.

Small as was the remuneration of the writers, it was much to them; and

they were naturally the first to protest against the new invention. At

the same time, their opposition and that of the booksellers was soon

overcome, swamped, and choked by the growing crowd of printers. Then, as

always happens in similar cases, in place of fighting against the

current, most of the former workers in manuscript followed it. The

writers designed letters for engraving in wood, the booksellers sold the

printed works, and some of the illuminators engraved in relief or cast

their _histoyres_. For a long time these last continued to decorate

books with the ornamental drawings with which they had adorned the

manuscripts, and so contributed to form the fine school of illustrators

who carried their art to so high a point from the end of the fifteenth

century.

[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Imprint of Arnold Ther Hoernen, printer, of

Mayence.]

As previously related, the revolution of Mayence caused the flight of a

crowd of artisans who found their liberty suddenly compromised by the

conqueror. The want of money at this time always brought a diminution of

patronage, and working printers have been at all times tenacious of

their privileges. It so happened that their guild, in place of remaining

established at Mayence many years longer, was, as it were, turned out,

scattered to the four cardinal points by the dispersion of its members,

and scattered many years before the natural time. In point of fact, in

the common order of things, a workman here and there quits the principal

workshop to try the world. He makes his way timidly, unconscious apostle

of a marvellous art. If he succeeds, he gathers some pupils round him;

if he fails, no trace of him remains; in any case invention propagates

itself more gradually. With printing it was a thunderclap. Hardly had it

made its appearance when the exodus commenced. The greater part of the

Mayence men went to Italy: to Subiaco and to Rome, Arnold Pannartz,

Conrad Sweynheim, Ulrich Hahn; to Venice, John of Spire, Vendelin of

Spire, Christopher Valdarfer, Bernard Pictor (of Augsburg), Erhardt

Ratdolt, Peter Loslein; to Ferrara, Andrew Belfort; to Foligno, John

Neumeister; Henry Alding tried Sicily; Andrew Vyel, of Worms, printed

at Palermo. Lambert Palmart was at Valencia, in Spain, in 1477;

Nicholas Spindeler at Barcelona; Peter Hagenbach at Toledo; not far from

Mayence--that is, at Cologne--Ulrich Zell, a pupil of Gutenberg, who

dated his first work 1466. It was Arnold Ther Hoernen who numbered a

book with Arabic figures; it was Koelhof who first used signatures to

indicate to the binder the order of the sheets; it was at Eltvil that

Henry Bechtermuncze, as we have already said, printed his _Vocabularium_

in German, with the types of the _Catholicon_; at Basle, Berthold

Rüppel, of Hanau, was the first established in that city which after

Mayence did the most for printing; at Nuremberg, Koburger, who took

nearly the first rank among his contemporaries, set as many as

twenty-four presses to work, and was named by Badius the prince of

printers. And how matters went on! For instance, the very year that

followed the death of Gutenberg, monks, the Brothers of the Common Life

of Marienthal, in the Rheingau, themselves published a copy of the

indulgences accorded by Adolph of Nassau, Archbishop of Mayence. Before

1480, presses were everywhere in Germany: at Prague, Augsburg, Ulm,

Lubeck, Essling, etc.

It is to be remarked that the Mayence men did not turn towards Holland.

Is it that they found there the descendants of Laurent Coster firmly

established in their workshops? Must the coexistence, the simultaneous

advance, of the invention in Germany and in the Low Countries be

admitted? It is a secret for us and for many others, but we know for

certain that Flemish printers were established at Utrecht in 1473, at

Delft, Bruges, Gouda, Zwoll, Antwerp, and Brussels. At Louvain there

was besides John of Westphalia, who published in 1474 a work of Peter

Crescens, and several other works.

Colard Mansion was printing at Bruges about 1473; and was employed by

William Caxton, who had been for some years trading as a merchant in the

Low Countries, to print the "Recuyell of the Histories of Troy," by

Raoul Le Fevre, which Caxton had translated into English at the command

of Queen Margaret. This was issued in 1474, and was the first book

printed in the English language. In 1475 or 1476 Caxton returned to

England with a fount of types, which he had employed Mansion to cut and

cast for him, and established himself as a printer in the precincts of

Westminster Abbey. In 1477 he produced the first book printed in

England, "The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers," followed by a

large number of important works, many of them written or translated by

Caxton himself. Thus was typography firmly established in England; and

Caxton's immediate successors, Wynken de Worde, Richard Pynson, William

Machlinia, have had a glorious roll of followers, which has never been

broken to this day. From Westminster the art spread in England to

Oxford, where Theodoricus Rood, from Cologne, printed an _Exposicio

Sancti Jeronimi_ in 1478; and to St. Albans in 1480 by a printer who has

never been identified, and who produced the famous "Chronicle" and "Boke

of St. Albans."

The invasion, we see, had been most rapid. In less than fifteen years,

every important city had followed the movement, and was ready to

establish printing offices. If we may credit a certain controverted

document, Charles VII. had on the 3rd of October, 1458, sent to Mayence

one of the best medal engravers of the Mint of Tours to study the

process of which marvels were spoken: "The 3rd of October, 1458, the

King having learned that Messire Guthenberg, living at Mayence, in the

country of Germany, a dexterous man in carving and making letters with a

punch, had brought to light the invention of printing by punches and

types, desirous of inquiring into such a treasure, the King has

commanded the generals of his mints to nominate persons well instructed

in the said cutting and to send them secretly to the said place to

inform themselves of the said mode and invention, to understand and

learn the art of them, in order to satisfy the said Lord King; and it

was undertaken by Nicholas Jenson, who took the said journey to bring

intelligence of the said art and of the execution of it in the said

kingdom, which first has made known the said art of impression to the

said kingdom of France" (Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Hf 467, pp. 410,

411).

Nicholas Jenson on his return met with a cool reception from Louis XI.,

who did not continue the works of his father. It may be supposed that

this coolness was the cause of his expatriating himself and retiring to

a place where his industry could be better exercised. Ten years after

the above mission we find him established at Venice, his art of engraver

of letters joined to that of printer. His Eusebius, translated by

Trapezuntius, and his Justinian, were composed in 1470 with such

marvellous and clear types that from that day the best typographers have

imitated his founts. In spite of its success, he did not confine himself

to these letters, but he made use also of Gothic, in which he printed

by preference pious books.

[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Imprint of Nicholas Jenson to a Justinian,

printed in 1470 at Venice. This type has prevailed up to now.]

In spite of the attempts of Jenson in the name of the King of

France--that is, if these attempts ever took place in the manner

indicated above--the invention was not known to have commended itself to

the powerful university of Paris. In general, and especially for the

introduction of innovations in that learned body, it was necessary to

fight, to strike without much chance of success, save in case of having

acquaintance in the place. We have seen John Fust, obliged suddenly to

retake the road to Germany, in a fair way to find himself taxed with

sorcery, not an inconsiderable matter. For others the sale of

unauthorised books had had most unhappy consequences unless the

Parliament intervened. So ten years had passed since the journey of

Jenson, and ten or twelve since the first manifestations of typography

at Mayence, without the diabolical discovery finding admittance to the

Sorbonne. A still more extraordinary thing, a Cologne printer issued

about 1472 a small folio in Gothic type, thirty-one long lines to a

page, which was a work written in French. The _Histoires de Troyes_ of

Raoul Le Fevre, chaplain of the dukes of Burgundy, first found a

publisher in Germany, and soon after another in England, before a single

press was definitely installed at Paris.

As we have said of Peter Schoeffer, numerous German students were in the

university, where they pursued their studies, and frequently remained

later as masters. It has been found that in 1458 a former student of

Leipzig named John Heinlein, a native of Stein, in the diocese of Spire,

entered as regent of the college of Burgundy, from whence he passed to

the Sorbonne in 1462, the year of the troubles in Mayence. After the

manner of latinising names so common at that time, he called himself

Lapidanus, from the name of his native place, which means Stone in

German. Heinlein met in Paris a Savoyard, William Fichet, born in 1433

at Petit Bornand, who became an associate of the Sorbonne about 1461,

and finally rector in 1468. These two men were great friends, and their

particular instincts attracted them to men of elevated studies. They

divined at once the enormous help printing would bring to their work.

Besides, it grieved them to see through the whole of France, especially

in Touraine, German colporteurs carrying on their trade under cover of

other commerce, a practice from which the most grave inconveniences

might result. It occurred to them that to prevent fraud they would

themselves create a printing establishment; but if they deliberated on

it, it must have been in secret, for the registers of the Sorbonne are

silent on their enterprise. If Fichet conceived the idea, it may be

believed that, from his German origin, Heinlein put it into execution.

M. Philippe thinks that he was formerly at Basle. In all probability it

was from that city he tried to obtain his workmen. In 1468 six years had

elapsed since the craftsmen were dispersed and fled from Mayence. At all

events, it was from Basle that Ulrich Gering, Michael Freyburger, and

Martin Krantz, printers recommended to the two Sorbonnists, departed,

and in due course arrived in Paris. Of these three men, who were the

first to establish a printing office on the French side of the Rhine,

Ulrich Gering was a student as well as a printer, so was Freyburger,

originally of Colmar. Krantz was a letter-founder, and the only real

workman of the three companions.

We have often regretted with regard to these men, as also to Gutenberg,

Fust, and Schoeffer, that no really authentic portrait has transmitted

their features to us. Every one will recall the fur cap and loose

pantaloons of the mediocre statue at Mayence, but there is really no

portrait of Gutenberg. As to Gering, M. Philippe, in his _Histoire de

l'Origine de l'Imprimerie à Paris_, publishes a grotesque figure muffled

in the ruff of the sixteenth century, after a picture preserved at

Lucerne, but for which much cannot be said. Lacaille, in his _Histoire

de l'Imprimerie_, gives a full-length portrait of Gering, said to be

taken from a painting in the College Montagu.

The workshop of the three Germans was set up within the walls of the

Sorbonne--_in ædibus Sorbonnicis_--in 1469. There they set to work at

once, their printing establishment consisting simply of a room, none too

light, a table, a press, and formes. Krantz doubtless struck the types

chosen by the Sorbonnists, for there were then in use two sorts of

letters: German Gothic and Roman. They kept to the Roman, as being more

round and clear; and as soon as they obtained matrices and cast their

type, they entered on their task with ardour.

[Illustration: Fig. 10.--"Letters" of Gasparin of Bergamo. First page of

the first book printed at Paris, in 1470.]

The tendencies of Fichet and Heinlein were not towards transcendent

theology, but rather towards the literature of the ancients and

contemporary rhetorical works. Besides, it may be said, considering that

men are far from perfect, Fichet counted on making the authorised

presses serve his own purpose. We find him publishing a treatise on

rhetoric in quarto in 1471; meantime he supervised the work confided to

his artists. They commenced with a large volume of "Letters" of Gasparin

of Bergamo, which was set up in quarto with the Roman type, the form of

which had been accepted. At the end of the work, the impression of

which cost much time--possibly a year--the three printers placed a

quatrain in Latin distichs, which is at once a statement of identity and

a promise for the future.

[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Colophon in distichs in the "Letters" of

Gasparin of Bergamo, first book printed at Paris, at the office of the

Sorbonne.]

If we try to apportion to each of the three printers his share in the

making of the book, it may be supposed that the intellectual part of the

composition and the correction fell to Freyburger and Gering, while the

heavier work of founding, placing in formes, and press work fell to

Krantz. This essay, satisfactory as it appeared, was far from

perfection. The first Parisian printers had multiplied abbreviations and

irregular contractions, and enormous difficulties and inevitable faults

ensued. Further, either they had more than one punch, or the leaden

matrix was deformed, for the characters frequently differ. At the same

time, we must commend them for having used the _æ_ and _[oe]_, which

were uniformly written _e_ in the manuscripts, thus giving rise to

errors without number. Their punctuation was the comma, semicolon, and

full stop.

[Illustration: Fig. 12.--_Rhetorique_ of Fichet, printed at Paris in

1471. The marginal ornaments are drawn by hand.]

Fichet and Heinlein had become the modest librarians of the Sorbonne,

and this new employment gave them greater facilities for surveillance.

The printing office did not remain inactive. It issued successively the

"Orthography" of Gasparin of Bergamo, the "Letters" of Phalaris, two

books of Æneas Sylvius, the "Conspiracy of Catiline" of Sallust, the

"Epitome of Titus Livius" of Florus, and finally the "Rhetorics" of

William Fichet, which, if we may credit a letter addressed to Bessarion,

was finished in 1471. Following came the "Letters" of Bessarion, the

_Elegantia Latinæ Linguæ_ of Valla, the first folio volume from the

Sorbonne presses; and others, thirteen volumes in 1470-71 and seventeen

in 1472.

At the end of 1472 the workshop was somewhat broken up, Fichet having

left for Rome and Heinlein preaching in Germany. The three printers had

shown by their works that they were in earnest; besides, they had from

the first gratuitously distributed copies among the nobles, who, being

accustomed to pay highly for manuscripts, did not fail to note the

difference. The associates then resolved to quit the Sorbonne and create

an establishment for themselves; their patrons being no longer there to

sustain them in case of failure, and in giving up their presses and

types it may be judged that they were not without anxiety on that point.

Their oldest dated book, the _Manipulus Curatorum_ of Montrochet, was

also the first that they printed in their new quarters, at the sign of

the "Golden Sun" in the Rue St. Jacques. They remained united up to the

year 1477, when Gering alone printed at the "Golden Sun," but he

obtained associates, George Mainyal in 1480 and Berthold Rembold in

1494, who lived with him in the Rue de la Sorbonne, where he established

himself on leaving the Rue St. Jacques. Ulrich Gering died on the 23rd

of August, 1510, after a half-century of work.

The movement inaugurated by the Sorbonne was promptly followed. German

workmen opened their shops nearly everywhere in France; then the French

themselves scattered. At Lyons in 1472 a Frenchman was established, the

same at Angers, Caen, Metz, Troyes, Besançon, and Salins. But in the

central provinces we find Henry Mayer at Toulouse, John Neumeister at

Albi; in the east Metlinger at Dijon; and Michael Wensler, of Basle, at

Macon, among others, about 1493.

We have now arrived at an epoch of greater efforts. The Lyons printers

used ornamental letters, from which were developed engravings in the

Book. Since the block books illustration had been neglected, as the

means were wanting to distribute the plates here and there in the forme;

Schoeffer still employed initial letters in wood very like vignettes.

John Fust was now dead, but Peter Schoeffer continued to print without

intermission.

If we search for the precise epoch in which illustration appeared in the

history of the Book, we shall perhaps have to go back to the time of

Albert Pfister, printer of Bamberg, who issued in 1461 an edition of the

"Fables of Ulrich Bohner" with a hundred and one figures on wood. This

may be said to be the unconscious combination of xylography with

typography, a kind of transformation of old elements to new things

without other importance; art had no place in this adaptation.

Up to this time Germany had not, in its school of painters or

miniaturists, men capable of giving a personal impulse to ornament. In

the German editions of the block books the influence of Van Eyck had

made itself felt very sensibly, and the Flemish had preserved their

supremacy on this point; on the other hand, the German printers who went

to seek their fortune in Italy fell into the middle of a circle

admirably prepared to receive them and to communicate their ideas to

them. It is believed that the first book printed in Italy with woodcuts

in the text and with an ascertained date is the work of a German

established at Rome, Ulrich Hahn, in 1467. An account in the _Annuaire

du Bibliophile_, which, being without citation of authority, we quote

for what it is worth, relates that Ulrich Hahn was established as a

printer at Vienna about 1462, but was driven thence by the publication

of a pamphlet against the burgomaster of the city, and was attracted to

Rome by Torquemada, who confided to him the impression of his work the

_Meditationes_. Hahn was an engraver, as were also most of his

_confrères_ at that time--that is, he cut in relief designs to be

intercalated in the text--and Passavant relates that the designs of the

_Meditationes_ were from compositions of Fra Angelico, who died in 1455.

Be that as it may, the book, the printing of which was finished on St.

Sylvester's Day, 1467, is the first known with engravings, and only

three copies of it exist: one at Vienna, one at Nuremberg, and one in

Lord Spencer's library; it is composed in Gothic type in folio.

[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Wood engraving of Matteo Pasti for Valturius'

_De Re Militari_: Verona, 1472.]

Illustration found a true artist at Verona, Matteo Pasti, who furnished

designs for a volume on military art by Valturius, printed in Roman

characters in folio, at the expense of John of Verona, and dedicated to

Sigismond Pandolfi. Pasti's eighty-two figures are simple outlines, and

we here reproduce one of the principal--an archer shooting at a butt.

Published in 1472, the volume of Valturius followed soon after the

_Meditationes_, but the engravings enable us to see how the Italian

process, consisting mostly of lines without shadows, differed from the

Dutch and German. One thing to be remarked here is the purity of the

design, in spite of the roughness of the engraving; we see in these

figures Italian art at its height, despite the somewhat coarse

translation of the wood-cutter.

At Venice the German inventors had reaped their harvest. At the end of

the fifteenth century, fifty years after the invention of typography,

the printing offices and booksellers' shops were counted by hundreds. It

was in this city that for the first time a title with frontispiece

carrying indication of the contents, the place, the date, and the name

of the printer, was given to the Book. We give here this ornamental

title, placed before a _Calendario_ of John de Monteregio, printed by

Pictor, Loslein, and Ratdolt in 1476, folio.

The German Erhardt Ratdolt was probably the promoter of these

innovations. He soon afterwards published the first geometrical book

with figures, the "Elements of Euclid," 1482, folio; in the same year he

produced the _Poeticon Astronomicum_ of Hyginus, previously printed at

Ferrara, with illustrations on wood of excellent design, but laboriously

and unskilfully engraved. Yet the art of the Book could not remain

mediocre in this city, where the artists were creating marvels. John of

Spire and afterwards Nicholas Jenson, the emigrant from France, of whom

we have spoken above, had created, after Italian manuscripts, that Roman

letter, the primitive type of which has come down to our time very

little retouched. At the death of Jenson in 1481, his materials passed

into the hands of Andrew d'Asola, called Andrea Torresani, who did not

allow the good traditions of his master to die, and who produced among

others a book bearing signatures, catchwords, and paging ("Letters of

St. Jerome," 1488). Torresani was the father-in-law of Aldus Manutius,

who was to be for ever illustrious in the art of printing at Venice, and

raised his art to the highest perfection.

[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Title-page of the _Calendario_, first

ornamental title known. Printed in 1476 at Venice.]

But if decoration by means of relief blocks found a favourable reception

in Italy and, above all, a group of artists capable of carrying it to

success, there were at the same time other experiments conceived in a

different way. The discovery of Maso Finiguerra gave to the art a new

process of reproduction, and printing presses had now to render possible

and practicable the working of engraved plates. In order to make that

which follows comprehensible, we enter into a few technical details, the

whole subject having been so admirably and fully treated by MM.

Delaborde and Duplessis.

In the engraved wood block, as in the printing type, it is a projection

in the wood or metal which, being inked and passed under a press, leaves

on paper its lines in black. Naturally then the intercalation of an

engraving of this kind in typographical composition is made without

difficulty, and the impression of both is taken at once. On the other

hand, a line engraving is obtained from incised lines on a plate of

copper; that is, an instrument called a burin traces the lines, which

are filled with greasy ink. These incised lines only are inked. The

surface of the plate is cleaned off to avoid smudging. The sheet of

paper destined for the impression has then to be made very pliable, so

that at the striking of the press it runs, so to speak, to find the ink

in the lines and hold it. It is therefore impossible to take a text from

relief characters at the same time as an engraved plate.

[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Engraving on metal by Baccio Baldini for _El

Monte Santo di Dio_, in 1477.]

However, this kind of reproduction, which, contrary to that from

wood, allowed of half-tints or toning down, attracted in good time

the workers at the Book. It appeared to them possible to reconcile

the two printings by the successive passage of the same sheet of

paper through the press, to receive at first the impression from the

type and afterwards to find the ink deposited in the incisions in the

copper. The first manifestation of this new method of illustration was

made at Florence, the home of line engraving, by Nicholas di Lorenzo

in 1477, for the work of Antonio Bettini, of Siena, called _El Monte

Santo di Dio_. Here the artists were never known. Common opinion has

it that Baccio Baldini borrowed from Sandro Botticelli the subjects of

his plates. Italian engraving always seeks its source in Pollajuolo,

Botticelli, and Baldini. It is not the simple work of a niellist,

but it had not yet reached perfection either in the work or in the

impression; the illustrations of the _Monte Santo_ are proof of this,

as are also those of the _Dante_, by Baldini, in 1481, for the same

Nicholas di Lorenzo. From this we reproduce the Misers.

[Illustration: Fig. 16.--Metal engraving by Baccio Baldini from the

Dante of 1481.]

At this epoch engravings from the burin were taken with a pale ink, the

composition of which is very different from the fine black ink of

Schoeffer as well as of the old Italian printers. And besides in most

cases the proofs were obtained with the _frotton_, like the ancient

block books, an eminently defective process. The press was not yet well

adapted to the delicate work of line engraving, and the workmen, who did

not apply the plates until after the text was printed, preferred not to

risk the loss of their sheets by the use of inappropriate presses.

These, with the insignificant attempts made by the Germans in 1479,[A]

are the beginnings of the process of line engraving in the ornamentation

of the Book. In fact, the process failed to take its due position for

want of a more convenient mode of working. Relief engraving had got

ahead; with it the sheets used for the impression did not require

working more than once to register the figures with the text; in a word,

the labour was not so great. A century had to pass before line engraving

completely dethroned the vignette on wood, a century in which the latter

attained its height, and showed what able artisans could make of a

process apparently the least flexible.

[Footnote A: _Breviarium ecclesie Herbipolensis_: Et. Dold., 1479,

folio, copper plate engravings.]

Not to leave Italy, which had the honour of making the book with

engraved illustrations known to the world, we pass by some years,

during which Arnold Bucking gave at Rome a _Cosmographia_ of Ptolemy,

1478, with incised plates, which is the first printed atlas that was

produced, whilst as regards ordinary publications there appeared in all

parts classical and Italian works, such as Cicero, Virgil, Tacitus,

Pliny, Eusebius, among the ancients, and Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio,

etc., among moderns. Among the editions of Dante, we may cite that of

Peter of Cremona, dated 18th November, 1491, with one engraving to

each canto, of which the earlier are after Botticelli, and perhaps

drawn by him directly on the wood. Passavant believes these figures

to be cut in relief in the metal. On some of the plates there is a

signature, a Gothic b, the signification of which leaves a free

field for conjecture, and perhaps for error. Copies of this book with

the complete series of twenty plates are extremely rare; one in the

Hamilton Palace Library sold in May, 1884, for £380; the Royal Library

of Berlin recently agreed to pay £1,200 for a proof set of the plates.

[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Plate from the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_,

printed by Aldus Manutius, in 1499.]

As we shall see later apropos of German vignettes of the same period,

the characteristic of Italian engraving was sobriety, the complete

absence of useless work and the great simplicity of the human figure.

This special manner will be found in the famous edition of the

_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ of Francis Colonna, printed in 1499 by

Aldus, copied sixty years later by a French printer, and lately

reproduced in reduced size.

[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Plate from Bonino de Bonini's Dante, at

Brescia, in 1487.]

The Italian illustrators, whether they were working in wood, or, as some

writers have it, in metal, adroitly brought their figures forward by

contrasting some rudimentary work in the persons with the more

accentuated and often stippled ground, which formed a dark background.

This was also the ordinary process in their ornaments, among the most

interesting of which are the borders of the plates to an edition of

Dante by Bonino de Bonini, Brescia, 1487, of which a specimen is here

reproduced.

If we return from Italy, which then took the lead, to Germany, a school

of _Formschneiders_ is found about the year 1470 at Augsburg, whose

secluded workshops were of no benefit to the booksellers. These

ill-advised artisans went still further. Apparently furious to see

printing so widely spread as to render their bad woodcuts difficult to

get rid of, they united in a body to interdict Gunther Zainer and

Schüssler from putting engravings into their books. They must

nevertheless have come to an ultimate arrangement, for Zainer printed in

1477 a book on chess by Jacopo da Cessole, with vignettes. He was one of

the few German printers who employed Roman characters in place of the

Gothic of Peter Schoeffer. At Cologne in 1474 Arnold Ther Hoernen

published a work entitled _Fasciculus Temporum_, with small

illustrations engraved on wood. A Bible without date contains most

interesting illustrations. As to the celebrated _Todtentantz_, or "Dance

of Death," published about 1485, it contains forty-one relief plates of

the most ordinary kind, the same as in the "Chronicle of Cologne" of

1499, of which the figures, though less German, less distorted, are

worth little compared with those of the Nuremberg books, more German,

but more artistic.

[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The creation of woman, plate from the

_Schatzbehalter_, engraved after Michael Wolgemuth.]

At Nuremberg, Antony Koburger, called by Badius the prince of

booksellers, directed an immense establishment, employing more than a

hundred workmen, without counting smaller houses at Basle and Lyons.

Koburger was a capable and a fortunate man. He had at first put forth a

Bible very indifferently illustrated with the cuts of the Cologne Bible,

but he had before him something better than copying others. Michael

Wohlgemuth, born at Nuremberg in 1434, was then in the full vigour of

his talent. To his school the young Albert Dürer came to study; and as

he was able to draw on wood as well as to engrave on copper and paint on

panel, Koburger was attracted to him, and engaged him to make a set of

illustrations for a book. The projected work was the _Schatzbehalter_, a

sort of ascetic compilation, without interest, without arrangement.

Michael Wohlgemuth set to work; and, thanks to the ability of his

engravers, of whom William Pleydenwurff was probably one, Koburger was

able to put the book on sale in the course of 1491 in three hundred and

fifty-two folios of two columns. Without being perfection, the designs

of Wohlgemuth, very German, very striking, present the vigour and merit

of the future school of Nuremberg. The figure is no longer a simple

line, in the manner of the block books, but a combination of interlaced

cuttings, intended to imitate colour. Those representing the creation of

Eve and the daughter of Jephthah are here reproduced. In the search for

harmony between the text and engravings of this curious work, we shall

find grace and gaiety laid aside, on the other hand a freedom and

boldness that interest and permit us to appreciate at their value the

Nuremberg artists and Koburger, the printer. In fact, the German artists

are more individual, each one taken by himself, than the Italian

illustrators could be, condemned as they were to the hierarchical

commonplace and to a certain form of idealism into which the art of

Italy entered little by little. The German painters, naturalists and

believers, presented their heroes in the image of that robust nature

that was before their eyes. It was in this rude and unpolished spirit

that Michael Wohlgemuth decorated the _Schatzbehalter_; he also composed

the designs for the "Nuremberg Chronicle" of Dr. Hartman Schedel,

printed by Koburger in 1493.

[Illustration: Fig. 20.--The daughter of Jephthah, plate taken from the

_Schatzbehalter_, engraved after Michael Wolgemuth.]

With Dürer, at the latter end of the fifteenth century, the Book was no

more than a pretext for engravings. Thausing, his biographer, says that

the great artist felt the necessity of designing an Apocalypse at Rome

at the time that Luther was premeditating his religious revolution in

face of the worldly splendours of the pontifical court. The

"Apocalypse," published in 1511 in Latin, with Gothic characters, was an

album of fifteen large wood engravings. The Four Horsemen is the best of

these plates, and the boldest; but in this gross fancy, in these poor

halting old hacks, the fantastic and grand idea which the artist meant

to convey can hardly be seen. It may be said the genius of Dürer was

little adapted to vignettes, however large they were, and did not easily

lend itself to the exigencies of a spun-out subject. The title of his

"Apocalypse" is of its kind a curious example of German genius, but, in

spite of its vigour, it does not please like an Italian headpiece or

like a French or Flemish frontispiece. The other works of Dürer

published in the fifteenth century, "The Life of the Virgin" and "The

Passion," were also sets of prints that received a text in the sixteenth

century.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Title of the "Apocalypse," by Albert Dürer,

printed in 1498. First edition, without text.]

[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Title of Sebastian Brandt's "Ship of Fools,"

printed in 1497 at Basle by Bergman de Olpe.]

[Illustration: Fig. 23.--The _Bibliomaniac_. Engraving from the "Ship of

Fools."]

For the rest of his illustrations Dürer belongs to the sixteenth

century, and we shall have occasion to recur to his works. At present it

remains to speak of a curious work printed at Basle by Bergman de Olpe

in 1497, which appears to be the first comic conception of fifteenth

century artists: the _Navis Stultifera_, or "Ship of Fools," of

Sebastian Brandt. This work of the school of Basle lacks neither

originality nor vigour. At the time when it was published its success

was immense, from the strange tricks of its clowns, with fools' caps,

with which every page was adorned. Alas! the best things fall under the

satire of these jesters, even the Book and the lover of books, if we may

judge by the sarcasms against useless publications volleyed by the

personage here reproduced. "I have the first place among fools.... I

possess heaps of volumes that I rarely open. If I read them, I forget

them, and I am no wiser." Brunet sees in these humorous caricatures more

art than is really to be found in them. Their value is owing more to

their spirit and humour than to any other artistic merit. Even the

engraving is singularly fitted to the subject, with its peculiar

cutting, somewhat executed in hairlines. The designer was certainly not

a Holbein, but he is no longer the primitive artisan of the first German

plates, and his freedom is not displeasing.

We have before spoken, apropos of engraving by the burin in Italy, of

the small share of Germany in the essay at illustration by that means,

and we do not see a real and serious attempt in the two little coats of

arms in copper plate in the _Missale Herbipolense_, printed in 1479.

The Flemish had not taken any great flights in the midst of this almost

European movement. The school of Burgundy, whose influence was felt in

all the surrounding countries, had lost its authority in consequence of

the progress realized at Mayence. Without doubt the great Flemish

artists were there, but they were honoured painters, and their

inclination did not descend to seeking the booksellers beyond making

them offers of service. Besides, the first of these, officially

established in Flanders, were two Germans, John of Westphalia and John

Veldener, of Cologne, who established themselves in the university of

Louvain in 1473, three years after the first Paris printers. John of

Westphalia, who took his own portrait for his mark, edited the

_Fasciculus Temporum_, a book which had enormous success in the

fifteenth century.

At Haarlem, in spite of the block books attributed to Laurent Coster,

illustration was backward. About 1485, a Dutch translation of the

_Malheurs de Troye_ of Le Fevre was put on sale. This French book was

published at Cologne before France possessed the smallest typographical

workshop. At Bruges Colard Mansion illuminated the cuts of his

_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid in 1484. Simple engraving appeared to him far

remote from manuscripts of which the vogue had not yet passed away. At

Zwoll Peter van Os, the publisher, cut up and used the xylographic

plates of the _Biblia Pauperum_, while the master _à la navette_, John

of Cologne, an artist in the best sense of the word, was ornamenting

certain popular publications with his designs. At Utrecht Veldener came

from Louvain to establish a workshop. He published for the second time a

_Fasciculus_ in 1480; he created a style of decoration with flowers and

leaves, which shortly after developed into the trade of

_Rahmenschneiders_. Antwerp had attracted Gerard de Leeu from Gouda, and

he produced the romance of _Belle Vienne_. Schiedam had an inventive

engraver who illustrated an edition of the _Chevalier Delibéré_ of

Oliver de la Marche, in folio, with Gothic letters, after 1483, as we

read in the colophon:--

"Cet traittié fut parfait l'an mil

Quatre cens quatre vings et trois

Ainsi que sur la fin d'avril

Que l'yver est en son exil,

Et que l'esté fait ses explois.

Au bien soit pris en tous endrois

De ceulx à qui il est offert

Par celui qui _Tant a souffert_,

La Marche."

The French language, bright and harmonious, thus found hospitality in

other countries. For many examples of French books published abroad, we

cannot cite one German work printed in France. Spreading from the north

to the south, typography had from 1490 its two principal centres at

Paris and Lyons. After the success of the three Germans at the Sorbonne,

events took their own course. In 1474 Peter Cæsaris and John Stol, two

students who had been instructed by Gering and Krantz, founded the

second establishment in Paris, at the sign of the "Soufflet Vert;" and

they printed classical works. Ten years later appeared Antony Vérard,

Simon Vostre, and Pigouchet, the first of whom gave to French

bookselling an impulse that it has not since lost; but before them

Pasquier-Bonhomme published his _Grandes Chroniques_ in 1476, three

volumes folio, the oldest in date of books printed at Paris in French.

The French school of illustration was at its most flourishing point at

the end of the fifteenth century, but solely in miniature and

ornamentation by the pencil. The charming figures of the manuscripts had

at this time a Flemish and naturalistic tendency. The most celebrated

of the great artists in manuscripts, John Foucquet, could not deny the

source of his talent nor the influence of the Van Eyck school, yet the

touch remained distinctly personal. He had travelled, and was not

confined to the art circles of a single city, as were so many of the

earliest painters of Flanders. He had gone through Italy, and from

thence he transported architectural subjects for his curious designs in

the _Heures_ of Etienne Chevalier, now at Frankfort; a precious fragment

of it is preserved in the National Library of Paris. Side by side with

this undoubted master, whose works are happily known, lived a more

modest artist: John Perréal, called John of Paris, painter to Charles

VIII., Louis XII., and Anne of Brittany.

In joining with these two masters, to serve as a transition between

Foucquet and Perréal, John Bourdichon, designer to the kings of France

from Louis XI. to Francis I., we obtain already a not despicable

assemblage of living forces. Without doubt these men were not comparable

either with the admirable school of Flanders, or the Germans of

Nuremberg, or the masters of Italy; but, moderate as we may deem their

merit, they did their tasks day by day, painting miniatures, colouring

coats of arms, rendering to the kings, their masters, all the little

duties of devoted servants without conceit, and preparing, according to

their means, the great artistic movement in France of the seventeenth

century. That these men, leaving the brush for the pencil, devoted

themselves to design figures on wood, is undeniable. It is said that one

of them followed Charles VIII. to the Italian wars, and probably

sketched the battles of the campaign as they took place. Now in the

books published at this epoch in France we meet with vignettes which so

very nearly approach miniatures, that we can easily recognise in them

French taste and finish. Such are, for example, the illustrations of the

_Mer des Histoires_, printed by Le Rouge in 1488, where suppleness of

design is blended in some parts with extraordinary dexterity in

engraving. Nevertheless, others leave something to be desired; they maim

the best subjects by their unskilful line and their awkwardness of

handling. Were not these engravers on wood printers themselves: the

Commins, Guyot Marchants, Pierre Lecarrons, Jean Trepperels, and others?

We are tempted to see in certain shapeless work the hasty and light

labour of an artisan hurried in its execution. As mentioned above, the

part taken by the booksellers in the making of the plates does not make

our supposition in itself appear inadmissible.

[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Mark of Philip Pigouchet, French printer and

wood engraver of the fifteenth century.]

Printing had been established about twenty years in Paris when Philip

Pigouchet, printer and engraver on wood, began to exercise his trade for

himself or on account of other publishers. Formerly bookseller in the

University, he transported his presses to the Rue de la Harpe, and took

for his mark the curious figure here reproduced. At this moment a

veritable merchant, Simon Vostre, conceived the idea of putting forth

Books of Hours, until then disdained in France, and of publishing them

in fine editions with figures, borders, ornaments, large separate

plates, and all the resources of typography. The trials made at Venice

and Naples between 1473 and 1476 warranted the enterprise. Entering

into partnership with Pigouchet, the two were able on the 17th of April,

1488, to place on sale the _Heures à l'Usaige de Rome_, octavo, with

varied ornaments and figures. The operation having succeeded beyond

their hopes, thanks to the combination of the subjects of the borders,

subjects that could be turned and re-turned in all ways so as to obtain

the greatest variety, Simon Vostre reapplied himself to the work, and

ordered new cuts to augment the number of his decorations. Passavant's

idea is commonly received that the engraving was in relief on metal; the

line in it is very fine, the background stippled, and the borders

without scratches. Wood could not have resisted the force of the press;

the reliefs would have been crushed, the borders rubbed and broken. In

all the successive editions hard work and wear are not remarked, and we

are forced to admit the use of a harder material than the pear or

box-wood of ordinary blocks.

According to his wants, Simon Vostre designed new series of ornaments.

Among them were histories of the saints, Biblical figures, even

caricatures against Churchmen, after the manner of the old sculptors,

who thought that sin was rendered more horrible in the garb of a monk.

Then there were the Dance of Death and sibyls, allying sacred with

profane, even the trades, all forming a medley of little figures in the

margins, in the borders, nestled among acanthus leaves, distorted men,

fantastic animals, and saints piously praying. The Middle Ages live

again in these bright and charming books, French in their style, imbued

with good sense and perfect toleration.

[Illustration: Fig. 25.--Border in four separate blocks in the _Heures à

l'Usaige de Rome_, by Pigouchet, for Simon Vostre, in 1488. Small

figures from the "Dance of Death."]

The Book rose under Simon Vostre and Philip Pigouchet to the culminating

point of ornamentation. Here design and engraving improve and sustain

each other. It is not only the stippled backgrounds of the borders that

please the eye. And who was this unknown designer, this painter of bold

conceptions, whose work is complete in little nothings? However, the

large full-page figures have not always an originality of their own, nor

the French touch of the borders. Thus that of the Passion here

reproduced is inspired line for line by the German, Martin Schongauer.

Are we to suppose, that duplicates of blocks passed between France and

Germany, or was a copy made by a French designer? It is difficult to

say. Still the coincidence is not common to all the missals of the great

Parisian bookseller. The Death of the Virgin here reproduced is an

evident proof of it. It forms part of the 1488 book, and is a truly

French work.

[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Plate copied from Schongauer's Carrying of the

Cross, taken from the _Heures_ of Simon Vostre.]

[Illustration: Fig. 27.--The Death of the Virgin, plate taken from the

_Heures_ of Simon Vostre, printed in 1488. The border is separate.]

It may be said that from the artistic association of Philip Pigouchet

and Simon Vostre was born the art of illustration of the Book in France;

they worked together for eighteen years, in steady collaboration, and,

as far as we know, without a cloud. At Vostre's commencement in 1488 he

lived in the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, at the sign of "St. Jean

l'Evangeliste;" and in 1520 he was still there, having published more

than three hundred editions of the Missal, according to the use of the

several cities.

Contemporary with Simon Vostre, another publisher was giving a singular

impulse to the Book by his extreme energy, true taste, and the aid of

first-class artists. Antony Verard, the most illustrious of the old

French booksellers, was a writer, printer, illuminator, and dealer. Born

in the second half of the fifteenth century, he established himself in

Paris on the Pont Notre Dame, both sides of which were then covered with

shops, and about 1485 commenced his fine editions with a "Decameron" in

French by Laurent de Premierfait. M. Renouvier remarks in his notice of

Verard that his first books were not good, the plates were often

unskilful, and were probably borrowed or bought from others; this may be

very well understood in a beginner whose modest resources did not permit

bold enterprises; the figures were in most cases groundworks for

miniatures, outlines and sketches rather than vignettes.

[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Border of the _Grandes Heures_ of Antony

Verard: Paris, 1498 (?).]

Antony Verard was accustomed to take a certain number of fine copies on

vellum or paper of each book published by him, in which authorised

painters added miniatures and ornaments. It is curious now to find what

the cost to one of the great lords of the court of Charles VIII. was of

one of these special copies in all the details of its impression, and we

find it in a document published by M. Senemaud in a provincial journal

(_Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de la Charente_, 1859, part 2, p.

91), which enables us at the same time to penetrate into a printing

office of a great French publisher of the fifteenth century. According

to this document, Verard did not disdain to put his own hand to the

work, even to carrying the book to the house of his patron if he were a

man of consequence. It is an account of Charles de Valois-Angoulême,

father of Francis I. He was then living at Cognac; and he ordered Verard

to print separately for him on vellum the romance of Tristan, the "Book

of Consolation" of Boetius, the _Ordinaire du Chrétien_, and _Heures en

François_, each with illuminations and binding. In the detail of

expenses Verard omits nothing. He reckons the parchment at three sous

four deniers the sheet, the painted and illuminated figures at one écu

the large and five sols the small. We give here the outline of one of

the plates of the Tristan, ordered by the Duc d'Angoulême, reduced by

two-thirds, and from it it may be judged that the profession of the

illuminator, even for the time, was by no means brilliant. The binding

was in dark-coloured velvet, with two clasps with the arms of the Duke,

which cost sixty sous each. The work finished, Verard took the route for

Cognac, carrying the precious volumes. He was allowed twenty livres for

carriage; and this brings the total to 207 livres 10 sous, equivalent to

£200 to £240 of present money.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Plate from the Tristan published by Antony

Verard, a copy of which was illuminated for Charles of Angoulême.]

Verard had preceded Simon Vostre in the publication of books of hours,

but his first volume dated 1487 was not successful for the want of

borders and frontispieces. At the most he had introduced figures

intended for illumination, which, as well as the vignettes, were cut in

wood. In 1488, the same year that Simon Vostre commenced his

publications, Verard put forth, by "command of the King our lord," the

book called the _Grandes Heures_, which is in quarto, Gothic letter,

without paging, twenty lines to the full page. This _Grandes Heures_

contained fourteen engravings, large borders in four compartments,

smaller subjects and initials rubricated by hand. He also published more

than two hundred editions between 1487 and 1513, and among them the

_Mystère de la Passion_, with eighty figures; the _Grandes Chroniques_,

in three folio volumes, printed by John Maurand; the _Bataille Judaïque_

of Flavius Josephus; the _Legende Dorée_ of Voragine, all books for

which he called to his aid rubricators, illuminators, and miniaturists.

From the first he had two shops where he put his productions on sale:

one on the Pont Notre Dame, the other at the Palace of Justice, "au

premier pilier devant la chapelle où l'on chante la messe de

messeigneurs les présidents." From 1499, when the Pont Notre Dame was

burned, Verard transported his books to the Carrefour St. Severin. At

his death in 1513 he was living in the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, "devant

Nostre-Dame de Paris."

[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Page of the _Grandes Heures_ of Antony Verard:

Paris, fifteenth century.]

Besides Verard, Vostre, and Pigouchet, many others will be found who

imitated them in the publication of books of hours. The first was John

du Pré, who published a Paris missal in 1481, and who was at once

printer and bookseller. Like Pigouchet, Du Pré printed books of hours on

account of provincial publishers, without dreaming of the competition he

was creating for himself. The encroachments of the publishers upon one

another, the friendly exchanges, the loans of plates and type, form one

of the most curious parts of the study of the Book. Thielman Kerver, a

German, also began to put forth books of hours in 1497 in Paris,

ornamenting them with borders and figures on wood, and modelling his

work completely upon that of Simon Vostre. But after having imitated

him, he was associated with him in the publication and sale of the Paris

Missal; the competition of these men was evidently an honest one, or the

sale of pious works was sufficient to maintain all engaged in it.

Established on the Pont St. Michel, at the sign of the "Unicorn," he

sold his stock to Gilles Remacle about the beginning of the sixteenth

century.

Thielman Kerver in his own works shows himself as the rival of Simon

Vostre. The Hardouins, who followed the same profession, do not appear

to have attained the success of their predecessors; and, excepting in

the _Heures à l'Usage de Rome_, published in 1503 by Gilles Hardouin on

the Pont au Change, at the sign of the "Rose," they servilely imitated

them. There was also among the disciples of Vostre William Eustache,

bookseller to the King, "tenant la boutique dedans la grant salle du

palais du costé de messeigneurs les présidens, ou sur les grans degrés

du costé de la conciergerie à l'ymage St. Jean levangeliste." Eustache

made use of the work of Pigouchet and Kerver, not to mention the

printers of the end of the fifteenth century.

We have named the principal, the fortunate ones; but what becomes of the

crowd of other publishers whose hopes vanished before the success of

Vostre and Verard? There were Denis Meslier, with his quarto _Heures de

Bourges_, and Vincent Commin, bookseller of the Rue Neuve Notre Dame,

who thus appealed to his customers:--

"Qui veult en avoir? On en treuve

A tres grand marché et bon pris

A la Rose, dans la rue Neuve

De Nostre-Dame de Paris."

[Illustration: Fig. 31.--Plate from a book of hours of Simon Vostre,

representing the massacre of the Innocents.]

There were also Robin Chaillot, Laurent Philippe, and a hundred others

whose names have died with them or are only preserved on the torn pages

of their works.

[Illustration: Fig. 32.--Dance of Death, said to be by Verard. The Pope

and the Emperor.]

[Illustration: Fig. 33.--Dance of Death of Guyot Marchant in 1486. The

Pope and the Emperor.]

But if books of this kind found vogue and a large sale at this epoch,

the dealers did not keep to pious publications only. By a singular

mixture of the sacred and the profane, the bookmen put on sale on their

stalls the "Decameron" of Boccaccio as well as the "Hours of the

Immaculate Virgin," and the purchasers thought fit to make the

acquaintance of the one as well as the other. Besides, the end of the

fifteenth century had its literary preferences, its alluring titles, its

attractive frontispieces. At the commencement of the present century

double titles--"Atala; or, The Child of Mystery;" "Waverley; or, Sixty

Years Since"--were common, although now out of fashion. Since then came

books of travels--_Voyages au Pays des Milliards_, etc. In the fifteenth

century, and even since the fourteenth, a series of titles was in public

favour. There was first the _Débats_, or "Dialogues:" _Débat de la Dame

et de l'Escuyer_, Paris, 1490, folio; "Dialogue of Dives and Pauper,"

London, Richard Pynson, 1493; and many other eccentric titles. There

came also thousands of _complaintes_, a kind of lay in verse or prose;

_blasons_, light pieces describing this or that thing; _doctrinals_,

that had nothing to do with doctrine. And among the most approved

subjects, between the piety of some and the gaiety of others, the Dances

of Death established themselves firmly, showing, according to the

hierarchy of classes then prevalent, Death taking the great ones of the

earth, torturing equally pope, emperor, constable, or minstrel,

grimacing before youth, majesty, and love. Long before printing

appeared, the Dances of Death took the lead; they were some consolation

for the wretched against their powerful masters, the revenge of the

rabble against the king; they may be seen painted, sculptured,

illuminated, when engraving was not there to multiply their use; they

may be seen largely displayed on walls, sombre, frightful, at Dresden,

Leipzig, Erfurt, Berne, Lucerne, Rouen, Amiens, and Chaise-Dieu. It was

the great human equality, attempted first by the French, then by the

inimitable Holbein.

We can imagine the impression these bitter ironies made on the oppressed

and disdained lower classes. The first "Dance of Death" was produced by

Guyot Marchant in 1485, in ten leaves and seventeen engravings, in

folio, with Gothic characters. Marchant describes himself as "demeurant

en Champ Gaillart à Paris le vingt-huitiesme jour de septembre mil

quatre cent quatre-vingtz et cinq." The book must have gone off rapidly,

for it was republished in the following year, with additions and new

engravings. French illustration was already moving forward, as may be

judged by the reproductions here given from the folio edition of 1486.

Pope and emperor, glory and power, are led and plagued by Death, hideous

Death, with open body and frightful grin.

We could wish that the tendencies and processes of what may be called

the second generation of printers were well understood. In a few years

they surmounted the difficulties of their art, and made the Book a model

of elegance and simplicity. The smallest details were cared for, and

things apparently the most insignificant were studied and rendered

practical. Speaking of titles, an enormous progress was here made in the

publications of the end of the century. In Italy the subjects of

decoration ordinarily formed a framework for the front page, wherein

were included useful indications. The most ancient specimen of this kind

has already been referred to. A model of this species is the "St.

Jerome," published at Ferrara by Lorenzo Rossi, of Valenza, in 1497,

folio; the title, much adorned, is in Gothic letters; the engraved

initial is very adroitly left in outline, so as not to burden or break

the text.

In Germany there was already the appearance of bad taste and

prodigality, the letters crossing each other, the Gothic type covered

with bizarre appendices, the titles intricate; later they became

illegible even for the Germans.

[Illustration: Fig. 34.--Typographical mark of Thielman Kerver.]

In France the first page gave the most circumstantial indications of the

contents of the work, the name and abode of the printer and bookseller.

Often these titles were ornamented with movable frameworks, printed in

Gothic, sometimes in two colours, which necessitated two printings, one

for the black and one for the red ink. The mark of the printer or

publisher generally appeared, and it was nearly always a charming work.

These French marks were all more or less treated heraldically; that is

to say, the initials occupy a shield, sustained by supporters and cut

with extreme care. The first was that of Fust and Schoeffer at Mayence,

of admirable simplicity and grace. In France this early specimen of the

trade mark took with Simon Vostre and Verard the shape of delicate

illustrations, finely designed and carefully engraved; but the custom of

allusive marks did not prevail, as we shall have occasion to see, until

the sixteenth century. The mark of Pigouchet has already been given;

that of Thielman Kerver is conceived in the same principles of taste and

art. The sign of his house being the "Unicorn," Kerver took as

supporters to his shield two unicorns _affrontées_.

In these colophons are found philosophic aphorisms, satirical remarks,

marvels of poetry. A certain bookseller paid court to the powerful

university, which dispensed glory and riches to the poor tradesmen by

buying many books. Andrew Bocard engraved on his mark this flattery as a

border:--

"Honneur au Roy et à la court,

Salut à l'université

Dont nostre bien procède et sourt.

Dieu gart de Paris la cité!"

The Germans introduced into their colophons some vainglorious notices.

Arnold Ther Hoernen, already mentioned, who printed the _Theutonista_ at

Cologne in 1477, boasted in it of having corrected it all with his own

hands. Jean Treschel, established at Lyons in 1493, proclaims himself a

German, because the Germans were the inventors of an art that he himself

possessed to an eminent degree. He prided himself on being what we may

call a skilled typographer; "virum hujus artis solertissimum," he writes

without false modesty. At times, in the colophons of his books, he

attempted Latin verse, the Sapphic verse of Horace, of a playful turn,

to say that his work was perfected in 1494.

"Arte et expensis vigilique cura

Treschel explevit opus hoc Joannes,

Mille quingentos ubi Christus annos

Sex minus egit.

Jamque Lugduni juvenes, senesque,

Martias nonas celebres agebant

Magna Reginæ quia prepotenti

Festa parabant."

[Illustration: Fig. 35.--Frontispiece to Terence, published by Treschel

at Lyons in 1493. The author writing his book.]