which founded types for 43,000 distinct characters, has, probably,
reached the highest practicable number; but this performance was
accomplished only by repeated alterations of punches and matrices. The
punches were cut on wood, and pressed in prepared plaster. The matrices
so made were broken when a sufficient quantity of types had been cast
from them. By shortening or cutting off a line or lines, the old
punches were altered to form new characters. The matrices, also, after
they had received the prints of these punches, were sometimes altered
by the [p118] separate prints of dots, lines, or angles, which gave
them a different meaning. The imperfection of the process is obvious,
for it required the destruction of many matrices and punches.
The difficulties in the way of using types, if they could be made
with advantage, are too great to be overlooked: they could not be
classified nor handled with economy. The American compositor picks
types from cases with boxes for 152 characters, and covering an area of
1088 square inches; but experts in type-setting say that the American
case is too large, and that the speed of the compositor would be much
increased by reducing the area of the case. The performance of the
compositor decreases with an increase in the size of case and in the
number of characters. To provide for 80,000 Chinese characters, cases
covering an area of 550,000 square inches would be required. In other
words, the Chinese compositor would need the room occupied by five
hundred cases; he would unavoidably waste the largest portion of his
time walking through alleys in search of types, and vainly trying to
recollect the places where he had distributed them.
The Chinese are not entirely insensible to the advantages of European
typography. There is a story current in books on printing, that Jesuit
missionaries, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, cast
250,000 Chinese characters in the form of movable types.[46] Here is an
obvious error: if we consider the work done afterward with these types,
the quantity stated is altogether too small for the types and too large
for the punches. It is further said that the Jesuit missionaries, with
the permission of the reigning emperor, [p119] printed a collection
of ancient and standard works in six thousand octavo volumes. Of this
edition, there are now in Paris, the _History of Music_ in sixty
volumes, the _History of the Chinese Language_ in eighty volumes,
and the _History of Foreign Peoples_ in seventy-five volumes.[47]
A printing office, in which movable types of cast metal are used,
has been in operation in Peking since the year 1776. The types of
this office are of home manufacture, made from punches of hard wood
and matrices of baked porcelain. There may be other instances of an
occasional use of types for special purposes, but they are exceptions
to the general practice.
Ever since their invention of the art, the largest part of Chinese
printed work has been done, as it is now done, by xylography. So long
as they continue to use these peculiar characters, this simple method
of printing must be preferred for its great cheapness and simplicity.
We may smile at the clumsiness of the method, but we should not
overlook the fact that it is efficient. “Every one,” Du Halde says,
“hath the liberty to print what he pleaseth, without the supervising,
censure or licence of any one, and with so small charge, that for
every hundred letters perfectly engraved in the manner above said,
they pay four pence half-penny, yet every letter consists of many
strokes.” In no country are books so cheap and so abundant as they
are in China. The American book or pamphlet in paper cover, sometimes
sold for seventy-five cents, more frequently for one dollar, seems of
exorbitantly high price when contrasted with a Chinese book of similar
size, which can be had in China for the equivalent of eight or ten
cents. If the Chinese have not derived great benefits from printing, it
is obvious that their failure has not been produced by the high price
of printed work.
There are many points of similarity between the Chinese method of
printing and the early European practice of the art. The preliminary
writing or drawing in ink of a design on paper; the transfer of lines
from the paper upon the wood, [p120] and the cutting away of the
field; the use of a fluid writing ink; the fashion of printing upon one
side only of the sheet: these were features in use by both peoples. If
we had a more thorough knowledge of the processes of the early European
engravers on wood, other points of similarity might be found. These
resemblances seem still more significant when they are considered with
the fact that playing cards, supposed to be of oriental origin, were
among the earliest productions of European engravers on wood. They
have been regarded as a sufficient warrant for the hypothesis that
our knowledge of engraving on wood must have been taken from China.
It is the belief of many that block-printing was introduced in Europe
by Venetian travelers of the thirteenth century, who had acquired a
full knowledge of all the details of printing through long residence
in China. This is a specious proposition, but it will not bear close
examination.
Venice took the lead of all European cities in the establishment
of commercial intercourse with China. Venetian merchants, in 1189,
occupied an allotted street in Constantinople, from which port they
sent vessels through the Black Sea, with bales of merchandise, which
accompanying agents introduced into Thibet, Tartary and China. To
promote this traffic, Venice sent to the courts of the Eastern
potentates some of her most reputable citizens as diplomatic and
commercial agents. Marco Polo, the most distinguished of these
embassadors, resided more than twenty years in the great empire of
Cathay, or China, in high favor with the emperor, and provided with
every facility for acquiring a knowledge of the arts and industry of
the country. Soon after his return to Venice, in 1295, he dictated
a narrative of his travels, but his statements were received with
general disbelief, and they have usually been considered as extravagant
and improbable. Of late years, the travels of Marco Polo have been
defended as substantially truthful, but his most zealous defenders
have to confess that he was remarkably credulous. It is a noteworthy
circumstance that he does not describe printing or [p121] printed
books, although he does mention the paper money of China, formally
stamped in red ink with the imperial seal. This paper money must have
been printed, but he does not say anything about the printing.[48]
The commercial relations between Venice and China were continued many
years, and it is possible that other travelers may have acquired some
knowledge of the peculiarities of Chinese printing, and may have
communicated this knowledge; but it was a communication of details
only, and not of the principle of printing. Printing could not have
been a novelty, for we have many evidences that it was practised in
Italy before Marco Polo was born. The mechanics of Europe had nothing
to learn of the theory, and but little of the practice, of the art of
xylography. All they needed was something to print, and something to
print on. They were waiting for paper and for playing cards.
[p122]
VII
The Early Printing of Italy.
Printing with Ink in Italy during the Twelfth Century . . . Printed
Initials in Manuscripts . . . Printed Signatures and Monograms,
with Illustrations . . . Medieval Trade-Marks, with Illustrations
. . . Engraved Initials probably made by Copyists who could not draw
. . . Texts of Books printed from Engraved Letters . . . The Codex
Argenteus of Sweden . . . Weigel’s Fac-Similes of Printing on Silk and
Linen Cloth . . . Probable Method of Printing . . . Printed Fabrics
made in Spain, Sicily and Italy . . . Art not derived from China
. . . Antiquity of Stained Cloths . . . No Connecting Link between
Hand-Stamping and Card-Printing . . . No Early Italian Image Prints
. . . Story about the Two Cunios . . . Its Improbability . . . No
Early Notices of Engraving on Wood . . . Not considered a New Art,
nor a Great Art . . . Its Productions of Paltry Nature . . . Early
Engravers had nothing to print on.
* * * * *
Nor is it any proof or strong argument against the antiquity of
printing, that authentic specimens of wood engraving of those early
times are not to be found. Their merits as works of art were not such
as to render their preservation at all probable.
_Ottley._
* * * * *
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a student of old Italian
books called the attention of bibliographers to the strange uniformity
of the initial letters in many old manuscripts,[49] some of which
had been made as early as the ninth century. Each ornamental letter,
wherever found or however often repeated in the same book, was of
the same form. He reached the conclusion that this uniformity had
been produced by engraved stamps. The announcement of this discovery
induced other persons to make similar examinations, the result of which
confirmed the original statement. [p123] It was proved that there was
a uniformity in the shapes of the letters which could not have been
made by drawing.
[Illustration:
The Mark of The Mark of
Jacobus Arnoldus, 1345. Johannes Meynersen, 1435.
[From Jackson.] [From Jackson.]]
The statement that a rude method of printing had been practised
three centuries before its supposed invention, was received by the
bibliographers with incredulity. Authors who had advocated theories
of a Chinese, a German or a Netherlandish discovery of printing would
not admit that printing with ink could have been done at an earlier
period. They said that the initials were made by stenciling, or by
tracings taken from a model letter. But they had a peculiarity which
could not have been produced by stenciling, for they showed the marks
of hard indentation in the parchment. Papillon, a practical engraver on
wood, accepted the indented letters as the impressions of wood-cuts;
Lanzi, the historian of Italian fine arts, said that the initials were
certainly printed.
Signatures which show all the mechanical peculiarities of impressions
from engravings on wood have also been found on Italian documents
of the twelfth century. Printed [p124] signatures or monograms of
notaries, which seem to have been made to serve the double purpose of
signature and seal, in imitation of the kingly practice of affixing the
signet, were frequently used in Italy, Spain and Germany from the ninth
to the fourteenth century. It was customary, also, for the manufacturer
or merchant[50] to stamp or brand merchandise with a sign or mark
through which its origin could be traced. It does not appear that
merchants made use of these trade-marks instead of signatures on paper
or parchment, but many of them could neither read nor write. Yet there
was an active trade between Italy and the Levant, between England and
Germany, between Spain and the Netherlands, which could not have been
carried on without accounts, correspondence, and the employment of duly
authenticated signatures. It may be supposed that the use of stamped or
printed signatures would not be confined to the notaries and copyists,
and that this printing would be practised by merchants, as much for
reasons of necessity as of convenience. The merchant who knew the
advantages derived from branding boxes or cattle, and the respect paid
to the stamp of a notary, would also see the utility of an engraved and
stamped signature on a letter of credit or a bill of lading.
The initials printed in manuscripts were probably made for scribes who
could write, but could not draw the floriated initials then placed
in all books of value. They may have been cut by calligraphers, who
tried to expedite their work, or may have been made to the order of
copyists who desired to free themselves from their dependence on the
calligrapher. In either case there would have been sufficient reason
for the engraving. These initials are, for the most part, of unusually
intricate design, but they were engraved in outline only, so [p125]
that they could be filled in with bright color, by hand-painting or by
stenciling. They were printed with a fluid writing ink, which may have
been black, but is now of a dingy brown.
A recent Italian author, D. Vincenzo Requeno, who has published an
essay on this subject, tells us that the employment of engraved letters
by the Italian book-makers of the middle ages was not confined to
floriated initials. He says that they were sometimes used for the texts
of books, and that many so-called manuscripts were printed by stamping
cut letters one after another upon the page. This method of printing
a book, letter by letter, could have been made a quicker process than
that of careful writing. Not more than sixty-six engraved characters
would have been required for the copying of any ordinary manuscript.
A skillful workman, who had the characters before him, fitted up as
hand-stamps, lettered so that he could select them at a glance, resting
on a surface which kept them coated with ink, could take them up one
after another, and produce on paper the impressions of letters faster
than they could be produced by the penman who was obliged to carefully
draw each letter and to paint or fill in its outlines with ink.[51]
[Illustration:
Mark of Adam de Mark of Edmund Pepyr, Mark of an unknown
Walsokne, who died who died 1483. person from a tomb in
1349. [From Jackson.] Lynn.]
In a library at Upsal, Sweden, is a volume known as the _Codex
Argenteus_, or the Silvered Book, which seems to have been made
exclusively by this method of stamping one letter [p126] after
another. The book is so called because the letters are in silver,
and present a brilliant appearance, like the glittering letters of
bookbinders, on their leaves of purple vellum. The _Codex Argenteus_
presents many indications of hand-printing: the letters are depressed
on one side of the leaf, and raised on the other, as if made by
indentation. Under the letters that have been too rudely pressed with
the stamp, the vellum is thin; in some parts the leaf has been broken
by pressure and patched with bits of vellum. Occasionally, letters are
found turned upside down—an error possible to a hand-printer, but not
to a penman. John Ihre, who described the book, in a pamphlet published
at Upsal in 1755, says the silver leaf of the letters was affixed to
the vellum by means of sizing, and that the letters were produced by
stamping on the leaf with engraved punches of hard metal, which had
been heated and used as bookbinders now use gilding tools. The use
of heat has not been proved, but the blemishes of the work are most
satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis that the book was printed
letter by letter.[52]
This explanation of the method by which the book was made has not
been generally accepted. It was said that silver letters are found in
medieval books made entirely by writing. But this is negative evidence,
for these books do not present the mechanical imperfections of the
_Codex Argenteus_. There has, evidently, been a vague apprehension
that the admission of an early use of single types for printing would
invalidate all subsequent claims to the invention of typography. One
can hardly imagine a grosser error, for the hand-printing of single
types is not typography. It is even farther removed from it than the
printing of letters on engraved blocks. [p127]
The doubts that once existed as to the genuineness of the printed
initials in manuscript books have been dissipated by recent
investigation in another direction. It has been conclusively proved
that woven fabrics of silk and of linen, ornamented with designs
printed in bright colors, not unlike those of modern chintzes and
calicoes, were produced between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.
The designs or patterns were printed in ink from engraved blocks
of wood, by the tedious process of hand-stamping. Of this curious
primitive printed work, there are, in several European collections,
fragments of images, priests’ robes, altar cloths, and ecclesiastic
apparel of like nature. The genuineness of these relics of early
printing, and the process by which the printing was done, have been
established in the most satisfactory manner. Weigel, in his valuable
work on the _Infancy of Printing_, has illustrated this part of his
subject with fac-similes of these fragments which prove that Italian
workmen not only knew how to print, but that they printed in colors
with great precision.
The modern printer who fairly appreciates the difficulties of printing
colors in register, and the force required to secure a good impression
from a large, flat surface, may be puzzled by the neatness of this
early printing. His experience tells him that these designs should have
been printed upon strong and accurately adjusted presses, and from
large surfaces, in sections or forms of two or more square feet. But
the method of the Italian printers was quite different; the designs
were engraved on many pieces of wood of small size, made to fit each
other with accuracy, and each piece was separately inked and struck by
hand, or by a mallet, on the fabric. A careful workman could readily
connect the different impressions of different blocks, keeping the
colors in true register, and could pursue the pattern in a neat manner
over any surface, however large. The work was tedious, but not more
so than that of finishing, or gilding by hand tools, in ornamental
bookbinding, which is now done by a similar method. Slow as it may seem
when compared with the rapidity of modern [p128] calico-printing, it
was an improvement on all methods then known, and much quicker and more
exact than any form of stenciling or hand-painting.
The fragment adjudged by Weigel the oldest of the ten specimens
illustrated in the book, is a bit of red silk, woven and printed during
the last ten years of the twelfth century. He says that we must search
for its origin where silk fabrics were most extensively manufactured;
that it must have been made by Moorish artisans of Almeria, Grenada
and Seville in Southern Spain, or by Saracens in Sicily in the rich
manufacturing cities of Palermo[53] and Messina. Printed fabrics of
silk, cotton, linen, and woolen stuffs were subsequently made in Lucca,
in Genoa, and the free cities of Northern Italy.
The art of staining cloth with colors is older than history. Homer
writes about the magnificent colored cloths of Sidon; Herodotus
mentions the garments of the people of Caucasus, which he says were
covered with figures of animals; Pliny describes the decorated linens
of the old Egyptians.[54] The Spanish invaders of Mexico brought back
statements that all the people of the New World were clothed in cotton
cloths [p129] of brilliant colors, which Stephens says were certainly
printed. Cook, the discoverer of islands in the Pacific, says that the
Polynesians beautified their garments by a method of stamping. It is
not even necessary to attribute the early Italian practice of printing
upon woven fabrics to the Saracens of Sicily; the Italian practice may
have been the revival of a disused but unforgotten Roman art—a revival
made possible through the growth of commerce and manufactures.
There is no connecting link between the Italian hand-stamps of the
thirteenth and the Venetian playing cards of the fifteenth century.
There are no Italian prints of images, and no Italian block-books,
which can be attributed to this period. Papillon, the author of a
treatise on engraving, is the only person who has attempted to supply
this deficiency in the record. He gives a description of eight large
prints, which he thinks were made at Ravenna, in the year 1286, by a
twin brother and sister, known as the two Cunios:
When I was a young man, and employed by my father almost every
week-day in different places, to paste or arrange our papers for the
hanging of rooms, it happened that, in 1719 or 1720, I was sent to
the village of Bagneux, near Mount Rouge, to a Mr. De Greder, a Swiss
captain, who there possessed a very pretty house. After I had papered
a closet for him, he employed me to paste certain papers in imitation
of mosaic upon the shelves of his library. One day after dinner, he
found me reading in one of his books, and was, in consequence, induced
to show me two or three very ancient volumes which had been lent to
him by a Swiss officer, one of his friends, that he might examine them
at his leisure. We conversed together about the prints contained in
them, and concerning the antiquity of engraving on wood. I will now
give the description of these ancient volumes, such as I wrote in
his presence, and as he had the goodness to dictate to me: “Upon a
cartouche, or frontispiece, decorated with fanciful ornaments, which,
although Gothic, are far from disagreeable, and measuring about nine
inches in width by six inches in height, with the arms, no doubt,
of the family of Cunio at the top of it, are rudely engraved the
following words, in bad Latin, or ancient Gothic Italian, with many
abbreviations:
“The Heroic Actions, represented in Figures, of the great and
magnanimous Macedonian King, the bold and valiant Alexander, [p130]
dedicated, presented, and humbly offered to the most holy father
Pope Honorius II, the glory and support of the Church, and to our
illustrious and generous father and mother—by us, Allessandro Alberico
Cunio, cavalier, and Isabella Cunio, twin brother and sister—first
reduced, imagined, and attempted to be executed in relief, with a
small knife, on blocks of wood, and made even and polished by this
dear sister, and continued and finished by us together, at Ravenna,
from eight pictures of our invention, painted six times larger than
here represented, engraved and explained by verses, and thus marked
upon the paper, to perpetuate the number of them, and to enable us to
present them to our relatives and friends, in testimony of gratitude,
friendship and affection. All this was done and finished by us when
only sixteen years of age.”[55]
The book was, apparently, in its original binding of thin plates of
wood, covered with leather, but without any gilding, ornamented only
by crossed divisions marked with a heated iron. Papillon says that
the engravings were cut in a crude, experimental manner, and that
they appear to have been printed by rubbing the palm of the hand or
a frotton many times over the paper. The tint of the ink was a pale,
faded blue, mixed as water color. The field of the engravings was badly
routed out; projections that soiled the paper appeared in several
places, obscuring words, which had subsequently been written on the
margin. Neither the engravings, nor the memoir bound with them, furnish
us with dates; but there can be no doubt as to the period in which the
engravings were ostensibly made, for Pope Honorius occupied the papal
chair only between April 2, 1285, and April 3, 1287.
There is nothing improbable in the statement that prints like these
could have been made in 1285. There may be a substratum of truth
under the exaggerations raised by family pride and a love for the
marvelous; but the memoir of the lives of the two Cunios, and the
details furnished by Papillon about the appearance of the engravings,
are altogether unsatisfactory.{1} Whatever opinion may be formed of
the credibility [p131] of the story of the two Cunios,[56] it must be
admitted that their prints had no known influence in the development
of engraving on wood. They were not imitated. The interval between
the years 1285 and 1440 is almost an absolute blank in the annals of
Italian engraving: it furnishes us neither trace nor tradition of
engravings on wood. The oldest authentic Italian engravings on wood are
in _The Meditations of John of Turrecremata_, a book printed at Rome in
1467; but these engravings cannot be claimed as illustrations of the
development of the Italian practice of the art, for they were designed
and cut by or for Ulric Hahn, a German printer.