been accustomed to preserve in our libraries, in gold, silver, or
bronze, the personages whose immortal spirits speak to us from
distances of leagues and centuries. We create statues of those who are
no longer living. Our regrets invest them with features which have not
been given to us by tradition, as, for example, is shown in the bust
of Homer. The idea of making a collection of these portraits is due
to Asinius Pollio, who was the first to throw open his library, and
to make these men of genius the property of the public. That the love
for portraits has always existed is sufficiently proven by Atticus,
the friend of Cicero, who published a book on the subject, and also by
Marcus Varro, who had the enlarged idea of inserting in his numerous
books not only the names, but, by the aid of a certain invention,
the images of seven hundred illustrious persons. Varro wished to
save their features from oblivion, so that the length of centuries
would not prevail against them. As the inventor of a benefit which
will fill even the gods with jealousy, he has clothed these persons
with immortality. He has made them known over the wide world, so that
everywhere one can see them as if they were present. Pliny, book XXXV,
chap. I.
This invention has never been clearly explained. A new invention, which
exhibited in books the features of seven hundred men, which multiplied
them so that they were known over the wide world, and preserved them
for posterity, should have been the invention of printing. Pliny speaks
of it as a well-known fact, but no other writer of his age makes any
mention of it. Why did not Pliny describe the new art instead of
praising it?
[42] Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 563.
[43] American engravers on wood use box which has been cut across the
fibres in flat disks, ninety-two hundredths of an inch thick. Wood
so cut, with its fibres like columns, perpendicular to the touch of
the graver and to the line of impression, can be engraved with more
delicacy, and, for printing, has more strength than wood cut in line
with the fibres.
[44] The buff-tinted wrappers around fire-crackers and Chinese silks
will fairly represent the quality of the paper used for Chinese books.
[45] I have before me a thick Chinese pamphlet which is bound in
this style. In the essential points of strength, flexibility and
convenience, this binding is much superior to that of American or
European sewed pamphlets. The most famous bookbinder would be justly
proud of the combination of firmness and elasticity in the sewing.
[46] To this description of Chinese typography is usually added the
untrue statement that the types were made of copper. Why the Jesuit
missionaries, who were amateurs in type-founding, should add to their
labors by the use of such a troublesome and slowly melted metal as
copper, when European type-founders preferred lead, tin and antimony,
cannot be explained. I cannot find a copy of the original statement,
which was, no doubt, in Latin. The phrase, types of copper, is,
probably, an incorrect translation, a repetition of the error explained
in a note on page 65 of this book. The missionaries intended to say,
and no doubt did say, that they made types _in_ copper, or in copper
matrices.
[47] _American Encyclopædia of Printing_, p. 104.
[48] Polo was more deeply interested in the simplicity of the financial
method by which the Emperor filled his impoverished treasury.
He transferred the bark of the mulberry-tree into something resembling
sheets of paper, and these into money, which cost him nothing at all:
so that you might say he had the secret of alchemy to perfection. And
these pieces of paper he made to pass current universally over all his
kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power
and sovereignty extended. And nobody, however important he thought
himself, durst refuse them on pain of death. _The Book of Ser Marco
Polo, the Venetian._ Translated and edited by Henry Vale, London, 1871.
With all his power, the Great Khan met the fate which comes to every
financier who tries to fill up a depleted treasury by the issue of
paper money. In a very short time the notes were worth but one-half of
their original value. But the Emperor was equal to the emergency: when
the notes fell to one-fifth of the nominal value, he called them in,
and exchanged five old for one new note of the same denomination.
[49] Papillon, _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_,
vol. I, pp. 76, 77. Papillon does not name this student. Lanzi
describes him as the ecclesiastic Padre della Valla. Passavant (_Le
peintre-graveur_, p. 18) says that the initials of like character which
have been found in German manuscript books of the twelfth century, were
printed.
[50]. . . If he was a wool-stapler, he stamped it on his packs; or if a
fish-curer, it was branded on the end of his casks. If he built himself
a new house, his mark was frequently placed between his initials over
the principal doorway, or over the fireplace of the hall; if he made a
gift to a church or a chapel, his mark was emblazoned on the windows,
beside the knight’s or the nobleman’s shield of arms; and when he died,
his mark was cut upon his tomb. Jackson and Chatto, _Treatise on Wood
Engraving_, pp. 17, 18.
[51] The letters in the most meritorious manuscript books of the middle
ages were not made with running hand, closely connected, like the
letters of modern penmanship. The form of writing most in fashion was
a spurred or pointed Gothic of remarkable blackness. Each letter was
separate, carefully drawn, angled and painted, by many strokes of the
reed.
[52] The text of the _Codex_ is a translation of the four Gospels,
written in the Gothic character, by Ulphilas, bishop of the Goths,
about the year 370. This book, which is supposed to have been made
not later than the sixth century, was discovered in the year 1587,
in an abbey in Westphalia, and was taken to Prague. When that city
was captured by the Swedes in 1648, the book was sent as one of the
trophies of war to Queen Christina. It has ever since been regarded as
a great curiosity.
[53] Moorish authors tell us that in the days of the last Norman kings
of Sicily, ten thousand silk looms were in active operation in Palermo;
but this statement is an oriental exaggeration of a fact that required
no embellishment. Others say that Jewish and Italian traders carried
these silks to Italy, Germany, and the North of Europe. The earliest
silk-weavers of Palermo were the captured inhabitants of Greece who had
been taken there in 1147.
[54] Pliny says that the colors were produced by dyeing, but the
garments described by Herodotus could not have been made by this
process. We have to infer that they used some form of impression.
Breitkopf tells us that the colored cloths of the Egyptians were made
by printing. His conclusions seem reasonable when we consider how
largely engraved stamps were used by the Egyptians for printing upon
clay, and how short was the step from printing on clay to printing on
cloth. The art of staining, printing or stenciling cloth with bright
colors by different processes, has been practised in Hindostan from
a very early period. The antiquity of the Indian manufacture may be
inferred from the European adoption of Indian names. The English word
_chintz_, and its German synonym _zitz_, are derived from a Hindostanee
word that means both a colored printed cloth and a flower. The word
_calico_ is from Calicut, the town on the Malabar coast from which
calico was first exported to Europe.
[55] Papillon, _Traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois_,
vol. I, p. 89. His description is very prolix and full of irrelevant
matter. I have made use of the translation of Ottley, but have abridged
it.
[56] This version of the origin of block-printing in Europe has been
accepted by many authors, who find in it, or profess to find in it,
the evidence that printing was derived from China and was first used
in Italy. The wisest judgment passed upon its merits is that of Lanzi,
who merely recites the legend, and concludes that “it is safest to say
nothing about it.” But Humphreys (_History of the Art of Printing_,
second issue, page 209) submits the substance of a letter from a
Russian book-collector, who asserts that, in 1861, he had seen, in the
possession of a Mr. Herdegen of Nuremberg, seven prints which agreed
precisely with those described by Papillon. I find no other description
of these prints.
[57] Du Halde, as quoted by Ottley in his _Inquiry into the Origin of
Engraving_, p. 9. There is another version placing the date at 170 B. C.
[58] The artist was not restricted by the scant space that allowed him
to show only the leg of the pulp-beater on the first page. He does
this, and then, with an amusing unconsciousness of its impropriety,
proceeds to draw the head and body on the following page, which, in the
Japanese book from which this was taken, is the other side of the leaf.
[59] Proteaux, _Practical Guide for the Manufacture of Paper_, Paine’s
translation, p. 17. He does not name his authority for fixing the date
in the fifth century, but it is not at all improbable that a card-like
paper was then made for some other purpose than that of writing.
[60] The phrase _ex rasuris veterum pannorum_, here translated as the
scrapings of old rags, has been construed by many authors as linen
paper, in opposition to the “compacted refuse material,” which is
supposed to be cotton, or, at least, a mixture of cotton and cordage.
[61] See _The American Encyclopedia of Printing_, p. 329, for
engravings of microscopic enlargements of some of the fibres used for
paper.
[62] Sismondi, _Literature of the South of Europe_, chap. 2.
[63] The jealousy with which trades were then guarded is illustrated
by the policy of Stromer. He obliged all his workmen to take an oath
that they would not reveal the process, nor practise it on their own
account. He had two rollers and eighteen stampers, and was about to
put in another roller, when he was opposed by his Italian workmen, who
probably thought that this extension of the works would give him a
monopoly, and would deprive them of all opportunity of obtaining work
from any rival manufacturer. The mutineers were brought before the
magistrates and sent to prison. They afterward submitted and returned
to work, but were allowed to renounce their oath of obligation.
[64] Paper, whenever or wherever invented, was very sparingly used, and
especially in manuscript books, among the French, Germans or English,
or linen paper even among the Italians, until near the close of the
fourteenth century. Upon the study of the sciences it could as yet have
had very little effect. The vast importance of the invention was just
beginning to be discovered. It is to be added that the earliest linen
paper was of very good manufacture, strong and handsome, though perhaps
too much like card for general convenience. _Literature of Europe in
the Middle Ages_, chap. I, sec. 65.
[65] Lewis Beaumont, an illiterate French nobleman, made bishop
of Durham in 1330, was so inexpert at reading, that he could not
read the bulls written for his people at his consecration. The word
_metropoliticæ_ occurred: the bishop paused, tried in vain to repeat
it, and at last said, “Let us suppose that read.” Then he came to the
word _ænigmate_, before which he stopped in a fine wrath, and said,
“By St. Lewis, he was no gentleman who wrote this stuff.”. . . . At an
entertainment given at Rome, during the same century, by the bishop of
Murray, the papal legate from Scotland, the bishop so blundered in his
Latin when he was saying grace, that his holiness and the cardinals
could not refrain from laughing. The disconcerted bishop testily
concluded in Scotch-English, by wishing “all the false carles to the
devil,” to which the company, who did not understand the dialect,
unwittingly responded, Amen.
[66] At a period when the fine arts may be said to have been almost
extinct in Italy and in other parts of the Continent, namely, from
the fifth to the end of the eighth century, a style of art had been
established and cultivated in Ireland absolutely distinct from that
of all other parts of the civilized world. In the sixth and seventh
centuries the art of ornamenting manuscripts of the sacred scriptures,
and more especially of the gospels, had attained a perfection in
Ireland almost marvelous. Westwood, _Palæographia Sacra Pictoria_, Book
of Kells, page 1. Westwood further says, that in delicacy of handling,
and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography
offers nothing that can be compared to these early Irish manuscripts,
and those that were produced by their pupils in England. Wyatt, in
a curt description of the famous Book of Kells, says that he tried
to make a copy of some of its ornaments, but broke down in despair.
“In one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted,
with a magnifying glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight
interlacements of a very slender ribbon pattern, formed of white
lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground.” In this book, which
he studied for hours, he never detected a false line or an irregular
interlacement. Giraldus Cambrensis, a learned Welsh ecclesiastic of
the twelfth century, who had carefully examined some of the Irish
manuscripts at Kildare, says that the writer of this Book of Kells made
the drawings from designs furnished by angels through the intercession
of St. Bridget. Timms and Wyatt, _Art of Illumination_, p. 14.
[67] The text as it now appears in authorized copies of the Vulgate is:
_Erat autem homo ex Pharisæis, Nicodemus nomine, princeps Judæorum. Hic
venit ad Jesum nocte, et dixit ei._ John 1, 3.
[68] Petrarch’s detestation of pointed letters and their admirers is
amusing. After complaining of the difficulty he met in getting a fair
copy of his writings, he commends the workmanship of a copyist to whom
he applied, a penman who wrote Roman letters with great neatness.
His writing is not labored and tortured. It is suitable for our age,
and, indeed, for all ages. Young people, always giddy, admirers of
frivolity, despisers of useful things, have adopted the fashion
of writing in bristling and undecipherable letters, of which
accomplishment they are very proud. To me, these medleys and jumbles
of angled letters, riding one on another, make nothing but a mess of
confusion which the writer himself must read with difficulty. Whoever
buys work of this character, buys not a book, but an unreadable farrago
of letters.
[69] These boards were sometimes paneled from the inside of the cover.
Scaliger tells us that his grandmother had a printed psalter, the
cover of which was two fingers thick, containing in an interior panel
a silver crucifix. Hansard says that he had seen an old book which
contained in a similar recess a human toe, obviously a sacred relic of
value.
[70] This is one of the finest existing specimens of antique
bookbinding in the National Library at Paris. It is a work of the
eleventh century, and encases a book of prayers in a mass of gold,
jewels and enamels. The central object is sunk like a framed picture,
and represents the Crucifixion, the Virgin and St. John on each side
of the cross, and above it the veiled busts of Apollo and Diana; thus
exhibiting the influence of the older Byzantine school, which is,
indeed, visible throughout the entire design. This subject is executed
on a thin sheet of gold, beaten up from behind into high relief, and
chased upon its surface. A rich frame of jeweled ornament surrounds
this object, portions of the decoration being further enriched with
colored enamels; the angles are filled in with enameled emblems of the
evangelists; the ground of the whole design enriched by threads and
foliations of delicate gold wire. Chambers, _Book of Days_.
[71] Wickliffe says that, in 1380, there were in England many “unable
curates that kunnen not the ten commandments, ne read their sauter, ne
understand a verse of it.” The author of the _Plowman’s Tale_ accuses
the clergy of faults worse than that of ignorance.
[72] Boccaccio, one of the enthusiasts of the fourteenth century in the
labor of collecting the forgotten manuscripts of classical authors,
has told the following characteristic story about the neglect of
libraries and the abuse of books by the constituted conservators of
literature. When traveling in Apulia, Boccaccio was induced to visit
the convent of Mount Cassino and its then celebrated library. He
respectfully addressed a monk who seemed the most approachable, begging
that he would open to him the library. But the monk, pointing to a
high staircase, said, in a harsh voice, “Go up; the library is open.”
Ascending the staircase with gladness, Boccaccio came to a hall, to
which there was neither door nor bar to protect the treasures of the
library. What was his astonishment when he saw that the windows were
obstructed with plants which had germinated in the crevices, and that
all the books and all the shelves were thickly covered with dust. With
still greater astonishment, he took up book after book, and discovered
that in a large number of classical manuscripts entire sections had
been torn out. Other books had their broad, white margins cut away to
the edges of the text. Full of grief, and with eyes filled with tears,
at this sad spectacle of the destruction of the works of wise and
famous men, he descended the staircase. Meeting a monk in a cloister,
he asked why the books were so mutilated. The monk answered, “This is
the work of some of the monks: to earn a few sous, they tear out the
leaves and make little psalters, which they sell to the children. With
the white margins they make mass-books, which they sell to the women.”
Benvenuto da Immola, as quoted by Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p.
567.
[73] The word stationer which has been adopted in the English language
has lost its first meaning in the French. It is here used to define a
trader who sold books and all kinds of writing materials in a station,
shop or store, in contradistinction to a class of peddlers or clerks
who had no store or place of business, but who acted as couriers or
agents between the buyer and maker.
[74] The prices allowed to stationers in 1303 for the use of their
copies seem pitiably small. A treatise on the _Gospel of Matthew_, 37
pages, was priced at 1 sol; _Gospel of Mark_, 20 pages, at 17 deniers;
_St. Thomas on Metaphysics_, 53 pages, at 3 sols; a treatise on _Canon
Law_, 120 pages, at 7 sols; _St. Thomas on the Soul_, 19 pages, at 13
deniers.
[75] If the book was objectionable, it was burned and the author was
imprisoned. According to the Roman law, the condemnation of death
attached not only to the author and buyer of a proscribed book, but to
him who chanced to find it and did not burn it. In 1328, Pope John XXII
condemned two authors who had written a book in eight chapters, full
of grievous heresies—for they had undertaken to prove that the Emperor
Louis of Bavaria had the right to discipline, install or depose the
pope at his own pleasure, and that all the property of the church was
held by it through the sufferance of the Emperor. Lacroix, _Histoire de
l’imprimerie_, p. 26.
[76] Erasmus, caustically, but truthfully, said of this huge book, “No
man can carry it about with him, nor even get it in his head.”
[77] The National Library at Paris possesses two manuscript Bibles, of
which one volume contains 5,122 pictures. Each picture is explained
by two lines, one in Latin and one in French; each line is decorated
by an initial and a finial in gold and bright colors. If the cost of
each picture with its lines be estimated at sixteen francs (Didot’s
valuation), the value of this book would be 82,000 francs, exclusive of
the cost of parchment, binding and copying. By the same estimate, the
value of the second volume would be 50,000 francs. Didot pertinently
asks the question: Where can we find, in the printed work of our day,
an equal prodigality in illustration? _Essai sur la typographie_, p.
715.
[78] Abbreviations which deformed written language to such an extent
that it is almost undecipherable to modern readers, were once esteemed
a positive merit. The habit of making them was continued after printing
was invented. In 1475, a printer of Lubec said, in commendation of one
of his own books, that he had made free use of abbreviations, to get
the whole work in one volume instead of two—a procedure, he thought,
that deserved special praise, for he said that the contractions made
the book more readable. The modern reader will be of a different
opinion. The _Logic of Ockham_, in folio, printed at Paris in 1488, by
Clos-Bruneau, contains, among other abbreviations, this bewildering
passage:
(The text as printed.)
‹f›Sic hic e fal sm qd ad simplr a e pducible a Deo g a et silr hic a
n g a n e pducible a Do.‹/f›
(With words in full.)
Sicut hic est fallacia secundum quid ad simpliciter. A est producibile
a Deo. Ergo A est. Et similiter hic. A non est. Ergo A non est
producibile a Deo.
In 1498, John Petit, of Paris, published a dictionary which professed
to be _A Guide to the Reading of Abbreviations_. It was not published
too soon, for the practice of making contractions had increased to such
an extent that books with abbreviations were legible only to experts.
[79] From a catalogue still extant, it appears that this library was
composed chiefly of romances, legends, histories, and treatises on
astrology, geometry and chiromancy. It was then valued at 2,223 French
livres, rather more than the same number of pounds sterling. At this
time, the price of a cow was about eight shillings, and of a horse
about twenty shillings.—It is difficult to ascertain the real value of
the money of the middle ages. Coins were frequently clipped to light
weight by knavish traders, and were oftener debased at the mint when
the royal treasury was low. Sellers everywhere knew that the value of
a coin was not in its stamp, but in its quantity of silver, and they
altered prices to meet the altered value of coin. But even in its
most debased form, the silver coin of the middle ages had a very high
purchasing capacity.
[80] He has given an extract from an ecclesiastical account book in
which are found the items of expense for the making, binding, and
presentation of the manuscript book _Royal Chants_ to Princess Louise
of Savoy.
To Jacques Plastel, for sketching the designs for forty-eight pictures,
45 livres; to Jehan Pichou, illuminator, for coloring the designs, 80
livres; to workmen of Jehan Pichou, 50 sols, and for _vin du marché_
(in colloquial English, _treating_ or drink money) with illuminator
Pichou, 24 sols; to Jean de Béguines, priest, for engraving the
ballads, 12 livres; to Guy-le-Flamenc, for illuminating the large
initial letters, 13 livres, 3 sols; for vellum, 3 livres, 12 sols;
for the binding, expenses of presentation to Louise of Savoy, and the
journey to Amboise, 68 livres, 8 sols. Sum total, 366 livres. Lacroix,
_Histoire de l’imprimerie_, p. 47.