Bethsaida. He is circumcised, and announces himself as the Messiah.
He is instructed in magic and all sorts of evil. Elias and Enoch come
down from Heaven and preach against him. Antichrist deceives the world
by superior eloquence; he performs miracles; his apostles preach to
the kings of Lybia and Ethiopia, and “the queen of the Amazons, and
the Red Jews.” All the kings of the world are converted to Antichrist;
he condemns unbelievers to strange tortures; he kills Elias and Enoch.
He repeats the history of the resurrection; he bids the whole world
witness his ascent to Heaven from the Mount of Olives. The Almighty
then gives the order—“Michael, strike him dead; I will no longer bear
with the unjust.” Antichrist is carried to Hell, where he is received
by the Devil and his allies. Antichrist being dead, princes and people
become Christians, and there is only one faith. But the people fear
the Day of Judgment. These are some of the signs of the great and
terrible day: The sea shall rise forty ells above the mountains; it
shall then sink away and vanish. The sea shall burn. Trees and plants
shall sweat blood. There will be earthquakes. Buildings and trees
shall fall down in hopeless ruin. Stones shall fly up in the air. Wild
beasts grow tame with fright, and run to men for help. The dead arise.
Stars fall from Heaven. Heaven and earth are burnt up and chaos comes
again. At this point the imagination of the designer was exhausted: he
had done his best. The page following, which should have been filled
with an illustration, is judiciously left blank. The last engraving is
that of the resurrection of the blessed.
[121] The central figure in the lower illustration, the meek and
priestly personage who, surrounded by gamboling devils, and with a
monkey perched upon his back, walks with measured pace and uplifted
eyes, is the Antichrist. This is the introduction to the explanatory
text:
Antichrist is instructed by adepts, who teach him to make gold, the
art of magic, and all sorts of evil. And this takes place at the
city named Corosaym. And this stands also written in the _Compendium
Theologiæ_. And our Lord curses the said city in his gospel, and says
thus: “Woe to thee, Corosaym!”
Here, we see Antichrist goes from Capernaum to Jerusalem, and he there
announces himself as holy. And hereof is also written in the book
_Compendium Theologiæ_. And our Lord, in the gospel, also curses this
city, and speaks thus concerning it: “Woe to thee, Capernaum!”
[122] The Latin title is _Ars Memorandi, notabilis per figuras
evangelistarum_.
[123] The bibliographic title is _Ars Moriendi_, or, literally, The Art
of Dying, but the work is more clearly described by the paraphrase _How
to Die Becomingly_. It is also known as _The Temptations of Demons_.
[124] John of Gamundia was a mathematician and professor of astronomy.
At his death, in the year 1442, he was chancellor of the University
of Vienna. The calendars made by him were highly esteemed, and were
engraved and printed for many years after his death. In his researches
after old prints, the late R. Z. Becker, of Gotha, discovered one of
the original blocks of a placard or poster edition of the _Calendar of
John of Gamundia_. He describes it as about 10-3/4 inches wide, 15-1/4
inches long and 1-1/2 inches thick. The block was engraved on both
sides.
[125] Chatto says that the practice of distributing pictures or prints
of a religious character at monasteries and shrines to those who visit
them is not yet extinct in Europe.
In Belgium it is still continued, and, I believe, also in France,
Germany and Italy. The figures, however, are not generally impressions
from wood blocks, but are, for the most part, wholly executed by
means of stencils. One of the latter class, representing the shrine
of _Notre Dame de Hal_, colored in the most wretched taste with
brick-dust red and shining green, is now lying before me. It was given
to a gentleman who visited Halle, near Brussels, in 1829. It is nearly
of the same size as many of the old devotional wood-cuts of Germany,
being about four inches high by two and three-quarters wide. _Treatise
on Wood Engraving_, pp. 57, 58.
[126] The Brotherhood of the Life-in-Common may, perhaps, be regarded
as an exception. Madden in his _Lettres d’un bibliographe_ has shown
that this fraternity were much interested in the production of books,
and that they had a printing office in a monastery at Cologne; but he
has not yet made it appear that they did the manual labor.
[127] Southey says that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
many educated men complained that the reputation of learning, its
privileges and rewards, were lowered when it was thrown open to all
men. It was seriously proposed in Italy to prohibit the publication of
any book costing less than three soldi.
The amusing insolence manifested by authors, scholars and readers
toward the early development of literature in any new field, or by a
new method, is a subject that could be amply illustrated. The city
of New-York furnishes a comparatively recent example in the field of
journalism. The daily newspapers of 1835, which were then sold for
six cents each, refused to recognize the rightful existence of the
new daily then sold for one cent. So strong a prejudice was created
against “the penny paper,” that many timid men were afraid to be seen
with the despised sheet in their hands: the six-penny papers were
respectable, and the penny paper was vulgar. The same contemptuousness
was manifested when duodecimos supplanted the folios and quartos—when
books bound in cloth took the place of books bound in leather. The
despised forms of printing have had their revenge. The rod of Aaron has
swallowed its rivals.
[128] The full title of the book is _Donatus de octibus partibus
orationis_, or Donatus on the Eight Parts of Speech. It is sometimes
designated as _Donatus pro puerilis_, or the Donatus for Little Boys.
[129] This extract is from the chapter entitled, “When, where, and by
whom was found out the unspeakably useful art of printing books?” It
contains statements of value, which will be quoted at greater length on
an advanced page.
[130] There can be no doubt whatever about the genuineness of these
blocks. They were bought in Germany, about two hundred years ago, by
Foucault, the minister of Louis XIV of France.
[131] Van der Linde says that the _Donatus_ and _Abecedarium_, a
religious primer hereafter to be noticed, are used in all the religious
schools of Italy to this day.
I look with melancholy respect at an _Abecedarium_, a little octavo
of four leaves, _Il Sillabario_, printed in our time in 1862, at
Asti. Beneath the heading, Jesus Maria, the Alphabet follows, and
after that the _Pater noster_, _Ave_, and _Credo_. Beside the
_Sillabario_, I have a little grammar entitled _Donato ad uso delle
scuolle secondarie. Nuova editione accresciuta e riformata._ Pinerola,
&c., 1865. . . . The esteem in which these Catholic school-books,
those foul springs from which, for instance, Erasmus drew the first
elements of Latin, were held, was so great that the first efforts of
the humanists to improve them were regarded as heresy, and heaven and
earth were moved against such dangerous destroyers. . . . Donatuses
were printed in every place where schools were established, and where
the art of printing was introduced. _The Haarlem Legend_, p. 3.
[132] Sometimes described under the title of _Speculum Humanæ
Salvationis_.
[133] Jackson and Chatto, _Treatise on Wood Engraving_, p. 83.
The book was written for the instruction of the traveling mendicant
friars who had, since the thirteenth century, gradually monopolized
preaching and the pastoral work of the settled clergy. Provided with
nothing but a little Church Latin, and therefore too ignorant to
derive their discourses from original sources, they felt the want of
homiletic and catechetical assistance as an aid to their understanding
and memory. Picture books, with a brief explanatory text, were the best
means of supplying this want. Hence originated representations of the
mystic relation between the Old and the New Testament, of which the
_Biblia Pauperum_ is the first fruit. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_,
p. 3.
[134] There is an edition, with a text in Latin and in German, which
was printed at Augsburg in 1471; there are many editions in German
only, some without dates, and others with dates of 1476, 1492, and
1500; a Flemish edition by Veldener in 1483; and various editions in
French.
[135] There are two copies of the book which exhibit the blemish of
a leaf made up of two distinct pieces of paper, each piece printed
by a different impression, but so pasted together as to constitute
one perfect page. We do not certainly know the cause that made this
patchwork necessary, but it would seem that a gross blunder had been
made in the printing-office; perhaps a transposition of lines by the
compositor, or illegible presswork by the pressman. It was necessary
that the sheet containing the error should be canceled and replaced.
But the frugal printer refused to destroy the entire page for an error
confined to but half a page. He tore off the lower half of the leaf,
and replaced it by attaching a piece of white paper to the bottom of
the upper half, which contained the engraving in brown ink. On this
pasted piece of white paper, he took a corrected or perfect impression
from the types. In this copy, the impression, which deeply indented
the paper in the double thickness where it was pasted, proves that
the types were printed after the engravings. There is another copy in
which the illustration on the upper half of the sheet was canceled, and
replaced by the same method.
[136] Ottley, selecting one letter for examination from a great
number of letters of the same kind, found that it was always the same
where-ever it occurred, not only in the first, but in the second
edition. Koning and Enchedé, pursuing a badly cast or defective letter,
found that the peculiar blemishes of this letter re-appeared in other
letters on many pages. This precision of form is the peculiarity of
typography: it proves that the letters of unvarying uniformity could
not have been made by any engraver on wood, but must have been produced
by a mould.
[137] The Latin and Dutch editions of the _Speculum_ maintain such a
remarkable conformity with each other in the engravings, in the types,
in the quality of the paper, in the presswork, and in every typographic
feature, that it is evident that the four editions were published
in the same country and by the same printer. As all bibliographers,
whatever theory they may have concerning the origin of printing,
attribute, without hesitation, the Dutch edition of the _Speculum_
to Holland, the Latin editions should also be attributed to Holland.
Guichard, _Notice sur le Speculum_, pp. 118 and 119. This is the
opinion of all bibliographers except Heineken.
[138] The fac-simile given by Holtrop in his _Monuments typographiques_
presents the following measurements, in American inches: In the Latin
edition, described in this book as the first, 25 lines measure 5-1/2
inches. In the Dutch edition, here described as the third, 27 lines
measure 5-1/2 inches. In the Dutch edition, here described as the
fourth, 26 lines measure 5-1/2 inches. As we find no indication of the
use of leads or thin blanks to increase the distance between lines, it
would seem that the types of the three editions were cast in different
moulds. Sotheby’s fac-similes, which seem to have been made with equal
care, do not exactly agree with those taken from Holtrop’s book. There
are, no doubt, differences of size, not only in the fac-similes, but
in the original copies of the book. Allowance must be also made for
the unequal shrinkage on different leaves of the very thick paper,
which may have been unequally dampened, and unequally extended before
printing.
[139] When a new engraving on wood, in imitation of an old one, is
desired, the modern engraver does not redraw, but transfers the
subject, substantially by the following process: The back of the print
to be copied is moistened with a solution of alkali, or of benzine,
which, soaking through the paper, forms a new combination with the oil
in the ink. The black of the ink is thereby liberated, so that it can
be completely removed by firm pressure. The print so treated is then
laid, face downward, on the block, and the free black is transferred
to the block by the pressure of a burnisher, or of a press. The black
re-appears on the block, but in a properly reversed position, ready for
the tool of the engraver.
[140] The neglect of engraving on wood by the early typographers has
frequently been noticed as a strange fact. It was, no doubt, induced
by the difficulties encountered in trying to print wood-cuts with
types. The blocks would warp and crack in spite of all precautions.
The evil was but partially checked by diminishing the size of the
blocks. To evade the annoyance produced by warped blocks, some printers
engraved large illustrations on separate pieces of wood, which were
roughly fitted to each other, but not conjoined. Other printers printed
the wood-cuts of their books by a separate impression. As these
illustrations were printed in the same black ink which was used for the
text, the double impression is rarely ever noticed, not even by the
practical printer.
[141] The Dutch folio of Jan de Mandeville, placed by Holtrop about
1470, as a work of printing, is so bad that the earliest editions of
the _Speculum_ are masterpieces by the side of it. The work of an
unknown Schiedam printer of the latter part of the fifteenth century
is equally bad. The Brussels incunabula of the Brotherhood of the
Life-in-Common are bad; those of Arnold ter Hoorne at Cologne (1471–83)
are sometimes barbarous. Heineken mentions a book printed in Augsburg
in 1557, and says: “If the name of the engraver on wood and the date
had not been found, one might think that this was the oldest book
in the world.” In the series of the different Dutch incunabula of
this kind, the _Speculum_ presents itself very favorably; it is not
badly, but well printed; it is not a first experiment, but the fruit
of practice. Dr. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend of the Invention of
Printing_, p. 37.
[142] The frisket of the modern hand-press is a light frame-work of
iron, which is covered like a kite, with a sheet of paper pasted to
the edges. Just before the act of impression, this frisket is placed
between the form of inked types and the sheet of paper prepared to
receive the impression. The office of the frisket is to prevent the
sheet from being blackened by anything but the face of the types. For
this purpose, every part of the page to be printed is neatly cut out
of the paper mask pasted on the frisket. Every part of the sheet that
should remain unprinted is masked or covered by the uncut paper of the
frisket. When the impression is taken, the sheet receives only the
impression from the type, and is unsoiled by the ink that accumulates
about the types and their fixtures.
[143] Veldener, who was a German, and, probably, a pupil of Ulric Zell
of Cologne, began to print at Louvain in 1473. Like many printers of
the Netherlands, he moved his printing office from place to place. He
printed at Louvain in 1473; at Utrecht in 1478; at Culemburg in 1483.
The last book bearing his imprint is dated 1484.
[144] For a fac-simile (from Holtrop) of this face of type see page 277.
[145] A fuller notice of Cornelis the binder will be given in the
chapter on the Legend of Coster, in which his relations to early
printing will be described. Attention may be called to the significance
of the fact that no fragments of any book in the types of the
_Speculum_ have been found in the covers or binding of any manuscript
book of earlier date than 1467.
[146] This work was in use as late as the reign of Charles V. It was
enjoined by him that a printer should furnish without alteration
“the little book commencing with the alphabet, the little book which
directs how to bless the table (grace at meals), and the little book
which directs how to answer at the holy mass.” Van der Linde, _Haarlem
Legend_, p. 2.
[147] Hessels does not describe this as Type VIII, but as the _Type
of the Enschedé Abecedarium_. He thought it “advisable to separate
these two little works [the _Donatus_ and the _Abecedarium_, which
are printed in this face], to a certain extent, from the others” but
he admits that the types of these books bear the family likeness and
cannot be omitted.
[148] Berjeau, who accepts this _Abecedarium_ as one of the first
products of the invention, says that impositions of eight pages seem
more complex than they really are—that the printer had but to fold a
sheet, to mark the pages and then unfold the sheet, to see the method
at a glance. This reasoning is specious, but it is inconclusive. It
was the argument of the courtiers with Columbus after he had stood the
egg on its end. Anybody can do it. Simple as the process may seem, the
imposition of eight pages of type in one form was not done by any of
the early printers, and we have to infer that they did not know how to
do it.
[149] Caxton, who printed thousands of pages in folio, made use of
but eight fonts. Blades, _Life and Typography of Caxton_, vol. II, p.
xxvii. Gutenberg, who practised printing for thirty years, did his work
with not more than six fonts of type. Schœffer, who was a printer and
publisher for forty-three years, made use of but six fonts.
[150] Leon De la Borde, _Debut de l’imprimerie à Strasbourg_, pp. 70,
72.
[151] Leads are very thin pieces of metal which are inserted between
the lines of types to increase the distance between the lines, and to
give the printed page a more open and inviting appearance.
[152] This apparently easy method of demonstrating the practicability
of types of wood has been attempted by many writers. Wetter, the
author of a valuable history of printing, published in his book a
page printed from types of wood, which he offered as conclusive
evidence that types of wood could have been made and were made by the
early printers. But his types of wood are larger than those of the
_Speculum_, and they are also provided with leads to keep them in line.
Notwithstanding these precautions, they are more out of line than the
types of the _Speculum_. Meerman, in his _Origines Typographicæ_,
printed a few words from types of wood with a similar result; but he
showed a practical disbelief in his own theory, by engraving all the
fac-similes of the alleged types of wood upon plates of copper. The
substitution of copper for wood was, virtually, an acknowledgment of
the impracticability of wood types. Schinkel, a Dutch printer, was more
successful than either Meerman or Wetter in obtaining a good impression
from small types of wood, but he subsequently admitted that his success
was but a trick, and that it did not prove that they could be used in
the ordinary practice of printing. Léon De la Borde afterward conceded
that types of wood would be impracticable.
[153] The impracticability of types of wood is cleverly stated by
Enschedé:
“I have exercised printing for about fifty years, and I have cut
letters and figures for my father’s and my own printing office in
wood of palm, pear, and medlar trees; I have now been a type-founder
for upwards of thirty years; but to do such things as those learned
gentlemen [Junius and Meerman] pretend that Laurens Coster and his
heirs have done, neither I nor Papillon [the most clever wood-engraver
of France] are able to understand, nor the artists Albrecht Durer,
De Gray, and Iz. Van der Vinne either; but such learned men who
dream about wooden movable letters make Laurens Janzoon Coster use
witchcraft, for the hands of men are not able to do it. To print a
book with capitals of the size of a thumb, as on placards, _House
and Ground_, which are cut in wood, and which I have cut myself by
hundreds, would be ridiculous; to do it with wooden letters of the
size of a pin’s head is impossible. I have made experiments with a
few of a somewhat larger size. I made a wooden slip of Text Corpus
[a body about the size of Long-primer], and drew the letters on the
wood or slip; thereupon I cut the letters. I had left a space of about
the size of a saw between each letter on purpose, and I had no want
of fine and good tools; the only question now was to saw the letters
mathematically square off the slip. I used a very fine little saw,
made of a very thin spring of English steel, so cleverly made that I
doubt whether our Laurens Janszoon had a saw half as good; I did all I
could to saw the letters straight and parallel, but it was impossible;
there was not a single letter which could stand the test of being
mathematically square. What now to do? It was impossible to polish or
file them. I tried it, but it could not be done by our type-founder’s
whetstones, as it would have injured the letters. In short, I saw
no chance, and I feel sure that no engraver is able to cut separate
letters in wood, in such a manner that they retain their quadrature,
for that is the most important part of the work of type-casting. If,
however, I wished to give my trouble and time to it, I should be able
to execute the three words, _Spiegel onzer Behoudinis_, better than
the Rotterdam artist has done in the Latin works of M. Meerman; but it
is impossible, ridiculous, and merely chimerical, to print books in
this manner.” Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, pp. 72, 73.
[154] This taste for variety in the shape of letters was more clearly
exhibited in Greek and German than in Roman types. The Greek types
of the sixteenth century are so full of ligatures and variants,
that they are undecipherable to the scholar who has been taught the
language only in modern text books. So far from trying to make letters
readable, the literati of that period tried to make them obscure: they
were evidently determined not to make the acquisition of the language
easy for their successors. When Francis I of France established the
royal printing office, he engaged a skillful Greek penman to design
additional varieties of contractions. Two centuries afterward, Pierre
Fournier, the younger, a type-founder of Paris, commended the Greek
types of his own manufacture as much less complicated than any Greek
types then in use. But I count 776 characters in the font. More than
300 of Fournier’s contractions, once esteemed as admirable graces,
have been rejected by modern type-founders. Blades, who has made a
careful analysis of the characters used by Caxton, shows that in the
face described by him as 1 there are at least 167 distinct characters.
But 24 of these are capitals and 81 are double letters. In faces 2 and
2* there are 380 characters, exclusive of figures, spaces and marks of
punctuation.
[155] Blades, in his _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, has given
a practical illustration of these changes in Plate IX B, which also
illustrates the feasibility of types of pure lead, for a notice of
which see next page.
[156] The most approved process in the modern art of stereotyping is
that in which the mould is made of calcined gypsum or plaster. The same
material is used by type-founders in the manufacture of the largest
types of metal. The cheapness of sand, and the ease with which it can
be worked, make it the most serviceable of materials for all founders
who wish to produce cheap castings.
[157] To satisfy his own doubts as to the feasibility of casting small
types in moulds of sand, Bernard, of Paris, gave to a brass-founder
the types of a few Roman capital letters as the models from which he
requested founded duplicates. He charged the founder not to dress nor
finish the face of the founded letters, nor to give them more than
ordinary care. The founded letters so made were printed by Bernard
in his history as practical illustrations of the feasibility of
sand moulds. They lack the finish of types made by the professional
type-founder; they look like badly worn types, but they are legible.
The brass-founder assured Bernard that a workman could make one
thousand similar types in one working day. Bernard then gave to this
founder separate types of a word in Gothic letters and requested
him to furnish duplicates of these types founded on one body. The
duplicates returned showed the very defects of the types of the
_Speculum_; the thick lines were spotted, and the letters were out of
line. Bernard’s impression shows that the movable types which made the
word were jostled or trivially disturbed at the instant of moulding. A
disturbance of this nature would explain the irregularity of line and
the rounding of the edges. The spotted and ragged edges of the founded
word were probably caused by the roughness of the moulding sand, or
by the sticking fast to the mould of bits of metal. It is a proper
inference that in both cases the defects were the imperfections of the
same process. The experiment of Bernard fully proved the feasibility of
making small types in sand moulds.
[158] In the sand mould, the hot metal is poured in; in the metal
mould, whether worked by hand or machine, the hot metal is forced or
cast in. The phrase “casting type,” which implies a sudden throw or
violent jerk, has entirely supplanted the older phrase of “founding
type.”
[159] Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 607.