bibliographe_,—the most curious piece of analytical criticism that has
appeared in typographical literature—has demonstrated that the method
of dictation was practised in the office at Weidenbach. In this series
of letters he critically examines three books, printed at this office
with the same types, and at the same time, and points out the peculiar
errors of three different compositors, who, not seeing the copy, were
misled by their misapprehension of the dictated words. He claims that
these books were the practice work of three amateur compositors who
were then learning the trade. Each compositor had copies of his own
workmanship printed as evidences of his skill, or as a memento of his
errors. Novel as they may seem, I am inclined to accept the conclusions
of Madden. Many copies of early printed books, known to be of the same
edition, or done at the same time, show variations in the typographical
arrangement which cannot be explained by any other hypothesis than that
of a double composition by compositors working from dictation.
[391] The composition of Schœffer’s edition of the _Decretals_ has been
injudiciously praised by Bernard. In the fac-simile on page 463, it
will be noticed that the page is crooked, and that the justification
and making-up are very faulty. In a copy of Torresani’s edition of the
_Decretals_, the frequent contractions make the work almost unreadable.
This book has been highly commended for its even spacing; but it is
a sufficient answer to say that any printer could space admirably,
even in the narrowest measure, if allowed to mangle words to suit his
convenience.
[392] The statement made by Lacroix that one book was paged in 1469
does not prove that this was the usage. In some books printed at Venice
during the last ten years of the fifteenth century, the leaves (not
the pages) are numbered on every odd page. But this was not the common
practice. In the _Statius_ of Aldus, printed at Venice in 1502, and in
the Italian translation of the _Commentaries of Julius Cæsar_, printed
by Bernard Venetus of that city in 1517, neither leaves nor pages are
numbered.
[393] Some early chases held their types not with quoins, but by the
pressure of screws. A German printer’s hand-book, dated Leipsic, 1743,
has diagrams of imposition in which the pages are fastened by screws
perforating the chase. Quoins and bevels were not an early invention.
[394] See page 395 for illustration of primitive screw press.
[395] _Mechanick Exercises_, vol. I, pp. 52, 69. To the printer who has
seen only the press in which the platen covers the bed this may seem an
absurd method, but it was a method in general use even as late as the
beginning of this century. Men are yet living who have printed books by
the method shown in the cut—pulling down the bar when one-half of the
form was under the platen—releasing the pressure—running the other half
of the bed under the platen—and finishing the presswork of the other
half of the sheet by a second pull.
[396] There should have been a gradual improvement in the construction
of the press, as there was in the making of the types, but there was
no decided change for two centuries. Moxon, in 1683, commending the
“new fashion” presses of Blaew, denounced the “old fashion presses as
make-shift, slovenly contrivances practised in the minority of this
art.” Nor was Blaew’s press perfect. To insure proper register, Jackson
(who undertook, at Venice in 1745, to print wood-cuts in colors) was
obliged to reconstruct the press of Blaew.
[397] It must also be remembered that on the early printing press two
pressmen were required for the work—one to beat or to ink, and one to
pull or to print. The ordinary task of the hand-pressman of New-York
in 1840 was rated at 1500 impressions, but these impressions were
made by one man (working an inking machine) and one pull on forms of
large size. Considering the surface printed, the performance of one
hand-pressman in 1840 was about eight times more than that of one
pressman in 1458.
[398] Words and lines were sometimes printed in red in a text of black,
with a nicety of register rarely equaled by any printer during the
first years of this century. The early method of printing red with
black, has been described by Moxon. The black form was first printed
with quadrats in the places that should be occupied by the red words
or lines. This done, the form remaining on press, the quadrats were
taken out and the vacant space partially filled with “underlays” of
reglet, about one-sixth inch thick. On these underlays the types to be
printed in red were placed, which adjusting made them about one-sixth
of an inch higher than the types of the black form. The bearers were
then raised, the impression was readjusted, a new frisket was put on,
and the pressman was ready to print red as he had printed the black.
This method of printing red with black, a clumsy method at best, which
can be practised only on small forms on the hand-press, has been out
of fashion for many years.—The color work of the early printers has
been overpraised. Superior, no doubt, to that of printers of the last
century, who tried to do more work in less time, it cannot be compared
with the color work of our time. The rubricated _Book of Common
Prayer_ printed by Welch, Bigelow & Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
the _Specimen Book_ of Charles Derriey of Paris, the _French-English
Dictionary_ of George Bellows of Gloucester, England, may be offered as
specimens of modern color presswork which show an exactness of register
and a purity of color and of impression not to be found in any early
book.
[399] This unevenness does not prove the use of two distinct inks.
In some instances, it was caused by the negligence of the pressman
who applied an unequal quantity of ink upon different pages. In many
instances, it was produced by the variable qualities or conditions of
the paper or vellum. If the paper laid out for one form differed from
that used for other forms in being too coarse or too dry, or over-wet,
or if the vellum had been polished too much or too little, or had not
been entirely freed from lime and grease, it would take up from the
types, during each condition, a variable quantity of color, and produce
prints of a different degree of blackness. These variations in color
are most noticeable in books of vellum. In a prayer book printed by
Kerver in 1507, the ink is black wherever the vellum is smooth, and
gray where it is rough. In another edition of the same book on paper,
printed by Kerver in 1522, the ink is not so black as it appears on
the smooth vellum, but the color is more uniform. Equal carefulness
seems to have been taken with each book, and the ink was, no doubt,
substantially the same. Some of the early printers sorted their sheets
_after_ printing, separating the under-colored from the over-colored
and binding each together.
[400] In trying to avoid the gloominess of early printing, modern
printers have gone too far in the opposite direction. The fault of
imperfect blackness which is justly censurable in many modern books is
largely due to what Hansard calls the “razor-edged” hair lines and thin
stems of modern types which give the printer no opportunity to show
black color. Readers have been taught to prefer a feminine elegance in
types, a weak and useless imitation of copper-plate effects, to the
masculine boldness, solidity and readableness of the old-style letter
of the last century.
[401] Mr. Ticheborne, a recent contributor to _Chambers’ Journal_, says
that the older printing inks are more easily saponified and washed
off by alkalies than those of the last century. Some of the old inks
he found so sensitive, that on introducing them to a weak solution
of ammonia, the printed characters instantly floated off the surface
of the pages. His explanation, that the oil had not been properly
prepared by boiling, and was not changed into an insoluble varnish, and
“resinfied,” is, no doubt, correct. A practical ink-maker, in a series
of papers to _L’imprimerie_ (vol. I, p. 129), says that in many books
of the fifteenth century, the adhesion of the color to the paper is
very weak, and that the ink can be made pale or washed off with a moist
sponge.
[402] Lanzi refers to an Italian manuscript of 1437 in which it is
asserted that the new method of painting in oil, as practised by the
Germans, must begin with the process of boiling linseed oil. _History
of Painting in Italy._ Bohn’s edition, 1852, vol. I, p. 86.
[403] Our _Inck-makers_ to save charges, mingle many times _Trane-Oyl_
among theirs and a great deal of _Rosin_; which _Trane-Oyl_ by its
grossness Furs and Choaks up a _Form_, and by its fatness hinders the
_Inck_ from drying; so that when the Work comes to the _Binders_, it
_Sets-off_; and besides is dull, smeary and unpleasant to the eye. And
the _Rosin_, if too great a quantity be put in, and the _Form_ be not
very _Lean-Beaten_, makes the _Inck_ turn yellow: And the same does the
New _Linseed-Oyl_.——_Secondly._ They seldom _Boyl_ or _Burn_ it to that
consistence the _Hollanders_ do, because they not only save labour and
Fewel, but have a greater weight of _Inck_ out of the same quantity of
_Oyl_ when less _Burnt_ away than when more _Burnt_ away; which want of
Burning makes the _Inck_ also, though made of good old _Linseed-Oyl_,
Fat and Smeary, and hinders its Drying; so that when it comes to the
_Binders_ it also _Sets-off_.——_Thirdly._ They do not use that way of
clearing their _Inck_ the _Hollanders_ do, or indeed any other way than
meer Burning it, whereby the _Inck_ remains more _Oyly_ and _Greasie_
than if it were well clarified.——_Fourthly._ They, to save the
_Press-man_ the labour of _Rubbing_ the _Blacking_ into _Varnish_ on
the _Inck-Block_, _Boyl_ the _Blacking_ in the _Varnish_, or at least
put the _Blacking_ in whilst the _Varnish_ is yet _Boyling-hot_, which
so _Burns_ and _Rubifies_ the _Blacking_, that it loses much of its
brisk and vivid black complection.——_Fifthly._ Because _Blacking_ is
dear, and adds little to the weight of the Inck, they stint themselves
to a quantity which they exceed not; so that sometimes the _Inck_
proves so unsufferable _Pale_, that the _Press-man_ is forced to _Rub_
in more _Blacking_ upon the Block; yet this he is often so loth to do,
that he will rather hazard the Content, the Colour shall give, than
take the pains to amend it: satisfying himself that he can lay the
blame upon the _Inck-maker_. Moxon, _Mechanick Exercises_, vol. II, pp.
76, 77.
[404] No exception need be made for the initial letters of the _Psalter
of 1457_. The thin curved lines of the ornamental portions of these
letters could not have been cut on the flat boards then used by all
engravers on wood. The absence of cracks and broken lines, after long
service, in every print taken from these cuts is presumptive evidence
that they were cut on metal. The ornamentation is unlike that of the
professional engravers of block-books and at once suggests the thought
that they were cut on brass or type-metal by the hand that cut the
types of the text.
[405] That the early printers did encounter serious difficulties in the
use of wood-cuts in type forms is proved by their selection of blocks
of smaller size. Full-page cuts are rare in the books of Koburger, Leeu
and Veldener. Von Os of Zwoll cut up the blocks of the _Bible of the
Poor_. Blades says that Colard Mansion printed the types and wood-cuts
that appeared on the same page by two impressions. Sad experience in
the warping and cracking of blocks of wood in forms of types was, no
doubt, the reason for this extra labor. This difficulty seems to have
been avoided by Pigouchet, Kerver and the printers of ornamental books,
whose cuts have all the mannerisms of engraving on metal.
[406] The disconnection between the arts of engraving on wood and
typography is fairly indicated by the quarrel between the type-printers
and block-printers of Augsburg.
[407] Some engravers on wood who would not work with typographers
undertook a new branch of printing—the making of prints, thirty or
forty inches long, for the decoration of interior walls. Becker has
published a collection of these large prints, taken from the original
blocks, some of which he says were made before 1500. See cut on page
535.
[408] If Florentine money had eight times the purchasing power of
its American equivalent, these were high prices. They justify the
observation of Keyser and Stol, printers at Paris in 1486, that the
price of paper was out of all proportion to the price of printed books.
[409] Vellum was made out of the dressed skins of very young kids and
lambs; parchment from the skins of sheep and goats. The vellum was
very thin, flexible and highly polished; the parchment was thick and
horn-like; but each substance was prepared by nearly the same process.
The skin, when freed from hair, was put in a lime-pit, until it was
deprived of its fat. It was then stretched on a frame, pared with a
knife, rubbed with lime and pumice-stone, and repeatedly dried and wet,
and rubbed and stretched, until the surface was made faultlessly smooth.
[410] See page 469 for the testimony of Schoeffer’s proof-reader.
[411] The copyists, underpaid by the stationers, did their work
recklessly, abbreviating words so freely that it was often impossible
to discover the meaning of the author. The faults of the calligrapher,
who preferred beauty to accuracy, and of the young scholar, who rashly
undertook to correct errors—tended to the same result. Fichet, a
professor of the University of Paris, who seems to have been the first
man of letters who esteemed printing, said, in a complimentary letter
to Gering, Crantz and Friburger, that books were becoming barbarous
through the faults of the copyists. Bouhier, a later president of the
University, said that the books of the copyists were monstrous, and
often unintelligible.
[412] Marchand quotes at length an author who says that John Andrew,
the corrector for Sweinheym and Pannartz, was a very presumptuous
meddler with texts. When he met a word he did not understand, he
printed it in Latin, or put in words at a venture, often making the
text more unintelligible than ever. Another ecclesiastical reader,
Bishop Nicholas Perotti, was quite as great an offender.
[413] Marchand, _Histoire de l’imprimerie_, vol. I, pp. 97–103, and
notes. In support of this assertion he cites the opinions of Schelhorn,
Maittaire, Naudé, and other eminent bibliographers, and gives many
specifications of the inaccuracies of the early printers from Fust
and Schœffer to Froben. Not even Aldus Manutius escapes, for Marchand
quotes at length the accusation of Erasmus that the _Homer_, _Cicero_,
and _Plutarch_ of Aldus were _depravatissima_. This criticism is hardly
warranted by the errors of these editions, and is decidedly unjust in
its reflection on a printer whose industry and carefulness as an editor
have never been surpassed, and who, in his edition of _Plato_ of 1513,
offered a gold coin for every mistake that should be discovered. This
damaging accusation would probably never have been made if Erasmus had
not quarreled with Aldus, and had not thought it necessary to deny with
much asperity that he had served as a corrector of the press in the
Aldine office. As a corrector, Erasmus was not beyond reproach, as will
be more clearly seen in his reading of the _Greek Testament_. Froben’s
lamentation over the two pages of errata in this book (published by
him, but corrected by Erasmus) shows how much easier it is to discover
errors after commission than it is to correct them in time. Stung by
the taunts of critics, Erasmus said that if the Devil did not preside
over typography, there must have been a diabolical malice on the part
of the compositors.
Transcriber's note:
Original printed spelling and grammar are retained, with a few
exceptions noted below. For example, _Gernszheim_, _Gernszheym_,
and _Gernsheim_ are all retained.
Foot-notes have been renumbered 1–413 and moved to the end of book.
Large curly brackets ‘{}’ used to combine information on multiple
lines have been eliminated, by minimally changing the text to retain
the original meaning.
The original Index employed ditto marks and white space extensively
to indicate topics related by a word or phrase. These marks,
sometimes of dubious scope, have been replaced by em dashes,
one for each word to be regarded as repeated. For example, under the
topic heading “Bible of 36 lines, . . . ”, several topics started with
two ditto marks and sufficient white space to indicate the four-word
phrase; herein “— — — —”.
Page 19. In the sentence ending with “ . . . when it has been prepared
for printing by each of the different methods:”, the colon was changed
to full stop.
Page 125. Changed the first _that_ to _than_, in “quicker process that
that of careful writing”.
Page 127. Added full stop after “ . . . have been established in the
most satisfactory manner”.
Page 207. Full stop added after “but they cannot be entirely
overlooked”.
Page 295. “Abcedarium” changed to “Abecedarium”.
Page 302. Second comma in “and for lining, like other matrices,”
changed to full stop.
Page 313 note. Changed _gette en molle_ to _getté en molle_.
Page 356. The comma in “Koning tried to supplement the many
deficiencies of Junius, with extracts . . .” looked more like a
fly-speck, but was present in both 1st and 2nd editions, and seems
plausible.
Page 357 note. Changed “Eclaircissemens” to “Éclaircissemens”.
Page 372 note. Added a left double quotation mark to ‘_long before he
was born_.”’, although this placement is perhaps questionable.
Page 410. There was a symbol that looks similar to the poorly
supported Unicode glyph ܀ U+700 SYRIAC END OF PARAGRAPH. This has been
represented in this edition like this: “·:·”.
Page 548. Changed “Bechtermuntz” to “Bechtermüntz”.
Page 555—Additional Notes and Corrections. None of the corrections
recommended in this section have been applied. Hyperlinks are provided
in the html and epub editions only. ¶ There are two notes in the
_Additional Notes and Corrections_ section that refer to page 150. The
second one seems to be a mistake, however, and really refers to page
154. Similarly, the note that refers to page 451 seems to fit better
page 450.