Printing remained, as long as its first artificers could keep it, a
secret and occult art; and it is the only one that ceaselessly operates
all the miracles which the others had vainly promised.
Who first thought to carve the wooden immoveable letters on blocks?--to
stamp the first sheet which ever was imprinted? Or who, second in
invention, but first in utility, imagined to cast the metal with fusile
types, separate from each other?--to fix this scattered alphabet in a
form, and thus by one stroke write a thousand manuscripts, and, with the
identical letters, multiply not a single work, but all sorts of works
hereafter? Was it fortunate chance, or deliberate meditation, or both in
gradual discovery, which produced this invention? In truth, we can
neither detect the rude beginnings, nor hardly dare to fix on the
beginners. The _Origines Typographicae_ are, even at this late hour,
provoking a fierce controversy, not only among those who live in the
shades of their libraries, but with honest burghers; for the glory of
patriotism has connected itself with the invention of an art which came
to us like a divine revelation in the history of man. But the place, the
mode, and the person--the invention and the inventor--are the subjects
of volumes! Votaries of Fust, of Schoeffer, of Gutenberg, of Costar! A
sullen silence or a deadly feud is your only response. Ye jealous cities
of Mentz, of Strasburg, and of Haarlem, each of ye have your armed
champion at your gates![1]
The mystical eulogist of the art of printing, who declared that "the
invention came from Heaven," was not more at a loss to detect the origin
than those who have sought for it among the earliest printers.[2]
Learned but angry disputants on the origin of printing, what if the art
can boast of no single inventor, and was not the product of a single
act? Consider the varieties of its practice, the change of wood to
metal, the fixed to the moveable type; view the complexity of its
machinery; repeated attempts must often have preceded so many inventions
ere they terminated in the great one. From the imperfect and
contradictory notices of the early essays--and of the very earliest we
may have no record--we must infer that the art, though secret, was
progressive, and that many imperfect beginnings were going on at the
same time in different places.
Struck by the magnitude and the magnificence of the famous Bible of
Fust, some have decided on the invention of the art by one of its most
splendid results; this, however, is not in the usual course of human
affairs, nor in the nature of things. "The Art of Printing," observes
Dr. Cotton, in his introduction, "was brought almost to perfection in
its infancy; so that, like Minerva, it may be said to have sprung to
life, mature, vigorous, and armed for war." But in the article
"Moguntia, or Mentz," this acute researcher states that "after all that
has been written with such angry feelings upon the long-contested
question of the _origin of the Art of Printing_, Mentz appears still to
preserve the best-founded claim to the honour of being the _birth-place
of the Typographic Art_; because," he adds, "the specimens adduced in
favour of Haarlem and Strasburg, even if we should allow their
genuineness, are confessedly of _a rude and imperfect execution_." We
require no other evidence of the important fact, that the art, in its
early stages, had to pass through many transitions--from the small
school-books, or Donatuses, of Costar, to the splendid Bible of Fust.
Had the art been borrowed or stolen from a single source, according to
the popular tradition, the works would have borne a more fraternal
resemblance, and have evinced less inferiority of execution; but if
several persons at the same time were working in secrecy, each by his
own method, their differences and their inferiority would produce "the
rude and imperfect specimens." Mr. Hallam has suffered his strong
emotion on the greatness of the invention to reflect itself back on the
humble discoverers themselves; and, unusual with his searching
inquiries, calls once more on Dr. Cotton's Minerva, but with a more
celestial panoply. "The _high-minded inventors_ of this great art tried,
at _the very outset_, so bold a flight as the printing _an entire
Bible_. It was Minerva leaping on earth, in her divine strength and
radiant armour, ready at the moment of her nativity to subdue and
destroy her enemies."[3] The Bible called the Mazarine Bible, thus
distinguished from having been found in the Cardinal's library, remains
still a miracle of typography, not only for its type, but for the
quality of the paper and the sparkling blackness of its ink.[4] The
success of the art was established by this Bible; but the goldsmith
Fust, who himself was no printer, was no otherwise "high-minded," than
by the usurious prices he speculated on for this innocent imposture of
vending what was now a printed book for a manuscript copy!
No refined considerations of the nature and the universal consequences
of their discovery seem to have instigated the earliest printers; this
is evident by the perpetual jealousy and the mystifying style by which
they long attempted to hide that secret monopoly which they had now
obtained.
The first notions of printing might have reached Europe from China. Our
first block-printing seems imitated from the Chinese, who print with
blocks of wood on one side of the paper, as was done in the earliest
essays of printing; and the Chinese seem also to have suggested the use
of a thick black ink. European traders might have imported some fugitive
leaves; their route has even been indicated, from Tartary, by the way of
Russia; and from China and Japan, through the Indies and the Arabian
Gulf. The great antiquity of printing in China has been ascertained. Du
Halde and the missionary Jesuits assert that this art was practised by
the Chinese half a century before the Christian era! At all events, it
is evident that they exercised it many centuries before it was attempted
in Europe. The history of gunpowder would illustrate the possibility of
the same extraordinary invention occurring at distinct periods. Roger
Bacon indicated the terrible ingredients a hundred years before the monk
Schwartz, about 1330, actually struck out the fiery explosion, and had
the glory of its invention. Machines to convey to a distance the thunder
and the lightning described by their discoverers were not long after
produced. But it would have astonished these inventors to have learnt
that guns had been used as early as the year 85 A.D., and that the fatal
powder had been invented previously by the Chinese. Well might the
philosophical Langles be struck by "the singular coincidence of the
invention in Europe of the compass, of gunpowder, and of printing, about
the same period, within a century." These three mighty agents in human
affairs have been traced to that wary and literary nation, who, though
they prohibit all intercourse with "any barbarian eye," might have
suffered these sublime inventions to steal away over "their great wall."
What has happened to the art of printing also occurred to the sister-art
of engraving on copper. Tradition had ascribed the invention as the
accidental discovery of the goldsmith Maso Finiguerra. But the Germans
insist that they possess engravings before the days of the Italian
artist; and it is not doubtful that several of the compatriots of
Finiguerra were equally practising the art with himself. Heinecken would
arbitrate between the jealous patriots; he concedes that Vasari might
ascribe the invention of the art in Italy to Finiguerra, yet that
engraving might have been practised in Germany, though unknown in Italy.
Buonarotti, the great judge of all art, was sensible that in this sort
of invention every artist makes his own discoveries. Alluding to the art
of engraving, he says, "It would be sufficient to occasion our
astonishment, that the ancients did not discover the art of
chalcography, were it not known that DISCOVERIES OF THIS SORT generally
occur ACCIDENTALLY to the mechanics in the exercise of their
calling."[5] On this principle we may confidently rest. All the early
printers, like the rivals of Finiguerra at home, and his unknown
concurrents in Germany, were proceeding with the same art, and might
urge their distinct claims.
The natural magic of concave and convex lenses, those miracles of
optical science, one of which searches Nature when she eludes the eye,
and the other approximates the remotest star--the microscope and the
telescope; who were their inventors, and how have those inventions
happened? These instruments appeared about the same time. The Germans
ascribe the invention of the microscope to a Dutchman, one Drebell;
while the Neapolitan Fontana claims the anterior invention; but which
Viviani, the scholar of Galileo, asserts, from his own knowledge, was
presented to the King of Poland by that father of modern philosophy long
anterior to the date fixed on by the Germans. The history of the
telescope offers a similar result. Fracastorius may have accidentally
combined two lenses; but he neither specified the form nor the quality;
and in these consisted the real discovery, which we find in Baptista
Porta, and which subsequently was perfected by Galileo. The invention of
the art of printing seems a parallel one. It appeared in various
quarters about the same time; and in the process of successive attempts,
by intimation, by conjecture, and by experiment, each artificer
insensibly advanced into a more perfect invention; till some fortunate
claimant for the discovery puts aside all preceding essayists, who, not
without some claims to the invention, leave their advocates in another
generation to dispute about their rights, which are buried in oblivion,
or falsified by traditional legends.
Thus it has happened that obscure traditions envelope the origin of
some of the most interesting inventions. Had these ingenious discoveries
been as simple and as positive as their historians oppositely maintain,
these origins had not admitted of such interminable disputes. We may
therefore reasonably suspect that the practitioners in every art which
has reached to almost a perfect state, such as that of printing, have
silently borrowed from one another; that there has often existed a
secret connexion in things, and a reciprocal observation in the
intercourse of men alike intent on the same object; that countries have
insensibly transferred a portion of their knowledge to their neighbours;
that travellers in every era have imparted their novelties, hints
however crude, descriptions however imperfect; all such slight notices
escape the detection of an historian; nothing can reach him but the
excellence of some successful artist. In vain rival concurrents dispute
the invention; the patriotic historian of the art clings to his people
or his city, to fix the inventor and the invention, and promulgates
fairy tales to authenticate the most uncertain evidence.[6]
The history of printing illustrates this view of its origin. The
invention has been long ascribed to GUTENBERG, yet some have made it
doubtful whether this presumed father of the art ever succeeded in
printing a book, for we are assured that no colophon has revealed his
name. We hear of his attempts and of his disappointments, his bickerings
and his lawsuits. He seems to have been a speculative bungler in a
new-found art, which he mysteriously hinted was to make a man's fortune.
The goldsmith, Fust, advanced a capital in search of the novel
alchymy--the project ends in a lawsuit, the goldsmith gains his cause,
and the projector is discharged. Gutenberg lures another simple soul,
and the same golden dream vanishes in the dreaming. These copartners,
evidently tired of an art which had not yet found an artist, a young
man, probably improving on Gutenberg's blunders, one happy day displayed
to the eyes of his master, Fust, a proof pulled from his own press. In
rapture, the master confers on this Peter Schoeffer a share of his
future fortunes; and to bind the apprentice by the safest ties of
consanguinity, led the swart youth, glorious with printer's ink, to the
fair hand of his young daughter. The new partnership produced their
famed Psalter of 1457; and shortly followed their magnificent Bible.
While these events were occurring, COSTAR, of Haarlem, was plodding on
with the same "noble mystery," but only printing on one side of a leaf,
not having yet discovered that a leaf might be contrived to contain two
pages. The partisans of Costar assert that it was proved he substituted
moveable for fixed letters, which was a giant's footstep in this new
path. A faithless servant ran off with the secret. The history of
printing abounds with such tales. Every step in the progress of the
newly-invented art indicates its gradual accessions. The numbering of
the pages was not thought of for a considerable time; the leaves were
long only distinguished by letters or signatures--a custom still
preserved, though apparently superfluous.
There is something attractive for rational curiosity in the earliest
beginnings of every art; every slight improvement, even though trivial,
has its motive, and supplies some want. On this principle the history of
punctuation enters into the history of literature. Caxton had the merit
of introducing the Roman pointing as used in Italy; and his successor,
Pynson, triumphed by domiciliating the Roman letter. The dash, or
perpendicular line, thus, | was the only punctuation they used. It was,
however, discovered that "the craft of poynting well used makes the
sentence very light." The more elegant comma supplanted the long uncouth
|; the colon was a refinement, "showing that there is more to come." But
the semicolon was a Latin delicacy which the obtuse English typographer
resisted. So late as 1580 and 1590 treatises on orthography do not
recognise any such innovator; the Bible of 1592, though printed with
appropriate accuracy, is without a semicolon; but in 1633 its full
rights are established by Charles Butler's "English Grammar." In this
chronology of the four points of punctuation it is evident that
Shakspeare could never have used the semicolon--a circumstance which the
profound George Chalmers mourns over, opining that semicolons would
often have saved the poet from his commentators.
FUST had bound his workmen to secrecy by the solemnity of an oath; but
at the siege of Mentz that freemasonry was lost. These early printers
dispersed, some were even bribed away. Two Germans set up their press in
the monastery of Subiaco, in the vicinity of Naples, whose confraternity
consisted of German monks. These very printers finally retreated to Rome
for that patronage they had still to seek; and at Rome they improved the
art by adopting the Roman character. Not only the invention of the art
was progressive, but the art itself was much more so.
We have other narratives of printers romantically spirited away from the
parent-presses; one of the most extraordinary is the history of printing
set up at Oxford, ten years before the art was practised in Europe,
except at Haarlem and Mentz. Henry VI., by advice of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, despatched a confidential agent in disguise, under the
guidance of Caxton, in his trading journeys to Flanders. The Haarlemites
were so jealous of idling strangers who had come on the same insidious
design, that foreigners had frequently been imprisoned.
The royal agent never ventured to enter the city, but by heavy bribes in
a secret intercourse with the workmen, one dark night he smuggled a
printer aboard a vessel, and carried away Frederick Corsellis. That
printer, on landing in England, was attended by a guard to Oxford. There
he was constantly watched till he had revealed the mysterious craft. The
evidence of this unheard-of history hinged on a record at Lambeth-palace
authenticating the whole narrative, and on a monument of Corsellis's
art, which any one might inspect at the Bodleian, being a book bearing a
date six years prior to any printing by Caxton. The record at Lambeth,
however, was never found, and never heard of, and the date of the book
might have been accidentally or designedly falsified. An x dropped in
the date of the impression would account for the singularity of a book
printed before our Caxton had acquired the art. The tale long excited a
sharp controversy, when Corsellis at Oxford was considered as the first
printer in England. The possibility of the existence of this person at
Oxford, and even of the book he printed, appears by a lively
investigation of Dr. Cotton;[7] and I have been assured of a
circumstance which, if true, would render the story of Corsellis
probable; it is that a family of this name may still be found in
Oxfordshire. The whole history has, however, by some been considered as
supposititious, standing on the single evidence of a Sir Richard Atkyns,
a servile lawyer and royalist of no great character in the days of
Charles the Second.[8] Grafting his tale on the accident of the date of
this book, he had a covert design--to maintain a theory or a right that
printing was "a flower of the crown," constituting the sovereign the
printer of England! all others being his servants. This enormous
prevention of the abuses of the press was not deemed too extravagant for
those desperate times.
The only certainty in the history of printing, after all the fables of
its origin, is its native place. It is a German romance enlivened by
some mysterious adventures, wanting only the opening pages, which no one
can supply.[9] Even the most philosophic of bibliographers, Daunou,
utters a cry of despair, and moreover, at this late day, seems at a
loss to decide on the nature of the influence of the art of printing!
"We live too near the epoch of the discovery of printing to judge
accurately of its influence, and too far from it to know the
circumstances which gave birth to it." Our sage seems to think that
another cycle of at least a thousand years must pass away ere we can
decide on the real influence of printing over the destinies of man: this
new tree of knowledge bears other fruit than that of its own sweetness,
source of good and evil, of sense and of nonsense! whence we pluck the
windy fruitage of opinions, crude and changeable!
How has it happened that such a plain story as that of the art of
printing should have sunk into a romance? Solely because the
monopolisers dreaded discovery. It originated in deception, and could
only flourish for their commercial spirit in mysterious obscurity. Among
the first artisans of printing every one sought to hide his work, and
even to blind the workmen. After their operations, they cautiously
unscrewed the four sides of their forms, and threw the scattered type
beneath, for, as one craftily observed to his partner, "When the
component parts of the press are in pieces, no one will understand what
they mean." One of the early printers of the fifteenth century at
Mutina, or Modena, professes his press to have been _in aedibus
subterraneis_--doubtless, if possible, still further to darken the
occult mystery. They delivered themselves in a mystical style when they
alluded to their unnamed art, and impressed on the marvelling reader
that the volume he held in his hand was the work of some supernatural
agency. They announced that the volumes in this newly-found art were
"neither drawn, nor written with a pen and ink, as all books before had
been." In the "Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye," our honest printer,
plain Caxton, caught the hyperbolical style of the dark monopolising
spirit of the confraternity. I give his words, having first spelt them.
"I have practised and learned at my great charge, and dispense to ordain
(put in order) this said book in print after the manner and form as ye
may here see, and is not written with pen and ink as other books be, to
the end that _every man may have them_ AT ONCE; for all the books of
this story, thus imprinted as ye see, were _begun in one day, and also
finished in one day_." A volume of more than seven hundred folio
pages, "begun and finished in one day," was not the less marvellous for
being impossible. But for the times was the style! Caxton would keep up
the wonder and the mystery of an art which men did not yet comprehend;
and because a whole sheet might have been printed in one day, and was
_all at once_ pulled off, and not line by line, our venerable printer
mystified the world. And all this was said at a time when so slow was
the process of transcription, that one hundred Bibles could not be
procured under the expense of seven thousand days, or of nearly twenty
years' labour. Honest men, too eager in their zeal, particularly when
their personal interests are at stake, sometimes strain truth on the
tenter-hooks of fiction. The false miracle which our primeval printer
professed he had performed we seem to have realized: it is amusing to
conceive the wonderment of Caxton, were he now among us, to view the
steam working that cylindrical machine which disperses the words of a
speaker throughout the whole nation, when the voice which uttered them
is still lingering on our ear!