This art cannot be assigned to any single year, but must rather be
referred to a _decennium_; and the one in which we now are (1851--1860),
is certainly the first decennium of the fifth century of the existence
of the art. If anything were proposed in the way of celebration of this
_anni_versary, probably the year 1855 would be chosen, not only as the
year which touches the middle of the decennium, but as being very
probably the year in which the printing of the Bible was completed. We
have then a year or two to consider in what manner the spirit which
anniversaries usually call up shall be turned to account. The following
will probably be suggested.
_A feed._ If we could call down Fust and Gutenberg to witness that
within twelve hours after dessert and commonplaces are finished, an
account of the dinner, as long as three epistles of St. Paul, would be
about the world in something like a hundred thousand copies, such a
celebration would have a strong point of interest about it.
_A monument in sculpture._ That is to say, a lame subscription, a
committee, five-and-twenty abusive paragraphs before the thing is done,
one more when, ten years after, it is completed, and a short notice in
the handbooks of London in all time to come.
If these two modes are abandoned, many others would be proposed. Mine
would be, a subscription to defray the expense of publishing, on a large
scale, a book of fac-similes of early typography, to be sold at a cheap
rate, with such prefatory matter as would form an accurate popular
history of printing from 1450 to 1550. The great interest with which I
saw plain working men looking at the treasures now exhibited in glass
cases at the British Museum, made me think of this.
Reference is frequently made upon the origin of printing, to the
_fasciculus temporum_, or _Cologne Chronicle_. In one place I find a
citation in support of the Gutenberg Bible having been commenced in
1450; in another citation it is only affirmed that printing was first
done in that year. The only edition I have the means of consulting at
this moment is that of Ratdolt, 1484. And here I find nothing about
printing except that, of the year 1457 and thereabouts, it is said that
"Artifices mira celeritate subtiliores solito fiunt. Et
impressores librorum multiplicant in terra."
In the preface Ratdolt says that he had printed the _fasciculus_ three
times already, of which Hain mentions two. He says, moreover, that this
fourth (Venice) edition was _cura et opera diligentiori_. Did Ratdolt,
after inquiry, abandon the more specific account above cited, and
content himself with the above sentence, as expressing all that could be
verified; or, as I have sometimes supposed, do _different books_
circulate under the title of _fasciculus temporum_? Be this as it may,
Ratdolt expressly refers to the great impulse which the mechanical arts
in general received just about the time when printing became common. Now
we may hope the same thing of the decennium on which we are entering,
the beginning of which is made conspicuous by the great forcing-house of
art, which has not yet got the name it is to keep.