enumerated by that distinguished Sinologue, M. Henri Cordier, in his
epoch-making bibliography. Time, however, compels me to pass to Japan,
where the subject has received most important illustration from the
labours of the present English minister to that country, Sir Ernest
Mason Satow. Sir Ernest found examples of the use of movable types in
Japan about 1598, and endeavoured to ascertain whether the art had been
imported from Korea, where, as I have already stated, it existed at a
much earlier period, or whether it was taught to the Japanese by the
Jesuit missionaries. The point remains undecided; but Sir Ernest's
researches have acquainted him with fourteen books printed by the
missionaries between 1591 and 1605—some in Latin, some in Japanese,
some in both languages. Some are religious in character, others
philological. One, exceptionally, is a translation into Japanese of
"Æsop's Fables," thus curiously restored to the East whence they
originally came. Sir Ernest, himself a Japanese scholar, has given a
minute account of all, with the aid of numerous facsimiles. All, of
course, are of the greatest rarity, and chiefly to be found in the
public libraries of London, Paris, Lisbon, Oxford, Leyden, and Rome, or
in the collection of the Earl of Crawford. Sir Ernest Satow mentions, in
an appendix, others which have been stated to exist, but have not been
recovered. Some of these, it is probable, were merely manuscripts. It
may be added that the frontispieces of these books, engraved by natives
under European direction, evince much talent, and that the same is the
case with similar work subsequently executed in South America and the
Philippines.
The extirpation of Christianity in Japan destroyed European printing in
that country; but books relating to Japan, chiefly acts of Japanese
martyrs, continued for some time to be produced at Manila, the capital
of the Philippines. The history of Manila printing is thoroughly
investigated in the classical work of Señor Medina, whom I have already
named as the discoverer of the real beginning of printing at Macao. It
seems probable that the art was directly imported into Manila from the
latter city. Two books—one in Spanish and Tagala, the other in
Chinese—appear as printed in 1593, then follows a gap of nine years,
after which publications begin to be tolerably frequent, and altogether
a hundred and twelve are enumerated up to the end of the seventeenth
century. A large proportion are in the vernacular languages. It is
remarkable that the Caxton of the Philippines was a Chinese convert,
whose celestial origin is disguised under the name of Juan de Vera. This
fact is only known by the testimony of a Dominican, since it is another
remarkable circumstance and peculiar to the Philippines, that for a very
long time the name of no private individual appears as that of a
printer, the imprint being always that of some religious or educational
institution.
One other important city in the Eastern Archipelago possessed printing
at an early date. This was Batavia. The Museum possesses treaties with
native princes printed there in 1668, and these were probably not the
first. A printed book also is referred to the same year.
Now, like Scipio, we must carry the war into Africa. As might be
expected in the Dark Continent, the appearance of the first African
printed book is a matter of some obscurity; not that the statements
respecting time and place and authorship are not precise, but because it
has hitherto been impossible to verify them. Nicolas Antonio, in his
"Bibliotheca Hispanica," distinctly mentions "Theses rhetoricæ, varia
eruditione refertæ," by Antonio Macedo, a celebrated Portuguese Jesuit
who is said to have had a hand in the conversion of Queen Christina of
Sweden, as printed at Funchal in Madeira in 1637. I cannot find that
this book has ever come to light, or that any other early production of
the Funchal press has been recorded, though one would think that such
must have existed. I need not say that the first African book would be a
treasure almost rivalling the volume with which Mexico initiated
American typography in 1539, or the Goa and Macao books whose probable
disappearance we have been lamenting. There is room for error; Antonio
hardly appears to have himself seen the book. But, on the other hand,
there may well be copies in the possession of persons to whom the
imprint Funchal suggests nothing. A Macao or Manila book at once
announces itself as something extraordinary by the peculiarity of its
paper, but a book printed in Madeira would probably be indistinguishable
in general appearance from contemporary productions on the Portuguese
mainland, whose appearance at the period was fully in keeping with the
then fallen fortunes of the nation. If, therefore, the book ever
existed, I shall not despair of its being found, most probably at
Lisbon, Funchal, or Rome. If its existence is mythical, the first
African printed book would probably be the catechism on baptism in the
Angola language by Francisco Pacconio, executed at Loanda, the capital
of the Portuguese settlements on the west coast, said at least to have
been printed there in 1641, but perhaps only sent out from Lisbon. If
actually printed at Loanda, it would be the first book printed on the
African mainland, and hence of the highest bibliographical interest. But
it may have been confounded with a similar catechism by the same author,
published at Lisbon in 1642. Books were printed at Santa Cruz de
Tenerife at least as early as 1754. Port Louis, the capital of
Mauritius, followed soon afterwards. Apart from official documents, the
first book printed in South Africa is G. F. Grand's "Memoirs of a
Gentleman" (Cape Town, 1814), exhibited at the British Museum. To
prevent misunderstanding, it may be remarked that the honour due to the
first African book has been claimed for a narrative of the capture of
the island of Terceira by the Marquis de Santa Cruz in 1583, but it is
clear that the date Angra, the capital of the island, is not an imprint,
but refers merely to the place where the despatch was written, and that
it was printed in Spain.
I am not quite sure whether Australia properly belongs to my subject,
but two circumstances of especial interest induce me to include it. One
is that the first Australian publication, the official _Sydney Gazette_
of 1803, is, I understand, at present a visitor to England in the
custody of Mr. Anderson, librarian of the public library at Sydney, who
contemplates reproducing it. The other is that what is believed to be
the first Australian book, as distinguished from a newspaper or official
notification, has been very recently acquired by the British Museum. It
is a narrative of the crimes and death of William Howe, the last and
worst of the bushrangers of Tasmania, and was printed at Hobart Town in
1817. It was noticed by the _Quarterly Review_ so long ago as 1819, when
it was prophesied that Australian bibliographers would one day fight for
it as fiercely as English collectors contend for Caxton's "Reynard the
Fox." If they do, they must fight with the Sydney Public Library, which,
I am informed, has three copies. There is also a copy in the Bodleian.
The subject of the beginning of printing by Europeans in Asia and Africa
is one which must gain in interest as printing itself extends.
Typography in these countries is as yet but in its infancy, for it has
not laid hold of the mass of the people. It seems evident that the
cumbrous Oriental alphabets must eventually give way to the simplicity
of Roman type, and then one great bar to the intercommunication of ideas
among Oriental nations will have ceased to exist. It may be that they
will go a step further, and employ a single language for the purposes of
general intercourse. So far as we can see at present, this language can
hardly be any other than English. Should this come to pass, Lord
Beaconsfield's celebrated saying, "England is a great Asiatic power,"
will prove true in a deeper and wider sense than he intended, and we
shall look back with augmented veneration to the labours of the zealous
and disinterested men who paved the way for European culture by first
bringing the European printing-press to the far East.
FOOTNOTES:
[115:1] Read before the London Meeting of the Library Association, 1896.
PARAGUAYAN AND ARGENTINE BIBLIOGRAPHY[127:1]
[_Bibliographica_, vol. i., pt. 3, published by Messrs. Kegan Paul &
Co.]
The great merit of the Spanish and Portuguese bibliographers has in some
degree missed recognition from the exceptional character of their
themes. They have done little for general bibliography or the literary
history of other nations, but, observant of the German precept, have
"swept before their own doors" in the most thorough manner. Nicolas
Antonio and Barbosa Machado have given magnificent examples of what may
be termed bio-bibliography, where not only the literary productiveness,
but the life of the author is the subject of investigation. There are
few books of the class to which resort can be made with so fair a
prospect of being able to find exactly what is required. The dimensions
of modern literature forbid the hope of such works being ever seen
again. Bibliography and biography must henceforth walk apart, or at
most, as in our own Dictionary of National Biography, one must sink into
a mere appendage to the other. Works like Antonio's or Machado's belong
to the extinct mammoths of the past: yet more modern Spanish and
Portuguese bibliographers have displayed equal diligence in more
restricted fields. It would be difficult to praise too highly the
research of a Mendez, a Salva, or an Icazbalceta, who, like their
predecessors, manage to convey the impression of having exhausted their
subjects. To these is now to be added Señor Jose Toribio Medina, a
Chilian gentleman who has taken an entire continent for his province. In
1891 he produced his bibliography of Chilian literature to 1810, the era
of South American independence. In 1892 the assistance of the Museo de
la Plata, stimulated by the approaching congress at Huelva in
commemoration of the discovery of America, enabled him to publish his
bibliography of the Argentine Republic, including Paraguay and Uruguay,
on a scale, and with a wealth of illustration, to ensure the book, if
not the author, a foremost place amongst bibliographical mammoths, and
to suggest that it might be used as collateral security for a new
Argentine loan, could such things be. Compared with the tiny but
serviceable lists of early South American books which Señor Medina has
so frequently published in limited editions, his present volume is as
the Genie outside the vase to the Genie within, and it must be the
earnest hope of all interested in bibliographical research, and
especially of all those who from personal acquaintance have learned to
appreciate his indefatigable patriotism and single-minded earnestness,
that the step now taken in advance may not be retraced, but that he may
find encouragement to produce the still more important bibliography of
Peru, now nearly ready for the press, with equal completeness, if not on
a scale equally magnificent. When this has been effected, Señor Medina
will be at no loss for more worlds to conquer. "We shall follow up the
subject," he says, "with the history of printing in the
Captain-Generalship of Quito, in Bogota, Havana, Guatemala, and, please
Heaven, in the Viceroyalty of Mexico, the cradle of the typographic art
in America. Finally, we shall publish the general history of printing in
the old Spanish colonies, for which we shall be able to employ a great
number of documents hitherto entirely unknown."
The history of South American typography is as interesting in a
bibliographical, as it is barren in a literary point of view. The
hand-list of the productions of the Lima Press in colonial days, already
published by Señor Medina, would alone be a sufficient indictment of
Spanish rule, and a sufficient apology for the mistakes of the
emancipated colonists. Apart from religious books published in the
native languages, and the grammars and dictionaries associated with
them, scarcely anything can be found indicative of intellectual life, or
imparting anything that the citizen needs to know. Public ceremonies,
bull-fights, legends of saints, theses in scholastic philosophy, make up
the dreary catalogue, and show how a lively and gifted people were
systematically condemned, in so far as their rulers' power extended, to
frivolity, superstition and ignorance. But if South America was for
nearly three centuries a desert for literature, it was and is a happy
hunting-ground for bibliography. The limited interest and limited
circulation of such books as were produced conspired to make them rare;
the best religious and philological works in Indian languages were
commonly worn out or mutilated by constant use; local difficulties
occasioned the production of others under peculiar and even romantic
circumstances; such as the half-dozen perhaps printed, certainly
published at Juli, twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea; or
those rude but deeply interesting Paraguayan books which form the
subject of Señor Medina's first chapter.[130:1]
The extreme difficulty of introducing any kind of literature into South
America under the Spanish régime, cannot be better illustrated than by
the history of the first Paraguayan book, now extant in a single copy in
the library of Señor Trelles, a citizen of the Argentine Republic. First
of all, about 1693, Father Jose Serrano translates Father Nieremberg's
treatise "on the difference between things temporal and things
eternal," into Guarani, the vernacular of the Paraguay Indians. Father
Tirso Gonzalez, the head of the mission, thinks it well that this
translation and another of Ribadeneira's "Flos Sanctorum," also made by
Father Serrano, should be printed nearer home than at Lima, the only
city in the vast South American continent then in possession of a
printing-press. Though they are religious works of the most edifying
character, it is necessary to memorialise the Council of the Indies.
Father Gonzalez does not make up his mind to this step until December
1699. At length, however, he writes to Spain, obtains permission, and,
by the beginning of 1703, types have been cast and the numerous
engravings in the Antwerp edition of Nieremberg's treatise copied by the
native Indians, whose extraordinary imitative talent is celebrated by
Father Labbe, who visited La Plata about this time. "I have seen," he
says, "beautiful pictures executed by them, books very correctly printed
by them, organs and all kinds of musical instruments. They make pocket
timepieces, draw plans, engrave maps, &c."[131:1] One thing, however,
they could not do, found types of proper hardness, inasmuch as the
requisite metal for alloy did not exist. The consequent blurred
appearance of the impression has led high authorities to assert that
the types were made of hard wood, which would not _a priori_ have
appeared improbable. The late lamented Mr. Talbot Reed, however, assured
the present writer that this could not have been the case; and Señor
Medina proves by an official letter, written in 1784, more than twenty
years after the ruin of the missions, that the material was tin. The
types which existed at that period have disappeared, the remains of the
printing-press are still extant in the La Plata Museum. Señor Medina
thinks that they ought to be restored: and so do we, provided only that
enough remains to distinguish restoration from re-creation.
The book, announced as about to be printed in January 1703, eventually
made its appearance in 1705; with the licenses of the Viceroy of Peru,
the Dean of Asuncion, and the acting provincial of the Jesuits, two
recommendations by divines, and two dedications by Father Serrano
himself, the first to the Holy Spirit, who is addressed as "Your
Majesty"; the second to Father Gonzalez. The place of imprint is given
as "en las Doctrinas," probably the mission station of Santa Maria la
Mayor. We must refer our readers to Señor Medina's volume for the
interesting and minute bibliographical particulars it affords, as well
as for the facsimiles of the original engravings, a remarkable episode
in the history of the art, and only made accessible through Señor
Medina's instrumentality, since the original exists in but a single
copy.
The reader will have observed Father Labbe's statement that he has seen
_books_ printed by the Indians. At least one other book, therefore,
should have been executed by them between 1705 and 1710, and Father
Serrano undoubtedly intended to publish his Guarani version of
Ribadeneira's "Flos Sanctorum." If he did, no trace of the publication
exists at present, nor is any further record of typography in Paraguay
found until 1721, when a little liturgical manual for the use of
missionaries, entirely in Guarani, with the exception of the first
fifteen leaves, was printed at the mission station of Loreto. In 1722
and 1724 the "Vocabulario de la Lengua Guarani" and the "Arte de la
Lengua Guarani," both by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, a Peruvian missionary
of the seventeenth century, were reprinted from the original Spanish
editions, with copious additions, those to the latter work certainly,
those to the former probably, by Paulo Restivo. Both these books were
printed at Santa Maria la Mayor, as also was the catechism of Nicolas
Yapuguai, a native Paraguayan, in 1724. His "Sermones y Exemplos"
appeared at San Francisco Xavier in 1727, and in the same year and at
the same place was printed the letter of the unfortunate ex-governor
Joseph Antequera y Castro, indited in his prison at Lima, to his
adversary the Bishop of Paraguay, who apparently only allowed it to be
printed that he might add a more prolix reply. From this time until
after the overthrow of Spanish authority, all trace of a press in
Paraguay disappears. It should be added that the seven books recorded
are undoubtedly productions of one and the same press, although the
place of imprint is frequently varied. One curiosity remains to be
mentioned, a fragment of a Guarani catechism and syllabary, consisting
of two wooden leaves paginated 4 and 13, on which characters are cut in
relief precisely as in Chinese stereotypic printing. It is to be
supposed that they are older than the books printed with movable types.
They are in the library of Señor Lamas, to whom they were presented by
an English traveller.
Four out of these seven books are in the British Museum—the Vocabulario
and Arte of Ruiz de Montoya, Yapuguai's Catechism, and the letter of
Antequera y Castro. The first two were presented in 1818 by Mr. George
Bellas Greenough, the founder of the Geological Society. The Catechism
was purchased in 1889, and the letter in 1893. The latter is the only
copy hitherto known, and is the only one of the seven books of which
some portion is not facsimiled by Señor Medina.
Printing had died out in Paraguay before its introduction into any other
portion of the great La Plata region. It revived under Jesuit auspices
at Cordova, where towards the end of the seventeenth century a college
had been founded by Duarte y Quiros, which had become the chief
educational institution of the country. By 1765 it had attained
sufficient consequence to become sensible of the inconvenience of being
unable to print its theses and other academical documents, which, so
wretched was the provision then made for the intellectual needs of the
Spanish colonies, could only be done at Lima, more than a thousand miles
off on the other side of the Andes. The Viceroy of Peru was accordingly
appealed to, and permission obtained, fenced with all imaginable
precautions and restrictions. No time was lost in printing five
panegyrical orations upon the pious founder Duarte y Quiros, probably by
Father Peramas, which appeared in 1766. Two, or possibly three, minor
publications, now entirely lost, had followed, when the existence of the
press was abruptly terminated by the suppression of the Jesuits, and
Cordova never saw another until after the independence. The types,
however, not tin like the Paraguayan, but imported from Spain and cast
_secundum artem_, were preserved in the college, and in 1780 were
transferred to Buenos Ayres, where it had been resolved to introduce
typography; not for its own sake, but as a means of raising money
towards the support of a foundling hospital, endowed with the proceeds
of the printing-press. Official and ecclesiastical patronage were not
wanting; by the end of 1781 twenty-seven publications of various
descriptions, mostly of course on a very small scale, had issued from
the Buenos Ayres press. The first of any kind was a proclamation
relating to the militia, facsimiled by Señor Medina; the first deserving
the character of a book was, as in British North America, an almanac.
The most interesting from their subject were pastoral letters by two
bishops on the overthrow of the rebel cacique Tupac Amaru in Peru. The
press continued to thrive, and in 1789 it was necessary to procure a
new fount of type from Spain. The total number of publications known to
the end of 1810 is 851—a very large proportion of which, however, are
merely fly-sheets. Some, nevertheless, are of exceptional interest, such
as the translation of Dodsley's "Economy of Human Life," perhaps the
first translation of an English book ever published in Spanish America,
and the numerous broadsides attesting the impression at first produced
in the colonies by Napoleon's invasion of the mother country. Eight
proclamations by General Beresford during the brief occupation of the
city by the British forces in 1806 are of especial interest to
Englishmen. In one Beresford endeavours to conciliate the good-will of
the inhabitants by promising deliverance from the financial oppression
of the Spanish colonial system. They soon afterwards took the matter
into their own hands: the publications for the last months over which
Señor Medina's labours extend are chiefly proclamations by the Junta and
similar revolutionary documents. Among them, duly facsimiled by Señor
Medina, is the proclamation of the Junta, with the date of May 23, 1810,
announcing the virtual deposition of the Viceroy, the first document of
Buenos Ayrean independence, although the authority of Ferdinand the
Seventh is still acknowledged in name, and the autonomy of the country
was not proclaimed until 1816. Another curiosity, also facsimiled, is a
proclamation in Spanish and Quichua, "from the most persecuted
American," Iturri Patiño, to the inhabitants of Cochabamba in Upper
Peru, more than a thousand miles from Buenos Ayres, exhorting them to
welcome their deliverers. The interest is greatly enhanced by Señor
Medina's industry in tracing out other works of the writers, published
in other parts of South America.