The invention of printing, we have often been told, added to book
production only the two commercial elements of speed and cheapness. As
regards the book itself, we are assured, printing not only added
nothing, but, during the four and a half centuries of its development,
has constantly tended to take away. These statements are no doubt
historically and theoretically true, yet they are so unjust to the
present-day art that some supplementary statement of our obligations to
printing seems called for, aside from the obvious rejoinder that, even
if speed and cheapness are commercial qualities, they have reached a
development--especially in the newspaper--beyond the dreams of the most
imaginative fifteenth-century inventor, and have done nothing less than
revolutionize the world.
Taking the service of printing as it stands to-day, what does it
actually do for the reader? What is the great difference between the
printed word and even the best handwriting? It is obviously the
condensation and the absolute mechanical sameness of print. The
advantage of these differences to the eye in respect to rapid reading is
hardly to be overestimated. Let any one take a specimen of average
penmanship and note the time which he consumes in reading it; let him
compare with this the time occupied in reading the same number of
printed words, and the difference will be startling; but not even so
will it do justice to print, for handwriting average in quality is very
far from average in frequency. If it be urged that the twentieth-century
comparison should be between typewriting and print, we may reply that
typewriting _is_ print, though it lacks most of its condensation, and
that the credit for its superior legibility belongs to typography, of
which the new art is obviously a by-product. But we are not yet out of
the manuscript period, so far as private records are concerned, and it
still is true, as it has been for many generations, that print
multiplies the years of every scholar's and reader's life.
At this point we may even introduce a claim for print as a contributor
to literature. There are certainly many books of high literary standing
that never would have attained their present form without the
intervention of type. It is well known that Carlyle rewrote his books in
proof, so that the printer, instead of attempting to correct his
galleys, reset them outright. Balzac went a step further, and largely
wrote his novels in proof, if such an expression may be allowed. He so
altered and expanded them that what went to the printing office as copy
for a novelette finally came out of it a full-sized novel. Even where
the changes are not so extensive, as in the proof-sheets of the Waverley
Novels preserved in the Cornell University Library, it is interesting to
trace the alterations which the author was prompted to make by the sight
of his paragraphs clothed in the startling distinctness of print. Nor is
this at all surprising when one considers how much better the eye can
take in the thought and style of a composition from the printed page
than it can even from typewriting. The advantage is so marked that some
publishers, before starting on an expensive literary venture, are
accustomed to have the copy set up on the linotype for the benefit of
their critics. If the work is accepted, the revisions are made on these
sheets, and then, finally, the work is sent back to the composing room
to receive the more elaborate typographic dress in which it is to
appear.
But to return to the advantages of type to the reader. Handwriting can
make distinctions, such as punctuation and paragraphing, but print can
greatly enforce them. The meaning of no written page leaps out to the
eye; but this is the regular experience of the reader with every
well-printed page. While printing can do nothing on a single page that
is beyond the power of a skillful penman, its ordinary resources are the
extraordinary ones of manuscript. It might not be physically impossible,
for instance, to duplicate with a pen a page of the Century Dictionary,
but it would be practically impossible, and, if the pen were our only
resource, we never should have such a marvel of condensation and
distinctness as that triumph of typography in the service of
scholarship.
In ordinary text, printing has grown away from the distinctions to the
eye that were in vogue two hundred years ago--a gain to art and perhaps
to legibility also, though contemporary critics like Franklin lamented
the change--but in reference books we have attained to a finer skill in
making distinctions to the eye than our forefathers achieved with all
their typographic struggles. Nor are our reference pages lacking in
beauty. But our familiarity with works of this class tends to obscure
their wonderful merit as time-savers and eye-savers. It is only when we
take up some foreign dictionary, printed with little contrast of type,
perhaps in German text, and bristling with unmeaning abbreviations, that
we appreciate our privilege. Surely this is a marvelous mechanical
triumph, to present the words of an author in such a form that the eye,
to take it in, needs but to sweep rapidly down the page, or, if it
merely glances at the page, it shall have the meaning of the whole so
focused in a few leading words that it can turn at once to the passage
sought, or see that it must look elsewhere. The saving of time so
effected may be interpreted either as a lengthening of life or as an
increased fullness of life, but it means also a lessening of friction
and thus an addition to human comfort.
We have been speaking of prose; but print has done as much or more to
interpret the meaning of poetry. We have before us a facsimile of
nineteen lines from the oldest Vatican manuscript of Vergil. The
hexameters are written in single lines; but this is the only help to the
eye. The letters are capitals and are individually very beautiful,
indeed, the lines are like ribbons of rich decoration; but the words are
not separated, and the punctuation is inconspicuous and primitively
simple, consisting merely of faint dots. Modern poetry, especially
lyric, with its wealth and interplay of rhyme, affords a fine
opportunity for the printer to mediate between the poet and his public,
and this he has been able to do by mere indention and leading, without
resorting to distinction of type. The reader of a sonnet or ballad
printed without these two aids to the eye is robbed of his rightful
clues to the construction of the verse. It seems hardly possible that a
poem could have been read aloud from an ancient manuscript, at sight,
with proper inflection; yet this is just what printing can make possible
for the modern reader. It has not usually done so, for the printer has
been very conservative; he has taken his conception of a page from
prose, and, not being compelled to, has not placed all the resources of
his art at the service of the poet. Accents, pauses, and certain
arbitrary signs might well be employed to indicate to the reader the
way the poet meant his line to be read. Milton curiously gave us some
metric hints by means of changes in spelling, but we have to read all
our other poets in the light of our own discernment, and it is not to be
wondered at if doctors disagree. Even the caesura, or pause in the
course of a long line, is not always easy to place. Francis Thompson, in
his poem "A Judgement in Heaven," has indicated this by an asterisk,
giving an example that might well be followed by other poets and their
printers. The regularity of eighteenth-century verse made little call
for guide-posts, but modern free meter, in proportion to its greater
flexibility and richness, demands more assistance to the reader's eye,
or even to his understanding. For instance, to read aloud hexameters or
other long lines, some of which have the initial accent on the first
syllable and some later, is quite impossible without previous study
supplemented by a marking of the page. Yet a few printed accents would
make a false start impossible. Poetry will never require the elaborate
aid from the printer which he gives to music; but it seems clear that he
has not yet done for it all that he might or should.
It is surely not an extreme assumption that the first duty of the
printer is to the meaning of his author, and his second to esthetics;
but shall we not rather say that his duty is to meet both demands, not
by a compromise, but by a complete satisfaction of each? A difficult
requirement, surely, but one that we are confident the twentieth-century
printer will not permit his critics to pronounce impossible.