LATER FOREIGN BOOKS
One of the chief charms of the books of the fifteenth century is that
they are so unlike those of our own day. In the first year of its
successor a great step was taken towards their modernization by the
production of the first of the Aldine octavos, and the process went on
very rapidly. In the early days of printing all the standard works of
the previous three centuries that could by any possibility be considered
alive were put on the press. By 1500 men were thinking of new things.
New editions of many of the old religious and didactic treatises, the
old poems and romances, continued to be printed, though mostly in a form
which suggests that they were now intended for a lower class of readers,
but the new publishers would have little to do with them. Scholarship,
which till now had been almost confined to Italy, spread rapidly to all
the chief countries of Europe, and amid the devastation which constant
war soon brought upon Italy, was lucky in being able to find new homes.
With the new literary ideals came new forms for books, and new methods
of housing them. Before 1500 several publishers had found it worth their
while to print editions in five huge volumes of the _Speculum_ of
Vincent de Beauvais, each volume measuring eighteen inches by thirteen
and weighing perhaps a dozen pounds, though paper in those days was not
yet made of clay. These great volumes had been cased in thick wooden
boards, covered with stout leather and protected with bosses or
centre-pieces and corner-pieces of metal. They were not intended to
stand on shelves like modern books, but were laid on their sides,
singly, on shelves and desks, and from pictures which have come down to
us we can see that the library furniture of the day included a variety
of reading-stands with the most wonderful of screws. The men for whom
Aldus catered wanted books which they could put in their pockets and
their saddlebags, and it was not long before the publishers of Paris and
Lyon outdid Aldus in the smallness and neatness of their editions. Of
course large books continued to be issued. The _Complutensian Polyglott_
will not easily be got either into a pocket or a saddlebag, but it is a
good deal smaller than the _Speculum_ of Vincent de Beauvais, and,
speaking generally, small folios took the place of large folios, and
octavos the place of quartos, and in a little time the octavos
themselves were threatened by the still smaller sextodecimos. There is,
indeed, no stop till in the seventeenth century we come to the tiny
Elzevirs, which remained the last word in book-production until the
diamond editions of Didot and Pickering.
Aldus Manutius, who led the revolution, has often been wrongly praised.
He can hardly be called a great printer. He burdened Greek scholarship
for three centuries with a thoroughly bad style in Greek types, and the
cursive substitute which he provided for the fine roman founts for which
Italy had been famous almost drove them from the field. Both the Greek
type and the italics were the outcome of confused thinking. They were
based upon styles of handwriting which Aldus and his scholarly friends
doubtless found more expeditious than the formal book-hands which had
previously been in use. Quickness in writing is an excellent thing. But
a sloping type takes just as long to set up as an upright one, and
absolutely nothing is gained by the substitution of an imitation of a
quicker hand for the imitation of a slower one.
Aldus had begun publishing at Venice early in 1495[43] with an edition
of the Greek grammar of Lascaris, an earlier edition of which, issued at
Milan in 1476, had been the first book wholly in Greek to obtain the
honour of print. The Idylls of Theocritus and the poem of Hesiod called
_Works and Days_ had been printed at the same place in 1479 and a Greek
Psalter in 1487. At Florence the famous first edition of Homer was
printed (by Bartolommeo Libri) in 1488, and was followed in the years
1494-6 (i.e. about the time that Aldus began work) by five books printed
entirely in majuscules on the model of the letters used in inscriptions.
Among these books were the Greek Anthology, four plays of Euripides, and
an Apollonius Rhodius. The printing of the Greek classics had thus made
a start, although a slow one. Aldus now greatly quickened the pace,
producing his great Aristotle in four (or, as it is sometimes reckoned,
five) volumes, between the years 1495 and 1498, and following it up with
nine comedies of Aristophanes in 1498, Thucydides, Sophocles, and
Herodotus in 1502, Xenophon's _Hellenics_, and the plays of Euripides in
1503 and Demosthenes in 1504. The service which he thus rendered to
Greek scholarship was incalculable, but it was accompanied by a very
serious drawback, the evil effects of which lasted for nearly three
centuries. The Greek quotations in many books printed in Italy before
this time had been printed in types imitating the writing in fairly old
Greek manuscripts, handsome in appearance and fairly free from
contractions; Aldus is said to have taken as his model the handwriting
of his friend Marcus Musurus, with all its crabbed and often fantastic
ligatures, and the simplicity of the Greek alphabet was thus intolerably
complicated.
As we have seen, the introduction of the Aldine italics, though in
themselves a better fount than the Greek type, was almost as mischievous
in its effects. On the other hand, the service which Aldus rendered to
scholarship by his cheap and handy series of the Latin and Italian
classics was very great. The first book which he printed in his new type
was a Virgil, and this was quickly followed by works by Petrarch and
Dante and a whole series of similar editions. Aldus had powerful
supporters in these ventures, among them being Jean Grolier, the famous
bibliophile, who for many years was resident in Italy as Treasurer of
the Duchy of Milan. Despite this encouragement he did not find printing
very profitable, partly, no doubt, on account of the wars in which
Venice was at this time engaged.
On the death of Aldus in 1515 his business was for some time carried on
by his father-in-law, Andrea de Torresani, an excellent printer, but
with little of Aldus's scholarship. In 1533, at the age of twenty-one,
Paulus Manutius, the youngest son of Aldus, took over the management of
the firm, and proved himself an even finer scholar than his father.
Financially he was no more successful, and when he was made printer to
the Pope the anxiety of carrying on business at Rome as well as at
Venice only added to his difficulties. On his death in 1574 his son,
Aldus Manutius the younger, succeeded him and worked till 1597, but
without adding anything to the reputation of the firm, perhaps because
he had been pushed on prematurely in his boyhood, as is witnessed by his
compilation of a volume of elegant extracts at the age of nine.
The family of printers and publishers which came nearest to rivalling
the fame of the Aldi in Italy during the sixteenth century was that of
the Giunta. Springing originally from Florence, members of it worked for
some time simultaneously at Florence and Venice, and Lucantonio Giunta,
the earliest member of it to rise into note, was already one of the
foremost publishers at Venice in the closing years of the fifteenth
century, and subsequently printed for himself instead of always
employing other men to print for him. The speciality of this Venetian
firm was at first illustrated books of all kinds, afterwards the
production of large and magnificent missals and other service books of
the Roman Church, and these they continued to publish until nearly the
end of the sixteenth century.
At Florence, Filippo Giunta competed with Aldus of Venice in printing
pretty little editions of the classics, his competition sometimes taking
the form of unscrupulous imitation.
At Rome, Eucharius Silber and his successor Marcellus were the chief
printers from 1500 to 1516. A little later the Bladi took their place,
and under the auspices of the Council of the Propaganda of the Faith a
press was set up for printing in Syriac, Armenian, and other Oriental
languages. The output also of the presses in other Italian cities was
still considerable. Nevertheless, from the same causes which produced
her political decay Italy rapidly ceased to be the head-quarters of
European printing, yielding this honour to France about the end of the
first quarter of the century, and by some thirty or forty years later
becoming quite uninfluential.
To the German printing trade, also, the sixteenth century brought a
notable decline of reputation. In its first two decades Johann Schoeffer
(son of Peter) produced some fine books at Mainz; at Strassburg
Gruninger poured forth illustrated books, and Johann Knoblouch and
Matthias Schurer were both prolific. The importance of Cologne
diminished, though the sons of Heinrich Quentell had a good business.
Augsburg, on the other hand, came to the front, the elder and younger
Schoensperger, Johann and Silvanus Otmar, Erhard Oglin, Johann Miller,
and the firm of Sigismund Grim and Marcus Wirsung all doing important
work. At Nuremberg the chief printing houses were those of Hieronymus
Holzel, Johann Weissenburger, and Friedrich Peypus. Leipzig and Hagenau
both greatly increased their output, and with the advent of Luther,
Wittenberg soon became an important publishing centre. Luther's activity
alone would have sufficed to make the fortunes of any publisher had it
not been for the fact that as each pamphlet from his pen was produced at
Wittenberg by Hans Lufft, or some other authorized printer, it was
promptly pirated in other cities, often with the retention of the
original imprint. Many of these Luther tracts had ornamental borders,
and, as will be narrated in another chapter, the German
book-illustrations of this period were often very finely designed, but
the paper used, even in important books, was poor compared to that found
in German incunabula, and the presswork too often careless. These
defects are found intensified in almost all the German books published
after this date, and German printing soon lost all its technical
excellence, though the output of its presses continued to be large, and
the great annual fair at Frankfort during the course of the sixteenth
century became the most important event in the book-trade of Northern
Europe.
A little before Germany gave herself up to theological strife, the
conjunction at Basel of the great printer Johann Froben and the great
scholar Erasmus temporarily raised that city to importance as an
intellectual centre. Froben had begun printing at Basel in 1491, but
until he formed his friendship with Erasmus in 1513 published only a few
editions of the Bible, some of the papal Decretals, the works of S.
Ambrose, and a few other books of no special interest. From 1513 onwards
his output increased rapidly both in quantity and importance, so that by
the time of his death in 1527 he had printed over three hundred books,
including almost all the works of Erasmus and many books in Greek.
During this period, also, border-pieces and initials were designed for
him by the two Holbeins (Hans and Ambrosius) and other skilful artists,
and he was entitled to rank as the greatest printer-publisher in Europe
in succession to Aldus. After his death in 1527 the supremacy of
European printing rested for the next generation indisputably with
France.
During the fifteenth century printing in France had developed almost
entirely on its own lines. Vernacular books of every description had
poured from the presses of Paris and Lyon, and many of them had been
charmingly illustrated in a style worthy of the great French school of
illustrators of manuscripts. In the first half of the sixteenth century
the publication of these popular books--romances, poetry, and works of
devotion--still continued, though with some loss of quality, the print
and paper being less good and the illustrations often consisting of a
medley of old blocks, or where new ones were made being executed in a
coarser and heavier style. But to the vernacular literature there was
now added a learned and scholarly literature which soon rose to great
importance. As early as 1492 Johann Trechsel, a printer of Lyon, had
possessed himself of sufficient Greek type to print quotations in that
language, and in the following year he issued the profusely illustrated
edition of _Terence_, the cuts in which were imitated by Gruninger at
Strassburg. Trechsel's press corrector and general editor was a young
scholar named Josse Bade, of Asch, near Ghent, better known by the Latin
form of his name as Jodocus Badius Ascensius, or Ascensianus. In 1503,
after Trechsel's death, Ascensius started business for himself in Paris,
and his editions of the classics, well known from the device of a
printing-press found on many of their titlepages, obtained a
considerable reputation. Almost simultaneously, in 1502, Henri Estienne,
the first of a famous family of scholar-printers, had started in
business by an expedient of which we hear a great deal in the annals of
English printing, that of marrying a printer's widow. Of Henri
Estienne's three sons the eldest, Francois, became a bookseller, Robert
a scholar-printer, and Charles, in the first instance, a physician. In
the technical side of his business Henri had been helped by Simon de
Colines, who, on his employer's death, in 1520, became his widow's third
husband, and carried on the business until 1526, when he handed it over
to Robert Estienne, and started on his own account in another house in
the same street. Thus, just as the co-operation of Erasmus with Froben,
which began shortly before the death of Aldus, brought the Basel press
into prominence, so this duplication, just before the death of Froben,
of the business of Henri Estienne with the two firms of Robert Estienne
and Simon de Colines materially aided the rivalry of Paris. Greek
printing, which by this time had become essential to a printer's
reputation for scholarship, had at last begun there with the publication
of a Greek Grammar in 1507, and had increased somewhat, though not very
rapidly. In 1539 Francois I appointed Robert Estienne royal printer for
Latin and Hebrew, and Conrad Neobar, a German from the diocese of
Cologne, his printer for Greek. It was soon after this that plans were
formed for the printing of Greek texts from manuscripts in the royal
library, and the preparation for this purpose of a special fount of
Greek type. Neobar died from overwork the following year, and the office
of royal printer in Greek was added to Robert Estienne's other honours,
and with it the supervision of the new Greek type. For this Angelus
Vergetius, a celebrated Greek calligrapher, had probably already made
the drawings, and the cutting of the punches was entrusted to Claude
Garamond. By 1544 a fount of great primer had been completed and a book
printed in it, the _Praeparatio Euangelica_ of Eusebius. A smaller type,
of the size known as pica, was next put in hand, and a pocket Greek
Testament in sextodecimo printed with it in 1546. Lastly, a third fount,
larger than either of the others, was produced and used for the text of
a folio Greek Testament in 1550, the other two founts appearing in the
prefatory matter and notes. These royal Greek types became very famous
and served as a model to all designers of Greek characters for nearly
two centuries. Technically, indeed, they are as good as they could be,
showing a great advance in clearness and dignity upon those of Aldus,
from which nevertheless they inherited the fatal defect of being based
on the handwriting of contemporary Greek scholars, instead of on the
book-hand of a nobler period of Greek writing.
While the name of Robert Estienne is thus connected with these royal
Greek types he was himself distinctly a Latinist, and his own personal
contribution to scholarship was a Latin Dictionary (_Thesaurus Linguae
Latinae_) published in 1532, which remained a standard work for two
centuries. He published, too, as did also Simon de Colines, many very
pretty little editions of Latin classics in sextodecimo, some in
italics, others in roman type, thus carrying a step further the
triumphant march of the small book, which Aldus had only taken as far as
octavos. Simon de Colines, while sharing in work of this kind, did not
neglect other classes of literature, and, as has already been noted,
joined with Geoffroi Tory, another scholar-printer, who was also a
scholar-artist, in producing some remarkable editions of the Hours of
the Blessed Virgin.
This scholar-artist, Geoffroi Tory, was a native of Bourges, who had
been a professor at several of the Paris colleges and was at one time
proof-reader to Henri Estienne. His career as a printer began in 1522
and ended with his death in 1533, after which his business was carried
on by Olivier Mallard, who married his widow. Tory printed a few
scholarly books and wrote and published a curious work, to which he gave
the name _Champfleury_, on the right forms and proportions of the
letters of the alphabet. It is, however, by his Books of Hours that he
is now chiefly remembered.
While all this good work was going on in Paris the printers at Lyon were
no less busy. At the beginning of the century Aldus had been justly
annoyed at the clever counterfeits of his italic octavos which were put
on the market at Lyon. But in Sebastian Gryphius (a German, born in 1491
at Reutlingen) Lyon became possessed of a printer who had no need to
imitate even Aldus. After printing one or two works in the four
preceding years his press got into full swing in 1528 and, by the time
of his death in 1556 he had issued very nearly a thousand different
editions, mostly in Latin, and many of them in the dainty format in
sextodecimo which Estienne and de Colines were using in Paris. In 1534
the luckless Etienne Dolet, soon to be burnt as a heretic, arrived at
Lyon, and with some friendly help from Gryphius printed between 1538 and
1544 some seventy editions. In 1546 Jean de Tournes, who had been a
journeyman in the office of Gryphius, started business for himself, and
soon proved a worthy rival to his master. Meanwhile excellent popular
work was being done by other printers, such as Francois Juste, Claude
Nourry, Mace Bonhomme, and Guillaume Roville. From the old Lyonnese firm
of Trechsel proceeded in 1538 two books illustrated by Holbein (the
_Dance of Death_ and _Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones_, see p.
192), and numerous other Lyonnese books were charmingly illustrated and
also, it may be added, charmingly bound, a very pretty style of trade
bindings being just then in vogue.
Against the pretty bindings and vignettes and the popular books to which
they were applied little or no opposition was raised, and they continued
to be issued till the taste for them died out about 1580. But against
all the scholarly work of the French presses the leaders of the Church
took up an attitude of unrelenting hostility. Foremost in this
opposition, regretful that their predecessors had introduced printing
into France, were the theologians of the Sorbonne, who forbade the study
of Hebrew as dangerous and likely to lead to heresy, and looked with
eyes almost as unfriendly on that of Greek. In 1546 (just after the
iniquitous campaign against the Vaudois) Etienne Dolet was hanged on a
charge of atheism, and his body cut down and burnt amid a pile of his
books. In 1550, despite his position as a royal printer, Robert
Estienne, who had just completed his fine folio edition of the Greek
Testament, was obliged to seek safety by flying to Geneva, and a
generation later Jean de Tournes the younger, of Lyon, was obliged to
follow his example. The kings of France and their advisers at this
period were determined to be rid of both Huguenots and Freethinkers at
all costs, and French scholarship and French printing were both the
recipients of blows from which it took them some generations to recover.
When Robert Estienne fled to Geneva, his brother, the physician,
Charles, was allowed to succeed to his office at Paris, and he in turn
was followed by a younger Robert, who died in 1571. Meanwhile Robert I
had taken with him a set of matrices of the royal Greek types, and with
these and other founts printed at Geneva until his death in 1559. His
son, Henri Estienne II, then took over the business, but was of too
restless and roving a disposition to conduct it with success. As a
scholar he was even greater than his father, excelling in Greek as
Robert had in Latin, and producing in 1572 a Greek dictionary
(_Thesaurus Graecae Linguae_) which became as famous as the Latin one
which Robert had published forty years earlier. Henri Estienne the
younger died in 1598, but the Estienne tradition was kept up by his son
Paul (1566-1627) and grandson Antoine (1592-1674), the latter bringing
back into the family the office of royal printer at Paris, and printing
an edition of the Septuagint.
Under the discouraging conditions of the middle of the sixteenth century
French printers gradually ceased to be scholars and enthusiasts, but
Christopher Plantin, a Frenchman, born in the neighbourhood of Tours in
1514, built up by his energy and industry a great business at Antwerp,
the memory of which is preserved in the famous Plantin Museum. He had
started at Antwerp in 1549 as a binder, but about six years later turned
his attention to printing, in consequence (it is said) of an accident
which disabled him for binding-work. The most famous of his books is the
great Antwerp Polyglott edition of the Bible in eight volumes, published
between the years 1569 and 1573. Over this he came so near to ruining
himself that the Spanish Government granted him special privileges for
the production of service-books by way of compensation. The sack of
Antwerp by the Spaniards in 1576 was another heavy financial blow, and
for a time Plantin removed to Leyden, and also for a time kept a branch
business at Paris. But he ultimately returned to Antwerp, and his
premises remained in the possession of the descendants of one of his
sons-in-law, Joannes Moretus, until they were purchased in 1877 for
L48,000 as the Musee Plantin.
After Plantin's death the branch business which he had left at Leyden
was carried on by another of his sons-in-law, Franciscus Raphelengius,
who printed some pretty little editions of the classics and other good
books. Plantin's own work as a printer was costly and pretentious rather
than beautiful, and the bad style of his ornaments and initials
exercised a powerful influence for evil on the printers of the ensuing
century.
The mention of Plantin's Antwerp Polyglott may remind us that the first
Polyglott edition of the Bible had been printed between 1514 and 1518 at
Alcala, in Spain, under the auspices of Cardinal Ximenes. The Latin name
of Alcala being Complutum, this edition is generally quoted as the
Complutensian Polyglott. Among the notable features in it is the use of
a singularly fine Greek type in the New Testament. Absolutely different
from the Aldine and all the other Greek types imitating the rapid
handwriting of the Greek scholars of the sixteenth century, this was
based on the book-hand used in some early manuscript, possibly the one
which the Pope had lent from the Vatican to aid Cardinal Ximenes in
forming his text. It was on this Greek type that Mr. Robert Proctor,
shortly before his death, based his own fount of Greek, supplying the
majuscules which (with a single exception) are wanting in the original
and making other improvements, but keeping closely to his model and thus
producing by far the finest Greek type ever cast. This has been used to
print notable editions of the _Oresteia_ and _Odyssey_, the former at
the Chiswick, the latter at the Clarendon Press.
Save for the Complutensian Polyglott there is nothing striking to record
of the Spanish printing of the sixteenth century, which retained its
massive and archaic character for some decades, and then became as dull
and undistinguished as the printing of all the rest of Europe tended to
be towards the end of the century. The enthusiasm with which the new art
had at first been received had died out. Printers were no longer lodged
in palaces, monasteries, and colleges; Church and State, which had at
first fostered and protected them, were now jealous and suspicious, even
actively hostile. Thriving members of other occupations and professions
had at one time taken to the craft. A little later great scholars had
been willing to give their help and advice, and at least a few printers
had themselves been men of learning. All this had passed or was passing.
Printing had sunk to the level of a mere craft, and a craft in which the
hours appear to have been cruelly long and work uncertain and badly
paid. In the eighteenth century the Dutch journeymen were certainly
better paid than our own, and it may be that it was through better pay
that they did better work in the seventeenth century also. It seems
certain, moreover, that the improvements in the construction of printing
presses which were introduced in that century originated in Holland. The
primacy of the Dutch is proved by the large amount of Dutch type
imported into England, and indeed the Dutch books of the seventeenth
century are neater and in better taste than those of other countries. It
was in Holland also that there worked the only firm of printers of this
period who made themselves any abiding reputation. The founder of this
firm, Louis Elzevir, was a bookseller and bookbinder at Leyden, where,
in 1583, he began printing on his own account, and issued between that
year and his death in 1617 over a hundred different books of no very
special note. No fewer than five of his seven sons carried on his
business, and the different combinations of these and of their
successors in different towns are not a little bewildering. Bonaventura
Elzevir with his nephew Abraham issued pretty little editions of the
classics in very small type in 12mo and 16mo, of which the most famous
are the Greek Testament of 1624 and 1633, the Virgil, Terence, Livy,
Tacitus, Pliny, and Caesar of 1634-6, and a similar series of French
historical and political works and French and Italian classics. After
the deaths of Abraham and Bonaventura in 1652 the business was carried
on by their respective sons Jean and Daniel, who issued famous editions
of the _Imitatio Christi_ and the Psalter. Meanwhile Louis Elzevir
(another grandson of the founder) had been working at Amsterdam, and in
1654 was joined there by Daniel, the new partnership producing some fine
folio editions. Other members of the family went on working at Utrecht
and Leyden until as late as 1712, so that its whole typographical career
extended over a hundred and thirty years. But it is only the little
classical editions, and a French cookery book called _Le Pastissier
Francois_, that are at all famous, and the fame of these (the little
classics being troublesome to read and having more than a fair share of
misprints, though edited by David Heinsius) probably rests on a
misconception. These small classical editions were the last word for two
centuries in that development of the Small Book which we have already
traced in the Aldine editions at Venice, those of De Colines and Robert
Estienne of Paris, of Sebastian Gryphius at Lyons, and of the successors
of Plantin at Antwerp. Now the small books of the Elzevirs were produced
at a very important period in the history of bookbinding, and when we
hear of large sums having been paid for an Elzevir it will mostly turn
out that the excellence of its binding has had a good deal to do with
the price. The cookery book is an exception, the value of this, though
often enhanced by a fine binding, being yet considerable, even in a
shabby jacket. But the interest in this case is due to the antiquarian
instincts of book-loving gourmets, and not in any way to the printing.
The little classics, even when of the right date and with all the right
little headpieces and all the right misprints, have never been worth on
their own merits more than a few pounds, while shabby, cropped copies
have no selling value whatever.
FOOTNOTE:
[43] He was born at Bassiano in the Papal States in 1450.