The first who threw doubt on the recorded date of the Jerome was Conyers
Middleton in his ©Dissertation on the origin of Printing© published in
1735, and since then the opinion that 1468 is an error for 1478 (an X
having dropped out of “MCCCCLXXVIII”) has steadily gained ground with
the advance of critical methods, until authorities like Bradshaw and
Blades and Duff have come to regard the question as settled. The only
two separate and formal defences of the date (not counting incidental
passages in books) are a MS. in the Guildhall Library in London, in a
volume of Stukeley’s ©Palæographia Britannica© marked B. 2. 1, perhaps
written in about 1770, and S. W. Singer’s ©Some Account of the book
printed at Oxford in MCCCCLXVIII© (London, 1812, 50 copies for private
distribution), a work which the author subsequently called in as far as
he was able. In the former the arguments are of a general character,
such as that if, as Middleton asserted, the King had not leisure to
attend to such matters during Civil War, the archbishop _had_, and that
Caxton’s silence counts for nothing in the general obscurity which
surrounds the earliest printing presses. The Corsellis story is
accepted. Singer is more scientific, as befits the later date, and
adduces several of the technical arguments which may still be used.
It is now time to state the present aspect of the dispute, and to
ascertain how far the date “1468” is not only dubious but untenable. The
arguments against the date may be stated in presumed order of their
cogency, with the remarks on the other side which they severally
suggest.