Читать книгу The Printed Book - Bouchot Henri - Страница 2

Origin of the Book – Engravers in relief – The St. Christopher of 1423 – Origin of the Xylographs – The Xylographs, Donatus, and Speculum– The Laurent Coster legend – From block books to movable characters – John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg – The Strasbourg trial – Gutenberg at Mayence – Fust and Schoeffer – The letters of indulgence – The Bible – The Catholicon – The Mayence Bible – Causes of the dispersion of the first Mayence printers – General considerations.

LIKE its forerunner, Painting, the Book has ever been the most faithful reflection of the times when it was written and illustrated. Natural and genuine from the first, and simply embellished with crude illustrations, it assumed in the sixteenth century the grand airs of the Renaissance, gay or serious according to circumstances, decked in what were then called histoires– that is to say, wonderful engravings – and daintily printed in Gothic, Roman, or choice Italic characters. But at the close of the century it had already abandoned wood for line engravings, heightening its mysticism or its satire at the whim of passing politics and religious wranglings. Then, under the influence of the painters and courtiers of the Grand Monarque, it becomes completely transformed, donning the peruke, so to speak, indulging in allegory and conventionalities, pompous and showy, tricking itself out in columns and pilasters instead of the old arabesques and scroll work of the Renaissance, thus continuing amid the coquetries of the regency, the pastorals and insipidities of the following reigns, until at last it suddenly assumes with the heroes of the Revolution the austere mien and airs of classic art. The Book has always been as closely connected with the manners of our predecessors as art itself. The artist submits more than he thinks to the tendency of his surroundings; and if he at times makes his taste appreciated, it is because he has more or less received his first influence from others.

In the sixteenth century the fashion of emblematic representation placed under the portrait of Gaston de Foix a figure of a young plant in full bloom; and the inscription in Latin was "Nascendo maturus" – "Mature at birth." The Book deserves the same device; from its first day up to now it is a marvel of simplicity and harmony. The tentative efforts which preceded the discovery of printing were but few; it may be said that from the moment that Gutenberg conceived the idea of separating the characters, of arranging the words in the forme, of inking them, and of taking a proof on paper, the Book was perfect. At best we see in following times some modifications of detail; the art of printing was mature, mature from its birth.

But before arriving at the movable type placed side by side, and forming phrases, which appears to us to-day so simple and so ordinary, many years passed. It is certain that long before Gutenberg a means was found of cutting wood and metal in relief and reproducing by application the image traced. Signs-manual and seals were a kind of printing, inasmuch as the relief of their engraving is impressed upon a sheet by the hand. But between this simple statement and the uncritical histories of certain special writers, attributing the invention of engraving to the fourteenth century, there is all the distance of legendary history. Remembering that the numerous guilds of tailleurs d'images, or sculptors in relief, had in the Middle Ages the specialty of carving ivories and of placing effigies on tombs, it can be admitted without much difficulty, that these people one day found a means of multiplying the sketches of a figure often asked for, by modelling its contour in relief on ivory or wood, and afterwards taking a reproduction on paper or parchment by means of pressure. When and where was this discovery produced? We cannot possibly say; but it is certain that playing cards were produced by this means, and that from the year 1423 popular figures were cut in wood, as we know from the St. Christopher of that date belonging to Lord Spencer.

It is not our task to discuss this question at length, nor to decide if at first these reliefs were obtained on wood or metal. It is a recognised fact that the single sheet with a printed figure preceded the xylographic book in which text and illustration were cut in the same block. This process did not appear much before the second quarter of the fifteenth century, and it was employed principally for popular works which were then the universal taste. The engraving also was nothing more than a kind of imposition palmed off as a manuscript; the vignettes were often covered with brilliant colours and gold, and the whole sold as of the best quality.

The first attempts at these little figures in relief discovered by the image-makers and diffused by the makers of playing cards were but indifferent. The drawing and the cutting were equally unskilful, as may be seen in the facsimiles given by M. H. Delaborde in his Histoire de la Gravure. An attempt had been made to put some text at the foot of the St. Christopher of 1423, and the idea of giving more importance to the text was to the advantage of the booksellers. At the mercy of the writers who fleeced them, obliged to recoup themselves by the exaggerated prices of the most ordinary books, they hoped to turn engraving to account in order to obtain on better terms the technical work needed for their trade. At the epoch of the St. Christopher, in 1423, several works were in vogue in the universities, the schools, and with the public. Among the first of these was the Latin Syntax of Ælius Donatus on the eight parts of speech, a kind of grammar for the use of young students, as well as the famous Speculum, a collection of precepts addressed to the faithful, which were copied and recopied without satisfying the demand.

To find a means of multiplying these treatises at little cost was a fortune to the inventor. It is to be supposed that many artisans of the time attempted it; and without doubt it was the booksellers themselves, mostly mere dealers, who were tempted to the adventure by the sculptors and wood-cutters. But none had yet been so bold as to cut in relief a series of blocks with engravings and text to compose a complete work. That point was reached very quickly when some legend was engraved at the foot of a vignette, and it may be thought that the Donatus was the most ancient of books so obtained among the "Incunabuli," as we now call them, a word that signifies origin or cradle.

The first books then were formed of sheets of paper or parchment, laboriously printed from xylographic blocks, that is to say wooden blocks on which a tailleur d'images had left in relief the designs and the letters of the text. He had thus to trace his characters in reverse, so that they could be reproduced as written; he had to avoid faults, because a phrase once done, well or ill, lasted. It was doubtless this difficulty of correction that gave the idea of movable types. If the cutter seriously erred, it was necessary to cancel altogether the faulty block. This at least explains the legend of Laurent Coster, of Haarlem, who, according to Hadrian Junius, his compatriot, discovered by accident the secret of separate types while playing with his children. And if the legend of which we speak contains the least truth, it must be found in the sense above indicated, that is in the correction of faults, rather than in the innocent game of a merchant of Haarlem. However, we shall have occasion to return to the subject of these remarks. It should be well established that engraving in relief on wood alone gave the idea of making xylographic blocks and of composing books. Movable type, the capital point of printing, the pivot of the art of the Book, developed itself little by little, according to needs, when there was occasion to correct an erroneous inscription; but, in any case, its origin is unknown. Doubtless to vary the text, means were found to replace entire phrases by other phrases, preserving the original figures; and thus the light dawned upon these craftsmen, occupied in the manufacture and sale of their books.

According to Hadrian Junius, Laurent Janszoon Coster (the latter name signifying "the discoverer") published one of the celebrated series of works under the general title of Speculum which was then so popular (the mystic style exercising so great an attraction on the people of the fifteenth century), the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis. Written before the middle of the fifteenth century, made popular by manuscripts, in spite of its fantastic Latinity and of its false quantities, this ascetic and crude poem was easy of access to the xylographists. Junius, as we see, attributes to Laurent Coster the first impression of the Speculum, no longer the purely xylographic impression of the Donatus from an engraved block, but that of the more advanced manner in movable types. In point of fact, this book had at least four editions, similar in engravings and body of letters, but of different text. It must then be admitted that the fount was dispersed, and typography discovered, because the same cast of letters could not be adapted to different languages. On the other hand, the vignettes do not change, indicating sufficiently the mobility of the types. In comparison to what may be seen in later works, the illustrations of the Speculum are by no means bad; they have the appearance, at once naïve and picturesque, of the works of Van Eyck, and not at all of the style of the German miniaturists; properly illuminated and gilded, they lent themselves to the illusion of being confounded with the histoyres, drawn by the hand, and this is what the publisher probably sought.

All the xylographic works of the fifteenth century may be classed in two categories: the xylographs, rightly so called, or the block books, such as the Donatus, and the books with movable types, like the Speculum, of which we speak. This mystic and simple literature of pious works for the use of people of modest resources found in printing the means of more rapid reproduction. Then appeared the Biblia Pauperum, one of the most celebrated and the most often reproduced, and the Ars Moriendi, a kind of dialogue between an angel and a devil at the bedside of a dying person, which, inspired no doubt by older manuscripts, retained for a long time in successive editions the first tradition of its designs. On labels displayed among the figures are found inscribed the dialogue of the demons and angels seeking to attach to themselves the departing soul, the temptations of Satan on the subject of faith, and the responses of the angel on the same subject.

We can see what developments this theme could lend to the mysticism of the fifteenth century. Composed in eleven designs, the Ars Moriendi ran up to eight different editions. From the middle to the end of the fifteenth century, the text was in Latin, then in French, under the title L'Art au Morier. In the French edition will be found the blocks that served for the second impression of the work. About 1480, more than fifty years after the first essays, the Ars Moriendi enjoyed so much vogue that it employed all the resources of typography as much as in its earliest days. The original subjects, copied in a very mediocre manner, adorned the text, which was composed in Gothic letters, with a new and more explicit title: Tractatus brevis ac valde utilis de Arte et Scientia bene moriendi (4to, s.l.n.d.), but the order is inverted, figure 5 of the xylograph becoming No. 3 of the edition of 1480.

The Ars Memorandi, another xylographic work, of which the subject, taken from the New Testament, was equally well adapted to the imagination of the artists, had also a glorious destiny. The work originally comprised thirty blocks, the fifteen blocks of text facing the fifteen engravings. The designs represented the attributes of each of the Evangelists, with allegories and explanatory legends. Thus, in that which relates to the Apostle Matthew,

No. 1 represents the birth and genealogy of Jesus Christ,

No. 2 the offerings of the Magi,

No. 3 the baptism of St. John,

No. 4 the Temptation of Christ,

No. 5 the Sermon on the Mount,

No. 6 the parable of the birds.

The angel that supports the whole is the emblem of St. Matthew the Evangelist.

This mnemonic treatment of the Gospels began with symbols of which we have no means of finding the origin, but which without doubt were employed many centuries earlier. However that may be, their success was as great as that of the already-quoted works. In 1505 a German publisher put forth an imitation, under the title of Rationarium Evangelistarum; and this time the copier of the illustrations, retaining the tradition of the first xylographers, no less reveals an artist of the first order, at least a pupil of Martin Schongauer. Some of the conceptions of the Rationarium recall exactly the engravings of the great German master, among others that of the Infant Jesus (plate 12), which nearly approaches the style of the Infant Jesus of Schongauer; besides, the principal figures leave but little doubt on the subject. The same wings are on the angels and on the eagles, the same coiffures on the human characters, often the same attitudes.

From the preceding can be judged the extraordinary favour these productions enjoyed. From their origin they were diffused through the whole of Europe, and attracted the attention of excellent artists. Nevertheless their beginnings were difficult. The movable types used, cut separately in wood, were not constituted to give an ideal impression. We can understand the cost that the execution of these characters must have occasioned, made as they were one by one without the possibility of ever making them perfectly uniform. Progress was to substitute for this irregular process types that were similar, identical, easily produced, and used for a long time without breaking. Following on the essays of Laurent Coster, continuous researches bore on this point; but as the invention was said to be his, and it being of importance to him not to divulge it, so that he should not lose his profit, much time was lost over it in his workshop without much success. Here history is somewhat confused. Hadrian Junius positively accuses one of Laurent Coster's workmen of having stolen the secrets of his master and taken flight to Mayence, where he afterwards founded a printing office. According to Junius, the metal type was the discovery of the Dutchman, and the name of the thief was John. Who was this John? Was it John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg, or possibly John Fust? But it is not at all apparent that Gutenberg, a gentleman of Mayence, exiled from his country, was ever in the service of the Dutch inventor. As to Fust, we believe his only intervention in the association of printers of Mayence was as a money-lender, from which may be comprehended the unlikelihood of his having been with Coster, the more so as we find Gutenberg retired to Strasbourg, where he pursued his researches. There he was, as it were, out of his sphere, a ruined noble whose great knowledge was bent entirely on invention. Doubtless, like many others, he may have had in his hands one of the printed works of Laurent Coster, and conceived the idea of appropriating the infant process. In 1439 he was associated with two artisans of the city of Strasbourg, ostensibly in the fabrication of mirrors, which may be otherwise understood as printing of Speculums, the Latin word signifying the same thing. These men needed to surround themselves with precautions; printing was as yet only a practical means of multiplying manuscripts, to impose a little on the innocent, and fortune awaited him who, without saying anything, made this invention serve him. The following will prove this, as well as its tendency.

A legal document discovered in 1760 by Wencker and Schoepflin in the Pfennigthurm of Strasbourg, and afterwards translated into French by M. Leon de Laborde, makes us at length acquainted with the work of Gutenberg and of his associates Andrew Dritzehen and Andrew Heilmann. Apparently these three men were, as we have said, Spiegelmacher, that is makers of mirrors. They had jointly entered into a deed by the terms of which, if one of the partners died in the course of their researches, his heirs would have no rights beyond an indemnity corresponding to the amount invested by him. It happened that Andrew Dritzehen did die, and that one of his brothers aspired to occupy his place in the partnership. The dead man left debts behind him; he had squandered his florins by hundreds in his experiments. Gutenberg having offered to pay the amounts expended, the heirs of Dritzehen, who wanted more, summoned him before the courts to show why he should not make place for them in the work of experiments and making of mirrors. The witnesses in their testimony before the court told what they knew of the inventions of the partnership. One among them deposed that after the death of Dritzehen, Gutenberg's servant went to the workshop and begged Nicholas Dritzehen, brother of the deceased, to displace and break up four formes placed in a press. A second testified that the works of Andrew had cost him at the least three hundred florins, an enormous sum for those days. Other witnesses painted Gutenberg in a curious light: they made him out to be a savage, a hermit, who concealed from his associates certain arts of which the deed stipulated nothing. One fact proved that the experiments referred to the manufacture of metallic characters. A goldsmith, named Dünne, maintained that he had received more than a hundred florins for printing material "das zu dem trucken gehoret." "Trucken!" – "Typography!" The word was found, and from that day usage has consecrated it.

Before 1439, then, John Gaensefleisch, or Gutenberg, was devoted to the art of reproduction of texts, and had consecrated his life and feeble resources to it. Three problems presented themselves to him. He wanted types less fragile than wooden types and less costly than engraving. He wanted a press by the aid of which he could obtain a clear impression on parchment or paper. He desired also that the leaves of his books should not be anopistograph, or printed only on one side. There were many unknown things to vex his soul, of which he himself alone could have a presentiment. Until then, and even long after, the xylographs were printed au frotton or with a brush, rubbing the paper upon the forme coated with ink, thicker than ordinary ink. He dreamed of something better.

In the course of his work John Gutenberg returned to Mayence. The idea of publishing a Bible, the Book of books, had taken possession of his heart. The Spiegelmacher of Strasbourg was on the road to loss. The cutting of his types had ruined him, and on his arrival in his native town, his stock in trade, transported by him, was of no great weight: some boxes of type, an inconvenient forme, and perhaps an ordinary press, a wine-maker's press, with a wooden screw. The idea of using this unwieldy instrument for the impression of his formes had already occurred to him; but would not the frotton serve still better? The force of the blow from the bar would break the miserable type, the raised parts of which could not resist the repeated strokes. In this unhappy situation, Gutenberg made the acquaintance of a financier of Mayence, named Fust, who was in search of a business, and who put a sum of eleven hundred florins at his disposal to continue his experiments. Unfortunately this money disappeared, it melted away, and the results obtained were absolutely ludicrous.

It is certain that John Fust did not enter on the engagement without protecting himself. From the first he bound his debtor in a contract for six per cent. interest, besides a share in the profits. In addition he stipulated repayment in case of failure. Gutenberg, improvident, as is the way of inventors, had signed away all that he possessed to procure funds. It is presumed, besides, that during the continuance of his investigations, he composed some current books with the resources at his disposal, that served a little to lighten his debts. But the printing house of the Zum Jungen at Mayence was far from shining in the world, because the association of Fust concerned itself only with the publication of a Bible, and not at all with the Speculums and Donatuses that were so much in vogue at this time. Besides, the money-lender made a point of pressing his debtor, and did not allow him any leisure to labour outside the projected work. About this time a third actor enters on the scene. Peter Schoeffer, of Gernsheim, a writer, introduced into the workshop of Gutenberg to design letters, benefited by the abortive experiments, and taking up the invention at its deadlock, conducted it to success. John of Tritenheim, called Trithemius, the learned abbot of Spanheim, is the person who relates these facts; but as he got his information from Schoeffer himself, too much credence must not be given to his statements. Besides, Schoeffer was not at all an ordinary artisan. If we credit a Strasbourg manuscript written by his hand in 1449, he was a student of the "most glorious university of Paris." In the workshop of Gutenberg, his industrious and inventive intellect found a fecund mine, and this caligraphist dreamt of other things than shaping letters for the use of wood engravers. Gutenberg, arrested in his career by the wants of life, the worries of business, and perhaps also the fatigues of his labours, may have let the new-comer know something of his experiences. One cannot know, but it is certain that, shortly after, John Fust was so fascinated by Schoeffer, so attracted by his youth and his application, that he resolved to put new capital into the business. He did more: to permanently attach him, he gave him his grand-daughter in marriage, not his daughter, as was thought until M. Auguste Bernard rectified this mistake.

We have now come to 1453, the year preceding the first dated monument of printing in movable types: the letters of indulgence. It may be acknowledged that the sudden affection of Fust for his workman depended on some interested motive, and not at all on attraction of the heart. Had this former student of the university of Paris found the means of rapidly founding metallic types, the search for which had cost Gutenberg many sleepless nights? Had he completed it by applying to it the matrix and punch which had then and for centuries served the makers of seals and the money-coiners? Perhaps, as was most probable, the two associates had agreed, and putting their experiences together, had conquered hitherto insurmountable difficulties.

The year 1454 witnessed the diffusion throughout Christendom of letters of indulgence, accorded by Pope Nicholas V., who wished to aid in funds the King of Cyprus against the Turks. These circular letters, scattered by thousands to every corner of the world, employed numerous copyists. Arrived at Mayence, the distributers found a workshop ready prepared to furnish copies in the shortest possible time. They set to work and brought together all the type they possessed, cast or engraved, to set up these famous letters. Among the impressions was that of which we give a reproduction, which belongs to the edition called that of thirty-one lines. The original was delivered for a consideration to Josse Ott von Mospach on the 31st of December, 1454.

It is not without interest, for the history of the Book and of printing, to note here that these letters of indulgence, the clandestine traffic in which was largely accelerated by rapidity of production and the small cost of each copy, formed one of the causes of the religious reform of Martin Luther. They afforded a means of raising money, and were so generally resorted to that in the register of the Hotel de Ville of Paris preserved in the Archives Nationales (H 1778) it may be seen that the sheriffs requested the Pope to allow them to employ them in the reconstruction of the bridge at the Hotel de Ville.

The ice once broken, Fust and Schoeffer found it hard to nourish a useless mouth. For them Gutenberg was more of a hindrance than a profit, and they sought brutally to rid themselves of him. Fust had a most easy pretext, which was to demand purely and simply from his associate the sums advanced by him, and which had produced so little. Gutenberg had probably commenced his Bible, but, in face of the claims of Fust, he had to abandon it altogether, types, formes, and press.

In November, 1455, he had retired to a little house outside the city, where he tried his best, by the aid of foreign help, to establish a workshop, and to preserve the most perfect secrecy. Relieved of his company, Fust and Schoeffer were able to take up the impression of the Bible and to complete it without him. If matters did so happen, and Schoeffer had not the excuse that he had previously discovered the casting of type, there is but one word to designate his conduct: robbery, and moral robbery, the worst of all. But what can be said to-day of these people?

One thing is certain: that the Bible of Schoeffer, commenced by Gutenberg or not, put on sale by Fust and Schoeffer alone about the end of 1455 or beginning of 1456, proves to be the first completed book. Retired to his new quarters, Gutenberg was taking courage, so as not to appear too much behindhand, but the reconstitution of his workshop cost him enormous time. And, besides, he missed the letter-maker Schoeffer, his own Gothic letters, engraved on steel with a punch, not having the same elegance. When his work appeared, it could not sustain comparison. The Bible of Schoeffer was more compact, the impression was more perfect, the ink better, the type less irregular. The original inventor, in his business with Fust, made an unhappy competition for himself. We give here a fragment of this celebrated book, a kind of mute witness of the science and mortifications of the first printer. It is now called the Mazarine Bible, from the fact that the copy in the Mazarin Library was the first to give evidence concerning it. The book was put on sale at the end of 1455 or beginning of 1456, for a manuscript note of a vicar of St. Stephen at Mayence records that he finished the binding and illuminating of the first volume on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1456, and the second on the 15th of August. St. Bartholomew's Day is the 13th of June, and not the 24th of August, as the catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale has it.

All these remarks show that the printers did not proclaim themselves, and were making pseudo-manuscripts. They did not make known their names or address. The rubricators sided with them, for many of the copies are illuminated with as much care and beauty as if they were the finest manuscripts.

There is no record extant of the number of copies printed, but it was done on both vellum and paper. Copies are by no means uncommon, most of the great libraries having one, and many are in private collections. One is shown among the typographical monuments in the King's Library of the British Museum, and there is a finely illuminated copy in the show-room of the Bibliothèque Nationale. From its very great importance as the first book that is known to have been printed, its value has a constant increase. Of the copies recently sold, one at the Perkins sale in 1873 on vellum sold for £3,400, another on paper at the same sale fetched £2,900, while one on paper in the Syston Park Library sold in December, 1884, for £3,900. It has been asserted that the copies on paper were the first issued by Gutenberg and his partners, and those on vellum subsequently printed by Fust and Schoeffer, after they had obtained possession of the inventor's stock.

But so many copies absolutely similar in aspect, and of so regular a style, put in the market from day to day by Fust and Schoeffer, gave rise to protests from the caligraphists. Criticism always attends upon success, but having obtained the result, the two associates did not hesitate to proclaim themselves the printers of the Bible. On the publication of the Psalter, which followed the Bible at a year's interval, they gave their names and added a date, 1457, the first instance of a date being recorded in a book. This second work was of so skilful a typography, that it might have been shown as the work of an expert penman; the faults remarked in the letters of indulgence are no longer seen; type had attained perfection; in two years printing had reached its culminating point.

In spite of his disappointments, Gutenberg did not rest idle. If he had seen his two enemies rob him of his claim of priority in the invention, he had to show that, reduced to his own exertions and to the restricted means furnished him by charitable people, he also could print well. Two years after the Bible a dated book, composed in Gothic letters, appeared at Mayence; this was the Catholicon of John Balbus, of Genoa. It had not yet occurred to these first printers to exercise their art otherwise than on religious works. It is admitted by general opinion that the Catholicon issued from the press of Gutenberg; on the other hand, M. Bernard believes that it ought to be attributed to a printer of Eltvil, who published in 1467 a vocabulary called the Vocabularium ex quo with the same types. The former theory may be sustained by the words of the colophon of the book, which is a sort of hymn to God and a recognition of the city of Mayence without any mention of the name of the printer. Now in the situation in which Gutenberg found himself, in the face of his rivals, had he not some claim to regard the great discovery as his own? But if M. Bernard is mistaken, and if our supposition has no foundation, what a beautiful act of humility, what a noble idea of his character, Gutenberg gives us in writing, "With the aid of the Most High, Who releases the tongues of infants and often reveals to babes that which is sealed to learned men, this admirable book the Catholicon was finished in the year of the incarnation of our Saviour MCCCCLX. in the mother-country of Mayence, famous city of Germany, which God, in His clemency, has deigned to render the most illustrious and the first of cities; and this book was perfected without the usual help of pen or style, but by the admirable linking of formes and types"!

The history of these men, it is easy to understand, has to be regarded with caution, people of so little consequence then that the authentic documents relating to them have for ever disappeared. If we except that of the Pfennigthurm of Strasbourg, of which we have before spoken, and the deed of claim for money from Fust to Gutenberg dated 1455, we are forced to quote from authors living long afterwards, who submitted, without knowing better, to the miserable errors of oral tradition. It is nearly always the same with men who have occupied a large place in the history of art; posterity only knows of their genius at the time when no one knows anything of them. For Gutenberg the situation was still more terrible; a rival, Peter Schoeffer, survived him, and he did not for his own reputation care to preserve his rival's memory; and if, as is believed, Gutenberg left pupils and heirs, Henry Bechtermuncze, Ulrich Zell, and Weigand Spyes, his misfortune is crowned by Bechtermuncze being now reputed to be the printer of the Catholicon, of which we have just given the history. Even Albert Pfister, one of his workmen, dismissed at the end of his work, having obtained from his master some rejected types, was presumed later to have invented printing. We find this artisan established at Bamberg about 1460, composing Bibles in movable types, the first known being that published in 1461. But Albert Pfister showed that he was not at all an inventor by the mediocrity of his work, and more by the old types that he used. If he had known the secret of engraving the punches, he would have cast new letters and have given a better aspect to his work.

In these statements all is supposition and contradiction. That which is certain – and the dates are there to prove it – is the enormous progress in the productions of Peter Schoeffer. In 1459 he published his third book, Durand's Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, in folio. As in the Psalter, Schoeffer employed initial letters printed in red, which the rival workshop could not do in the Catholicon, the rubrics of which are painted by hand, as in manuscripts. In time he put forth a second edition of the Psalter, always with Fust's name joined to his own. A great number of types were broken at the beginning, but he dreamed of doing yet better. In 1460 he gave the Constitutiones of Pope Clement V., with a gloss and commentaries by John André; here was the first example of a process much employed in manuscripts, but of which the typographical composition was very difficult. Again, in 1462 a new Latin Bible issued from their workshops in two folio volumes. It is the first dated edition. The first volume has two hundred and forty-two folios in double columns, the second two hundred and thirty-nine. It commences with an epistle of St. Jerome, and on the last leaf of the second volume is the colophon on the preceding page.

This book, one of the first worthy of the name, and which is called by preference the Mayence Bible, appeared in one of the most troubled epochs that the episcopal city had had to go through. Subject to its archbishops, who were at the head of all the lay lords and fighting men, the city found itself in 1462 the prey of two prelates of equal title who refused to give way to one another: Thierry of Isembourg and Adolph of Nassau-Wiesbaden. Adolph surprised Mayence on the 27th October, 1462, pursuing his adversary, who scaled the walls with a rope to escape quicker, and the city was sacked and pillaged from its foundations. In the middle of this turmoil, what became of the obscure persons who were then the printers of the Bible? Doubtless their insignificance saved them from disaster, but as it was long before peace was re-established, and the entire edition of their last volume could not be kept back, we incline to believe that they were for a time going about the country as itinerant booksellers. Paris was to them a well-indicated point of travel – Paris, toward which all German commerce tended. The university where Peter Schoeffer was instructed in letters, and that truly passed for the first in Europe, appeared to them a market of the first order. If we may believe Walchius (Decas fabularum generis humani: Strasbourg, 1609, 4to, p. 181), John Fust himself went to that city, where he put books on sale from sixty crowns a copy, then fifty, then forty, according to the prevailing system in matters of discount. Fust was above all things a merchant; he led it to be believed that he had the marvellous establishment of a copyist beyond the Rhine, and he had disposed of many copies, when the corporate scribes of the university, becoming aware of the imposition, cried out furiously and declared it a diabolical invention. We may now take this tale of Walchius as a fable, as the registers of Parliament, on being consulted, rest silent on the proceedings instituted against the "magician" of Mayence. Only we must not lose sight of the fact that the booksellers had their masters, their syndicate, if we may use the modern word, charged to prohibit fraudulent publications. They were too much interested in the suppression of printed books to judge the matter coldly. The Parliament had nothing to see to in this.

The revolution of Mayence had otherwise great results, which were not affected by these minor reverses. The printing workshops, or at least the successors of Gutenberg, began to be dispersed, and Fust and Schoeffer having established a school of printers in the city, their trade was no longer secret. Deprived of their liberties by the new Archbishop, many of them expatriated themselves. We shall take occasion later to name some of these exiles, through whom the art of printing spread itself almost simultaneously throughout the world: to Cologne and Strasbourg, to Italy and Spain, without reckoning Holland, France, Switzerland, and the country around Mayence. We have before named the episcopal city of Bamberg; it had the singular fortune to be the second city to possess a printing office, but it disappeared as quickly as it was established, with Albert Pfister, without leaving the least trace; we do not find printing there again before 1480, more than twenty years later.

Gutenberg was dead before 1468. He was interred in the Church of the Récollets of Mayence, by the pious care of a friend, who attributed the invention of printing to him on his tomb.

We may begin to comprehend the influence of this man upon the discovery of which all the world was then talking, but the troubles of the archiepiscopal city hampered the respective merit of the inventors. Peter Schoeffer and John Fust were not much affected by the political crisis. After two years' suspension, they reappeared with a Cicero, De Officiis, 1465, quarto, always at work and always surpassing themselves. This time they freely gave up religious publications, and, still more extraordinary, they employed Greek types.

Such is, detached from the incredible contradictions of writers on art, and sketched solely on its main lines, the origin of printing as it is established at this day. First came the image engraved in relief, which we have not gone to China to find, with some of our predecessors. Upon this image were often cut, by the same economical process, legends of explanation that presented the idea of imitation of manuscript; and the xylographs appeared with or without illustrations. Then from the correction of errors in these books followed the discovery of movable characters. This wooden type, possible when it was used with a frotton for printing, would quickly break under the press, the idea of which was gained from the common press of the wine-makers. Then a kind of metallic type had to be found which would run in a mould struck by a punch. This punch was not invented for the purpose; it served previously for the makers of coins and seals. The fabrication of type from the matrix was a simple adoption. The lead thrown into the matrix gave the desired type. Thus were made the first books, of which we have briefly related the composition.

As to the proportion of glory due to each one of the first printers, it is necessary equally, to guard against error on one side or the other. We have sought to separate from the heap of publications probable opinions or those based on certain documents. That the origin of the Donatus, the block books, was Dutch would be puerile to deny, because, on one side, the engravings on blocks are surely of the school of Van Eyck, and, on the other hand, Ulrich Zell, who inspired the "Cologne Chronicle" of 1499, assigned positively to Holland the cradle of the Donatus. At any rate, it was a pupil of Gutenberg, a question we have discussed. After that we will trouble ourselves but little about Laurent Coster. The name makes no difference in a matter of this kind.

As to Gutenberg, we have not been able to go as far as M. E. Dutuit, who in his Manuel a'Estampes (vol. i., p. 236, etc.) doubts Gutenberg's right to the title of inventor. It is stated that in a letter of William Fichet, prior of the Sorbonne, of whom we shall have more to say presently, to Robert Gaguin, which M. A. Claudin found at the beginning of a work entitled Gasparim Pergamensis orthographiæ liber, published in 1470, nearly twenty years after the first work at Mayence, Gutenberg is proclaimed the inventor of printing. Without any other, this testimony of a savant who was the first to bring the German printers to Paris appears to us well nigh irrefutable.

As to John Fust and his grandson by marriage, Peter Schoeffer, they are so well defended by their works, that there is no more to say here; doubtless grave presumptions arise as to the delicacy of their conduct with Gutenberg, but we are not so bold as to censure them beyond measure. We know nothing precise either of the time or of the men.

Let us now imagine humble workmen, the most simple of gens de mestiers, to employ the French expression then in use, shut up in a kind of dark workshop, like a country forge, formed in little groups of two or three persons, one designing and the other cutting the wood, having near them a table, on which is held the engraved block after its reliefs have been rubbed with sombre ink, who afterwards, by means of the frotton, apply the damped paper to the raised parts of the block; we shall have without much stretch of thought all the economy of the xylographic impression. If we add to this primitive workshop the matrix in which the types are cast, the box in which they are distributed, the forme on which they are arranged to compose the pages, and a small hand-press, with blacker ink and paper damped to permit the greasy ink to take better, we have a picture of the work-room of Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, and of the first printers with movable types.

Thus typography was born of painting, passing in its infancy through wood-cutting, revolutionising ideas and somewhat the world. But the mighty power of the new art was not confined to itself; it extended the circle of engraving, which till then had suffered from the enormous difficulties of reproduction. As if the time were ripe for all these things, nearly at the moment when the first printers were distinguishing themselves by serious works, a Florentine goldsmith accidentally discovered the cutting of cast metal.1 What would have become of this new process if the presses of Gutenberg had not brought their powerful assistance to the printing of engravings? It will be found then that printing rendered a hundredfold to engraving for that which it received from it and bore it along with its own rapid advance.

Then reappeared, following the new processes, the figures somewhat abandoned by the Mayence workmen during the period of transformation. Our object is to speak at length of the Book ornamented and illustrated according to the means of relief-cutting or casting; to demonstrate the influence of painting, of sculpture, of art, on the production of the Book; and thus to help the reader at the same time to understand the almost sudden and irresistible development of typography, and to mention its foremost representatives.