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STEPS TOWARDS THE INVENTION.

When we speak of the invention of printing, we mean the invention of the art of multiplying books by means of single types capable of being used again and again in different combinations for the printing of different books. Taking the word printing in its widest sense, it means merely the impression of any image; and the art of impressing or stamping words or pictures seems to have been known from the very earliest times. The handles of Greek amphoræ, the bases of Roman lamps and vases, were often impressed with the maker’s name, or other legend, by means of a stamp. This was the basis of the art, and Cicero (De Nat. Deorum, ii. 37) had suggested the combination of single letters into sentences. Quintilian refers to stencil plates as a guide to writing; and stamps with letters cut in relief were in common use amongst the Romans. The need for the invention, however, was not great, and it was never made. The first practical printing, both from blocks and movable type, was done in China. As early as a.d. 593 the more important texts were printed from engraved wooden plates by the order of the Emperor Wên-ti, and in the eleventh century printing from movable type was introduced by a certain smith named Picheng. The multiplicity of Chinese characters rendered the discovery of movable type of little economical value, and the older system of block printing has found favour even up to the present time. In the same way, Corea and Japan, though both had experimented with movable type, returned to their former custom of block printing.

It is impossible now to determine whether rumours of the art could have reached Europe from China and have acted as incentives to its practice. Writers on early printing scout the idea; and there is little to oppose to their verdict, with our present uncertain knowledge. Modern discoveries, however, point to the relations of China with foreign countries in the fourteenth century having been much more important than is generally supposed.

The earliest productions in the nature of prints from wooden blocks upon paper which we find in Europe, are single sheets bearing generally the image of a saint. From their perishable nature but few of these prints have come down to our times; and though we have evidence that they were being produced, at any rate as early as the fourteenth, perhaps even as the thirteenth century, the earliest print with a definite and unquestioned date still in existence is the ‘St. Christopher’ of 1423. This print was discovered in 1769 by Heinecken, pasted inside the binding of a manuscript in the library of the Convent of the Chartreuse at Buxheim in Swabia. The manuscript, which is now in the Spencer Library,[1] is entitled Laus Virginum, is dated 1417, and is said to have been given to the Monastery of Buxheim by a certain Anna, Canoness of Buchau, ‘who is known to have been living in 1427.’ On the inside of the other board of the binding is pasted a cut of the Annunciation, said to be of the same age and workmanship as the St. Christopher. It is worth noticing that there seem to have been some wood engravers in this Swabian monastery, who engraved the book-plate for the books given by ‘Dominus Hildibrandus Brandenburg de Bibraco’ towards the end of the fifteenth century; and these book-plates are printed on the reverse sides of pieces of an earlier block-book, very probably engraved and printed in the monastery for presentation to travellers or pilgrims.

[1]The Spencer Library has now passed into the possession of Mrs. Rylands, of Manchester; but as many of the early printed books in it are described in Dibdin’s Bibliothecá Spencerianá, and as it is so widely known under the name of the Spencer Library, it has been thought best, in order to avoid confusion, to refer to it under its old name throughout the present book.

The date on the celebrated Brussels print of 1418 has unfortunately been tampered with, so that its authenticity is questioned. The print was found by an innkeeper in 1848, fixed inside an old chest, and it was soon acquired by the Royal Library at Brussels. Since the date has been touched up with a pencil, and at the same time some authorities consider 1468 to be the right reading, it is best to consider the St. Christopher as the earliest dated woodcut. Though these two are the earliest dated prints known, it is, of course, most probable that some others which are undated may be earlier; but to fix even an approximate date to them is in most cases impossible. The conventional way in which religious subjects were treated, and the extraordinary care with which one cutter copied from another, makes it difficult even for a specialist to arrive at any very definite conclusions.

In England, wood engraving does not seem to have been much practised before the introduction of printing, but there are one or two cuts that may be assigned to an earlier period. Mr. Ottley, in his Inquiry concerning the Invention of Printing, drew attention to a curious Image of Pity which he had found sewn on the blank leaf at the beginning of a manuscript service-book. This cut, of which he gives a facsimile in his book, is now in the British Museum. Another cut, very similar in design and execution, and probably of about the same date, was found a few years ago in the Bodleian, also inserted at the beginning of a manuscript service-book. In the upper part of the cut is a half-length figure of our Lord, with the hands crossed, standing in front of the cross. On a label at the top of the cross is an inscription, the first part of which is clearly O BACIΛEVC, but the second part is not clear. In the British Museum cut it has been read ‘hora 3ª;’ and though this interpretation is ingenious, and might be made to fit with the Museum copy (which has unfortunately been touched up), the clearer lettering of the Bodleian copy, which has evidently the same inscription, shows that this reading can hardly be accepted.

Below the figure we have the text of the indulgence—

‘Seynt gregor’ with othir’ popes & bysshoppes yn feer

Have graunted’ of pardon xxvi dayes & xxvi Mill’ yeer’

To theym that befor’ this fygur’ on their’ knees

Deuoutly say v pater noster & v Auees.’

Ottley was of opinion that his cut might be of as early a date as the St. Christopher; but that is, of course, a point impossible to determine. From the writing of the indulgence, Bradshaw considered it to belong to the northern part of England; and the subject is differently treated from other specimens of the Image of Pity issued subsequently to the introduction of printing, for in them the various symbols of the Passion are arranged as a border round the central figure. Inserted at the end of a Sarum Book of Hours in the British Museum is a drawing of an Image of Pity, with some prayers below, which resembles in many ways the earlier cuts.

The woodcut alphabet, described by Ottley, now in the British Museum, has been considered to be of English production, because on one of the prints is written in very early writing the two words ‘London’ and ‘Bechamsted.’ There seems very little reason beyond this for ascribing these letters to an English workman, though it is worth noticing that they were originally bound up in a small volume, each letter being pasted on a guard formed of fragments of English manuscript of the fifteenth century.

In the Weigel Collection was a specimen of English block-printing which is now in the British Museum; it is part of some verses on the Seven Virtues, but it is hard to ascribe any date to it. Another early cut is mentioned by Bradshaw as existing in Ely Cathedral. It is a cut of a lion, and is fixed against one of the pillars in the choir, close to the tomb of Bishop Gray, whose device it represents. This bishop died in 1479, so that an approximate date may be given to the cut. It is very probable that these last two specimens of block-printing are later than the introduction of printing into England, and the only ones that should be dated earlier are the British Museum and Bodleian Images of Pity.

A good many single woodcuts were executed in England before the close of the fifteenth century. They were mostly Images of Pity, such as have been mentioned, or ‘rosaries’ containing religious emblems, with the initials I. H. S. A curious cut in the Bodleian represents the Judgment, and below this a body in a shroud. Above the cut is printed, ‘Surgite mortui Venite ad Judicium,’ and below on either side of a shield the words, ‘Arma Beate Birgitte De Syon.’

A curious devotional cut is inserted in the Faques Psalter of 1504 in the British Museum, containing the emblems of the Passion and a large I. H. S. At the base of the cut are the initials d. h. b., perhaps referring to the place where the cut was issued. Most of these cuts were doubtless produced in monasteries or religious houses to give or sell to visitors, who very often inserted them in their own private books of devotion, and in this manner many have been preserved. The Lambeth copy of the Wynkyn de Worde Sarum Horæ of 1494 shows signs of having contained eighteen of such pictures, though only three are now left.

After the single leaf prints we come to the block-books, which we may look upon in some ways as the precursors of printed books.

‘A block-book is a book printed wholly from carved blocks of wood. Such volumes usually consist of pictorial matter only; if any text is added in illustration, it likewise is carved upon the wood-block, and not put together with movable types. The whole of any one page, sometimes the whole of two pages, is printed from a single block of wood. The manner in which the printing was done is peculiar. The block was first thoroughly wetted with a thin watery ink, then a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of the paper was carefully rubbed with some kind of dabber or burnisher, till an impression from the ridges of the carved block had been transferred to the paper. Of course in this fashion a sheet could only be printed on one side; the only block-book which does not possess this characteristic is the Legend of St. Servatius in the Royal Library of Brussels, and that is an exceptional volume in many respects besides.’[2] These block-books must be considered as forming a distinct group of themselves, radically different from other books, though undoubtedly they gave the idea to the inventor of movable type. They continued to be made during the whole of the fifteenth century, almost always on the same plan, and each one as archaic looking as another. The invention of movable type did not do away with the demand, and the supply was kept up.

[2]Conway’s Woodcutters of the Netherlands. Cambridge, 1884. 8vo.

Unfortunately we have no data for determining the exact period at which these books were made; and it is curious to note that all the editions which are dated have a late date, the majority being between 1470 and 1480, and none being earlier than the first date, with the exception of the Brussels block-book, which is dated 1440.

The number of different block-books in existence is hard to estimate, but it must approach somewhere near one hundred. Many of these are of little importance, many others of too late a date to be of much interest.

The best known of the earlier block-books are the Ars Moriendi, the Biblia Pauperum, the Apocalypse, and the Canticum Canticorum. Of these, the first and third are probably German, the second and fourth Dutch. Of all these books there are a number of editions, not easily distinguishable apart, and which it is difficult to place in chronological order. These editions are hardly editions in the modern sense of the term. They were not produced by a printer who used one set of blocks till they were worn out, and then cut another. The woodcutter was the only tradesman, and he sold, not the books, but the blocks. He cut set after set of blocks to print the few books then in demand, and these were sold to private purchasers. We find wealthy people or heads of religious establishments in possession of such sets. In the inventory of Jean de Hinsberg, Bishop of Liège, 1419-1455, are noticed—

‘Unum instrumentum ad imprimendas scripturas et ymagines

‘Novem printe lignee ad imprimendas ymagines cum quatuordecim aliis lapideis printis.’

Thus, these editions do not necessarily follow one another; some may have been produced side by side by different cutters, others within the interval of a few months, but by the same man. Their date is another difficult point. The copies of the Biblia Pauperum, Apocalypse, and Ars Moriendi, which belonged to Mr. Horn, were in their original binding, and it was stamped with a date. The books were separated and the binding destroyed. Mr. Horn asserted from memory that the first three figures of the date were certainly 142, and the last probably an 8. Mr. Conway very justly points out that the resemblance of a 5 of that date to our 2 was very strong, and that Mr. Horn’s memory may have deceived him.

It will be noticed in examining block-books generally, that the letterpress in the majority of the later examples is cut in imitation of handwriting, and not of the square church hand from which printing types and the letterpress of the earlier block-books were copied. The reason of this probably is, that it was found useless to try to compete with the books printed from movable type in regularity and neatness. To do so would have involved a much greater expenditure of trouble by the woodcutter and designer. The illustrations were the important part of the book, and the letterpress was put in with as little trouble as possible.

The sheets on which the early block-books were printed were not quired, i.e. placed one inside the other to form a quire or gathering, as was done in ordinary printed books, but followed each other singly. In many of the books we find signatures, each sheet being signed with a letter of the alphabet as a guide to the binder in arranging them.

Among the dated block-books may be mentioned an edition of the Endkrist, dated 1472, produced at Nuremberg; an edition of the Ars Moriendi cut by Hans Sporer in 1473; and another of about the same period cut by Ludwig zu Ulm. Of the Biblia Pauperum there are three dated editions known, one of 1470 and two of 1471. A copy of the De generatione Christi has the following full colophon:—

‘Johannes Eysenhut impressor, anno ab incarnationis dominice Mº quadringentesimo septuagesimo Iº.’ Hans Sporer of Nuremberg produced an edition of the Biblia Pauperum in 1475, and Chatto speaks of another of the same year without a name, but containing as a mark a shield with a spur upon it, which he supposes to stand for the name Sporer. Many of these later books were not printed in distemper on one side of the paper only, but on both sides and in printer’s ink, showing that the use of the printing press was known to those who produced them.

PAGE 3 OF THE ‘MIRABILIA ROMÆ’

Among the late block-books should be noticed the Mirabilia Romæ [Hain 11,208]; for why it should have been printed as a block-book is a mystery. It consists of 184 pages of text, with only two illustrations, printed on both sides of the page, and evidently of late date. The letterpress is not cut in imitation of type, but of ordinary handwriting, and the book may have been made to sell to those who were not accustomed to the type of printed books. The arms of the Pope which occur in the book are those of Sixtus IV., who occupied the papal chair from 1471 to 1484, so that the book may be considered to have been produced within those two dates, probably nearer the latter. The accompanying facsimile is taken from the first page of text.

The best known of the block-books, and the one which has the most important place in the history of printing, is the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis. While it is called a block-book, it has many differences from those we have previously spoken of, and occupies a position midway between them and the ordinary printed book.

The earliest block-books were printed page by page, and the sheets were bound up one after the other; but the Speculum is arranged in quires, though still only printed on one side of the page. In it, too, the text is, as a rule, printed from movable type, except in the case of one edition, where some pages are entirely xylographic. There are four editions known, printed, according to the best authorities, in the following order:—

1. Latin, printed with one fount. [Hessels, 2.]

2. Dutch, printed with two founts. [Hessels, 3.]

3. Latin, with twenty leaves printed xylographically. [Hessels, 1.]

4. Dutch, with one fount. [Hessels, 4.]

In all these four books the same cuts are used, and the type with which they were printed was used in other books.

Edition 1 contains sixty-four leaves, made up by one gathering of six leaves, three of fourteen, and one of sixteen; the text is throughout printed from movable type. In two copies, those in the Meerman-Westreenen Museum at the Hague, and the Pitti Palace at Florence, are to be found cancels of portions of some leaves. Either the text or the illustration has been defectively printed; in each case the defective part has been supplied by another copy pasted on.

Edition 2 contains sixty-two leaves, made up in the same way as the first edition, but having only four leaves in the first gathering. Two leaves in this edition are printed in a different type from the rest of the book.

Edition 3 contains the same number of leaves, and is made up in the same way as edition 1. It is remarkable for having twenty leaves printed entirely from blocks, text as well as illustrations.

Edition 4 is made up in the same way as edition 2. The copy in the library at Lille contains some leaves with text printed upon both sides, seemingly by an error of the printer. The very fact of their existence shows that it was possible to print the text on both sides of the leaf. There must therefore have been some reason other than the ignorance or incapacity of the printer for printing these books on one side only, or, as it is called, anopisthographically.

There can be very little doubt that Mr. Sotheby is correct in his conjecture, that ‘the then usual process of taking off the wood engravings by friction, rendered it impossible to effect two impressions back to back, as the friction for the second would materially injure the first. On this account, and on no other, we presume, was the text printed only on one side.’ In the Lille copy above mentioned, two leaves, 25 and 26 (the centre sheet of the third quire), contain printed on their other side the text, not the illustrations, of leaves 47 and 62 (the first sheet of the fifth quire.)

From this we learn three things of great importance—1. That the text and the cut were not printed at the same time, and that the text was printed first. 2. That the printer could print the text, for which he used movable type, on both sides of the paper. 3. That the book was printed, not page by page, but two pages at a time.

Mr. Ottley was strongly of opinion, after careful examination, that the book was certainly printed two pages at a time. He says, ‘The proofs of this are, I think, conclusive. The upper lines of the text in those two pages always range exactly with each other.... Here and there, in turning over the book, we observe a page printed awry or diagonally on the paper; in such case, if the other page of the same sheet be examined, the same defect will be noticed. Upon opening the two Dutch copies of the edition, which I shall hereafter show to be the fourth at Harlem, in the middle sheet of the same gathering we find, upon comparing them, the exact same breadth and regularity of the inner margin in both, and the lines of the two pages range with each other exactly the same in both copies, which could not be the case had each page been printed separately.’

Where and when was this book printed? Conjectural dates have been given to it ranging from 1410 to 1470. The earliest date that can be absolutely connected with it is 1471-73. Certainly there is nothing in its printing which would point to its having been executed earlier than 1470. Its being printed only on the one side of the leaf was a matter of necessity on account of the cuts, and is not a sign of remote age, while the printing of two pages at a time argues an advance of knowledge in the printer, and consequently a later date. About 1480-81 the blocks which had been used for the four editions of the Speculum passed into the hands of John Veldener. This Veldener printed in Louvain between 1475 and 1477, and he was not then in possession of the blocks. ‘At the end of 1478 he began work at Utrecht, still, however, without this set of blocks. For his second edition of the Fasciculus temporum, published 14th February 1480, he had a few new blocks made, some of which were copied from Speculum cuts. At last, on the 19th April 1481, he published an Epistles and Gospels in Dutch, and into that he introduced two cut-up portions of the real old Speculum blocks. This was the last book Veldener is known to have printed at Utrecht. For two years we hear nothing more of him, and then he reappears at Kuilenburg, whither he removed his presses. There, on the 27th September 1483, he printed a quarto edition of the Speculum in Dutch. For it he cut up all the original blocks into their separate compartments, and thus suited them to fit into the upper portion of a quarto page. He had, moreover, twelve new cuts made in imitation of these severed portions of the old set, and he printed them along with the rest. Once more, in 1484 he employed a couple of the old set in the Dutch Herbarius, which was the last book known to have been issued by him at Kuilenburg. Thenceforward the Speculum cuts appear no more.’[3]

[3]Conway’s Woodcutters, p. 13.

The only place, then, with which the Speculum blocks are definitely connected is Utrecht, and there they must be left until some further evidence is forthcoming respecting their origin; nor have we any substantial reason for believing that when they passed into the possession of Veldener they had been in existence for more than ten or twelve years.

Some among the late block-books are of interest as having been produced by men who were at the same time printers in the ordinary sense of the word. There is part of a Donatus in the Bodleian, with a colophon stating it to be the work of Conrad Dinckmut, a printer at Ulm from 1482 to 1496. In the British Museum is a German almanac of about 1490 produced by Conrad Kacheloffen, who printed a number of books, many with illustrations, at Leipzig. For a book so small as the Donatus, a book which was always in demand, it would be almost as economical to cut blocks as to keep type standing, and we consequently find a number of such xylographic editions produced at the very end of the fifteenth century. In the Bibliothèque Nationale are two original blocks, bought by Foucault, the minister of Louis XIV., in Germany, and probably cut about 1500 or shortly before. The letters are cut in exact imitation of type, and with such regularity that a print from the block might almost pass for a print from ordinary type, did not the bases and tops of a few letters overlap.

The latest block-book of any size was printed at Venice. It is the Figure del Testamento Vecchio, printed about 1510 by Giovanni Andrea Vavassore.

In the library at Lambeth Palace are two curious block-printed leaves of early English work. Each leaf contains an indulgence printed four times, consisting of a figure of Saint Cornelius and five lines of text. ‘The hole indulgence of pardon granted to blessed S. Cornelis is vi score years, vi score lentes, ii M ix C and xx dais of pardon for evermore to endure.’

It shows us very clearly the cheapness with which such work could be produced; for, in order to save the time which would be occupied in taking impressions singly from one block, two blocks have been used almost exactly the same, so that two impressions could be taken off at once. This was usually done in printing indulgences from movable type, for there the trouble of setting up twice was very small compared to the gain in the time and labour which resulted from it.

There still remains to be noticed the one specimen of xylography produced in France. This is known as Les Neuf Preux. It consists of three sheets of paper, each of which contains an impression from a block containing three figures. They are printed by means of the frotton in light-coloured ink, and have been coloured by hand. The first sheet contains pictures of the three champions of classical times, Hector, Alexander, and Julius Cæsar; the second, the three champions of the Old Testament, Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabæus; the third, the three champions of mediæval history, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Boulogne. Under each picture is a stanza of six lines, all rhyming, cut in a bold type.

These leaves form part of the Armorial of Gilles le Bouvier, who was King-at-Arms to Charles VII. of France; and as the manuscript was finished between 9th November 1454 and 22nd September 1457, it is reasonable to suppose that the prints were executed in France, probably at Paris, before the latter date. The verses are, at any rate, the oldest printed specimen of the French language.

When we consider that printing of a rudimentary kind had existed for so many centuries, and that during the whole of the early part of the fifteenth century examples with words or even whole lines of inscription were being produced, we can only wonder that the discovery of printing from movable types should have been made so late. It has been said inventions will always be made when the need for them has arisen, and this is the real reason, perhaps, why the discovery of printing was delayed. The intellectual requirements of the mediæval world were not greater than could be satisfactorily supplied by the scribe and illuminator, but with the revival of letters came an absolute need for the more rapid multiplication of the instruments of learning. We may even say that the intellectual activity of the fifteenth century not only called printing into existence, but furnished it with its noblest models. The scholarly scribes of Italy at that epoch had revived the Caroline minuscules as used in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and it was this beautiful hand which the early Italian printers imitated, thereby giving us the ‘Roman’ type in which our books are still printed.

I cannot more fitly close this preliminary chapter than by quoting from the MS. note-books of Henry Bradshaw the opening sentences of his article ‘Typography’ for the Encyclopædia Britannica, an article which unfortunately was never completed.

‘Typography was, in the eyes of those who first used it, the art of multiplying books, of writing by means of single types capable of being used again and again, instead of with a pen, which, of course, could only produce one book at a time.[4]

[4] This is clearly brought before us by the words of the first printers at Avignon, ‘ars artificialiter scribendi,’ a phrase used several times over in speaking of their new invention.

‘The art of multiplying single sheets, for which woodcut blocks could be used to serve a temporary purpose, may be looked upon as an intermediate stage, which may have given the idea of typography. When the reproduction of books had long passed out of the exclusive hands of the monasteries into the hands of students or hangers-on of the universities, any invention of this kind would be readily and rapidly taken up. When there was no Greek press in Paris, we find Georgius Hermonymus making a living by constant copying of Greek books for the scholars who were so eager for them. So Reuchlin in the same way supported himself by copying.

‘In fact, the two departments of compositor and corrector in the printing office were the direct representatives and successors of the scribe and corrector of manuscripts from the early times. The kind of men whom we find mentioned in the early printing offices as correctors, are just such men as would be sought for in earlier times in an important scriptorium. In our modern world, printed and written books have come to be looked upon as totally distinct things, whereas it is impossible to bring before our minds the state of things when books were first printed, until we look upon them as precisely the same. They were brought to fairs, or such general centres of circulation as Paris, Leipzig, or Frankfort, before the days of printing, just as afterwards, only that printing enabled the stationer to supply his buyers with much greater rapidity than before, and at much cheaper rates; so that the laws of supply and demand work together in such a manner that it is difficult to say which had more influence in accelerating the movement.’