brands, and all the other applications of the principle of impression which had existed in one form or another from time immemorial. It is reasonable to suppose that the first idea of movable type may have been suggested to the mind of the inventor by a study of the works of a xylographic printer, and an observation of the cumbrous and wearisome method by which his books were produced. The toil involved in first painfully tracing the characters and figures, reversed, on the wood, then of engraving them, and, finally, of printing them with the frotton, would appear-in the case, at any rate, of the small school-books, for the production of which this process was largely resorted to scarcely less tedious than copying the required number by the deft pen of a scribe. And even if, at a later period, the bookmakers so far facilitated their labours as to write their text in the ordinary manner on prepared paper, or with prepared ink, and so transfer their copy, after the manner of the Chinese, on to the wood, the labour expended in proportion to the result, and the uselessness of the blocks when once their work was done, would doubtless impress an inventive genius with a sense of dissatisfaction and impatience. We can imagine him examining the first page of an Abecedarium, on which would be engraved, in three lines, with a clear space between each character, the letters of the alphabet, and speculating, as Cicero had speculated centuries before,1 on the possibilities presented by the combination in indefinite variety of those twenty-five symbols. Being a practical man as well as a theorist, we may suppose he would attempt to experiment on the little wood block in his hand, and by sawing off first the lines, and then some of the letters in the lines, attempt to arrange his little types into a few short words. A momentous experiment, and fraught with the greatest revolution the world has ever known! No question has aroused more interest, or excited keener discussion in the history of printing, than that of the use of movable wooden types as a first stage in the passage from Xylography to Typography. Those who write on the affirmative side of the question profess to see in the earlier typographical works, as well as in the historical statements handed down by the old authorities, the .... 1 "Hic ego non mirer esse quemquam qui sibi persuadeat. . . . mundum effici . . . . ex concursione fortuitâ! Hoc qui existimet fieri potuisse, non intelligo cur non idem putet si innumerabiles unius et viginti formæ litterarum, vel aureæ, vel qualeslibet, aliquò conjiciantur, posse ex his in terram excussis, annales Ennii, ut deinceps legi possint, effici" (De Nat. Deor., lib. ii). Cicero was not the only ancient writer who entertained the idea of mobile letters. Quintilian suggests the use of ivory letters for teaching children to read while playing: "Eburneas litterarum formas in ludum offere" (Inst. Orat., i, cap. 1); and Jerome, writing to Læta, propounds the same idea: "Fiant ei (Paulæ) litteræ vel buxeæ vel eburneæ, et suis nominibus appellentur. Ludat in eis ut et lusus ipse eruditio fiat." clearest evidence that wooden types were used, and that several of the most famous works of the first printers were executed by their means. As regards the latter source of their confidence, it is at least remarkable that no single writer of the fifteenth century makes the slightest allusion to the use of wooden types. Indeed, it was not till Bibliander, in 1548,1 first mentioned and described them, that anything professing to be a record on the subject existed. "First they cut their letters," he says, "on wood blocks the size of an entire page, but because the labour and cost of that way was so great, they devised movable wooden types, perforated and joined one to the other by a thread." The legend, once started, found no lack of sponsors, and the typographical histories of the sixteenth century and onward abound with testimonies confirmatory more or less of Bibliander's statement. Of these testimonies, those only are worthy of attention which profess to be based on actual inspection of the alleged perforated wooden types. Specklin2 (who died in 1589) asserts that he saw some of these relics at Strasburg. Angelo Roccha,3 in 1591, vouches for the existence of similar letters (though he does not say whether wood or metal) at Venice. Paulus Pater, in 1710, stated that he had once seen some belonging to Fust at Mentz; Bodman, as late as 1781, saw the same types in a worm-eaten condition at Mentz; while Fischer,5 in 1802, stated that these precious relics were used as a sort of token of honour to be bestowed on worthy apprentices on the occasion of their finishing their term. This testimony proves nothing beyond the fact that at Strasburg, Venice, and Mentz there existed at some time or other certain perforated wooden types which tradition ascribed to the first printers. But on the question whether any book was ever printed with such type, it is wholly inconclusive. It is possible to believe that certain early printers, uninitiated into the mystery of the punch and matrix, may have attempted to cut themselves wooden types, which, when they proved untractable under the press, they perforated and strung together in lines; 1 In Commentatione de ratione communi omnium linguarum et literarum. Tiguri, 1548, p. 80. 2 In Chronico Argentoratensi, m.s. ed. Jo. Schilterus, p. 442. "Ich habe die erste press, auch die buchstaben gesehen, waren von holtz geschnitten, auch gäntze wörter und syllaben, hatten löchle, und fasst man an ein schnur nacheinander mit einer nadel, zoge sie darnach den zeilen in die länge," etc. 3 De Bibliothecâ Vaticanâ. Romæ, 1591, p. 412. "Characteres enim a primis illis inventoribus non ita eleganter et expedite, ut a nostris fieri solet, sed filo in litterarum foramen immisso connectebantur, sicut Venetiis id genus typos me vidisse memini." 4 De Germaniæ Miraculo, etc. Lipsiæ, 1710, p. 10. ". . . . ligneos typos, ex buxi frutice, perforatos in medio, ut zonâ colligari unâ jungique commode possint, ex Fausti officina reliquos, Moguntiæ aliquando me conspexisse memini." Essai sur les Monumens Typographiques de Jean Gutenburg. Mayence, an 10, 1802, p. 39. but it is beyond credit that any such rude experiment ever resulted in the production of a work like the Speculum. It is true that many writers have asserted it was so. Fournier, a practical typographer, insists upon it from the fact that the letters vary among themselves in a manner which would not be the case had they been cast from a matrix in a mould. But, to be consistent, Fournier is compelled (as Bernard points out) to postpone the use of cast type till after the Gutenberg Bible and Mentz Psalter, both of which works display the same irregularities. And as the latest edition of the Psalter, printed in the old types, appeared in 1516, it would be necessary to suppose that movable wood type was in vogue up to that date. No one has yet demonstrated, or attempted seriously to demonstrate, the possibility of printing a book like the Speculum in movable wooden type. All the experiments hitherto made, even by the most ardent supporters of the theory, have been woful failures. Laborde1 admits that to cut the 3,000 separate letters required for the Letters of Indulgence, engraved by him, would cost 450 francs; and even he, with the aid of modern tools to cut up his wooden cubes, can only show four widely spaced lines. Wetter2 shows a page printed from perforated and threaded wooden types3; but these, though of large size, only prove by their 1 Débuts de l'Imprimerie à Strasbourg. Paris, 1840, p. 72. 2 Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst. Mainz, 1836. Album, tab. ii. 3 The history of these "fatal, unhistorical wooden types" is worth recording for the warning of the over-credulous typographical antiquary. Wetter, writing his book in 1836, and desirous to illustrate the feasibility of the theory, "spent," so Dr. Van der Linde writes, "really the amount of ten shillings on having a number of letters made of the wood of a pear-tree, only to please Trithemius, Bergellanus, and Faust of Aschaffenburg. . . . His letters, although tied with string, did not remain in the line, but made naughty caprioles. The supposition-that by these few dancing lines the possibility is demonstrated of printing with 40,000 wooden letters, necessary to the printing of a quarternion, a whole folio book-is dreadfully silly. The demonstrating facsimile demonstrates already the contrary. Wetter's letters not only declined to have themselves regularly printed, but they also retained their pear-tree-wood-like impatience afterwards." The specimen of these types may be seen in the Album of plates accompanying Wetter's work, where they occupy the first place, the matter chosen being the first few verses of the Bible, occupying nineteen lines, and the type being about two-line English in body. M. Wetter stated in his work that he had deposited the original types in the Town Library of Mentz, where they might be inspected by anyone. wishing to do so. From this repository they appear ultimately to have returned to the hands of M. Wetter's printer. M. Bernard, passing through Mentz in 1850, asked M. Wetter for a sight of them, and was conducted to the printing office for that purpose, when it was discovered that they had been stolen; whereupon M. Bernard remarks, prophetically, "Peutêtre un jour quelque naïf Allemand, les trouvant parmi les reliques du voleur, nous les donnera pour les caractères de Gutenberg. Voilà comment s'établissent trop souvent les traditions." This prediction, with the one exception of the nationality of the victim, was literally fulfilled when an English clergyman, some years afterwards, discovered these identical types in the shop of "naughty caprioles" the absurdity of supposing that the "unleaded" Speculum, a quarternion of which would require 40,000 distinct letters, could have been produced in 1440 by a method which even the modern cutting and modern presswork of 1836 failed to adapt to a single page of large-sized print. John Enschede, the famous Haarlem typefounder, though a strong adherent to the Coster legend, was compelled to admit the practical impossibility, in his day at any rate, of producing a single wood type which would stand the test of being mathematically square; nor would it be possible to square it after being cut. "No engraver," he remarks, "is able to cut separate letters in wood in such a manner that they retain their quadrature (for that is the main thing of the line in type-casting)." Admitting for a moment that some printer may have succeeded in putting together a page of these wooden types, without the aid of leads, into a chase: how can it be supposed that after their exposure to the warping influences of the sloppy ink and tight pressure during the impression, they could ever have survived to be distributed and recomposed into another forme ?2 The claims set up on behalf of movable wood types as the means by which the Speculum or any other of the earliest books was printed, are not only historically unsupported, but the whole weight of practical evidence rejects them. Dismissing them, therefore, from our consideration, a new theory confronts us, which at first blush seems to supply, if not a more probable, certainly a more possible, stepping-stone between Xylography and Typography. We refer to what Meerman, the great champion of this theory, calls the "sculpto-fusi" a curiosity-dealer at Mayence, and purchased them as apparently veritable relics of the infancy of printing. After being offered to the authorities at the British Museum and declined, they were presented in 1869 to the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where they remain to this day, treasured in a box, and accompanied by a learned memorandum setting forth the circumstances of their discovery, and citing the testimony of Roccha and other writers as to the existence and use of perforated types by the early printers. The lines (which we have inspected) remain threaded and locked in forme exactly as they appear in Wetter's specimen. It is due to the present authorities of the Bodleian to say that they preserve these precious "relics," without prejudice, as curiosities merely, with no insistence on their historic pretensions. 1 Van der Linde, Haarlem Legend. Lond., p. 72. 2 Skeen, in his Early Typography, Colombo, 1872, takes up the challenge thrown down by Dr. Van der Linde on the strength of Enschede's opinion, and shows a specimen of three letters cut in boxwood, pica size, one of which he exhibits again at the close of the book after 1,500 impressions. But the value of Skeen's arguments and experiments is destroyed when he sums up with this absurd dictum: "Three letters are as good as 3,000 or 30,000 or 300,000 to demonstrate the fact that words are and can be, and that therefore pages and whole books may be (and therefore also that they may have been) printed from such separable wooden types."-P. 424. characters: types, that is, the shanks of which have been cast in a quadrilateral mould, and the "faces" engraved by hand afterwards. Meerman and those who agree with him engage a large array of testimony on their side. In the reference of Celtis, in 1502, to Mentz as the city "quæ prima sculpsit solidos ære characteres," they see a clear confirmation of their theory; as also in the frequent recurrence of the same word "sculptus" in the colophons of the early printers. Meerman, indeed, goes so far as to ingeniously explain the famous account of the invention given by Trithemius in 1514,1 in the light of his theory, to mean that, after the rejection of the first wooden types," the inventors found out a method of casting the bodies only (fundendi formas) of all the letters of the Latin alphabet from what they called matrices, on which they cut the face of each letter; and from the same kind of matrices a method was in time discovered of casting the complete letters (æneos sive stanneos characteres) of sufficient hardness for the pressure they had to bear, which letters before-that is, when the bodies only were cast-they were obliged to cut."2 After this bold flight of translation, it is not surprising to find that Meerman claims that the Speculum was printed in "sculpto-fusi" types, although in the one page of which he gives a facsimile there are nearly 1,700 separate types, of which 250 alone are e's. Schoepflin, claiming the same invention for the Strasburg printers, believes that all the earliest books printed there were produced by this means; and both Meerman and Schoepflin agree that engraved metal types were in use for many years after the invention of the punch and matrix, mentioning, among others so printed, the Mentz Psalter, the Catholicon of 1460, the Eggestein Bible of 1468, and even the Nideri Præceptorium, printed at Strasburg as late as 1476, as “literis in ære sculptis." Almost the whole historical claim of the engraved metal types, indeed, turns on the recurrence of the term "sculptus" in the colophons of the early printers. Jenson, in 1471, calls himself a "cutter of books" (librorum exsculptor). Sensenschmid, in 1475, says that the Codex Justinianus is “cut” (insculptus), and that he has "cut" (sculpsit) the work of Lombardus in Psalterium. Husner of Strasburg, in 1472, applies the term "printed with letters cut of metal" (exsculptis 1 Annales Hirsaugienses, ii, p. 421 : "Post hæc inventis successerunt subtiliora, inveneruntque modum fundendi formas omnium Latini Alphabeti literarum quas ipsi matrices nominabant ; ex quibus rursum æneos sive stanneos characteres fundebant, ad omnem pressuram sufficientes, quos prius manibus sculpebant." Trithemius' statement, as every student of typographical history is aware, has been made to fit every theory that has been propounded, but it is doubtful whether any other writer has stretched it quite as severely as Meerman in the above rendering of these few Latin lines. 2 Origines Typographica, Gerardo Meerman auctore. Haga Com., 1765. Append., p. 47. |