NOTES

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
THE TYPES AND TYPE FOUNDING OF THE FIRST PRINTERS

[1] The Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing by Lourens Janszoon Coster, critically examined. From the Dutch by J. H. Hessels, with an introduction and classified list of the Costerian Incunabula. London, 1871. 8vo.

[2] Xylography did not become extinct for more than half a century after the invention of Typography. The last block book known was printed in Venice in 1510.

[3] “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.”

[4] In Commentatione de ratione communi omnium linguarum et literarum. Tiguri, 1548, p. 80.

[5] 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.

[6] 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.”

[7] 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.”

[8] Essai sur les Monumens Typographiques de Jean Gutenburg. Mayence, an 10, 1802, p. 39.

[9] Débuts de l’ Imprimerie à Strasbourg. Paris, 1840, p. 72.

[10] Erfindung der Buchdruckerkunst. Mainz, 1836. Album, tab. ii.

[11] 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 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.

[12] Van der Linde, Haarlem Legend. Lond., p. 72.

[13] Skeen, in his Early Typography, Colombo, 1872, takes up the challenge thrown down by Dr. Van der Linde on the strength of Enschedé’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.

[14] 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.

[15] Origines Typographicæ, Gerardo Meerman auctore. Hagæ Com., 1765. Append., p. 47.

[16] The constant recurrence in more modern typographical history of the expression “to cut matrices,” meaning of course to cut the punches necessary to form the matrices, bears out the same conclusion.

[17] Origine et Débuts de l’Imprimerie en Europe. Paris, 1853, 8vo, i, 38.

[18] Life and Typography of William Caxton. London, 1861–3, 2 vols, 4to, ii, xxiv.

[19] The Invention of Printing. New York, 1876. 8vo.

[20] Origine de l’Imprimerie, i, 40.

[21] Mr. Blades points out that there are no overhanging letters in the specimen. The necessity for such letters would be, we imagine, entirely obviated by the numerous combinations with which the type of the printers of the school abounded. The body is almost always large enough to carry ascending and descending sorts, and in width, a sort which would naturally overhang, is invariably covered by its following letter cast on the same piece.

[22] It is well known that until comparatively recently the large “proscription letters” of our foundries, from three-line pica and upwards, were cast in sand. The practice died out at the close of last century.

[23] An Enquiry Concerning the Invention of Printing. London, 1863, 4to, p. 265.

[24] In a recent paper, read by the late Mr. Bradshaw of Cambridge, before the Library Association, he points out a curious shrinkage both as to face and body in the re-casting of the types of the Mentz Psalter, necessary to complete the printing of that work. The shrinking properties of clay and plaster are well known, and, assuming the new type to have been cast in moulds of one of these substances formed upon a set of the original types, the uniform contraction of body and face might be accounted for. If, on the other hand, we hold that the types of this grand work were the product of the finished school of typographers, the probability is that the new matrices (of the face of the letter only) were formed in clay, as suggested at p. [15], and that the adjustable mould was either purposely or inadvertently shifted in body to accommodate the new casting.

[25] In connection with the suggested primitive modes of casting, the patent of James Thomson in 1831 (see Chap. iv, post), for casting by a very similar method, is interesting.

[26] Origine de l’Imprimerie. Paris, 1810, 2 vols., 8vo, i, 97.

[27] Origine de l’Imprimerie, i, 99, etc. The following are the citations:—“Escriture en molle,” used in the letters of naturalisation to the first Paris printers, 1474. “Escrits en moule,” applied to two Horæ in vellum, bought by the Duke of Orleans, 1496. “Mettre en molle,” applied to the printing of Savonarola’s sermons, 1498. “Tant en parchemin que en papier, à la main et en molle,” applied to the books in a library, 1498. “Mettre en molle,” applied to the printing of a book by Marchand, 1499. “En molle et à la main,” applied to printed books and manuscripts in the Duke of Bourbon’s library, 1523. “Pièces officielles moulées par ordre de l’Assemblée.” Procès verbaux des Etats Généraux, 1593.

[28] Coster Legend, p. 6.

[29] Ibid., p. viii.

[30] A calculation given in the Magazin Encyclopédique of 1806, i, 299, shows that from such matrices 120 to 150 letters can be cast before they are rendered useless, and from 50 to 60 letters before any marked deterioration is apparent in the fine strokes of the types.

[31] Several writers account for the alleged perforated wooden and metal types reputed to have been used by the first printers, and described by Specklin, Pater, Roccha and others, by supposing that they were model types used for forming matrices, and threaded together for safety and convenience of storage.

[32] Works of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, consisting of his Life, written by himself, in 2 vols. London, 1793, 8vo, i, 143. It is a very singular fact that in a later corrected edition of the same work, edited by John Bigelow, and published in Philadelphia in 1875, the passage above quoted reads as follows: “I contrived a mould, made use of the letters we had as puncheons, struck the matrices in lead, and thus supplied in a pretty tolerable way all deficiencies.” Whichever reading be correct, the illustration is apt, as proving the possibility of producing type from matrices either of clay or lead in a makeshift mould.

[33] Origine de l’Imprimerie, i, 144.

[34] From this method of forming the matrices (says a note to the Enschedé specimen) has arisen the name Chalcographia, which Bergellanus, among others, applies to printing.

[35] Printer’s Grammar. Lond., 1755, p. 10.

[36] It has been suggested by some that wood could be struck into lead or pewter; but the possibility of producing a successful matrix in this manner is, we consider, out of the question. In 1816 Robert Clayton proposed to cast types in metal out of wooden matrices punched in wood with a cross grain, which has been previously slightly charred or baked.

[37] In the specimen of “Ancienne Typographie” of the Imprimerie Royale of Paris, 1819, several of the old oriental founts are thus noted: “les poinçons sont en cuivre.”

[38] In the 2nd edition of Isaiah Thomas’ History of Printing in America, Albany, 1874, i, 288, an anecdote is given of Peter Miller, the German who printed at Ephrata in the United States in 1749, which we think is suggestive of the possible expedients of the first printers with regard to the mould. During the time that a certain work of Miller was in the press, says Francis Bailey, a former apprentice of Miller’s, “particular sorts of the fonts of type on which it was printed ran short. To overcome this difficulty, one of the workmen constructed a mold that could be moved so as to suit the body of any type not smaller than brevier nor larger than double-pica. The mold consisted of four quadrangular pieces of brass, two of them with mortices to shift to a suitable body, and secured by screws. The best type they could select from the sort wanted was then placed in the mold, and after a slight corrosion of the surface of the letter with aquafortis to prevent soldering or adhesion, a leaden matrix was cast on the face of the type, from which, after a slight stroke of a hammer on the type in the matrix, we cast the letters which were wanted. Types thus cast answer tolerably well. I have often adopted a method somewhat like this to obtain sorts which were short; but instead of four pieces of brass, made use of an even and accurate composing-stick, and one piece of iron or copper having an even surface on the sides; and instead of a leaden matrix, have substituted one of clay, especially for letters with a bold face.” De Vinne describes an old mould preserved among the relics in Bruce’s foundry at New York, composed (with the matrix) of four pieces, and adjustable both as to body and thickness. Bernard also mentions a similar mould in use in 1853.

[39] A curious instance of this occurs in the battered text of the De Laudibus Mariæ, shown at p. [24], where the rubricator has added his red dashes to capital letters at the beginning, middle and end of a palpably illegible passage.

[40] Notizie storiche sopra la Stamperia di Ripoli. Firenze, 1781, p. 49. Prezzi de’ generi riguardanti la Getteria (letter foundry).

s.d.
Acciaio(steel)liv.280la lib.( = 90per lb.)
Metallo(type-metal?) ″0110 ″( = 20 3⁄4″ )
Ottone(brass) ″0120 ″( = 23″ )
Rame(copper) ″068 ″( = 13″ )
Stagno(tin) ″080 ″( = 16″ )
Piombo(lead) ″024 ″( = 05 1⁄4″ )
Filo di ferro(iron wire) ″080 ″( = 16″ )

[41] It would be more correct to say the discovery of the properties of antimony, which were first described by Basil Valentin about the end of the 15th century, in a treatise entitled Currus triumphalis Antimonii.

[42] Printing was practised at Lyons in 1473, three years only later than at Paris. From the year 1476 the art extended rapidly in the city. Panzer mentions some 250 works printed here during the 15th century by nearly forty printers, among whom was Badius Ascensius. The earlier Lyons printers are supposed to have had their type from Basle, and their city shortly became a depôt for the supply of type to the printers of Southern France and Spain.

[43] Histoire de l’Invention de l’Imprimerie par les Monuments. Paris, 1840, fol., p. 12.

[44] Lettres d’un Bibliographe. Paris, 1875, 8vo, Ser. iv, letter 16.

[45] Begins “Incipit Liber de Laudibus ac Festis Gloriose Virginis Matris Marie alias Marionale Dictus per Doctores eximeos editus et compilatus”; at end, “Explicit Petrus Damasceni de laudibus gloriose Virginis Marie.” The book is mentioned in Hain, 5918. The drawn-up type occurs on the top of folio b 4 verso.

[46] It will be understood that in each case the outline of the types being merely a depressed edge in the original, the black outline of the facsimiles represents shadow only, and not, as might appear at first glance, inked surface. M. Madden’s facsimile is apparently drawn. In the photograph facsimile of the “De laudibus” type, the distribution of black represents the distribution of shadow caused by the somewhat uneven or tilted indentation of the side of the type in the paper.

[47] Such projections or “drags” in the mould are not unknown in modern typefounding, where they are purposely inserted so as to leave the newly cast type, on the opening of the mould, always adhering to one particular side.

[48] Life of Caxton, i, 39. Later on (p 52), Mr. Blades points out, as an argument against the supposed typographical connection between Caxton and Zel of Cologne, that the latter, from an early period, printed two pages at a time.

[49] Haarlem Legend, p. xxiii.

[50] Mr. Skeen (Early Typography, p. 299) speaks of 300 matrices as constituting a complete fount; he appears accidentally, in calculating for two pages instead of one, to have assumed that a double number of matrices would be requisite for the double quantity of type.

[51] Origin and Progress of Writing. London, 1803. 4to. Chapter ix.

[52] The cost-book of the Ripoli press contains several entries pointing to an early trade in type and matrices. In 1477 the directors paid ten florins of gold to one John of Mentz, for a set of Roman matrices. At another time they paid 110 livres for two founts of Roman and one of Gothic: and further, purchased of the goldsmith, Banco of Florence, 100 little initials, three large initials, three copper vignettes, and the copper for an entire set of Greek matrices.

[53]