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.’