[5-*] It is desirable to observe this, as it has sometimes been supposed that the Proof-sheets of an entire work may be furnished at once. This it will be seen could not be, in a work of any extent; as the quantity of Type required for each sheet renders it necessary that the type should be liberated as speedily as convenient, in order to facilitate the progress and completion of the Printing.
[5-†] Taken asunder, and every Letter, Space, Point, &c. restored to its allotted compartment in the Type Case.
[5-‡] The cost of Setting the Type is regulated by the Thousand, which will explain why a full page or a smaller type is more expensive than a light or a larger.
[6-*] From the labour required in setting the Type, it will be easily conceived that Printing must necessarily be a rather slow process: it is so generally, three or four sheets per week being usually considered tolerably good speed, allowing for the unavoidable impediments occasioned by the transmitting and correcting of Proofs, &c. On urgent occasions, however, much greater progress may be made, which is accomplished by dividing the Manuscript among a greater number of hands. The publishers of this little work have had a volume printed in the astonishingly short space of three days. It was a work by Sir Lytton Bulwer, and the effort was rendered necessary in consequence of the arrangements made for the Foreign Editions. Nearly one hundred workmen were employed in effecting it.
[7-*] The Roller is a modern improvement. Formerly, the Inking process was performed with two large Balls, filled with wool, and covered with a sort of parchment. The Roller is a great improvement, diffusing the Ink more equally and producing a much greater uniformity of colour (as it is called) in the Printing.
[10-*] The Newspaper Press affords a remarkable instance of the surprising effect of combined and persevering effort. Few persons, perhaps, among those who are accustomed to receive the Daily Papers, are aware of the vast amount of cost and labour constantly employed in their production. To take for an instance the Times Newspaper. To accumulate the various articles of intelligence which are there collected, persons are constantly and assiduously employed in all directions, both at home and abroad. For the Foreign department, gentlemen, men of education and address, especially fitted for their office, resident in the various foreign capitals, and who regularly transmit (when necessary, by express) the earliest accounts of important occurrences, so effectually indeed as sometimes even to precede the government couriers; so that during the late war, events of the highest importance were first promulgated through the columns of this paper.—For the daily occurrences of the metropolis and its environs, others, devoted to this particular office. For the political circles, the Courts of Law, Police Offices, Accidents, Offences, &c., others;—and for the two Houses of Parliament, expert and expeditious short-hand writers; all of whom are continually engaged in transmitting their various reports to the office with the most persevering activity, to be there arranged, condensed, and fitted to their respective columns, by the sub-editors and those employed in what is called making up the Paper; while the Editor’s attention is more especially engaged in watching the progress of events, and in furnishing on the moment those remarks which are to be found in what is called the Leading Article. Thus the whole is in one day communicated, arranged, and printed; and by the same evening’s post transmitted to the most distant parts of the Empire; a result which may well strike those who enter into the contemplation of the vast expenditure of effort and capital which are constantly employed for the purpose, with astonishment.
In the completion of their Steam Printing Press alone, the Proprietors are said to have expended upwards of sixty thousand pounds. The daily sale of the paper is understood to be about ten thousand copies; and these, by means of the Steam Press, are printed off in the almost incredibly short space of about two hours and a half.
[12-*] Something like this is the plan originally invented and still practised in China. The work intended to be printed is transcribed by a careful Writer upon thin transparent Paper. The Engraver glues this with its face downwards upon a smooth tablet of Pear or Apple tree, or some other hard wood; and then with Gravers and other instruments, he cuts the wood away in all those parts upon which he finds nothing traced, thus leaving the transcribed characters Embossed and ready for Printing. In this manner he prepares as many Blocks as there are written Pages. In printing they do not as in Europe use a Press; the delicate nature of their Paper would not admit of it; when once, however, their Blocks are engraved, the Paper is cut, and the Ink is ready, one man, says Du Halde, with his brush, can without fatigue print ten thousand sheets in a day. The Block is Inked with one Brush, and with another the Paper is rubbed down upon it so as to take the Impression. In this way the Printer can travel with his Ink and his Blocks, and from place to place take off as many copies as he may find occasion for. According to Chinese chronology, this art was discovered in China about fifty years before the Christian era. It seems to be especially adapted to their language, in which are employed such a vast variety of characters.
[14-*] “Before the invention of this divine art, mankind were absorbed in the grossest ignorance, and oppressed under the most abject despotism of tyranny. The clergy, who before this era held the key of all the learning in Europe, were themselves ignorant, proud, presumptuous, arrogant, and artful; their devices were soon detected through the invention of typography. Many of them, as it may naturally be imagined, were very averse to the progress of this invention, as well as the brief-men, or writers, who lived by their manuscripts for the laity. They went so far as to attribute this blessed invention to the devil, and some of them warned their hearers from using such diabolical books.”—Lemoine.
[22-*] Mr. Lodge’s Peerage is perhaps the only instance in which a whole work, of that magnitude, has been kept standing in Type. This has been done for two reasons; first, because of the great expense of setting the Type afresh for each Edition; and secondly, that by being thus kept standing, it may be rendered constantly and uniformly correct, a point of the greatest importance in a work containing so large a mass of family history, the value of which so much depends on the accuracy of names and dates.