More often than not these colophons are irritatingly reticent, and withhold the very thing we want to know. At other times they are informing, and in some cases amusing. Dr Garnett has suggested that as a literary pastime some one might do worse than collect fifteenth-century colophons into a volume, for the sake of their biographical and personal interest, but I am not aware that his idea has been carried out. Two colophons have already been quoted here, the first printed colophon (see [p. 103]) and one which is possibly from the pen of Gutenberg (see [p. 101]). A quaint specimen found in a volume of Cicero's Orationes Philippicæ, printed at Rome by Ulrich Hahn, about 1470, descends to puns. It is in Latin verse, and supposed by some to have been written by Cardinal Campanus, who edited several of Hahn's publications. It informs the descendants of the Geese who saved the Capitol, that they need have no more fear for their feathers, for the art of Ulrich the Cock (German Hahn = Latin Gallus = English Cock) will provide a potent substitute for quills. A colophon to Cicero's Epistolæ Familiares, printed at Venice in 1469 by Joannes de Spira, declares with pardonable pride that he had printed two editions of three hundred copies in four months.
The first book with any attempt at a title-page is the Sermo ad Populum Predicabilis, printed at Cologne in 1470 by Arnold Therhoernen, but a full title-page was not generally adopted till fifty years later. The first English title-page is very brief, and reads as follows:—
A passing gode lityll boke necessarye & behouefull agenst the Pestilence.
This gode lityll boke, written by Canutus, Bishop of Aarhaus, was printed in London about 1482 by Machlinia. A later development of the title-page was a full-page woodcut, headed by the name of the work, as in the Kynge Richarde cuer du lyon, printed in 1528 by Wynkyn de Worde. The same woodcut does duty in another of the same printer's books for Robert the Devil.
Early title-pages in Latin sometimes render the names of familiar places of publication in a very unfamiliar form. London may appear as Augusta Trinobantum, Edinburgh as Aneda, Dublin as Eblana. Some towns are easily recognised by their Latin names, such as Roma or Venetiæ; others are less obvious, such as Moguntia, or Mentz; Lutetia, or Paris; Argentina, or Strasburg. Several places had more than one Latin form of name. London, for example, was also Londinum, and Edinburgh, Edemburgem.
Pagination, or numbering of the pages, was first introduced by Arnold Therhoernen, in the same book in which he gives us the first title-page, and to which reference has already been made. He did not place the figures at the top corner, however, but in the centre of the right hand margin.
The practice of printing the first word of a leaf at the foot of the leaf preceding, as a guide for the arrangement of the sheets, was first employed by Vindelinus de Spira, of Venice, in the Tacitus which he printed about 1469.
[CHAPTER X
EARLY PRINTING IN ITALY AND SOME OTHER COUNTRIES]
The new invention found more favour in Italy than in any other country, for more presses were established there than anywhere else. The printers, however, were all Germans, and before 1480 about 110 German typographers were at work in twenty-seven Italian cities. They kept the secrets of their trade well to themselves, and not till 1471 was any printing executed by an Italian. In May of that year the De Medicinis Universalibus of Mesua was executed at Venice by Clement of Padua, who accomplished the truly wonderful feat of teaching himself how to print. Another Italian, Joannes Phillipus de Lignamine, printed at Rome some time before July 26, 1471, and it is therefore uncertain whether he or Clement of Padua was the first native printer of Italy.
The first press established in Italy was that set up in the Benedictine monastery of St Scholastica at Subiaco, a few miles from Rome, by two German typographers, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz. There they issued Cicero's De Oratore in 1465, the first book printed in Italy. In their petition to the Pope, referred to below, they say that they had printed a Donatus, presumably before the Cicero, but no such work is known, and some have thought it was only a block-book. In the same year they issued the works of Lactantius, “the Christian Cicero,” the first dated book executed in Italy. It is also one of the earliest books to adopt a more elaborate punctuation than the simple oblique line and full stop in general use. The Lactantius has a colon, full stop, and notes of admiration and interrogation. Both these books are printed in a pleasing type which is neither Gothic nor Roman, but midway between the two.