TYPE OF THE SUBIACO LACTANTIUS (exact size.)
Two years later Sweynheim and Pannartz removed to Rome, where their countryman, Ulric Hahn, was already at work, and prosecuted their business with so much energy, and apparently so little prudence or regard to the works of other printers, that at the end of five years they had printed no less than 12,475 sheets which they could not sell, and were in such financial straits that they petitioned the Pope for assistance for themselves and their families. Whether they obtained it is unknown, but the partnership was soon after dissolved, and the name of Pannartz alone appears in books of 1475 and 1476. When these two printers died is uncertain.
Venice was the next city of Italy to take up the new art. There, in 1469, Joannes de Spira, or John of Spires, executed Cicero's Epistolæ ad Familiares. He obtained a privilege from the Venetian Senate with regard to his productions, and, more than that, a monopoly of book-printing in Venice for five years. He died, however, less than a year later, and his monopoly with him. His brother Vindelinus carried on his work, and was succeeded by Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, who, from a technical point of view, was perhaps the most skilful and artistic of early typographers.
The most famous printer of Venice, however, and the most famous printer of Italy, and perhaps of the world, is Aldus Manutius, born in 1450, but his fame rests less on his actual printing, which, though good, is not unequalled, than upon the efforts he made for popularising literature, and bringing cheap, yet well-produced books within the reach of the many. He saw that the works printed in such numbers by the Venetian printers, who paid attention to quantity and cheapness and altogether ignored the quality of their productions, were faulty and corrupt, and that textually as well as typographically there was room for improvement. He applied himself to the study of the classics, above all to the Greek, hitherto neglected or published through Latin translations, and secured the assistance of many eminent scholars, and then, having obtained good texts, turned his thoughts to type and format. The types he cast for his first book, Lascaris' Greek Grammar, were superior to the Greek types then in use. Next he designed a new Roman type, modelled, so it is said, upon the handwriting of Petrarch. It called forth admiration, and won fame under the name of the “Aldino” type. Its use has continued to the present day, and it is known to almost everyone as Italic. It was cut by Francesco de Bologna, who was probably identical with Francesco Raibolini, that painter-goldsmith who signed himself on his pictures as Aurifex, and on his gold-work as Pictor.
The advantage of the Aldino type, at the time of its invention, when type was large and required a comparatively great deal of space, was that its size and form permitted the printed matter to be much compressed, while losing nothing in clearness. The book for which it was used could be made smaller, and printed more cheaply. In 1501 Aldus inaugurated his new type by issuing a Virgil printed throughout in “Aldino.” It occupied two hundred and twenty-eight leaves, and was of a neat and novel shape, measuring just six by three and a half inches. This book, which was sold for about two shillings of our money, marks Aldus as the pioneer of cheap literature—literature not for the wealthy alone, but for all who loved books. A proof of the popularity of the new departure is afforded by the fact that the Virgil was immediately forged, that is to say, reproduced in a number of exceedingly inferior copies, by an unknown printer of Lyons.
TYPE OF THE ALDINE VIRGIL, 1501 (exact size.)