The Aldine mark, which appears on Aldus' edition of Dante's Terze Rime in 1502, and on nearly all the numerous works subsequently issued from this famous press, is a dolphin twined about an anchor, and the name Aldvs divided by the upper part of the anchor. This device continued to be used after the death of Aldus Manutius in 1515 by his descendants, who carried on the work of the press until 1597.
France was somewhat late in availing herself of the advantages offered by the new art, although Peter Schoeffer had had a bookseller's shop in Paris. In 1470, Guillaume Fichet, Rector of the Sorbonne, invited three German printers—Ulric Gering, Michael Friburger and Martin Cranz—to come and set up a printing-press at the Sorbonne. The first work they produced there was the Epistolæ of Gasparinus Barzizius. For this and a few other volumes they used a very beautiful Roman type, but after the closing of the Sorbonne press in 1472 they established other presses elsewhere in Paris and adopted a Gothic character similar to that of the contemporary French manuscripts, and therefore more likely to be popular with French readers.
The first work printed in the French language, however, is believed to have been executed, chiefly, at any rate, by an Englishman, probably at Bruges, five years later, that is, about 1476. The book was Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes, the Englishman was William Caxton. Caxton also printed at the same place, and about the year 1475, the first book in the English language—a translation of Le Recueil. In both these works he may have been assisted by Colard Mansion, believed by some to have been his typographical tutor, though so eminent an authority as Mr Blades holds that Le Recueil was printed by Mansion alone, and that Caxton had no hand in it. As with so many other questions concerning early typography, there seems to be no means of deciding the point.
The first work in French which was issued in Paris was the Grands Chroniques de France, printed by Pasquier Bonhomme in 1477.
Holland and the Low Countries can show no printed book with a date earlier than 1473, while the celebrated city of Haarlem's first dated book was produced ten years later. But printing was very possibly practised in these countries at an earlier period, and some undated books exist which those who ascribe the invention of typography to Holland consider to have been executed by Dutch printers before any German books had been given to the world. Those who stand by Germany of course think otherwise.
In the year just named—1473—Nycolaum Ketelaer and Gerard de Leempt produced Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica at Utrecht, and Alost and Louvain also started printing. The types of John Veldener, the first Louvain printer, have a great resemblance to those used by Caxton, and have led some to believe that Veldener supplied Caxton with the types he first used at Westminster. About the same time, Colard Mansion, noted for his association either as teacher or assistant with Caxton, is supposed to have introduced printing into Bruges. His first dated book was a Boccaccio of 1476, and he continued to print until 1484, when he issued a fine edition, in French, of Ovid's Metamorphoses. After this nothing more is known of him. Blades thinks that his printing brought him financial ruin, and suggests that he may have joined his old friend Caxton at Westminster, and helped him in his work, but this is only conjecture. We have already seen that it was from Colard Mansion's press that the first printed books in the English and French languages were produced.
The first Brussels press was established by the Brethren of the Common Life, a community who had hitherto made a speciality of the production of manuscript books. At what date they began to print in Brussels is uncertain, but their first dated book, the Gnotosolitos sive speculum conscientiae, is of the year 1476. The Brethren also had an earlier press at Marienthal, near Mentz, and subsequently set up others at Rostock, Nuremberg, and Gouda.
The Elzevirs belong to a somewhat later period than that with which we are concerned in these chapters, but a name so famous in bibliographical annals as theirs cannot well be passed over. The first of the Elzevirs was Louis, a native of Louvain, who in 1580 established a book-shop in Leyden, gained the patronage of the university, and opened an important trade with foreign countries. Certain of his sons and successors became printers as well as booksellers, and produced work of the highest excellence. Some of them opened shops or set up presses at Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht, and also established agencies or branches elsewhere, and extended their trade all over Europe. The history of the partnerships between different members of the family, and of the sixteen hundred and odd publications which they printed or sold, is a complicated subject upon which there is no need to enter here. The last of the Elzevirs, a degenerate great-great-grandson of the first Louis Elzevir, was Abraham Elzevir of Leyden, who died in 1712, leaving no heir, and at whose decease the press and apparatus were sold.
[CHAPTER XI
EARLY PRINTING IN ENGLAND]
The first name on the list of early English printers, it is hardly necessary to say, is that of Caxton. In his Life and Typography of William Caxton, the late Mr Blades has told all there is to be known of Caxton's life, and a great deal about Caxton's work; and although as regards the latter half of the subject there are authorities who dissent from some of the theories he advances, Mr Blades' monograph remains the standard work on the matter of England's first printer and the recognised source of information concerning him and his books.