But while the learned of Italy were eagerly exploring their recent acquisitions of manuscripts, decyphered with difficulty and slowly circulated from hand to hand, a few obscure Germans had gradually perfected the most important discovery recorded in the annals of mankind. The invention of printing, so far from being the result of philosophical sagacity, does not appear to have been suggested by any regard to the higher branches of literature, or to bear any other relation than that of coincidence to their revival in Italy. The question why it was struck out at that particular time must be referred to that disposition of unknown causes which we call accident. Two or three centuries earlier, we cannot but acknowledge the discovery would have been almost equally acceptable. But the invention of paper seems to have naturally preceded those of engraving and printing. It is generally agreed that playing cards, which have been traced far back in the fourteenth century, gave the first notion of taking off impressions from engraved figures upon wood. The second stage, or rather second application of this art, was the representation of saints and other religious devices, several instances of which are still extant. Some of these are accompanied with an entire page of illustrative text, cut into the same wooden block. This process is indeed far removed from the invention that has given immortality to the names of Fust, Schœffer, and Gutenburg, yet it probably led to the consideration of means whereby it might be rendered less operose and inconvenient. Whether moveable wooden characters were ever employed in any entire work is very questionable—the opinion that referred their use to Laurence Coster, of Haarlem, not having stood the test of more accurate investigation. They appear, however, in the capital letters of some early printed books. But no expedient of this kind could have fulfilled the great purposes of this invention, until it was perfected by founding metal types in a matrix or mould, the essential characteristic of printing, as distinguished from other arts that bear some analogy to it.
The first book that issued from the presses of Fust and his associates at Mentz was an edition of the Vulgate, commonly called the Mazarine Bible, a copy having been discovered in the library that owes its name to Cardinal Mazarin at Paris. This is supposed to have been printed between the years 1450 and 1455.[h] In 1457 an edition of the Psalter appeared, and in this the invention was announced to the world in a boasting colophon, though certainly not unreasonably bold.[] Another edition of the Psalter, one of an ecclesiastical book, Durand's account of liturgical offices, one of the Constitutions of Pope Clement V., and one of a popular treatise on general science, called the Catholicon, filled up the interval till 1462, when the second Mentz Bible proceeded from the same printers.[k] This, in the opinion of some, is the earliest book in which cast types were employed—those of the Mazarine Bible having been cut with the hand. But this is a controverted point. In 1465 Fust and Schœffer published an edition of Cicero's Offices, the first tribute of the new art to polite literature. Two pupils of their school, Sweynheim and Pannartz, migrated the same year into Italy, and printed Donatus's grammar and the works of Lactantius at the monastery of Subiaco, in the neighbourhood of Rome.[m] Venice had the honour of extending her patronage to John of Spira, the first who applied the art on an extensive scale to the publication of classical writers.[n] Several Latin authors came forth from his press in 1470; and during the next ten years a multitude of editions were published in various parts of Italy. Though, as we may judge from their present scarcity, these editions were by no means numerous in respect of impressions, yet, contrasted with the dilatory process of copying manuscripts, they were like a new mechanical power in machinery, and gave a wonderfully accelerated impulse to the intellectual cultivation of mankind. From the era of these first editions proceeding from the Spiras, Zarot, Janson, or Sweynheim and Pannartz, literature must be deemed to have altogether revived in Italy. The sun was now fully above the horizon, though countries less fortunately circumstanced did not immediately catch his beams; and the restoration of ancient learning in France and England cannot be considered as by any means effectual even at the expiration of the fifteenth century. At this point, however, I close the present chapter. The last twenty years of the middle ages, according to the date which I have fixed for their termination in treating of political history, might well invite me by their brilliancy to dwell upon that golden morning of Italian literature. But, in the history of letters, they rather appertain to the modern than the middle period; nor would it become me to trespass upon the exhausted patience of my readers by repeating what has been so often and so recently told, the story of art and learning, that has employed the comprehensive research of a Tiraboschi, a Ginguené, and a Roscoe.
FOOTNOTES:
[a] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 270. Meyer ascribes the origin of Flemish trade to Baldwin count of Flanders in 958, who established markets at Bruges and other cities. Exchanges were in that age, he says, chiefly effected by barter, little money circulating in Flanders. Annales Flandrici, fol. 18 (edit. 1561).
[] Matthew Westmonast, apud Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 415.
[c] Such regulations scared away those Flemish weavers who brought their art into England under Edward III. Macpherson, p. 467, 494, 546. Several years later the magistrates of Ghent are said by Meyer (Annales Flandrici, fol. 156) to have imposed a tax on every loom. Though the seditious spirit of the Weavers' Company had perhaps justly provoked them, such a tax on their staple manufacture was a piece of madness, when English goods were just coming into competition.
[d] Terrâ marique mercatura, rerumque commercia et quæstus peribant. Non solum totius Europæ mercatores, verum etiam ipsi Turcæ aliæque sepositæ nationes ob bellum istud Flandriæ magno afficiebantur dolore. Erat nempe Flandria totius prope orbis stabile mercatoribus emporium. Septemdecim regnorum negotiatores tum Brugis sua certa habuere domicilia ac sedes, præter complures incognitas pæne gentes quæ undique confluebant. Meyer, fol. 205, ad ann. 1385.
[e] Meyer; Froissart; Comines.
[f] It contained, according to Ludovico Guicciardini, 35,000 houses, and the circuit of its walls was 45,640 Roman feet. Description des Pais Bas, p. 350, &c. (edit. 1609). Part of this enclosure was not built upon. The population of Ghent is reckoned by Guicciardini at 70,000, but in his time it had greatly declined. It is certainly, however, much exaggerated by earlier historians. And I entertain some doubts as to Guicciardini's estimate of the number of houses. If at least he was accurate, more than half of the city must since have been demolished or become uninhabited, which its present appearance does not indicate; for Ghent, though not very flourishing, by no means presents the decay and dilapidation of several Italian towns.
[g] Guicciardini, p. 362; Mém. de Comines, 1. v. c. 17; Meyer, fol. 354; Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 647, 651.