Fig. 388.—Fac-simile of an Engraving on Wood, by an ancient Flemish Engraver (about 1438); which was inserted, after the manner of a Miniature, in a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, containing Prayers for the use of the People. (Delbecq’s Collection, Ghent.)
“The art of taking impressions once discovered,” says M. Léon de Laborde, “and applied to engraving in relief, gave rise to printing, which was only the perfection to which a natural and rapid progression of attempts and efforts would naturally lead.” “But it was only,” adds M. Ambroise-Firmin Didot, “when the art of making paper—that art familiar to the Chinese from the beginning of our era—spread in Europe and became generally known, that the reproduction, by pressing, of texts, figures, playing-cards, &c., first by the tabular process, called xylography (block-printing), then with movable types, became easy, and was consequently to appear simultaneously in different places.”
Fig. 389.—Wood-block, cut in France, about 1440, representing an Image of St. James the Great, with one of the Commandments as a Text. (Imperial Library, Paris, Collection of Prints.)
But, at the end of the fourteenth century, at Haarlem, in Holland, wood-engraving had been discovered, and consequently tabular impression, with which the Chinese, it is said, were already acquainted three or four hundred years before the modern era. Perhaps it was some Chinese book or pack of cards brought to Haarlem by a merchant or a navigator, that revealed to the cardmakers and printsellers of the industrious Netherlands a process of impressing more expeditious and more economical. Xylography began on the day when a legend was engraved on a wood-block; this legend, limited at first to a few lines, very soon occupied a whole page; then this page was not long in becoming a volume ([Fig. 387] to 389).
Here is an extract from the account given by Adrian Junius, in his Latin work entitled “Batavia,” of the discovery of printing at Haarlem, written in 1572:—“More than one hundred and thirty-two years ago there lived at Haarlem, close to the royal palace, one John Laurent, surnamed Coster (or governer), for this honourable post came to him by inheritance, being handed down in his family from father to son. One day, about 1420, as he was walking after dinner in a wood near the town, he set to work and cut the bark of beech-trees into the shape of letters, with which he traced, on paper, by pressing one after the other upon it, a model composed of many lines for the instruction of his children. Encouraged by this success, his genius took a higher flight, and then, in concert with his son-in-law, Thomas Pierre, he invented a species of ink more glutinous and tenacious than that employed in writing, and he thus printed figures (images) to which he added his wooden letters. I have myself seen many copies of this first attempt at printing. The text is on one side only of the paper. The book printed was written in the vulgar tongue, by an anonymous author, having as its title ‘Speculum nostræ Salutis’ (‘The Mirror of our Salvation’). Later, Laurent Coster changed his wooden types into leaden, then these into pewter. Laurent’s new invention, encouraged by studious men, attracted from all parts an immense concourse of purchasers. The love of the art increased, the labours of his workshop increased also, and Laurent was obliged to add hired workmen to the members of his family, to assist in his operations. Among these workmen there was a certain John, whom I suspect of being none other than Faust, who was treacherous and fatal to his master. Initiated, under the seal of an oath, into all the secrets of printing, and having become very expert in casting type, in setting it up, and in the other processes of his trade, this John took advantage of a Christmas evening, while every one was in church, to rifle his master’s workshop and to carry off his typographical implements. He fled with his booty to Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and afterwards to Mayence, where he established himself; and calculating upon safety here, set up a printing-office. In that very same year, 1422, he printed with the type which Laurent had employed at Haarlem, a grammar then in use, called ‘Alexandri Galli Doctrinale,’ and a ‘Treatise of Peter the Spaniard’ (‘Petri Hispani Tractatus’).”
This account, which came, indeed, rather late, although the author referred to the most respectable authorities in support of it, met at first with nothing but incredulity and contempt. At this period the right of Mayence to be considered the birthplace of printing could only be seriously counterbalanced by the right Strasbourg had to be so considered. The three names of Gutenberg, of Faust, and of Schœffer were already consecrated by universal gratitude. Everywhere, then, except in Holland, this new testimony was rejected; everywhere the new inventor, whose claim had just been made for a share of the honour, was rejected as an apocryphal or legendary being. But very soon, however, criticism, raising itself above the influences of nationality, took up the question, discussed the account given by Junius, examined that famous “Speculum” which no one had yet pointed out, proved the existence of xylographic impressions, sought for those which could be attributed to Coster, and opposed to the Abbé Tritheim (or Trithemius), who had written on the origin of printing from information furnished by Peter Schœffer himself, the more disinterested testimony of the anonymous chronicler of Cologne in 1465, who had learned from Ulric Zell, one of Gutenberg’s workmen, and the first printer of Cologne in 1465, this important peculiarity:—“Although the typographic art was invented at Mayence,” says he, “nevertheless the first rough sketch of this art was invented in Holland, and it is in imitation of the ‘Donatus’ (the Latin syntax by Cœlius Donatus, a grammarian of the fourth century, a book then in use in the schools of Europe), which long before that time was printed there; it is in imitation of this, and on account of it, that the said art began under the auspices of Gutenberg.”
If Gutenberg imitated the “Donatus,” which was printed in Holland before the time he himself printed at Mayence, Gutenberg was not the inventor of printing. It was in 1450 that Gutenberg began to print at Mayence ([Fig. 390]); but from as early a date as 1436 he had tried to print at Strasbourg; and, before his first attempts, there had been printed in Holland,—at Haarlem, and Dordrecht,—“Specula” and “Donati” on wooden boards; a process known by the name of xylography (engraving on wood), while the attempts at typography (printing with movable type) made by Gutenberg entirely differed from the other; since the letters, engraved at first on steel points (poinçons), and afterwards forced into a copper matrix reproduced by means of casting in a metal more fusible than copper the impress of the point on shanks (tiges) made of pewter or lead, hardened by an alloy ([Fig. 391]).