Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography

by Richard Garnett

press, we are particularly impressed by its utilitarian, and, as a corollary, its essentially popular character. We do not employ this latter term as indicative of a relation between the printers and the mass of the people, who at that period were generally unable to read, but between the printers and their limited public. In our times a considerable proportion of the current literature of the day is produced without any reference to the needs and tastes of the reading public. The author knows that he will not be read, but it nevertheless suits him to put his opinions, his experiences, or his skill in composition upon record; for the gratification of his self-esteem, it may be, or the expression of his emotions, or as a document for future reference, or as an act of duty, or for the pleasure of friends, or for any one or more of these and many other conceivable reasons. Were it not for the safety-valve afforded by the periodical press, the number of books thus existing for the author's individual sake would be very much more considerable. Hardly anything of this is to be observed in the early ages of publishing. Scarcely a book is to be found for which a public might not be reasonably expected, and which, therefore, would not be produced without the expectation of profit. We know that this expectation was not always realised from Sweynheym and Pannartz's petition to Pope Sixtus IV., that he would indemnify them by some public appointment for the loss of capital sunk in their unsold publications, but the books were such as promised to command a sale, and the reason of

their failure was probably the competition of other Italian presses. They were principally classical authors or Fathers of the Church, and it may be that exigencies of Papal patronage led Sweynheym and his partner to produce more of the latter class than was prudent on strictly commercial grounds. If so, the case was quite exceptional, and does not invalidate the general proposition that the Italian printers of the Renaissance looked entirely, and in the main intelligently, to the needs of their public. It is thus easy to discover the character of this constituency, and to estimate its requirements.

For long after the invention of printing the books produced consist mainly of four classes:—(1) Classical, (2) Grammatical, (3) Theological, (4) Legal. The immense proportion of these in comparison with other subjects demonstrates that the great majority of readers belonged to the professional classes—teachers, or at least students at the universities, divines, and practitioners of civil or canon law. Had a leisured and cultured class existed, as in our times, we should have seen more modern history and biography, more essays and facetiæ, more vernacular poetry and fiction—all departments very slenderly represented in the fifteenth century. Men evidently read for practical ends, and invested their money in the expectation of a substantial rather than an intellectual return. The class that now reads principally for amusement, did not in that age read at all; but if it had, books could not then be produced at the cheap rate

required to ensure an extensive circulation. If such books are costly, they must at all events be solid, to give the purchaser an apparent return for his money; or the expense must be distributed over a wide area by the agency of circulating libraries, an institution which implies a numerous reading public. Hence, a fact honourable to Renaissance literature, it includes hardly anything that can be called trash. Copious in the number of its publications, it is disappointingly meagre in their themes; many branches of human activity hardly exist for it, but, at all events, almost every one of its publications was produced in response to a real need. Most of them have inevitably become obsolete, few have ever been, or will be, utterly valueless.

The drawback to the generally sterling character of the early Renaissance printing was want of enterprise on the part of the printers, who were also the publishers. At the present day culture is greatly promoted by the ambitious and competitive spirit of publishers, who look far and wide for subjects likely to touch sympathetic chords in the breast of the public, are always ready to listen to new ideas, to which they frequently accord generous encouragement, compete among themselves for promising writers, and are continually devising new schemes to attract patronage by elegance, cheapness, artistic decoration, or the supply of some want which the public has not yet found out for itself. Very little of this is to be discovered in the fifteenth century. Publishers

seldom cared to transgress the safe ordinary round of classics, divinity, and law. Occasionally there are symptoms of alertness to the events of the day: thus, as soon as Cardinal Rovere becomes Pope, his treatises on the Redemption and the perpetual virginity of Mary are printed at Rome; and when the Jews are accused of murdering a Christian boy, circumstantial accounts of the tragedy appear in different parts of Europe. But, notwithstanding the intellectual curiosity of the age, it would seem to have been a very unpromising one for the literary manifestation of original genius of any kind. Works of contemporary authors, other than of a purely utilitarian character, are very rare. One of the most remarkable exceptions is the publication at Naples in 1476 of the "Novellini" of Masuccio, a book whose scandalous character would be sure to obtain it readers. Towards the end of the century, works by living authors of eminence became more frequent, but even then they are most commonly those of men like Sanazzaro, influential in courts, and enjoying literary distinction long before they went to press. One of the press's most important functions, the encouragement of unknown ability, was hardly performed at all in that age, and the principal reason was that the printers, though sometimes of classical acquirements, were either too exclusively commercial in their views or too limited in their resources to promote literary activity outside of the beaten track. Our own Caxton appears a model of intelligent adaptation to the tastes of his public,

but he never finds an author or exerts himself to give superior finish or elegance to a book. It cannot but be thought that if Italy had in the fifteenth century possessed a publisher of enterprising spirit and ample means, a powerful impulse might have been imparted to Italian vernacular literature. Such a person, indeed, would have perceived that the public for such a literature, apart from its few classical examples, did not then exist, but he would have deemed that the multitude of intelligent men who could not read Latin would read Italian, if Italian were put before them. Instead of hiring editors he would have hired authors, and his enterprise might have been attended by momentous consequences.

Another token of the lack of a far-seeing speculative spirit is the extraordinary period which elapsed before an Italian printer ventured upon the publication of a Greek book. The interest in Greek literature must have been very general, but instructors were probably scarce, and few Italians had taken the trouble to learn it. The educational value of the language, apart from the contents of the books composed in it, was utterly unsurmised, and the reader was fully satisfied if he could obtain a faithful Latin translation, which in the majority of cases was not yet to be had. Had printed Greek texts been placed in the way of readers, a vast impulse would have been given to the study of the language, and a publisher of genius, labouring to create the taste he did not find, might have greatly accelerated the course of European

culture. Greek grammar, even, awaited the typographer until 1476, and Greek literature for some years longer. No originality was infused into the business of publishing until the advent of Aldus, almost as much the father of modern bookselling as Gutenberg is the father of printing.

Leaving the question of what the Renaissance printers and publishers of Italy might have done, we proceed to illustrate what they did by a brief analysis of the character of their productions during the first few years of their activity, especially in Rome and Venice. The survey is necessarily very imperfect, for a large proportion of their productions are not dated, and the exact year is usually a matter of conjecture. We must confine ourselves to the list of dated books given by Panzer, which might admit of considerable extension. It is not likely, however, that this would materially affect the mutual proportion of the various classes of literature, the point with which we are principally concerned.