2. Specimens illustrating the variations in the face of type produced by bad casting.
It may be asked, if the matrices were so truly justified, and the mould so accurately adjusted, how comes it that in the first books of these Mentz printers we still discover irregularites among the letters—fewer, indeed, but of the same kind as are to be found in books printed by the artists of the ruder school? To this we reply, that these irregularities are for the most part attributable neither to varieties in the original models, nor to defects in the matrix or the mould, but to the worn or unworn condition of the type, and to the skill or want of skill of the caster. Anyone versed in the practice of type-casting in hand-moulds, is aware that the manual exercise of casting a type is peculiar and difficult. With the same mould and the same matrix, one clever workman may turn out nineteen perfect types out of twenty; while a clumsy caster will scarcely succeed in producing a single perfect type out of the number. Different letters require different contortions to “coax” the metal into all the interstices of the matrix; and it is quite possible for the same workman to vary so in his work as to be as “lucky” one day as he is unprofitable the next. In modern times, of course, none but the perfect types ever find their way into the printer’s hands, but in the early days, when, with a perishable matrix, every type cast was of consequence, the censorship would be less severe,[39] and types would be allowed to {19} pass into use which differed as much from their original model as they did from one another. Let any inexperienced reader attempt to cast twenty Black-letter types from one mould and matrix, and let him take a proof of the types so produced in juxtaposition. The result of such an experiment would lead him to cease once and for all to wonder at irregularities observable in the Gutenberg Bible, or the Mentz Psalter, or the Catholicon.
With regard to the metal in which the earliest types were cast, we have more or less information afforded us in the colophons and statements of the printers themselves; although it must be borne in mind that the figurative language in which these artists were wont to describe their own labours is apt occasionally to lead to confusion, as to whether the expressions used refer to the punch, the matrix, or the cast types. We meet almost promiscuously with the terms,—“ære notas,” “æneis formulis,” “chalcographos,” “stanneis typis,” “stanneis formulis,” “ahenis formis,” “tabulis ahenis,” “ære legere,” “notas de duro orichalco,” etc. We look in vain for “plumbum,” the metal one would most naturally expect to find mentioned. The word æs, though strictly meaning bronze, is undoubtedly to be taken in its wider sense, already familiar in the fifteenth century, of metal in the abstract, and to include, at least, the lead, tin, or pewter in which the types were almost certainly cast. The reference to copper and bronze might either apply to the early punches or the later matrices; but in no case is it probable that types were cast in either metal.
Padre Fineschi gives an interesting extract from the cost-book of the Ripoli press, about 1480,[40] by which it appears that steel, brass, copper, tin, lead, and iron wire were all used in the manufacture of types at that period; the first two probably for the mould, the steel also for the punches, the copper for the matrices, the lead and tin for the types, and the iron wire for the mould, and possibly for stringing together the perforated type-models.
It is probable that an alloy was early introduced; first by the addition to the lead of tin and iron, and then gradually improved upon, till the discovery of {20} antimony at the end of the fifteenth century[41] supplied the ingredient requisite to render the types at once tough and sharp enough for the ordeal of the press. There is little doubt that at some time or other every known metal was tried experimentally in the mixture; but, from the earliest days of letter-casting, lead and tin have always been recognised as the staple ingredients of the alloy; the hard substance being usually either iron, bismuth, or antimony.
Turning now from type-casting appliances to the early types themselves, we are enabled, thanks to one or two recent discoveries, to form a tolerably good idea as to their appearance and peculiarities. We have already stated that, with regard to the traditional perforated wooden types seen by certain old writers, the probability is that, if these were the genuine relics they professed to be, they were model types used for forming moulds upon, or for impressing into matrices of moist clay or soft lead. We have also considered it possible, in regard to types cast in the primitive sand or clay moulds of the rude school, that to overcome the difficulties incident to irregular height to paper, uneven bodies, and loose locking-up, the expedient may have been attempted of perforating the types and passing a thread or wire through each line, to hold the intractable letters in their place.
This, however, is mere conjecture, and whether such types existed or not none of them have survived to our day. Their possessors, as they slowly discovered the secret of the punch, matrix and mould, would show little veneration, we imagine, for these clumsy relics of their ignorance, and value them only as old lead, to be remelted and recast by the newer and better method.
But though no relic of these primitive cast types remains, we are happily not without means for forming a judgment respecting some of the earliest types of the more finished school of printers. In 1878, in the bed of the river Saône, near Lyons,[42] opposite the site of one of the famous fifteenth century printing-houses of that city, a number of old types were discovered which there seems reason to believe belonged once to one of those presses, and were used by the early printers of Lyons. They came into the hands of M. Claudin of Paris, {21} the distinguished typographical antiquary, who, after careful examination and inquiry, has satisfied himself as to their antiquity and value as genuine relics of the infancy of the art of printing.