The quantity of type with which the earliest printers found it necessary to provide themselves, turns, of course, upon the question, did the first printers print only one page at a time, or more? M. Bernard considers that the Gutenberg Bible, which is usually collated in sections of five sheets, or twenty pages, containing about 2,688 types in a page, would require 60,000 types to print a single section; and if sufficient type was cast to enable the compositors to set one section while another was being worked, the fount would need to consist of 120,000 letters. Others consider that two pages, requiring, in the case of the Gutenberg Bible, only 6,000 types, were printed at one time. But even this estimate has been shown to be opposed to the evidence afforded by a considerable number of the incunabula, respecting which it is evident only one page was printed at a time. On this point we cannot do better than quote the words of Mr. Blades. “The scribe,” he says, “necessarily wrote but one page at a time, and, curiously enough, the early printers here also assimilated their practice. Whether from want of sufficient type to set up the requisite number of pages, or from the limited capability of the presses, there is strong evidence of the early books from Caxton’s press having been printed page by page. . . . . Instances are found of pages on the same side of the sheet being out of parallel, which could not occur if two pages were printed together. . . . A positive proof of the separate printing of the pages may be seen in a copy of the Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, in the Bodleian; {27} for the ninth recto of the third quaternion has never been printed at all, while the second verso (the page which must fall on the same side of the sheet) appears properly printed.”[48]
What is true of Caxton’s early works is also true of a large number of other fifteenth century printed books. Mr. Hessels, after quoting the testimony of Mr. Bradshaw of Cambridge, and Mr. Winter Jones of the British Museum, refers to a large number of incunabula in which he has found evidence that this mode of printing was the common practice of the early typographers.[49]
Assuming, then, that the first books were generally printed page by page, it will be seen that the stock of type necessary to enable the printer to proceed was but small. 2,700 letters would suffice for one page of the forty-two-line Bible; and for the Rationale Durandi, about 5,000 would be required. It is probable, however, that, as Bernard suggests, the printers would cast enough to enable one forme to be composed while the other was working, so that double these quantities would possibly be provided. Nor must it be forgotten that a “fount” of type in these days consisted not only of the ordinary letters of the alphabet, but of a very large number of double letters, abbreviations and contractions, which must have seriously complicated the labour of composition, as well as reduced the individual number of each type required to fill the typefounder’s “bill.” This feature, doubtless attributable to the attempt on the part of the early printers to imitate manuscript as closely as possible, as well as to the exigencies of justification in composition, which, in the absence of a variety of spaces, required various widths in the letters themselves, was common to both schools of early typography. M. Bernard states that, in the type of the forty-two-line Bible, each letter required at least three or four varieties; while with regard to Caxton’s type 1, which was designed and cast by Colard Mansion at Bruges, before 1472, Mr. Blades points out that the fount contained upwards of 163 sorts, and that there were only five letters of which there were not more than one matrix, either as single letters or in combination. Speaking of the Speculum, Mr. Skeen counts 1,430 types on one page, of which 22 are a, 61 e, 91 i, 73 o, 37 u, 22 d, 14 h, 30 m, 50 n, 42 s, and 41 t; besides which there are no less than ninety duplicate and triplicate characters, comprising one variation of a, 15 of c, 7 of d, 3 of e, 9 of f, 10 of g, 3 of i, 7 of l, 2 of o, 3 of n, 2 of p, 10 of r, 9 of s, 9 of t, varying in the frequency of their occurrence from once to eleven times, leaving but 541 other letters for the rest of the alphabet, including the capitals; {28} and of these last, from three to twenty would be the utmost of each required. Altogether, calculating 138 matrices (i.e., two alphabets of twenty-four letters each, and ninety double and treble letters) to be the least number of matrices required to make a complete fount,[50] the highest number of types of any one particular sort necessary to print a single page would be ninety-one. The average number of the eleven chief letters specified above would be about forty-four, while if we take into calculation the minor letters of the alphabet and the double letters, this average would be reduced to little more than ten. It will thus be seen that the founts of the earliest printers consisted of a small quantity each of a large variety of sorts. Mr. Astle, in his chapter on the Origin and Progress of Printing,[51] is, we believe, the only writer who has dwelt upon the difficulty which the first letter-founders would be likely to encounter in the arrangement of their “bill.” This venerable compilation was, he considers, made in the fifteenth century, probably by the ordinary method of casting-off copy. If so, it must have experienced considerable and frequent change during the time that the ligatures were falling into disuse, and until the printer’s alphabet had reduced itself to its present limits.
Of the face of type used by the earliest printers we shall have occasion to speak later on. Respecting the development of letter-founding as an industry, there is little that can be gathered in the history of the fifteenth century. At first the art of the inventor was a mystery divulged to none. But the sack of Mentz, in 1462, and the consequent dispersion of Gutenberg’s disciples, spread the secret broadcast over Europe. Italy, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Spain, England, in turn learned it, and after their fashion improved it. Italy, especially, guided by the master-hands of her early artists, brought it to rapid perfection. The migrations of Gutenberg’s types among the early presses of Bamberg, Eltville, and elsewhere, have led to the surmise that he may have sold matrices of his letter.[52] In 1468, Schoeffer put forward what may be considered the first advertisement in the annals of typography. “Every nation,” he says, in {29} the colophon to Justinian’s Institutes, “can now procure its own kind of letters, for he (i.e., Schoeffer himself) excels with all-prevailing pencil” (i.e., in designing and engraving all kinds of type).[53] For the most part printers were their own founders, and each printer had his own types. But type depôts and markets, and the wanderings of the itinerant typographers, as the demands of printing yearly increased, brought the founts of various presses and nations to various centres, and thus gave the first impulse to that gradual divorce between printing and typefounding which in the following century left the latter the distinct industry it still remains.
Such is a brief outline of the chief facts and opinions regarding the processes, appliances and practices of the earliest typefounders. It may be said that, after all, we know very little about the matter. The facts are very few, and the conjectures, in many instances, so contradictory, that it is impossible to erect a “system,” or draw any but general conclusions. These conclusions we very briefly summarise as follows.
Accepting as a fundamental principle that the essence of typography is in the mobility of the types, we dismiss, as beyond the scope of our inquiry, the xylographic works which preceded typography. Passing in review the alleged stepping-stones between the two arts, we fail to see in the evidence adduced as to the use of movable wooden perforated types anything to justify the conclusion that the earliest printers printed books by their means. Such types may have been cut experimentally, but the practical impossibility of cutting them square enough to be composed in a forme, and of producing a work of the size and character of the Speculum, is fatal to their claims. With regard to the sculpto-fusi types—types engraved on cast-metal bodies—the evidence in their favour is of the most unsatisfactory character, and, coupled with the practical difficulties of their production, reduces their claims to a minimum. The marked difference of style and excellence in the typography of certain of the earliest books leads us to accept the theory that two schools of typography existed side by side in the infancy of the art—one a rude school, which, not having the secret of the more perfect appliances of the inventors, cast its letters by some primitive method, probably using moulds of sand or clay, in which the entire type had been moulded. Such types may have been perforated and held together in lines by a wire. The suggestion that the earliest types were produced by a system of polytype, and that the face of each letter, sawn off a plate resembling a {30} stereotype-plate, was separately mounted on loose wooden shanks, we dismiss as purely fanciful.
Turning now to the processes adopted by the typographers of the more advanced school, we consider that in the first instance, although grasping the principle of the punch, the matrix and the adaptable mould, they may have made use of inferior appliances—possibly by forming their matrices in lead from wooden or leaden punches or models—advancing thence by degrees to the use of steel punches, copper matrices, and the bipartite iron mould. We hold that the variations observable in the early works of this school are due mainly to uneven casting and wear and tear of the types. As to the metal in which the type was cast, we find mention made of almost every metal, several of which, however, refer to the punches and matrices, leaving tin, lead, and antimony as the staple ingredients of the type-metal. Of the types themselves, we find these in most essential particulars to be the same as those cast at a later date. We see, however, evidence of perforated, mould-cast type, and, in the absence of a nick, a “shamfer” at the foot, from which the jet appears to have been sawn or cut, instead of being broken. We remark a great irregularity in the heights of different founts, the average of which height is beyond any modern English standard. The accidental impression of a type in two early German books, proves that about the year 1476 types were made differing only in the two points of the want of a nick and the want of a jet-break from the types of to-day. The quantity of types required by the earliest printers, we consider, would be small, since they appear in most instances to have printed only one page at a time; but the number of different sorts going to make up a fount would be very considerable, by reason of the numerous contractions, double letters and abbreviations used.