[12] Van der Linde, Haarlem Legend. Lond., p. 72.
[13] Skeen, in his Early Typography, Colombo, 1872, takes up the challenge thrown down by Dr. Van der Linde on the strength of Enschedé’s opinion, and shows a specimen of three letters cut in boxwood, pica size, one of which he exhibits again at the close of the book after 1,500 impressions. But the value of Skeen’s arguments and experiments is destroyed when he sums up with this absurd dictum: “Three letters are as good as 3,000 or 30,000 or 300,000 to demonstrate the fact that words are and can be, and that therefore pages and whole books may be (and therefore also that they may have been) printed from such separable wooden types.”—P. 424.
[14] Annales Hirsaugienses, ii, p. 421: “Post hæc inventis successerunt subtiliora, inveneruntque modum fundendi formas omnium Latini Alphabeti literarum quas ipsi matrices nominabant; ex quibus rursum æneos sive stanneos characteres fundebant, ad omnem pressuram sufficientes, quos prius manibus sculpebant.” Trithemius’ statement, as every student of typographical history is aware, has been made to fit every theory that has been propounded, but it is doubtful whether any other writer has stretched it quite as severely as Meerman in the above rendering of these few Latin lines.
[15] Origines Typographicæ, Gerardo Meerman auctore. Hagæ Com., 1765. Append., p. 47.
[16] The constant recurrence in more modern typographical history of the expression “to cut matrices,” meaning of course to cut the punches necessary to form the matrices, bears out the same conclusion.
[17] Origine et Débuts de l’Imprimerie en Europe. Paris, 1853, 8vo, i, 38.
[18] Life and Typography of William Caxton. London, 1861–3, 2 vols, 4to, ii, xxiv.
[19] The Invention of Printing. New York, 1876. 8vo.
[20] Origine de l’Imprimerie, i, 40.
[21] Mr. Blades points out that there are no overhanging letters in the specimen. The necessity for such letters would be, we imagine, entirely obviated by the numerous combinations with which the type of the printers of the school abounded. The body is almost always large enough to carry ascending and descending sorts, and in width, a sort which would naturally overhang, is invariably covered by its following letter cast on the same piece.