If this principle be adopted—and we can hardly imagine it questioned—it will be obvious that a large class of works which usually occupy a prominent place in inquiries into the origin of Printing, have but slight bearing on the history of Typography. The block books of the fifteenth century had little direct connection with the art that followed and eclipsed them.[2] In the one respect of marking the early use of printing for the instruction of mankind, the block books and the first works of Typography proper claim an equal interest; but, as regards their mechanical production, the one feature they possess in common is a quality shared also by the playing-cards, pictures, seals, stamps, {3} brands, and all the other applications of the principle of impression which had existed in one form or another from time immemorial.
It is reasonable to suppose that the first idea of movable type may have been suggested to the mind of the inventor by a study of the works of a xylographic printer, and an observation of the cumbrous and wearisome method by which his books were produced. The toil involved in first painfully tracing the characters and figures, reversed, on the wood, then of engraving them, and, finally, of printing them with the frotton, would appear—in the case, at any rate, of the small school-books, for the production of which this process was largely resorted to—scarcely less tedious than copying the required number by the deft pen of a scribe. And even if, at a later period, the bookmakers so far facilitated their labours as to write their text in the ordinary manner on prepared paper, or with prepared ink, and so transfer their copy, after the manner of the Chinese, on to the wood, the labour expended in proportion to the result, and the uselessness of the blocks when once their work was done, would doubtless impress an inventive genius with a sense of dissatisfaction and impatience. We can imagine him examining the first page of an Abecedarium, on which would be engraved, in three lines, with a clear space between each character, the letters of the alphabet, and speculating, as Cicero had speculated centuries before,[3] on the possibilities presented by the combination in indefinite variety of those twenty-five symbols. Being a practical man as well as a theorist, we may suppose he would attempt to experiment on the little wood block in his hand, and by sawing off first the lines, and then some of the letters in the lines, attempt to arrange his little types into a few short words. A momentous experiment, and fraught with the greatest revolution the world has ever known!
No question has aroused more interest, or excited keener discussion in the history of printing, than that of the use of movable wooden types as a first stage in the passage from Xylography to Typography. Those who write on the affirmative side of the question profess to see in the earlier typographical works, as well as in the historical statements handed down by the old authorities, the {4} clearest evidence that wooden types were used, and that several of the most famous works of the first printers were executed by their means.
As regards the latter source of their confidence, it is at least remarkable that no single writer of the fifteenth century makes the slightest allusion to the use of wooden types. Indeed, it was not till Bibliander, in 1548,[4] first mentioned and described them, that anything professing to be a record on the subject existed. “First they cut their letters,” he says, “on wood blocks the size of an entire page, but because the labour and cost of that way was so great, they devised movable wooden types, perforated and joined one to the other by a thread.”
The legend, once started, found no lack of sponsors, and the typographical histories of the sixteenth century and onward abound with testimonies confirmatory more or less of Bibliander’s statement. Of these testimonies, those only are worthy of attention which profess to be based on actual inspection of the alleged perforated wooden types. Specklin[5] (who died in 1589) asserts that he saw some of these relics at Strasburg. Angelo Roccha,[6] in 1591, vouches for the existence of similar letters (though he does not say whether wood or metal) at Venice. Paulus Pater,[7] in 1710, stated that he had once seen some belonging to Fust at Mentz; Bodman, as late as 1781, saw the same types in a worm-eaten condition at Mentz; while Fischer,[8] in 1802, stated that these precious relics were used as a sort of token of honour to be bestowed on worthy apprentices on the occasion of their finishing their term.
This testimony proves nothing beyond the fact that at Strasburg, Venice, and Mentz there existed at some time or other certain perforated wooden types which tradition ascribed to the first printers. But on the question whether any book was ever printed with such type, it is wholly inconclusive. It is possible to believe that certain early printers, uninitiated into the mystery of the punch and matrix, may have attempted to cut themselves wooden types, which, when they proved untractable under the press, they perforated and strung together in lines; {5} but it is beyond credit that any such rude experiment ever resulted in the production of a work like the Speculum.
It is true that many writers have asserted it was so. Fournier, a practical typographer, insists upon it from the fact that the letters vary among themselves in a manner which would not be the case had they been cast from a matrix in a mould. But, to be consistent, Fournier is compelled (as Bernard points out) to postpone the use of cast type till after the Gutenberg Bible and Mentz Psalter, both of which works display the same irregularities. And as the latest edition of the Psalter, printed in the old types, appeared in 1516, it would be necessary to suppose that movable wood type was in vogue up to that date. No one has yet demonstrated, or attempted seriously to demonstrate, the possibility of printing a book like the Speculum in movable wooden type. All the experiments hitherto made, even by the most ardent supporters of the theory, have been woful failures. Laborde[9] admits that to cut the 3,000 separate letters required for the Letters of Indulgence, engraved by him, would cost 450 francs; and even he, with the aid of modern tools to cut up his wooden cubes, can only show four widely spaced lines. Wetter[10] shows a page printed from perforated and threaded wooden types[11]; but these, though of large size, only prove by their {6} “naughty caprioles” the absurdity of supposing that the “unleaded” Speculum, a quarternion of which would require 40,000 distinct letters, could have been produced in 1440 by a method which even the modern cutting and modern presswork of 1836 failed to adapt to a single page of large-sized print.
John Enschedé, the famous Haarlem typefounder, though a strong adherent to the Coster legend, was compelled to admit the practical impossibility, in his day at any rate, of producing a single wood type which would stand the test of being mathematically square; nor would it be possible to square it after being cut. “No engraver,” he remarks, “is able to cut separate letters in wood in such a manner that they retain their quadrature (for that is the main thing of the line in type-casting).”[12] Admitting for a moment that some printer may have succeeded in putting together a page of these wooden types, without the aid of leads, into a chase: how can it be supposed that after their exposure to the warping influences of the sloppy ink and tight pressure during the impression, they could ever have survived to be distributed and recomposed into another forme?[13]
The claims set up on behalf of movable wood types as the means by which the Speculum or any other of the earliest books was printed, are not only historically unsupported, but the whole weight of practical evidence rejects them.