Old Lucifer, both kind and civil,
To ev’ry Printer lends a Devil;
But balancing accounts each winter,
For ev’ry Devil takes a Printer.
Moxon, in 1683, quotes it as an old trade word, and it was doubtless the same in Shakspere’s time, a century earlier, as it is now two centuries later. But where could Shakspere have picked up the word if not in the Printing-office?
Any one accustomed to collate old MSS. must have noticed how very seldom the copyist would, in transcribing, add nothing and omit nothing. If what the scribe considered a good idea entered his mind while his pen was travelling over the page, he was a very modest penman indeed, if he did not incorporate it in the text. From this cause, and from genuine unintentional blunders, the texts of all the old authors had become gradually very corrupt—a source of great trouble to the early Printers. With this in his mind Shakspere defines it as one of the qualities of Time
To blot old books and alter their contents.
Lucrece, l. 948.
Many of Vautrollier’s publications must have been printed from discolored old manuscripts; and these papers Shakspere, if he read ‘proof’ for his employer, would have to study carefully. Does he call this to mind in Sonnet XVII?
My papers yellowed with their age.
Was it, after admiring some beautifully illuminated Horæ, that he wrote:
O that record could with a backward look,
E’en of five hundred courses of the sun;
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done.
Sonnet lix.
Does the Poet refer to its wonderfully burnished gold initials, and the red dominical letters which he must often have seen in the printed calendars, when he exclaims in tones of admiration:
My red dominical—my golden letter!
Love’s Labour Lost, v, 2.