[30] For, says the Bishop in his ‘Philobiblon,’ “Books are masters who instruct us without rods, without hard words and anger, without clothes and money. If you approach them they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them they never grumble; if you are ignorant they cannot laugh at you.”
[31] Vide vol. i. of The Life and Typography of William Caxton, from the second chapter of which the two preceding paragraphs have been abridged.
Early Typography.
CHAPTER III.
John Gutenberg.—First attempts at Typography in Strasburg.—Difficulties.—Invention of the Press.—Lawsuit.—Return to Mentz.—Connection with Faust.—Success.—Mazarin Bible the first book printed from moveable metal types.—Second Lawsuit.—Forfeiture of Plant to Faust.—Peter Schœffer.—Invention of Type-founding.—Faust and Schœffer.—The Gutenberg ‘printing house.’—Gutenberg attached to the Court of the Elector of Mentz.—Death.
Until the publication in the Hague of Meerman’s Origines Typographicæ (1765),—a work based upon the traditions inserted in Hadrian Junius’s Batavia, first published in 1588,—the man to whom the whole of Europe, with hardly a dissentient voice, ascribed the honor of the invention of the Art of Typography, was John Gutenberg.[32] a native of Mentz. He was of honorable descent; his family being included among the junckers and nobility, the equestrian order of the country, and possessing a small estate situated in the neighbourhood of Mentz, called Sulgeloch, on which estate he was born, about the year 1399. His father, Frielo, had besides him, an elder son, Conrad, who died some time previous to the year 1424, and Frielo, a younger, who was living in 1459; and two daughters, Bertha and Hebele, both of whom became nuns in the Convent of St. Clair at Mentz. In addition to the above-mentioned estate, the family owned two houses in the city of Mentz, one of which was called ‘Zum Gansfleisch,’ and the other ‘Zum Gutenberg.’ The latter of these formed part of the property of his mother, Elsy of Gutenberg. John Gutenberg, junior,[33] left Mentz in early life for Strasburg, where he settled and obtained rights of citizenship, and established himself in business as a polisher of precious stones, and a mirror and looking-glass manufacturer, in both which arts he is said to have shewn considerable skill. The precise date of his arrival and settlement in Strasburg has not been ascertained, but that it was prior to 1424 is known from a letter written to his sister Bertha, on the 24th March of that year;[34] probably it was about the year 1420, and may have been occasioned by the political disturbances of the time. His name frequently appears in the city documents and registers, and he occasionally visited Mentz. He left Strasburg finally about the year 1444. Of great natural sagacity, gifted with an inventive genius, and of indomitable perseverance, the increasing thirst for knowledge which at this period was every where manifesting itself, arrested his attention, and convinced him of the desirability, as well as the profitableness, of devising some method for its more ready and abundant supply.
The problem of the mechanical multiplication of manuscripts had already been partially solved in the block-books which were manufactured in Holland. In the study of these, Gutenberg perceived the immense advantages which would follow from having every letter made separate, with sufficient quantities of each to allow of their being combined into words, sentences, and pages, instead of continuously engraving whole series of lines in solid blocks as in the specimens before him. That idea once clearly seen, time and patience, with the ability to engrave, were all that were required for its realization, so far at least as concerned the mere making of the types or letters. The first experiments would naturally be, as indeed we are informed they were, on wood. And one can well imagine the flush of triumph that mantled on his brow, when, after having engraved a few continuous sentences, or sets of alphabets, with spaces between each line and letter; and after having sawn each line asunder, and separated each letter from the one adjoining, and trimmed and squared the whole to his mind, Gutenberg recomposed the letters into words, and other words, which differed from the original, and saw his cherished thought worked out complete before him.
But, while thus on the very threshold of success, obstacles and difficulties began to present themselves, which taxed his ingenuity and tried his perseverance to an extent which it was scarcely possible for him to have foreseen. In the first place, whatever plan he may have adopted to produce impressions in his earliest experiments, he could not fail to find out in a very short time that the Chinese method, adopted by the block-book printers, would not answer for his separable types; and moreover, that the fine strokes and edges of his wooden letters were liable to damage and destruction from other causes besides those arising from the amount of pressure it was necessary to subject them to in order to ensure a clear readable impression. It was necessary therefore to resort to metal. This was, in itself, a serious matter to begin with, for engraving on metal is a much more difficult, tedious, and expensive process, than engraving on wood. With separable types, and direct perpendicular pressure to produce impressions, a different kind of ink or pigment to that hitherto used by scribes, or stencillers, or block-book printers, also became necessary, as well as a different method of applying it to the face of the types; and many an experiment must have been made, and much time and money lost, before these difficulties were overcome, and success attained in these as in the preceding step.[35]
The chief difficulty—the greatest obstacle in the way of putting to a practical use the Types as now designed, and thus bringing the Typographic Art before the world,—was the want of the Letter Press. To overcome this obstacle, to conquer this difficulty, was Gutenberg’s great task. There was, in point of fact, no particular ingenuity or inventive faculty required in making separable letters. The keen perception which saw the advantages to be gained from such separation, was, no doubt, a sure indication that Gutenberg was a man of mark,—one whose mental gifts transcended those ordinarily possessed by his fellow-men. But the realization of the idea of separating the letters was a task which mainly depended on the amount of manual and mechanical dexterity brought to bear upon its execution. The higher efforts of genius, and the development of the inventive faculties were displayed in the subsequent steps, and in none more notably than in the invention of the Press.