Heinecken concludes this part of his argument by saying, “I trust that this extravagant notion of finding books, and sometimes even large volumes, printed with these moveable characters of wood, will by degrees cease, and that able printers may be found, who will shew the impossibility of it.”
There is not however, any impossibility in the matter. Box wood will bear printing from better than soft lead; and Mr. Blades has demonstrated that types of unhardened lead can be used at an ordinary printing press,—the half of plate IX. B, in the 2d volume of his Life and Typography of William Caxton being printed from such types. Argument however is needless in the presence of a fact, and in the word
here given, each of the three letters is separately engraved on a piece of box-wood, the shanks of the letters being two sizes smaller than those of the Speculum, while a portion of the upper part of the capital overhangs its shank; each letter is also perforated and nicked, and is therefore altogether weaker than a letter of the same size as in the Speculum would be. As a proof that it was perfectly possible for such works as the Speculum to have been printed with wooden types, three such letters are as good as three thousand; and letters with the finest strokes most exposed to damage have been purposely selected, in order to demonstrate the fact.
The existence in the middle of the Fifteenth century of Guilds or confraternities of trades connected with book-making, in Antwerp, Bruges, and Brussels, amongst whom were included ‘Prenters,’ ‘Letter-,’ and ‘Form-snyders,’ and ‘Beelde-makers;’—Letter and Form and Figure engravers, and those who printed them;—is brought forward as a part of the “vast mass” of so-called “unanswerable evidence,” which sustains the claims of Coster and Haarlem to be the man and the place by whom and where the Art of Typography was invented.
“The ‘figure engravers’ (writes Mr. Blades,) were doubtless the artists of the playing cards, the images of saints, and the block-books, then manufactured to a great extent in Holland and Flanders. The term ‘letter engraver’ may have been applied to the sculptor of the legends on the block-books, when not executed by the same artist as the figure itself, but of this there is no evidence, and it seems far from impossible that the term was used to denote artists employed to produce moveable types. The ‘printers’ were doubtless workmen who took the impressions, whether by friction or a press, from the engraved blocks delivered to them; but there is no reason to restrict the meaning of the word, and the same term was from the commencement always applied to printers from moveable types. There is therefore, primâ facie, evidence to support the supposition that at a very early period there were workmen in Bruges who employed themselves, albeit in a very rudimentary way, in printing from moveable types.”
But if moveable types were at this date in use at Bruges or elsewhere in Holland, and if these were of cast fusile metal, how comes it that “Letter-zetters” and “Letter-geiters,”—compositors and type-founders,—are not included among the crafts incorporated by the Guilds? How comes it, too, that no mention is made of the “Drukker,” and the “Drukkers-maker”—the press and press-maker? “Printer” is a common enough term applied to pressmen now-a-days, but as late as 1454 it had an exclusive reference to the producer of prints—the printers of the figures sculptured by the “Beelde-makers” on the solid blocks; and it may safely be inferred that these prints were produced after the Chinese manner, by friction, seeing that the term “Drukker,” is that which is applied amongst the Dutch to letter-press printers,—the pressmen of modern days.
If, moreover, from the mention of “letter engravers” and “printers” in the records of the Dutch Guilds referred to, we are to understand that there is “primâ facie evidence to support the supposition that at a very early period there were workmen ... who employed themselves in working from moveable types,”—typographic printers in fact,—then, upon the same ground, it must be admitted that there is primâ facie evidence for admitting the priority of the art in various parts of Germany, for as early as 1428 we find a record of a “letter-printer,” one Wilhelm Kegler, at Nördlingen, besides card-makers at Augsburg in 1418. And in 1440 there is found a record of Henne Cruse of Mayence, one of the fraternity, on the roll of the citizens of Frankfort.[125] But so far from there being any such primâ facie evidence, the inference to be drawn lies, I think, in an opposite direction; and the absence of all mention of “Letter-zetters,” “Letter-geiters,” “Drukkers,” and “Drukker-makers,” is rather to be considered a proof that they were not then known; that moveable types and presses had not at that time been introduced; and that “Letter-snyders,” and “Prenters” were wholly and solely engaged upon block-books, just as much as the “Beelde-makers,” the figure-engravers were.
“The general opinion of late writers,”[126] Mr. Blades continues, “is, that the art was first perfected at Mentz ... but that nevertheless the earliest use of moveable types must be recognized in the rude specimens attributed to Laurence Coster of Haarlem. Coster died in 1440, and nothing is known to have issued from his press between that period and 1483; but what became of his assistants? Did they, after gaining some insight into the curious effects of Coster’s trials, resign all further attempts, or did they seek to imitate him, some in one town, some in another?” These are very pertinent questions, inasmuch as if they are asked in reference to the assistants of Gutenberg, Faust and Schœffer, they can be answered in the affirmative, and their respective movements traced. But asked with reference to Coster, the disappointing answer is, “No one knows;” yet it seems more than probable that experiments in the direction of printing from moveable types were making about this period in every city where wood engraving and block-printing were practised.... The idea was simple enough, in the execution was the difficulty. Nor need the opinion that at Bruges there existed at a very early period rude printers, be based on the notice of ‘letter-snyders’ and ‘prenters’ only; there has fortunately been preserved in the Archives at Lille an original manuscript, containing a diary of Jean le Robert, Abbé de S. Aubert de Cambrai, among the entries in which the two following are especially worthy of notice:—
“Item pour .j. doctrinal gette en molle anuoiet querre a Brug. par Marquet .j. escripuain de Vallen. ou mois de jenuier xlv. pour Jaq. xx. s.t.”
“Item enuoiet Arras .j. doctrinal pour apprendre ledit d. Girard qui fu accatez a Vallen. et estoit jettez en molle et cousta xxiiij. gr. Se me renuoia led. doctrinal le jour de Touss. lan. .lj. disans quil ne falloit rien et estoit tout faulx. Sen anoit accate .j. x patt. en. papier.”[127]
“Item. For a printed Doctrinal (doctrinal gette en molle) that I have sent for to Bruges, by Marquet, a writer of Valenciennes, in the month of January, 1445 (i. e. 1446) for Jacquet, xx sous tournois.”
“Item. Sent to Arras a Doctrinal for the instruction of dom. Gerard, which was purchased at Valenciennes, and was printed (jettez en molle) and cost xxiiij. gros. The same Doctrinal he returned to me on Christmas Day 1451, saying ‘it was worthless, and full of errors;’ he had bought one on paper for xx patards.”