[137] The differences in these prices lead to the conclusion that the higher prices must have been given for copies of the Bible of 1455, and the lower for those of 1462; the charge made for each varying according to the amount of ornamentation in illuminated letters and marginal decorations.

[138] Humphreys, p. 89.

[139] The following is a brief list of these works:—

[140] Another son, or perhaps a grandson, Peter, established himself as a printer in the city of Worms, not far distant from Mentz. It was at his press that William Tyndale’s version of the first English translation of the New Testament was printed (in 1525 or 1526), after failing to get it done at the press of P. Quentell of Cologne. A press was established at Friesingen in 1495, by Joann. Schæffler.

[141] Hist. of Art of Printing, p. 216.

[142] “One of the most remarkable typographical displays in the great Exhibition of 1851 was the collection of Chinese types, or at least types to represent Chinese characters, in the Zollverein department. They were manufactured by Beyerhaus of Berlin, for the American Missionary Society. The Chinese vocabulary is made up of a number of distinct words, which are not built up from component letters, as in European languages, but have a good deal of the hieroglyphic effect about them. To imitate these words or characters by moveable types has always been deemed a difficult matter. M. Beyerhaus has analyzed the lines and dots of the Chinese language, so as to make 4200 letters out of them, or elements which will serve the compositor in lieu of letters. The steel punches of all these 4200 types were shewn; and by various combinations of them, about 24,000 Chinese words or characters can be imitated; and it was very interesting to see copies of the Bible and the New Testament printed in Chinese by the aid of these types.”—Curiosities of Industry—Printing; its Modern Varieties, by G. Dodd, p. 4.

[143] This may sometimes have been owing to a scarcity of capital letters. An amusing story is told of a jobbing printer, who was seen printing the label “Lodgings to let,” in gold capital letters on a blue ground, with the second G left out. Upon the omission being pointed out to him, he said “Pshaw! I should like to know why a printer should not spell Lodgings with one G, when he has but that one in his fount!”

[144] Some of these bindings were wonderful specimens of patient labour. Wooden boards as thick as the panels of a door, studded with large brass nails with ornamented heads and massive metal corners, for sides, the backs solid with paste and glue, and the fronts fastened with heavy clasps, were by no means rare. Sometimes these covers were so made as to serve as receptacles for relics. Scaliger tells us that his grandmother had a printed Psalter, the cover of which was two inches thick, the inside forming a kind of cupboard in which was a small silver crucifix; and Mr. Hansard relates having seen an ancient book, in the cover of which was a recess for a relic—a human toe!