“We cannot wish for a more decisive and competent criticism of the story of Junius than this, given by a Haarlemer and a Costerian; for Junius represents Coster as having printed the Speculum in Dutch with wooden types; he makes him, in other words, do something impossible, ridiculous, and chimerical. It is true that the wooden types have been patronized until our times; that Camus has given a specimen of printing with wooden types of two lines, Wetter of one column, Schinkel of half a page; that we are able to do much more with the means of the nineteenth than with those of the fifteenth century; but none of those specimens have proved what they should have proved; the practicability of printing a book with moveable wooden letters, i. e. to distribute the forms, to clean the ink from the letters, to submit them to frequent strong pressing, and to retain the usefulness of the letters employed, and without the aid of modern apparatus. They have only proved what men are willing to do for a favorite opinion, for a prejudice which they insist, for once and all, ought to be true.”... “It is high time for criticism to make a fire of these imaginary wooden letters.”
Determined that the advocates of wooden letters shall be beaten completely out of the field, the Dr. adds, in a note upon Schinkel in the above quotation.
“In a brochure entitled ‘Tweetal Bijdragen,’ Schinkel gives some ‘experiments’ of his foreman H. le Blansch, namely, seven lines, printed with types of palm wood. The xylotypographic text runs:—‘That the first Dutch Spiegel onzer Behoudenis was printed with cast types, is not to be doubted. Is it possible to print a book of some extension with moveable letters cut of wood? Yes.—Le Blansch, sculp.’ This Yes is an unproved dictum, the contrary of which is evident already from the dancing lines of the experiment. Let a book be produced printed with moveable wooden letters, instead of all those experiments which signify nothing.... But apart from all this Costerian talk, the question may not be put as Schinkel did, but simply: Were ever books printed with moveable wooden letters? No.”—pp. 72–73.
It may however be retorted upon the Dr. that his No! is also an improved dictum. But he says again, pages 78 and 79:—
“Those fatal unhistorical wooden types! Wetter spent nearly the amount of ten shillings on having a number of letters made of the wood of a pear tree, only to please Trithemius, Bergellanus, and Faust of Aschaffenburg, the first two, falsifiers of history in good, the last in bad, faith. His letters, although tied with string, did not remain in the line, but made naughty caprioles. The supposition—that by these few dancing lines the possibility is demonstrated of printing with 40,000 wooden letters, necessary to the printing of a quaternion, a whole folio book—is dreadfully silly. The demonstrating fac-simile demonstrates already the contrary. Wetter’s letters not only declined to have themselves regularly printed, but they also retained their pear-tree-wood-like impatience afterwards. He says, ‘I have deposited the wooden types with their forms in the town-library, where they may be seen at any time.’ Nothing is more liberal.” “I not only deny” [with M. Bernard] adds the Dr., “that they [books printed with moveable wooden characters] exist at present—I deny that they ever have existed.”
Nothing can be more emphatic. But, in the first place, “40,000 wooden letters” are not “necessary to the printing of a quaternion, a whole folio book,”—and if they were, the supposition is not “dreadfully silly,” for it was quite within the power of letter-snyders to cut that number if required. But they were not required. I have already shewn (p. 299), that to print two pages of the Speculum the number of letters necessary was under 3,000. It has also been shewn, that the early printers never printed more than one or two pages of their books at a time; while the impressions taken of such productions as the Speculum would in their different editions vary from but 20 to 60 copies each;—3,000 letters therefore were ample for bringing out a whole folio book or quaternion, and the pressure the types were subjected to in the course of a dozen or twenty editions would not more than equal the strain brought to bear upon a single edition of a thousand copies in modern times. It is however “dreadfully silly” to insist, that wooden types, if capable of being used at all in an experiment which proves their capability of printing a portion of a book, ought also to be proved capable of being used for printing a whole book with. In other words, that a whole book should be printed with such types, in order to prove, that as a whole book has been, therefore, a whole book may have been, printed with them. It requires, moreover, no great profundity of wisdom to profess a disbelief in the making and use of wooden types by the inventors of Typography, and to deny the assertions of older and contemporary writers, that they were so made and used. A whole book could just as easily be printed with wooden types, when they were once prepared and ready for use, as half a book, or half a page, or a single word. The real question at issue is not, Can a single book, or has a single book, ever been printed with wooden types?—a question answered with an emphatic, although an unproved No! by Dr. Van Der Linde and other anti-xylo-typographers;—but, Did the earliest Typographers, in their first experiments, make use of wooden types or not? Trithemius says, on information derived from Schœffer senior, that they did. His statement is borne out by that of Zell, who says Gutenberg got the beginning of this art from the Donatuses, i. e. block-books, printed in Holland. Bergellanus, an independent inquirer a generation later, and for fifteen years a corrector of the press at Mentz, confirms the statement of Trithemius; while Faust of Aschaffenburg declares that the family papers in his possession bore evidence to the same effect. What the first German printers did, it was most natural that the first Dutch printer would also do; and, as I have already pointed out (p. 346,) there are reasons for believing that wherever the Speculum[148] was printed, (and later information seems to indicate that Utrecht may have been the place), the types used were the work of a letter-snyder, and the material of which they were made was wood. It is quite a different question, Could a continued series of works, be produced by the use of wooden types, in a manner equal, or nearly equal, to that by which works are produced with metal types? To such a question, the advocates of the use, first, of wooden types by the earliest Typographers, reply, No; wooden types would only answer for a while; and because of their fragile nature, metal types, cut or cast, became sooner or later a necessity.[149] It is, besides, if not “dreadfully silly,” at least unwise, to argue against the possibility of the original use of wooden types, because the specimens given by Schinkel and Wetter are crooked and irregular, and do not line, although tied or strung together with string. Schinkel and Wetter both maintained that the Speculum was printed with metal types; so did Enschedé. For either of the three, therefore, to have thoroughly succeeded with his experiment, would have been fatal to his argument and preconceived opinion. Doubtless, it was scarcely possible for Enschedé to succeed in making wooden letters of “a size somewhat larger than a pin’s head.” His mode of stating that part of his experiment is not at all so straightforward or clear as it might and should have been. But he says further, “I made a slip of Text Corpus, and figured the letters on the wood or slip,” &c. Now, what is the size of the Text Corpus? I am rather at a loss to understand this expression, as I find that the Dutch type called Text, is that which corresponds to the English Great Primer, which contains 51½ lines to a foot, while the Garmond, corresponding to the German Corpus, is equal to the English Long Primer, which has 89 lines to a foot. Neither does Enschedé say what particular wood he used in his experiment. But at any rate he avows, that, using the best and finest tools he could procure, he failed.
On the opposite side of the question, I have but to place my own experience; and I may say at the outset, that I have not practised wood engraving for nearly twenty years, that at best I was but an amateur, and that the only tools I had, when I ventured upon the experiment a few months ago, were a common graver, an ordinary tenon saw, a penknife, and a rasp and file. With these implements then, I made, precisely in the way I have described the method I supposed the earliest printers would follow, the letters inserted in page 310. They are of box wood, Pica-size (71½ lines to a foot) and are squared and line well, and are perforated and nicked, and are two sizes smaller than the letters used for the Speculum, which are only 54 lines to the foot. The letter
I here insert again. More than 1,500 impressions have been taken from it; and it scarcely yet seems anything the worse for wear. Calculating by the time the cutting of the three letters occupied, I could, without difficulty, finish in nine months 3,000 letters equally good, as mathematically square, as true to line, as capable of being used again and again, and therefore as capable of printing a book, a whole folio, with. An expert Chinese ‘chop’ cutter (the modern letter-snyder) would with his simple tools, complete the same number in less than a third of that time: and I know of no reason why similar types of the Corpus or Long Primer size could not be cut on wood. Certainly there is nothing “impossible, ridiculous or chimerical” in the idea. Where then is the “silliness”—the “dreadful silliness”—of supposing that a whole book could be printed with such wooden types, even supposing, further, that 40,000 would be required in all? The “dreadful silliness” lies in the cry of those who argue on the opposite side—“Let a book be produced, printed with moveable wooden letters, instead of all those experiments which signify nothing.” The answer to that cry is, Cui bono?—Why should a book be printed, when 3 letters are as good as 3,000, or 30,000, or 300,000, to demonstrate the fact, that words are and can be, and that therefore pages and whole books may be, (and therefore also that they may have been,) printed from such separable wooden types? As well might the demand be made that a whole suburb of London should be lighted up with obsolete oil-lamps, in order to demonstrate to the rising generation the fact, that in that manner the streets of the city were lighted up in the days of their forefathers, before the introduction of coal gas. In the one case, as in the other, a single specimen, one demonstrative example, ought to be sufficient to carry, to every candid and reasonable mind, a conviction of the truth of the asserted fact. But perhaps it “signifies nothing” to a certain class, who are determined not to believe, how great or how small the demonstrative experiments may be. Of such, the voice of supreme wisdom has long ago declared,—“neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”