Alfred W. Pollard

“ The majority of them are more curious than beautiful, but the pictures of the Cantica Canticorum, the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, and the Ars Moriendi have all very great merit. The tall, slender figures in the Song of Songs have a charm as great as any Dutch book-illustrations of the fifteenth century; the cuts of the Speculum are full of vigour, while the serene dignity of the scenes in the Ars Moriendi illustrating the Inspirations of the Good Angel is as impressive as the grotesque force used in depicting the diabolic suggestions. ”

“ But whether he used his roman or his gothic type the exquisite craftsmanship which he put into all his books enabled Morris to attain his aim, and his wonderful borders and capitals crown them with the delight which this king of designers took in his work. No other printer since printing began has ever produced such a series of books as the fifty-three which poured from the Kelmscott Press during those wonderful seven years, and no book that has ever been printed can be compared for richness of effect with the Chaucer which was the crowning achievement of the Press. ”

“ In a work which does not pretend to the dignity of a history of printing it is impossible to discuss, or even to enumerate, the different theories as to the events of the years 1453-6, which have been formulated to account for these facts. The edition of the Bible of which Heinrich Cremer rubricated the copy now at Paris is so fine a book and so great a landmark in typographical history, that the desire to regard it as the production of the man who is credited with the invention of printing, Johann Gutenberg, easily becomes irresistible. ”

“ But when we think of Pynson’s edition of Lord Berners’ Froissart, of Berthelet’s of Gower’s Confessio Amantis, of Godfray’s Chaucer, and of Grafton’s edition of Halle’s Chronicle, all illustratable books and all unillustrated, it is evident that educated book-buyers, wearied of rudely hacked blocks, often with no relevance to the book in which they were found, had told the printers that they might save the space occupied by these decorations, and that the reign of the primitive woodcut in English books, if it can be said ever to have reigned, was at an end. ”

“ As for the individual man, if we would keep any oases green in what may easily become a sandy desert, we must surely treasure every trace of his personality. One large element in the charm of incunabula is the human interest of difficulties overcome, and wherever a craftsman began work by cutting a distinctive type to suit the calligraphic fashion of the neighbourhood, at whatever date he started, his books will still have some interest. ”

“ Bodley’s munificent donation marked an epoch in the history of English book-collecting because its tendency was to make private book-collecting of the kind which was then admired incongruous and even absurd. When there were no public libraries open to scholars, for a great man to maintain a splendid library in his own house and allow students to read in it was worthy of Aristotle’s μεγαλόψυχος, the man who does everything on a scale that befits his dignity. ”

“ If sentiment is to count for anything we must admit the interest of the first books printed in any country which possesses an important history and literature—if only because we may legitimately be curious to know on what books a printer, with all the extant literature to choose from, ventured his capital as likely in that particular country and time to bring him the quickest and most profitable return. ”

“ In the book-illustrations of the sixteenth century the artist is more learned, more self-conscious, and his design is interpreted with far greater skill by the better trained wood-cutters of his day. More pains are taken with accessories, and often perhaps for this reason the cut does not tell its story so quickly as of old. It is now a work of art which demands study, no longer a signpost explaining itself however rapidly the leaf is turned. ”

“ The slowness of the presswork in the simple form of press at first used obliged the printers to keep several presses, sometimes as many as six, occupied with different sections of the same book, and the trouble they were given to make the end of one section join neatly to the beginning of the next has left many traces. Any book which thus lets us into the secrets of the early printing offices possesses in a very high degree the charm which should attach to an incunable, if that hardly used word is to retain, as it should, any reference to the infancy of printing. ”

“ In Italy the new century brought some evil days to the book trade. Printing itself ceased for a time at Brescia; at Florence publishers for many years relied chiefly on their old stock of cuts; at Milan, at Ferrara and Pavia a little new work was done. At Venice the thin delicate outline cuts of the last decade of the fifteenth century ceased to be produced any longer, though the old blocks sometimes reappear. More often the old designs were either simply copied or imitated in the more heavily shaded style which was now coming into vogue. ”

“ A really dull book is merely a nuisance, and whether only one copy of it, or many, can be proved to exist, nobody wants it. If this be so we are justified in saying that, although as soon as a book is found desirable for any other reason its rarity becomes of paramount importance in determining its price, Rarity by itself is of no interest to collectors. ”

“ The relative positions of Holland and Germany as regards the invention of printing are very analogous to those of the old velocipede and the bicycle. Even if it could be proved decisively that some Dutch fragment of a Donatus was earlier than any experiment made at Mainz or Strassburg, it was at Mainz that the possibility was first demonstrated of producing by print books as beautiful as any written by the scribes, and it was from Germany, not from Holland, that printers carried the art which they had proved to be practicable to all parts of Europe, including Holland itself. ”

“ Thus if we go far enough back Age does add to the interest of a book, but only by bringing it under another influence, that the interest of an English fifteenth century book is due to its importance in the history of printing and not to its antiquity being easily demonstrated by the fact that a contemporary unadorned manuscript of the same work will probably have only a fraction of the value of the printed edition. There are, of course, other cases in which age may be said to have some secondary influence, as in the case of books dealing with social customs, ballads and the like. ”

“ However good the large illustrations in Venetian books, the merits of them are rather those of single prints than of really appropriate bookwork. The little column-cuts, on the other hand, are almost playful in their minuteness, and even when most successful produce the effect of a delightful border or tailpiece without quite attaining to the full possibilities of book-illustration. The feverish production of these column-cuts began to slacken, though it did not cease, in 1493, and about that date a few charming full-page pictures are found at the beginning and end of various small quartos. ”

“ But his greatest achievement was in an undated book of this period, the Speculum Humanae Vitae of Rodericus Bishop of Zamora, in the German translation of Heinrich Steinhowel. If this Mirror of Man’s Life had been written by a man with his eyes open instead of by a vapid rhetorician it should have been one of the most valuable documents for the social life of the fifteenth century, since it professes to contrast the advantages and evils of every rank and occupation of life, from the Pope and the Emperor down to craftsmen and labourers. ”

“ As for the proportions between the lower and upper margins, the explanation may lie in the angle at which we habitually read books, or by the need for leaving room for the reader to hold the book in his hands. But whether it be a matter of inherent rightness or merely of long-established convention, the pleasure of handling a book with correct margins is very great, and a collector who secures an uncut copy of even a poorly printed book of the period when margins were understood, will find that it presents quite a pleasing and dignified appearance. ”

“ It would be an excellent thing if more of our modern collectors, instead of taking up antiquarian hobbies, were content to follow Grolier’s example. Books always look best when clad in jackets of their own time, and this in the future will apply to the books of the twentieth century as much as to any others. Moreover, there is more actual binding talent available in England just now than at any previous time, and it is much to be desired that modern Groliers would give it scope, not in pulling about old books, but in binding beautifully those of our own day. ”

“ But in the Middle Ages books were by no means cheap, and until quite the close of the fourteenth century there were few libraries in which they could be read. Princes and other very wealthy book-buyers took pleasure in possessing finely written and illuminated manuscripts, but the ruling ideals were mainly literary and scholastic, the aim (the quite right and excellent aim) being to have the best books in as many subjects as possible. After printing had been invented the same ideals continued in force, the only difference being that they could now be carried out on a larger scale. ”

“ The unusually bad copy, indeed, would often have no selling value at all were it not that it may be useful to students and so win a purchaser at a small price. The collector should leave it severely alone, partly because such “working copies” are the rightful perquisite of poor scholars, partly because, as he presumably buys books for his pleasure, he defeats his own object if, except in the case of the very rarest, he buys copies at which he cannot look without regretting that their headlines are cut off or the paper rotten through bad cleaning. ”

“ Many of the printers at Paris printed for him; illustrations originally made for other men gravitated into his possession and were used occasionally for new editions of the book for which they had been made, much more often as stock cuts in books with which they had nothing to do; while if another firm brought out a successful picture-book, Vérard imitated the cuts in it with unscrupulous and unblushing closeness. ”

“ But adequate as the plates may seem, if they are judged not as book-illustrations but as engravings, no one could rate them high, and as a book what is to be said of an edition of La Fontaine’s Fables, which fills four volumes, each measuring nearly nineteen inches by thirteen? The bookman can only regard such a work as a portfolio of plates with accompanying text, and if the plates as plates are only second rate, enthusiasm has nothing to build on. ”

“ As we have already said, the charm of the woodcut pictures in incunabula lies in their simplicity, in their rude story-telling power, often very forcible and direct, in the valiant effort, sometimes curiously successful in cuts otherwise contemptibly poor, to give character and expression to the human face, and as regards form in the harmony between the woodcuts and the paper and type of the books in which they appear. ”

“ But if we think for a moment of how the manuscript books to which the early printers were accustomed had been produced we shall see that it was the most natural thing in the world. A scribe would take his quire of paper or vellum, and if he were a high-class scribe, mindful of the need of keeping his text clean, he would leave his first leaf blank and begin at the top of his second. ”

“ In 1908 it was followed by an edition of the Odyssey printed at the Clarendon Press. Like Morris’s gothic founts, this Greek type may or may not be admired, but that it attains the effects at which it aims can hardly be denied. No page of such richness had ever before been set up by any printer of Greek.
To write of books printed in types which for one reason or another seem less successful than those already named is a less grateful task, but there are several designers and printers whose work approaches excellence, and who worked independently of Morris, though with less sure touch. ”

“ Robert Proctor, who knew more about fifteenth century books than any other man has ever known, or is ever likely to know, once said to me in all seriousness, that he did not think he had ever seen an ugly one. ”

“ A few illuminated manuscripts of English workmanship and a few with illustrations in outline have come down to us from the fifteenth century, but amid the weary wars with France and the still wearier struggles of Yorkists and Lancastrians, the artistic spirit which had been so prominent in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seems to have died out altogether. ”

“ But the men who took a pride in their new art, and who thought that their work was good enough to bring more custom to their press if their name were associated with it, took the opposite course, and so colophons from 1457 onwards are common in the best books, and may perhaps be found in about 40 per cent of the incunables that have come down to us. By the men who were skilful in using red ink they were often thus printed, and whether in red or in black, they frequently had appended to them the printer’s mark or device, which gave a very decorative finish to the book. ”

“ Even as between the design cut by hand and the process line-block which has as its basis a photograph taken direct from a pen drawing, the difference can hardly be said to be one of better and worse. We lose the individuality of the wood-cutter or wood-engraver, but we are brought into closer touch with the individuality of the artist, and whether we gain or lose depends on the ability of the artist to dispense with a skilled interpreter. The one requisite for success is that either the artist, or an interpreter for him, should recognize the limits within which his work can be effective. ”

“ That the first large book in Germany was a Bible, the first books in Italy Latin classics, the first produced for the English market one that we must call an historical romance, cannot be regarded as merely insignificant. ”

“ But in proportion as public collections of books and facilities for obtaining access to them are increased, the preservation of a library on a large scale in a private house, where none of the inmates have any desire to use it, becomes an easy and justifiable object of 4 satire. A man without literary instincts who inherits a fine library is indeed in a parlous state, for if he keeps it he is as a dog in the manger, and if he sells it he is held up to opprobrium. ”