Gertrude Burford Rawlings

“ In 1465 Gutenberg was made one of the gentlemen of the court to Adolph II., Count of Nassau and Archbishop of Mentz, and presumably abandoned his printing on acceding to this dignity. In 1467 or 1468 Gutenberg died, and thus ends the meagre list of facts which we have concerning the life and career of the first printer.
To nearly every question which we might wish to ask about Gutenberg and his work, one of two answers has to be given—“It is not known,” or “Perhaps.” He does not speak for himself, and none of his personal acquaintance, or his family, if he had any, speak for him. ”

“ To endure, there is nothing like leather.” In which, perhaps, the book-lover will see a parable. For, after all, the book is the thing, and the cover a mere circumstance, and those who wish to make books merely pegs to hang bindings upon deserve to have no books at all. Yet it is right that though the binding should not be raised above the book, it should be worthy of the book, and much of the cheap and good literature which is now within the reach of all who care to stretch out their hands for it, is clothed in a manner to which no exception can be taken on any score. ”

“ With the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced.” That these words only express the feeling of our far away ancestors, a cursory glance into the mythology of various peoples will prove. For wherever there is a tradition respecting writing, that tradition almost invariably, if not always, connects the great invention with the gods or with some sacred person. ”

“ There is something characteristic about a book in a cloth cover which it loses when it dons the livery of its owner's library. Cloth is not only more varied in texture, but admits of greater freedom and variety of design than does leather, so there is something to be said in its favour in spite of the contention that direct handicraft is preferable to handicraft which works through a machine, and that one of a batch of bindings printed by the thousand is not to be compared with a single specimen of tooled leather which has cost a pair of human hands hours of careful toil. ”

“ The most famous printer of Venice, however, and the most famous printer of Italy, and perhaps of the world, is Aldus Manutius, born in 1450, but his fame rests less on his actual printing, which, though good, is not unequalled, than upon the efforts he made for popularising literature, and bringing cheap, yet well-produced books within the reach of the many. ”

“ The literature of Greece, dating from the far Homeric age, grew up a strong and beautiful factor in Greek life, and Rome, drawing first her alphabet and then her literature from the land before which she stooped, even while she conquered it, passed them on as an everlasting possession to the peoples of the western world. ”

“ The earliest of all the block-books was the Biblia Pauperum, or “Bible of the Poor,” so called because it was designed for the edification of persons of unlearned minds and light purses, who could neither have afforded the high prices demanded for ordinary manuscript copies, nor have read such copies had they owned them. The Biblia Pauperum, however, exactly met their want. It is not so much a book to read, as a book to look at. It has a text, it is true, but the text is subordinate to the pictures. ”

“ Copyists of books retained a high place in the order of things literary until the introduction of printing, and without their labours we should know nothing of ancient literature, seeing that no original manuscript of any classical author has survived. And apart from its purely literary value, which is variable, the work of the early mediæval scribes in many instances reaches a high artistic standard, and exhibits marvellous skill in an accomplishment now numbered among the lost arts. ”

“ On the whole, the production of books was more of an industry in those days than we should believe possible, unless we admit that the Dark Ages were not quite as dark as they have been painted. “There was always about us in our halls,” says Richard de Bury, who no doubt was a munificent patron of all scribes and book-workers, “no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes, bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and generally of all such persons as were qualified to labour in the service of books.” ”

“ Before noting some of the ways by which ancient literature has come down to the present day, let us for a moment transport ourselves into the past, and see how a wealthy Roman lover of letters would set about gathering a collection of books. Having no lack of means, all that is best in the literary world will be at his service. He will first take care that the works of every Greek writer which can possibly be obtained, as well as those of Roman authors, are represented in his library by well-written papyrus rolls containing good, correct texts. ”

“ EARLY PRINTING IN SCOTLAND Scotland was one of the last of the countries of Europe to appreciate the advantages of typography so far as to possess herself of a printing-press. She was also, as we have pointed out in a previous chapter, the only one, save England, and possibly Holland, to have the art of printing brought to her by one of her own sons and not by a foreigner.
The first Scottish printer was Andrew Myllar, an Edinburgh bookseller, who imported books from England and from France, and who, in the latter country, learned how to print. ”

“ But here we have to take into consideration a new and important factor in literary as in other matters—the spread of Christianity. With such obvious exceptions as the cuneiform records, or the Egyptian writings, and similar remains, the bulk of the manuscripts (as manuscripts, not as compositions) is the work of (Christian) religious houses, and it is easy to see that we owe much to the labours of the monks and ecclesiastics who have transmitted to us not only the earliest and most valuable works of the Church's own writers, but also the chief part of the literature of Greece and Rome. ”

“ The art of binding books is far older than the art of printing. The first known attempt to provide a cover by way of protection for a document was made by the workman who devised a clay case for the clay tablet-books of Babylonia, but this is as far from our notion of bookbinding as the tablets themselves are from our notion of books. Nor do the Roman bindings, which consisted of coloured parchment wrappers, come much nearer the modern conception. ”

“ The little libraries with which so many of us have to be contented owe their bright and cheerful appearance to the cloth covers of the books, in which each book stands out with modest directness, wearing its individuality instead of losing it in a crowd of neighbours dressed exactly like itself. ”

“ Moreover, it is the homely, everyday garb of the great majority of our favourite volumes, and though, no doubt, it is delightful to possess books sumptuously bound, book-lovers of less ambition, or of lighter purses than those who can command such luxuries, are not very much to be pitied. ”

“ But whether chandler or coster, nothing is heard of him as a printer until 1568, more than a hundred years after his alleged success in printing from types—in itself a strange fact, since if Coster were the inventor, why were the Mentz printers allowed to appropriate all the credit to themselves, unchallenged by Coster's kinsfolk or countrymen, and supported by the opinions of sixty-two writers, including Caxton, the chronicler Fabian, Trithemius, and the compilers of the Cologne and Nuremberg chronicles? ”

“ The Beginning of Writing.—Books began with writing, and writing began at the time when man first bethought himself to make records, so that the progenitor of the beautiful handwriting and no less beautiful print of the civilised world is to be looked for in the rude drawing which primeval man scratched with a pointed flint on a smooth bone, or on a rock, representing the beast he hunted, or perhaps himself, or one of his fellows. ”

“ THE BEGINNING OF PRINTING The germs of the invention which, in spite of Carlyle's somewhat slighting reference, has proved itself hardly less momentous in the world's history than the conception of the idea of writing, are to be found in the stamps with which the ancients impressed patterns or names upon vases or other objects, or in the device and name-bearing seals which were in common use among the nations of antiquity. ”

“ The next production of the Mentz press, as is generally believed, is the beautiful volume known as the Gutenberg Bible, or the Mazarin Bible, because it was a copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarin which first attracted attention and led bibliographers to enquire into its history. It illustrates a most remarkable fact—that is, the extraordinary degree of perfection to which the art of printing attained all but simultaneously with its birth. ”

“ But of all libraries those of Alexandria were the largest and most celebrated, and yet, notwithstanding their eminence, the accounts relating to them are confused and contradictory. Alexandria, which, although situated in Egypt, was a Greek and not an Egyptian city, was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C., and rapidly rose to a high position. Its buildings, its learning, its luxury, and its books, became world-famous. The first library was established by Ptolemy Soter, a ruler of literary tastes, about 300 B.C., and was situated in that part of the city known as the Bruchium. ”

“ No original documents exist, and it is known to us solely through copies, single copies, in most cases. Beowulf, for instance, is represented only by a manuscript of the first half of the eleventh century, and Caedmon by a manuscript of the tenth century.
With the invention and spread of the knowledge of printing, however, the risk of loss was greatly reduced. Such ancient writings as came into the printer's hands were given a fresh lease of life which in many cases was of indefinite length, or rather, of practically eternal duration. ”

“ I can find no other record of the provision of a fount of Irish types at the Queen's expense, and having no more definite information at hand on this point, and taking into consideration the contents of the book—an Irish alphabet, and directions for reading Irish, and a catechism, etc. (by way of exercise?) —its diminutive size and the imperfection of its print, I venture the suggestion that O'Kearney's work was printed as a trial of the new types given by the Queen and intended for printing the New Testament. ”

“ The books of Babylonia and Assyria took the form of thick clay tablets of various sizes. The wedge-shaped characters they bore were made by impressing the wet, soft clay with a triangular-pointed instrument of wood, bone, or metal. The tablet was then baked, and as recent discoveries prove, rendered exceedingly durable. It is a matter of conjecture as to whether the form of the original documents of the Old Testament was that of the Babylonian tablets, or of the Egyptian papyrus rolls, or of rolls of parchment. ”

“ The oldest manuscript in existence, however, is on papyrus, which, as is well known, was the chief writing-material of the ancient world. Although the discovery that skins of animals, when properly prepared, formed a convenient and durable writing-material, was made at a very early date, the papyrus held its own as the writing-material of literary Egypt, Greece, and Rome, until about the fourth or fifth century of our era. ”

“ Although the balance of opinion is now, and always has been, in favour of Gutenberg, the battle has been long and furious. The diligence of the disputants in collecting data in support of their theories has been equalled only by the vigour and ferocity with which some of their number have maintained their opinions. Each side has charged the other with forging evidence, and ink and abuse have been freely poured out in the cause of typographical truth. ”

“ But one of the Latin editions is remarkable for having twenty pages of the text printed from wood blocks. How and why these xylographic pages appear in a book whose remaining forty-two pages are printed from types is a mystery. They are inserted at intervals among the other leaves, and for this and other reasons it is considered improbable that they were printed from blocks originally intended for a block-book, to help to eke out a not very plentiful stock of type. Moreover, no entirely xylographic Speculum exists to lend colour to such a theory. ”

“ Poggio Bracciolini, a learned Italian of the fifteenth century, has also made himself famous by his ardent pursuit of the remains of classical literature, and by aiding the interest in them which the Renaissance had awakened. He searched Europe for manuscripts to such good purpose that he unearthed a valuable text of Quintilian's Institutes, “almost perishing at the bottom of a dark neglected tower,” in the monastery of St Gall, and recovered many other classical writings by his industry, including some of the Orations of Cicero ”

“ The Chinese, however, kept their invention to themselves, or at any rate it spread no further than Japan, until many years later; and although in the tenth century the knowledge of printing was carried as far as Egypt, Europeans seem to have made the discovery for themselves, quite independently of help from the East, both as regards block-printing and the use of moveable type. ”