Theodore De Vinne

“ Neither the emperor nor elector gave him any distinction as the founder of a great art; no one put up a stone to his memory, honoring him as an inventor; no printer of that century regarded him as aught more than a thrifty publisher. His reputation has been created entirely by his own boasts and those of his family; and it is a most damaging circumstance that these boasts were not made until Gutenberg and Fust were dead, and that the statement written by Trithemius was not published until all the witnesses to the invention were dead, and there could be no contradiction. ”

“ The error seems pardonable, for the printed book was not as attractive as the manuscript, and no one foresaw the future of printing. Gutenberg may have had a clearer idea than any man living of its capabilities, but it is not probable that he foresaw the wheels within wheels which his types would put in motion, or heard the clash and roar of the innumerable presses for which there should be no night and scarcely a Sunday of rest, or dreamed that books, schools, libraries, newspapers and readers were yet to appear in a world then undiscovered, in numbers so great that they could not be counted. ”

“ To the dainty tastes of book-makers printing was a barbarous trade; to the wealthy book-buyer, a printed book would have been the degradation of art and literature. One may look in vain among the book-makers and scholars of the fourteenth century for any sign that heralded the coming of printing. Makers and buyers of books seem to have been fully satisfied with things as they were—with the established methods of book-making, with the organization of society and the state of education. ”

“ To men of thought and purpose, they taught a more impressive lesson of the value of paper and letters. They induced inquiries that led to important resolves. If a few arbitrarily arranged signs on bits of paper could greatly amuse a party of friends during a long evening, would not the letters of the alphabet as they were combined in books, furnish a still greater and an unfailing source of amusement?
The meagre notices of card-makers and card-painters in old town-books of Germany and in the decree of Venice do not tell us whether cards were made before or after image prints. ”

“ This forgetfulness of Coornhert has always seemed to me one of the most striking peculiarities of the Haarlem legend. How can it be! Here is a man, very learned, very patriotic, who appreciates the importance of the discovery, who contends with zeal to establish for his country the honor of being some souvenir, by giving his name to the cradle of the greatest of modern inventions. He knows the name, the family name and the family of the inventor, and he does not divulge them to his fellow-citizens! This surpasses belief. And what shall we say of the burgomaster Van Zuren? ”

“ We do not find in them any valuable contributions to knowledge, nor do we discover in the writers or teachers of the day any disposition to make knowledge easy to be acquired. The love of great books during this period, frequently noticed as one of the evidences of a true revival of literature, is, when critically examined, evidence only of the artistic tastes of book-buyers and of the exclusiveness of scholars. So far from paving the way for the introduction of printing, this trifling with literature was one of the most formidable impediments in its path. ”

“ Scriverius said that Lourens Janszoen or Laurens Koster was the inventor of xylography as well as of types. After an examination of the Speculum, he had wit enough to see what Junius did not, that the printer of the book must have had practice with blocks, and that printing on blocks necessarily preceded printing with types. His description of the growth of the new art is not at all satisfactory. The careless manner in which he skips over the invention of matrices and the making of the moulds is that of a man who knows nothing about type-founding, neither from instruction nor observation. ”

“ The modern printer, who sees that the chief ingredients of printing ink are the well-known materials smoke-black and oil, may think that an ignorance of this mixture, or an inability to discover it, is ridiculous and inexcusable. Modern printing ink is but one of many inventions which could be named as illustrating the real simplicity of a long delayed improvement. Simple as it may seem, the mixing of color with oil was a great invention which wrought a revolution in the art of painting. ”

“ I, John Mentel, who, by the grace of God, was the first to invent, in Strasburg, the characters of typography, and to develop this art of printing, which should be perpetuated to the end of the world, to such a degree of perfection that a man can now write as much in a day as another could have done in a year. ”

“ He could print a large or small edition at pleasure. And what was of much more importance, he could print more legibly from his smooth plates of wood than the amateur typographer could from his uneven surface of lead. ”

“ Wealthy laymen who could afford to buy gorgeous missals, and priests who daily saw and handled manuscript works of art, might put the prints aside as rubbish; but poor men and women, whose work-day lives were unceasing rounds of poverty and drudgery, unrelieved by art, ideality or sentiment, must have hailed with gladness the images in their own houses which shadowed ever so dimly the glories of the church and the rewards of the righteous. ”

“ The first block-printers were men outside the pale of literature, and not indebted to any school or scholar for the suggestion of printing. The first merchantable products of printing on paper were not books, but playing cards and images. The earliest purchasers of printing were men who could neither read nor write. The card-makers, who labored for the amusement of boyish tastes, were the ignorant nurses of an art which has preserved the learning of the world. ”

“ That the love for portraits has always existed is sufficiently proven by Atticus, the friend of Cicero, who published a book on the subject, and also by Marcus Varro, who had the enlarged idea of inserting in his numerous books not only the names, but, by the aid of a certain invention, the images of seven hundred illustrious persons. Varro wished to save their features from oblivion, so that the length of centuries would not prevail against them. As the inventor of a benefit which will fill even the gods with jealousy, he has clothed these persons with immortality. ”

“ The world was not ready at the beginning of the fifteenth century to apply its knowledge of printing with ink to the making of books. It was regarded as too expensive a process. It bided its time, waiting for more readers and book-buyers, for paper in greater supply and of better quality, for higher skill on the part of the engravers, printers and ink-makers. If there were no other evidences than those afforded by the partly printed and written books, it could be safely assumed that when the early engravers did begin to print books, they would be, not books of letters, but books of pictures. ”

“ So far from deserving praise, the art of engraving and printing letters was regarded as a confessed acknowledgment of inability to draw, more deserving of censure than of praise. There were in the thirteenth century workmen, now unknown, who produced exquisite workmanship in the carving of wood and stone, in the chasing of gold and silver, and in the copying of manuscripts. ”

“ It is equally plain that they have been dissatisfied with his statements and have tried to fill up the gaps in the evidence with conjectures. But they have not made the legend any more credible. The exact nature and date of the invention, the name of the inventor, his method of making types, the books he printed, the thief who stole his process, the fate of his printing office, the total disappearance of the knowledge of the new art—these and other features of the positive statement first made by Junius are enveloped in as complete a mystery as they were when Batavia was written. ”

“ His workmanship seems to be that of an imitator, a curious mixture of skill and of ignorance, but its inferiority to the workmanship of other printers of his time is not proof of its greater age or of his originality; it proves only his imperfect instruction or greater incapacity. So far from showing the first steps in an immature invention, his books truly show the degradation of a perfect method. They show the ignorance of a badly taught typographic printer, and the prejudices of an old block-printer who had adopted the newer method with reluctance. ”

“ The inferiority of the tools of the early printing office could be plainly exhibited by contrasting them with, those of our time—the early hand-press with the modern cylinder printing machine—the entire collection of types made in the fifteenth century with the specimen book of any reputable modern type-founder. But the pride of the young printer in improvements which have been most largely made by the men of this century should be modified by the reflection that there has been no change in the theory, and but few changes in the elementary processes of printing. ”

“ History is silent about the printing office that was conducted by the sons of Coster. This office and these printers were really created by Meerman to fill a disagreeable gap in the story of Junius—a gap not seen by any of his numerous commentators from Scriverius to Seiz. There is no book that bears their names; there is no record that mentions them as printers; there is not even a tradition that they had anything to do with printing. If their names had not appeared upon the pedigree of Gerrit Thomaszoon, we should know nothing of them. ”

“ The feature which gives to typography its precedence in usefulness over all other branches of the graphic arts is not so much its superior adaptation to impression as its superior facility for combining letters. Its merit is in the mobility of its types and their construction for combination. Printing is Typography. The printing which disseminates knowledge is not the art that makes prints or pictures ”

“ The round cap, the furred robe, and the matrix in the extended hand, are the features of the Scriverius portrait; but the head is that of another man. The stony face which Scriverius presented as the image of Coster was somewhat softened by the pencil of Van Campen, but after he had exhausted upon it all the resources of his art, it still remained a grim and unsatisfactory head, a head without any expression of genius or even of culture—the head of a hard innkeeper, but not of an inventor. ”

“ He clearly perceived, although he obscurely described, two distinct methods of book-printing: the first, the method used for printing the Donatus, which method was imperfect and but a prefiguration; the second, the method that was more masterly and subtile, the method that now is used. The second method was, without doubt, the making of accurate types in metal moulds, and the printing of great books. It was not the second invention, but the invention, inasmuch as it was the only invention that had a practical value. The Donatus was printed, but it was not printed by the art. ”

“ No feature of early printing is more unworkmanlike than that of composition. Imitating the style of the manuscript copy, the compositor huddled together words and paragraphs in solid columns of dismal blackness, and sent his forms to press without title, running-titles, chapter-heads and paging-figures. ”

“ The literary merit of the block-books was small, and their shabby mechanical execution made them contemptible. To readers accustomed to handle great books of tinted vellum, admirably written in letters that are yet as sharp and legible as modern types, these miserable little pamphlets on dingy paper, and with muddy letters, scarcely deserved the name of books. By the educated readers of the fifteenth century they were rated as literary rubbish. ”

“ How much of the pleasure derived from an inspection of the work is due to the skill of the printer, and how much to the art of the illuminator, has not always been judicially weighed by those who represent the book as a specimen of perfect printing. It cannot be denied that the most attractive features of the book are those made, not by printing, but by illumination, but it is plain that the designs and ornamentation are not of a character appropriate to the text. They would not be allowed in any modern edition of the book. ”

“ If the idea of printing books from movable types had been entertained by an ancient Roman bookseller, or by a copyist, during the earlier part of the dark ages, it may be doubted whether he could have devised the mechanism that is needed in the making of types. For types that are accurate as to body, and economical as to cost, can be made by one method only. It is, in the highest degree, improbable, that the scientific method of making types by mechanism could have been invented at an earlier date than the fifteenth century. ”

“ Although much had been done to prepare Germany and Flanders for the reception of printing, one thing was lacking. Printing waited for a wise appreciation of the utility of paper. For centuries paper had been regarded as a plebeian writing surface, unfitted for books, but good enough for shopkeepers, mechanics, and children who had or sought a smattering of education. It was necessary that the prejudices in favor of vellum should be uprooted, and that the practical superiority of paper should be recognized by men of higher authority than card-printers or poor scholars. ”