Theodore Low De Vinne

“ 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. ”

“ 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; it is, as Bernard has defined it, “the art that makes books.” ”

“ If the cards conveyed a suggestion of the possibility of printed books, the suggestion was rejected. 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. ”

“ It was necessary that the illustrations made for the lady’s missal, or for a book of romance, should be designed, not by some grim old monk whose imagination had been cramped by his solitary life, and whose narrowness and severity were visible in all his workmanship, but by a courtier, an artist, and man of fashion, who knew the world, who knew how to please it, and how to paint it. ”

“ He who is pleased to endow mighty men with knowledge has given us two distinguished masters in the art of engraving, both bearing the name of John, both living in the city of Mentz, and both illustrious as the first printers of books. In company with these masters, Peter hastened toward the same end.321 The last to leave, he was the first to arrive; for he excelled in the science of engraving, through the grace of Him only who can give genius and inspiration. Hereafter every nation may procure proper types of its own characters, for he excels in the engraving of all kinds of types. ”

“ Sotheby, who tries to establish the priority of Dutch printing, says that the ink in one edition is brilliant; that its types have great beauty and sharpness; that its presswork is equal in clearness to that of Gutenberg’s Bible. In this high praise no other author joins: most critics say it is but a shabby piece of presswork. The Dutch authors, who wish to show the imperfections of typography in its infancy, call especial attention to the illegibility of the fourth edition in Dutch, which they claim as the first, and for that reason they rate it as an unusually clumsy piece of printing. ”

“ 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 space for the ornamental borders and letters of the illuminator seems extravagant when contrasted with the pinched spaces between lines and words. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To be ultimately successful, it was requisite that printing should begin with the plainest work, and that it should be adapted to the demands of very plain people; but the tastes of Italians were refined, and they could not tolerate rudeness in any form. With all its skill, wealth and culture, there was in Italy no true middle class, and, consequently, no suitable basis for the upholding of an art like xylography. The spirit which Woltmann has specified as the basis of printing,—“the impulse to make each mental gain a common blessing,”—was entirely wanting. ”

“ An unsuitable ink may seem but a trifling impediment to the development of printing, but if there had been no other, this would have been an insurmountable obstacle. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 introduction of the cards in Europe was soon followed by the revival, or as Bibliophile Jacob of Paris characterizes it, by the invention, of engraving on wood. Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to whether the art was revived or invented, it is certain that playing cards were the means by which early printing was made popular. Cards were the only kind of printed work which promised to repay the labor of engraving. People who could neither read nor write, and who had no desire to be taught either accomplishment, derived great pleasure from them. ”

“ Morse, inventor of the electric telegraph, was an artist, not a mechanician, nor even a man of science. Koning, inventor of the cylinder printing machine, was not a printer. The greatest inventions have been made by men not within, but without, the arts they improved. It would seem that a thorough technical education in any art or trade cramps the inventive faculties, disqualifying the expert from making any attempt at radical changes, permitting him to attempt improvement in the details only. ”

“ The small prices for which all popular modern books and newspapers are sold lead many into the error that printing is, necessarily and under all circumstances, a much cheaper method of making books than that of writing. As compared with writing, presswork, or the operation of impressing the types on the sheet, is much the quicker and cheaper process; but presswork is not the main branch of the art of printing. Before one impression can be taken, or one copy be made, types must be composed or blocks engraved at very great expense. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A growing fondness for pictures is a marked peculiarity in the intellectual development of the age. It was not confined to the buyers of printed images: it was manifested in the paintings on the walls and windows of magnificent churches, in the pictorial playing cards then in the hands of all people, gentle and simple, and more than all in the fearful pictures of the Dance of Death upon the walls of convents, in the arcades of burying-grounds, and in market-places and town halls. ”

“ This is the name of an early block-book almost as famous as the Bible of the Poor, and of which there are at least six distinct xylographic editions. Some of them have fifty, and others have forty-eight leaves, printed upon one side only of the leaf. The dissimilarities in the designs and the engraving of these editions are decided and unmistakable: they are, no doubt, impressions from different suites of blocks, and each edition may be regarded as the work of a different printer.
As a literary production, the Apocalypse has small merit. ”

“ This silence of the early chroniclers should not be construed as evidence that there was no engraving on wood; it is evidence only of the trivial nature of the work done. To specify the work is to justify the neglect. It consisted, so far as we know, only of stamps for the use of notaries, autographs for those who did not write, trade-marks for merchants’ packages, outlined initials for inexpert scribes, and engraved blocks for manufacturers of textile fabrics. This paltry work seems specially inappropriate for the initiation of a great art destined to make a revolution in literature. ”

“ In the town records Koster is not noticed as a printer, but Koning described his method of printing, his punches, moulds, matrices, presses, inking balls, ink, types, and printing office furniture, with as much boldness as if he had been eye-witness to the entire process. Nor was this his only error. It has since been proved that he willfully suppressed many important facts in the records which are of great importance in an examination of the life and services of Coster. It is plain that he was more intent on pleasing the national pride than on revealing the truth. ”

“ The misconstruction of the language of a chronicler of the sixteenth century—who, in trying to explain the process of making types, carelessly placed the cutting of the punch after the founding of the type—seemed a full warrant for this conjecture. It is, however, but a conjecture: there is no credible authority for the statement that the printers first cast the bodies and then cut the faces. Cut types, if made at all, were made only in the way of preliminary experiment. The method is as impracticable as it is absurd. ”

“ In that century it was not an easy matter to learn an art or a trade of value: no one could enter the ranks of mechanics even as a pupil, without the payment of a premium in money; no one could practise any trade unless he had served a long period of apprenticeship. These exactions hopelessly shut out many who wished to learn; but men who had complied with all the conditions were often unwilling to teach, or to allow others to practise. Many trades were monopolies. In some cases they were protected by legislative enactments, like that accorded to the Venetian makers of playing cards. ”

“ As the professional book-makers, who were of the people, did nothing for the advancement of their order, the development of Italian printing had to stop with printed cards, cloths and images. The skill of Italian engravers culminated, not, as it did in Germany, in popular block-books, but in the more artistic and exclusive branch of copper-plate printing. The efforts of Italian scholars to revive the study of classical authors, however useful they may have been to the people of other countries, ended in Italy with a widening of the gulf that separated the ignorant from the educated. ”

“ The invention of types had to wait for the invention of ink.
Typography had to wait for the invention of paper, the only material that is mechanically adapted for printing, the only material that supplies the wants of the reader in his requirements for strength, cheapness, compactness and durability. Paper was known in civilized Europe for at least two centuries before typography was invented, but it was not produced in sufficient quantity nor of a proper quality until the beginning of the fifteenth century. ”

“ 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. This change in fashion was effectually made by the rich merchants of Flanders and Germany. ”

“ Printing has been practised in China for many centuries, but there can be no comparison between the fruits of printing in China and in Europe. The remarkable inefficiency of the Chinese method is the result not so much of clumsiness of the process, as of the perverseness of a people who are unable to improve it, and unwilling to accept the improvements of Europeans. The first printing press brought to the New World was set up in the City of Mexico about one hundred years before a printing office was established in Massachusetts. ”

“ Jenson said it was a divine art; Husner said it was a scientific method; Wittig said that the inventor has deserved well of the wide world. It would be useless to attempt to add anything to these tributes—quite as useless to attempt to break their force. Typography, made practicable and perfect by means of the type-mould, was an original and a great invention. If the inventor had produced nothing more than the type-mould, this would be enough to entitle him to the highest honor. ”

“ It was easier to transfer the letters than to draw them; easier to cut the letters for a book of twenty or thirty pages than to cut the punches, make the moulds, and cast and compose the types. The blocks having been engraved, the block-printer had the superior advantage. His blocks, like modern stereotype plates, were always ready for use. 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. ”

“ The thin curving lip and pointed nose, the strongly marked lines on the forehead, the bold eyes and arrogant bearing of the head reveal to us a man of genius p430 and of force, a man born to rule, impatient of restraint, and of inflexible resolution. We have but to look at the portrait of Fust to see that he, also, was accustomed to having his own way, and that he and Gutenberg were not at all adapted to each other as partners. ”

“ For the benefits of printed books, Italy is indebted to the skill of German printers, whose early productions had been excluded from Venice at the petition of her querulous card-makers.
It may seem equally strange that block-book printing was not invented in Spain, where textile fabrics were printed, and where paper was more largely made and used than in any portion of Europe. We there find schools, libraries, and signs of great mental activity. In poetry, architecture, music and other fine arts, the people of Spain were as advanced as the French or Italians. ”

“ The beginnings of the telegraph, the railroad and the express are within the memory of the men of the present generation. The systematic establishment of free schools and libraries is the work of the present century. Public mails and post-offices were introduced in 1530, but it is only within the past forty years that their management has been more liberal for the benefit of the people. It is by aids like these, and not by its intrinsic merits alone, that printing has received its recent development. It was for the want of these aids that printing languished for many years after its invention. ”

“ The slenderness of the incised lines, the fineness and hardness of the metal, and the peculiar method by which the ink is laid on the plate and fixed to the paper, give to prints from engravings on steel or p020 on copper a sharpness of line, a brilliancy of color, a delicacy of tone, and a receding in perspective, which have always won for this branch of printing the preference of artists. Yet it is a slow and expensive process. A steel-plate engraver may be engaged for many months upon a large plate, from which but forty perfect impressions can be taken in a day. ”

“ Every printer who handled the types and every goldsmith who helped to make the tools must have felt a weakening of the obligation of secrecy. The sack of Mentz was a greater misfortune, for it dissolved all obligations and sent the printers to other cities to found new offices. Not one of these printers has told us when and how he began to print on his own account. All we know about the introduction of printing in many of the large cities has been gathered from the dates of books and the chance allusions of early chroniclers. ”