Printer's devil

“ Laid out on the site of the old Westminster Mews, and so named on account of its proximity to King Street.
Printer’s Devil. When Caxton introduced printing into England many people regarded it as an invention of the devil. This idea was also fostered by his boys, whose hands and faces were besmeared with ink. They were accordingly called “Imps” and “Devils.” Since his day the boys engaged in feeding the printing press have not improved in their personal appearance. Young devils they are, and young devils they will remain until the end of time. ”

“ He would follow shortly, and declare that he would not write another line unless I returned. This was an effectual threat, for he was constantly behind, and even out there heard the cry for "copy" which the printer's devil is always represented as making. ”

“ But as the hapless inventor of the first great art of printing incurred, among his astounded contemporaries, the opprobrium of being in compact with the evil one, (whence, probably, the familiar appellation of printers' devils,) it behoves the early practitioners of the new art to look to their reputations! By economizing the time of the public, they may squander their own good repute. It is not every printer who can afford, like Benjamin Franklin, to be a reformer ”

“ Later, the copying of manuscripts was entrusted to ignorant monks and even to women. But how much more serious is the evil that can be brought about by a careless printer, and yet to this matter the law gives no heed. A dealer who sells English stuffs under the guise of Venetian is punished, but the printer who in place of correct texts, misleads and abuses the reader with pages the contents of which are an actual trial and torment, escapes unharmed. ”

“ This seeming realisation of the phantom expressing perversity was an incarnation of human frenzy; the devil became the nightmare of cloisters, the human mind fell a prey to its own fear and, though supposed to be reasonable, trembled at the chimeras which it had evoked. A black and deformed monster spread its batwings between heaven and earth, to prevent youth and life from trusting in the promises of the sun and the still peace of the stars. This harpy of superstition poisoned all things with its breath, infected all by its contact. ”

“ We have here an instance of the printer aiming at directly imitating and supplanting by his craft the art of the calligrapher and illuminator, and with such a beauty and perfection of workmanship as must have astonished them and given them far more reason to regard the printer as a dangerous rival than had (as it is said) the early wood engravers, who were unwilling to help the printer by their art for fear his craft would injure their own, which seems somewhat extraordinary considering how closely allied both wood engraver and printer have been ever since. ”

“ When good, cheap ink jets and laser printers hit the market, these noise hassles will end.
SPECIAL FEATURES
“Will it underline?” I asked. And would it offer boldface, the dark, heavy print that books often use for emphasis.
And what about other special features? How about proportional spacing, for instance, which prints the “M” wider than a “j”—making the type look more like a book’s. That could make the print more readable.
Another question is, “Does the printer offer justification?” It’s really a software issue. ”

“ From the vehicles are thrown out slips of paper about an inch and a half by five inches, with slits cut in them. There is a common belief that the devil must go through every hole in every piece of paper before he can reach the soul of the dead. ”

“ The Devil lurks beneath the venerable broadcloth of an intolerant and ignorant priest; he uses the seducing smiles of a wicked beauty; he stirs the blood of the covetous and grasping; he strides through the gilded halls of ambitious emperors and ministers, who go [194] with "light hearts" to kill thousands of human beings with newly-invented infernal machines; he works havoc in the brains of the vain. The Devil shuffles the cards for the gambler, and destroys our peace whether he makes us win or lose on the turf ”

“ Of course, so long as the machine toils and earns wealth and other power which still goes to support and further social and ecclesiastical forms, constituted with reference to salvation from a devil or demons no longer believed in, the phrase ‘machine-and-devil-driven’ is true. ”

“ An under-devil, called the prompter, takes good care that I don't exchange my costume for one more suitable; and whenever I try to hide myself behind the crowd, which is made up of the director-manufacturer's factory hands, it opens and pushes me forward to the footlights. If I look into the wings, my eyes fall on the under-devil, standing there, grinning, and if I look at the house, I see Satan himself sitting in a box, laughing. ”

“ Satan! is this how thou holdest the pact thou hast made with me? Help, Satan! Help! my time is not out yet!" and the stranger, it was found, had suddenly vanished. But from the spot where he had been standing an enormous bat went fluttering up, darted into the thick of the flames, and thence rose screaming into the air with the old woman's fur cloak; and the burning pyre went crashing down into extinction.
Horror seized upon all the spectators; every one now saw clearly that the distinguished stranger had been none other than the very Devil in person. ”

“ Thus every Dissembler, every false Friend, every secret Cheat, every Bearskin-Jobber has a Cloven-Foot, and so far hands on the Devil’s Interest by the same powerful Agency of Art, as the Devil himself uses to act when he appears in Person, or would act if he was just now upon the Spot; for this Foot is a Machine which is to be wound up and wound down, as the Cause it appears for requires; and there are Agents and Engineers to act in it by Directions of Satan (the grand Engineer) who lies still in his Retirement, only issuing out his Orders as he sees convenient. ”

“ The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: it will win. ”

“ Of the many annoyances associated with the lithographic machine printer’s work, grit is probably the most troublesome, inasmuch as its presence is almost imperceptible, while its effect is extensive and often disastrous. Its sharp grains become embedded in the inking-roller skins, and plough tiny [44] furrows across the printing forme, doing much damage before the printer realises the presence of any foreign matter on the inking-rollers. Prevention is a simple matter enough, but a cure is rarely, if ever, accomplished. ”

“ The virtues of the hearth and all good morals seem to have fled to the bosom of those families only who have discarded the paganism of Rome and, although styled heretics, practice the simplicity of evangelical morality. One of these families is that of Christian the Printer, the great-grandchild of Jocelyn the Champion's son, who, due to the rapid progress made by the printing press, which rendered manuscript books useless and unnecessarily expensive, found it ever more difficult to earn his living at his trade of copyist and illuminator of manuscripts. ”

“ It must be conceded in favour of printers that some authors do write an execrable hand. One sometimes receives a letter which requires about three readings before it can be understood. At the first time of reading the meaning is scarcely intelligible, at the second time some faint glimpse of the writer's object in writing is obtained, and at the third time the main point of the letter is deciphered. Such men may be deemed to be the plague of printers. A friend of Beloe ``the Sexagenarian'' was remonstrated with by a printer for being the cause of a large amount of swearing in his office. ”

“ We have seen men, in other respects of unimpeachable integrity, who were much infected with this malady; from hence I have been inclined to conclude, that this is an infernal machine, artfully invented by the Devil, to subdue those souls, who by all other ways are invincible ”

“ In this sense of ‘messenger’, the word ‘devil’ has a special fitness; for it is, and always has been among Printers, and Printers only, another word for ‘errand-boy’. In olden times, when speed was required, a boy stood at the off-side of the press, and as soon as the frisket was raised, whipped the printed sheet off the tympan. ”

“ The reactions of printer's ink are stronger somehow than its original actions—its chemical processes acquire added strength in the back kick. What has saved many a rotten criminal in this country from getting his just deserts? It wasn't the fact that the newspapers were all for him. It was the fact that all the newspapers were against him. The under dog may be ever so bad a dog, but only let enough of us start kicking him all together, and what's the result? ”

“ Then there is a certain freedom about printers’ humour which we don’t find elsewhere, save among editors: but printers, like editors, have ever been privileged individuals, and we are told that when the recording angel observes a printer hold a bit of bent brass rule between his fingers, while he misses it with a hammer, the trustworthy scribe drops into a brown study, and pretends not to hear anything. Nor is it logical to assume that a printer is a saint because he sets up a hymn-book. ”

“ But, let us say in parenthesis, that while we deprecate the lack of artistic culture that prevents our printers from turning out artistic work, we do not for a moment claim that that which is not artistic is poor, or that all printing that is not rough is not artistic. The half-tone and coated paper have their use. If, as a matter of news or information, exactness is required, any sensible printer will turn to the half-tone for assistance. ”

“ Another favourite medium of printing-house fun is found in adapting Gilbert’s famous line and mourning that a “printer’s lot is not a happy one,” or magnifying the annoyances from authors and editors with which printers have to put up. In this connexion we find one printer relieving his troubled soul thus—
Working for forty editors and scores of authors, every one of whom is as sensitive [93] as a sore thumb, and as lively and interesting as a hornet, no wonder that printers die young, and only pachydermatus, grizzly, mulish specimens get their share of life. ”

“ They are also conspicuous, for, though the standard is nothing less than perfection, the ordinary human eye is able to apply the standard. These tricks of the malicious imp are commonly called "misprints," "printer's errors," "errors of the press," or, more impartially, "errata" or "corrigenda." In the first three names there is a tinge of unfairness, because the printer is by no means responsible for all the mistakes that appear in type. ”

“ I shall conclude by committing myself to your printer's mercy, trusting that he will be too magnanimous to take notice of my remarks on the "slip-slop" printing of figures, which will sometimes occur in the best offices; if he should misprint my figures, all my facts will fall to the ground. ”

“ Our ancestors deemed the human mind incapable, without the aid of the Evil One, of producing anything beyond their own comprehension. The red letters which Fust used at the close of his earliest printed volumes to give his name, with the place and date of publication, were interpreted in Paris as indications of the diabolical origin of the works so easily produced by him. (M. D. Conway, Demonology and Devil-Lore.) Sacred days, as is well known, are printed in the Catholic calendar with red letters, and the devil has also employed them in books of magic. ”

“ The cutting is not that of types used for printing, but of the punches by which the printing types were made. The types of the early printers were made by two classes of workmen: he who poured the melted metal was the founder; he who made the model letters was the cutter. Performing the more artistic and the more difficult part of the work, the punch-cutter was properly regarded as the maker of the types.
The variety of faces in the types of the unknown printer can be explained in a much more satisfactory manner than by attributing them to the accidental slips or deviation of the graving tool. ”

“ In a number of instances, these first printers were obliged, as had been the later manuscript-dealers, to pay for the privilege of examining, collating, and copying. They were, however, frequently able to purchase from monks who no longer valued a parchment even as a fetish, the so-called “original.” For the printer, who had of necessity a larger responsibility for the correctness of his text than rested upon the old manuscript-dealer, the task of securing the “copy” [484] for his compositors was not completed when he had secured control of one manuscript. ”

“ In pleasant contrast to dreadful stories are the tales of the amusing devils that we find frequently. The comic devil is much older than the comic ghost, as authors showed a levity toward demons long before they treated the specter with disrespect,—one rather wonders why. Clownish devils that appeared in the miracle plays prepared the way for the humorous and satiric treatment of the Elizabethan drama and late fiction. ”

“ The Apostle exhorts the believers to put on the whole armour of God, to be able to stand (not to be swept away or captured) against the wiles of the Devil. Then the Devil is a trickster—a sleight-of-hand performer—a magician. One of his many methods to accomplish his purpose, we find, is delusion: practicing sleights, tricks, and works of magic on the gullibility of his victims.
How many unsophisticated men and boys have been robbed in daylight on a street corner by some little “game,” or trick, by a sharper. Farms have been deeded away for nothing in return. ”