Part 74

"It was probably at the press of Colard Mansion, in a little room over the porch of St. Donat's at Bruges, that William Caxton learned the art which he was the first to introduce into England. A Kentish boy by birth, but apprenticed to a London mercer, Caxton had already spent thirty years of his manhood in Flanders as Governor of the English gild of Merchant Adventurers there, when we find him engaged as copyist in the service of Edward's sister, Duchess Margaret of Burgundy. But the tedious process of copying was soon thrown aside for the new art which Colard Mansion had introduced into Bruges. … The printing-press was the precious freight he brought back to England in 1476 after an absence of five-and-thirty years. Through the next fifteen, at an age when other men look for ease and retirement, we see him plunging with characteristic energy into his new occupation. His 'red pale' or heraldic shield marked with a red bar down the middle invited buyers to the press he established in the Almonry at Westminster, a little enclosure containing a chapel and almshouses near the west front of the church, where the alms of the abbey were distributed to the poor. … Caxton was a practical man of business, … no rival of the Venetian Aldi or of the classical printers of Rome, but resolved to get a living from his trade, supplying priests with service books and preachers with sermons, furnishing the clerk with his 'Golden Legend' and knight and baron with 'joyous and pleasant histories of chivalry.' But while careful to win his daily bread, he found time to do much for what of higher literature lay fairly to hand. He printed all the English poetry of any moment which was then in existence. His reverence for that 'worshipful man, Geoffrey Chaucer,' who 'ought to be eternally remembered,' is shown not merely by his edition of the 'Canterbury Tales,' but by his reprint of them when a purer text of the poem offered itself. The poems of Lydgate and Gower were added to those of Chaucer. The Chronicle of Brut and Higden's 'Polychronicon' were the only available works of an historical character then existing in the English tongue, and Caxton not only printed them but himself continued the latter up to his own time. A translation of Boethius, a version of the Eneid from the French, and a tract or two of Cicero, were the stray first-fruits of the classical press in England. Busy as was Caxton's printing-press, he was even busier as a translator than as a printer. More than four thousand of his printed pages are from works of his own rendering. The need of these translations shows the popular drift of literature at the time; but keen as the demand seems to have been, there is nothing mechanical in the temper with which Caxton prepared to meet it. A natural, simple-hearted taste and enthusiasm, especially for the style and forms of language, breaks out in his curious prefaces. … But the work of translation involved a choice of English which made Caxton's work important in the history of our language. He stood between two schools of translation, that of French affectation and English pedantry. It was a moment when the character of our literary tongue was being settled, and it is curious to see in his own words the struggle over it which was going on in Caxton's time. 'Some honest and great clerks have been with me and desired me to write the most curious terms that I could find;' on the other hand, 'some gentlemen of late blamed me, saying that in my translations I had over many curious terms which could not be understood of common people, and desired me to use old and homely terms in my translations.' 'Fain would I please every man,' comments the good-humoured printer, but his sturdy sense saved him alike from the temptations of the court and the schools. His own taste pointed to English, but 'to the common terms that be daily used' rather than to the English of his antiquarian advisers. 'I took an old book and read therein, and certainly the English was so rude and broad I could not well understand it,' while the Old-English charters which the Abbot of Westminster lent as models from the archives of his house seemed 'more like to Dutch than to English.' To adopt current phraseology however was by no means easy at a time when even the speech of common talk was in a state of rapid flux. … Coupling this with his long absence in Flanders we can hardly wonder at the confession he makes over his first translation, that 'when all these things came to fore me, after that I had made and written a five or six quires, I fell in despair of this work, and purposed never to have continued therein, and the quires laid apart, and in two years after laboured no more in this work.' He was still however busy translating when he died [in 1491]. {2591} All difficulties in fact were lightened by the general interest which his labours aroused. When the length of the 'Golden Legend' makes him 'half desperate to have accomplished it' and ready to 'lay it apart,' the Earl of Arundel solicits him in no wise to leave it and promises a yearly fee of a buck in summer and a doc in winter, once it were done. 'Many noble and divers gentle men of this realm came and demanded many and often times wherefore I have not made and imprinted the noble history of the San Graal.' … Caxton profited in fact by the wide literary interest which was a mark of the time."

_J. R. Green, History of the English People, book 5, chapter 1 (volume 2)._

"Contemporary with Caxton were the printers Lettou and Machlinia, … who carried on business in the city of London, where they established a press in 1480. Machlinia had previously worked under Caxton. … Wynkyn de Worde … in all probability … was one of Caxton's assistants or workmen, when the latter was living at Bruges, but without doubt he was employed in his office at Westminster until 1491, when he commenced business on his own account, having in his possession a considerable quantity of Caxton's type. Wynkyn de Worde, who was one of the founders of the Stationers' Company, died in 1534, after having printed no less than 410 books known to bibliographers, the earliest of which bearing a date is the 'Liber Festivalis,' 4to, 1493."

_J. H. Slater, Book Collecting, chapter 9._

ALSO IN: _C. Knight, William Caxton._

_C. H. Timperley, Encyclopœdia of Literary and Typographical Anecdote, pages 138-194._

_T. C. Hansard, History and Process of Printing ("The Five Black Arts," chapter 1)._

_Gentleman's Magazine Library: Bibliographical Notes, and Literary Curiosities._

PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1496-1598. The Estienne or Stephanus Press in Paris.

"With the names of Aldus and Elzevir we are all acquainted; the name of Estienne, or Stephanus, has a less familiar sound to English ears, though the family of Parisian printers was as famous in its day as the great houses of Venice and Leyden. The most brilliant member of it was the second Henry, whose story forms a melancholy episode in French literary history of the 16th century. … The Estiennes are said to have come of a noble Provençal family, but nothing is exactly known of their descent. The art of printing was not much more than fifty years old when Henry Estienne, having learnt his trade in Germany, came to Paris, and set up his press [about 1496] in the Rue Saint Jean de Beauvais, opposite the school of Canon Law. There for some twenty years he laboured diligently, bringing out in that time no less than 120 volumes, chiefly folios. The greater number of these are theological and scholastic works; among the few modern authors on the list is the name of Erasmus. Henry Estienne died in 1520 leaving three sons. Robert, the second of them, was born probably in 1503. The boys all being minors, the business passed into the hands of their mother, who in the following year married Simon de Colines, her late husband's foreman, and perhaps partner. … Robert worked with De Colines for five or six years before he went into business on his own account in the same street." It was he who first gave celebrity to the name and the press. "The spell of the Renaissance had early fallen upon the young printer, and it held him captive almost till the end of his life." He married "the daughter of the learned Flemish printer Jodocus Badius, notable for her culture and her beauty. Latin was the ordinary language of the household. The children learned it in infancy from hearing it constantly spoken. … At one time ten foreign scholars lived in Estienne's house to assist him in selecting and revising his manuscripts and in correcting his proofs. … Both Francis [King Francis I.] and his sister Marguerite of Navarre had a great regard for Robert, and often visited the workshop; to that royal patronage the printer was more than once indebted for his liberty and his life." His danger came from the bigoted Sorbonne, with whom he brought himself into collision by printing the Bible with as careful a correction of the text as he had performed in the case of the Latin classics. After the death of Francis I., the peril of the printer's situation became more serious, and in 1550 he fled to Geneva, renouncing the Roman Catholic faith. He died there in 1559.

_H. C. Macdowall, An old French Printer (Macmillan's Magazine, November 1892)._

The second Henry Estienne, son of Robert, either did not accompany his father to Geneva, or soon returned to Paris, and founded anew the Press of his family, bringing to it even more learning than his father, with equal laboriousness and zeal. He died at Lyons in 1598.

_E. Greswell, A View of the Early Parisian Greek Press._

PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1535-1709. Introduction in America. The first Spanish printing in Mexico. The early Massachusetts Press. Restrictions upon its freedom.

"The art of printing was first introduced into Spanish America, as early as the middle of the 16th century. The historians whose works I have consulted are all silent as to the time when it was first practiced on the American continent; … but it is certain that printing was executed, both in Mexico and Peru, long before it made its appearance in the British North American colonies. [The precise date of the introduction of printing into Mexico was for a long time in doubt. … When Mr. Thomas wrote his 'History of Printing in America,' early works on America were rare, and it is probable that there was not one in the country printed in either America or Europe in the 16th century, except the copy of Molina's dictionary; now many of the period may be found in our great private libraries. The dictionary of Molina, in Mexican and Spanish, printed in Mexico, in 1571, in folio, was, by many, asserted and believed to be the earliest book printed in America. … No one here had seen an earlier book until the 'Doctrina Christiana,' printed in the house of Juan Cromberger, in the city of Mexico, in the year 1544, was discovered. Copies of this rare work were found in two well known private libraries in New York and Providence. For a long time the honor was awarded to this as the earliest book printed in America. But there is now strong evidence that printing was really introduced in Mexico nine years before that time, and positive evidence, by existing books, that a press was established in 1540. Readers familiar with early books relating to Mexico have seen mention of a book printed there as early as 1535, … the 'Spiritual Ladder' of St John Climacus. … It seems that no copy of the 'Spiritual Ladder' has ever been seen in recent times, and the quoted testimonials are the only ones yet found which refer to it.

_Note by Hon. John R. Bartlett, appendix A., giving a 'List of Books printed in Mexico between the years 1540 and 1560 inclusive.'_

{2592}

… In January, 1639, printing was first performed in that part of North America which extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Frozen ocean. For this press our country is chiefly indebted to the Rev. Mr. Glover, a nonconformist minister, who possessed a considerable estate. … Another press, with types, and another printer, were, in 1660, sent over from England by the corporation for propagating the gospel among the Indians in New England. This press, &c., was designed solely for the purpose of printing the Bible, and other books, in the Indian language. On their arrival they were carried to Cambridge, and employed in the printing house already established in that place. … The fathers of Massachusetts kept a watchful eye on the press; and in neither a religious nor civil point of view were they disposed to give it much liberty. … In 1662, the government of Massachusetts appointed licensers of the press; and afterward, in 1664, passed a law that 'no printing should be allowed in any town within the jurisdiction, except in Cambridge'; nor should any thing be printed there but what the government permitted through the agency of those persons who were empowered for the purpose. … In a short time, this law was so far repealed as to permit the use of a press at Boston. … It does not appear that the press, in Massachusetts, was free from legal restraints till about the year 1755 [see PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1704-1729]. … Except in Massachusetts, no presses were set up in the colonies till near the close of the 17th century. Printing then [1686] was performed in Pennsylvania [by William Bradford], 'near Philadelphia' [at Shackamaxon, now Kensington], and afterward in that city, by the same press which, in a few years subsequent, was removed to New York.

See PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1685-1693; also PENNSYLVANIA: A. D. 1692-1696.

The use of types commenced in Virginia about 1681; in 1682 the press was prohibited. In 1709 a press was established at New London, in Connecticut."

_I. Thomas, History of Printing in America, 2nd edition. (Translated and Collection of the American Antiquity Society, volume 5), volume 1, pages 1-17._

ALSO IN: _J. L. Bishop, History of American Manufactures, volume 1, chapter 7._

PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1612-1650. Origin of printed newspapers. The newspaper defined. Its earliest appearances in Germany and Italy.

"Lally-Tollendal, in his 'Life of Queen Elizabeth,' in the 'Biographie Universelle' (vol. xiii, published in 1815, p. 56) … remarks that 'as far as the publication of an official journal is concerned, France can claim the priority by more than half a century; for in the Royal Library at Paris there is a bulletin of the campaign of Louis XII. in Italy in 1509.' He then gives the title of this 'bulletin,' from which it clearly appears that it is not a political journal, but an isolated piece of news—a kind of publication of which there are hundreds in existence of a date anterior to 1588 [formerly supposed to be the date of the first English newspaper—see PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1622-1702], and of which there is no doubt that thousands were issued. There is, for instance, in the British Museum a French pamphlet of six printed leaves, containing an account of the surrender of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella on the 'first of January last past' (le premier jour de janvier dernierement passe), in the year 1492; and there are also the three editions of the celebrated letter of Columbus, giving the first account of the discovery of America, all printed at Rome in 1493. Nay, one of the very earliest productions of the German press was an official manifesto of Diether, Archbishop of Cologne, against Count Adolph of Nassau, very satisfactorily proved to have been printed at Mentz in 1462. There is among the German bibliographers a technical name for this class of printed documents, which are called 'Relations.' In fact, in order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion with regard to the origin of newspapers, it is requisite, in the first place, to settle with some approach to precision what a newspaper is. Four classes of publications succeeded to each other from the 15th to the 19th century, to which the term has by different writers been applied:

1st. Accounts of individual public transactions of recent occurrence.

2nd. Accounts in one publication of several public transactions of recent occurrence, only connected together by having taken place about the same period, so as at one time to form the 'news of the day.'

3rd. Accounts similar to those of the second class, but issued in a numbered series.

4th. Accounts similar to those of the second class, but issued not only in a numbered series, but at stated intervals.

The notices of the surrender of Granada and the discovery of America belong to the first class, and so also do the last dying speeches, which are in our own time cried about the streets. These surely are not newspapers. The Times and Daily News [London] belong to the fourth class, and these, of course, are newspapers. … Are not, in fact, all the essentials of a newspaper comprised in the definition of the second class, which it may be as well to repeat: 'Accounts in one publication of several public transactions of recent occurrence, only connected together by having taken place about the same period, so as at one time to form the news of the day'? Let us take an instance. There is preserved in the British Museum a collection of several volumes of interesting publications issued in Italy between 1640 and 1650, and containing the news of the times. They are of a small folio size, and consist in general of four pages, but sometimes of six, sometimes only of two. There is a series for the month of December, 1644, consisting entirely of the news from Rome. The first line of the first page runs thus:—'Di Roma,' with the date, first of the 3rd, then of the 10th, then the 17th, then the 24th, and lastly the 31st of December, showing that a number was published every week, most probably on the arrival of the post from Rome. The place of publication was Florence, and the same publishers who issued this collection of the news from Rome, sent forth in the same month of December, 1644, two other similar gazettes, at similar intervals, one of the news from Genoa, the other of the news from Germany and abroad. That this interesting series of publications, which is well worthy of a minute examination and a detailed description, is in reality a series of newspapers, will, I believe, be questioned by very few; but each individual number presents no mark by which, if separately met with, it could be known to form part of a set. … {2593} The most minute researches on the history of newspapers in Germany are, as already mentioned, those of Prutz, who has collected notices of a large number of the 'relations,' though much remains to be gleaned. There are, for instance, in Van Heusde's Catalogue of the Library at Utrecht (Utrecht, 1835, folio), the titles of nearly a hundred of them, all as early as the sixteenth century; and the British Museum possesses a considerable quantity, all of recent acquisition. Prutz has no notice of the two that have been mentioned, and, like all preceding writers, he draws no distinction between the publications of the first class and the second. The view that he takes is, that no publication which does not answer to the definition of what I have termed the fourth class is entitled to the name of a newspaper. There was in the possession of Professor Grellman a publication called an 'Aviso,' numbered as '14,' and published in 1612, which has been considered by many German writers as their earliest newspaper, but Prutz denies that honour to it, on the ground of there being no proof that it was published at stated intervals. In the year 1615 Egenolph Emmel, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, issued a weekly intelligencer, numbered in a series, and this, according to Prutz, is the proper claimant. Its history has been traced with some minuteness in a separate dissertation by Schwarzkopf, who has also the credit of having published in 1795 the first general essay on newspapers of any value, and to have followed up the subject in a series of articles in the Allgemeine Litterarische Anzeiger. … The claims of Italy have yet to be considered. Prutz dismisses them very summarily, because, as he says, the Venetian gazettes of the sixteenth century, said to be preserved at Florence, are in manuscript, and it is essential to the definition of a newspaper that it should be printed. These Venetian gazettes have never, so far as I am aware, been described at all; they may be mere 'news-letters,' or they may be something closely approaching to the modern newspaper. But I am strongly inclined to believe that something of the second class of Italian origin will turn up in the great libraries of Europe when further research is devoted to the subject. … The existence of these 'gazettes' in so many languages furnishes strong ground for supposing that the popularity of newspapers originated in Italy."

_T. Watts, The fabricated "Earliest English Newspaper" (Gentleman's Magazine, 1850, reprinted in the Gentleman's Magazine Library; Bibliographical Notes, pages 146-150)._

PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1617-1680. The Elzevirs.