Part 20

The provision of black ink for the types and brown ink for the cuts seems unnecessary, but Van der Linde’s explanation of this peculiarity is plausible. He says that the oily black ink used on the types may have been rejected for the cuts because its greasy surface interfered with the brush of the colorist. It does not appear that the inquiry has ever been made, whether the brown ink of block-books was always brown. It is probable that this brown ink was once black. The variability of the color, so frequently remarked in all block-books, is the certain indication of a faded black writing ink. It was the fluidity of this writing ink that prevented its use on the types of the _Speculum_; the fluid collected in globules on the metal, spreading under impression, and blotting the paper. Oily ink was required for a surface of metal.

The unequal indentation of the letters indicates that the types were not of a uniform height. Nor is it probable that the engravings at the head of every page were always truly flat and of precisely the same height as the types. They were pieces of flat boards, which must have warped with every change from heat to cold, or from dampness to dryness.[140] In these irregularities we find the probable reason for the employment of two distinct methods of impression. Two impressions were needed as much as two kinds of ink. [p279] The types required strong, and the wood-cuts weak impression. If the impression had been graduated to suit the wood-cuts, the print of the types would not have been visible; if enough impression had been given to face the types, the wood-cuts, if in the same form, would have been crushed.

The quality of the presswork of the _Speculum_ has been strangely misrepresented. 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. Van der Linde says that the presswork of the _Speculum_ does not differ materially from that of many books printed in the Netherlands during the last quarter of the fifteenth century.[141]

The wood-cuts were printed by the unknown process then made use of by all block-printers; the types were printed on a press which was fitted with at least one of the appliances of a well-made printing press; but the two editions in Latin, which are in verse, with lines of irregular length, show typographical blemishes of an extraordinary nature. In the blank spaces at the ends of the short lines are found impressions of letters never intended to be seen or read—of letters that do [p280] not belong to the text—of letters not printed with ink, but embossed or jammed in the paper. On some pages entire words are found. These words and letters, which are always found within the square of the printed page, and in line with the types printed in black, are, undeniably, embossings of types from the same font. The printer who critically examines these embossed letters will be convinced that the types making them were used as bearers at the ends of the short lines, to shield adjacent types from hard impression: he will also know that they were printed on a press provided with a frisket.[142]

The period in which the early editions of the _Speculum_ were printed will be the subject of the next chapter, but it may here be told when the wood-cuts were destroyed. In the year 1483, one John Veldener, then a printer at Culembourg, printed two editions of the _Speculum_, in the Dutch language, and in small quarto form. One edition contained 116 and another 128 illustrations, printed from the wood-cuts that had been previously used in the four notable editions. To make these broad wood-cuts, which had been designed for pages in folio, serve for pages in quarto, Veldener cut away the architectural frame-work surrounding each illustration, and then sawed each block in two pieces. Mutilated in this fashion, it was impossible afterward for any printer to use these blocks in the production of an edition in folio like any of those that have been previously described. Veldener’s editions were not made by the method used by the printer of the earlier editions: the types and the wood-cuts were printed together, [p281] in black ink and upon both sides of the leaf. The blocks were badly worn before they were mutilated: the finer lines of the engraving are flattened out, and retain too much ink, producing an effect of blackness and muddiness not shown in the impressions of the earlier editions. The fault is certainly in the cuts, and not in the presswork, for Veldener was an able printer. The wood-cuts printed by him in other books, at Louvain and at Utrecht, show neater presswork, although they are of feeble design and meanly engraved.[143]

Although Veldener made use of the wood-cuts, he did not use any of the types of the _Speculum_. His book types are well known: as they are of different bodies and faces, they may be regarded as conclusive evidence that Veldener was not the printer of the early editions. It is probable that he bought from the printer of the first editions, or from his successors, the wood-cuts only. We may suppose that the types were worn out, and that the punches and matrices were also worn out or obsolete, for we find no traces of them in the books of any later printer. We have, therefore, to attribute all the books in which these types are found to a printer who preceded Veldener. We do not know the name of this printer, nor can we fix the date when he began to print, but it is evident that he was one of the earliest if not the first typographic printer in the Netherlands.

[p282]

XV

The Works and Workmanship of an Unknown Printer.

The Speculum not the Work of an Experimenter . . . Improbable that this was his only Typographic Book . . . Twelve Books, Eight Faces of Types and Forty-two Editions attributed to him or his Successors . . . Hessel’s Classification of these Types . . . Fac-simile of the Types of the Speculum . . . Fac-simile of the Fables of Lorenzo Valla . . . Fac-simile of the Peculiarities of Criminal Law . . . Fac-simile of the Epitaphs of Pope Pius II . . . The Donatus . . . Fac-simile of the Abecedarium . . . The Eight Faces of Types were made by the same Printer . . . An Indication that he Wore out Types rapidly . . . That he Sold many Books . . . Trivial Character of the Books . . . His Types not Made of Wood . . . Illustrations of Types of Wood . . . Their Impracticability Demonstrated . . . Books not made from Cut Types . . . Cause of the Dissimilar Appearance of the Types . . . Were Founded . . . The Press of the Unknown Printer . . . Its Defects . . . Indications of the Use of a Frisket.

* * * * *

If any shall suggest, that some of the Enquiries here insisted upon (as particularly those about the Letters of the Alphabet) do seem too minute and trivial for any prudent man to bestow his serious thoughts and time about, such persons may know that the discovery of the true nature and cause of any the most minute thing doth promote real knowledge, and therefore cannot be unfit for any Man’s endeavours.

_Bishop Wilkins_, 1668.

* * * * *

If the printer of the _Speculum_ was the rightful inventor of typography, his workmanship, as shown in the different editions of the book, clearly proves that he had passed the shoals of experiment, and was on the broad sea of successful practice. We can see, even without the help of the legends or chronicles, that he cut punches, made moulds and founded types of different faces and bodies; that he compounded ink in a proper manner, and printed his types upon a press constructed for the needs of his work; that he was successful both as a publisher and a printer. He practised printing not for amusement, nor in the way of scientific experiment, but as a business. Rude as his workmanship may appear, it fairly included all departments of the art: it was not experimental, but practical typography. [p283]

With these facts before us, it would seem proper to pass at once to the examination of the statements that have been made about the supposed printer of the book. But an examination at this point would be premature, for we have not, as yet, all the facts that are required. The four editions of the _Speculum_ do not furnish enough evidence. It is not reasonable to suppose that two or three distinct fonts of type were made for no other purpose than the printing of four editions of this book. It is probable that the printer printed other books. But the early chronicles of Dutch printing tell us very little about these books. They are not only meagre in their recital of the more important facts connected with the invention, but are notoriously incorrect in their description of the minor details. They are unsafe guides. The books themselves, which reveal, to some extent, the process by which they were printed, are now regarded as of higher authority. We can accept the chronicles only so far as they corroborate the internal evidences of the books. It is proper that the books should be examined first.

The number of these books is greater than has been supposed, even by those who have favored the Dutch version of the invention of typography. Forty-three editions of twelve different works, printed from eight faces of types, are now attributed to the unknown printer of the _Speculum_ or to his successors. In eleven works, the types resemble those of the _Speculum_, but the books are different as to character. They are in the form of small quarto or octavo, and are entirely destitute of illustrations. They are without name or place of printer, and, with one exception, are without date; they have no literary and no historical value; they differ but little, in a mechanical point of view, from numerous undated works of similar nature that have been assigned by bibliographers to the latter part of the fifteenth century. The places where these books or their fragments were found, and some of their peculiarities of workmanship, furnish evidences of value in an inquiry concerning their printer. [p284]

These books have been carefully classified according to their types, by J. H. Hessels, the translator in English of Van der Linde’s _Haarlem Legend_, from which work the classification following has been copied. The types have been specified by numbers, and have been arranged according to the order in which they are described by Holtrop in his _Monuments typographiques_. It is not pretended that the order of these numbers indicates the order in which the types were made; numbers have been assigned to them only for convenience in reference and for the purpose of accurate classification.

TYPE I. In this character[144] the four notable editions of the _Speculum_ were printed. In the same character were found the relics of six editions of the _Donatus_. The single leaf by which one edition of this book was identified, was pasted in a volume which once belonged to Sion Convent, at Cologne, and which contained several treatises printed by Ulric Zell, of Cologne. One of these treatises is dated 1467. Another leaf, now in the city hall of the city of Haarlem, was found in the original binding of an account book for the year 1474, which book was kept in the cathedral of that city. The account books of this church for the years 1476, 1485 and 1514, contain cuttings of leaves from the same edition. The first entry in the record of 1474 is to this effect: “_Item._ I have paid six Rhine florins to Cornelis the binder, for the binding of books.”[145] Fragments of other little books printed in the types of the _Speculum_ have been found:

An abridgment of the Liturgy, then known as the _Little Book of the Mass_,[146] a small quarto, with pages of twelve lines. [p285]

A Dutch version of the _Seven Penitential Psalms_, in the form of a very small quarto, containing but eleven lines to the page, printed on vellum, on one side only of the leaf. The only known copy of this work was found in Brussels.

Fragments on vellum of three editions of the _Doctrinal of Alexander Gallus_, a Latin grammar in rhyme, noticed by Van der Linde as the shabby compilation, by a priest of Brittany who lived in the thirteenth century, of the old Latin grammar of Priscianus. One of these fragments was found within the lining of a book printed at Deventer in 1495.

Four leaves of the _Couplets of Cato_, a small quarto which was then very popular in the schools.

TYPE II. The Dutch edition of the _Speculum_, which is described in this book as the third, contains, on pages 49 and 60, types which resemble those of other editions, and which seem to be the workmanship of the same letter-cutter. As these types are of a smaller face and body, they must have been founded in another mould. No fragments of any book in this smaller type have been found.

TYPE III. The types of this face are newer, but they resemble those of Type II; some capitals are identical, but others have differences which establish it as a distinct face. As it is of a larger body, it must have been founded in a [p286] different mould. A book which contains the _Fables of Lorenzo Valla_ and the _Witty Speeches of Great Men_, two little works of some popularity in the fifteenth century, is the only known specimen of this type. The paper of this book, which is like that of the _Speculum_, contains many of the strange blemishes, previously described, of useless letters embossed in the white lines and near the margins. As the written preface of the author is dated May, 1438, it is apparent that the book must have been printed subsequently to this date.

TYPE IV. Of this face, the fragments of four copies, and presumably of four distinct editions, of the _Donatus_ have been found. This type, which does not closely resemble the faces previously described, was founded on a body a little larger than Paragon. The largest book in this type is a treatise on the Roman Law, apparently an abridgment of the fifth book of the _Pandects of Justinian_. It is described in the preface as _The Peculiarities of Criminal Law, by Lewis of Rome_. This treatise, which consists of forty-four pages, is printed in the form of small folio, twenty-six lines to the page. It was the largest book and contains the largest type of the unknown printer. [p287]

TYPE V. The forty-fifth page and all subsequent pages of the book previously described are devoted to a _Treatise and Epitaphs by Pope Pius II_, and a _Eulogy on Lorenzo Valla_. In these names we find sure indications of the probable age of the book: Cardinal Piccolomini or Æneas Sylvius was made Pope Pius II in the year 1458; Lorenzo Valla died in 1457. The book must have been written and printed after these dates. The workmanship of this part of the book is of superior character: the types were fairly founded on a body about the size of Great-primer; they were decently printed in good black ink and on both sides of the paper, but the remarkable defect of embossed letters which has been noticed as one of the blemishes of the _Speculum_ is also noticeable in this book.

This Type V seems to have been more frequently used than any other type in the list, but it was always on petty books or pamphlets. One book printed in it has only twenty-four pages, but it is made up of four distinct tracts: _William of Saliceto on the Health of the Body_; _Torquemada on the Health of the Soul_; _A Treatise on Love, etc., by Pope Pius II_; _The Iliad of Homer_, or more definitely, a commendation of the _Iliad_. Two editions of this book have been discovered. A fragment of one edition was found in the binding of a work printed by Jan Andrieszoon, of Haarlem, in the year [p288] 1486. Another book in the same type, which consists of ten leaves, contains an abridgment or an epitome of the _Iliad_, with a preface by Pius II in praise of Homer. Of this book two editions were printed. Six editions of the _Donatus_, four editions of the _Doctrinal of Alexander Gallus_, and one edition of the _Couplets of Cato_ were also printed in this type.

TYPE VI. An edition of the _Donatus_, twenty-seven lines to the page, is the only known book in this type, which was founded on Great-primer body.

TYPE VII. Four leaves of a _Donatus_ on vellum, taken from the binding of a book printed in Strasburg in the year 1493, and belonging to a convent in North Brabant, are all that is known of this type, which closely resembles the character described as Type V.

TYPE VIII.[147] Impressions from this face of type have been found in the fragments of only two books. Two broad bands of parchment printed upon one side only with the text of a [p289] _Donatus_, which were discovered in the cover linings of a manual of devotion, printed at Delft in 1484, are the only known relics of one of these books. The types are barbarous, of singularly ungraceful cut, of uneven height and out of line, evidently founded by a man who had no skill in type-founding. They are printed in pale ink which is readily removed by the application of water. The presswork is as slovenly as the type-founding, but the composition was done with some care and intelligence. The lines of type are nearly even as to length, and the words, when broken, are properly divided in syllables. It is evident that the compositor knew how to space and divide words, but the font of type that he used was not provided with hyphens or marks of punctuation. The fashion of the letter is in the Dutch style as may be seen in the final _t_ with the perpendicular bar.

The other fragment in this type is a little pamphlet of eight pages, printed on parchment and upon one side only. It is described by some as a _Horarium_, or a little book of prayers; by others as an _Abecedarium_, or a child’s primer. It contains the Alphabet (all the small letters but not the capitals), the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostles’ Creed, and two prayers. The Alphabet has the _k_, a letter that was not used in the Latin language; it has no _w_, this letter being formed by the union of the two characters _v_. Holtrop says that the types seem to have been made for the Dutch language.

The “turning upside down” of four letters on the second page of this little work proves that the letters are impressions from movable types.

Line 2. _Paue_ should be Pane.

Line 3. _Cotidiaun_ should be Cotidianu.

Line 5. _uobis_ should be nobis.

Line 6. _uostra_ should be nostra.

This little tract was discovered in 1751 by the celebrated type-founder Enschedé, of Haarlem, in a manuscript breviary of the fifteenth century, among the books of the descendants of John Van Zuren, a printer of Haarlem in 1561.

If barbarous type-founding and shabby printing could be accepted as conclusive evidence of the superior antiquity of [p290] the book in which these faults occur, the _Abecedarium_ should be the oldest piece of printed matter. One cannot imagine a printed book with more slovenly workmanship. Its types present all the irregularities of the _Donatus_ previously described. The pages have but nine lines of types to each page, yet they are very crooked. This crookedness was partially produced by an unskillful fastening, or locking-up of the types, but it is plain that the types were of irregular size as to body, and that the letters were badly adjusted upon the bodies. Some types are high and others low to paper, and there are types that are legible at one end of the face and not at the other. The presswork is wretched: we see the evidences of too weak and badly distributed ink and of uneven impression. The text shows many faults of composition in the division of syllables. To the observer who is not an expert in typography, the workmanship of the book seems that of a man who had no experience in any department of printing: the faults do not appear to be those of a badly taught printer, but those of an experimenter.

For this reason the _Abecedarium_ has been claimed by the Dutch historians of typography as the first production of the inventor of the art. They say that it was printed before any edition of the _Speculum_, and probably in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. A closer [p291] examination of the book does not lead to this conclusion: the printer of the book was, no doubt, a careless workman, but he had been taught the trade. The fragments of the tract are in four pieces, but they were printed in one form of eight pages, and by one impression. This artificial arrangement of the pages, in the arbitrary position which allows them to be folded together in regular order, reveals an expertness in little technicalities on the part of this early printer which is somewhat unexpected. The method of printing sheets imposed in forms of eight pages was not in fashion before it was adopted by Aldus Manutius, of Venice, in his edition of Virgil dated 1501. It is not an invention of the first, but of the last quarter of the fifteenth century, to which period this book belongs.[148]

The types of the book were not set up by an experimenter or ignoramus. The comparatively even outline to the right of every page shows that the compositor tried to space out his lines and to give every page an appearance of uniform squareness. As full and even-spaced lines are not to be found in any edition of the _Speculum_, nor in any of the first books of the early printers, we may conclude that the _Abecedarium_ was printed at a later date, when this improvement had been adopted by all printers.

It has been maintained that the book must be very old, because it is printed on one side only, after the fashion of the block-printers. This is an improper inference, for each fragment has the appearance of a spoiled impression which was rejected before the sheet had been perfected by printing on the other side. The unfilled space for the initial letter shows that the work on the sheet was never completed. [p292]