Part 44
The book was written for the instruction of the traveling mendicant friars who had, since the thirteenth century, gradually monopolized preaching and the pastoral work of the settled clergy. Provided with nothing but a little Church Latin, and therefore too ignorant to derive their discourses from original sources, they felt the want of homiletic and catechetical assistance as an aid to their understanding and memory. Picture books, with a brief explanatory text, were the best means of supplying this want. Hence originated representations of the mystic relation between the Old and the New Testament, of which the _Biblia Pauperum_ is the first fruit. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 3.
[134] There is an edition, with a text in Latin and in German, which was printed at Augsburg in 1471; there are many editions in German only, some without dates, and others with dates of 1476, 1492, and 1500; a Flemish edition by Veldener in 1483; and various editions in French.
[135] There are two copies of the book which exhibit the blemish of a leaf made up of two distinct pieces of paper, each piece printed by a different impression, but so pasted together as to constitute one perfect page. We do not certainly know the cause that made this patchwork necessary, but it would seem that a gross blunder had been made in the printing-office; perhaps a transposition of lines by the compositor, or illegible presswork by the pressman. It was necessary that the sheet containing the error should be canceled and replaced. But the frugal printer refused to destroy the entire page for an error confined to but half a page. He tore off the lower half of the leaf, and replaced it by attaching a piece of white paper to the bottom of the upper half, which contained the engraving in brown ink. On this pasted piece of white paper, he took a corrected or perfect impression from the types. In this copy, the impression, which deeply indented the paper in the double thickness where it was pasted, proves that the types were printed after the engravings. There is another copy in which the illustration on the upper half of the sheet was canceled, and replaced by the same method.
[136] Ottley, selecting one letter for examination from a great number of letters of the same kind, found that it was always the same where-ever it occurred, not only in the first, but in the second edition. Koning and Enchedé, pursuing a badly cast or defective letter, found that the peculiar blemishes of this letter re-appeared in other letters on many pages. This precision of form is the peculiarity of typography: it proves that the letters of unvarying uniformity could not have been made by any engraver on wood, but must have been produced by a mould.
[137] The Latin and Dutch editions of the _Speculum_ maintain such a remarkable conformity with each other in the engravings, in the types, in the quality of the paper, in the presswork, and in every typographic feature, that it is evident that the four editions were published in the same country and by the same printer. As all bibliographers, whatever theory they may have concerning the origin of printing, attribute, without hesitation, the Dutch edition of the _Speculum_ to Holland, the Latin editions should also be attributed to Holland. Guichard, _Notice sur le Speculum_, pp. 118 and 119. This is the opinion of all bibliographers except Heineken.
[138] The fac-simile given by Holtrop in his _Monuments typographiques_ presents the following measurements, in American inches: In the Latin edition, described in this book as the first, 25 lines measure 5-1/2 inches. In the Dutch edition, here described as the third, 27 lines measure 5-1/2 inches. In the Dutch edition, here described as the fourth, 26 lines measure 5-1/2 inches. As we find no indication of the use of leads or thin blanks to increase the distance between lines, it would seem that the types of the three editions were cast in different moulds. Sotheby’s fac-similes, which seem to have been made with equal care, do not exactly agree with those taken from Holtrop’s book. There are, no doubt, differences of size, not only in the fac-similes, but in the original copies of the book. Allowance must be also made for the unequal shrinkage on different leaves of the very thick paper, which may have been unequally dampened, and unequally extended before printing.
[139] When a new engraving on wood, in imitation of an old one, is desired, the modern engraver does not redraw, but transfers the subject, substantially by the following process: The back of the print to be copied is moistened with a solution of alkali, or of benzine, which, soaking through the paper, forms a new combination with the oil in the ink. The black of the ink is thereby liberated, so that it can be completely removed by firm pressure. The print so treated is then laid, face downward, on the block, and the free black is transferred to the block by the pressure of a burnisher, or of a press. The black re-appears on the block, but in a properly reversed position, ready for the tool of the engraver.
[140] The neglect of engraving on wood by the early typographers has frequently been noticed as a strange fact. It was, no doubt, induced by the difficulties encountered in trying to print wood-cuts with types. The blocks would warp and crack in spite of all precautions. The evil was but partially checked by diminishing the size of the blocks. To evade the annoyance produced by warped blocks, some printers engraved large illustrations on separate pieces of wood, which were roughly fitted to each other, but not conjoined. Other printers printed the wood-cuts of their books by a separate impression. As these illustrations were printed in the same black ink which was used for the text, the double impression is rarely ever noticed, not even by the practical printer.
[141] The Dutch folio of Jan de Mandeville, placed by Holtrop about 1470, as a work of printing, is so bad that the earliest editions of the _Speculum_ are masterpieces by the side of it. The work of an unknown Schiedam printer of the latter part of the fifteenth century is equally bad. The Brussels incunabula of the Brotherhood of the Life-in-Common are bad; those of Arnold ter Hoorne at Cologne (1471–83) are sometimes barbarous. Heineken mentions a book printed in Augsburg in 1557, and says: “If the name of the engraver on wood and the date had not been found, one might think that this was the oldest book in the world.” In the series of the different Dutch incunabula of this kind, the _Speculum_ presents itself very favorably; it is not badly, but well printed; it is not a first experiment, but the fruit of practice. Dr. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend of the Invention of Printing_, p. 37.
[142] The frisket of the modern hand-press is a light frame-work of iron, which is covered like a kite, with a sheet of paper pasted to the edges. Just before the act of impression, this frisket is placed between the form of inked types and the sheet of paper prepared to receive the impression. The office of the frisket is to prevent the sheet from being blackened by anything but the face of the types. For this purpose, every part of the page to be printed is neatly cut out of the paper mask pasted on the frisket. Every part of the sheet that should remain unprinted is masked or covered by the uncut paper of the frisket. When the impression is taken, the sheet receives only the impression from the type, and is unsoiled by the ink that accumulates about the types and their fixtures.
[143] Veldener, who was a German, and, probably, a pupil of Ulric Zell of Cologne, began to print at Louvain in 1473. Like many printers of the Netherlands, he moved his printing office from place to place. He printed at Louvain in 1473; at Utrecht in 1478; at Culemburg in 1483. The last book bearing his imprint is dated 1484.
[144] For a fac-simile (from Holtrop) of this face of type see page 277.
[145] A fuller notice of Cornelis the binder will be given in the chapter on the Legend of Coster, in which his relations to early printing will be described. Attention may be called to the significance of the fact that no fragments of any book in the types of the _Speculum_ have been found in the covers or binding of any manuscript book of earlier date than 1467.
[146] This work was in use as late as the reign of Charles V. It was enjoined by him that a printer should furnish without alteration “the little book commencing with the alphabet, the little book which directs how to bless the table (grace at meals), and the little book which directs how to answer at the holy mass.” Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 2.
[147] Hessels does not describe this as Type VIII, but as the _Type of the Enschedé Abecedarium_. He thought it “advisable to separate these two little works [the _Donatus_ and the _Abecedarium_, which are printed in this face], to a certain extent, from the others” but he admits that the types of these books bear the family likeness and cannot be omitted.
[148] Berjeau, who accepts this _Abecedarium_ as one of the first products of the invention, says that impositions of eight pages seem more complex than they really are—that the printer had but to fold a sheet, to mark the pages and then unfold the sheet, to see the method at a glance. This reasoning is specious, but it is inconclusive. It was the argument of the courtiers with Columbus after he had stood the egg on its end. Anybody can do it. Simple as the process may seem, the imposition of eight pages of type in one form was not done by any of the early printers, and we have to infer that they did not know how to do it.
[149] Caxton, who printed thousands of pages in folio, made use of but eight fonts. Blades, _Life and Typography of Caxton_, vol. II, p. xxvii. Gutenberg, who practised printing for thirty years, did his work with not more than six fonts of type. Schœffer, who was a printer and publisher for forty-three years, made use of but six fonts.
[150] Leon De la Borde, _Debut de l’imprimerie à Strasbourg_, pp. 70, 72.
[151] Leads are very thin pieces of metal which are inserted between the lines of types to increase the distance between the lines, and to give the printed page a more open and inviting appearance.
[152] This apparently easy method of demonstrating the practicability of types of wood has been attempted by many writers. Wetter, the author of a valuable history of printing, published in his book a page printed from types of wood, which he offered as conclusive evidence that types of wood could have been made and were made by the early printers. But his types of wood are larger than those of the _Speculum_, and they are also provided with leads to keep them in line. Notwithstanding these precautions, they are more out of line than the types of the _Speculum_. Meerman, in his _Origines Typographicæ_, printed a few words from types of wood with a similar result; but he showed a practical disbelief in his own theory, by engraving all the fac-similes of the alleged types of wood upon plates of copper. The substitution of copper for wood was, virtually, an acknowledgment of the impracticability of wood types. Schinkel, a Dutch printer, was more successful than either Meerman or Wetter in obtaining a good impression from small types of wood, but he subsequently admitted that his success was but a trick, and that it did not prove that they could be used in the ordinary practice of printing. Léon De la Borde afterward conceded that types of wood would be impracticable.
[153] The impracticability of types of wood is cleverly stated by Enschedé:
“I have exercised printing for about fifty years, and I have cut letters and figures for my father’s and my own printing office in wood of palm, pear, and medlar trees; I have now been a type-founder for upwards of thirty years; but to do such things as those learned gentlemen [Junius and Meerman] pretend that Laurens Coster and his heirs have done, neither I nor Papillon [the most clever wood-engraver of France] are able to understand, nor the artists Albrecht Durer, De Gray, and Iz. Van der Vinne either; but such learned men who dream about wooden movable letters make Laurens Janzoon Coster use witchcraft, for the hands of men are not able to do it. To print a book with capitals of the size of a thumb, as on placards, _House and Ground_, which are cut in wood, and which I have cut myself by hundreds, would be ridiculous; to do it with wooden letters of the size of a pin’s head is impossible. I have made experiments with a few of a somewhat larger size. I made a wooden slip of Text Corpus [a body about the size of Long-primer], and drew the letters on the wood or slip; thereupon I cut the letters. I had left a space of about the size of a saw between each letter on purpose, and I had no want of fine and good tools; the only question now was to saw the letters mathematically square off the slip. I used a very fine little saw, made of a very thin spring of English steel, so cleverly made that I doubt whether our Laurens Janszoon had a saw half as good; I did all I could to saw the letters straight and parallel, but it was impossible; there was not a single letter which could stand the test of being mathematically square. What now to do? It was impossible to polish or file them. I tried it, but it could not be done by our type-founder’s whetstones, as it would have injured the letters. In short, I saw no chance, and I feel sure that no engraver is able to cut separate letters in wood, in such a manner that they retain their quadrature, for that is the most important part of the work of type-casting. If, however, I wished to give my trouble and time to it, I should be able to execute the three words, _Spiegel onzer Behoudinis_, better than the Rotterdam artist has done in the Latin works of M. Meerman; but it is impossible, ridiculous, and merely chimerical, to print books in this manner.” Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, pp. 72, 73.
[154] This taste for variety in the shape of letters was more clearly exhibited in Greek and German than in Roman types. The Greek types of the sixteenth century are so full of ligatures and variants, that they are undecipherable to the scholar who has been taught the language only in modern text books. So far from trying to make letters readable, the literati of that period tried to make them obscure: they were evidently determined not to make the acquisition of the language easy for their successors. When Francis I of France established the royal printing office, he engaged a skillful Greek penman to design additional varieties of contractions. Two centuries afterward, Pierre Fournier, the younger, a type-founder of Paris, commended the Greek types of his own manufacture as much less complicated than any Greek types then in use. But I count 776 characters in the font. More than 300 of Fournier’s contractions, once esteemed as admirable graces, have been rejected by modern type-founders. Blades, who has made a careful analysis of the characters used by Caxton, shows that in the face described by him as 1 there are at least 167 distinct characters. But 24 of these are capitals and 81 are double letters. In faces 2 and 2* there are 380 characters, exclusive of figures, spaces and marks of punctuation.
[155] Blades, in his _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, has given a practical illustration of these changes in Plate IX B, which also illustrates the feasibility of types of pure lead, for a notice of which see next page.
[156] The most approved process in the modern art of stereotyping is that in which the mould is made of calcined gypsum or plaster. The same material is used by type-founders in the manufacture of the largest types of metal. The cheapness of sand, and the ease with which it can be worked, make it the most serviceable of materials for all founders who wish to produce cheap castings.
[157] To satisfy his own doubts as to the feasibility of casting small types in moulds of sand, Bernard, of Paris, gave to a brass-founder the types of a few Roman capital letters as the models from which he requested founded duplicates. He charged the founder not to dress nor finish the face of the founded letters, nor to give them more than ordinary care. The founded letters so made were printed by Bernard in his history as practical illustrations of the feasibility of sand moulds. They lack the finish of types made by the professional type-founder; they look like badly worn types, but they are legible. The brass-founder assured Bernard that a workman could make one thousand similar types in one working day. Bernard then gave to this founder separate types of a word in Gothic letters and requested him to furnish duplicates of these types founded on one body. The duplicates returned showed the very defects of the types of the _Speculum_; the thick lines were spotted, and the letters were out of line. Bernard’s impression shows that the movable types which made the word were jostled or trivially disturbed at the instant of moulding. A disturbance of this nature would explain the irregularity of line and the rounding of the edges. The spotted and ragged edges of the founded word were probably caused by the roughness of the moulding sand, or by the sticking fast to the mould of bits of metal. It is a proper inference that in both cases the defects were the imperfections of the same process. The experiment of Bernard fully proved the feasibility of making small types in sand moulds.
[158] In the sand mould, the hot metal is poured in; in the metal mould, whether worked by hand or machine, the hot metal is forced or cast in. The phrase “casting type,” which implies a sudden throw or violent jerk, has entirely supplanted the older phrase of “founding type.”
[159] Didot, _Essai sur la typographie_, p. 607.
[160] The process seems impracticable, but whoever carefully studies the British and American patent reports, will find specifications of inventions in typography that are much more absurd. There can be no doubt of their use. Koning cites one M. Fleischman, who had not only seen conjoined matrices in the type-foundry of C. Hardwich, of Nuremberg, but had experimentally cast types from them in an old mould that appears to have been made for this express purpose. Speckelinus, Paul Pater, Meerman, Schoepflin, Spiegel, and other early chroniclers, have specifically mentioned types pierced with a hole, and bound together with wire. These so-called types were either punches or matrices. Koning, _l’Origine, etc., de l’imprimerie_, p. 12.
[161] Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, has given a curious description of his attempt to supply his defective printing office with types cast in matrices of lead:
“Our printing house often wanted sorts, and there was no letter-foundry in America; I had seen types cast at James’s in London, but without much attention to the matter; however, _I contrived a mould_, and made use of the letters we had as puncheons, _struck the matrices in lead_, and thus supplied in a pretty tolerable way all deficiencies. I also engraved several things on occasion; made the ink; I was warehouse-man, and, in short, quite a factotum.”
[162] _Dissertation sur l’origine, l’invention, etc., de l’imprimerie_, p. 18.
[163] It has been shown that book types must be on square bodies. As a necessary consequence every form of types must be squared. If the lines of types in any page are not of uniform length in the metal, and the page is not truly squared, the form cannot be handled nor printed. But although the lines are of uniform length in the metal, they do not always appear so in print. The last line of a paragraph is frequently short; lines of poetry are always of an irregular length. To make the form square, and yet produce this desired irregularity at the end of every short line, the compositor inserts metal blanks, technically known as quadrats. As these blanks are about one-third shorter than the letters, they are not touched by the inking roller; they receive no ink and take no impression, and are consequently invisible to the reader. Quadrats are now regarded as an indispensable part of every font of types, but the appearance of the _Speculum_ shows that the printer of the book had to do his work without them. That he knew the utility of quadrats is apparent, for he used low types as spaces between words. His imperfect press compelled him to reject quadrats at the end of short lines, and to fill the blanks with bearers.
[164] To protect types in places similarly exposed, stereotypers insert at the extreme ends of short lines types of flat face expressly designed for this object, which are usually known as guards. When the plates have been made perfect in other points, the guards are no longer needed, and are cut away. When books were printed on hand presses during the first half of this century, pressmen sometimes pasted on or tacked on thin strips of wood around the forms of types to shield the ends of lines from injury. It is a strange surprise to encounter this modern method of protecting types from injury in one of the earliest books.
[165] A paper-mark is an opaque design on the web of the paper, placed there to enable the buyer to identify a particular manufacture. It is made by bending the wires on which the moist pulp is couched in some peculiar shape which leaves its impression on the paper when it is perfected. Certain sizes of paper are even now known by the names of marks that are no longer used. Foolscap once bore the mark of a fool’s head with cap and bells; Post once had the mark of a post-boy’s horn. Paper-marks are now made chiefly for the finer qualities of writing papers. The illustrations of old paper-marks, on the following pages, were taken from Koning, and are about one-eighth of the original size.
[166] Water-marks have much less weight in bibliography than some writers have attributed to them. In very few instances can a prime limit be fixed for their use; and, as the marks might be repeated, and the paper itself kept for any length of time, and imported to any place, they cannot be used as evidence either of the date when, or place where, they passed through the press. Blades, _William Caxton_, vol. II, p. XVIII.—The results of the examination of the paper-marks are, for the present, mostly negative. Van der Linde, _Haarlem Legend_, p. 86.
[167] Hessels, _Haarlem Legend_, p. xvii.
[168] _Haarlem Legend_, p. 35.
[169] Bernard, _De l’origine et des débuts de l’imprimerie_, vol. I, pp. 97 and 98.
[170] Bernard, _De l’origine et des débuts de l’imprimerie_, vol. I. p. 98.
[171] The phrase could be applied to the forms of the letters in the books, without regard to the quality or any peculiarity of the printing or the binding. Two forms of writing were then in use: one, a black angular, and somewhat condensed form of Gothic character, which is defined in Fournier’s _Manuel typographique_ as _lettres de forme_, or letters of precision; the other, a round, light-faced, more careless and more popular form of letters, named by him as _lettres de somme_. To this day, carefully written but disconnected letters, whether upright or inclined, are colloquially known as _print_ letters. The doctrinal which was put in form may have been written in _lettres de forme_. The phrase _getté en molle_ could have been fairly applied to these precise letters, in contradistinction to the more careless shapes of the _lettres de somme_.