Part 50
[396] There should have been a gradual improvement in the construction of the press, as there was in the making of the types, but there was no decided change for two centuries. Moxon, in 1683, commending the “new fashion” presses of Blaew, denounced the “old fashion presses as make-shift, slovenly contrivances practised in the minority of this art.” Nor was Blaew’s press perfect. To insure proper register, Jackson (who undertook, at Venice in 1745, to print wood-cuts in colors) was obliged to reconstruct the press of Blaew.
[397] It must also be remembered that on the early printing press two pressmen were required for the work—one to beat or to ink, and one to pull or to print. The ordinary task of the hand-pressman of New-York in 1840 was rated at 1500 impressions, but these impressions were made by one man (working an inking machine) and one pull on forms of large size. Considering the surface printed, the performance of one hand-pressman in 1840 was about eight times more than that of one pressman in 1458.
[398] Words and lines were sometimes printed in red in a text of black, with a nicety of register rarely equaled by any printer during the first years of this century. The early method of printing red with black, has been described by Moxon. The black form was first printed with quadrats in the places that should be occupied by the red words or lines. This done, the form remaining on press, the quadrats were taken out and the vacant space partially filled with “underlays” of reglet, about one-sixth inch thick. On these underlays the types to be printed in red were placed, which adjusting made them about one-sixth of an inch higher than the types of the black form. The bearers were then raised, the impression was readjusted, a new frisket was put on, and the pressman was ready to print red as he had printed the black. This method of printing red with black, a clumsy method at best, which can be practised only on small forms on the hand-press, has been out of fashion for many years.—The color work of the early printers has been overpraised. Superior, no doubt, to that of printers of the last century, who tried to do more work in less time, it cannot be compared with the color work of our time. The rubricated _Book of Common Prayer_ printed by Welch, Bigelow & Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the _Specimen Book_ of Charles Derriey of Paris, the _French-English Dictionary_ of George Bellows of Gloucester, England, may be offered as specimens of modern color presswork which show an exactness of register and a purity of color and of impression not to be found in any early book.
[399] This unevenness does not prove the use of two distinct inks. In some instances, it was caused by the negligence of the pressman who applied an unequal quantity of ink upon different pages. In many instances, it was produced by the variable qualities or conditions of the paper or vellum. If the paper laid out for one form differed from that used for other forms in being too coarse or too dry, or over-wet, or if the vellum had been polished too much or too little, or had not been entirely freed from lime and grease, it would take up from the types, during each condition, a variable quantity of color, and produce prints of a different degree of blackness. These variations in color are most noticeable in books of vellum. In a prayer book printed by Kerver in 1507, the ink is black wherever the vellum is smooth, and gray where it is rough. In another edition of the same book on paper, printed by Kerver in 1522, the ink is not so black as it appears on the smooth vellum, but the color is more uniform. Equal carefulness seems to have been taken with each book, and the ink was, no doubt, substantially the same. Some of the early printers sorted their sheets _after_ printing, separating the under-colored from the over-colored and binding each together.
[400] In trying to avoid the gloominess of early printing, modern printers have gone too far in the opposite direction. The fault of imperfect blackness which is justly censurable in many modern books is largely due to what Hansard calls the “razor-edged” hair lines and thin stems of modern types which give the printer no opportunity to show black color. Readers have been taught to prefer a feminine elegance in types, a weak and useless imitation of copper-plate effects, to the masculine boldness, solidity and readableness of the old-style letter of the last century.
[401] Mr. Ticheborne, a recent contributor to _Chambers’ Journal_, says that the older printing inks are more easily saponified and washed off by alkalies than those of the last century. Some of the old inks he found so sensitive, that on introducing them to a weak solution of ammonia, the printed characters instantly floated off the surface of the pages. His explanation, that the oil had not been properly prepared by boiling, and was not changed into an insoluble varnish, and “resinfied,” is, no doubt, correct. A practical ink-maker, in a series of papers to _L’imprimerie_ (vol. I, p. 129), says that in many books of the fifteenth century, the adhesion of the color to the paper is very weak, and that the ink can be made pale or washed off with a moist sponge.
[402] Lanzi refers to an Italian manuscript of 1437 in which it is asserted that the new method of painting in oil, as practised by the Germans, must begin with the process of boiling linseed oil. _History of Painting in Italy._ Bohn’s edition, 1852, vol. I, p. 86.
[403] Our _Inck-makers_ to save charges, mingle many times _Trane-Oyl_ among theirs and a great deal of _Rosin_; which _Trane-Oyl_ by its grossness Furs and Choaks up a _Form_, and by its fatness hinders the _Inck_ from drying; so that when the Work comes to the _Binders_, it _Sets-off_; and besides is dull, smeary and unpleasant to the eye. And the _Rosin_, if too great a quantity be put in, and the _Form_ be not very _Lean-Beaten_, makes the _Inck_ turn yellow: And the same does the New _Linseed-Oyl_.——_Secondly._ They seldom _Boyl_ or _Burn_ it to that consistence the _Hollanders_ do, because they not only save labour and Fewel, but have a greater weight of _Inck_ out of the same quantity of _Oyl_ when less _Burnt_ away than when more _Burnt_ away; which want of Burning makes the _Inck_ also, though made of good old _Linseed-Oyl_, Fat and Smeary, and hinders its Drying; so that when it comes to the _Binders_ it also _Sets-off_.——_Thirdly._ They do not use that way of clearing their _Inck_ the _Hollanders_ do, or indeed any other way than meer Burning it, whereby the _Inck_ remains more _Oyly_ and _Greasie_ than if it were well clarified.——_Fourthly._ They, to save the _Press-man_ the labour of _Rubbing_ the _Blacking_ into _Varnish_ on the _Inck-Block_, _Boyl_ the _Blacking_ in the _Varnish_, or at least put the _Blacking_ in whilst the _Varnish_ is yet _Boyling-hot_, which so _Burns_ and _Rubifies_ the _Blacking_, that it loses much of its brisk and vivid black complection.——_Fifthly._ Because _Blacking_ is dear, and adds little to the weight of the Inck, they stint themselves to a quantity which they exceed not; so that sometimes the _Inck_ proves so unsufferable _Pale_, that the _Press-man_ is forced to _Rub_ in more _Blacking_ upon the Block; yet this he is often so loth to do, that he will rather hazard the Content, the Colour shall give, than take the pains to amend it: satisfying himself that he can lay the blame upon the _Inck-maker_. Moxon, _Mechanick Exercises_, vol. II, pp. 76, 77.
[404] No exception need be made for the initial letters of the _Psalter of 1457_. The thin curved lines of the ornamental portions of these letters could not have been cut on the flat boards then used by all engravers on wood. The absence of cracks and broken lines, after long service, in every print taken from these cuts is presumptive evidence that they were cut on metal. The ornamentation is unlike that of the professional engravers of block-books and at once suggests the thought that they were cut on brass or type-metal by the hand that cut the types of the text.
[405] That the early printers did encounter serious difficulties in the use of wood-cuts in type forms is proved by their selection of blocks of smaller size. Full-page cuts are rare in the books of Koburger, Leeu and Veldener. Von Os of Zwoll cut up the blocks of the _Bible of the Poor_. Blades says that Colard Mansion printed the types and wood-cuts that appeared on the same page by two impressions. Sad experience in the warping and cracking of blocks of wood in forms of types was, no doubt, the reason for this extra labor. This difficulty seems to have been avoided by Pigouchet, Kerver and the printers of ornamental books, whose cuts have all the mannerisms of engraving on metal.
[406] The disconnection between the arts of engraving on wood and typography is fairly indicated by the quarrel between the type-printers and block-printers of Augsburg.
[407] Some engravers on wood who would not work with typographers undertook a new branch of printing—the making of prints, thirty or forty inches long, for the decoration of interior walls. Becker has published a collection of these large prints, taken from the original blocks, some of which he says were made before 1500. See cut on page 535.
[408] If Florentine money had eight times the purchasing power of its American equivalent, these were high prices. They justify the observation of Keyser and Stol, printers at Paris in 1486, that the price of paper was out of all proportion to the price of printed books.
[409] Vellum was made out of the dressed skins of very young kids and lambs; parchment from the skins of sheep and goats. The vellum was very thin, flexible and highly polished; the parchment was thick and horn-like; but each substance was prepared by nearly the same process. The skin, when freed from hair, was put in a lime-pit, until it was deprived of its fat. It was then stretched on a frame, pared with a knife, rubbed with lime and pumice-stone, and repeatedly dried and wet, and rubbed and stretched, until the surface was made faultlessly smooth.
[410] See page 469 for the testimony of Schoeffer’s proof-reader.
[411] The copyists, underpaid by the stationers, did their work recklessly, abbreviating words so freely that it was often impossible to discover the meaning of the author. The faults of the calligrapher, who preferred beauty to accuracy, and of the young scholar, who rashly undertook to correct errors—tended to the same result. Fichet, a professor of the University of Paris, who seems to have been the first man of letters who esteemed printing, said, in a complimentary letter to Gering, Crantz and Friburger, that books were becoming barbarous through the faults of the copyists. Bouhier, a later president of the University, said that the books of the copyists were monstrous, and often unintelligible.
[412] Marchand quotes at length an author who says that John Andrew, the corrector for Sweinheym and Pannartz, was a very presumptuous meddler with texts. When he met a word he did not understand, he printed it in Latin, or put in words at a venture, often making the text more unintelligible than ever. Another ecclesiastical reader, Bishop Nicholas Perotti, was quite as great an offender.
[413] Marchand, _Histoire de l’imprimerie_, vol. I, pp. 97–103, and notes. In support of this assertion he cites the opinions of Schelhorn, Maittaire, Naudé, and other eminent bibliographers, and gives many specifications of the inaccuracies of the early printers from Fust and Schœffer to Froben. Not even Aldus Manutius escapes, for Marchand quotes at length the accusation of Erasmus that the _Homer_, _Cicero_, and _Plutarch_ of Aldus were _depravatissima_. This criticism is hardly warranted by the errors of these editions, and is decidedly unjust in its reflection on a printer whose industry and carefulness as an editor have never been surpassed, and who, in his edition of _Plato_ of 1513, offered a gold coin for every mistake that should be discovered. This damaging accusation would probably never have been made if Erasmus had not quarreled with Aldus, and had not thought it necessary to deny with much asperity that he had served as a corrector of the press in the Aldine office. As a corrector, Erasmus was not beyond reproach, as will be more clearly seen in his reading of the _Greek Testament_. Froben’s lamentation over the two pages of errata in this book (published by him, but corrected by Erasmus) shows how much easier it is to discover errors after commission than it is to correct them in time. Stung by the taunts of critics, Erasmus said that if the Devil did not preside over typography, there must have been a diabolical malice on the part of the compositors.
Transcriber's note:
Original printed spelling and grammar are retained, with a few exceptions noted below. For example, _Gernszheim_, _Gernszheym_, and _Gernsheim_ are all retained.
Foot-notes have been renumbered 1–413 and moved to the end of book.
Large curly brackets ‘{}’ used to combine information on multiple lines have been eliminated, by minimally changing the text to retain the original meaning.
The original Index employed ditto marks and white space extensively to indicate topics related by a word or phrase. These marks, sometimes of dubious scope, have been replaced by em dashes, one for each word to be regarded as repeated. For example, under the topic heading “Bible of 36 lines, . . . ”, several topics started with two ditto marks and sufficient white space to indicate the four-word phrase; herein “— — — —”.
Page 19. In the sentence ending with “ . . . when it has been prepared for printing by each of the different methods:”, the colon was changed to full stop.
Page 125. Changed the first _that_ to _than_, in “quicker process that that of careful writing”.
Page 127. Added full stop after “ . . . have been established in the most satisfactory manner”.
Page 207. Full stop added after “but they cannot be entirely overlooked”.
Page 295. “Abcedarium” changed to “Abecedarium”.
Page 302. Second comma in “and for lining, like other matrices,” changed to full stop.
Page 313 note. Changed _gette en molle_ to _getté en molle_.
Page 356. The comma in “Koning tried to supplement the many deficiencies of Junius, with extracts . . .” looked more like a fly-speck, but was present in both 1st and 2nd editions, and seems plausible.
Page 357 note. Changed “Eclaircissemens” to “Éclaircissemens”.
Page 372 note. Added a left double quotation mark to ‘_long before he was born_.”’, although this placement is perhaps questionable.
Page 410. There was a symbol that looks similar to the poorly supported Unicode glyph ܀ U+700 SYRIAC END OF PARAGRAPH. This has been represented in this edition like this: “·:·”.
Page 548. Changed “Bechtermuntz” to “Bechtermüntz”.
Page 555—Additional Notes and Corrections. None of the corrections recommended in this section have been applied. Hyperlinks are provided in the html and epub editions only. ¶ There are two notes in the _Additional Notes and Corrections_ section that refer to page 150. The second one seems to be a mistake, however, and really refers to page 154. Similarly, the note that refers to page 451 seems to fit better page 450.