Part 9

There is nothing incredible in this curious story: on the contrary, it bears internal evidences of its probability. The selection, for printing purposes, of so unpromising a material as clay, the patient labor given to each character before it reached the condition of a type, the sagacity that foresaw and evaded the difficulty of irregular bodies and heights by the use of iron parallels, and a yielding bed-plate—all these are characteristic of the eccentricities of Chinese invention. The process was ingenious, but it was not entirely practical. It depended for its success more on the zeal and ability of Pi-Ching than it did on its own merits. When Pi-Ching died, his process died with him. His friends preserved his types as mementos of his ability, but none of them were able to use his method with success.

The present Chinese method is, practically, the method originally used by Foong-Taou. For the purpose of block-printing, Chinese printers select the wood of the pear-tree, which has close fibres that yield readily and sharply to the [p114] touch of the graver. Contrary to western usage, the blocks are cut from wood sawed in boards, or sawed parallel with the fibres. The thickness of the boards or blocks is about a half-inch, but, in the Chinese method, it is not important that the blocks be made of uniform thickness.[43] Each block is cut large enough to contain two pages, and is carefully planed and truly squared. The surface is then sized with a thick solution of boiled rice, which saturates the pores of the wood. When the sizing is hard, the block is ready for the engraver.

The writing or design to be engraved is neatly drawn or written on thin, strong, transparent paper, and is transferred, face downward, to the surface of the block. The rubbing of the back of the paper permanently transfers the writing in its inverted position to the block. The engraver then cuts away the field, leaving the transferred lines in high relief. If the graver slips and spoils a letter, the defective part is cut out; the vacant space is plugged with new wood, on which plug the letter is redrawn and cut. Labor is cheap, and skill is abundant: the cutting of a block of Chinese characters which conveys as many ideas as a page of large Roman book types costs no more, often less, than the composition of the types. The block has advantages over metal types or stereotypes. It is, practically, a stereotype: correct to copy, it needs no proof-reading; light, portable, and not so liable to damage as the stereotype, it can be used for printing copies as they are needed from time to time.

For printing the block, a press is not needed. The block is adjusted upon a level table, before which the printer stands, with a bowl of fluid ink on one side, and a pile of paper, cut to proper size, on the other. In his right hand the printer holds two flat-faced brushes, fixed on the opposite ends of the same handle. One brush is occasionally dipped into the ink, [p115] and afterward swept over the face of the block. This done, the printer places a sheet on the block; he then reverses the position of the wet brush, and sweeps the paper lightly, but firmly, with the dry brush at the other end of the handle. This light impression of the brush is all that is needed to fasten the ink on the paper. The success of this operation depends largely on the quality of the paper, which is soft, thin, pliable, and a quick absorbent of fluid ink.[44] If American book papers were substituted for Chinese paper, the process of printing by the brush and with fluid ink would be found impracticable: the sheet would not adhere to the block; the ink would smear on the paper; the brush would not give enough pressure to transfer the ink.

Chinese presswork is done with rapidity. Du Halde said that a printer could perfect, without exertion, ten thousand sheets within one day. As this performance, about thirteen impressions in a minute, for a working day of twelve hours, is really greater than that of ordinary book-printing machines in modern printing offices, this part of the description of Du Halde may be rejected as entirely untrustworthy. We must believe that the good father did not count the work, and that his credulity was imposed upon by some Chinese braggart. Davis, with more reason, says that the usual performance of the Chinese printer is two thousand sheets per day, which is about one-fourth more than the daily task of an American hand-pressman. The simple nature of the work favors speed. The sheets are printed on one side only, and the printer is not delayed by the setting-off, or smearing of the ink, on the back of the white paper.

Although the Chinese book is printed on paper of the size of two leaves, in pairs of two pages, it is not stitched through the back or centre of the double leaf. The paper is folded between the pages, and the fold is made the outer edge of the book; the cut edges are the back of the book, [p116] through which the stitching is done. Clumsy as this method of binding may seem to our standards of propriety, it is done in China with a neatness and thoroughness which are almost beyond criticism.[45]

The labor of engraving separate blocks for every work, which would be regarded as an insuperable difficulty in the Western World, is esteemed but lightly by the patient and plodding Chinese, and is no hindrance to a very broad development of printing. A daily newspaper, known to European residents as the _Peking Gazette_, has been printed in Peking for centuries. This paper, which is made up chiefly of the orders of the emperor and the proceedings and papers of his general council, is printed from a composition of hard wax, which can be more quickly engraved or indented than wood. The presswork, as might be expected, is inferior to that done from engraved wooden blocks. The cost, in China, of engraving a full page, about twice the size of the fac-simile opposite, would be about forty-five cents; a careful imitation of the same page by a competent engraver on wood in New-York would cost about thirty-five dollars.

Adherence to old usages, in neglect of improved methods, is a true oriental trait, but the preference of the Chinese for block-printing is not altogether unreasonable. Their written language is an almost insurmountable obstacle to the employment of types. Chinese characters do not stand for letters or sounds; they represent complete words or ideas. As their vocabulary contains a great many of these words, estimated by some at 80,000, and by others at 240,000, it is impracticable, by reason of its expense, to cut punches for all these characters. European type-founders, at various times, have made up an assortment of Chinese characters for printing the New Testament, and for other books requiring a limited [p117] number of words, but a complete collection has never been attempted beyond the Chinese Empire.

The type-foundry attached to the National Printing Office at Paris, which founded types for 43,000 distinct characters, has, probably, reached the highest practicable number; but this performance was accomplished only by repeated alterations of punches and matrices. The punches were cut on wood, and pressed in prepared plaster. The matrices so made were broken when a sufficient quantity of types had been cast from them. By shortening or cutting off a line or lines, the old punches were altered to form new characters. The matrices, also, after they had received the prints of these punches, were sometimes altered by the [p118] separate prints of dots, lines, or angles, which gave them a different meaning. The imperfection of the process is obvious, for it required the destruction of many matrices and punches.

The difficulties in the way of using types, if they could be made with advantage, are too great to be overlooked: they could not be classified nor handled with economy. The American compositor picks types from cases with boxes for 152 characters, and covering an area of 1088 square inches; but experts in type-setting say that the American case is too large, and that the speed of the compositor would be much increased by reducing the area of the case. The performance of the compositor decreases with an increase in the size of case and in the number of characters. To provide for 80,000 Chinese characters, cases covering an area of 550,000 square inches would be required. In other words, the Chinese compositor would need the room occupied by five hundred cases; he would unavoidably waste the largest portion of his time walking through alleys in search of types, and vainly trying to recollect the places where he had distributed them.

The Chinese are not entirely insensible to the advantages of European typography. There is a story current in books on printing, that Jesuit missionaries, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, cast 250,000 Chinese characters in the form of movable types.[46] Here is an obvious error: if we consider the work done afterward with these types, the quantity stated is altogether too small for the types and too large for the punches. It is further said that the Jesuit missionaries, with the permission of the reigning emperor, [p119] printed a collection of ancient and standard works in six thousand octavo volumes. Of this edition, there are now in Paris, the _History of Music_ in sixty volumes, the _History of the Chinese Language_ in eighty volumes, and the _History of Foreign Peoples_ in seventy-five volumes.[47] A printing office, in which movable types of cast metal are used, has been in operation in Peking since the year 1776. The types of this office are of home manufacture, made from punches of hard wood and matrices of baked porcelain. There may be other instances of an occasional use of types for special purposes, but they are exceptions to the general practice.

Ever since their invention of the art, the largest part of Chinese printed work has been done, as it is now done, by xylography. So long as they continue to use these peculiar characters, this simple method of printing must be preferred for its great cheapness and simplicity. We may smile at the clumsiness of the method, but we should not overlook the fact that it is efficient. “Every one,” Du Halde says, “hath the liberty to print what he pleaseth, without the supervising, censure or licence of any one, and with so small charge, that for every hundred letters perfectly engraved in the manner above said, they pay four pence half-penny, yet every letter consists of many strokes.” In no country are books so cheap and so abundant as they are in China. The American book or pamphlet in paper cover, sometimes sold for seventy-five cents, more frequently for one dollar, seems of exorbitantly high price when contrasted with a Chinese book of similar size, which can be had in China for the equivalent of eight or ten cents. If the Chinese have not derived great benefits from printing, it is obvious that their failure has not been produced by the high price of printed work.

There are many points of similarity between the Chinese method of printing and the early European practice of the art. The preliminary writing or drawing in ink of a design on paper; the transfer of lines from the paper upon the wood, [p120] and the cutting away of the field; the use of a fluid writing ink; the fashion of printing upon one side only of the sheet: these were features in use by both peoples. If we had a more thorough knowledge of the processes of the early European engravers on wood, other points of similarity might be found. These resemblances seem still more significant when they are considered with the fact that playing cards, supposed to be of oriental origin, were among the earliest productions of European engravers on wood. They have been regarded as a sufficient warrant for the hypothesis that our knowledge of engraving on wood must have been taken from China. It is the belief of many that block-printing was introduced in Europe by Venetian travelers of the thirteenth century, who had acquired a full knowledge of all the details of printing through long residence in China. This is a specious proposition, but it will not bear close examination.

Venice took the lead of all European cities in the establishment of commercial intercourse with China. Venetian merchants, in 1189, occupied an allotted street in Constantinople, from which port they sent vessels through the Black Sea, with bales of merchandise, which accompanying agents introduced into Thibet, Tartary and China. To promote this traffic, Venice sent to the courts of the Eastern potentates some of her most reputable citizens as diplomatic and commercial agents. Marco Polo, the most distinguished of these embassadors, resided more than twenty years in the great empire of Cathay, or China, in high favor with the emperor, and provided with every facility for acquiring a knowledge of the arts and industry of the country. Soon after his return to Venice, in 1295, he dictated a narrative of his travels, but his statements were received with general disbelief, and they have usually been considered as extravagant and improbable. Of late years, the travels of Marco Polo have been defended as substantially truthful, but his most zealous defenders have to confess that he was remarkably credulous. It is a noteworthy circumstance that he does not describe printing or [p121] printed books, although he does mention the paper money of China, formally stamped in red ink with the imperial seal. This paper money must have been printed, but he does not say anything about the printing.[48] The commercial relations between Venice and China were continued many years, and it is possible that other travelers may have acquired some knowledge of the peculiarities of Chinese printing, and may have communicated this knowledge; but it was a communication of details only, and not of the principle of printing. Printing could not have been a novelty, for we have many evidences that it was practised in Italy before Marco Polo was born. The mechanics of Europe had nothing to learn of the theory, and but little of the practice, of the art of xylography. All they needed was something to print, and something to print on. They were waiting for paper and for playing cards.

[p122]

VII

The Early Printing of Italy.

Printing with Ink in Italy during the Twelfth Century . . . Printed Initials in Manuscripts . . . Printed Signatures and Monograms, with Illustrations . . . Medieval Trade-Marks, with Illustrations . . . Engraved Initials probably made by Copyists who could not draw . . . Texts of Books printed from Engraved Letters . . . The Codex Argenteus of Sweden . . . Weigel’s Fac-Similes of Printing on Silk and Linen Cloth . . . Probable Method of Printing . . . Printed Fabrics made in Spain, Sicily and Italy . . . Art not derived from China . . . Antiquity of Stained Cloths . . . No Connecting Link between Hand-Stamping and Card-Printing . . . No Early Italian Image Prints . . . Story about the Two Cunios . . . Its Improbability . . . No Early Notices of Engraving on Wood . . . Not considered a New Art, nor a Great Art . . . Its Productions of Paltry Nature . . . Early Engravers had nothing to print on.

* * * * *

Nor is it any proof or strong argument against the antiquity of printing, that authentic specimens of wood engraving of those early times are not to be found. Their merits as works of art were not such as to render their preservation at all probable.

_Ottley._

* * * * *

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a student of old Italian books called the attention of bibliographers to the strange uniformity of the initial letters in many old manuscripts,[49] some of which had been made as early as the ninth century. Each ornamental letter, wherever found or however often repeated in the same book, was of the same form. He reached the conclusion that this uniformity had been produced by engraved stamps. The announcement of this discovery induced other persons to make similar examinations, the result of which confirmed the original statement. [p123] It was proved that there was a uniformity in the shapes of the letters which could not have been made by drawing.

The statement that a rude method of printing had been practised three centuries before its supposed invention, was received by the bibliographers with incredulity. Authors who had advocated theories of a Chinese, a German or a Netherlandish discovery of printing would not admit that printing with ink could have been done at an earlier period. They said that the initials were made by stenciling, or by tracings taken from a model letter. But they had a peculiarity which could not have been produced by stenciling, for they showed the marks of hard indentation in the parchment. Papillon, a practical engraver on wood, accepted the indented letters as the impressions of wood-cuts; Lanzi, the historian of Italian fine arts, said that the initials were certainly printed.

Signatures which show all the mechanical peculiarities of impressions from engravings on wood have also been found on Italian documents of the twelfth century. Printed [p124] signatures or monograms of notaries, which seem to have been made to serve the double purpose of signature and seal, in imitation of the kingly practice of affixing the signet, were frequently used in Italy, Spain and Germany from the ninth to the fourteenth century. It was customary, also, for the manufacturer or merchant[50] to stamp or brand merchandise with a sign or mark through which its origin could be traced. It does not appear that merchants made use of these trade-marks instead of signatures on paper or parchment, but many of them could neither read nor write. Yet there was an active trade between Italy and the Levant, between England and Germany, between Spain and the Netherlands, which could not have been carried on without accounts, correspondence, and the employment of duly authenticated signatures. It may be supposed that the use of stamped or printed signatures would not be confined to the notaries and copyists, and that this printing would be practised by merchants, as much for reasons of necessity as of convenience. The merchant who knew the advantages derived from branding boxes or cattle, and the respect paid to the stamp of a notary, would also see the utility of an engraved and stamped signature on a letter of credit or a bill of lading.

The initials printed in manuscripts were probably made for scribes who could write, but could not draw the floriated initials then placed in all books of value. They may have been cut by calligraphers, who tried to expedite their work, or may have been made to the order of copyists who desired to free themselves from their dependence on the calligrapher. In either case there would have been sufficient reason for the engraving. These initials are, for the most part, of unusually intricate design, but they were engraved in outline only, so [p125] that they could be filled in with bright color, by hand-painting or by stenciling. They were printed with a fluid writing ink, which may have been black, but is now of a dingy brown.

A recent Italian author, D. Vincenzo Requeno, who has published an essay on this subject, tells us that the employment of engraved letters by the Italian book-makers of the middle ages was not confined to floriated initials. He says that they were sometimes used for the texts of books, and that many so-called manuscripts were printed by stamping cut letters one after another upon the page. This method of printing a book, letter by letter, could have been made a quicker process than that of careful writing. Not more than sixty-six engraved characters would have been required for the copying of any ordinary manuscript. A skillful workman, who had the characters before him, fitted up as hand-stamps, lettered so that he could select them at a glance, resting on a surface which kept them coated with ink, could take them up one after another, and produce on paper the impressions of letters faster than they could be produced by the penman who was obliged to carefully draw each letter and to paint or fill in its outlines with ink.[51]

In a library at Upsal, Sweden, is a volume known as the _Codex Argenteus_, or the Silvered Book, which seems to have been made exclusively by this method of stamping one letter [p126] after another. The book is so called because the letters are in silver, and present a brilliant appearance, like the glittering letters of bookbinders, on their leaves of purple vellum. The _Codex Argenteus_ presents many indications of hand-printing: the letters are depressed on one side of the leaf, and raised on the other, as if made by indentation. Under the letters that have been too rudely pressed with the stamp, the vellum is thin; in some parts the leaf has been broken by pressure and patched with bits of vellum. Occasionally, letters are found turned upside down—an error possible to a hand-printer, but not to a penman. John Ihre, who described the book, in a pamphlet published at Upsal in 1755, says the silver leaf of the letters was affixed to the vellum by means of sizing, and that the letters were produced by stamping on the leaf with engraved punches of hard metal, which had been heated and used as bookbinders now use gilding tools. The use of heat has not been proved, but the blemishes of the work are most satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis that the book was printed letter by letter.[52]

This explanation of the method by which the book was made has not been generally accepted. It was said that silver letters are found in medieval books made entirely by writing. But this is negative evidence, for these books do not present the mechanical imperfections of the _Codex Argenteus_. There has, evidently, been a vague apprehension that the admission of an early use of single types for printing would invalidate all subsequent claims to the invention of typography. One can hardly imagine a grosser error, for the hand-printing of single types is not typography. It is even farther removed from it than the printing of letters on engraved blocks. [p127]

The doubts that once existed as to the genuineness of the printed initials in manuscript books have been dissipated by recent investigation in another direction. It has been conclusively proved that woven fabrics of silk and of linen, ornamented with designs printed in bright colors, not unlike those of modern chintzes and calicoes, were produced between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The designs or patterns were printed in ink from engraved blocks of wood, by the tedious process of hand-stamping. Of this curious primitive printed work, there are, in several European collections, fragments of images, priests’ robes, altar cloths, and ecclesiastic apparel of like nature. The genuineness of these relics of early printing, and the process by which the printing was done, have been established in the most satisfactory manner. Weigel, in his valuable work on the _Infancy of Printing_, has illustrated this part of his subject with fac-similes of these fragments which prove that Italian workmen not only knew how to print, but that they printed in colors with great precision.