Chapter II: Part 2

I could cite many more examples of ancient engraving which would yield impressions on paper, either by pressure or friction. But our business is with printing rather than engraving; I will, therefore, go back to the subject, and cite a very early and interesting example of stamping engraved letters on clay. I mean the Babylonian bricks, supposed to be four thousand years old, mostly sun-baked, but some apparently kiln-burnt almost to vitrification. Of these there are now many examples in England, added to our stores by the indefatigable researches of Layard, Rawlinson, and others. These bricks, which are about a foot square and three inches thick, are on one side covered with hieroglyphics, evidently impressed with a stamp, just as letters are now stamped on official papers.

Another evidence of the same kind, and of about the same age, is the famous Babylonian cylinder found in the ruins of Persepolis, and now preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is about seven inches high, barrel-shaped, and covered with inscriptions in the cuneiform character, disposed in vertical lines, and affording a positive example of an indented surface produced by mechanical impression. Such cylinders are supposed to have been memorials of matters of national or family importance, and were in early ages, as we know by tradition, very numerous. Stamped or printed blocks of lead, bearing the names of Roman authorities, are to be found in the British Museum.

Printing on leather was practised by the Egyptians, as we discover from their mummies, which have bandages of leather round their heads, with the name of the deceased printed on them. And in Pompeii a loaf was found on which the name of the baker and its quality were printed. Among ancient testimonies, one of the most interesting is that afforded by Cicero in his _de Natura Deorum_. He orders types to be made of metal, and calls them _forma literarum_--the very words used by our first printers; and in another place he gives a hint of separate cut letters when he speaks of the impossibility of the most ingenious man throwing the twenty-four letters of the alphabet together by chance, and thus producing the famous _Annals_ of Ennius. He makes that observation in opposition to the atheistical argument of the creation of the world by chance.

We have besides, in what is generally classed as a manuscript, a reasonable although disputed evidence of an elementary stage of printing; I mean the _Codex Argenteus_ (or _Silver Book_) of Upsala, which contains a portion of the gospels in Mesogothic, supposed to be of the fourth or fifth century, the work of Ulfilas. In this codex the first lines of each gospel and of the Lord's Prayer are in large gold letters, apparently printed by a stamp, in the manner of a bookbinder, as there are indentations on the back of the vellum. The small letters are written in silver. The whole is on a light purple or violet colored vellum.

Having said enough, I think, of the ancients' knowledge of type-forms and printing materials, I pass on to the recognized establishments of the art in the fifteenth century; for, whatever knowledge the ancients had of printing, it would appear to have yielded no immediate fruits to posterity.

But before I proceed to modern times, I am bound to note that the Chinese, who seem to have been many centuries in advance of Europe in most of the industral arts, are supposed to have practised block-printing, just as they do now, more than a thousand years ago. Nor does the complicated nature of their written language, which consists of more than one hundred thousand word-signs, admit of any readier mode. But they print, or rather rub off, impressions with such speed--seven hundred sheets per hour--that, until the introduction of steam, they far outstripped Europeans. Gibbon, it will be remembered, regrets that the emperor Justinian, who lived in the sixth century, did not introduce the art of printing from the Chinese, instead of their silk manufacture.

Block-printing ushered in the great epoch; and the first dawn of it in Europe seems to have been single prints of saints and scriptural subjects, with a line or two of description engraved on the same wooden plate. These are for the most part lost; but there is one in existence, large and exceedingly fine, of St. Christopher, with two lines of inscription, dated 1423, believed to have been printed with the ordinary printing-press. It was found in the library of a monastery near Augsburg, and is therefore presumed to be of German execution. Till lately this was the earliest-dated evidence of block-printing known; but there has since been discovered at Malines, and deposited at Brussels, a wood-cut of similar character, but assumed to be Dutch or Flemish, dated "MCCCCXVIII"; and though there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness of the cut, it is asserted that the date bears evidence of having been tampered with.

There is a vague tradition, depending entirely on the assertion of a writer named Papillon, not a very reliable authority, which would give the invention of wood-cut-printing to Venice, and at a very early period. He asserts that he once saw a set of eight prints, depicting the deeds of Alexander the Great, each described in verse, which were engraved in relief, and printed by a brother and sister named Cunio, at Ravenna, in 1285. But though the assertion is accredited by Mr. Ottley, it is generally disbelieved.

There is reason to suppose that playing-cards, from wooden blocks, were produced at Venice long before the block-books, even as early as 1250; but there is no positive evidence that they were printed; and some insist that they were produced either by friction or stencil-plates. It seems, however, by no means unlikely that cards, which were in most extensive use in the Middle Ages, should, for the sake of cheapness, have been printed quite as early, if not earlier, than even figures of saints; and the same artists are presumed to have produced both.

From single prints, with letter-press inscriptions, the next stage, that of a series of prints accompanied by letter-press, was obvious. Such are our first recognized block-books, among which are the Apocalypse, and the _Biblia Pauperum_ (or _Poor Man's Bible_), supposed to have been printed at Haarlem by Laurence Koster, between 1420 and 1430; I say supposed, because we have no positive evidence either of the person, place, or date; and Erasmus, who was born at Rotterdam in 1467, and always ready to advance the honor of his country, is silent on the subject. We rely chiefly upon the testimony of Ulric Zell, an eminent printer of Cologne, who is quoted in the _Cologne Chronicle_ of 1499, and Hadrian Junius, a Dutch historian of repute, who wrote in the next century. Both agree in ascribing the invention of book-printing from wooden blocks, as well as the first germ of movable wood and metallic type printing, to Haarlem; and Junius adds the name of Laurence Koster. His surname of Koster is derived from his office, which was that of custodian, sexton, or warden of the Cathedral Church of Haarlem. The story told of the accident by which the discovery was made is as follows:

Koster, as he was one day walking in a wood adjoining the city, about the year 1420, cut some letters on the bark of a beech tree, from which he took impressions on paper for the amusement of his brother-in-law's children. The idea then struck him of enlarging their application; and, being a man of an ingenious turn, he invented a thicker and more tenacious ink than was in common use, which blotted, and began to print figures from wooden tablets or blocks, to which he added several lines of letters, first solid, and then separate or movable. These wooden types are said to have been fastened together with string.

One thing seems pretty clear, which is, that, whether or not Koster was the printer, the first block-books were produced somewhere in Holland, as several are in Dutch, a language seldom, if ever, printed out of its own country. They were generally printed in light-brown ink, like a sepia drawing, which, I think, was adopted with a view to their being colored--a condition in which we find the greater part of them. When these prints were colored they presented very much the appearance of the Low Country stained-glass windows.

Block-books continued to be printed and reprinted, first in Holland and afterward in Germany, with considerable activity, for twenty or thirty years, during which period we had several editions of the _Biblia Pauperum_, the _Ars Moriendi_ (or _Art of Dying),_ the _Speculum Humanae Salvationis_, and many others, chiefly devoted to the promulgation of scripture history. The earliest ones are printed, or rather transferred by friction--and therefore on one side only of the paper--entirely from solid blocks; later on, some portions were printed with movable types of wood; and at last the letter-press was entirely of movable metal types. Junius says that Koster by degrees exchanged his wooden types for leaden ones, and these for pewter; and I will add that it is not unlikely they may have been cast in lead or pewter plates from the wooden blocks, as metal-casting was well understood at the time.

The pretensions of Haarlem and Koster have for more than a century been a matter of fierce controversy; and there have been upward of one hundred and fifty volumes written for or against, without any approach to a satisfactory decision. This one thing is certain, that, whether or not we owe the first idea of movable type to Laurence Koster or to Haarlem, we do not owe to the period any very marked use of it; that was reserved for a later day.

There is a story current, dependent on the authority of Junius, that Koster's principal workman, assumed to be Hans or John Faust--and some, to reconcile improbabilities, even say John Gutenberg--who had been sworn to secrecy, decamped one Christmas Eve, after the death of Koster, while the family were at church, taking with him types and printing apparatus and, after short sojourns at Amsterdam and Cologne, got to Mainz or Mayence with them, and there introduced printing. He is said by Junius to have printed, about the year 1442--that is, two years after Koster's death--the _Doctrinale_ of Alexander Gallus and the _Tracts_ of Peter of Spain, with the very types which Koster made use of in Haarlem; but as no volume of this kind has ever been discovered, nor any trace of one, the entire story is generally regarded as apocryphal. Laurence Koster died in 1440, at the age of seventy; therefore any printing attributed to him must be within that period.

What has hitherto been advanced proves only that mankind had walked for many centuries on the borders of the two great inventions, chalcography and typography, without having fully and practically discovered either of them.

We now come to the great epoch of printing--I mean the complete introduction, if not actually the first invention, of movable metal or fusile types. This took place at Mainz, in or before 1450, and the general consent of Europe assigns the credit of it to Gutenberg. Of a man who has conferred such vast obligations on all succeeding ages, it may be desirable to say a few words.

John Gutenberg was born at Mainz in 1397, of a patrician and rather wealthy family. He left his native city, it is said, because implicated in an insurrection of the citizens against the nobility, and settled at Strasburg, where, in 1427, we find him an established merchant, and sustaining a suit of breach of promise brought against him by a lady named Ann of the Iron Door, whom he afterward married. While resident here, and before 1439, his attention appears to have been actively directed to the art of printing, as we learn by a legal document of the time, found of late years in the archives of Strasburg. He is there stated to have entered into an engagement with three persons, named Dreizehn, Riffe, and Heilmann, to reveal to them "a secret art of printing which he had lately discovered," and to take them into partnership for five years, upon the payment of certain sums.

The death of Dreizehn before he had paid up all his instalments led to a suit on the part of his relations, which ended in Gutenberg's favor. In the course of the evidence one of the witnesses, a goldsmith, deposed to having received from Gutenberg three or four years previously--that is, about 1435--upward of three hundred florins for materials used in printing. Other witnesses proved the anxiety that Gutenberg had shown to have four pages of type distributed which appear to have been screwed up in chase, and lying on a press on the deceased's premises.

This would be evidence that Gutenberg had arrived at a knowledge of movable types, either of wood or metal, and probably of both, before 1440; and, had it not been for the rupture of the partnership before anything had been printed by the new process, Strasburg might have claimed the honor which is now given to Mainz.

Soon after this--it is supposed in 1444--Gutenberg returned to his native city, by leave of the town council, which he was obliged to ask, bringing with him all his materials. In 1446 he entered into a partnership with John Faust--a wealthy and skilful goldsmith and engraver--who engaged, upon being taught the secrets of the art and admitted into a participation of the profits, to advance the necessary funds, which he did to the extent of two thousand two hundred florins. Goldsmiths, it should be borne in mind, were then the great artists in all kinds of metal work, and extremely skilful in modelling, engraving, and casting, which were exactly the arts required for type-founding.

The new partnership immediately commenced operations, hired a house called Zumjungen, and took into their employ Peter Schoeffer, who had been Faust's apprentice, as their assistant. Faust is supposed to have employed himself in cutting the type, which is an extremely slow process, till Peter Schoeffer, afterward his son-in-law, suggested an improved mode of casting it in copper matrices struck by steel punches, pretty much in the same manner as was till recently practised throughout Europe. The firm had for some time previously adopted a method of casting type in moulds of plaster, which was a tedious process, as every letter required a new mould.

Although to Gutenberg are undoubtedly due all the main features of metal-type printing, yet we owe, perhaps, to the practical skill of Faust, and the taste of Schoeffer, who was an accomplished penman, the exquisite finish and perfection with which their first joint effort came forth to the world. This was a Latin Vulgate, printed in a large cut metal type, and commonly called the Mazarin Bible, because the first copy known to bibliographers was found in the library of Cardinal Mazarin. It consists of six hundred and forty-one leaves, forming two, sometimes four, large volumes in folio; some copies on paper of beautiful texture, some on vellum. It was without date or names of the printers, as it was evidently intended to present the appearance of a manuscript; but it is supposed, on good evidence, to have been printed between 1450 and 1455, and it is not improbable the volumes were all that time, that is, five years, and some say more, at press; for we know, by certain technicalities, that every page was printed off singly.

These precious volumes, as splendid as they are wonderful, have excited the admiration of all beholders. The sharpness and elegant uniformity of the type, the lustre of the ink, and the purity of the paper leave that first great monument of the typographic art unsurpassed by any subsequent effort; nor could it be exceeded with all the appliances of the present day.

"It is a striking circumstance," says Mr. Hallam, "that the high-minded inventors of this great art tried, at the very outset, so bold a flight as the printing of an entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing success. It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength and radiant armor, ready, at the moment of her nativity, to subdue and destroy her enemies."

There is a curious story current about this Bible, which, as it is connected with a popular fiction, I will venture to repeat. It is that Faust went to Paris with some of his Bibles for sale, one of which, printed on vellum and richly illuminated, he sold to the King for seven hundred and fifty crowns, and another to the Archbishop of Paris for three hundred crowns, and to the poorer clergy and the laity copies on paper as low as fifty crowns, and even less. Faust does not appear to have disclosed the secret of how they were produced, and probably let it be supposed that they were manuscript; for the aim of the first printers was to make their books equal in beauty to the finest manuscripts, and as far as possible undistinguishable from them, to which end the large capitals and decorations were filled in by hand.

The Archbishop, proud of his purchase, showed it to the King, who, comparing it with his own, found with surprise that they tallied so exactly in every respect, excepting the illuminated ornaments, as convinced them that they were produced by some other art than transcription; and on further inquiry they found that Faust had sold a considerable number exactly similar. Orders, therefore, were given without delay to apprehend and prosecute him as a practitioner of the black art in multiplying Holy Writ by aid of the devil. Hence arose the popular fiction of the Devil and Dr. Faustus, which, under different phases, has found its way into every country in Europe, and probably gave rise to Goethe's celebrated drama.

In 1455, as we find by a notarial document, dated November 6th of that year, Faust separated from Gutenberg, and successfully instituted proceedings against him for money advanced. Gutenberg, who had exhausted all his means in bringing his invention to maturity, was obliged to mortgage and in the end surrender all his materials, and, it should seem, his printed stock. His impoverishment may easily be accounted for when we are told, as a received fact, that before the first four sheets of his Bible were completed he had already expended four thousand crowns upon it--a large sum in those days. Of this his then wealthier partner reaped all the subsequent advantage.

After this period, Faust, and his son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer, in possession of the materials, printed on their own account, and, within eighteen months of their separation from Gutenberg, produced the celebrated Latin Psalter of 1457, the first book in any country which bears a complete imprint--that is, the name of the printer, place, and date. This magnificent volume, of which the whole edition was printed on vellum, is now even rarer than the Mazarin Bible, and of extraordinary value; the letters are very large and bold, cast in metal type, and the ornamental initials are beautifully cut in wood.

Two years later, that is, in 1459, Faust and Schoeffer produced an almost fac-simile reprint of the Psalter, and in the same year _Durandi Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, the latter with an entirely new font of metal type--the first cast from Schoeffer's punches--which some, in the erroneous belief that the Psalter was printed from wooden types, have asserted to be the first dated book printed with metal type. Then followed, in 1460, the _Constitutiones Clementis V_, a handsome folio, and in 1462 their famous Latin Bible, the first one with a date.

In the mean time, Gutenberg, undaunted by the loss of all that had cost him so many years of unremitted application and his whole fortune, began afresh; and this time, it should seem, with better success, as we find him, in 1459, undertaking to present, for certain considerations, all the books he had then printed, or might thereafter print, to a convent where his sister was a nun. No book, however, has yet been discovered bearing the name of Gutenberg; and we can only guess what came from his press by a peculiarity of type, of which, after the first Bible, the most marked is the famous _Catholicon_, dated 1460--a kind of universal dictionary, the germ of all future cyclopaedias, and which became so popular that more than forty editions were printed of it in as many years. In 1465 Gutenberg retired from printing, being appointed to a lucrative office at the court of the Archbishop of Mainz, and in 1467 he died.

And here we take leave of Gutenberg, with admiration for his patience, his perseverance, and his self-sacrifice in a cause which has produced such glorious fruits. He was one of those noble spirits who are endowed with a perception of what is good, and pursue it independent of worldly considerations. Posterity has done him tardy justice in erecting a marble monument to his memory and establishing a jubilee, which gave rise to one of the most touching of Mendelssohn's compositions.

By this time the secret had transpired to the neighboring states, and Mentelin, of Strasburg, and Pfister, or Bamberg, were, before the beginning of 1462, in full activity. Indeed, Pfister is, by some, thought to have printed before 1460; and his finely executed Latin Bible, in cast type, was for many years regarded as the first.

At this critical period, when the art was reaching its zenith, the operations of the Mainz printers were suddenly brought to a standstill by the siege and capture of the city in 1462. The occasion of this was a fierce dispute between the Pope and the people as to who had the right of appointment to the archbishopric, lately become vacant. The original hive of workmen dispersed to other states, and by degrees the mysteries of the art became spread over the civilized world. Such, indeed, was the fame printing had acquired, and its manifest importance, that every crowned head sought to introduce it into his kingdom, and welcomed the fugitives. Within a few years of this period the art had been carried by the scattered German workmen into Italy, France, Spain, and Switzerland; and before the close of the fifteenth century it was practised in more than two hundred twenty different places.

Before entering upon the history of printing in England, I will take leave to call your attention to a few prominent facts connected with its progress abroad, as well as to some points of its early condition which could not be conveniently introduced in chronological order. All the books printed previously to 1465 are in the Gothic, or black letter, which still remained the favorite in Germany and the Low Countries long after the Italians introduced their beautiful Roman letter. The first books in which any Greek type occurs are Cicero's _Offices_, printed by Faust and Schoeffer in 1465, directly after the resumption of their establishment; and _Lactantius_, printed the same year by Sweynheim and Pannartz, in the monastery of Soubiaco at Rome. The first book printed entirely in Greek was Constantine Lascar's _Greek Grammar_, Milan, 1476.

One of the earliest of the Italian books, and, to use the words of Dr. Dibdin, perhaps the most notorious volume in existence, was the celebrated Boccaccio, printed at Venice by Valdarfer in 1471. This book deserves particular mention, because of an extraordinary contest which once took place for its possession between two wealthy bibliomaniacs. It was a small black-letter folio, in faded yellow morocco, and supposed to be unique. Its history is this: In the early part of the eighteenth century it had come accidentally into the possession of a London bookseller, who successively offered it to Harley, Earl of Oxford, and to Lord Sunderland; then the two principal collectors, for one hundred guineas; but both were staggered at the price and higgled about the purchase. An ancestor of the late Duke of Roxburghe, whom nobody dreamed of as a collector, hearing of the book, secured it, and then invited the two noblemen to dinner, with the view of parading his trophy. In due course he led the conversation to the book, and, after letting them expatiate on its rarity, told them he thought he had a copy in his bookcase, which they emphatically declared to be impossible, and challenged him to produce it. On producing the book, about the purchase of which they had only been temporizing, they were not a little chagrined.

This same copy made its appearance again, half a century later, at the Duke of Roxburghe's sale in 1812, a time when bibliomania was at its height. Loud notes of preparation foretold that it would sell for a considerable sum; five hundred and even one thousand guineas were guessed, as it was known that Lord Spencer, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Marquis of Blandford were all bent on its possession, but nobody anticipated the extravagant sum it was to realize. After a very spirited competition, it was knocked down to the Marquis of Blandford for two thousand sixty pounds. This book was resold at the Marquis of Blandford's sale, in 1819, for eight hundred seventy-five guineas, and passed to Lord Spencer, in whose extraordinary library it now reposes.

Before the commencement of the sixteenth century, that is, within forty or fifty years of the invention of printing with movable type, upward of twenty thousand volumes had issued from at least a thousand different presses. All the principal Latin classics, many of the Greek, and upward of two hundred fifty editions of the Bible, or parts of the Bible, had appeared.

One of the most active and enterprising of the early printers was Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg, an accomplished scholar, who began there in 1472, and before the year 1500 had printed thirteen large editions of the Bible in folio, and a prodigious number of other books. He kept twenty-four presses at work, employing one hundred workmen, and had sixteen shops for the sale of books in the principal cities of Germany, besides factors and agents all over Europe. He printed, in 1493, that grand volume, the _Nuremberg Chronicle_, which is illustrated with upward of one thousand woodcuts by Michael Wohlgemuth, the master of Albert Dürer, and is curious as being one of the first books in which cross-hatchings occur in wood-engraving.

The sixteenth century opened with another invention in type, the Italic, which was beautifully exemplified in a pocket edition of Vergil, the first of a portable series of classical works commenced in 1501 at Venice by the celebrated Aldus Manutius, who, after some years of preparation, had entered actively on his career as a printer in 1494, and deservedly ranks as one of the best scholars of any age.

Then came the Giunti, the learned family of the Stephenses, of whom Robert is accredited as the author of the present divisions of our New Testament into chapters, and Henry, author of the great Greek _Thesaurus_, the most valuable Greek lexicon ever published. To the opprobrium of the age, he died in an almshouse.

Among many others immortalized by their successful contributions to the great cause we must not forget the Plantins, whose memories are still so cherished at Antwerp that their printing establishment remains to this day untouched, just as it was left two centuries ago, with all the freshness of a chamber in Pompeii, the type and chases of their famous Polyglot lying about, as if the workmen had but just left the office.

The accordance of the art of printing with the spirit of the times which gave it birth must be regarded as singularly providential. The Protestant Reformation in Germany was brought about by Luther's accidentally meeting, in a monastic library, with one of Gutenberg's printed Latin Bibles, when at the age of twenty. "A mighty change," says Luther, "then came over me," and all his subsequent efforts are to be attributed to that event. His recognition of the importance of printing is given in these words: "Printing is the best and highest gift, the _summum et postremum donum_ by which God advanceth the Gospel. Thanks be to God that it hath come at last. Holy fathers now at rest would rejoice to see this day of the revealed Gospel."

William Caxton, by common consent, is the introducer of the art of printing into England. He was born about 1422, in Kent, and received what was then thought a liberal education. His father must have been in respectable circumstances, as there was at that time a law in full force prohibiting any youth from being apprenticed to trade whose parent was not possessed of a certain rental in land. In his eighteenth year Caxton was apprenticed to Robert Large, an eminent London mercer, who in 1430 was sheriff and in 1439 Lord Mayor of London. At his death, in 1441, he bequeathed Caxton a legacy of twenty marks--a large sum in those days--and an honorable testimony to his fidelity and integrity. Soon after this the Mercers' Company appointed him their agent in the Low Countries, in which employment he spent twenty-three years.

In 1464 he was one of two commissioners officially employed by Edward IV to negotiate a commercial treaty with Philip of Burgundy; and in 1468, when the King's sister, Margaret of York, married Charles of Burgundy, called "the Bold," he attached himself to their household, probably in some literary capacity, as in the next year we find him busied in translating at her request. During the greater part of this long period he was residing or travelling in the midst of the countries where the new art of printing was the great subject of interest, and would naturally take some measures to acquaint himself with it. Indeed, it has been said that he had a secret commission from Edward IV to learn the art, and to bribe some of the foreign workmen into England. Be this as it may, we know that Caxton acquired a complete knowledge of it while abroad, for he tells us so, and that he had printed at Cologne the _Recueil des Histoires de Troye_ (or _Romance History of Troy_), in 1465, and in 1472 an English edition of the same, translated by himself. These two early productions are remarkable as being the first books printed in either the French or English language[26]. The English edition was sold at the Duke of Roxburghe's sale for one thousand sixty pounds, and is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire.

Caxton returned to England about 1474, bringing with him presses and types, and established himself in one of the chapels of Westminster Abbey, called the Eleemosynary, Almondry, or Arm'ry, supposed to have been on the site of Henry VII's chapel. A printer would naturally resort to the abbey for patronage, as in those days it was the head-quarters of learning as well as of religion. Before the foundation of grammar schools, there was usually a _scholasticus_ attached to the abbeys and cathedral churches, who directed and superintended the education of the neighboring nobility and gentry. He was, besides, one of the members of the _scriptorium_, a large establishment within the abbey, where school and other books used to be written.

The first book Caxton printed, after he returned to England and established himself at the Almonry, is supposed to be _The Game and Play of Chesse_, dated 1474. But some have raised doubts whether this was printed in England, as there is no actual evidence of it. One of the arguments is that the type is exactly the same as what he had previously used at Cologne; but this is no evidence at all, as both the type and paper used in England for many years came from Cologne, and there is no doubt that Caxton brought some with him. A second edition of the book of chess, with woodcuts, was printed two or three years later, and this is generally admitted to have been printed in England.

The first book with an unmistakable imprint was his _Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers_, which had been translated for him by the gallant but unfortunate Lord Rivers, who was murdered in Pomfret castle by order of Richard III. The colophon of this states that it was printed in the Abbey of Westminster in 1477. He appears to have printed but one single volume upon vellum, which is _The Doctrynal of Sapience_, 1489, of which a copy, formerly in the King's Library at Windsor, is now in the British Museum. This is a very interesting work as connected with Caxton, being entirely translated by himself into English verse. It is an allegorical fiction, in which the whole system of literature and science comes under consideration.

Caxton died in 1491, after having produced, within twenty years of his active career, more than fifty volumes of mark, including Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and his own _Chronicle_ of England. Before Caxton's time the youths of England were supplied with their school-books and their reading, which was necessarily very limited, by the Company of Stationers, or text-writers, who wrote and sold, by an exclusive royal privilege, the school-books then in use. These were chiefly the A B Cs, (called _Absies_), the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the address to the Virgin Mary, called _Ave Maria_.

The location of these stationers was in the neighborhood of St. Paul's Cathedral, whence arose the names Paternoster Row, Creed Lane, Amen Corner, and Ave Maria Lane. Manuscripts of a higher order, that is, in the form of books, were mostly supplied by the monks, and were scarcely accessible to any but the wealthy, from their extreme cost. Thus, a Chaucer, which may now be bought for a few shillings, then cost more than a hundred pounds; and we read of two hundred sheep and ten quarters of wheat being given for a volume of homilies.

Minstrels, instead of books, were in early times the principal medium of communication between authors and the public; they wandered up and down the country, chanting, singing, or reciting, according to the taste of their customers, and had certain privileges of entertainment in the halls of the nobility.

It may be wondered that Caxton, like many of the foreign printers, did not begin with, or at least some time during his career print, the Scriptures, especially as Wycliffe's translation had already been made. But there were good reasons. Religious persecution ran high, and the clergy were extremely jealous of the propagation of the Scriptures among the people. Knighton had denounced the reading of the Bible, lamenting lest this jewel of the Church, hitherto the exclusive property of the clergy and divines, should be made common to the laity; and Archbishop Arundel had issued an enactment that no part of the Scriptures in English should be read, either in public or private, or be thereafter translated, under pain of the greater excommunication. The Star Chamber, too, was big with terrors. A little later, Erasmus' edition of the New Testament was forbidden at Cambridge; and in the county of Surrey the Vicar of Croydon said from the pulpit, "We must root out printing, or printing will root out us."

Winkin de Worde, who had come in his youth with Caxton to England and continued with him in the superintendence of his office to the day of his death, succeeded to the business, and conducted it with great spirit for the next forty years. He began by entirely remodelling his fonts of Gothic type, and introduced both Roman and Italic; became his own founder, instead of importing type from the Low Countries; promoted the manufacture of paper in this country; and such was his activity that he printed the extraordinary number of four hundred eight different works. He deserves, perhaps, more praise than he has ever received for the important part he played in establishing and advancing the art in England.

But no one of our early printers deserves more grateful remembrance than Richard Grafton, who, in 1537, was the first publisher of the Bible in England. I say in England, because the first Bible, known as Coverdale's, and several editions of the Testament, translated by Tyndale, had been previously printed abroad in secrecy. Grafton's first edition of the Bible was a reprint of Coverdale and Tyndale's translation, with slight alterations, by one who assumed the name of Thomas Matthew, but whose real name was John Rogers, then Prebendary of St. Paul's, and afterward burned as a heretic in Smithfield. Even this was printed secretly abroad, nobody yet knows where, and did not have Grafton's name attached to it till the King had granted him a license under the privy seal. Though this year, 1537, has by the annalists of the Bible been called the first year of triumph, on account of the King's license, yet Bibles were still apt to be dangerous things to all concerned; and what was permitted one day was not unlikely, by a change in religion or policy, to be interdicted the next with severe visitations.

Although Henry VIII had recently completed his breach with Rome and been excommunicated, he alternately punished the religious movements of Protestants and Catholics, according to his caprice; and it was but a few years previously that the reading of the Bible had been prohibited by act of parliament, that men had been burned at the stake for having even fragments of it in their possession, and that Tyndale's translation of the new Testament had been bought up and publicly burned (1534) by order of Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London; and even as late as May, 1536, the reading of the sacred volume had been strictly forbidden.

Grafton, therefore, must have been a bold man to face the danger. Thus, in 1538, when a new edition of the Bible, commonly called the "Great Bible," afterward published in 1539, was secretly printing in Paris at the instance of Lord Cromwell, under the superintendence of Grafton, Whitchurch, and Coverdale, the French inquisitors of the faith interfered, charging them with heresy, and they were fortunate in making their escape to England.

Shortly after the death of Caxton's patron, Lord Cromwell, Grafton was imprisoned for the double offence of printing Matthew's Bible and the Great Bible, notwithstanding the King's license; and though after a while released, he was again imprisoned in the reign of Philip and Mary on account of his Protestant principles; and, after all his services to religion and literature, died in poverty in 1572.

Printing was now spreading all over England. It had already begun at Oxford in 1478--some say earlier--at Cambridge soon after, although the first dated work is 1521; at St. Albans in 1480; York in 1509; and other places by degrees.

Printing did not reach Scotland till 1507, and then but imperfectly, and Ireland not till 1551, owing, it is said, to the jealousy with which it was regarded by the priesthood.

We will now take a rapid survey of the vast strides printing has made of late years in England, and therewith close. The principal movements have been in stereotyping, electrotyping, the improvement of presses, and the application of steam power. Stereotyping is the transfer of pages of movable type into solid metal plates, by the medium of moulds formed of plaster of Paris, _papier-mâché,_ gutta-percha, or other substances. This art is supposed to have been invented, in or about 1725, by William Ged, a goldsmith of Edinburgh. A small capitalist, who had engaged to embark with him, withdrawing from the speculation in alarm, he accepted overtures from a Mr. William Fenner, and in 1729 came to London. Here he obtained three partners, in conjunction with whom he entered into a contract with the University of Cambridge for stereotyping Bibles and prayer-books. But the workmen, fearing that stereotyping would eventually ruin their trade, purposely made errors, and, when their masters were absent, battered the type, so that the only two prayer-books completed were suppressed by authority, and the plates destroyed. Upon this the art got into disrepute, and Ged, after much ill-treatment, returned to Edinburgh, impoverished and disheartened. Here his friends, desirous that a memorial of his art should be published, entered into a subscription to defray the expense; and a Sallust, printed in 1736, and composed and cast in the night-time to avoid the jealous opposition of the workmen, is now the principal evidence of his claim to the invention.

But the time had not come; for without a very large demand, such as could not exist in those days, stereotyping would be of no advantage. Books which sell by hundreds of thousands, and are constantly reprinting, such as Bibles, prayer-books, school-books, Shakespeares, Bunyans, Robinson Crusoes, Uncle Toms, and very popular authors and editions, will pay for stereotyping; but for small numbers it is a loss. After the invention had been neglected long enough to be forgotten, Earl Stanhope, who had for several years devoted himself earnestly to the subject, and made many experiments, resuscitated it, in a very perfect manner, in 1803; and his printer, Mr. Wilson, sold the secret to both universities and to most of the leading printers. To the art of stereotyping the public is mainly indebted for cheap literature, for when the plates are once produced the chief expense is disposed of.

Something akin to stereotyping is another method of printing, called logography, invented by John Walter of the London _Times_, in 1783, and for which he took out a patent. This means a system of printing from type cast in words instead of single letters, which it was thought would save time and corrections when applied to newspapers, but it was not found to answer. A joke of the time was a supposed order to the type-founder for some words of frequent occurrence, which ran thus: "Please send me a hundredweight, sorted, of murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, alarming explosion, melancholy accident; an assortment of honourable member, whig, tory, hot, cold, wet, dry; half a hundred weight, made up in pounds, of butter, cheese, beef, mutton, tripe, mustard, soap, rain, etc., and a few devils, angels, women, groans, hisses, etc." This method of printing did not succeed; for if twenty-four letters will give six hundred sextillions of combinations, no printing-office could keep a sufficient assortment of even popular words.

[Footnote 1: See Vol 1, 8]

[Footnote 2: See accompanying fac-simile of a page of the English edition--a reproduction as faithful as possible in text, color, texture of paper, etc.]

JOHN HUNYADY REPULSES THE TURKS[1]

A.D. 1440-1456

ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY

From the time (1354) when the Turks took Gallipoli and secured their first dominion in Europe, the Ottoman power on that side of the Hellespont was gradually increased. In 1360 Amurath I crossed from Asia Minor, ravaged an extensive district, and took Adrianople, which he made the first seat of his royalty and the first shrine of Mahometanism in Europe. He next turned toward Bulgaria and Servia, where in the warlike Slavonic tribes he found far stronger foes than the Greek victims of earlier Turkish conquests.

Pope Urban V preached a crusade against the Turks; and Servia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Wallachia leagued themselves to drive the Ottomans out of Europe. Amurath defeated them and added new territory to his previous acquisitions. A peace was made in 1376, but a new though fruitless attempt of the Slavonic peoples against him gave Amurath a pretext for further assault upon southeastern Europe. In 1389 he conquered and annexed Bulgaria and subjugated the Servians. In the same year Amurath was assassinated.

Bajazet I, the son and successor of Amurath, still further extended the Turkish conquests. Under Bajazet's son, Mahomet I (1413-1421), comparative peace prevailed; but his son, Amurath II, rekindled the flames of war. A strong combination, including, with other peoples, the Hungarians and Poles, was made against him. In the struggle that followed, and which for a time promised the complete expulsion of the Turks from Europe, the great leader was the Hungarian, John Hunyady, born in 1388. According to some writers, he was a Wallach and the son of a common soldier. Creasy calls him "the illegitimate son of Sigismund, King of Hungary, and the fair Elizabeth Morsiney." With him appeared a new spirit, such as the Ottomans up to that time could not have expected to encounter in that part of Europe. In Vambéry's narrative we have the authority of Hungary's greatest historian for the leading events in the life of her greatest hero.

In Europe a new power pulsating with youthful life had arrived from somewhere in the interior of Asia with the intention of conquering the world. This power was the Turk--not merely a single nation, but a whole group of peoples clustered round a nation, inspired by one single idea which urged them ever forward--"There is no god but God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God."

The Mahometan flood already beat upon the bounds of Catholic Christendom, in the forefront of which stood Hungary. Hungary's King, Sigismund, was able for a moment in 1396 to unite the nations of Europe against the common danger, but the proud array of mail-clad knights were swept away like chaff before the steady ranks of the janizaries.

And herewith began the long series of desolating inroads into Hungary, for the Turks were wont to suck the blood of the nation they had marked down as their prey. They took the country by surprise, secretly, suddenly, like a summer storm, appearing in overwhelming numbers, burning, murdering, robbing, especially men in the hopes of a rich ransom, or children whom they might bring up as Mahometans and janizaries. This body, the flower of the Turkish armies, owed its origin for the most part to the Christian children thus stolen from their parents and their country. This infantry of the janizaries was the first standing army in Europe. Living constantly together under a common discipline, like the inmates of a cloister, they rushed blindly forward to the cry of "God and his Prophet!" like some splendid, powerful wild beast eager for prey. The Turkish sultans published the proud order: "Forward! Let us conquer the whole world; wheresoever we tie up our horses' heads, that land is our own."

To resist such a nation, that would not listen to negotiation, but only thirsted for war and conquest, seemed already an impossibility. Europe trembled with fear at the reports of the formidable attacks designed against her, and listened anxiously for news from distant Hungary, which lay, so to say, in the lion's very mouth.

Against such an enemy a soldier of the modern type was useless, one who slays only in defence of his own life and at the word of command, whose force consists in the high development of the military art and the murderous instruments of modern technical science. What was wanted was a heroic soul, inspired by a burning faith like to that which impelled the Mahometan soldier. This heroic soul, this burning faith, united to the tenacious energy of youth, were all found united in John Hunyady, accompanied withal by a singular talent for leadership in war. He could not rely for support upon the haughty magnates who could trace their descent back for centuries and despised the parvenu with a shorter pedigree and a smaller estate. He was consequently obliged to cast in his lot with the mass of the lesser nobility, individually weaker, it is true, but not deficient in spirit and a consciousness of their own worth. Of this class he soon became the idolized leader. Around him gathered the hitherto latent forces of Hungarian society, especially from Transylvania and South Hungary and the Great Hungarian Plain, which suffered most from the incursions of the Turks, and were therefore most impressed with the necessity of organizing a system of defence. It was these who were the first to be inspired by Hurvyady's heroic spirit.

Before commencing his career as independent commander he, following his father's example, attached himself to the court of Sigismund, the Emperor-king, in whose train he visited the countries of Western Europe, Germany, England, and Italy, till he at length returned home, his mind enriched by experience but with the fervor of his first faith unchilled.

When over fifty years old, he repaired at his sovereign's command to the south of Hungary to organize the resistance to the Turks. At first he was appointed ban of Severin, and as such had the chief command of the fortified places built by the Hungarians for the defence of the Lower Danube. After that he became waywode of Transylvania, the civil and military governor of the southeastern corner of the Hungarian kingdom.

Before, however, he had reached these dignities he had fought a succession of battles and skirmishes with such success that for the fanatical Turkish soldiery his form, nay, his very name, was an object of terror. It was Hunyady alone whom they sought to slay on the field of battle, well persuaded that, he once slain, they would easily deal with the rest of Hungary. Thus in 1442 a Turkish leader, named Mezid Bey, burst into Transylvania at the head of eighty thousand men in pursuance of the Sultan's commands, with no other aim than to take Hunyady dead or alive.

Nor, indeed, did Hunyady keep them waiting for him. He hurried at the head of his troops to attack the Turkish leader, who was laying siege to Hermannstadt. Upon this, Mezid Bey, calling his bravest soldiers around him, described to them once more Hunyady's appearance, his arms, his dress, his stature, and his horse, that they might certainly recognize him. "Slay him only," he exclaimed, "and we shall easily deal with the rest of them; we shall drive them like a flock of sheep into the presence of our august master."

On that occasion was seen with what self-sacrificing enthusiasm his soldiers loved their heroic leader. When they learned from their spies the purpose of the Turks, they took all possible measures to secure his precious life. One of their number, Simon Kemeny, who bore a striking resemblance to Hunyady, determined to sacrifice himself for his leader. He announced that he would put on Hunyady's clothes and armor. The Turks would then attack him under the belief that he was the celebrated chief, and while they were thus engaged the real Hunyady would fall upon them unexpectedly and put them to flight. At first Hunyady would by no means consent to this plan, as he did not wish to expose Kemeny to such mortal danger; but at last, seeing the great military advantages likely to accrue from it, he consented.

And so, indeed, it fell out. As soon as the battle began, the Turks, perceiving Simon Kemeny in the garb of Hunyady, directed all their force against him. Kemeny, after a stout defence, fell, together with a great number of his followers, and the Turks, seeing him fall, set up a general cry of triumph and exultation. Just at this critical moment they were hotly attacked in the flank by the genuine Hunyady. Thus attacked in the very moment when they imagined that they had already gained the day, the Turks were thrown into confusion and took wildly to flight. Twenty thousand corpses were left on the battlefield; among them lay Mezid Bey himself, together with his sons.

Fearful was the rage of the Turkish Sultan when he heard of the defeat and death of Mezid Bey, and he at once despatched another army against Hunyady, which like the first numbered eighty thousand men. This time, however, Hunyady did not let them enter Transylvania, but waited for them at the pass known as the Iron Gate, among the high mountains on the southern boundary of Hungary.

The Hungarian army was not more than fifteen thousand men, so that the Turks were at least five times as strong. But the military genius of Hunyady made up for the small number of his followers. He posted them in a strong position in the rough pass, and attacked the enemy in places where it was impossible for him to make use of his strength. Thus more than half the Turkish army perished miserably in the battle. Again their commander-in-chief fell on the field, together with six subordinate commanders, while two hundred horse-tail standards fell into Hunyady's hands as trophies of his victory.