Chapter IV: Part 4

The engraving on the following page is a fac-simile of one of a set of forty-eight playing cards now preserved in the British Museum. The entire set, printed on six separate sheets of paper, eight cards to each sheet, was found in that great hiding-place of discarded sheets, the inner lining of a book cover, for which, to adopt the bookbinder’s phrase, it served as a stiffener. The sheets may have been rejected for imperfections, and put in the book cover because they were unsalable. The book in which they were found was printed and bound by some unknown or undescribed printer before the year 1500.[27] If rudeness of engraving could be considered [p093] as sufficient proof of superior antiquity, this card should be rated as one of the oldest pieces of engraving on wood. The cutting of this block could have been done by any carver on wood, or even by a carpenter. But the quality of the engraving is not a proper criterion of the condition of the art of engraving on wood during the period in which it was made. It is obviously a cheap card, made for the uses of people who could pay but a small price. There may have been other reasons for the rudeness of the work. The stiff and conventional manner of drawing the figures may have been as popular then as a similar method of designing playing cards is at this day.

[From Singer.]]

Dull red and dark green were the only colors used in illuminating this set of cards. They were laid on with brush and stencil. The stencil is one of the oldest forms of labor-saving contrivance for abridging the labor of writing or drawing. It was used, as has been stated, in the sixth century by a Roman emperor who could not write; it was used for the same purpose by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and by the emperor Charlemagne. It is used to this day by merchants who mark boxes, in preference to writing, printing, branding, or painting. It has advantages of cheapness and simplicity that commend it to all manufacturers. It is even used by publishers of books for tinting maps, fashion plates, and illuminated pamphlet covers.

Jost Amman, in his Book of Trades, has presented us a representation of the print stenciler, as he practised his work [p094] in 1564. The method here shown is, probably, the method in general use in 1440, for the coloring of playing cards and image prints. We see the bowls that contain different colors, with their proper brushes, on top of the chest. The colorer is sweeping the brush over the perforated metal plate, and filling up the outlines of the print. The neat pile of sheets before him and near his right hand shows that he is working with precision and with system. Stencil painting was work of care and neatness, but it was so simple that we can clearly understand that it could have been done by women in Nuremberg as effectively as it is done now.[28]

[From Jost Amman.]]

The illustration of the engraver on wood which appears in the same _Book of Trades_ puts before us a man in a richer dress, plainly a workman of higher grade than the stencil painter. He seems to be tracing outlines on the block. The technical accessories about this engraver are the same as those in use at this day—the graver, the whetstone, and, possibly, a water globe lens in the corner near the window casement.[29] [p095]

Playing cards and engraving on wood bear to each other a curious relation. The introduction of the cards in Europe was soon followed by the revival, or as Bibliophile Jacob of Paris characterizes it, by the invention, of engraving on wood. Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to whether the art was revived or invented, it is certain that playing cards were the means by which early printing was made popular. Cards were the only kind of printed work which promised to repay the labor of engraving. People who could neither read nor write, and who had no desire to be taught either accomplishment, derived great pleasure from them. There was no other kind of printed matter, not even the image prints, which found so many buyers in every condition of society. The fixing of the earliest practice as a regular business of engraving on wood in Europe depends, in some degree, on the fixing of the date of the first introduction of playing cards. The determination of this date has been made a national question, and the theme of books containing much curious information.

[From Jost Amman.]]

Ambrose Firmin Didot[30] quotes a scrap of poetry from a French romance of 1328, which alludes to the folly of games of dice, checkers and cards. Other French writers maintain that playing cards were in use in France as early as 1350. [p096] Bullet says that playing cards were used in France in the year 1376. But the testimony in confirmation of these dates is ambiguous and insufficient. The first unequivocal notice of playing cards in France is to be found in an account book for the year 1392, kept by one Charles Poupart, treasurer to Charles VI. In this book is an entry to this effect: “Paid to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilded, colored, and ornamented with various designs, for the amusement of our lord the king, 56 sols of Paris.” The mind of Charles VI had been seriously affected by sunstroke, and these cards were provided for his lucid intervals during which he suffered from melancholy. We are not told how these cards were made—whether they were first drawn by hand, or whether they were printed from cut blocks before they were painted. The price paid was not small: fifty-six sols of Paris in 1393 would be equivalent to one hundred and fifty francs in 1874. In 1454, a pack of cards purchased for the Dauphin of France cost but five sous of Tours, the equivalent of twelve or thirteen francs of modern French money.[31] The difference in these prices is some indication of a cheapened manufacture.

The earliest and most convincing evidence of the popularity of playing cards in Paris is contained in an order of the provost of that city, under the date of 1397, in which order he forbids working people from indulging in games of tennis, bowls, dice, cards, or nine-pins on working days. That the game was then comparatively new is inferred from the omission of playing cards in an ordinance of the city of Paris, for the year 1369, in which other popular games were minutely specified.

The Cabinet of Prints attached to the National Library at Paris contains seventeen cards which are supposed to be the relics of the three packs made for Charles VI by Gringonneur; but these cards were, without doubt, drawn by hand. This cabinet has no printed cards which can be attributed to the [p097] fourteenth century. Its oldest relics of this kind are eighteen printed cards which may have been made in France during the reign of Charles VII, or between the years 1442 and 1461.[32]

Playing cards seem to have been popular in Spain before they were known in France. They were supposed to be so demoralizing to the people, that John I, king of Castile, in the year 1387, thought it necessary, to prohibit them entirely. To have acquired this popularity, the cards should have been made by some process as economical as that of printing. We have, however, no knowledge that the cards were printed. They could have been made by stencils. Chatto says that the relics of playing cards which he thought were the oldest were made exclusively with stencils.

Cards were known in Italy as early as 1379. An old manuscript history of the town of Viterbo, which states this fact, says that “In this year, a year of great distress [occasioned by the war between the anti-pope Clement VII and the pope Urban VI], was brought into Viterbo, the game of cards, which came from the land of the Saracens, and by them is called Naib.” [p098]

Many German authors claim that playing cards were in common use throughout Germany at a much earlier period. Breitkopf quotes the following passage from a book called the _Golden Mirror_, said to have been written about the middle of the fifteenth century by a Dominican friar of the name of Ingold: “The game is right deceitful, and, as I have read, was first brought in Germany in the year 1300.”[33] Another writer quotes an old chronicle, that describes the emperor Rudolph as amusing himself with cards in the old town of Augsburg at some undefined time before his death in 1291. It cannot be proved that the cards here mentioned were true playing cards. It is more probable that the amusement noticed was the game of king and queen, which was forbidden to the clergy by the synod of Worcester in 1240, and which has sometimes been erroneously understood as a game of cards. The notices of card-makers and card-printers in the town books of Nuremberg and Augsburg should be regarded as the earliest records of the use of playing cards in Germany.[34]

[From Breitkopf.]]

A review of the dates proves that playing cards were not popular in any part of Europe before the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The Italian record which attributes their derivation to the land of the Saracens is fully corroborated by other testimony of authority. Students of oriental literature assure us that the Saracens were taught the uses of playing cards by the inhabitants of Hindostan, in which country they were invented.[35] Playing cards were made in China from printed blocks long before the game was known in Europe. [p099] The introduction of this oriental pastime in civilized Europe has been attributed to the Moors of Spain, to eastern Jews who traded on the shores of the Mediterranean, to Gypsies who made their appearance in Germany at the beginning [p100] of the fifteenth century. Whether they were introduced by Moor, Christian, Jew or Gypsy is of minor importance. It concerns us more to know how they were received. We have abundant evidence that the cards supplied a universal want, and that they soon became as popular with the poor and ignorant as they had been with the rich and noble. While the Duke of Milan found amusement, as he did in 1415, with a suite of cards elaborately painted by artists of renown on plates of ivory, at a cost of fifteen hundred crowns, and while Flemish nobles were playing at games of hazard with cards engraved on silver plates, the working people of France and Spain, soldiers in Italy, and traveling mechanics in Germany were diverting themselves in wine-shops and public gardens, in huts and by the road-side, with similar games, played with greasy cards which had been printed or stenciled on coarse paper. The cards were adapted to all tastes, and there was a fascination in them which made men neglectful of duty.

The evil results of this infatuation were soon perceived. Playing cards were denounced not only by kings and the provosts of cities, but by the more zealous and conscientious priests of the church. At the synod of Langres held in 1404, the fathers of the church forbid all games of playing cards to the clergy. On the fifth day of May, in the year 1423, St. Bernard of Sienna preached against playing cards from the steps of the Church of St. Peter, with such effect, that his hearers ran to their houses, and brought therefrom all the games of hazard that they owned—cards, dice and checkers—and burnt them in the public square. One card-maker, who felt that his business had been ruined by the sermon, went in tears to the saint, and said, “Father, I am a card maker, and know no other trade. You have forbidden me to make cards and have consequently condemned me to die from starvation.” Whereupon the ready priest said, “If you know how to paint, paint this image”—showing him the figure of Christ, with the monogram I. H. S. in the centre of a halo of glory. The card-maker, we are told, followed the [p101] judicious advice. The proper sequel is not wanting: virtue had proper reward; the converted image-maker soon became rich. In 1452, the monk John Capistan preached for three hours in Nuremberg with a similar result. The conscience-stricken people brought into the market-place “76 jousting sledges, 3,640 backgammon boards, 40,000 dice, and cards innumerable,” and burnt them in the market-place.

The attacks of the clergy had no permanent effect. At the end of the fifteenth century, playing cards were more popular than ever. Other games were invented, and new forms of cards of quainter or of more graceful patterns were produced. Sometimes they were engraved on copper plates, and were painted with all the delicacy of fine miniatures. Despairing of success in their attempts to entirely abolish the practice, moralists undertook to divert cards from their first purpose, and to make them a means of instruction as well as of amusement. Of this character is an old pack of fifty cards engraved on copper plates, and supposed to be the work of Finiguerra, which has been preserved in an Italian library. One of the cards bears the printed date, 1485. The pack is divided in five suites: the first suite contains cards that represent, by figures and words in the Venetian dialect, the various conditions of men from the pope to the beggar; the second suite contains the names and figures of the nine muses, with Apollo added to make the complement; the third illustrates branches of polite learning from grammar to theology; the fourth exhibits cardinal virtues, like justice and prudence; the fifth, displays the heavenly bodies, the Moon, Saturn, the stars, Chaos and the First Cause. This game, obviously made up for the benefit of young collegians, was, probably, no more popular with them than the scientific story books of 1820–30 were with the boys of that period. The combination of abstruse sciences with a frivolous amusement may rightfully be considered a problem of despair.

The illustration on the next leaf is the reduced fac-simile of a suite of twenty-two playing cards, intended, apparently, [p102] to convey solemn religious truths in the form of a game of life and death. We do not know how the game was played: we have to accept the figures upon the cards as their own explanation and commentary. In the figures of Jupiter and of the Devil, we see the powers which shape the destinies of men. The Wheel of Fortune is emblematic of the fate which assigns to one man the condition of a Hermit, and to another that of an Emperor. The virtues of Temperance, Justice and Strength which man opposes to Fate, the frivolity of the Fool, the happiness of the Lover (if he can be happy who is cajoled by two women), and the pride of the Empress, are all dominated by the central card bearing an image of the skeleton Death—Death which precedes the Last Judgment and opens to the righteous the House of God. In these cards we have a pictorial representation of scenes from one of the curious spectacle plays of the middle ages, which were often enacted in the open air to the accompaniments of dance and music. The union of fearful mysteries with ridiculous accessories, and the ghastly suggestion of the fate of all men, as shown in the card of Death the reaper—these were the features which gave point and character to the series of strange cartoons popular for many centuries in all parts of civilized Europe under the title of the _Dance of Death_.

This was but one of the many innovations proposed as substitutes for the older oriental games. In the latter part of the fifteenth century, playing cards were made in Italy with figures which represented the four great monarchies of the ancient world, with which a childish game was played in imitation of war and conquest. Suitable marks on the cards designated the four different classes of society; hearts were the symbol of the clergy; spades (from the Italian _spada_, a sword) were for the nobility; clubs stood for the peasantry; and diamonds represented the citizens or burghers.

1 The Juggler. 12 The Hanged. 2 Juno. 13 Death. 3 The Empress. 14 Temperance. 4 The Emperor. 15 The Devil. 5 Jupiter. 16 The House of God. 6 The Lovers. 17 The Stars. 7 The Chariot. 18 The Moon. 8 Justice. 19 The Sun. 9 The Hermit 20 The Last Judgment. 10 The Wheel of Fortune. 21 The World. 11 Strength. 22 The Fool.

Reduced Fac-Simile of French Copper-plate Playing Cards of the Sixteenth Century.

[From Breitkopf.]]

Thomas Murner, a professor of philosophy at Cracow in 1507, undertook to make use of playing cards for teaching high scholastic science. He published a book which he called [p104] _Logical Playing Cards, or Logic Realized and Made Comprehensible through Pleasant Exercises with Pictures_. The cards were filled with mysterious symbols intended as keys to the entire art of reasoning. The difficult science was adapted to the meanest capacity, by puerile methods which subsequently provoked the contempt of Erasmus. Each card had some pedantic name like Proposition, Predicate or Syllogism. Could there be a more unattractive game?

Eminent German artists—among them Martin Schongauer and the Master of 1466—undertook to supplant the stiff and barbarous figures that had been used on playing cards, with designs of merit. They drew and engraved new face figures of most extraordinary character, in which satirical and poetic fancies were strangely blended. The amorousness of the monks and the coquetry of the ladies, the quarrels of termagants among the peasantry, the revenge of hares who are roasting their enemy man and his friend the dog, are the subjects of some cards. On other German cards of this period are represented, in startling contrast, the sweet and saintly faces of pure women, heroic men riding in triumph, and filthy sows with their litters.

Jost Amman[36] designed, and perhaps engraved, a full pack of cards which was published in book form with explanatory verses in Latin and German. Rejecting the established forms of hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds for the designation of the suites, he substituted books, printers’ inking balls, wine pots and drinking cups. The moral that he endeavored to inculcate was the advantages of industry and learning over idleness and drunkenness. But the intended moral is not as clear as it should be. Some of the figures are exceedingly gross, although they are drawn with admirable skill and spirit.

[From Lacroix.]]

[From Lacroix.]]

[From Lacroix.]]

]

These innovations had but a transient popularity. The people played cards, not for instruction in art, science or [p106] morality, but for amusement, and they would not suffer the games to be diverted from their first purpose of the pleasure of hazard. The old games and the old figures were deeply rooted in their memories and habits. They would have no changes, and there have been none of any importance. The hard conventional figures of king, queen and jack which are to be found on the oldest playing cards have been repeated almost without alteration in the popular cards of every succeeding century. We can readily understand the reasons why the scholastic and scientific games were rejected, but it would be difficult to account for the preference always manifested for coarse outlines and clumsy drawing in the figures.

Although playing cards led to gambling, and to forms of dissipation which required restraint,[37] their general use was not an unmixed evil. To the common people, they were a means of education; a circuitous and a dangerous means, no doubt, but not the less effectual. The medieval churl whose ignorance was so dense that he failed to see the advantages of education, and who would have refused to learn his letters by any persuasion, did perceive that there was amusement in playing cards, and did take the trouble to learn the games. With him, as with little children, the course of instruction began with bright-colored little pictures and the explanation of hidden meanings in absurd-looking little spots or symbols. In the playing of the game, his dull mind was trained to a new and a freer exercise of his reasoning faculties, and he must have been inspired with more of respect for the dimly seen utility of painted or printed symbols. To the multitude of early card players, cards were of no other and no greater benefit as a means of mental discipline. To men of thought and purpose, they taught a more impressive lesson of the value of paper and letters. They induced inquiries that led [p107] to important resolves. If a few arbitrarily arranged signs on bits of paper could greatly amuse a party of friends during a long evening, would not the letters of the alphabet as they were combined in books, furnish a still greater and an unfailing source of amusement?

The meagre notices of card-makers and card-painters in old town-books of Germany and in the decree of Venice do not tell us whether cards were made before or after image prints. Those who have written most learnedly on this subject,[38] tell us that the cards were made before the images; that at first they were drawn and painted by hand; that they were afterward colored by stencils; that when this method was found too slow, blocks were engraved and printed; and that the image prints were subsequently introduced for the purpose of counteracting the evil influences of cards. These propositions are ingenious, but it must be confessed that we have no certain knowledge that the improvement was made in this order. This theory of gradual development is based on conjecture, and its best support is derived from a consideration of the fact that cards were in common use before we have any indications of the existence of image prints. That the cards should have been made by engraving before the images seems reasonable when we consider that the workmanship of the cards was of a much ruder nature. The experimenting amateur who knew that he was unable to cut a block like that of the _St. Christopher_, would readily undertake to engrave the spots and face figures of the earlier cards.

Breitkopf, an expert type-founder and a writer of authority, stands almost alone in his opinion that playing cards were [p108] made after the image prints. He says that the engravers who made cards also made images, and he adds the curious fact that in some places cards and images were called by the same name.[39]

The curt and careless manner in which the business of card-making is mentioned in the old records is an indication that the process used was not novel. We do not find in the writings of any author of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries a statement that the earliest playing cards were made by a new art. That they were made by block-printing at the beginning of the fifteenth century in Italy and Germany seems clearly established. That they were made at a corresponding period in Spain and France, where cards were as common, cannot be proved. It is probable that the Germans derived their knowledge of cards from Italy, but the evidences of an early manufacture by printing are decidedly in favor of southern Germany, a district in which the most famous image prints have been found, and which, at a later period, was the birthplace of many eminent engravers on wood.

[p109]

VI

The Chinese Method of Printing.

Antiquity of Printing among the Chinese . . . Statement of Du Halde . . . Its Perversion . . . First Chinese Method, the Gouging of Letters . . . Didot’s Hypothesis . . . Second Method, of Xylography . . . Third Method, a Combination of Xylography and Typography . . . A Peculiarly Chinese Invention . . . Method now used . . . Its Advantages over Types . . . Chinese Paper . . . Performance of Pressmen . . . Curious Method of Binding . . . Expense of Engraving no hindrance to Chinese Printing . . . The Xylographic Method necessary . . . Chinese Practice in Typography . . . Cheapness of Chinese Books . . . Similarity between the Chinese and the European Methods of Block-Printing . . . The Hypothesis of its Transmission to Europe through Marco Polo, or other Venetian Travelers.

* * * * *

In both arts, writing and printing alike, the Chinese have remained stiff, stolid, and immovable at the first step, With the characteristic unchangeability of the yellow races of Eastern Asia.

_D. F. Bacon._

* * * * *

Many eminent authors are of the opinion that we are indebted to China not only for playing cards, but for the means of making them. They tell us that playing cards could not have been popular, as they were at the beginning of the fifteenth century, if they had not been made by a cheaper process than drawing by hand. The inference attempted is that block-printing and playing cards were brought to Europe together. The reasons presented in support of this opinion are far from conclusive, but they are based on many curious facts which deserve consideration.

The Chinese claims for priority in the practice of block printing have been disallowed by some critics, chiefly because they have been presented in the form of perverted translations. That oriental people practised printing before this art was applied to any useful purpose in Europe is admitted by all who have studied their history. Du Halde, a learned Jesuit father, who traveled in China during the earlier part of the [p110] eighteenth century, was the first author who furnished Europeans with a description of Chinese printing. He quotes the following extract from a Chinese book, supposed to have been written in the reign of the emperor Wu-Wong, who was living 1120 B. C. “As the stone _me_ (Chinese for blacking), which is used to blacken the engraved characters, can never become white, so a heart blackened by vices will always retain its blackness.”[40] This is an allusion to some primitive method of blackening incised characters, for the purpose of making them more legible. It is a method which is still observed in the inscriptions on memorial stones in churches and graveyards. But it is an allusion to engraving and blackening only. There is no mention of printing ink, and no suggestion of printing. Du Halde quoted it only to show the antiquity of engraving, yet it has been used by many authors as a warrant for the assertion that printing was practised in China eleven hundred years before the Christian era. If we could accept this statement, we should have to believe that printing was invented in China but a few years after the siege of Troy, before Rome was founded, before Homer wrote and Solomon reigned. Du Halde’s words do not warrant this statement. He says, with due caution, “In printing, it seemeth that China ought to have the precedence of other nations, for, according to their books, the Chinese have made use of this art for sixteen hundred years,” or since the first century.

The practice of blackening characters was not printing, but it may have led to its development. Du Halde says that the Chinese printed not only on wood blocks, but on tables of “stone of a proper and particular kind.” The writing or design to be printed, while it was still wet with ink, was transferred by pressure from the paper upon which it was written to the smooth surface of a slab of stone. When the [p111] black lines of the writing or design were firmly set on the stone, the paper was peeled off. The black transferred lines were then cut out, or cut below the surface, as they are now done in the copper-plate process. The surface was inked, paper was laid on the stone, and an impression was taken. The result was, the appearance on the paper of the writing or design in white on a field of solid black. This method of cutting out the lines, so that they should appear white in the printed impression, is the simplest form of engraving. It is like that of the boy who cuts his name in the bark of a tree. He finds it easier to gouge out the letters than it is to raise them in high relief. Reasoning from probability, we should say that it should have been the earliest of the methods. Didot believes that it was known to the old Romans.[41] Du Halde says that this method of printing on stone was used chiefly for “epitaphs, pictures, trees, mountains and such like things.” He does not fix the date of its invention, but it was probably the earlier method. Didot says that he had in his [p112] library the portraits of four Chinese emperors of a dynasty which began A. D. 618, and ended during the ninth century, and also some fac-similes of the imperial writings, which were made by the same process.[42]

Sir John Francis Davis, for many years British Minister to China, and author of two valuable books on that country, places the invention of block-printing in China in the tenth century of the Christian era. He attributes the discovery of the art to Foong-Taou, the Chinese minister of state, who had been greatly hindered in the discharge of his duties by his inability to procure exact copies of his writings. After many trials and failures, he dampened a written sheet of paper, and pressed it on a smooth surface of wood until he had produced a fair transfer. He then cut away every part of the surface that did not show the transferred lines, and thus produced a block in relief. The lines in relief were next brushed with ink; a sheet of paper was laid on the block, and impression was applied. The result was, a true fac-simile of his writing, and the birth of block-printing.

There was another Chinese method, which, paradoxical as it may seem, was a combination of xylography and typography. It was invented A. D. 1041, by an ingenious Chinese blacksmith, named Pi-Ching, whose process is thus described by Davis. The inventor first made a thick paste of porcelain clay, and moulded or cut it in little oblong cubes of proper size. On these cubes he carved the Chinese characters that were most frequently used, thereby making movable types. The next process was to bake them in an oven until they were hardened. But the types so made were irregular as to height and as to body. In printers’ phrase, they would not stand together: some would be larger than the standard, others would be too high to paper, and all would be crooked. This difficulty could be remedied only by fixing the types firmly on a surface or bed-plate of unequal elevation. This surface was formed by pouring a melted mixture of wax, lime and [p113] resin on a plate of iron. Pi-Ching then took a stout frame of the size of the page he proposed to print, filled with iron wires in narrow parallels, and placed it on the prepared bed-plate. The types of clay were next forced between the iron wires on the mixture, and pressed close together. Then the plate was put on a furnace and heated until the composition became soft. A planer was put upon the face of the types, to force them down in the composition until they were firmly secured at a uniform height. So treated, the composed types were made as solid as a xylographic block or a stereotype plate. The form was then ready for printing. The method of printing was like that subsequently used for printing blocks engraved on wood, a method that will be described hereafter. When the form had been printed, heat was again applied; the types were withdrawn from the composition, cleaned of ink and adhering composition by the aid of a brush, and put back into a case for future use. Signs and unusual characters not in constant use were wrapped up in paper.

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.

[Furnished by Mr. John F. Marthens of Pittsburgh.]]

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 Mark of The Mark of Jacobus Arnoldus, 1345. Johannes Meynersen, 1435. [From Jackson.] [From Jackson.]]

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]

Mark of Adam de Mark of Edmund Pepyr, Mark of an unknown Walsokne, who died who died 1483. person from a tomb in 1349. [From Jackson.] Lynn.]