THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. PRINTING remained as long as its first artificers could keep it a secret and occult art; and it is the only one that ceaselessly operates all the miracles which the others had vainly promised. - Who first thought to carve the wooden immoveable letters on blocks? to stamp the first sheet which ever was imprinted? Or who, second in invention, but first in utility, imagined to cast the metal with fusile types, separate from each other? — to fix this scattered alphabet in a form, and thus by one stroke write a thousand manuscripts, and, with the identical letters, multiply not a single work, but all sorts of works hereafter ? Was it fortunate chance, or deliberate meditation, or both in gradual discovery, which produced this invention? In truth, we can neither detect the rude beginnings, nor hardly dare to fix on the beginThe Origines Typographicæ are, even at this late hour, provoking a fierce controversy, not only among those who live in the shades of their libraries, but with honest burghers; for the glory of patriotism has connected itself with the invention of an art which came to us like a divine ners. are the revelation in the history of man. But the place, the mode, and the person the invention and the inventor subjects of volumes! Votaries of Fust, of Schöffer, of Gutenberg, of Costar! A sullen silence or a deadly feud is your only response. Ye jealous cities of Mentz, of Strasburg, and of Haarlem, each of ye have your armed champion at your gates !* *The city of Haarlem designs to erect a statue of Costar; thus publicly, in the eyes of Europe, to vindicate the priority of this Inventor of Typography. But a statue is not the final argument which, like the canon of monarchs (that ultima ralio regum), will carry conviction on the spot it is placed. Mentz has already erected a The mystical eulogist of the art of printing, who declared that "the invention came from heaven," was not more at a loss to detect the origin than those who have sought for it among the earliest printers.* Learned but angry disputants on the origin of printing, what if the art can boast of no single inventor, and was not the product of a single act? Consider the varieties of its practice, the change of wood to metal, the fixed to the movable type; view the complexity of its machinery; repeated attempts must often have preceded so many inventions ere they terminated in the great one. From the imperfect and contradictory notices of the early essays - and of the very earliest we may have no record we must infer that the art, though secret, was progressive, and that many imperfect beginnings were going on at the same time in different places. Struck by the magnitude and the magnificence of the famous Bible of Fust, some have decided on the invention of the art by one of its most splendid results; this, however, is not in the usual course of human affairs, nor in the nature of things. "The art of printing," observes Dr. Cotton, in his introduction, "was brought almost to perfection in its infancy; so that, like Minerva, it may be said to have sprung to life, mature, vigorous, and armed for war." But in the article "Moguntia, or Mentz," this acute statue of Gutenberg. I have no doubt that, in the present state of agitation, both these statues will have much to say to one another, as the mystical Pasquin and Marforio of typography. "Some Observations on the Use and Original of the noble Art and Mystery of Printing, by F. Burges; Norwich, 1701." This is declared to be the first book printed at Norwich; where it appears that the establishment of a printing-office, so late as in 1701, encountered a stern opposition from its sage citizens. The writer did not know that as far back as 1570, a Dutch printer had exercised the novel art by printing religious books for a community of Dutch emigrants who had taken refuge at Norwich, according to the recent discovery of Dr. Cotton in his "Typographical Gazetteer". ume abounding with the most vigorous researches. a vol researcher states that "after all that has been written with such angry feelings upon the long-contested question of the origin of the art of printing, Mentz appears still to preserve the best-founded claim to the honor of being the birth-place of the typographic art; because," he adds, "the specimens adduced in favor of Haarlem and Strasburg, even if we should allow their genuineness, are confessedly of a rude and imperfect execution." We require no other evidence of the important fact, that the art, in its early stages, had to pass through many transitions - from the small school-books, or Donatuses, of Costar, to the splendid Bible of Fust. Had the art been borrowed or stolen from a single source, according to the popular tradition, the works would have borne a more fraternal resemblance, and have evinced less inferiority of execution; but if several persons at the same time were working in secrecy, each by his own method, their differences and their inferiority would produce "the rude and imperfect specimens." Mr. Hallam has suffered his strong emotion on the greatness of the invention to reflect itself back on the humble discoverers themselves; and, unusual with his searching inquiries, calls once more on with a more celestial panoply. ors of this great art tried, at the as the printing an entire Bible. earth, in her divine strength and radiant armor, ready at the moment of her nativity to subdue and destroy her enemies."* The Bible called the Mazarine Bible, thus distinguished from having been found in the Cardinal's library, remains still a miracle of typography, not only for its type, but for the quality of the paper and the sparkling blackness of its ink. The success of the art was established by this Bible; but the goldsmith Fust, who himself was no printer, was no otherwise "high-minded," than by the usurious * Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe, i., 211. Dr. Cotton's Minerva, but "The high-minded inventvery outset, so bold a flight It was Minerva leaping on Twenty copies of this famous Bible exist; one is preserved in our Royal Library. prices he speculated on for this innocent imposture of vending what was now a printed book for a manuscript copy! No refined considerations of the nature and the universal consequences of their discovery seem to have instigated the earliest printers; this is evident, by the perpetual jealousy and the mystifying style by which they long attempted to hide that secret monopoly which they had now obtained. The first notions of printing might have reached Europe from China. Our first block-printing seems imitated from the Chinese, who print with blocks of wood on one side of the paper, as was done in the earliest essays of printing; and the Chinese seem also to have suggested the use of a thick black ink. European traders might have imported some fugitive leaves; their route has even been indicated, from Tartary, by the way of Russia; and from China and Japan, through the Indies and the Arabian Gulf. The great antiquity of printing in China has been ascertained. Du Halde and the missionary Jesuits assert, that this art was practised by the Chinese half a century before the Christian era! At all events, it is evident that they exercised it many centuries before it was attempted in Europe. The history of gunpowder would illustrate the possibility of the same extraordinary invention occurring at distinct periods. Roger Bacon indicated the terrible ingredients a hundred years before the monk Schwartz, about 1330, actually struck out the fiery explosion, and had the glory of its invention. Machines to convey to a distance the thunder and the lightning described by their discoverers were not long after produced. But it would have astonished these inventors to have learned, that guns had been used as early as the year 85 A. D., and that the fatal powder had been invented previously by the Chinese. Well might the philosophical Langles be struck by "the singular coincidence of the invention in Europe of the compass, of gunpowder, and of printing, about the same period, within a century." These three mighty agents in human affairs have been traced to that wary and literary nation, who, though they prohibit all intercourse with "any barbarian eye," might have suffered these sublime inventions to steal away over "their great wall." What has happened to the art of printing also occurred to the sister art of engraving on copper. Tradition had ascribed the invention as the accidental discovery of the goldsmith Maso Finiguerra. But the Germans insist that they possess engravings before the days of the Italian artist; and it is not doubtful that several of the compatriots of Finiguerra were equally practising the art with himself. Heinecken would arbitrate between the jealous patriots; he concedes that Vasari might ascribe the invention of the art in Italy to Finiguerra, yet that engraving might have been practised in Germany, though unknown in Italy. Buonarotti, the great judge of all art, was sensible that in this sort of invention every artist makes his own discoveries. Alluding to the art of engraving, he says, "it would be sufficient to ocasion our astonishment, that the ancients did not discover the art of chalcography, were it not known that discoveries of this sort generally occur accidentally to the mechanics in the exercise of their calling." On this principle we may confidently rest. All the early printers, like the rivals of Finiguerra at home, and his unknown concurrents in Germany, were proceeding with the same art, and might urge their distinct claims. The natural magic of concave and convex lenses, those miracles of optical science, one of which searches nature when she eludes the eye, and the other approximates the remotest star the microscope and the telescope; who were their inventors, and how have those inventions happened? These instruments appeared about the same time. The Germans ascribe the invention of the microscope to a Dutchman, one Drebell; while the Neapolitan Fontana claims the anterior invention; but which Viviani, the * Ottley's "Inquiry into the Early History of Engraving." |