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Henry Hallam (1777-1859). The First Books Printed in Europe. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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Henry Hallam (1777-1859). The First Books Printed in Europe. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. The First Books Printed in Europe
By Henry Hallam (1777–1859) From “Introduction to the Literature of Europe,” Part I., Chap. iii.

ABOUT the end of the fourteenth century we find a practice of taking impressions from engraved blocks of wood; sometimes for playing cards, which were not generally used long before that time, sometimes for rude cuts of saints. The latter were frequently accompanied by a few lines of letters cut in the block. Gradually entire pages were impressed in this manner; and thus began what are called block books, printed in fixed characters, but never exceeding a very few leaves. Of these there exist nine or ten, often reprinted, as it is generally thought, between 1400 and 1440. In using the word Printed, it is of course not intended to prejudice the question as to the real art of printing. These block books seem to have been all executed in the Low Countries. They are said to have been followed by several editions of the short grammar of Donatus. These also were printed in Holland. This mode of printing from blocks of wood has been practiced in China from time immemorial.

1   The invention of printing, in the modern sense, from movable letters, has been referred by most to Gutenberg, a native of Mentz, but settled at Strasburg. He is supposed to have conceived the idea before 1440, and to have spent the next ten years in making attempts at carrying it into effect, which some assert him to have done in short fugitive pieces, actually printed from his movable wooden characters before 1450. But of the existence of these, there seems to be no evidence. Gutenberg’s priority is disputed by those who deem Lawrence Costar of Haarlem the real inventor of the art. According to a tradition, which seems not to be traced beyond the middle of the sixteenth century, but resting afterwards upon sufficient testimony to prove its local reception, Costar substituted movable for fixed letters as early as 1430; and some have believed that a book called “Speculum Humanæ Salvationis,” of very rude wooden characters, proceeded from the Haarlem press before any other that is generally recognized. The tradition adds that an unfaithful servant, having fled with the secret, set up for himself at Strasburg or Mentz; and this treachery was originally ascribed to Gutenberg or Fust, but seems, since they have been manifestly cleared of it, to have been laid on one Gensfleisch, reputed to be the brother of Gutenberg. The evidence, however, as to this is highly precarious; and even if we were to admit the claims of Costar, there seems no fair reason to dispute that Gutenberg might also have struck out an idea, which surely did not require any extraordinary ingenuity, and left the most important difficulties to be surmounted, as they undeniably were, by himself and his coadjutors.

2   It is agreed by all that about 1450 Gutenberg, having gone to Mentz, entered into partnership with Fust, a rich merchant of that city, for the purpose of carrying the invention into effect, and that Fust supplied him with considerable sums of money. The subsequent steps are obscure. According to a passage in the “Annales Hirsargienses” of Trithemius, written sixty years afterwards, but on the authority of a grandson of Peter Schæffer, their assistant in the work, it was about 1452 that the latter brought the art to perfection, by devising an easier mode of casting types. This passage has been interpreted, according to a lax construction, to mean that Schæffer invented the method of casting types in a matrix; but seems more strictly to intimate that we owe to him the great improvement in letter casting, namely, the punches of engraved steel, by which the matrices or molds are struck, and without which, independent of the economy of labor, there could be no perfect uniformity of shape. Upon the former supposition Schæffer may be reckoned the main inventor of the art of printing; for movable wooden letters, though small books may possibly have been printed by means of them, are so inconvenient, and letters of cut metal so expensive, that few great works were likely to have passed through the press till cast types were employed. Van Praet, however, believes the Psalter of 1457 to have been printed from wooden characters; and some have conceived letters of cut metal to have been employed both in that and in the first Bible. Lambinet, who thinks “the essence of the art of printing is in the engraved punch,” naturally gives the chief credit to Schæffer; but this is not the more usual opinion.

3   The earliest book, properly so called, is now generally believed to be the Latin Bible, commonly called the Mazarin Bible, a copy having been found, about the middle of the last century, in Cardinal Mazarin’s library at Paris. It is remarkable that its existence was unknown before; for it can hardly be called a book of very extraordinary scarcity, nearly twenty copies being in different libraries, half of them in those of private persons in England. No date appears in this Bible, and some have referred its publication to 1452, or even to 1450, which few, perhaps, would at present maintain; while others have thought the year 1455 rather more probable. In a copy belonging to the Royal Library at Paris an entry is made importing that it was completed in binding and illuminating at Mentz, on the Feast of the Assumption (Aug. 15), 1456. But Trithemius, in the passage above quoted, seems to intimate that no book had been printed in 1452; and, considering the lapse of time that would naturally be employed in such an undertaking during the infancy of the art, and that we have no other printed book of the least importance to fill up the interval till 1457, and also that the binding and illuminating the above-mentioned copy is likely to have followed the publication at no great length of time, we may not err in placing its appearance in the year 1455, which will secure its hitherto unimpeached priority in the records of bibliography.

4   It is a very striking circumstance that the high-minded inventors of this great art tried at the very outset so bold a flight as the printing 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. The Mazarin Bible is printed, some copies on vellum, some on paper of choice quality, with strong, black, and tolerably handsome characters, but with some want of uniformity, which has led, perhaps unreasonably, to a doubt whether they were cast in a matrix. We may see in imagination this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on the new art, by dedicating its first fruits to the service of heaven.

5   A metrical exhortation, in the German language, to take arms against the Turks, dated in 1454, has been retrieved in the present century. If this date unequivocally refers to the time of printing, which does not seem a necessary consequence, it is the earliest loose sheet that is known to be extant. It is said to be in the type of what is called the Bamberg Bible, which we shall soon have to mention. Two editions of Letters of indulgence from Nicolas V., bearing the date of 1454, are extant in single printed sheets, and two more editions of 1455; but it has justly been observed that even if published before the Mazarin Bible, the printing of the great volume must have commenced long before. An almanac for the year 1457 has also been detected; and as fugitive sheets of this kind are seldom preserved, we may justly conclude that the art of printing was not dormant so far as these light productions are concerned. A Donatus, with Schæffer’s name, but no date, may or may not be older than a Psalter published in 1457 by Fust and Schæffer (the partnership with Gutenberg having been dissolved in November, 1455, and having led to a dispute and litigation), with a colophon, or notice, subjoined in the last page, in these words:—          “Psalmorum codex venustate capitalium decoratus, rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus, adinventione artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi, absque calami ulla exaratione sic effigiatus, et ad eusebiam Dei Industrie est summatus. Per Johannem Fust, civem Moguntinum, et Petrum Schæffer de Gernsheim, anno Domini millesimo cccclvii. In vigilia Assumptionis.”

6   A colophon, substantially similar, is subjoined to several of the Fustine editions. And this seems hard to reconcile with the story that Fust sold his impressions at Paris, as late as 1463, for manuscripts.

7   Another Psalter was printed by Fust and Schæffer with similar characters in 1459; and, in the same year, “Durandi Rationale,” a treatise on the liturgical offices of the church; of which Van Praet says that it is perhaps the earliest with cast types to which Fust and Schæffer have given their name and date. The two Psalters he conceives to have been printed from wood. But this would be disputed by other eminent judges. In 1460 a work of considerable size, the “Catholicon” of Balbi, came out from an opposition press established at Mentz by Gutenberg. The Clementine Constitutions, part of the canon law, were also printed by him in the same year.

8   These are the only monuments of early typography acknowledged to come within the present decennium. A Bible without a date, supposed by most to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg, though ascribed by others to Gutenberg himself, is reckoned by good judges certainly prior to 1462, and perhaps as early as 1460. Daunou and others refer it to 1461. The antiquities of typography, after all the pains bestowed upon them, are not unlikely to receive still further elucidation in the course of time.

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