PRINTING IN ANTIQUITY 585 



ber of each large enough to supply the reading demand had been turned 

 out in manuscript. The literary output of new works in the Roman 

 Empire was, from our modern standpoint, extraordinarily small. Aside 

 from a few romances nothing existed in prose which would fall under 

 our head of fiction. More than this, the output of scientific, descriptive 

 and even historical writings was scanty in the extreme. Poetry, satire, 

 philosophy and religion seem to have made up the greatest part of the 

 output of new books in the Roman shops. Reading never became in the 

 Roman Empire the necessity it has been to an educated man for many 

 centuries past. Those who read habitually in the empire were the 

 school children and scholars, and the wants of these last were supplied 

 by the great libraries of Alexandria, Athens and Rome. Reading and 

 writing were to others rarely more than a means of communication and 

 of casting accounts or other commercial business. 



Nevertheless, had printing been invented in the Roman Empire it 

 would, no doubt, in the end, have created a demand for the books which 

 it would almost certainly have called into being. Now the idea of 

 typography, to nations possessing an alphabet, is so obvious that its 

 failure to appear at all in Rome seems at first puzzling. Commercial 

 enterprises are frequently started with no more prospect of gain than a 

 printing office, if ready for work, would have faced in Rome. The real 

 reason why in the conditions in the Roman Empire printing did not 

 appear at all is revealed when we turn to the history of the early print- 

 ers who invented the art in the fifteenth century. Though the idea of 

 typography is obvious, the means first to make the idea actual were, we 

 find, very far indeed from being so. Obscure though the early history 

 of the art is, it is certain that effort after effort was made by several 

 small groups of men in Holland and on the borders of Germany to 

 make a commercial success of printing in the years between 1420 and 

 1450. The difficulties they encountered were manifold — a workable 

 ink, a press which would give even impressions, but, most of all, type, 

 both as regards its cutting or its casting and as regards its wear, we 

 find giving them endless difficulties. We get some idea of the labors 

 connected with the invention when we find Gutenburg trying to print 

 at Strasburg as early as 1436. About 1442 he went to Mayence. There 

 he exhausted his means in various experiments. In turn he took up 

 and laid aside the different processes he had tried — xylography, movable 

 types of cast iron, wood and lead. He invented new tools and experi- 

 mented with a press made on the principle of a wine-press. He began 

 work on nearly a dozen books and could finish none of them. In 1450 

 he entered into partnership with John Fust, a rich goldsmith of May- 

 ence. Fust agreed to advance Gutenburg 800 gold florins for the manu- 

 facture of implements and tools and 300 for other expenses. In 1451 

 Peter Schoeffer, an employee in the establishment, at last hit on a 



VOL. LXXIX. — 40. 



