ICO 



PRINTING. 



Printing, where the work was executed. Guttemberg, it may not 

 ""^ "V~*~'' be improper to mention, though separated from Faust, 

 did not remain long unemployed. He found a patron in 

 Conrad Humery, Syndic of Mentz, through whom 

 he opened another printing-office in that city, from 

 which issued several elegant works. His merits ac- 

 quired him the notice and friendship of the Elector 

 Adolphus, from whom he received a pension ; and, 

 after a life of great activity and enterprise, he died in 

 .1468. 



In the art of printing, however, though it had made 

 great progress, an important improvement was yet to 

 l?e made ere the invention could be regarded as com- 

 plete. And Peter Sehoeffer, of whom we have just 

 spoken", was destined to have the honour of filling up 

 this desideratum. Naturally ingenious and inquisitive, 

 Sehoeffer discovered, after repeated trials, that the let- 

 ters might, by means of a matrix, be cast, instead of 

 being cut. Ere he revealed this discovery to any, he 

 privately made matrices for the whole alphabet, and 

 '? when," as we are told, " he showed his master the 

 letters cast from these matrices, Faust was so pleased 

 with the contrivance, that he promised him his only 

 daughter in marriage ; a promise which he soon after- 

 wards performed." This invaluable discovery, which 

 -was made about 1458, forms one of the most remark - 

 .able epochs in the history of printing; and so much 

 and so rapidly did it facilitate the art, that Sehoef- 

 fer, before his death, which is supposed to have taken 

 place about 1492, or the following year, printed up- 

 wards of fifty works. Of these the most celebrated are 

 two editions of Cicero de Officiis, some copies of which 

 are yet to be seen in our public libraries. Sehoeffer 

 and Faust seem to have used only one size of cast 

 letters, as all the large characters in the body of their 

 books, and at the top of the pages, were made from 

 cut types. They at iirst also seem to have printed 

 on vellam, in preference to paper, a practice soon 

 laid aside ; and a few copies only were afterwards 

 printed on vellum as curiosities, or for the purpose 

 ofjbeing brilliantly illuminated. * 



Such, as it seems to us, are the claims which Mentz 

 possesses to the invention of printing. The art was 

 first known and /practised at Harlaem, but Laurentius 

 and his family made use of nothing but wooden types, 

 and the books which Laurentius printed, though not 

 very inaccurate, are clumsy and inelegant. Mentz, 

 therefore, has the honour of bringing the art to perfec- 

 tion. It discovered and introduced the advantages of 

 metal types, first cut and then cast, and is inferior 

 to Harlaem only in as far as the inventor of any 

 art is superior to him who accomplishes improvements 

 on what is already known, or who makes it more easily 

 applicable and useful. It must not be denied, how- 

 ever, that in the edition of the Psalter published in 

 1457, Faust and SchoefFer assume to themselves the 

 merit of a new invention ; but this, we think, has re- 

 ference only to metal types, as they themselves very 

 indirectly allow that printing had been before known, 

 and that they had merely gained an important, and 

 previously unknown step, in the progress of it. And 

 it is extremely improbable, had they really been the 

 original inventors of the art in question, that they 

 would have delayed urging their claims to this distinc- 

 tion (since they urged them at all) tiil the year 1457, 



Claims (;l 

 Stra&buro 



since they might have done so with equal, or rather Printir 

 far greater, propriety fifteen years before that period. ' p -.^- 



The claims of Strasburg come next to be consider- 

 ed, a task by no means difficult to perform. Guttem- 

 berg, who, as formerly mentioned, originally resided 

 at Strasburg, (where his ordinary profession was that 

 of a looking-glass maker, and a polisher of precious 

 stones,) and who afterwards j-ined his brother Geins- 

 fleich at Mentz, is the person whom Strasburg holds 

 out as the inventor of printing. It has been supposed, 

 that, having paid a visit to his brother at Harlaem, 

 Guttemberg, in this way, became acquainted with the 

 success of Laurentius, and that, on his return to Stras- 

 burg, he exerted his utmost ingenuity to put into 

 practice the knowledge thus obtained. How far this 

 opinion is correct cannot now be established ; but it is 

 distinctly proved by Mr. Meerman that all his efforts 

 were ineffectual, a fact which, were it evident from 

 nothing else, is evident from the circumstance of his 

 afterwards removing to Mentz ; for had he been esta- 

 blished as a printer in Strasburg, it is highly impro- 

 bable he would have left a place where his merits must 

 have been so thoroughly known, and where, carrying 

 on business on his own account, he must have been far 

 more successful and prosperous, than as assistant and 

 partner to his brother at Mentz. Even Wimphelin- 

 gius, the earliest writer in favour of Strasburg, admits 

 in hfs Epitome Rerum Germanarum, that the art of 

 printing was found out incomplete by Gutenberg, and 

 that he was not altogether acquainted with it till he 

 had settled at Mentz. And what is indeed a stronger 

 and more irrefragable argument, no writers who sup- 

 port Guttemberg ever speak of any book printed by 

 him. Nor, indeed, is there any proof of a single vo- 

 lume printed at Strasburg till after the year ] 462, a 

 period when, as shall soon be shown, the art was intro- 

 duced into most of the principal towns in Europe. 

 Guttemberg, it may be mentioned, was a man of inge- 

 nuity and talents, but a fanciful theorist and projector; 

 and his speculations had been so absurd or unprofitable 

 that, on his removal to Mentz, he was in a state of in- 

 solvency, and was obliged to dispose of his little pro- 

 perty to lessen or liquidate his debts. 



But the supporters of Strasburg, convinced that 

 the arguments in favour of Guttembergare inconclusive, 

 or anxious to proclaim the praise of another individual, 

 have brought forward another candidate for the honour. 

 Metelius, the person thus distinguished, was, it is not 

 denied, the first that was established in that city as a 

 printer ; but whatever assertions may have been made, 

 there is no proof that he published any works before 

 1462 or 1463, previously to which date the art had not 

 only been practised twenty years at Mentz, but had 

 been brought to a high state of improvement. The 

 claims of Metelius are supported by little or nothing de- 

 serving the appellation of evidence. These claims were 

 first published to the world by Schottus, a grandson of 

 Metelius, likewise a printer at Strasburg, a person to 

 whose word, in such a case, we cannot attach the most 

 implicit confidence, and who rested his opinion on the 

 circumstance that the Emperor Frederick III. had 

 granted him, as the descendant of the inventor of print- 

 ing, the privilege of wearing a coat of arms, descriptive 

 of his honourable descent. This assertion is totally 

 false and unfounded. The art, in question, soon at- 



* SchoefFer, as previously mentioned, died about 1492 ; but how long Faust lived is unknown ; his death, however, must have taken 

 place before 1471, as at that time Schoeffer, his son-in-law, was in partnership with Conrad Henlif. 



