PRINCIPAL PRINTING. 



right to the throne. Thus the princes of the houses 

 Orleans and Bourbon Conde were formerly princes 

 of the blood. Louis XIV. also declared his sons 

 by his mistresses La Vahere and Montespan princes 

 of the blood ; but the dignity was taken from them 

 after his death. 



PRINCIPAL, in criminal law. See Accessary. 



PRINTER'S INK. See Ink. 



PRINTING, in a general sense, is the art of 

 making- impressions of figures, characters, or letters, 

 with-. ink, upon paper, vellum, silk, or any similar 

 substance ; in a more particular sense, it is the 

 term applied to that art by which, with single move- 

 able letters or types, any piece of literary composi- 

 tion is converted into a book. Printing, in its ex- 

 tended sense, embraces wood and copperplate en- 

 graving, lithography, and even the decoration of 

 calicoes ; but as these branches of the art have al- 

 ready been treated of under their proper heads, we 

 have only here to consider Printing in its most 

 commonly received meaning, that is, Typography, 

 or the art of printing paper with moveable metal 

 types. 



The first approximation to this most important 

 art, which has changed, more than any other 

 human invention, the moral condition of the world, 

 was undoubtedly made by the Chinese. At what 

 time their style of printing was introduced, it is im- 

 possible to determine ; they themselves claim an 

 antiquity for it long before the commencement of 

 the Christian era, and it is denied by none, even of 

 the Christian writers, that it was fully established in 

 China early in the tenth century, nearly 500 years 

 before printing was contemplated in Europe. The 

 Chinese method of printing, which has remained 

 unaltered for ages, is as follows : The work intend- 

 ed to be printed is transcribed upon thin, transpar- 

 ent paper ; each written sheet is glued, with its 

 face downward, upon a smooth block of wood ; the 

 engraver cuts the wood away in all those parts upon 

 which he finds nothing traced, and thus leaves the 

 transcribed parts ready for printing. Thus, there 

 must be as many blocks as there are pages in a 

 book, and these blocks are not of the least use in 

 printing any other work. The system, however, 

 has one advantage, but no other, in common with 

 stereotype, that by it impressions of a work may be 

 thrown oft' just as required. 



Block-printing in Europe, with single pieces of 

 wood, can be traced back as far as the thirteenth 

 century. The introduction of playing-cards early 

 in the fourteenth century, is supposed to have given 

 an impetus to the art of wood-engraving. From 

 single figures, the professors of the art came to en- 

 grave historical or biblical subjects, some with a 

 text or explanation subjoined, others without a text. 

 Of the former of these, the oldest and most cele- 

 brated extant is the Speculum Humance Salvationist 

 of the latter the Biblia Pauperum. (See a descrip- 

 tion and fac-similes of both in Home's Bibliogra- 

 phy.) These books of Images, as they were called, 

 may be considered as the earliest attempts at book- 

 printing in Europe ; and although there is little 

 likelihood that the practice of the art was derived 

 from China, they resembled Chinese books in one 

 essential point, each leaf being printed from single 

 blocks of wood. The great discovery was yet to 

 be made, which was to emancipate the art from its 

 iixed thraldom, and give it a ductility and power 

 beyond all previous conception the discovery, 

 namely, of the practicability and utility of adopting 

 moveable types. 



ft is a matter of much dispute to whom is due 

 the merit of making this, in its results, unparalleled 

 discovery. Nor, after all that has been written on 



the subject, can a very distinct or satisfactory con- 

 clusion be attained. Many claims have been ad- 

 duced, but the real question seems to lie between 

 those of Laurence Coster of Haerlem, and John 

 Guttenburg or Geinsfleisch of Mentz, ail others be- 

 ing groundless or puerile. The advocates for Haer- 

 lem maintain, chiefly on the authority of Hadrian 

 Junius, who flourished about a hundred years after 

 the introduction of the art, that Laurence Jansoen, 

 under the name of Coster (i. e. sacristan in the 

 great parochial church at Haerlem) as early as 

 1 430, not only practised the art of cutting on wooden 

 tables, but made impressions with moveable types 

 of wood, and afterwards of lead and tin. But no 

 undoubted specimen of his work has come down to 

 us, although the Speculum Humanee Salvationis is 

 said to be his; neither are his claims, on the whole, 

 so satisfactorily established as those of Guttenburg. 

 The best that can be said of him is, that he was, in 

 all probability, an ingenious wood-engraver, who 

 carried the practice of his art to a higher state of 

 perfection than most of his contemporaries, and who 

 even went so far as to employ separate wooden types 

 in the construction of brcadsides for alphabets, bre- 

 viaries, &c. To Guttenburg, according to the 

 opinion of the most numerous and competent judges, 

 belongs the credit of having first employed move- 

 able metal types in the production of books of hav- 

 ing, in short, been the first to supplant the ancient, 

 tedious, and expensive method of manual transcrip- 

 tion by letter-press printing. Guttenburg was a 

 native of Mentz, but his early life was spent at 

 Strasburg, and it is doubtful whether it was in the 

 former or latter city that he first prosecuted his art. 

 (See a notice of his life in this Encyclopedia, under 

 Guttenburg.) The probability is, that he first con- 

 ceived the idea of his invention, and made a few 

 experiments of it at Strasburg, but that it was 

 at Mentz, where, with the aid of Peter Schoeffer of 

 Gronsheim, he first brought the art into practical 

 use. Guttenburg left Strasburg for Mentz in 1445,* 

 and from that period may be dated the commence- 

 ment of the art of printing, although it has been 

 proved that moveable letters in wooden blocks must 

 have been used earlier than 1442. In 1449, Gutten- 

 burg connected himself with a rich citizen in Mentz, 

 named John Fust (Faustus), who advanced the 

 capital necessary to prosecute the business of print- 

 ing. Soon after (probably in 1453) Peter Schoefler, 

 who afterwards became Fust's son-in-law, was taken 

 into copartnership, and to him belongs the merit 

 of inventing matrices for casting types, each in- 

 dividual type having hitherto been cut in wood or 

 metal, This discovery is one of the most invaluable 

 in the history of printing, and so much did it facili- 

 tate the art, that Schoetier, before his death, which 

 is supposed to have taken place about 1492, printed 

 upwards of fifty works. The oldest work, of any 

 considerable size, printed in Mentz with cast letters, 

 by Guttenburg, Faustus, and Schoeffer, finished 

 about 1455, is Guttenburg's Latin Bible, which is 

 called the Forty-two lined Bible, because in every 

 full column it has forty-two lines. Faustus, having 

 separated from Guttenburg in 1456, and, by means 

 of a loan of 2020 florins, having obtained his print- 

 ing-press for his own use, undertook, in connection 

 with Peter Schoefler, greater typographical works, 

 in which the art was carried to higher perfection. 

 Faustus was particularly engaged in the printing of 

 the Latin and German Bible, by the copying of 

 which the monks had hitherto gained considerable 

 sums. As they could not understand this astonishing 



* Among- the authorities we consult, we find much diserf - 

 liancy of dates, and we can only adopt those which appear 

 bust authenticated. 



2x 



