SQ8 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS 



SECTION VI. 



Origin and Progrcts of Printing. 



As the invention or rather the introduction of printing into Ku. 

 rope has been attended with the most beneficial advantages to man- 

 kind, some account of the origin and progress of that art may be 

 acceptable. 



It has not been pretended that the art of printing books was ever 

 practised by the Romans, and yet the names they stamped on their 

 earthen vessels were in effect nothing else but printing, and the 

 letters on the matrices or stamps used for making these impressions 

 were necessarily reversed, as printing types; several of these ma- 

 trices are extant in the British Museum, and in other places, which 

 are cut out of, or are cast in one solid piece of metal. 



Many hundred pieces of the Roman pottery, impressed with 

 these stamps have been found in the sands near Reculver in Kent, 

 and on the eastern side of the Isle of Shepway, where they are fre. 

 quently dragged up by the fishermen. The art of impressing le- 

 gends upon coins is nothing more than printing on metals. 



It is generally allowed, that printing from wooden blocks has been 

 practised in China for many centuries. According to the accounts 

 of the Chinese, and of P. Jovius, Osorius, and several other Euro- 

 peans, printing began there about the year of Christ 927, in the 

 reign of Ming-Tcoung, the second emperor under the dynasty of 

 Heou-Thang: several of these blocks, which are cut upon ebony, 

 or on wood exceedingly hard, are now in England. The Ilistoria 

 Sinensis of Abdalla, written in Persic in 1317, speaks of it as an 

 art in very common use. Our countryman, Sir John Chardin, in 

 his Travels, confirms these accounts. 



Printing then may be considered as an Asiatic, and not a Euro- 

 pean invention. 



The first printing in Europe was from wooden blocks, whereon 

 a whole page was carred exactly in the same manner as is now 

 practised by the Chinese, who print only on one side of their 

 paper, because it is so exceedingly thin, that it will not bear the 

 impression of their characters on both sides. 



The earlier printers in Europe printed only on one side of the 

 paper for some time after the introduction of the art ; they pasted 

 the blank sides together, which made them appear as one leaf. 



