250 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1738. 



Mattaire, in his AnnalesTypographici, Hagae 17I9, in 4to, p. 4, concludes 

 from the best authors, that our modern art of printing was first thought of 

 about the year 1440. A copy of the book he mentions, ib. p. 13, called Spe- 

 culum nostrge Salutis, being pictures of stories out of the bible, with verses 

 underneath, in Dutch, is in the Stadhouse at Haarlem. Each page was printed 

 from a block of wood, like a sorry wooden cut; and this was the first essay of 

 printing, which hint was taken from engraving, and is what he means p. 4, by 

 typi fixi; after which they soon improved to use separate types, as we do now, 

 which he terms, ibid, typi mobiles. 



This stamp is, in reality, a small frame of fixed types, and prints with our 

 modern printer's ink, which is only a sort of black paint, as readily as any set 

 of letters, cut in the rude manner these are, can be expected to perform. 



We see by this stamp of two lines, that the very essence of printing was 

 known to the Romans, and they had nothing to do but to have made a stamp 

 with lines three or four times as long, and containing twenty instead of two 

 lines, to have formed a frame of types that would have printed a whole page, 

 as well as Coster's wooden blocks, which he used in printing the Speculum 

 Salutis. 



In the first volume of a collection of several pieces of Mr, John Toland, 

 printed Lond. 1726, in 8vo. p. 2Q7, is a small tract of his, entitled, Conjec- 

 tura verosimilis de prima Typographise Inventione, which is founded on the 

 following passage in Cicero, in cap. 20, lib, 2, de Natura Deorum ; where 

 Balbus the stoic uses the following words in an argument against Velleius an 

 Epicurean. 



Hie ego non mirer esse aliquem, qui sibi persuadeat, corpora quaedam solida 

 atque individua vi et gravitate ferri; mundumque effici ornatissimum et pul- 

 cherrimum, ex eorum concursione fortuita ? Hoc qui existimet fieri potuisse, 

 non intelligo cur non idem putet, si innumerabiles unius et viginti formae lite- 

 rarum (vel aureae vel quales libet) aliquo conjiciantur; posse ex his in terram 

 excussis annales Ennii, ut deinceps legi possint, effici; quod nescio an ne in uno 

 quidem versu possit tantum valere fortuna. 



He conjectures that this very passage gave the first hint to the inventors of 

 printing about the year 1445, because they retained even Cicero's name for 

 their types, calling them formae literarum, and made them of metal, as he says, 

 aureae vel quales libet. Moreover, in cap. 10, lib. 3, de Divinatione, Cicero 

 has the very phrase imprimere literas. 



Brands for marking cattle were in use in Virgil's time, Georg. lib. 3, ver. 158, 

 where he says, 



Continuoque notas, et nomina gentis inurunt. 



