PROTOTYPOaRAPHY. 575 



all countries involve tlie same idea — the transfer of inscriptions and 

 devices by pressure. The Chinese, from an early period, have 

 actually printed, laboriously carving in relief on separate tablets of 

 wood the contents of each page about to be reproduced. And if such 

 was a practice of the Chinese, we may be sure it was the practice also 

 of other Asiatic peoples, equally, if not more civilized, but who have 

 undergone greater vicissitudes. 



In Europe, whether learned from Asia or devised independently, 

 block-printing, just before the invention of the movable types, was 

 well-known, though not practised as extensively as in China, noi* 

 with the same skill and elegance. The manufacture of playing cards 

 was one common application of the process, but a more noble use of 

 it was in the production of books, especially illustrated books, the 

 picture and the description or moralization being all carved on the 

 same wooden plate. The best known European example of an illus- 

 trated volume printed -from carved blocks, prior to the invention of 

 movable types, is the Bihlia Pauperum Freed icatorum, a series of 

 Scripture scenes rudely but boldly drawn, three on a page ; the one in 

 the middle from the New Testament, the other two from the Old ; 

 above and below are a pair of heads representing the prophets from 

 whom respectively texts germane to the New Testament scene are 

 quoted ; all in Latin, with leonine descriptive verses subjoined ; e.g., 

 under a picture of the Adoration of the Magi : Christus adoratur ; 

 aurum, thus, myrrha donatur ; and under the Burning Bush, Lucet et 

 ignescit, sed non rubus igne calescit. Other remarkable early block- 

 books are the Speculum Humance Salvationis, the Ars Moriendi, the 

 Ars Memorandi, the Historice Sancti Johannis Evangelistce, and 

 various editions of Donatus, an elementary Latin grammar. 



But up to 1440, or a little earlier, no one, as it would seem, while 

 contemplating a carved block prepared for an impression, had as yet 

 chanced to carry forward his thoughts just the one step which would 

 have led him to the happy reflection : Seeing that all the words in a 

 page are made up of letters again and again repeated, would it not 

 be practicable, instead of carving perhaps all the letters of the alpha- 

 bet two or three times over in each page, to make separate letters, 

 which might be fastened together so as to form the words contained 

 in one page ; and then, after having done duty in the production of 

 that page, be released, and combined together afresh for the produc- 

 tion of another page ; and so on repeatedly? At length, in 1440, or 



