PROTOTYPOGRAPHY. 583 



The new Art of Printing spread rapidly tlirougliout Europe. The 

 learned class everywhere at once discerned its incalculable value. In 

 numerous instances, scholars of the fii'st order associated themselves 

 with the Press, not simply as active patrons, but as editors and cor- 

 rectors, and even as manual participants in its work. And this 

 continued to be the case for several generations after Gutenberg's 

 day. In the monasteries many who had been trained as transcribers 

 and illuminators learned how to set up type, and brought their skill 

 and taste to bear on the printed, instead of the written, sheet. 

 Copies of works on every subject, produced by the new method, 

 began to be in general demand. The same hunger of the mind for 

 more abundant and more satisfying food than it had been long wont 

 to receive, seemed to be everywhere felt. Even in the aged, the 

 mental appetite and curiosity of youth were re -awakened by a sight 

 of the feast of fat things, to which the new art gave unlooked for 

 access. 



In the regions which we now style the Netherlands and Belgium, 

 there were presses at work, before the close of the century which 

 witnessed the birth of printing with metal types, at Utrecht, at 

 Gouda, at Delft^ at Louvain, at Deventer, at Alost, at Antwerp ; 

 and in Germany and German Switzerland at Cologne, at Bamberg, 

 at ISTurembei-g, at Augsburg, at Spires, at Ulm, at Esslingen, at 

 Frankfort, at Basle, and other important towns. 



In France, at Paris, a press was set up in a room of the Sorbonne, 

 in 1478, the services of three Germans, XJlrich Gering, Michael 

 Friburger, and Martin Crantz, having been secured by Dr. Guillaume 

 Fichet of the Sorbonne. Peter Keyser and John Stol, workmen 

 under Gering, soon began printing on their own account, at the 

 sign of the Green Rod, Rue St. Jacques. Some twenty years 

 earlier (1458) the King, Charles YII., had endeavoured to introduce 

 printing at Paris, but Nicholas Jenson, after acquiring the secret at 

 Mayence, at the King's expense, went off with it to Yenice, where he 

 established a press for himself. In 1478, a printer with a French 

 name, Jacques Lachet, brought out Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools at 

 • Paris. In 1473, Guillaume Le Roy and Antoine Vincent were 

 engaged in printing at Lyons; also Klein and Treschel in 1488 at 

 the same place; and at Caen, Robert Mace in 1491. 



From Germany especially, the adepts in the new art scattered 

 themselves like so many apostles, far aiid wide, carrying with them 



