598 PROTOT YPOGK APHT. 



partner named Hunt, who probably was the person who put forth a 

 volume without a printer's name two years previously. The date of 

 this book reads "mccclxvi;" out of which an "x" has dropped, a 

 mishap which has befallen printed dates in other instances. In 1671 

 books printed iinder the auspices of the University began to be dated 

 '' E Theatro Sheldoniano," a practice which continued more or less 

 until the establishment of the Clarendon. In 1480, also, books were 

 being printed at St. Albans by the "Schoolmaster" of the Monastery 

 there. At Cambridge, John Siberch, a German, was printing in 

 1521, Erasmus himself being a resident in the University at the 

 same time. It was John Legate, a distinguished pi^inter here in 

 1589, who first made use of the device still to be seen in the Cam- 

 bridge books— a figure of Alma Mater Cantabrigia standing behind 

 an altar with streaming breasts, and holding in one hand a sun, in 

 the other a chalice, with an encircling legend of Hie lucem et pocida 

 sacra. At York, a Hollander, Hugo Goes, was printing in 1506 ; at 

 Canterbury, John Mytchell was similarly engaged in 1550. A press 

 was established in Edinburgh in 1507, under the auspices of James 

 TV. In Dublin, printing was introduced in 1551. 



After the manner then just narrated sprang up the pre-eminently 

 human art of type-printing ; after the manner just narrated did it 

 begin to spread. The rude wooden letters of the Haarlem block- 

 printei", slowly carved with the hand, were quickly transformed into 

 the magnificent metal characters of Gutenburg and Schoefier, cut and 

 cast with a finish, and impressed on paper and vellum with an efiect 

 which have never been surpassed. The adaptation of the invention 

 to the intellectual wants of men was instantly, universally recognized. 

 The appliances indeed by means of which these nimble ministers of 

 man's wit are made to do their oflS.ce, have undei-gone mighty changes. 

 The primitive wooden wine-press of the Rhineland, with its screw 

 and movable bar, gave the first idea of the apparatus required ; nay, 

 perhaps, in some cases was extemporized into the apparatus required. 

 And grievous for a time was the wear even on the hardest type by 

 the brute power of such a machine. Bleaw, of Amsterdam, an 

 ingenious and scientific man, in 1601, civilized some of the first 

 contrivances ; but it was not until the beginning of the 19th century 

 that the Stanhope press was constructed, made wholly of iron, and 

 doing its work to perfection by means of delicate adjustments of 

 pressure through spii'al springs and the nicely calculated action of 



