The Printed Book - Bouchot Henri

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paper or parchment, laboriously printed from xylographic blocks, that is to say wooden blocks on which a tailleur d'images had left in relief the designs and the letters of the text. He had thus to trace his characters in reverse, so that they could be reproduced as written; he had to avoid faults, because a phrase once done, well or ill, lasted. It was doubtless this difficulty of correction that gave the idea of movable types. If the cutter seriously erred, it was necessary to cancel altogether the faulty block. This at least explains the legend of Laurent Coster, of Haarlem, who, according to Hadrian Junius, his compatriot, discovered by accident the secret of separate types while playing with his children. And if the legend of which we speak contains the least truth, it must be found in the sense above indicated, that is in the correction of faults, rather than in the innocent game of a merchant of Haarlem. However, we shall have occasion to return to the subject of these remarks. It should be well established that engraving in relief on wood alone gave the idea of making xylographic blocks and of composing books. Movable type, the capital point of printing, the pivot of the art of the Book, developed itself little by little, according to needs, when there was occasion to correct an erroneous inscription; but, in any case, its origin is unknown. Doubtless to vary the text, means were found to replace entire phrases by other phrases, preserving the original figures; and thus the light dawned upon these craftsmen, occupied in the manufacture and sale of their books.

      According to Hadrian Junius, Laurent Janszoon Coster (the latter name signifying "the discoverer") published one of the celebrated series of works under the general title of Speculum which was then so popular (the mystic style exercising so great an attraction on the people of the fifteenth century), the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis. Written before the middle of the fifteenth century, made popular by manuscripts, in spite of its fantastic Latinity and of its false quantities, this ascetic and crude poem was easy of access to the xylographists. Junius, as we see, attributes to Laurent Coster the first impression of the Speculum, no longer the purely xylographic impression of the Donatus from an engraved block, but that of the more advanced manner in movable types. In point of fact, this book had at least four editions, similar in engravings and body of letters, but of different text. It must then be admitted that the fount was dispersed, and typography discovered, because the same cast of letters could not be adapted to different languages. On the other hand, the vignettes do not change, indicating sufficiently the mobility of the types. In comparison to what may be seen in later works, the illustrations of the Speculum are by no means bad; they have the appearance, at once naïve and picturesque, of the works of Van Eyck, and not at all of the style of the German miniaturists; properly illuminated and gilded, they lent themselves to the illusion of being confounded with the histoyres, drawn by the hand, and this is what the publisher probably sought.

      All the xylographic works of the fifteenth century may be classed in two categories: the xylographs, rightly so called, or the block books, such as the Donatus, and the books with movable types, like the Speculum, of which we speak. This mystic and simple literature of pious works for the use of people of modest resources found in printing the means of more rapid reproduction. Then appeared the Biblia Pauperum, one of the most celebrated and the most often reproduced, and the Ars Moriendi, a kind of dialogue between an angel and a devil at the bedside of a dying person, which, inspired no doubt by older manuscripts, retained for a long time in successive editions the first tradition of its designs. On labels displayed among the figures are found inscribed the dialogue of the demons and angels seeking to attach to themselves the departing soul, the temptations of Satan on the subject of faith, and the responses of the angel on the same subject.

      We can see what developments this theme could lend to the mysticism of the fifteenth century. Composed in eleven designs, the Ars Moriendi ran up to eight different editions. From the middle to the end of the fifteenth century, the text was in Latin, then in French, under the title L'Art au Morier. In the French edition will be found the blocks that served for the second impression of the work. About 1480, more than fifty years after the first essays, the Ars Moriendi enjoyed so much vogue that it employed all the resources of typography as much as in its earliest days. The original subjects, copied in a very mediocre manner, adorned the text, which was composed in Gothic letters, with a new and more explicit title: Tractatus brevis ac valde utilis de Arte et Scientia bene moriendi (4to, s.l.n.d.), but the order is inverted, figure 5 of the xylograph becoming No. 3 of the edition of 1480.

      The Ars Memorandi, another xylographic work, of which the subject, taken from the New Testament, was equally well adapted to the imagination of the artists, had also a glorious destiny. The work originally comprised thirty blocks, the fifteen blocks of text facing the fifteen engravings. The designs represented the attributes of each of the Evangelists, with allegories and explanatory legends. Thus, in that which relates to the Apostle Matthew,

      No. 1 represents the birth and genealogy of Jesus Christ,

      No. 2 the offerings of the Magi,

      No. 3 the baptism of St. John,

      No. 4 the Temptation of Christ,

      No. 5 the Sermon on the Mount,

      No. 6 the parable of the birds.

      The angel that supports the whole is the emblem of St. Matthew the Evangelist.

      This mnemonic treatment of the Gospels began with symbols of which we have no means of finding the origin, but which without doubt were employed many centuries earlier. However that may be, their success was as great as that of the already-quoted works. In 1505 a German publisher put forth an imitation, under the title of Rationarium Evangelistarum; and this time the copier of the illustrations, retaining the tradition of the first xylographers, no less reveals an artist of the first order, at least a pupil of Martin Schongauer. Some of the conceptions of the Rationarium recall exactly the engravings of the great German master, among others that of the Infant Jesus (plate 12), which nearly approaches the style of the Infant Jesus of Schongauer; besides, the principal figures leave but little doubt on the subject. The same wings are on the angels and on the eagles, the same coiffures on the human characters, often the same attitudes.

      From the preceding can be judged the extraordinary favour these productions enjoyed. From their origin they were diffused through the whole of Europe, and attracted the attention of excellent artists. Nevertheless their beginnings were difficult. The movable types used, cut separately in wood, were not constituted to give an ideal impression. We can understand the cost that the execution of these characters must have occasioned, made as they were one by one without the possibility of ever making them perfectly uniform. Progress was to substitute for this irregular process types that were similar, identical, easily produced, and used for a long time without breaking. Following on the essays of Laurent Coster, continuous researches bore on this point; but as the invention was said to be his, and it being of importance to him not to divulge it, so that he should not lose his profit, much time was lost over it in his workshop without much success. Here history is somewhat confused. Hadrian Junius positively accuses one of Laurent Coster's workmen of having stolen the secrets of his master and taken flight to Mayence, where he afterwards founded a printing office. According to Junius, the metal type was the discovery of the Dutchman, and the name of the thief was John. Who was this John? Was it John Gaensefleisch, called Gutenberg, or possibly John Fust? But it is not at all apparent that Gutenberg, a gentleman of Mayence, exiled from his country, was ever in the service of the Dutch inventor. As to Fust, we believe his only intervention in the association of printers of Mayence was as a money-lender, from which may be comprehended the unlikelihood of his having been with Coster, the more so as we find Gutenberg retired to Strasbourg, where he pursued his researches. There he was, as it were, out of his sphere, a ruined noble whose great knowledge was bent entirely on invention. Doubtless, like many others, he may have had in his hands one of the printed works of Laurent Coster, and conceived the idea of appropriating the infant process. In 1439 he was associated with two artisans of the city of Strasbourg, ostensibly in the fabrication of mirrors, which may be otherwise understood as printing of Speculums, the Latin word signifying the same thing. These men needed to surround themselves with precautions; printing was as yet only a practical means of multiplying manuscripts, to impose a little on the innocent, and fortune awaited him who, without saying anything, made this invention serve him. The following will prove this, as well

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