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 FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

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with dark clouds; now the pure tranquil stream, and then the foaming, raging sea; that here he is to express the character of the mau, strongly marked m his countenance, and there the mi- nutest ornament of his dress; in a word, that he is to represent all, even the most difficult objects in nature; we cannot sufficiently admire the Tast improvements in this art, and that degree of perfection to which it is at this day arrived. — Lemaitu.

Of the different modes of engraving, and the date of their invention, with notices of those who hare improved the art, will be found under their respective dates.

1462. Faust and SchoefTer published a Latin Bible, in 2 vols, folio. This is the first edition with a date, and like all other early typographical productions, is of extreme rariety and value. The copies of this bible on paper, are even more rare than those on vellum, or which last, more, probably, were printed, that they might have the greater resemblance to manuscripts, which the first printers endeavoured to imitate ns much as possible. Lambiaet,in his Recherches sur P origine ae r imprimerie, says, " it is certain that from the year 1463, Faust, SchoefTer, and their partners, sold or exchanged, in Germany, Italy, France, and the most celebrated universities, the great number of books which they had printed; and whenever they cov\d,sold them as mantucriptt. As proofs of which, it may be remarked, 1st. That we know of no work that issued from their press, betwixt the bible of 1462, and the first edition of Cicero de Officiis, in 1465. 2nd. Gabriel Nande informs us, that he brought to Paris a considerable number of copies of the bible, of 1462. As they were on parchment, and the capital letters illu- minated with blue, and purple, and gold, after the manner of ancient manuscripts, he sold them as such, at sixty crowns. But those who first purchased copies, comparing them together, soon found that they exactly resembled each other : afterwards they learned that Faust had sold a great number of copies, and had lowered the price, first to forty, and then to twenty crowns. The fraud being thus discovered, he was pursued by the officers of justice, and forced to fly from Paris, and return to Mentz; but not finding him- self safe, he again quitted Mentz, and withdrew to Stxasburg, where, it is supposed, he taught the art to John Mentilius. The facility with which Faust thus supplied bibles for sale, is said to have caused him to be accounted a necromancer; and to have given rise to the well-kuown stoiy of the Devil and Dr. Faustus. Others have called the truth of this in question, and remarked that there was a Faustus living at the same period, who wrote a poem De injtuentia Syderum, which, with a number of other tracts, was printed at Paris, per Guido Mercator, 1496." His proper name was Puhlius Faustus Andrelinus Foroliviencis, but he called himself, and his friends in their letters to him called him, Faustus.

Faust, when he could no longer prevent a dis- covery, ^ves an account of the inventors, and the nunner in which the books were done, and throws

some light upon the affair, by placing at the end of his book the following colophon or inscription; " This present work, with all its embellishments, &c. was done not with pen and ink, &c. but by a new invented art of casting letters, printing, Sec. by me John Faust, and my son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer, in the famous city of Mentz, upon the Rhine, anno

Next to the Latin bible, we have five several impressions, which were certainly made between the years 1457 and 1466. The first of these, which is omitted in all the lists of the early books that were printed before Lambeck's catalogue of the Vienna library, the Mentz's P»o//er, of 1457. The second is the Rationale Divinorum Officio- rvm, written by William Durand, and printed at Mentz, upon vellum, two years after the Psalter. The Durandi Rationale was the first book printed with the improved types {cast metal) the work of Faust and Schoeffer. They seem to have had only one size of cast letters, all the larger charac- ters which Faust gave him his daughter in mar- riage, and thus he became heir to his father-in- law's office, presses, &c.

The third is the C<i<Ao?tcon, aLatin vocabulary, printed at Mentz, in 1460, for the second time; for the first impression was done upon wood. This book was likewise in the earl of Pembroke's librarv; it is in large folio, and beautifully print- ed. This CathoUcon is a kind of grammar, com- piled by John of Genoa, a Dominican friar, 1286. It is divided into four parts, the last of which contains a dictionary of Latin words, digested alphabetically. There have been several editions of^ it in folio,' as Chevillier informs us, who saw two of them; one very old, and without date; the other printed at Paris, 1506, by Jodocus Ba- dius. Another impression of it is done at Lyons by Antony Du Ry, 1520, and augmented by Peter Gille. Furetiere, therefore, was led into a palpable error, when he affirmed, after Dr. Mental, and Father Jacob, a Carmelite, that the fii'st printed book, de Ritibus Ecclesue, printed 1461; a Bible printed anno 1462; St. Austin de Civitate Dei; and Tully Offices; seeing here are no less than four printed books before the oldest of them; besides, this book, de Ritibus Ecclesi<e. was not written by William Durand, but by John Stephen Durand, who was first president of the parliament oi Thoulouse, and is, therefore, a different book from Durand's Rationale, and of a much later date.

The fourth is the second edtion of the Latin bible, in folio, 1462, with the following inscrip- tion at the end : — " This present work was finished and perfected, for the service of God, in the city of Mentz, by John Faust, citizen, and Peter Schoeffer de Gemsbeim, clerk of the same diocese; it was completed in the year of our Lord's incarnation MCCCCLXII, on the eve of the assumption of the glorious Virgin Mary."

The fifth is Tully's Offices, printed at Mentz, 1465, though some editions have a later date by one, and others by two years, all of which wen printed at Mentz, with the same inscription in every respect, as we shall shew immediately. It

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