Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/962

 NINETEENTH CENTURY.

»55

This work cannot be better concluded than by taking a retrospective glance on the subjects of so many years, in which we have, however im- perfectly, endeavoured to trace the origin, pro- gress, and present state of literature, as con- nected with the invention and utility of the art of printing — an invention which is the rock of civil and religious liberty; an invention which has been the means of establishing the liberty of opinion and the liberty of conscience, thereby ameliorating the condition of the great mass of the people. Wherever the liberty of the press has been permanently fixed, and the diffusion of knowledge has extended its blessings, mankind have become both happier and wiser.

Without retracing our steps upon the ques- tions which form the early portion of the work, such as the origin of speech, or the figurative but highly expressive language of the Old Testa- ment ; the original use of hieroglyphics among the Egyptians; the kiln-burnt bricks of the Phoenecians ; the picture language of the Mexi- cans ; the Knotted cord of the Peruvians ;* or the bark of the Scandinavians. Without rekindling the classic fire of the Grecian bard, or breaking the spell of Cicero's oration or Virgil's song, amidst the luxuries and the vices of ancient Rome. Without tracing the aboriginal Briton, from his dominion under the Druid priesthood, till taught the arts of civilized life by his nor- thern conquerors, or receiving the blessings of religion and truth from Austin's lips, or till Alfred the wise and good laid the foundation of the future literary fame of his country. He

" who first could feel For leuminK's pure delishts a holy zeal ; Who first the ever-wasting lamp renewed. Wrapt In the joys of thoughtful solitude ; And raised the temple on eternal base. To knowledge sacred and the human race.*'

It may be proper to show the state of knowledge during the middle ages, when " learning trium- phed o'er her barbarous foes." When wander- ing stars, amidst the night of ages, shot through the settled gloom, emitting a faint light of the coming day of knowledge ; when polemic school- men derived their ill-digested learning, wrang- ling about bubbles and atoms; or poets peopling their poems and romances with giants, dragons, and necromancers, or the more delicate progeny of fairies, gnomes, sylphs, and salamanders. But it must be allowed, that the noblest productions of the muse appeared in the middle ages ; be- tween gross barbarism and voluptuous refine- ment, when the human mind yet possessed strong traits of its primeval grandeur and simplicity ; but divested of its former ferociousness, and chastened by courteous manners, felt itself rising in knowledge, virtue, and intellectual superiority. Of the literature of these times it may gene-

Qiupoet now open for publir opinion. London, printed it, J. Phair, Weatmintter, 1827, Mo. pp. 18. The reader is referred to vol. xi, page 228 of the Weitmintter Revieui, for a very Interesting article upon this curious mode of commonieating ideas before the invention of printing
 * A Pmpectut of the Quipola, or an eiptanation of the

rally be said, that it was "voluminous and vast." Princes, nobles, and even priests, were then ignorant of the alphabet. The number of authors was proportionally small, and the sub- jects on which they wrote were of the driest nature in polemics — such were the subtleties of the schoolmen ; of the most extravagant charac- ter in the paths of imagination — such were the romances of chivalry, the legends and songs of the troubadours ; and of the most preposterous tendency in philosophy, so called such were the treatises on magic, alchymy, judicial astrology, and the metaphysics. Few persons read but those who were devoted to reading, by an ir- resistible passion or professional necessity, and few wrote but those who were equally impelled by an inveterate instinct : great books were the natural produce of the latter, who knew not how to make little ones ; and great books were requisite to appease the voracity of the former, who for the most part were rather gluttons than epicures in their taste for literature. The common people, under such circumstances, could feel no interest, and derive no advantage from the labours of the learned, which were equally beyond their pur- chase and their comprehension. Their only mode of instruction was by pageants, mysteries,* and moralities, — by the recitations of wandering minstrels — by popular songs and ballads, or by common conversation. Then books of holy writ were chained in the cloister. Then

" Gorgeous fanes and palaces inclosed The sacred trust — for public use dispos'd.'*

The discovery of _the mariner's compass, the invention of the art" of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century, the revival of classic learn- ing, the reformation, (that submerged the super- stition of a thousand years,) with all the great moral, commercial, political, and intellectual consequences of these new means, materials, and motives for action and thought, produced corre- sponding effects upon literature and science, and fro'n thence may be dated a new era in the history of mankind.

" And rising arts the wreck of Time survives."

Barren indeed was the state of English literature in the productions of native genius, when Caxton, our first printer, arrived with the new art, and immediately undertook to invest such foreign works with an English dress, that tended to form the minds and entertain the leisure of the great. Nor was he unmindful to furnish such books as would initiate the common people in the first elements of reading. The English nobility were, probably, for more than the first half century of English printing, the encouragers of our press : they required translations and abridgments of the classics — versions of French and Italian ro-

and thirteenth centuries, edited from the ori/ginal manu- scripts in the British mttseum, and the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, and Vienna. By Thomas Wright, esq. M. A. F. S. A. of Trinity college, Cambridge, -8to. pp. xl. 138. 1838.
 * Early Mgnteriet, and other Latin poemt, of the twelfth

VjOOQ IC