Page:A litil boke the whiche traytied and reherced many gode thinges necessaries for the infirmite a grete sekeness called Pestilence.djvu/21

 An examination of the technique of Lettou's work shows that he was a practised printer. The fount of type used in his first books is practically identical with one employed at Rome in 1478-79 by Johann Bulle of Bremen, which, according to the late Mr. Proctor, was the same as one in the hands of another printer in that city, Johann Schurener. It seems quite likely that Lettou may have been an assistant at one of these presses, and have brought away with him from that city a fount of type with which he was already familiar. Many of the early printers moved from one country to another, so that there would be nothing exceptional in Lettou migrating from Rome to London.

What reasons brought Lettou to London we do not know, but here in 1480 we find him printing three editions of an indulgence of John Kendale against the Turks (of which Caxton printed a corresponding number), besides the work of Antonius Andreas "Questiones super duodecim libros metaphisice", and in the following year the "Expositiones super Psalterium" of Thomas Wallensis.

A certain amount of rivalry no doubt existed between Caxton and Lettou, and in one particular, namely, the use of "signatures", the former seems to have copied Lettou. These are small letters (or figures) placed at the foot of the first leaves of a quire to aid the binder in the arrangement of the sheets. They are found in some of the earliest manuscripts, and were at first added by hand to printed books, but about 1472 the custom of printing them was introduced.

The two books printed by Lettou were produced at the