Page:An alphabetical index to the Chinese encyclopaedia.pdf/21

Rh feat that the world has seen, movable types, instead of the usual wooden blocks, are known to have been employed. But one 吳長元 Wu Ch'ang-yüan states further, in a small guide-book to Peking which was published towards the end of 1788, that the types were cast in copper. These are his words:—

'The Wu-ying Palace, where sets of movable type are kept, stands on the east side of Pei-ch'ang Street outside the Hsi-hua Gate. My investigations show that these movable types were formerly cast in copper and produced in the reign of K'ang Hsi for the purpose of printing the T'u Shu Chi Ch'êng ... . After an interval of many years, these copper types were found to be defective by more than half the original number, and in 1773 they were replaced by wooden type for printing the books in the Imperial Library, after a pattern suitable for engraving. This set of type received the name of 'Gem-collection', a poem being composed by the Emperor on the occasion'.

The poem here mentioned took the form of a short eulogy of the undertaking, and it was reprinted in each subsequent work produced by the same means. In a note appended to one of the lines it is distinctly stated that 'when the T'u Shu Chi Ch'êng was compiled in the reign of K'ang Hsi, the characters were engraved in copper (刻銅字)'. The examination of a few pages of the British Museum copy can leave very little doubt as to which of these two conflicting assertions is correct. Mr. Alfred Pollard, Assistant Keeper in the Department of Printed Books, who has been good enough to give me his opinion on the matter, points out that the differences readily discernible between examples of the same character practically exclude the possibility of our having here to do with a fount, that is to say, the types must have been cut, not cast in matrices. And M. Émile Blochet, who has kindly examined the copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, speaks in very much the same sense.

The actual number of types thus cut by hand is stated by Julien to have been 250,000. Dr. Macgowan, on the other hand, puts it down as 230,000. The authority for neither statement is known. But Dr. Macgowan adds that 'the entire font ... was melted after only about thirty impressions were struck off', which appears to contradict the testimony both of Wu Ch'ang-yüan and of the anonymous commentator. According to Mayers, the current tradition at Peking in his time was that 100 sets were printed, and this certainly seems more likely to be the correct figure. Two sizes of type were employed: the larger, of which the bulk of the work consists, measuring just over one square centimètre, and the smaller, used for notes, etc., about 5 mm. square. The dimensions of the 本 pên or volumes, each of which contains two chüan, are 27.5 × 17.5 cm. or thereabouts; and the whole