Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/301

 THE LAMBETH MAZARINE TESTAMENT. 217 tliat in all likelihood this copy was one of the, if not the, earliest printed. Now, if we have rightly concluded, that, at all events, some of the pages of the three copies belong to one series of impressions, tiie priority of printing cannot amount to much, and a side-by-side comparison might, if necessary, settle the matter ; but assuming that the vellum had been ruled for the scribe and afterwards printed on, how does it happen that the page following the end of the Ep. to Coloss. which (doubtless in behoof of printing arrange- ments) is un-pri/ited (in all the copies) is likewise un-ruledf Also, that a similar un-printed page at the end of Ep. of Jude (in all the copies), has merely the vertical margin lines ruled ? Furthermore, the horizontal or writing lines (be- tween the printed lines) in very man}'- places, especially towards the end of the vol., are in parts of the pages omitted, a thing very unlikel}' to occur had the ruling been done on blank vellum : but what I conceive to be quite conclusive, is the fact that the lines are traceable in several instances overyg the print. " Were these lines, then, ruled for the purpose of deception, for the pui-pose of passing a printed book as a ]IS. 1 I think not. Specimens of the new art would have been deemed much greatei* curiosities than ]ISS., and hence more valuable. However anxious the inventors and earliest practitioners of the art may have been to keep their modus opcrrnidi secret, the}' did not fail to draw attention to the wonder and beaut}' of their productions: Thus in 1457, (about the time perhaps when this book was being illuminated) Fust and Schoefier, in the colophon to the well known Mentz Psalter, extol their woik which was " ad inventionem artificiosam imprimendi ac characterizandi absque calami ulla cxnratione sic affigiatus : " and our own Caxton, in the first book printed in the English tongue, says : "Thcrfore I haue practysed and lerned at my grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner and forme as ye may here see, and is not wreton with pcnne and ynke as other bokes ben, to thende that euery man may haue them attones, ffor all the bookcs of this storye named the I'ocule of the historycs of troyes thus enpryntid as yc here see were begonne in oon day, and also fynysshid in oon day." Having been his own scribe, that which naturally struck him as of peculiar value in " j>rynte," was the fact that as many copies as he wanted were taken from each VOL. XXIX. M M