Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/205

Rh repairs to blocks badly worn by long use; the newly engraved blocks are evidently the replacement of a suite completely worn out; an edition different from the others in design may be accepted as the work of a rival or competing printer.

The few block-books known in the seventeenth century were regarded by bibliographers as prejudicial to the claims of contestants for the honor of the invention of typography. They were annoying facts which could neither be rejected nor accepted without hurt to favorite theories. There was a disposition on all sides to belittle them in number as well as in importance. The first writer who called attention to their value as relics could describe but nine block-books. Sotheby, writing about them in 1858, described in the Principia Typographica twenty-one block-books — not different editions of a few books, but twenty-one distinct works. Even with these additions, the list cannot be considered complete: it is possible that more will yet be found, but it is certain that many have been irretrievably lost.

The neglect of the block-books by early librarians seems almost justifiable when we consider their great inferiority to the typographic books that followed them. From a literary point of view, they were of no importance as works of instruction or authority. They were published during the fifteenth century, but they really belong to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, during which period most of them were composed. The legends that explain their illustrations were written in Latin, but they are adapted to readers in a child-like state of development. It is not strange that they should have been put aside by the world when it had outgrown them. Childish as these books are, they are of high value to those who wish to note the growth of printing. They indicate the attainments of their authors and readers, and the artistic abilities of their designers and engravers. They show the quality of the paper, ink, and workmanship of the period. They prove that the art of printing from blocks was practised by many persons during the second and third quarters of the fifteenth century.