Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/21

Rh The first attempt to supply this great deficiency was made by August Bernard, in the disquisition published at Paris, in the year 1853, under the title, De l'origine et des debuts de l'imprimerie en Europe. His was the first book in which the printed work attributed to Coster and Gutenberg was critically examined from a typographic point of view. To readers who were not content with the vague descriptions of popular books of typography, the explanations of Bernard were of peculiar value. I had reason to think that a translation of the history of this eminent printer would be received by American. printers with some measure of the favor which the original had met with in Europe. Impressed with this belief I began the work.

I found it necessary to consult many of Bernard's authorities. My admiration of the superior method and forcible style of Bernard, an admiration still unabated, was increased by the reading of the new books; but the esteem in which I hold his valuable work does not prevent the regret that, in his entire neglect of the block-books, he should have overlooked the most significant feature of early printing. The fac-similes of early prints, subsequently shown in The Infancy of Book Printing of Weigel and in The Typographic Monuments of Holtrop, convinced me that the earliest practice of typography had its beginning in a still earlier practice of printing from blocks, and that a description of block-books should precede a description of the invention of types.

Since these books were written, all the old theories about the origin of typography have been examined with increased interest, and discussed with superior critical ability, by many eminent European scholars. Discoveries of great importance have been made; old facts have been set forth in new lights; traditions accepted as truthful history for three hundred years have been demolished. Of the many able men who have been engaged in this task of separating truth from fiction, no one has done more efficient service than Dr. A. Van der Linde of The Hague, whose papers on the traditions of typography are masterpieces of acute and scholarly criticism. His researches