Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/299

Rh Donatus, which were discovered in the cover linings of a manual of devotion, printed at Delft in 1484, are the only known relics of one of these books. The types are barbarous, of singularly ungraceful cut, of uneven height and out of line, evidently founded by a man who had no skill in type-founding. They are printed in pale ink which is readily removed by the application of water. The presswork is as slovenly as the type-founding, but the composition was done with some care and intelligence. The lines of type are nearly even as to length, and the words, when broken, are properly divided in syllables. It is evident that the compositor knew how to space and divide words, but the font of type that he used was not provided with hyphens or marks of punctuation. The fashion of the letter is in the Dutch style as may be seen in the final t with the perpendicular bar.

The other fragment in this type is a little pamphlet of eight pages, printed on parchment and upon one side only. It is described by some as a Horarium, or a little book of prayers; by others as an Abecedarium, or a child's primer. It contains the Alphabet (all the small letters but not the capitals), the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostles' Creed, and two prayers. The Alphabet has the k, a letter that was not used in the Latin language; it has no w, this letter being formed by the union of the two characters v. Holtrop says that the types seem to have been made for the Dutch language.

The "turning upside down" of four letters on the second page of this little work proves that the letters are impressions from movable types.

This little tract was discovered in 1751 by the celebrated type-founder Enschedé, of Haarlem, in a manuscript breviary of the fifteenth century, among the books of the descendants of John Van Zuren, a printer of Haarlem in 1561.

If barbarous type-founding and shabby printing could be accepted as conclusive evidence of the superior antiquity of