Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/471

Rh demonstrated his ability by the production of types of finer proportions than those of Gutenberg. If he was an expert type-founder, and the inventor of the type-mould, he should have proved his skill by casting types of neater finish. The first types made by him or by his order after his separation from Gutenberg are exhibited in the Rationale Durandi, but they do not warrant the opinion that he was a very skillful designer or an ingenious type-founder. The combination of Gothic and Roman which he there exhibited is evidently an imitation of the Round Gothic face used by Gutenberg in the Letters of Indulgence and the Catholicon. Schœffer's types present no features of superiority: they show mannerisms of engraving so like those of Gutenberg's types as to lead to the opinion that both were made by the same punch-cutter.

In the following year (1460), Schœffer and Fust finished a stout folio, which was printed in a Round Gothic face on the larger body of Great-primer. This book, the Constitutions (or Body of Divinity) of Pope Clement, with the Commentaries of Bishop John Andrew, has been much admired by bibliographers for its composition. The fac-simile on a following page shows the text of the pope nested in the commentaries of the bishop—truly "a rivulet of text in a meadow of notes." In some pages the text occupies about one-third, in other pages about one-sixth, of the space assigned to the print