Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/487

Rh to the invention of matrices, or to the perfection of printing, may be inferred from the fact that, although he was a judge, a man of distinction, and a successful publisher for more than forty years, during the period when the value of printing was fully appreciated, he was never noticed in any way as a great benefactor. Neither the emperor nor elector gave him any distinction as the founder of a great art; no one put up a stone to his memory, honoring him as an inventor; no printer of that century regarded him as aught more than a thrifty publisher. His reputation has been created entirely by his own boasts and those of his family; and it is a most damaging circumstance that these boasts were not made until Gutenberg and Fust were dead, and that the statement written by Trithemius was not published until all the witnesses to the invention were dead, and there could be no contradiction.

There are many facts which show the falsity of Schœffer's claim. Setting aside the evidences in favor of the probable priority of the types of the Bible of 36 lines, the record of the lawsuit between Gutenberg and Fust virtually tells us that the types of the Bible of 42 lines had been made, perhaps in 1452, but not later than 1453. That these types were founded in matrices, were of neater cut, more exact as to body, and better founded than any afterward made by Schœffer, is apparent at a glance. They prove that the true method of type-making had already been found. If Schœffer invented the matrices from which these types were made, he should have perfected this invention in 1451. But Schoeffer was a copyist at Paris in 1449, and it is not certain that he was with Gutenberg before 1453. Here we encounter an impossibility. It cannot be supposed that a young collegian, fresh from books, without experience in mechanics, could invent, off-hand, a complicated method of type-making, upon which Gutenberg had been working for many years.

There is still another version of this invention of matrices by Schœffer, the version of Jo. Frid. Faustus, which has been often paraded as conclusive testimony in Schœffer's favor.