Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/504

494 have been others, whose names are lost, but the printers are few; they cannot be compared, either in number or in influence, with those of many smaller cities during the same period. Long before Schœffer died, Mentz had ceased to be a great school and centre of printing.

. The statement of Lignamine, that Mentel printed at Strasburg after 1458, has been corroborated by the recent discovery in the Freiburg library of a Latin Bible in two volumes folio, which is known to have been printed by Mentel, and which contains the subscriptions of the illuminator and the written dates, in one volume of 1460, in the other of 1461. As this book should have been in press at least two years, it may be regarded as evidence that printing was practised here as early as in Bamberg. Strasburg gave greater encouragement to printers than Mentz, for sixteen master printers were working there before 1500.

. The first printer at Cologne was Ulric Zell. He was an industrious printer for more than forty years, but he never printed a book in German, nor did he adopt any of the improvements of the printers of Italy. He adhered rigidly to the severe style of his master, Schœffer, printing all his books from three sizes of a rude face of Round Gothic types. He was not a skillful nor even a correct printer, but he was a shrewd publisher, and accumulated a large property. Madden supposes that he went to Cologne in 1462, and