Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/521

Rh The activity of the early printers is remarkable. The task of preserving the literature of the world was fairly done at a very early date. There were not many books that promised to be salable and profitable, and some of them were scarce, and copies were obtained with difficulty—but nearly every valuable book was found and printed. Naudé, the librarian of Cardinal Mazarin, said that, before the year 1474, all the good books, however bulky, had been printed two or three times, to say nothing of many worthless works which should have been burned. The same work was often printed in the same year, by four or five rival printers in as many different cities. The catalogue of Hain very minutely describes 16,290 editions, which, at the low estimate of 300 copies for each edition, represents a total production of 4,887,000 books.

The attention of the literary world was first arrested, not by the possibilities of future usefulness in printing, but by the growing cheapness of books. The early printers offered their books at less than the market prices of manuscripts, but in a few years they were obliged to reduce the prices still lower. The market was soon glutted, and the prices fell rapidly and irretrievably. Chevillier says that, at the close of the century, the price of many books had been reduced by four-fifths. In the preface to a book printed at Rome in 1470, John Andrew, the bishop of Aleria, addressing Pope Pius, says: