Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/18

6 was known in Europe, seems to have been the first step towards the introduction of this art to the knowledge of mankind. The invention of cards, which took place towards the latter end of the fourteenth century, was an intermediate step between block and letter-press printing. They were originally painted, but, about the year 1400, a mode was discovered of printing them from blocks. The books of images succeeded: they are likewise printed from blocks, and the text is placed below, or on each side of the print. Mr. M. Lambinet mentions seven of these: 1. Figures Typicæ Veteris atque Antitypicæ Novi Testamenti. There is one copy of this work in the Bodleian Library, and another at Christ’s College, Cambridge. — 2. Historia S. Joannis Evangilistæ, ejusque Visiones Apoealypticæ. 3. Historia seu Providentia Virginis Mariæ, ex Cantico Canticorum. 4. Ars Moriendi. 5. Ars Memorandi Notabilis per Figuras Evangilistarum. 6. Donatus, seu Grammatica brevis in Usum Scholarum conscripta. 7. Speculum Humanæ Salvationis.

The bards are said to have carved their poems upon bars of wood, arranged like a gridiron. All these, which appear to be so many degrees of stereotype printing, naturally prepared the way for letter-press; but the origin and history of this invention is involved in so much obscurity, that with respect to its introduction, particularly to this kingdom, nothing satisfactory either has or can be said. The honour of having given birth to it is claimed by the cities of Haerlem, Strasbourg, and Mentz; but the evidence preponderates in favour of Strasbourg, where Guttemburg certainly first used movable types. It seems equally clear, that he afterwards carried on the business of printing at Mentz, where he was born. The names of the other competitors for the honour of this invention were, John Faust of Mentz, John Mental of Strasbourg, and L. J. Koster of Haerlem. When Mentz was taken, in the year 1462, by Adolphus, Count of Nassau, Faust and his workmen dispersed, and the art of printing became in consequence spread over the Continent. In Rome it was practised in the year 1367; and in 1468 it is said to have been introduced to this country by Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury. He sent persons to the Continent, to make themselves masters of the art, who induced workmen to come over and practise it in England. Accordingly a press is said to have been soon after established at Oxford, thence removed to St. Alban’s, and ultimately to Westminster Abbey. Great doubts, however, have been expressed, as to the authenticity of these circumstances; but the fact still remains, that about this period, and particularly at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Germans, the Italians, and the Dutch, who had continued to engrave on wood and copper, now printed with movable types, and the art spread itself over a considerable part of Europe with astonishing rapidity: nor should this circumstance be a subject of surprise, when we consider what an alteration this art almost immediately produced upon the mind, by rendering that knowledge accessible to all ranks, which formerly was a luxury of which the rich and the great only could partake. But we are more surprised, that, in the nineteenth century, there should