Page:The History of Ink.djvu/64

58 engraved as the figures to which they referred, and of which they were the explanation. He put that idea in practice: and in an instant the sublime ART OF PRINTING was an "accomplished fact."

The advocates of the claims of Koster, Gansefleisch, (or Gutenberg,) Faust (or Fust,) and Schoeffer, to this invention, have wasted much labor in bringing forth conflicting testimony about them. The long-forgotten and now wholly unknown wood-engraver of the Biblia Pauperum had preceded them by half of a generation. Such books were in existence before A.D. 1420; and the earliest date which the Haarlaem Dutchmen set up for the first printing of their fellow-townsman, Lawrence Koster, is 1428. And his pretensions are after all very dubious. Indeed they have been generally condemned as utterly fabulous by bibliographical critics and typographical historians.

We introduce it here to show the color and the (thereby indicated) composition of the INK employed. It was writing-ink. It contained sulphate of iron (copperas), in combination with vegetable astringent matter, and with very little carbon. The vegetable substance, imperfectly united to the mineral ingredient, has (in obedience to the laws of organic matter) been