The Story of Books Part 5

More often than not these colophons are irritatingly reticent, and withhold the very thing we want to know. At other times they are informing, and in some cases amusing. Dr Garnett has suggested that as a literary pastime some one might do worse than collect fifteenth-century colophons into a volume, for the sake of their biographical and personal interest, but I am not aware that his idea has been carried out. Two colophons have already been quoted here, the first printed colophon (see p. 103) and one which is possibly from the pen of Gutenberg (see p. 101). A quaint specimen found in a volume of Cicero's _Orationes Philippicae_, printed at Rome by Ulrich Hahn, about 1470, descends to puns. It is in Latin verse, and supposed by some to have been written by Cardinal Campa.n.u.s, who edited several of Hahn's publications. It informs the descendants of the Geese who saved the Capitol, that they need have no more fear for their feathers, for the art of Ulrich the _c.o.c.k_ (German _Hahn_ = Latin _Gallus_ = English _c.o.c.k_) will provide a potent subst.i.tute for quills. A colophon to Cicero's _Epistolae Familiares_, printed at Venice in 1469 by Joannes de Spira, declares with pardonable pride that he had printed two editions of three hundred copies in four months.

The first book with any attempt at a t.i.tle-page is the _Sermo ad Populum Predicabilis_, printed at Cologne in 1470 by Arnold Therh.o.e.rnen, but a full t.i.tle-page was not generally adopted till fifty years later. The first English t.i.tle-page is very brief, and reads as follows:--

A pa.s.sing G.o.de lityll boke necessarye & behouefull agenst the Pestilence.

This G.o.de lityll boke, written by Canutus, Bishop of Aarhaus, was printed in London about 1482 by Machlinia. A later development of the t.i.tle-page was a full-page woodcut, headed by the name of the work, as in the =Kynge Richarde cuer du lyon=, printed in 1528 by Wynkyn de Worde. The same woodcut does duty in another of the same printer's books for Robert the Devil.

Early t.i.tle-pages in Latin sometimes render the names of familiar places of publication in a very unfamiliar form. London may appear as Augusta Trin.o.bantum, Edinburgh as Aneda, Dublin as Eblana. Some towns are easily recognised by their Latin names, such as Roma or Venetiae; others are less obvious, such as Moguntia, or Mentz; Lutetia, or Paris; Argentina, or Strasburg. Several places had more than one Latin form of name.

London, for example, was also Londinum, and Edinburgh, Edemburgem.

Pagination, or numbering of the pages, was first introduced by Arnold Therh.o.e.rnen, in the same book in which he gives us the first t.i.tle-page, and to which reference has already been made. He did not place the figures at the top corner, however, but in the centre of the right hand margin.

The practice of printing the first word of a leaf at the foot of the leaf preceding, as a guide for the arrangement of the sheets, was first employed by Vindelinus de Spira, of Venice, in the _Tacitus_ which he printed about 1469.

CHAPTER X

EARLY PRINTING IN ITALY AND SOME OTHER COUNTRIES

The new invention found more favour in Italy than in any other country, for more presses were established there than anywhere else. The printers, however, were all Germans, and before 1480 about 110 German typographers were at work in twenty-seven Italian cities. They kept the secrets of their trade well to themselves, and not till 1471 was any printing executed by an Italian. In May of that year the _De Medicinis Universalibus_ of Mesua was executed at Venice by Clement of Padua, who accomplished the truly wonderful feat of teaching himself how to print.

Another Italian, Joannes Phillipus de Lignamine, printed at Rome some time before July 26, 1471, and it is therefore uncertain whether he or Clement of Padua was the first native printer of Italy.

The first press established in Italy was that set up in the Benedictine monastery of St Scholastica at Subiaco, a few miles from Rome, by two German typographers, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz. There they issued Cicero's _De Oratore_ in 1465, the first book printed in Italy.

In their pet.i.tion to the Pope, referred to below, they say that they had printed a _Donatus_, presumably before the Cicero, but no such work is known, and some have thought it was only a block-book. In the same year they issued the works of Lactantius, "the Christian Cicero," the first dated book executed in Italy. It is also one of the earliest books to adopt a more elaborate punctuation than the simple oblique line and full stop in general use. The _Lactantius_ has a colon, full stop, and notes of admiration and interrogation. Both these books are printed in a pleasing type which is neither Gothic nor Roman, but midway between the two.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPE OF THE SUBIACO LACTANTIUS (_exact size._)]

Two years later Sweynheim and Pannartz removed to Rome, where their countryman, Ulric Hahn, was already at work, and prosecuted their business with so much energy, and apparently so little prudence or regard to the works of other printers, that at the end of five years they had printed no less than 12,475 sheets which they could not sell, and were in such financial straits that they pet.i.tioned the Pope for a.s.sistance for themselves and their families. Whether they obtained it is unknown, but the partnership was soon after dissolved, and the name of Pannartz alone appears in books of 1475 and 1476. When these two printers died is uncertain.

Venice was the next city of Italy to take up the new art. There, in 1469, Joannes de Spira, or John of Spires, executed Cicero's _Epistolae ad Familiares_. He obtained a privilege from the Venetian Senate with regard to his productions, and, more than that, a monopoly of book-printing in Venice for five years. He died, however, less than a year later, and his monopoly with him. His brother Vindelinus carried on his work, and was succeeded by Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, who, from a technical point of view, was perhaps the most skilful and artistic of early typographers.

The most famous printer of Venice, however, and the most famous printer of Italy, and perhaps of the world, is Aldus Manutius, born in 1450, but his fame rests less on his actual printing, which, though good, is not unequalled, than upon the efforts he made for popularising literature, and bringing cheap, yet well-produced books within the reach of the many. He saw that the works printed in such numbers by the Venetian printers, who paid attention to quant.i.ty and cheapness and altogether ignored the quality of their productions, were faulty and corrupt, and that textually as well as typographically there was room for improvement. He applied himself to the study of the cla.s.sics, above all to the Greek, hitherto neglected or published through Latin translations, and secured the a.s.sistance of many eminent scholars, and then, having obtained good texts, turned his thoughts to type and format. The types he cast for his first book, Lascaris' _Greek Grammar_, were superior to the Greek types then in use. Next he designed a new Roman type, modelled, so it is said, upon the handwriting of Petrarch.

It called forth admiration, and won fame under the name of the "Aldino"

type. Its use has continued to the present day, and it is known to almost everyone as _Italic_. It was cut by Francesco de Bologna, who was probably identical with Francesco Raibolini, that painter-goldsmith who signed himself on his pictures as _Aurifex_, and on his gold-work as _Pictor_.

The advantage of the Aldino type, at the time of its invention, when type was large and required a comparatively great deal of s.p.a.ce, was that its size and form permitted the printed matter to be much compressed, while losing nothing in clearness. The book for which it was used could be made smaller, and printed more cheaply. In 1501 Aldus inaugurated his new type by issuing a _Virgil_ printed throughout in "Aldino." It occupied two hundred and twenty-eight leaves, and was of a neat and novel shape, measuring just six by three and a half inches.

This book, which was sold for about two shillings of our money, marks Aldus as the pioneer of cheap literature--literature not for the wealthy alone, but for all who loved books. A proof of the popularity of the new departure is afforded by the fact that the _Virgil_ was immediately forged, that is to say, reproduced in a number of exceedingly inferior copies, by an unknown printer of Lyons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPE OF THE ALDINE VIRGIL, 1501 (_exact size._)]

The Aldine mark, which appears on Aldus' edition of Dante's _Terze Rime_ in 1502, and on nearly all the numerous works subsequently issued from this famous press, is a dolphin twined about an anchor, and the name ALDVS divided by the upper part of the anchor. This device continued to be used after the death of Aldus Manutius in 1515 by his descendants, who carried on the work of the press until 1597.

France was somewhat late in availing herself of the advantages offered by the new art, although Peter Schoeffer had had a bookseller's shop in Paris. In 1470, Guillaume Fichet, Rector of the Sorbonne, invited three German printers--Ulric Gering, Michael Friburger and Martin Cranz--to come and set up a printing-press at the Sorbonne. The first work they produced there was the _Epistolae_ of Gasparinus Barzizius. For this and a few other volumes they used a very beautiful Roman type, but after the closing of the Sorbonne press in 1472 they established other presses elsewhere in Paris and adopted a Gothic character similar to that of the contemporary French ma.n.u.scripts, and therefore more likely to be popular with French readers.

The first work printed in the French language, however, is believed to have been executed, chiefly, at any rate, by an Englishman, probably at Bruges, five years later, that is, about 1476. The book was _Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes_, the Englishman was William Caxton. Caxton also printed at the same place, and about the year 1475, the first book in the English language--a translation of _Le Recueil_. In both these works he may have been a.s.sisted by Colard Mansion, believed by some to have been his typographical tutor, though so eminent an authority as Mr Blades holds that _Le Recueil_ was printed by Mansion alone, and that Caxton had no hand in it. As with so many other questions concerning early typography, there seems to be no means of deciding the point.

The first work in French which was issued in Paris was the _Grands Chroniques de France_, printed by Pasquier Bonhomme in 1477.

Holland and the Low Countries can show no printed book with a date earlier than 1473, while the celebrated city of Haarlem's first dated book was produced ten years later. But printing was very possibly practised in these countries at an earlier period, and some undated books exist which those who ascribe the invention of typography to Holland consider to have been executed by Dutch printers before any German books had been given to the world. Those who stand by Germany of course think otherwise.

In the year just named--1473--Nycolaum Ketelaer and Gerard de Leempt produced Peter Comestor's _Historia Scholastica_ at Utrecht, and Alost and Louvain also started printing. The types of John Veldener, the first Louvain printer, have a great resemblance to those used by Caxton, and have led some to believe that Veldener supplied Caxton with the types he first used at Westminster. About the same time, Colard Mansion, noted for his a.s.sociation either as teacher or a.s.sistant with Caxton, is supposed to have introduced printing into Bruges. His first dated book was a _Boccaccio_ of 1476, and he continued to print until 1484, when he issued a fine edition, in French, of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. After this nothing more is known of him. Blades thinks that his printing brought him financial ruin, and suggests that he may have joined his old friend Caxton at Westminster, and helped him in his work, but this is only conjecture. We have already seen that it was from Colard Mansion's press that the first printed books in the English and French languages were produced.

The first Brussels press was established by the Brethren of the Common Life, a community who had hitherto made a speciality of the production of ma.n.u.script books. At what date they began to print in Brussels is uncertain, but their first dated book, the _Gnotosolitos sive speculum conscientiae_, is of the year 1476. The Brethren also had an earlier press at Marienthal, near Mentz, and subsequently set up others at Rostock, Nuremberg, and Gouda.

The Elzevirs belong to a somewhat later period than that with which we are concerned in these chapters, but a name so famous in bibliographical annals as theirs cannot well be pa.s.sed over. The first of the Elzevirs was Louis, a native of Louvain, who in 1580 established a book-shop in Leyden, gained the patronage of the university, and opened an important trade with foreign countries. Certain of his sons and successors became printers as well as booksellers, and produced work of the highest excellence. Some of them opened shops or set up presses at Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht, and also established agencies or branches elsewhere, and extended their trade all over Europe. The history of the partnerships between different members of the family, and of the sixteen hundred and odd publications which they printed or sold, is a complicated subject upon which there is no need to enter here. The last of the Elzevirs, a degenerate great-great-grandson of the first Louis Elzevir, was Abraham Elzevir of Leyden, who died in 1712, leaving no heir, and at whose decease the press and apparatus were sold.

CHAPTER XI

EARLY PRINTING IN ENGLAND

The first name on the list of early English printers, it is hardly necessary to say, is that of Caxton. In his _Life and Typography of William Caxton_, the late Mr Blades has told all there is to be known of Caxton's life, and a great deal about Caxton's work; and although as regards the latter half of the subject there are authorities who dissent from some of the theories he advances, Mr Blades' monograph remains the standard work on the matter of England's first printer and the recognised source of information concerning him and his books.

But notwithstanding Mr Blades' industry and learning, our knowledge of the early part of Caxton's life is very scanty, and is derived mainly from what Caxton himself tells us in the prologue to his first literary production, the English translation of the French romance by Le Fevre, ent.i.tled _Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes_, or, Anglicised, _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_. Speaking of his boldness in undertaking the work, he refers to the "symplenes and vnperfightness that I had in both langages, that is to wete in frenshe and in englissh, for in france was I neuer, and was born & lerned myn englissh in kente in the weeld where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond." He was born probably in 1422 or 1423, and further than this we know nothing of him till his apprenticeship to Robert Large, a London mercer. Large died before Caxton's term of apprenticeship expired, and the next we hear of young Caxton is that he was living on the Continent, probably at Bruges. At the time he wrote the prologue from which quotation has just been made, that is about 1475, he had been for thirty years "for the most parte in the contres of Braband, flanders, holand, and zeland." Yet notwithstanding so long a residence in the Low Countries, he describes himself as "mercer of ye cyte of London."

As a wool merchant in Bruges he prospered, and in time rose to be Governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers, or "The English Nation," and in that capacity probably dwelt at the _Domus Angliae_, the Company's headquarters in Bruges. In 1468, and while holding this honourable and important position, he began his translation of _Le Recueil_, but soon laid it aside, unfinished. Two years later he took it up again, but by this time he had resigned the governorship, and was engaged in the service of the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV.

of England. When or why he took this position, and in what capacity he served the d.u.c.h.ess, is not known, but it was her influence which brought about the completion of his literary work and indirectly caused the subsequent metamorphosis of the mercer into the typographer. In the prologue to _The Recuyell_ he relates that the d.u.c.h.ess commanded him to finish the translation which he had begun, and this lady's "dredefull comandement," he says, "y durste in no wyse disobey because y am a servant vnto her sayde grace and resseiue of her yerly ffee and other many goode and grete benefetes."

_The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, when finished, immediately found favour in the eyes of the English dwellers in Bruges, who, rejoiced to have the favourite romance of the day in their own tongue, demanded more copies than one pair of hands could supply. So because of the weariness and labour of writing, and because of his promise to various friends to provide them with the book, "I haue practysed & lerned," he tells us, "at my grete charge and dispense, to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see, and is not wreton with penne and ynke, as other bokes ben, to thende that every man may haue them attones."

Where Caxton gained his knowledge of printing is a matter of dispute. Mr Blades holds that he was taught by Colard Mansion, the first printer of Bruges, others that he learned at Cologne. Mr Blades adduces in support of his view the similarity of the types of Mansion and Caxton, the reproduction in Caxton's work of various peculiarities to be observed in Mansion's, the improbability that Caxton would have travelled to Cologne to get what was already at hand in the city where he lived, and the absence in his work "of any typographical link between him and the Mentz school." For the Cologne theory Wynkyn de Worde, who carried on the work of Caxton's printing-office at Westminster after the latter's death, supplies some foundation in his edition of Bartholomaeus _De Proprietatibus Rerum_, where he says:

"And also of your charyte call to remembraunce The soule of William Caxton, the first prynter of this boke In laten tongue at Coleyn, hymself to avaunce, That every well-disposed man may thereon loke."

As usual there is something to be said on both sides, but leaving this debateable ground we will only add that the _Recuyell of the Histories of Troye_, translated by himself from the French, is generally considered to be the first book printed by Caxton, perhaps with Mansion's help, and probably at Bruges, and in or about the year 1475.

It is also the first printed book in English. It was followed about 1476 by the French version of the same work, and by the famous _Game and Play of the Chesse Moralised_. This was once believed to be the first book printed on English soil, but it is now a.s.signed to Caxton's press on the Continent, probably at Bruges.

About 1476 Caxton returned to England, and set up his press at Westminster. It has been a.s.serted that he worked in the scriptorium, but it is not known that Westminster Abbey ever had a scriptorium. Others have thought that he printed in some other part of the Abbey. His office, however, was situated in the Almonry, in the Abbey precincts, and was called the Red Pale, but it is now impossible to identify the place where it stood. In 1477 Caxton produced _The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres_, the first book, so far as is known, ever printed in England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPE OF CAXTON'S DICTES OR SAYENGIS OF THE PHILOSOPHRES, WESTMINSTER, 1477 (_exact size._)]

The Westminster printer was patronised by the king and by the mighty of the land, and also by the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, and with his pen, as well as with his press, he sought to supply the books and literature which the taste of the time demanded. "The clergy wanted service-books," says Mr Blades, "and Caxton accordingly provided them with psalters, commemorations and directories; the preachers wanted sermons, and were supplied with the 'Golden Legend,' and other similar books; the 'prynces, lordes, barons, knyghtes & gentilmen' were craving for 'joyous and pleysaunt historyes' of chivalry, and the press at the 'Red Pale'

produced a fresh romance nearly every year." From his arrival at Westminster about 1476 until his death about 1491--the date is not exactly known--Caxton was continually occupied in translating, editing, and printing, though beyond the prologues, epilogues, and colophons to his various publications he composed little himself, his princ.i.p.al work being the addition of a book to Higden's _Polychronicon_, bringing that history down to 1460. His translations number twenty-two.

The long list of his printed works includes a _Horae_, printed about 1478, and now represented only by a fragment, which is of great interest as being probably the earliest English-printed service-book extant. It was found in the cover of another old book, and is now in the Bodleian Library.

Other books printed by Caxton were the _Canterbury Tales_; _Boethius_; _Parvus et Magnus Catho_, a mediaeval school-book, the third edition of which contains two woodcuts, probably the earliest produced in England; _The Historye of Reynart the Foxe_, translated from the Dutch by Caxton; _A Book of the Chesse Moralysed_, a second edition of the _Game and Play of the Chesse_, printed by Caxton abroad; _The Cronicles of Englond_; _The Pylgremage of the Sowle_, believed to have been translated from the French by Lydgate; Gower's _Confessio Amantis_; _The Knyght of the Toure_, translated by Caxton from the French; _The Golden Legend_, consisting of lives of saints compiled by Caxton from French and Latin texts; _The Fables of Esope_, etc., translated by Caxton from the French; Chaucer's _Book of Fame_; _Troylus and Creside_; Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_; _The Book of Good Manners_, translated by Caxton from the French of Jacques Legrand; _Statutes of Henry VII._, in English, the "earliest known volume of printed statutes"; _The Governal of Helthe_, from the Latin, author and translator unknown, the "earliest medical work printed in English"; _Divers Ghostly Matters_, including tracts on the seven points of true love and everlasting wisdom, the Twelve Profits of Tribulation, and the Rule of St Benet; _The Fifteen Oes and other Prayers_, printed by command of "our liege ladi Elizabeth ... Quene of Englonde, and of the ... pryncesse Margarete," and the "prouffytable boke for mannes soule and right comfortable to the body and specyally in aduersitee and trybulacyon, whiche boke is called _The Chastysing of G.o.ddes Chyldern_."

Between seventy and eighty different books, besides indulgences and other small productions, are attributed to Caxton's press, and the works just named will serve to give an idea of their diversity and range. Some of the most popular were printed more than once; of the _Golden Legend_, for example, three editions are known, and of the _Dictes or Sayings_, the _Horae_, and _Parvus et Magnus Catho_, and several others, two editions are known. There is also a strong probability that many of Caxton's productions have been lost altogether, since thirty-eight of those yet extant are represented either by single copies or by fragments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOYS LEARNING GRAMMAR, from Caxton's "Catho" and "Mirrour of the World."]