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diff --git a/26029-h/26029-h.htm b/26029-h/26029-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6dc548 --- /dev/null +++ b/26029-h/26029-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1651 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Printing and the Renaissance, by John Rothwell Slater. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + text-indent: 1.25em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + img {border: 0;} + .tnote {border: dashed 1px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;} + ins {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin dotted gray;} + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + .cap:first-letter { float: left; clear: left; + margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; + padding:0; + line-height: .5em; font-size: 350%; text-align: justify;} + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: justify;} + + .bbox {border: solid 2px; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .unindent {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + .right {text-align: right;} + .poem {margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: left;} + .poem2 {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: left;} + .hang1 {text-indent: -3em; margin-left: 3em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Printing and the Renaissance, by John Rothwell Slater + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Printing and the Renaissance + A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York + +Author: John Rothwell Slater + +Release Date: July 11, 2008 [EBook #26029] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINTING AND THE RENAISSANCE *** + + + + +Produced by Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from +images generously made available by The Internet +Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + +<h1>PRINTING AND THE<br /> +RENAISSANCE</h1> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 32px;"> +<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="32" height="28" alt="Decoration" title="Decoration" /> +</div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h1><img src="images/i001.jpg" width="32" height="28" alt="Decoration" title="Decoration" /> +PRINTING AND THE RENAISSANCE: +A PAPER READ BEFORE +THE FORTNIGHTLY CLUB OF +ROCHESTER NEW YORK BY +JOHN ROTHWELL SLATER.</h1> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;"> +<img src="images/i003.jpg" width="100" height="300" alt="Decoration" title="Decoration" /> +</div> + +<div class='center'> +NEW YORK<br /> +William Edwin Rudge<br /> +1921<br /></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2> +PRINTING AND THE RENAISSANCE:<br /> +A PAPER READ BEFORE THE<br /> +FORTNIGHTLY CLUB OF<br /> +ROCHESTER<br /> +N. Y.<br /> +</h2> + + +<div class='cap'>PRINTING did not make the Renaissance; the +Renaissance made printing. Printing did not begin +the publication and dissemination of books. +There were libraries of vast extent in ancient +Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome. There were universities +centuries before Gutenberg where the few instructed the +many in the learning treasured up in books, and where +both scholars and professional scribes multiplied copies +of books both old and new. At the outset of any examination +of the influence of printing on the Renaissance it +is necessary to remind ourselves that the intellectual life +of the ancient and the mediaeval world was built upon +the written word. There is a naive view in which ancient +literature is conceived as existing chiefly in the autograph +manuscripts and original documents of a few great centers +to which all ambitious students must have resort. A +very little inquiry into the multiplication of books before +printing shows us how erroneous is this view.</div> + +<p>We must pass over entirely the history of publishing +and book-selling in ancient times, a subject too vast for +adequate summary in a preliminary survey of this sort. +With the fall of Rome and the wholesale destruction +that accompanied the barbarian invasions a new chapter +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>begins in the history of the dissemination of literature. +This chapter opens with the founding of the scriptorium, +or monastic copying system, by Cassiodorus and +Saint Benedict early in the sixth century. To these two +men, Cassiodorus, the ex-chancellor of the Gothic king +Theodoric, and Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine +order, is due the gratitude of the modern world. It +was through their foresight in setting the monks at +work copying the scriptures and the secular literature +of antiquity that we owe the preservation of most of the +books that have survived the ruins of the ancient world. +At the monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by Saint +Benedict in the year 529, and at that of Viviers, founded +by Cassiodorus in 531, the Benedictine rule required of +every monk that a fixed portion of each day be spent in +the scriptorium. There the more skilled scribes were entrusted +with the copying of precious documents rescued +from the chaos of the preceding century, while monks +not yet sufficiently expert for this high duty were instructed +by their superiors.</p> + +<p>The example thus nobly set was imitated throughout +all the centuries that followed, not only in the Benedictine +monasteries of Italy, France, Germany, England, +Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, but in religious houses of all +orders. It is to the mediaeval Church, her conservatism +in the true sense of the word, her industry, her patience, +her disinterested guardianship alike of sacred and of +pagan letters, that the world owes most of our knowledge +of antiquity. Conceive how great would be our loss if to +archaeology alone we could turn for the reconstruction +of the civilization, the art, the philosophy, the public +and private life of Greece and Rome. If the Church had +done no more than this for civilization, it would still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +have earned some measure of tolerance from its most +anti-clerical opponents. It is of course to the Eastern +rather than to the Roman Church that we owe the preservation +of classical Greek literature, copied during the +dark ages in Greek monasteries and introduced into +Italy after the fall of Constantinople.</p> + +<p>A second stage in the multiplication and publication +of manuscript books begins with the founding of the +great mediaeval universities of Bologna, Paris, Padua, +Oxford, and other centers of higher education. Inasmuch +as the study of those days was almost entirely +book study, the maintenance of a university library +with one or two copies of each book studied was inadequate. +There grew up in each university city an organized +system of supplying the students with textbooks. +The authorized book-dealers of a mediaeval university +were called <i>stationarii</i>, or stationers, a term apparently +derived from the fixed post or station assigned in or near +the university buildings to each scribe permitted to +supply books to the students and professors. A stationer +in England has always meant primarily a book-dealer +or publisher, as for example in the term Stationers' Hall, +the guild or corporation which until 1842 still exercised +in London the functions of a copyright bureau. Incidentally +a stationer also dealt in writing materials, +whence our ordinary American use of the term. Another +name for the university book-dealers was the classical +Latin word <i>librarii</i>, which usually in mediaeval Latin +meant not what we call a librarian but a vender of +books, like the French <i>libraire</i>. These scribes were not +allowed at first to sell their manuscripts, but rented +them to the students at rates fixed by university statutes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +A folded sheet of eight pages, sixteen columns of sixty-two +lines each, was the unit on which the rental charges +were based. Such a sheet at the beginning of the thirteenth +century rented for about twenty cents a term; +and since an ordinary textbook of philosophy or theology +or canon law contained many sheets, these charges +constituted no inconsiderable part of the cost of instruction. +The books must be returned before the student left +the university; sales were at first surreptitious and illegal, +but became common early in the fourteenth century. +Reasonable accuracy among the stationers was secured +by a system of fines for errors, half of which went to the +university, the other half being divided between the +supervisor or head proof-reader and the informant who +discovered the error.</p> + +<p>The original regulation which forbade the stationers +to sell books was intended to prevent students of a +profiteering turn of mind from buying books for resale +to their fellow-students at a higher price, thus cornering +the market and holding up the work of an entire class. +In course of time, however, the book-dealers were permitted +not only to sell textbooks, at prices still controlled +by official action, but also to buy and sell manuscripts +of other books, both those produced by local scribes +and those imported from other cities and countries.</p> + +<p>This broadening of the activities of the university +bookstores led naturally to the third and last stage +which the publishing business underwent before the +invention of printing. This stage was the establishment +in Florence, Paris, and other intellectual centers, of +bookshops selling manuscripts to the general public +rather than to university students. These grew rapidly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +during the first half of the fifteenth century, receiving a +marked impetus from the new interest in Greek studies. +Some years before the fall of Constantinople in 1453 +Italian book-sellers were accustomed to send their buyers +to the centers of Byzantine learning in the near East in +quest of manuscripts to be disposed of at fancy prices +to the rich collectors and patrons of literature. There is +evidence of similar methods in France and Germany +during the earlier decades of the Renaissance.</p> + +<p>This preliminary sketch of the book-publishing business +before printing is intended to correct a rather +common misapprehension. Manuscript books were indeed +relatively costly, but they were not scarce. Any +scholar who had not been through a university not only +had access to public libraries of hundreds of volumes, +but might also possess, at prices not beyond the reach +of a moderate purse, his own five-foot shelf of the classics. +The more elegant manuscripts, written by experts +and adorned with rich illuminations and sumptuous +bindings, were of course not for the humble student; +but working copies, multiplied on a large scale by a +roomful of scribes writing simultaneously from dictation, +might always be had. Chaucer, writing of the poor +clerk of Oxford at the end of the fourteenth century, +tells us that</p> + +<div class='poem'> +"Him was levere have at his beddes heed<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of Aristotle and his philosophye,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye."</span><br /></div> + +<p>We are not sure that he had the whole twenty books; +that was his ambition, his academic dream of wealth;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +but we are assured that he spent on books all the money +he could borrow from his friends, and that he showed his +gratitude by busily praying for the souls of his creditors.</p> + +<p>When we consider the enormous number of manuscript +books that must have existed in Europe in the +middle ages, we may well wonder why they have become +relatively rare in modern times. Several explanations +account for this. In the first place, the practice of +erasing old manuscripts and using the same vellum +again for other works was extremely common. Secondly, +vast numbers of manuscripts in the monasteries and +other libraries of Europe were wantonly or accidentally +destroyed by fire, especially in times of war and religious +fanaticism. In the third place, the early binders, +down through the sixteenth century and even later, +used sheets of vellum from old manuscripts for the +linings and the covers of printed books. Finally, after +the invention of printing, as soon as a given work had +been adequately and handsomely printed in a standard +edition, all but the finest manuscripts of that book +would naturally be looked upon as of little value, and +would be subject to loss and decay if not to deliberate +destruction. Owing to these and perhaps other causes +it is almost entirely the religious manuscripts that have +survived, except those preserved in royal libraries and +museums from the finer collections of the middle ages.</p> + +<p>The invention of printing was not the work of any one +man. Not only were printed pages of text with accompanying +pictures produced from woodcut blocks in Holland +a quarter of a century before Gutenberg began his +work at Mainz, but it is pretty well established that +movable types were employed by Laurence Koster, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +Haarlem, as early as 1430. But Koster, who died about +1440, did not carry his invention beyond the experimental +stages, and produced no really fine printing. Moreover, +his work had no immediate successor in Holland. +Whether it be true, as sometimes alleged, that Gutenberg +first learned of the new art from one of Koster's +workmen, we have no means of knowing. At any rate, +Gutenberg's contemporaries as well as his successors +gave to him the credit of the invention. That he was +not the first to conceive the idea of multiplying impressions +of type-forms by the use of a screw press is evident; +but he was the first to develop the invention to a point +where it became capable of indefinite extension. He +seems to have worked in secret for some years on the +problems involved in type-founding and printing before +the year 1450, when he set up his shop in Mainz.</p> + +<p>The capital for the new business was furnished by a +wealthy goldsmith named Johann Fust. Between 1450 +and 1455 Gutenberg printed an edition of the Latin +Bible, sometimes known as the Mazarin Bible, which is +ordinarily regarded as the first printed book. It was a +magnificently printed volume, exhibiting at the very +foundation of the art a skill in presswork scarcely surpassed +by any of Gutenberg's immediate successors. +He was a great printer, but not a financially successful +one. Fust sued his partner in 1455 for repayment of +the loans advanced, and upon Gutenberg's failure to +meet these obligations Fust foreclosed the mortgage +and took over the printing plant. Although Gutenberg +started another publishing house at Mainz, and continued +it until his death in 1468, the main development of +printing after 1455 was in the original plant as carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +on by Fust and his son-in-law, Peter Schoeffer. They +printed in 1457 an edition of the Psalms in which for the +first time two-color printing was employed, the large +initial letters being printed in red and black. This innovation, +designed to imitate the rubricated initials of the +manuscripts, involved great technical difficulties in the +presswork, and was not generally adopted. Most of the +early printed books, even down to the end of the fifteenth +century, left blanks for the large capitals at the beginnings +of the chapters, to be filled in by hand by professional +illuminators.</p> + +<p>From the establishments of Gutenberg and of Fust +and Schoeffer in Mainz knowledge of the new art spread +rapidly into many German cities. In 1462 Mainz was +captured and sacked by Adolph of Nassau in one of the +local wars of the period, and printers from the Mainz +shops made their way to other cities throughout the +empire. Before 1470 there were printing establishments +in almost every German city, and hundreds of works, +mostly theological, had been issued from their presses.</p> + +<p>In all these early German books, printed of course in +Latin, the type used was the black-letter. Gutenberg, +in designing his first font, evidently tried to imitate as +closely as possible the angular gothic alphabet employed +by the scribes in the best manuscripts. Not only were +the letters identical in form with the engrossing hand of +the monks, but the innumerable abbreviated forms used +in the Latin manuscripts were retained. Thus a stroke +over a vowel indicated an omitted <i>m</i> or <i>n</i>, a <i>p</i> with a +stroke across it indicated the Latin prefix <i>per</i>, a circle +above the line stood for the termination <i>us</i>, an <i>r</i> with a +cross meant—<i>rum</i>, and so forth. These abbreviations,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +which make printed books of the earliest period rather +hard reading today, were retained not only to save space +but to give the printed page as nearly as possible the +appearance of a fine manuscript. It was not at first the +ambition of the printers and type-founders to make their +books more legible or less taxing on the eyes than manuscript; +their readers were accustomed to manuscript and +felt no need of such improvements. The mechanical +advance in the art of writing brought about by printing +was at first regarded as consisting in the greater rapidity +and lower cost at which printed books could be produced.</p> + +<p>But the new invention was at first looked upon by +some famous scholars and patrons of learning as a detriment +rather than a help. The great Trithemius, abbot of +Sponheim, wrote as late as 1494 in the following terms:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A work written on parchment could be preserved for a thousand +years, while it is probable that no volume printed on paper +will last for more than two centuries. Many important works +have not been printed, and the copies of these must be prepared +by scribes. The scribe who ceases his work because of the invention +of the printing-press can be no true lover of books, in that, +regarding only the present, he gives no due thought to the intellectual +cultivation of his successors. The printer has no care for +the beauty and the artistic form of books, while with the scribe +this is a labor of love."</p></div> + +<p>Contrasted with this low estimate of the importance +of the new art by some scholars, we note the promptness +with which the great churchmen of Italy and of France +took measures to import German printers and set up +presses of their own. In 1464 the abbot of Subiaco, a +monastery near Rome, brought to Italy two German +printers, Conrad Schweinheim and Arnold Pannartz, +and set them at work printing liturgical books for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +use of the monks. Soon afterward, under ecclesiastical +patronage, they began to issue, first at Subiaco and then +at Rome, a series of Latin classics. During five years +this first printing establishment in Italy published the +complete works of Cicero, Apuleius, Caesar, Virgil, +Livy, Strabo, Lucan, Pliny, Suetonius, Quintilian, Ovid, +as well as of such fathers of the Latin Church as Augustine, +Jerome and Cyprian, and a complete Latin Bible. +This printing establishment came to an end in 1472 for +lack of adequate capital, but was soon followed by +others both in Rome and especially in Venice.</p> + +<p>Early Venetian printing forms one of the most distinguished +chapters in the whole history of the subject. +The most famous of the first generation was Nicolas +Jenson, a Frenchman who had learned the art in Germany. +Between 1470 and his death in 1480 he printed +many fine books, and in most of them he employed what +is now called roman type. He was not absolutely the +first to use the roman alphabet, but his roman fonts +were designed and cast with such artistic taste, such a +fine sense of proportion and symmetry of form, that +the Jenson roman became the model of later printers +for many years after his death. Roman type, unlike the +black-letter, had two distinct origins. The capitals were +derived from the letters used by the ancient Roman +architects for inscriptions on public buildings. The small +letters were adapted from the rounded vertical style of +writing used in many Italian texts, altogether different +in form from the angular gothic alphabet used in ecclesiastical +manuscripts. Jenson's roman letters were clear, +sharp and easy to read, and constituted the greatest +single addition to the art of printing since its beginning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +Germany clung obstinately to the black-letter in its +Latin books, as it has adhered down to very recent +times to a similar heavy type for the printing of German +text; but the rest of Europe within a few years came over +to the clearer and more beautiful roman.</p> + +<p>There were many early printers at Venice between +Jenson and his greater successor Aldus Manutius, who +began business in 1494, but we shall pass over them all +in order to devote more careful attention to the noble +history of the Aldine press. I propose in the remainder +of this paper to select five great printers of the Renaissance, +and to examine their work both as a whole and +as illustrated in typical examples. These five are:</p> + +<div class='poem2'> +ALDUS MANUTIUS, of Venice.<br /> +<br /> +ROBERT ESTIENNE, of Paris, commonly known by the name of <i>Stephanus</i>.<br /> +<br /> +JOHANN FROBEN, of Basel.<br /> +<br /> +ANTON KOBERGER, of Nuremberg.<br /> +<br /> +WILLIAM CAXTON, of London.<br /></div> + +<p>Each stands for a different aspect of the art of printing, +both in the mechanical features of book-making and also +in the selection of works to be published and the editorial +methods employed in making them ready for the press. +Taken together, the books issued from their presses at +the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth +century form a sort of composite picture of the +Renaissance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 284px;"> +<img src="images/i016.png" width="284" height="400" alt="Aldus Mantius' printer's mark" title="Aldus Mantius' printer's mark" /> +</div> + + +<div class='unindent'>First of all, in our consideration and in order of greatness, +stands the name of Aldus Manutius. The books of the +Aldine press, all with the well-known sign of the anchor +and dolphin, are familiar to most students of the classics. +Aldus was born in 1450, the very year of Gutenberg's +invention. For the first forty years of his life he was a +scholar, devoting himself to the Latin classics and to the +mastery of the newly revived Greek language and literature. +His intimate association with Pico della Mirandola<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +and other Italian scholars, as well as with many of the +learned Greeks who then frequented Italian courts and +cities, led him to conceive the great plan upon which his +later career was based. This was nothing less than to issue +practically the whole body of classic literature, Greek as +well as Latin, in editions distinguished from all that had +preceded in two important respects. First, they were to +be not reprints of received uncritical texts but new revisions +made by competent scholars based upon a comparison +of all the best available manuscripts. Secondly, they +were to be printed not in ponderous and costly folios but +in small octavos of convenient size, small but clear type, +and low price. This was not primarily a commercial venture +like the cheap texts of the classics issued in the nineteenth +century by Teubner and other German publishers, +but resembled rather in its broad humanistic spirit +such a recent enterprise as the Loeb Classical Library. +The purpose in each case was to revive and encourage +the reading of the classics not alone by schoolboys but +by men of all ages and all professions. But there is this +important difference, that Mr. Loeb is a retired millionaire +who employs scholars to do all the work and merely +foots the bill, while Aldus was a poor man dependent +upon such capital as he could borrow from his patrons, +and had at the same time to perform for himself a large +part of the editorial labors on his books. Mr. Loeb +commands the latest and most complete resources of +the modern art of printing; Aldus helped to make that +art. Mr. Loeb's editors may employ when they choose +the style of type known as italic; Aldus invented it. +Mr. Loeb's publishers have at their command all the +advertising and selling machinery of a great modern business<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +concern, and yet they do not, and probably can not, +make the classics pay for themselves, but must meet the +deficits out of an endowment. Aldus had to organize his +own selling system, his advertising had to be largely by +private correspondence with scholars and book-sellers +throughout Europe laboriously composed with his own +hand; yet it was imperative that the business become as +soon as possible self-supporting, or at least that losses in +one quarter should be recouped by profits in another.</div> + +<p>It was in his edition of Virgil, 1501, that Aldus first employed +the new cursive or sloping letter which later came +to be known in English printing as italic type. According +to tradition he copied it closely from the handwriting of +the Italian poet Petrarch. The type was very compact, +covering many more words on a page than the roman of +that day, and was used as a body type, not as in our day +for isolated words and phrases set apart for emphasis or +other distinction from the rest of the text. Aldus also, +though not the first to cast Greek type, gave his Greek +fonts an elegance which was soon imitated, like the italic, +by other printers. By the introduction of small types +which were at the same time legible, and by adopting for +his classical texts a small format suitable for pocket-size +books, Aldus invented the modern small book. No longer +was it necessary for a scholar to rest a heavy folio on a +table in order to read; he might carry with him on a journey +half a dozen of these beautiful little books in no more +space than a single volume of the older printers. Furthermore, +his prices were low. The pocket editions or small +octavos sold for about two lire, or forty cents in the money +of that day, the purchasing power of which in modern +money is estimated at not above two dollars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p> + +<p>This popularizing of literature and of classical learning +did not meet with universal favor amongst his +countrymen. We read of one Italian who warned Aldus +that if he kept on spreading Italian scholarship beyond +the Alps at nominal prices the outer barbarians would +no longer come to Italy to study Greek, but would stay +at home and read their Aldine editions without adding +a penny to the income of Italian cities. Such a fear +was not unfounded, for the poorer scholars of Germany +and the Netherlands did actually find that they could +stay at home and get for a few francs the ripest results +of Italian and Greek scholarship. This gave Aldus no +concern; if he could render international services to +learning, if he could help to set up among the humbler +scholars of other lands such a fine rivalry of competitive +coöperation as already existed among such leaders as +Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, he should be well content +to live laborious days and to die poor. Both these +he did; but he gathered around him such a company of +friends and collaborators as few men have enjoyed; he +must have breathed with a rare exhilaration, born of +honest and richly productive toil, the very air of Athens +in her glory; and he must have realized sometimes amid +the dust and heat of the printing shop that it was given +to him at much cost of life and grinding toil to stand +upon the threshold of the golden age alike of typography +and of the revival of learning. In 1514, the year before +his death, Aldus wrote to a friend a letter of which I borrow +a translation from George Haven Putnam's Books +and Their Makers during the Middle Ages. This is the +picture Aldus drew of his daily routine:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I am hampered in my work by a thousand interruptions. +Nearly every hour comes a letter from some scholar, and if I +undertook to reply to them all, I should be obliged to devote day +and night to scribbling. Then through the day come calls from +all kinds of visitors. Some desire merely to give a word of greeting, +others want to know what there is new, while the greater +number come to my office because they happen to have nothing +else to do. 'Let us look in upon Aldus,' they say to each other. +Then they loaf in and sit and chatter to no purpose. Even these +people with no business are not so bad as those who have a poem +to offer or something in prose (usually very prosy indeed) which +they wish to see printed with the name of Aldus. These interruptions +are now becoming too serious for me, and I must take steps +to lessen them. Many letters I simply leave unanswered, while +to others I send very brief replies; and as I do this not from pride +or from discourtesy, but simply in order to be able to go on with +my task of printing good books, it must not be taken hardly. As +a warning to the heedless visitors who use up my office hours to +no purpose, I have now put up a big notice on the door of my +office to the following effect: Whoever thou art, thou art earnestly +requested by Aldus to state thy business briefly and to take +thy departure promptly. In this way thou mayest be of service +even as was Hercules to the weary Atlas. For this is a place of +work for all who enter."</p></div> + +<p>What a picture that letter gives us of the half humorous, +half pathetic spirit in which the great publisher endured +the daily grind. Twenty years of it wore him out, +but his dolphin-and-anchor trade-mark still after four +centuries preaches patience and hope to all who undertake +great burdens for the enlightenment of mankind.</p> + +<p>The Aldine press did not confine its efforts to the +ancient classics, but printed editions of Dante and +Petrarch and other Italian poets, and produced the first +editions of some of the most important works of Erasmus. +But all of its publications belonged in general to +the movement known as humanism, the field of ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +and contemporary poetry, drama, philosophy, history, +and art. Aldus left to others, especially to the great +ecclesiastical printers of Venice and of Rome, the printing +of the scriptures, the works of the church fathers, +and the innumerable volumes of theological controversy +with which the age abounded. In France, on the other +hand, the great publishing house of the Estiennes, or +Stephani, to whom we next direct our attention, divided +its efforts between the secular and sacred literature. +Inasmuch as the history of the Stephanus establishment +is typical of the influence of printing upon the Renaissance, +and of the Renaissance upon printing, which is +the subject of this paper, we may well examine some +aspects of its career.</p> + +<p>Printing had been introduced into France in 1469 by +the ecclesiastics of the Sorbonne. Like that abbot of +Subiaco who set up the first press in Italy five years +before, these professors of scholastic philosophy and +theology at Paris did not realize that the new art had +in it the possibilities of anti-clerical and heretical use. +For the first generation the French printers enjoyed a +considerable freedom from censorship and burdensome +restrictions. They published, like the Venetians, both the +Greek and Latin classics and the works of contemporary +writers. Both Louis XII. and Francis I. gave their patronage +and encouragement to various eminent scholar-printers +who flourished between the establishment of +the first publishing-houses in Paris and the beginning +of the sixteenth century. I pass over all these to select +as the typical French printers of the Renaissance the +family founded by Henri Estienne the elder. His first +book, a Latin translation of Aristotle's Ethica, appeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +in 1504. From that date for nearly a hundred years the +house of Stephanus and his descendants led the publishing +business in France. Both in the artistic advancement +of the art of printing and in the intellectual advancement +of French thought by their selection of the +works to be issued they earned a right to the enduring +gratitude of mankind.</p> + +<p>Henri Estienne, the founder of the house, who died +in 1520, had published during these sixteen years at +least one hundred separate works. Although they were +mostly Latin, many of them revealed Estienne's knowledge +of and devotion to the new Greek studies, and this +tendency on his part was at once suspected as heretical +by the orthodox doctors of the Sorbonne. The favor of +King Francis was not at all times sufficient to protect +him from persecution, and an increasing severity of censorship +arose, the full force of which began to be evident +in the time of his son Robert.</p> + +<p>After Henri's death his business was for a time carried +on by his widow's second husband, Simon Colines, a +scholar and humanist of brilliant attainments. Both +while at the head of the house of Stephanus and later +when he had withdrawn from that in favor of Robert +Estienne his stepson and set up a separate publishing +business, Colines added much to the prestige of French +printing. He caused Greek fonts to be cast, not inferior +to those of the Venetian printers, and began to publish +the Greek classics in beautiful editions. It was Colines, +rather than either the elder or the younger Estienne, who +elevated the artistic side of French printing by engaging +the services of such famous typographical experts as +Geofroy Tory, and adding to his books illustrations of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +the highest excellence, as well as decorative initials and +borders. Indeed it may be said that after the death of +Aldus supremacy in the fine art of book-making gradually +passed from Venice to Paris.</p> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 220px;"> +<img src="images/i023.png" width="220" height="300" alt="Robert Etienne's printer's mark" title=" Robert Etienne's printer's mark" /> +</div> + + +<div class='unindent'>The greatest of the Estiennes was Robert, son of Henri +Estienne and stepson of Colines, who was in control of +the house from 1524 to his death in 1559. The very first +book he published was an edition of the Latin Testament. +Although following in the main the Vulgate or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +official Bible of the Roman Church, he introduced certain +corrections based on his knowledge of the Greek +text. This marked the beginning of a long controversy +between Estienne and the orthodox divines of the Sorbonne, +which lasted almost throughout his life. In following +years he published many editions of the Latin +scriptures, each time with additional corrections, and +eventually with his own notes and comments, in some +cases attacking the received doctrines of the Church. A +Hebrew Old Testament, in 1546, was followed in 1550 +by the Greek New Testament. The next year he published +a new edition of the Testament in which for the first +time it was divided into verses, a precedent followed in +Bible printing ever since. It was not merely the fact of +his printing the scriptures at all that angered the heresy-hunters, +but much more Estienne's notes and comments, +in which, like Luther in Germany and Tyndale in England, +he sided with the views of the Reformers.</div> + +<p>What distinguishes Robert Estienne from the ordinary +Protestant scholars and publishers of his time is the +fact that he was not only a Reformer but a humanist of +broad and tolerant culture. In all the illustrious group +of that age there is scarcely another like him in this union +of religious zeal and of scholarly culture. Luther and +Calvin and Tyndale had the one; Erasmus is the most +eminent example of the other, with such great publishers +as Aldus and Froben his worthy supporters. But Robert +Estienne, alongside of his controversial works and Biblical +texts, labored at such great enterprises as his monumental +edition of Terence, in which he corrected by the +soundest methods of textual criticism no less than six +thousand errors in the received text, and especially his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +magnificent lexicons of the Latin and Greek languages, +which set the standard for all other lexicographers for +generations to come.</p> + +<p>The middle of the sixteenth century in France is thus +marked by a curious blend of those two distinct movements +in human history which we call the Renaissance +and the Reformation, and the blend is nowhere more +picturesque than in the life of Robert Estienne. At one +moment we find him attacking the abuses of the church, +at another we find him consulting with Claude Garamond +upon the design of a new Greek type, or reading +the final proofs of an edition of Horace or Catullus or +Juvenal, or discussing with some wealthy and noble +book-collector like the famous Grolier the latest styles +in elegant bindings and gold-stamped decoration. For +beauty and for truth he had an equal passion. All that +romance of the imagination which touches with a golden +glamour the recovered treasures of pagan antiquity he +loved as intensely as if it were not alien and hostile, as +the many thought, to that glow of spiritual piety, that +zeal of martyrdom, that white, consuming splendor which +for the mystical imagination surrounds the holy cross. +Humanism at its best is ordinarily thought to be embodied +in the many-sided figure of Erasmus, with his sanity, +his balance, his power to see both sides, that of Luther +and of the Church, his delicate satire, his saving humor, +his avoidance of the zealot's extremes. Perhaps a not +less striking figure is that of this much less known French +printer, striving in the midst of petty cares and unlovely +sectarian strife to maintain the stoical serenity of +a Marcus Aurelius side by side with the spiritual exaltation +of a Saint Paul. There are two types of great men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +equally worthy of admiration: those of unmixed and lifelong +devotion to a single aim springing from a single +source, such as Aldus Manutius, and those in whom that +balance of diverse and almost contradictory elements of +character which commonly leads to weakness makes instead +for strength and for richness, for duty and delight. +Such was Robert Estienne.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 81px;"> +<img src="images/i026.png" width="81" height="250" alt="Decoration" title="Decoration" /> +</div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 214px;"> +<img src="images/i027.png" width="214" height="400" alt="Froben's printer's mark" title="Froben's printer's mark" /> +</div> + + +<div class='unindent'>The third printer whom I have selected as typical of the +Renaissance is Johann Froben, of Basel. His chief distinction +is that he was the closest friend and associate +of Erasmus, the principal publisher of Erasmus's works, +and the representative in the book trade of the Erasmian +attitude toward the Reformation. Although he did +print the Greek Testament, years before Estienne published +his edition in Paris, he accompanied it with no distinctively +Protestant comments. Although at one time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +he issued some of the earlier works of Luther, he desisted +when it became evident that Erasmus opposed any open +schism in the Church. It was Froben who gave to the +world those three famous works of Erasmus, the Encomium +Moriae or Praise of Folly, the Adagia or Proverbs, +and the Colloquia or Conversations, which did quite as +much as the writings of Luther to arouse independent +thinking within the Church, and to bring to an end the +last vestiges of the middle ages in church and state. +And in this relation of Froben to Erasmus there was not +the mere commercial attitude of a shrewd publisher toward +a successful author whose works became highly +lucrative, but the support by one enlightened scholar +who happened to be in a profitable business of another +who happened to be out of it. The earlier life of Erasmus +exhibits a rather depressing illustration of the humiliations +to which professional scholars were exposed in trying +to get a living from the pensions and benefactions of +the idle rich. Literary patronage, as it existed from the +days of Horace and Maecenas down to the death-blow +which Dr. Johnson gave it in his famous letter to Lord +Chesterfield, has never helped the independence or the +self-respect of scholars and poets. It was Froben's peculiar +good fortune to be able to employ, on a business basis +with a regular salary, the greatest scholar of the age as +one of his editors and literary advisers, and at the +same time enable him to preserve his independence of +thought and of action. Aldus and the French publishers +had gathered about them professional scholars and experts +for the execution of specific tasks at the market +price, supplemented often by generous private hospitality. +That was good; but far better was Froben's relation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +with his friend, his intellectual master, and his profitable +client Erasmus. In an age when no copyright laws existed +for the author's benefit the works of Erasmus were +shamelessly pirated in editions, published in Germany +and France, from which the author received not a penny. +Yet Froben went right on paying to Erasmus not only +the fixed annual salary as a member of his consulting +staff but also a generous share of the profits upon his +books. In a greedy, unscrupulous, and rapacious age this +wise and just, not to say generous, policy stands out as +prophetic of a better time.</div> + +<p>As a printer Froben was distinguished by the singular +beauty of his roman type, the perfection of his presswork, +and the artistic decoration of his books. In this +last respect he was much indebted to the genius of Hans +Holbein, whom he discovered as a young wood-engraver +seeking work as Basel. With that keen eye for unrecognized +genius which marked his career he employed +Holbein to design borders and initials for his books. +Later, with an equally sagacious and generous spirit, perceiving +that the young artist was too great a man to +spend his days in a printing office, he procured for him +through Sir Thomas More an introduction to the court +of Henry VIII, where he won fame and fortune as a portrait +painter. I narrate the incident because it illustrates +a very attractive and amiable aspect of some of these +men of the Renaissance, an uncalculating and generous +desire to help gifted men to find their true place in the +world where they might do their largest work. This, in an +age when competition and jealous rivalry in public and in +private life was as common as it is now, may give pause +to the cynic and joy to the lover of human kindness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>ANTON KOBERGER</h2> + +<div class='center'>(<i>No printer's mark known</i>)</div> + + +<div class='unindent'>We are in a different world when we turn to the fourth +of our five representative printers, Anton Koberger, of +Nuremberg. During the forty years of his career as a +publisher, between 1473 and 1513, he issued 236 separate +works, most of them in several volumes, and of the +whole lot none show any taint of reforming zeal. Koberger +was a loyal Catholic, and his published books were +largely theological and all strictly orthodox in nature. +He is distinguished in two respects from the other German +printers of his time, the time between the death of +Gutenberg and the rise of Martin Luther. In the first +place his work showed great typographical excellence, +with many fonts of handsome Gothic type and a lavish +use of woodcut illustrations. In the second place, his +publishing business was far better organized, far more +extensive in its selling and distributing machinery, +than that of any other printer in Europe. We learn that +he had agents not only in every German city, but in the +very headquarters of his greatest competitors at Paris, +Venice, and Rome, and in such more distant places as +Vienna, Buda-Pesth, and Warsaw. The twenty-four +presses in his own Nuremberg establishment were not +sufficient for his enormous business, and he let out printing +jobs on contract or commission to printers at Strasburg, +Basel, and elsewhere. The true German spirit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +discipline appears in a contemporary account of his printing +plant at Nuremberg. He had more than a hundred +workmen there, including not only compositors, pressmen, +and proof-readers, but binders, engravers, and +illuminators. All these were fed by their employer in a +common dining-hall apart from the works, and we are +told that they marched between the two buildings three +times a day with military precision.</div> + +<p>Koberger employed for a time the services of Albrecht +Dürer, the famous engraver, not only for the illustration +of books but also for expert oversight of the typographical +form. Typography in its golden age was rightly regarded +not as a mere mechanical trade but as an art of +design, a design in black upon white, in which the just +proportion of columns and margins and titles and initials +was quite as important as the illustrations. Perhaps +Koberger found Dürer too independent or too expensive +for his taste, for we find him in his later illustrated works +employing engravers more prolific than expert. Such +were Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, +who drew and engraved the two thousand illustrations in +the famous Nuremberg Chronicle published by Koberger +in 1493. This remarkable work was compiled by Doctor +Hartman Schedel, of Nuremberg. It is a history of the +world from the creation down to 1493, with a supplement +containing a full illustrated account of the end of +the world, the Millennium, and the last judgment. This +is by no means all. There is combined with this outline +of history, not less ambitious though perhaps not +more eccentric than H. G. Wells's latest book, a gazetteer +of the world in general and of Europe in particular, +a portrait gallery of all distinguished men from Adam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +and Methuselah down to the reigning emperor, kings, +and pope of 1493, with many intimate studies of the +devil, and a large variety of rather substantial and Teutonic +angels. Every city in Europe is shown in a front +elevation in which the perspective reminds one of Japanese +art, and the castle-towers and bridges and river-boats +all bear a strong family resemblance. The book +is full of curious material, quite apart from the quaint +illustrations. In the midst of grave affairs of state we +run across a plague of locusts, an eclipse of the sun, or a +pair of lovers who died for love. Scandalous anecdotes +of kings and priests jostle the fiercest denunciations of +heretics and reformers. A page is devoted to the heresies +of Wyclif and Huss. Anti-Semitism runs rampant +through its pages. Various detailed accounts are given +of the torture and murder of Christian boys by Jews, +followed by the capture and burning alive of the conspirators. +Superstition and intolerance stand side by +side with a naive mystical piety and engaging stories of +the saints and martyrs. Of all the vast transformation in +human thought that was then taking form in Italy, of +all the forward-looking signs of the times, there is little +trace. From 1493 to the last dim ages of the expiring +world, the downfall of Antichrist and the setting up of +the final kingdom of heaven upon earth, seemed but a +little way to Hartman Schedel, when he wrote with +much complacence the colophon to this strange volume. +He left three blank leaves between 1493 and the Day +of Judgment whereon the reader might record what +remained of human history. It is indeed rather the +last voice of the middle ages than the first voice of the +Renaissance that speaks to us out of these clear, black,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +handsome pages that were pulled damp from the press +four hundred and twenty-eight years ago on the fourth +of last June. At first reading one is moved to mirth, then +to wonder, then perhaps to disgust, but last of all to +the haunting melancholy of Omar the tent-maker when +he sings</p> + +<div class='poem'> +"When you and I behind the veil are past,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last."</span><br /></div> + +<p>As to worthy Hartman Schedel, God rest his soul, one +wonders whether he has yet learned that Columbus discovered +America. He had not yet heard of it when he +finished his book, though Columbus had returned to +Spain three months before. O most lame and impotent +conclusion! But the fifteenth century, though it had an +infinite childlike curiosity, had no nose for news. Nuremberg +nodded peacefully on while a new world loomed up +beyond the seas, and studied Michael Wolgemut's picture +of Noah building the ark while Columbus was fitting +out the Santa Maria for a second voyage. Such is +mankind, blind and deaf to the greatest things. We know +not the great hour when it strikes. We are indeed most +enthralled by the echoing chimes of the romantic past +when the future sounds its faint far-off reveille upon our +unheeding ears. The multitude understands noon and +night; only the wise man understands the morning.</p> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 327px;"> +<img src="images/i034.png" width="327" height="400" alt="Caxton's printer's mark" title="Caxton's printer's mark" /> +</div> + + +<div class='unindent'>And now finally, what of William Caxton? The father of +English printing had been for many years an English +merchant residing in Bruges when his increasing attention +to literature led him to acquire the new art of printing. +He had already translated from the French the +Histories of Troy, and was preparing to undertake other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +editorial labors when he became associated with Colard +Mansion, a Bruges printer. From Mansion he learned +the art and presumably purchased his first press and +type. Six books bearing Caxton's imprint were published +at Bruges between 1474 and 1476, though it is possible +that the actual printing was done by Mansion rather +than by Caxton himself. In 1476 Caxton set up the +first printing shop in England, in a house within the precincts +of Westminster Abbey. Between that date and +his death in 1491 he printed ninety-three separate works, +some of these in several editions. His industry and scholarly +zeal as a publisher somewhat exceeded his technical +skill as a printer. Caxton's books, which are now much +rarer than those of many continental printers of the +same period, are not so finely and beautifully done as +the best of theirs. But the peculiar interest of his work +lies in the striking variety of the works he chose for publication, +the conscientious zeal with which he conceived +and performed his task, and the quiet humor of his prefaces +and notes. Let me illustrate briefly these three +points. First, his variety. We have observed that Aldus +and Froben published chiefly the Latin and Greek classics, +Koberger the Latin scriptures and theological works, +and Stephanus a combination of classics and theology. +Caxton published few of the classics and very little theology. +His books consist largely of the works of the early +English poets, Chaucer, Gower, and others, of mediaeval +romances derived from English, French, and Italian +sources, and of chronicles and histories. The two most +famous works that came from his press were the first +printed editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and +Malory's Morte d'Arthur. His own English translation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +of the Golden Legend, a mediaeval Latin collection of +lives of the saints, is scarcely less in importance. Among +many other titles the following may serve to show how +unusual and unconventional were his selections:</div> + +<div class='poem2'> +The History of Reynard the Fox.<br /> +The History of Godfrey of Boloyne, or the Conquest of Jerusalem.<br /> +The Fables of Aesop.<br /> +The Book of Good Maners.<br /> +The Faytes of Armes and of Chyvalrye.<br /> +The Governayle of Helthe.<br /> +The Arte and Crafte to Know Well to Dye.<br /></div> + +<p>This is indeed humanism, but humanism in a different +sense from that of Aldus and Erasmus. Human life from +the cradle to the grave, human life in war and peace, +human life in its gayer and its graver lights and shadows, +human life as embodied equally in famous writers and +in anonymous popular legends, was Caxton's field. He +accounted nothing human alien to his mind or to his +great enterprise.</p> + +<p>Again, Caxton was conscientious. He set great store +by accuracy, not only typographical accuracy in matters +of detail, but also the general accuracy of the texts +or sources from which his own translations and his editions +of other works were made. For example, in the +second edition of the Canterbury Tales he explains how +the first edition was printed from the best manuscript +that he could find in 1478, but how after the appearance +of that there came to him a scholar who complained +of many errors, and spoke of another and more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +authentic manuscript in his father's possession. Caxton +at once agreed to get out a new edition "whereas before +by ignorance I erred in hurting and defaming his book +in divers places, in setting in some things that he never +said nor made and leaving out many things that are +made which are requisite to be set in." A great many +other examples of such disinterested carefulness are to +be found in the history of those busy fifteen years at +Westminster. In view of the fact that he was not only +editor, printer, and publisher, but also translated twenty-three +books totaling more than forty-five hundred printed +pages, this scholarly desire for accuracy deserves the highest +praise. Unlike Aldus and Froben, who were likewise +editors as well as publishers, he was not surrounded +by a capable corps of expert scholars, but worked almost +alone. His faithful foreman, Wynkyn de Worde, doubtless +took over gradually a large share of the purely +mechanical side of the business, but Caxton remained +till the end of his life the active head as well as the +brains of the concern.</p> + +<p>As for his humor, it comes out even in his very selections +of books to be printed, but chiefly in little touches +all through his prefaces. For example, in his preface to +the Morte d'Arthur he answers with a certain whimsical +gravity the allegations of those who maintain that there +was no such person as King Arthur, and that "all such +books as been made of him be but feigned and fables." +He recounts with assumed sincerity the evidence of the +chronicles, the existence of Arthur's seal in red wax at +Westminster Abbey, of Sir Gawain's skull at Dover +Castle, of the Round Table itself at Winchester, and so +on. But he goes on to say, in his own quaint way, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +there is not space to quote at large, that in his own +opinion the stories are worth while for the intrinsic interest +and the moral values in them, whether they are literally +true or not. He closes thus:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, +friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate +virtue and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall +bring you to good fame and renommee. And for to pass the time +this book shall be pleasant to read in, but for to give faith and +belief that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at your +liberty."</p></div> + +<p>This wise, sane, gentle apostle of literature in England +wrought well in his day, and is justly honored alike by +scholars and by printers, who regard him, in England and +America, as the father of their craft. Indeed to this day +in the printing trade a shop organization is sometimes +called a chapel, because according to ancient tradition +Caxton's workmen held their meetings in one of the +chapels adjoining the abbey of Westminster.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 50px;"> +<img src="images/i038.png" width="50" height="29" alt="Decoration" title="Decoration" /> +</div> + +<p>This survey of printing in its relations to the Renaissance +is now not finished but concluded. I have shown +that the invention and improvement of printing was not +the cause but rather the effect of the revival of learning, +while on the other hand the wide dissemination of literature +made possible by typography of course accelerated +enormously the process of popular enlightenment. I have +selected five typical printers of that age:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p> + +<div class='poem'> +Aldus, with his Homer.<br /> +Stephanus, with his Greek Testament.<br /> +Froben, with his Plato.<br /> +Koberger, with his Nuremberg Chronicle.<br /> +Caxton, with his Morte d'Arthur.<br /></div> + +<p>Here we find represented in the Aldus Homer the revival +of Greek learning, in the Stephanus Testament the +application of this to the free criticism of the scriptures, +in the Froben Plato the substitution of Platonic idealism +for the scholastic philosophy based on Aristotle, in +the Nuremberg book the epitome of mediaeval superstition, +credulity, and curiosity on the verge of the new +era, and in Morte d'Arthur the fond return of the modern +mind, facing an unknown future, upon the naive and +beautiful legends of Arthurian romance. An age full of +contradictions and strange delusions, but an age of +great vitality, great eagerness, great industry, patience, +foresight, imagination. And in such an age it was the +good fortune of these wise craftsmen who handled so +deftly their paper and type to be the instruments of +more evangels than angels ever sang, more revolutions +than gunpowder ever achieved, more victories than ever +won the applause of men or the approval of heaven. In +the beginning the creative word was <i>Fiat lux</i>—let there +be light. In the new creation of the human mind it was +<i>Imprimatur</i>—let it be printed. If printing had never +been invented, it is easy to conceive that the enormous +learning and intellectual power of a few men in each +generation might have gone on increasing so that the +world might to-day possess most of the knowledge that +we now enjoy; but it is certain that the masses could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +never have been enlightened, and that therefore the gulf +between the wise few and the ignorant many would have +exceeded anything known to the ancient world, and +inconceivably dangerous in its appalling social menace. +Whoever first printed a page of type is responsible for +many crimes committed in the name of literature during +the past four centuries; but one great book in a generation +or a century, like a grain of radium in a ton of pitchblende, +is worth all it has cost; for like the radium it is +infinitely powerful to the wise man, deadly to the fool, +and its strange, invisible virtue so far as we know may +last forever.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 50px;"> +<img src="images/i038.png" width="50" height="29" alt="Decoration" title="Decoration" /> +</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p> + +<div class='hang1'>DESIGNED BY BRUCE ROGERS AND PRINTED +FROM MONOTYPE CASLON TYPE BY WILLIAM +EDWIN RUDGE AT MOUNT VERNON NEW YORK +IN DECEMBER 1921.<br /><br /><br /></div> + +<div class='hang1'>OF THIS EDITION ONE HUNDRED COPIES ARE +ON FRENCH HAND-MADE PAPER AND FIVE +HUNDRED ON ANTIQUE WOVE PAPER.</div> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> + +<div class='tnote'>Transcriber's Note: This text uses both today and to-day.</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Printing and the Renaissance, by +John Rothwell Slater + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINTING AND THE RENAISSANCE *** + +***** This file should be named 26029-h.htm or 26029-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/0/2/26029/ + +Produced by Emmy and the Online Distributed Proofreading +Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from +images generously made available by The Internet +Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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