text stringlengths 25 168 | audio audioduration (s) 1.78 9.95 |
|---|---|
Printing, in the only sense with which we are at present concerned, differs from most if not from all the arts and crafts represented in the Exhibition | |
in being comparatively modern. | |
For although the Chinese took impressions from wood blocks engraved in relief for centuries before the woodcutters of the Netherlands, by a similar process | |
produced the block books, which were the immediate predecessors of the true printed book, | |
the invention of movable metal letters in the middle of the fifteenth century may justly be considered as the invention of the art of printing. | |
And it is worth mention in passing that, as an example of fine typography, | |
the earliest book printed with movable types, the Gutenberg, or "forty-two line Bible" of about fourteen fifty-five, | |
has never been surpassed. | |
Printing, then, for our purpose, may be considered as the art of making books by means of movable types. | |
Now, as all books not primarily intended as picture-books consist principally of types composed to form letterpress, | |
it is of the first importance that the letter used should be fine in form; | |
especially as no more time is occupied, or cost incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters | |
than in the same operations with ugly ones. | |
And it was a matter of course that in the Middle Ages, when the craftsmen took care that beautiful form should always be a part of their productions whatever they were, | |
the forms of printed letters should be beautiful, and that their arrangement on the page should be reasonable and a help to the shapeliness of the letters themselves. | |
The Middle Ages brought calligraphy to perfection, and it was natural therefore | |
that the forms of printed letters should follow more or less closely those of the written character, and they followed them very closely. | |
The first books were printed in black letter, i.e. the letter which was a Gothic development of the ancient Roman character, | |
and which developed more completely and satisfactorily on the side of the "lower-case" than the capital letters; | |
the "lower-case" being in fact invented in the early Middle Ages. | |
The earliest book printed with movable type, the aforesaid Gutenberg Bible, is printed in letters which are an exact imitation | |
of the more formal ecclesiastical writing which obtained at that time; this has since been called "missal type," | |
and was in fact the kind of letter used in the many splendid missals, psalters, etc., produced by printing in the fifteenth century. | |
But the first Bible actually dated (which also was printed at Maintz by Peter Schoeffer in the year fourteen sixty-two) | |
imitates a much freer hand, simpler, rounder, and less spiky, and therefore far pleasanter and easier to read. | |
On the whole the type of this book may be considered the ne-plus-ultra of Gothic type, | |
especially as regards the lower-case letters; and type very similar was used during the next fifteen or twenty years not only by Schoeffer, | |
but by printers in Strasburg, Basle, Paris, Lubeck, and other cities. | |
But though on the whole, except in Italy, Gothic letter was most often used | |
a very few years saw the birth of Roman character not only in Italy, but in Germany and France. | |
In fourteen sixty-five Sweynheim and Pannartz began printing in the monastery of Subiaco near Rome, | |
and used an exceedingly beautiful type, which is indeed to look at a transition between Gothic and Roman, | |
but which must certainly have come from the study of the twelfth or even the eleventh century MSS. | |
They printed very few books in this type, three only; but in their very first books in Rome, beginning with the year fourteen sixty-eight, | |
they discarded this for a more completely Roman and far less beautiful letter. | |
But about the same year Mentelin at Strasburg began to print in a type which is distinctly Roman; | |
and the next year Gunther Zeiner at Augsburg followed suit; | |
while in fourteen seventy at Paris Udalric Gering and his associates turned out the first books printed in France, also in Roman character. | |
The Roman type of all these printers is similar in character, | |
and is very simple and legible, and unaffectedly designed for use; but it is by no means without beauty. | |
It must be said that it is in no way like the transition type of Subiaco, | |
and though more Roman than that, yet scarcely more like the complete Roman type of the earliest printers of Rome. | |
A further development of the Roman letter took place at Venice. | |
John of Spires and his brother Vindelin, followed by Nicholas Jenson, began to print in that city, | |
fourteen sixty-nine, fourteen seventy; | |
their type is on the lines of the German and French rather than of the Roman printers. | |
Of Jenson it must be said that he carried the development of Roman type as far as it can go: | |
his letter is admirably clear and regular, but at least as beautiful as any other Roman type. | |
After his death in the "fourteen eighties," or at least by fourteen ninety, printing in Venice had declined very much; | |
and though the famous family of Aldus restored its technical excellence, rejecting battered letters, |
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 48