as epistles only those letters which were inscribed on paper, as distinguished from the ancient codicilli1_ the term he gives to the writings that Bellerophontes But the pencils principally in use in Italy, at the period of the revival of letters, were composed of lead and tin, the proportion being two parts of the former to one of the latter; which pencil was called a style. It seems that the oldest certain account of the use of the quills in writing, which has reached us, occurs in a passage in Isidorus Hispalensis, who died in 636. He mentions reeds and feathers as instruments employed in writing. There is besides, a small Latin poem on a writing pen, to be seen in the works of Anthelmus; the first Saxon, says Beckman, who wrote Latin, and who made the art of Latin poetry known to his countrymen. He is said also to have inspired them with some taste for compositions of this. kind. He died in 709. The poem De Penna Scriptoria, begins

thus:

"Me pridem genuit candens onocrotalus albam,” which, if not descriptive of a goose-quill, at least supposes an implement furnished by a feathered animal. Writing pens are mentioned by Aleuin, who lived in the eighth century, somewhat later than Anthelmus, and composed poetical inscriptions for every part of a monastery, and, among others, for the writing study; of which, he says, that no one ought talk in it, as it was very important that the pen of the transcriber should go correctly on without mistake.

Tramite quo recto penna volantis eat.

Mabillon saw a MS. of the Gospels written in the ninth century, in which the Evangelists were represented with quills in their hands. In the curious little work of Hericus Ackerus, called “Historia Pennarum," in which he treats of the pens of the famous Academicians, published at Altenburgh, in 1726, we read of the one pen of Leo Allatins, with which he wrote his Greek for forty years, and on losing which, he is said to have with difficulty refrained from tears. "Et eo tandem amisso tantum non lacrymasse." P. Holland, the translator of Pliny, performed his work with a single pen, and he has handed down the fact in the following verse:

1 The epistola were always sent to the absent. Codicilli were given to those present as well, as sent to the absent, as were also the libelli, as for example Cæsar's letters to the Senate, in the form of our present book, which form was adhered to by the other emperors.

carried from Proetus to Jobates, enjoining the death Licinius Mucianus, a writer of the time

of the bearer.

of Vespasian, mentions having seen, when governor

With one sole pen I wrote this book,

Made of a gray goose-quill;

A pen it was when I it took,

A

pen I leave it still.

Cicero, in a letter to his brother Quintus, makes some pleasant allusions to his bad pen, in which he tells him that he is apt to snatch up whatever pen (calamus) comes first to hand: "Calamo et atramento temperato, charta etiam dentata res agetur. Scribis enim te meas litteras superiores vix legere potuisse: in quo nihil eorum mi frater, fuit, quæ putas. Neque enim occupatus eram, neque perturbatus, nec iratus alicui : sed hoc facio semper, ut, quincumque calamus in manus meas venerit, eo sic utar tamquam bono" (Ad Quint. Frat. lib. ii. ep. xv.)

Haerlem, Mentz, and Strasburg seem to have the best pretensions to the original invention of the art of printing. Venice has a better claim to the improvement than to the first rudiments. For Nicolas Jenson, who is generally supposed to have first taught it to the Venetians, did not begin printing there till the year 1470; and if John de Spiras's claim should be allowed, who says "that he was the first who had ever printed in that city," yet his pretensions go only a year or two further backward. And even admitting that another book was printed at Venice before John de Spiras's "Cicero's Epistles ad Familiares," in 1469; (namely, "Fr. Maturantii de Componendis Versebus Hexametro et Pentametro," by Ranolt, Venet. 1468"), yet that would carry it back but one year more in support of the Venetian claim; whereas the first rudiments of

1

Πορεν δ' όγε σηματα λυγρα,

Γραψας εν πινακι πτυκτω θυμοφθορα πολλα. Hom. Iliad, 2'. 168. Thucidides relates a similar story of Pausanias, and similarly David sent a letter by Uriah to Joab, and Hamlet wrote letters for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And the like is told of Giangiacomo. But Homer's rivaй птνитоs would πιναξ πτυκτος seem rather to correspond to the Latin "tabellæ," or "pugillares," rather than litteræ or epistolæ. Pliny, while distinguishing pugillares and codicilli from epistolæ, assumed on the authority of the above passage: Pugillarium usum fuisse etiam ante Trojana tempora.

of Lycia, in a temple, an epistle from Sarpedon, written on paper. But Pliny distrusted the account; "since," says he, "even in Homer's time, and therefore long the art, the first rough specimens, the first essay with separate wooden types, if not elsewhere, yet at least at Haerlem, was about thirty years anterior to those dates.

At Haerlem, the use of separate type blocks appears to have been first thought of, by Laurentius, about 1430, and practiced. It was afterwards practiced at Mentz with metal types, first cut and then cast, invented by one of the two brothers of the name of Geinsfleich-probably by elder John Geinsfleich, about the year 1442, when he published his first essays on wooden types, which did not answer his expectations. However, both the brothers have been called protocharagmatici. This invention of printing with metal types was called “Ars characterizandi." The cut metal types were further improved by John Faust, of Mentz, who, in 1462, completed the art by the help of his servant, Peter Shoeffer, whom he adopted for his son, and to whom he gave his daughter in marriage, pro dignâ laborum multarumque ad inventionum remuneratione. So that the original foundation of the art of printing, in general, seems to have been laid at Haerlem, and the improvements made at Mentz. As to Strasburg, it can have no pretensions. nearly equal to either Haerlem or Mentz. Gutenberg endeavored to attain the art whilst he resided in that city, and his first attempts were made, in 1436, with wooden types. But he and his partners were never able to bring the art to perfection.. He quitted Strasburg in 1444 or 1445, greatly involved in debt, and obliged to sell all that he had.

The true inventor of printing seems to have been Laurentius, of Haerlem, son of John, who was son of another Laurence. This Laurence, the grandson, was born at Haerlem, about 1370, and died in 1440. He was Ædituus or Custos of the cathedral of Haerlem; and was called Custer from his office, not from his family name. His descent is said to have been from an illegitimate branch of the Gens Brederodia. He was a man of large property, and his office was both respectable and lucrative. Hadrian Junius gives a full narrative of the accident which led Laurentius into the happy train of this useful invention (see his Batavia, Ed. Ludg. Bat. 1588, 253). This Laurentius being a man of ingenuity and judg-.. ment, he proceeded step by step, inventing a more glutinous. ink, and then forming whole pages of wood with letters cut upon them; pasting the backsides of the pages together, thus

after Sarpedon, the part of Egypt which produces. paper was nothing but sea, being afterwards thrown up by the Nile."

making a single sheet printed on both sides. He changed his original beechen letters for leaden ones, and those again for a mixture of tin and lead, as a less flexible and more solid and durable substance. In one of his first works, the "Speculum Salutis," he introduced pictures on wooden blocks, printed on separate movable wooden types, fastened together by threads.

He did not live to see the art brought to perfection, as he died in 1440, aged 70; and was succeeded, either by his son-inlaw, Thomas Peter, who married his only daughter, Lucia, or by his immediate descendants, Peter, Andrew, and Thomas, who seem to have acquired the art of printing, neatly with separate wooden types. Their last known work was printed at Haerlem, in 1472; soon after which they disposed of all their materials, and probably quitted their employment. Laurentius' types were stolen soon after his death. The thief was one of his workmen, named John, a native of Mentz; to which place he conveyed them, and settled there; it is not so certain what was his surname. John Fust or Faust has been suspected; but it seems to be an unjust charge upon him. So also, upon John Gutenberg, whose residence was at Strasburgh, from 1436 to 1444, endeavoring with fruitless labor and expense to attain the art. Neither does it seem just to suspect John Meidenbachius, an assistant to the first Mentz printers; nor John Petersheimius, some time a servant to Fust and Schoeffer, who set up a printing house at Frankfort, in 1459.

It is most probable that the culprit was John Geinsfleich, senior, elder brother of Gutenberg, who was born at Mentz, but had resided in other places. He took the shortest route, through Amsterdam and Cologne, to Mentz, where he fixed his residence, in the year 1441, and in 1442 published two small works. Ulric Zell, in his Chronicon Coloniæ, 1499, attributes the invention, or at least the completion of the art, to Gutenberg, at Mentz, though he admitted that some books had been published in Holland earlier than in that city; and from Mentz, he says, it was first communicated to Cologne; next to Strasburg; then to Venice. There is no certain proof of any book having been printed at Strasburg till after 1462, after which period printing made rapid progress in Europe. In 1490, it reached Constantinople. In the middle of the next century it advanced into Africa and America, and about 1560 was in

The age of Homer, synchronizing with the time of Solomon, may be regarded as preceding the Christian Era by about one thousand years.' But the Scriptroduced into Russia. After this it was even carried into Iceland, the farthest north (as Mr. Bryant observes) of any place where arts and sciences have ever resided. We find mention of a book, written in Latin, by Arngrim Jonas, a native of Iceland, and printed ("Typris Hollensibus in Islandia Boreali, Anno, 1612, entitled Anatome Blefkiniana"). It was formerly the general opinion and belief, and seemed to be agreed by all our historians, that the art of printing was introduced and first practiced in England by Mr. William Caxton, a citizen of London, who had been bred a mercer, having served an apprenticeship to one Robert Large, who died in 1441, after having been sheriff and lord mayor of London, leaving a legacy to Caxton, in testimony of his good character and integrity. From the time of his master's death Mr. Caxton spent the following thirty years (from 1441 to 1471) beyond sea, in the business of merchandise. In 1464, he was employed by King Edward the Fourth in a public and honorable negotiation, to transact and conclude a treaty of commerce between that king and his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. By his long residence in Holland, Flanders, and Germany, he had opportunity of being informed of the whole method and process of this art; and returning to England, and meeting with encouragement from great persons, and particularly from the then abbot of Westminster, be first set up a press in that abbey (in the almonry or ambry), and began to print books soon after the year 1471, and is said to have pursued his business there till the year 1494, or, as some affirm, until the year 1491. He was probably upwards of four-score years of age when he died. The "Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye," is supposed to have been the first book that he had printed in England. All English writers before the Restoration, who mention the introduction of the art of printing, give Caxton the credit of it, without any contradiction or variation. For

'According to Theopompus, Homer lived 500 years after the siege of Troy (684 B. C.)-Clem. Alex. Stróm. 1. i. s. 21, p. 389. According to Plutarch, some affirmed that Homer lived at the time of the Trojan war, 1184 B. C. Plut. in V. Hom. 44. So that if, as Mr. Roberts suggests, we take a mean between these extremes, the age of Homer must stand at about 100 years after the age of Solomon.