rubber was applied. Gutenberg's application of the press, a modification probably of the wine press, or some other press in general domestic use, not only prevented the waste of paper, which the rubber occasioned by rendering one side of each leaf of no avail for the purposes of printing; but furthermore, as it appears from the evidence itself, it enabled Gutenberg to produce a greater number of impressions in a given time, by printing from four blocks at once. Such, it is evident, was the full extent of Gutenberg's discovery at Strasburg. Had he succeeded in bringing to any degree of perfection the art of printing from moveable types at Strasburg in 1438, we should hardly find him at Mayence, in 1450, retrograde to the printing them from solid blocks. Had he withdrawn from a partnership formed for the purpose of turning to account an invention of such importance, and which promised to realize such extensive profits, is it probable that all his co-partners, who were inhabitants of Strasburg, would have agreed, with one consent, to drop all further proceedings in the business? Had he succeeded so far as the advocates of the Strasburg claims would have us believe him to have done, the silence upon this point observed by the earliest printers of that city would indeed be remarkable. When Gutenberg himself, at the end of the Catholicon of 1460, proclaimed Mayence to be the seat of the invention, what was there to prevent Mentel and Eggestein, the earliest Strasburg printers, from contradicting that assertion if it were not founded in fact; and, while they at once acknowledged Gutenberg to be the inventor of the art, from claiming for their native city the honour of being its birth-place? But no; in 1467 Peter Schöffer published the "Constitutiones" of Pope Clement the Fifth; and at the end he also specified Mayence as the place at which the art, by which that book had been produced, was invented. Eggestein actually reprinted this book at Strasburg in 1471, and, though he spoke of himself as being well acquainted with all that related to printing, he never contradicted this statement made by Schöffer. In the year 1468 again Schöffer published the Institutes of Justinian, and again mentioned Mayence as the seat of the invention, and expressly declared that the two Johns (Gutenberg and Fust) were the inventors of the art. Eggestein, who reprinted this book in 1472, observed absolute silence on the subject of the invention; and does not contradict Schöffer's statement, but is content to describe himself again as "artis impressoria peritissimum." One word more, and we will quit this portion of our subject. As the children say, If Peter Piper picked a peck of pepper, where is the peck of pepper Peter Piper picked? So say we,-If John Gutenberg printed books at Strasburg, where are the books printed at Strasburg which John Gutenberg did so print? Turn we now to an examination of the claims which have been put forth from time to time by the learned in behalf of the city of Mayence, to be regarded not only as the birth-place of Gutenberg, but also as the scene of his great and important invention; and we shall be struck, at the first glance, with the extraordinary dissimilitude which exists between the evidence adduced in behalf of the rival cities. In the case of Strasburg, all is obscure, all is ambiguous, and only to be arrived at by the deduction of inferences, which the premises by no means warrant; in behalf of Mayence, on the other hand, we have evidence, clear, unmystified, undeniable, and conclusive. We have the evidence of the inventor Gutenberg himself; we have the evidence of his contemporaries; and what, in matters of this nature, must always exercise considerable influence upon the decision of such claims, we find the opinion of the world in general favourable to those put forward in behalf of Gutenberg's native city. After the termination of the process which the brother of Andreas Dritzehn had instituted against Gutenberg, we have no evidence as to the pursuits of the latter for a few following years; but it is most probable that he remained at Strasburg, awaiting the expiration of the period to which the partnership was limited, which was the year 1443, since he is found in that city for the last time in 1444, previously to which he had been obliged to obtain certain loans, a tolerably conclusive proof that the speculation, in which he and his partners were engaged, had not fulfilled their expectations. It is most probable that, in the course of the year 1444, he returned to Mayence, where his uncle, Henne Gensfleisch the elder, had, on the 28th of October in the preceding year, already rented from Ort zum Jungen the court called zum Jungen at Mayence, near the ancient church of the Franciscans, the same house in which Gutenberg exercised his profession as a printer, and which has consequently ever since retained the name of the Printing House. We hear nothing further of him now until the 6th of October, 1448, on which day he borrowed 150 florins, through the intercession of his relative, Arnold Gelthuss, from Rynhard Bromser and Henchin Rodenstein, and for which he mortgaged the rents of several houses belonging to him at Mayence. It is obvious from this that Gutenberg continued to contract debts with the view of bringing his invention to perfection, without however succeeding in doing so. The attempt to apply the printing from blocks to the production of books, which he had com menced at Strasburg, he continued at Mayence; and it is evident from a passage of Bergellanus*— that about the year 1450 he had already prepared a number of engraved blocks, when, finding himself prevented by want of means from bringing his invention to perfection, he was about to renounce all further thought upon the subject, when he was enabled by the advice and pecuniary assistance of John Fust, a citizen of Mayence, to carry his long-cherished idea into effect. Of this we have the evidence not only of Bergellanus, but also o Trithemius, abbot of Spanheim, a witness whose testimony few, we should think, would venture to impugn, when they consider that the account of the origin of printing, which he relates in his Annals of the Monastery of Hirschau, was, as he himself tells us, taken from the mouth of Peter Schöffer, the son-in-law of Fust, some thirty years before,―" sicuti ante xxx ferme annos, ex ore Petri Opilionis de Gernsheim, civis Moguntini, qui gener erat primi artis inventoris, audivi."+ Gutenberg's partnership with Fust was concluded on the 22nd of August, 1450, when an agreement was entered into between them, by which it was stipulated that Fust should advance to Gutenberg 800 florins, and receive six per cent. interest for the same. With this sum Gutenberg was to make and prepare the necessary tools, machinery, &c., which tools, &c. were to be made over to Fust as a collateral security for the money so advanced. Fust was further bound to give Gutenberg yearly the sum of 300 florins for expenses, and was also to pay for wages, house rent, parchment, paper, ink, &c. Moreover, if they disagreed, Gutenberg was to return to Fust the 800 florins which had been ad *Arnold Bergellanus, who published at Mayence, in 1541, a Latin poem in praise of printing, Encomion Chalcographie, and who, according to his account, had been for fifteen years a corrector of the press in a printing establishment at Mayence, declares, in the dedication of his work to the archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, that, in some historical work of Trithemius's, (certainly not the Annals, which were only printed in 1690,) he had found an eulogium upon printing and upon its invention, which invention Trithemius attributed to Gutenberg, as the first inventor, and to his assistants, Fust and Schöffer. This account, he adds, had been confirmed by certain old citizens of Mayence, with whom he had conversed; and he had also seen some of the materials, and these were very old indeed, which had been used by the first practisers of the art. + Since Trithemius completed his Annals of the Monastery of Hirschau, about the year 1514, Schöffer must have communicated this information to him about the year 1494, a fact which renders Trithemius's account of the greatest possible historical value. The MS. of these Annals was first recovered from the dust of a library towards the end of the seventeenth century, and printed at St. Gallen, in the year 1690. vanced by him, and to receive the tools, &c., free from the mortgage. And it was further agreed, that all moneys, not expended on the necessary tools and machinery, (for the preparation of which the 800 florins before named were especially intended,) but on the direct production of books, (such as workmen's wages, parchment, paper, ink, &c.,) should be considered as applied at the mutual risk and for the mutual advantage of the two contracting parties. Such was the agreement entered into by Gutenberg and Fust, as recorded in the instrument drawn up on the 4th of November, 1455, by the notary Helmasperger; and we learn from the account of the origin of printing, drawn up from the papers of the Fust family, by John Frederick Faust,* that the earliest works produced under this partnership were several books printed from blocks; the first being merely tables of the alphabet, which were printed off by means of small presses, after many attempts had been made to produce an ink adapted to the work. These tables were followed by the Donatus, and, according to Trithemius, by the Vocabulary, which he calls "Catholicon." As we have before observed, previously to his being joined by Fust, Gutenberg had already prepared a great number of such engraved blocks. Nor does the account given by J. F. Faust render it altogether impossible that, at the time of his admitting Fust into the partnership, he had already practised for some time with success his block printing, and was then engaged in plans for bringing into operation his grand scheme of printing with moveable types; and that Fust, aware of the honour and profit which must result from the discovery, to all who might be partakers in it, readily consented to furnish the necessary funds for the bringing out of that great work,-the Bible undoubtedly,-which Gutenberg was anxious to produce by his newly discovered art. Whether this be so or not, it is evident that he was prepared to apply the art of printing from wooden blocks to so important a purpose as the printing of a vocabulary. The objection which has been urged by some writers, that block printing could never have been rendered available to the production of any work of considerable extent, is contradicted by the testimony of Doctor Paul, of Prague, who, in a Latin MS. preserved in the university of Cracow, and which bears the date of 1449, describes a bookmaker *Johann Friedrich Faust, of Aschaffenburg, a son of the judge of the Imperial Court and Council of Frankfort, who died in 1619, drew up a History of Printing from the family papers of the Fausts of Aschaffenburg, the descendants of the Fusts of Mayence, which are preserved in the Uffenbach collection of MSS., now in the public library at Frankfort. as an artist who engraves lines, figures, &c. upon blocks, which he then transfers to paper; and adds, that in his time copies of the Bible had been so produced at Bamberg in the space of four weeks. "Et tempore mei Bambergæ quidam sculpsit Bibliam super lamellas, et in quatuor septimanis totam Bibliam in pergamento subtili præsignavit sculpturam." But, though practicable, the printing of a work of considerable extent from wooden blocks must obviously be one entailing extraordinary labour upon the projectors, in the engraving of the infinite number of blocks, which the work required; and none of which were of course available for any other purpose than that for which they were originally designed. Gutenberg, having well considered this difficulty, and having seen how much more advantageous it would be to employ single and separable letters instead of engraved columns or pages, had the blocks, which he had engraved for the Donatus, sawn asunder, separated the different letters of which they consisted, and began to compose works with these letters, supplying any of which he ran short by new ones expressly cut for the purpose. Such is the account given by J. F. Faust, and it certainly presents us with the most natural origin which can be ascribed to the invention of moveable types. Of the practicability of printing with letters so constructed we are furnished with ample proof. Gassau, in his "Annales Augsburgenses," speaks of the first letters being made of wood; and in the Colophon to the "Expositio Georgii super summulis Magistri Hispani," printed at Lyons in 1488, they are again mentioned, "Sic prima in buxo concisa elementa premendi.' These authors, it may be said, only confirm Faust, and do not attest the practicability. Dr. Wetter himself, however, has done this in the most satisfactory manner, by having a sufficient number of letters of the size of the type of the forty-two line Bible engraved on pear-tree wood, from which he has had a column printed and inserted in the appendix to his work. The types used for this purpose he has deposited in the public library at Mayence. That Gutenberg conceived the idea of separating his engraved blocks into single letters in the course of the year 1450, is rendered exceedingly probable, as the two leaves of the “Donatus," which Bodman found forming the cover of an old account book, belonged to an edition of that work printed, in all probability, in the course of that year, or in the beginning of 1451; and the type of this "Donatus" has been pronounced by those learned bibliographers, Fischer and Van Praet, to be of wood; and is |