Besides the preceding doubtful account we have notices of a print in the Library of Lyons with the date 1384. Specimens of engravings of playing cards, as well as of saints, said to have been produced in the years 1390 and 1400 are also extant. From the year 1400 to 1440 other and more elaborate engravings, of a devotional character, are likewise to be met with. One of the most curious, representing St. Christopher carrying the infant Saviour across the sea, is in the possession of Earl Spencer, and bears the date 1423. A few years later we find similar prints accompanied with explanatory inscriptions or texts of Scripture placed beneath them; next came whole series of these prints published together as a book; and lastly, the small Latin Grammars of Donatus, the common school-books of the day, engraved and printed in like manner. These productions are distinguished by Bibliographers as Block-books, and nine or ten different specimens are known to exist. Of these the most remarkable are the Biblia Pauperum, or Poor Man’s Bible,[16] a book containing 40 pages of quarto, or small folio prints, with several engravings with inscriptions upon each page, supposed to have been executed (most probably at Zwolle[17] in Holland) between the years 1420 and 1435; and the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis,[18] or Mirror of Salvation, a book containing 63 leaves in the two Latin, and 62 in the two Dutch editions, (each in small folio), 58 of which are ornamented with engravings representing stories from the Old and New Testaments, beneath which are more copious explanatory inscriptions than those in the “Biblia Pauperum.” These editions are supposed to have been published between the years 1430 and 1457.
Mean as these books would seem if issued from the press at the present day, they were wonderful productions for the age in which they appeared; and although the first named was called the ‘Poor Man’s Bible,’ or ‘Book of the Poor,’ it was only in comparison with the cost of a written copy of the Holy Scriptures, which was worth the, in that day, enormous sum of £100.[19] As very few copies are now in existence, (and those generally in an imperfect state), they have literally become worth more than their weight in gold: a copy of the Biblia Pauperum having been bought by the Duke of Marlborough, after a keen competition at an auction sale in 1813, for the almost fabulous sum of £257.
It was from these early Block-books, or Donatuses, that Gutenberg, as we learn from the statement of Ulric Zell—a contemporary, and working printer at Mentz with the original inventors while the art was yet a secret—derived his idea of printing as at present practised. In the words of Mr. Charles Knight, in his interesting biography of the venerable Caxton, the Father of the Art in England—“To seize upon the idea, that the text or legend might be composed of separate letters, capable of re-arrangement after the impressions were taken off, so as to be applied without new cutting to other texts and legends, was to secure the principle upon which the printing art depended. It was easy to extend the principle from a few lines to a whole page, and from one page to many, so as to form a book.”
Such, according to the almost universally adopted belief, were the successive steps which led to the invention of Typography. And for nearly a century no one had ventured to doubt that either images of saints, or characters for playing cards, were first printed from engraved wooden blocks, as cheap substitutes for the works of the draftsman and painter;—that these were succeeded by subjects of sacred history with explanatory legends cut in wood, imitative of the art of the illuminator, and the caligraphy of the scribes or professional writers;—that these again were followed by Donatuses;—and that from these Donatuses, printed from solid blocks, Gutenberg obtained his first idea of the Typographic Art.
But in 1868 an altogether new hypothesis was propounded at the annual congress of the British Archæological Association, held that year at Cirencester. It was there maintained, in a paper read by Mr. Henry F. Holt, that printing from moveable types, as practised in Europe, preceded in point of time that of printing from engravings on wood. After a careful inspection of the celebrated print of St. Christopher, in Earl Spencer’s library at Althorp, he contended—“that the date 1423 is not that of the engraving, but of the legend beneath it, which had been copied by the engraver, and has reference to the jubilee year of the Saint; that it has been printed by a press, and with printer’s ink; and, what is more important, upon paper which exhibits the well-known water-mark of the bull or heifer’s head, with a flower issuant between the horns, which was used by Faust, and supposed to have been made for him.[20] He has shewn, that the discovery of this supposed early engraving instigated the fabrication of several similar, which were stained with coffee to give them the appearance of age. He further maintains, that the block-books—originally, in his opinion, produced by the celebrated painter and engraver Albrecht Durer—were cheap substitutes for the highly-priced productions of the Printing press.” And he challenges literature “to prove, that a copy of the block-book known as the ‘Biblia Pauperum,’ was actually in any known library, public or private, prior to 1485, or known then to be in existence.”[21] “All this has,” as Mr. Planché observes, “naturally aroused a host of antagonists, who have more or less courteously contradicted, without convincing Mr. Holt, by the production of any incontrovertible fact, which would refute the evidence he adduces in support of his arguments. Alone and undismayed, he still gallantly defies all comers.”
Guided by the test of costume—“a test which he has never known applied in vain, when called to the assistance of the critical inquirer,”—Mr. Planché, while abstaining from the expression of an opinion upon the principal point in dispute, shews, as a matter of fact in regard to playing cards, that “with the exception of those by the Master of 1466 [an engraver only known by that designation], and a set of “tarots,” called the Mantegna Cards,[22] on one of which is the date 1483, all the specimens of printed playing cards that he has met with display the unmistakeable character of the fashions of Germany, France, and England, during the latter half of the Fifteenth century, and the greatest portion those of the very latest part—Louis XI, Charles VIII, of France; Edward IV, and Henry VII, of England; and Maximilian I, Emperor of Germany.”[23]
So far, then, the evidence of the playing cards seems to support the hypothesis of Mr. Holt.
[The Knave of Bells, 1390.]
Most of the early prints are certainly of an extremely rude type, consisting chiefly of mere outlines of figures; in the one case of saints, copied from the illuminated Missals, and in the other, of characters for playing cards similar to the foregoing fac-simile, afterwards coloured in imitation of paintings. Very probably they may have been made, in the first instance, by means of stencil plates; if not, the impressions were obtained from the engraved blocks by friction, after the Chinese manner. Whichever was the method adopted, the ‘Brief-malers’ or card painters of Germany seem to have run their Italian brethren hard in the race of competition in the first half of the Fifteenth century, as we learn from a decree of the Government of Venice, bearing date the 11th October 1441; which, after stating that the art and mystery of making cards and printed figures had fallen into decay, from the numbers printed out of Venice, ordains—“That it be ordered and established, according to that which certain masters had supplicated, that from this time in future no work of the said art that is printed or painted[24] on cloth or on paper, that is to say, altar pieces, images, and playing cards, and whatever other work of the said art is done with a brush and printed,[25] shall be allowed to be brought or imported into this city under pain of forfeiting the works so imported, and xxx livres and xii soldi,[26] of which fine one-third