The edition of the Bible, which was one of the very first productions of Gutenberg and Fust's press, is called the Mazarin, in consequence of the first known copy having been discovered in the famous library formed by Cardinal Mazarin. It seems to have been printed as early as August 1456, and is a truly admirable specimen of typography; the characters being very clear and distinct, and the uniformity of the printing perfectly remarkable. A copy in the Royal Library at Paris is bound in two volumes, and every complete page consists of two columns, each containing forty-two lines. The reader will recognize the appropriateness of the fact that from the first printing press the first important work produced should be a copy of God's Word. It sanctified the new art which was to be so fruitful of good and evil results—the good superabounding, and clearly visible—the evil little, and destined, perhaps, to be directed eventually to good—for successive generations of mankind. It was a fitting forerunner of the long generation of books which have since issued so ceaselessly from the printing press; books, of the majority of which we may say, with Milton, that "they contain a potency of life in them to be as active as those souls were whose progeny they are; to preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellects that feed them."
Gutenberg's career was dashed with many lights and shadows, but it closed in peace. In 1465, the Archbishop-elector of Mentz appointed him one of his courtiers, with the same allowance of clothing as the remainder of the nobles attending his court, and all other privileges and exemptions. It is probable that from this time he abandoned the practice of his new invention. The date of his death is uncertain; but there is documentary evidence extant which proves that it occurred before February 24, 1468. He was interred in the church of the Recollets at Mentz, and the following epitaph was composed by his kinsman Adam Gelthaus:—
"Joanni Gesnyfleisch, artis impressoriae repertori, de omni natione et lingua optime merito, in nominis sui memoriam immortalem Adam Gelthaus posuit. Ossa ejus in ecclesia D. Francisci Moguntina feliciter cubant."
II.—WILLIAM CAXTON.
During the last thirty or forty years of the fifteenth century, while printing was becoming gradually more and more practised on the Continent, and the presses of Mentz, Bamberg, Cologne, Strasburg, Augsburg, Rome, Venice, and Milan, were sending forth numbers of Bibles, and various learned and theological works, chiefly in Latin, an English merchant, a man of substance and of no little note in Chepe, appeared at the court of the Duke of Burgundy at Bruges, to negotiate a commercial treaty between that sovereign and the king of England; which accomplished, the worthy ambassador seems to have liked the place and the people so well, and to have been so much liked in return, that for some years afterwards he took up his residence there, holding some honourable, easy appointment in the household of the Duchess of Burgundy. This was William Caxton, who here ripened, if he did not acquire, his love of literature and scholarship, and began, from hatred of idleness, to take pen in hand himself.
"When I remember," says he, in his preface to his first work, a translation of a fanciful "Recueil des Histoires de Troye," "that every man is bounden by the commandment and counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness, which is mother and nourisher of vices, and ought to put himself into virtuous occupation and business, then I, having no great charge or occupation, following the said counsel, took a French book, and read therein many strange marvellous histories. And for so much as this book was new and late made, and drawn into French, and never seen in our English tongue, I thought in myself, it should be a good business to translate it into our English, to the end that it might be had as well in the royaume of England as in other lands, and also to pass therewith the time; and thus concluded in myself to begin this said work, and forthwith took pen and ink, and began boldly to run forth, as blind Bayard, in this present work."
While at work upon this translation, Caxton found leisure to visit several of the German towns where printing presses were established, and to get an insight into the mysteries of the art, so that by the time he had finished the volume, he was able to print it. At the close of the third book of the "Recuyell," he says: "Thus end I this book which I have translated after mine author, as nigh as God hath given me cunning, to whom be given the laud and praise. And for as much as in the writing of the same my pen is worn, mine hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyen dimmed with overmuch looking on the white paper, and my courage not so prone and ready to labour as it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily, and feebleth all the body; and also because I have promised to divers gentlemen and to my friends, to address to them as hastily as I might, this said book, therefore I have practised and learned, at my great charge and dispense, to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and form you may here see; and is not written with pen and ink as other books are, to the end that every man may have them at once. For all the books of this story, named the "Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye," thus imprinted as ye here see, were begun in one day, and also finished in one day" (that is, in the same space of time).
By the year 1477, Caxton had returned to London, and set up a printing establishment within the precincts of Westminster Abbey; had given to the world the three first books ever printed in England,—"The Game and Play of the Chesse" (March 1474); "A boke of the hoole Lyf of Jason" (1475); and "The Dictes and Notable Wyse Sayenges of the Phylosophers" (1477),—and was fairly started in the great work of supplying printed books to his countrymen, which, as a placard in his largest type sets forth, if any one wanted, "emprynted after the forme of this present lettre whiche ben well and truly correct, late hym come to Westmonster, in to the Almonesrye, at the reed pale, and he shal have them good chepe." From the situation of the first printing office, the term chapel is applied to such establishments to this day.
Caxton published between sixty and seventy different works during the seventeen years of his career as a printer, all of them in what is called black letter, and the bulk of them in English. He had always a view to the improvement of the people in the works he published, and though many of his productions may seem to us to be of an unprofitable kind, it is clear that in the issue of chivalrous narratives, and of Chaucer's poems (to whom, says the old printer, "ought to be given great laud and praising for his noble making and writing"), he was aiming at the diffusion of a nobler spirit, and a higher taste than then prevailed.
In 1490, Caxton, an old, worn man, verging on fourscore years of age, wrote, "Every man ought to intend in such wise to live in this world, by keeping the commandments of God, that he may come to a good end; and then, out of this world full of wretchedness and tribulation, he may go to heaven, unto God and his saints, unto joy perdurable;" and passed away, still labouring at his post. He died while writing, "The most virtuous history of the devout and right renouned Lives of Holy Fathers living in the desert, worthy of remembrance to all well-disposed persons."
Wynkyne de Worde filled his master's place in the almonry of Westminster; and the guild of printers gradually waxed strong in numbers and influence. In Germany they were privileged to wear robes trimmed with gold and silver, such as the nobles themselves appeared in; and to display on their escutcheon, an eagle with wings outstretched over the globe,—a symbol of the flight of thought and words throughout the world. In our own country, the printers were men of erudition and literary acquirements; and were honoured