Footnote
Table of Contents [1] "The multiplication of printed books and the consequent still greater multiplication of readers, created, what may be termed a literary public throughout England, and when the printed copies of a book from Caxton's press were spread throughout this public, each member of it used a copy that was uniform with the copies used by all the rest. But before printing was known, and while copies of a book could be made in manuscript only, the transcribers were apt to introduce changes of spelling, of syntax, and of phrase, according to the dialect of the part of the country to which each copyist belonged. And the dialects of different parts of England differed then from each other in a far greater degree than any amount of variation which can at present be detected by the most zealous philologist. Moreover, each author wrote in his own dialect, or to speak more correctly, in the pure native English of his own part of England. Hence the diction of an author of those times in many cases appears to us more archaic than the diction of his contemporaries, or even of some of his predecessors. But in proportion as men of letters became familiar in their reading with the nearly uniform English language of printed books, they followed or approached that uniform English in their own writings. The language continued to receive changes by the introduction of new words and phrases, and by the zeal for imitating Latin models, which grew to excess in many of our prose writers not long after the close of the Fifteenth century. Many more modifications of etymology, and some of syntax, took place before the modern English language can be said to have been substantially established throughout the country; but that amount of uniform establishment never could have been effected at all, without the intervention and the extended use of the art of printing."-Sir Edward S. Creasy's History of England. 8vo. 1870. vol. ii. pp. 556-7.
What the Art of Printing did in this respect for England, it likewise did in all other countries to which it was carried, in greater or lesser degrees, according to the amount of freedom it enjoyed, or of restriction to which it, and the people to whom it spoke, were subjected.
[2] Vide Reformation of Poland, by Count V. Krasinski, 2 vols. 8vo. Nisbet, 1838-40.
[3] For assistance in this matter, I am much indebted to my father, Mr. Robert Skeen, under whose able teachings I was thoroughly instructed in, and made a master of my craft-the Art of Printing. I have also to acknowledge, with thanks, the material aid received from Mr. H. W. Caslon, the eminent Type-founder, as well as from my publishers, Messrs. Trübner and Co., of Paternoster Row.
[4] Southey's "Colloquies."
[5] A reference can scarcely be avoided, in connection with this subject, to the exclamation of the patriarch Job (ch. xix. 23, 24), "Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen, and lead, in the rock for ever!" The book of Job is commonly supposed to have been written either by Moses, when residing amongst the Midianites about 1520 years before the commencement of the Christian era, or by Elihu, one of the speakers in the book, which would probably carry its antiquity a century and a half or two centuries further back. The word translated 'printed' does not, however, bear the meaning in the original, which is now generally attached to it. It evidently refers to the method of inscribing records on rolls, made of the skins of animals, for the purpose of preserving them for the benefit of future generations, or on such other substances as were then used for that purpose; and in the texts quoted the modes of writing and the instruments for inscribing are expressly referred to. Plates of metal, and prepared leaves of the talipot palm, are to this day engraved and inscribed on, in Eastern countries, with iron 'styles,' for purposes of record. Books of the laws of Buddha exist on plates of gold, as well as on the more common olas; and although we do not know upon what material Moses transcribed the Law, which God himself commanded him to write, and to place in the side of the Ark of the Covenant, we may be certain that it would be written on the most imperishable, as well as the most portable of substances adapted for such a purpose, Moses being learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and having for his assistants the most skilful artisans of the age. The Ten Commandments we know were graven on tablets of stone hewn out of the rock. From tablets such as these, and from engraved plates, as well as from inscribed olas, copies and fac-similes might have been easily made by a process analogous to that of copper-plate printing; the only drawback being that in all such copies the printed characters would have been reversed. That the Hebrews must have been familiar with books, such as were referred to by Job, is clear. In Egypt, during the time of their residence in that country, Public Libraries existed:-"Over the mouldering door which led to the bibliothetical repository of the Memnonium, said to have been built about the time of Moses, Champollion read, written over the heads of Thoth and Safkh, (who were the male and female deities of arts, sciences, and literature), the remarkably appropriate titles of 'President of the Library,' and 'Lady of Letters.'" (Kitto's Cycl. of Bibl. Literature, Art. Writing). The Egyptians probably derived their knowledge of writing from Misraim the son of Ham, as did the Canaanites from Canaan the brother of Misraim, from whom they were descended. There is proof in the sculptured pictures and inscriptions in the oldest Egyptian monuments, of about the same age as the Great Pyramid, that 2200 years B. C., writing was an art well known at that early period. "Whatever the employment, or whatever the produce being brought to be laid at the prince's feet, there were always scribes in attendance to take down the exact amount in writing on the property rolls." (Vide Life and Work at the Great Pyramid in 1865, by C. Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal, Scotland; and article in Good Words, Part VII, 1867, by the same author, p. 453.) When the Israelites took possession of the land of Canaan, among other great and walled cities which they captured was Debir, whose original name was Kirjath-sepher, or the City of Books, or Kirjath-sannah, the City of Letters, (Joshua xv. 49; Judges i. 11). This word "sannah" is evidently the same as "sannas," the name given to oblong copper-plates, on which are engraved the record of the grants of lands, &c., made from very ancient times by the kings of Ceylon, to temples, chiefs, and others; and which are frequently, under that name, received in evidence in the law courts in disputes regarding landed property. They are, in fact, the title-deeds under which most of the Sin?halese gentry of ancient family hold their estates. These royal grants are sometimes on plates of silver, and occasionally cut in the solid rock or on massive stone tablets.
[6] Plaster casts of inscriptions might also have suggested the same idea. The use of plaster, for the purposes of inscriptions, dates back to a very ancient era. It seems to have been as old as the art of writing itself. We learn from the book of Deuteronomy (xxvii. 2-4), that while the Children of Israel were yet wandering in the desert, after their exodus from Egypt, it was ordained, that when they had passed into Canaan,-the land which should be given them,-great stones, plaistered over with plaister, should be set up, on which stones should be written "very plainly" all the words of the law.
[7] "Sy-chong-n?gén-pon," the name of a Chinese Song-book.
[8] The following alphabetical list includes the most distinguished of these writers:-Andrès, Antonio, Baillet, Bayle, Blount, Bouterwek, Brucker, Brunet, Buhle, Chalmers, Collier, Corniani, De Bure, De Vries, Dibdin, Ebert, Eichhorn, Falkenstein, Fischer, Foppens, Frere, Gesner, Ginguéné, Goujet, Graesse, Greswell, Hallam, Hain, Heeren, Horne, Kästner, Mallinckrot, Maittaire, Maitland, Meiners, Mendez, Montucla, Naudé, Niceron, Panzer, Portal, Santander, Sismondi, Sprengel, Sotheby, Tennemann, Tiraboschi, Vanderhaeghen, Van der Meersch, Van Iseghem, Van Praet, Watt, Wolf, Würdtwein, Zapf.
[9] The Life and Typography of William Caxton, by William Blades. 2 vols. 4to. with 57 fac-simile illustrations. London, 1861-63.
[10] Catalogus Librorum Sæc. XVI. impressorum, in Bibliotheca Regia Haganâ asservatorum, 8vo. Hagae, 1856.
[11] Monumens Typographiques des Pays Bas au XVe Siècle, 20 livraisons, imp. 4to. 120 plates of fac-similes. La Haye, 1857-66. Of this magnificent work only 200 copies were printed.
[12] Classified Index of Fifteenth Century Books in the Collection of the late M. J. de Meyer of Ghent. 8vo. London, 1870. pp. 15-16.
[13] Trübner's American and Oriental Literary Record, July,...
