The Printed Book
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But the art of the founder-engraver was destined to specialise itself. There were artisans in this branch, and among them in France, in the fifteenth century, Simon de Collines, who engraved good Roman characters about 1480. Later was Claude Garamond, of Paris, who died about 1561, a pupil of Geoffroy Tory, the most celebrated of all of them; Tory definitely proscribed the Gothic character, of which Vostre and Verard had made constant use. Garamond worked in this way, producing with microscopical precision new letters, among others those of Robert Estienne, the most marvellous and the most distinct. It was he who was charged by Francis I. to form the celebrated royal Greek types. He assisted in getting up the Champfleury of Geoffroy Tory.
On his death William Lebé succeeded him, and inherited his punches. Lebé engraved by preference Hebrew characters, of which he made a specialty. His travels to Rome and Venice had given him a singular value in his art; and when he died about the end of the century, he was incontestably the first cutter of Oriental characters in the whole world. Philip II. of Spain had begged him to engrave the letters of the Bible of which Plantin had undertaken the impression, and Francis I. had charged him to make types for the Estiennes.
At the commencement of the seventeenth century we find James Sanlecque, pupil of Lebé, and his son. During this period several women succeeded their husbands as type-founders. In the eighteenth century Philip Grandjean, an artist who was royal printer to Louis XIV., was keeper of the foundry afterwards united, in 1725, to the Royal Printing House; Fournier succeeded the Lebés, then P. S. Fournier the younger, who engraved with great success. In our days we have seen above the Didots themselves working their punches; and one of them, Henri, founded microscopical characters for a La Rochefoucauld about the middle of the nineteenth century.
We have referred to English type-founders of the eighteenth century in Chapter V.
The type, or character used in printing, is a composition of lead and pure antimony, which, melted, form a resisting and at the same time supple mixture. Lead alone would be crushed, and the first printers often suffered in making their experiments. The proportion of the mixture is four of lead to one of antimony.
The matrix is combined in such manner that the eye– that is to say, the part of the character intended to produce the impression – and also the shank intended to hold the letter are cast together.
The letters, once founded according to their different forms, are afterwards disposed in boxes with compartments, or "cases." These cases serve to classify the character by letters, italics, capitals, lower case, punctuations, accents, etc.
As we have said, the relation of letters among themselves in the composition of a language is called the "fount." For example, it is certain that the Italian employs the letter a more than b, the letter a appearing in nearly every word; a compositor to compose in this language should therefore have more of a than of b. The relation between these two letters and all the others is the "fount." In French the proportion of a fount is about 5,000 a for 800 b, 3,000 c, 3,000 d, 11,000 e, etc. The fount varies with the languages. In English the proportion is 8,500 a to 1,600 b, 3,000 c, 4,400 d, etc.
Before 1789 there were in all twenty different "bodies" of letters that bore fantastic names. The "Parisienne" was the smallest size, and the "Grosse Nonpareille" the largest. In the sixteenth century a character called "Civilité" was invented. It sought to imitate fine cursive writing. In the last century this idea was reproduced, and the "Bâtarde Coulée," which did not have great success, was made. In English types, Joseph Moxon in 1669 had eleven sizes; Caslon in 1734 had thirty-eight.
When a printer wishes to compose a work, he first decides in which body he will print it. His choice made, he places in the compositors' "cases" – that is, in the boxes placed before each one of his workmen – the chosen character, with its italics, capitals, signs, etc. Then he gives them the "copy," that is to say the manuscript of the author to be reproduced. The compositors take a "galley" according to the size of the book; and, letter by letter, by running their fingers through the different cases, they place side by side the words laboriously composed, and necessarily presenting their reverse, so that they will show their proper face when printed.
The composition terminated, the process of "imposition" takes place. This is the disposition by pages in an iron chase, in such manner that the sheet of paper shall be printed on both sides, the pages exactly following one another.
It will be seen by the specimen on the preceding page that if the two sheets be brought together, page 2 of II. will fall exactly opposite page 1 of I, page 7 opposite page 8, and so on. Nothing is easier than this combination for folio, quarto, or octavo sizes, but as the smaller sizes are multiplied even to 128mo, tables are necessary to prevent error.
The imposition is completed by building up the composition in a chase by means of pieces of metal called "furniture," which regulate the margins. When the whole is in proper place, it is squeezed up and adjusted by means of sunk reglets. The chase may now be placed under the press without fear of the characters falling out or getting mixed.
A pressman takes a "proof" after having rubbed the relief of the characters with ink, and on this proof are corrected the author's or compositor's faults by indications in the margin by understood signs. By this amended proof the compositor amends his faults one by one: leaves out superfluous characters, puts turned characters straight, spaces or draws closer the lines, etc.
The corrections finished, the time has come to print. In the time of Geoffroy Tory this operation was made as we shall explain; it was the same before and the same after. Two pressmen have tempered with water the tympan, or more elastic part of the carriage, against which will be directed in good time the blow from the type; they have also damped the paper intended for the impression, so that it may retain the greasy ink with which the characters are charged; then the formes are washed before putting them under the press.
In the figure which we reproduce, which dates from about 1530, we see the workshop of Jodocus Badius, of Asch, father-in-law of two celebrated printers, Vascosan and Robert Estienne. The press rolls – that is to say, the formes – have been placed in the "carriage," or movable chase, which, coming forward, receives the sheet of paper and the ink, and returns under the press to receive the blow of the "bar." In the room, lighted by two windows, the compositors work. In front one works at the bar, while his comrade distributes the ink on the "balls." These balls are leather pads, on which the greasy ink, made of lampblack and oil, is spread, to more easily rub the forme after each blow. Ordinarily the inker had two functions: he prepared the ink, distributed it, and kept his eye on the printed sheets to correct faults, blots, and difference of tint. Here the workman is simply occupied by the balls. Printed sheets and prepared paper are on a table by the side of the press. This press is composed of the rolling chase, the tympan, and the "frisket," a smaller tympan, which work against one another. The tympan, we have said above, receives directly the blow. And it was so for nearly four centuries; the mechanical means of our days have a little changed the work, but the principle is always the same.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a press cost about a hundred and twenty-seven crowns, with its diverse utensils, as may be seen in an unpublished piece analysed by Dr. Giraudet, of Tours, in a very interesting pamphlet: Une Association d'Imprimeurs et de Libraires de Paris Réfugiés à Tours au XVIe Siècle. The workshop of Jamet Métayer, of Tours, cost a rent of eighty-three crowns – about twenty pounds of current money.
Workmen were then paid by the "day;" and it came to be one of the expressions then so much used in manual labour, corresponding to the sum of the least work of a good workman. M. Ladevèze, printer, thought that the "day" represented the work of about twenty thousand Roman or Cicero letters employed by a compositor.
With us the "day" of compositors and pressmen is differently calculated. The latter have to take a certain number of sheets.
The sheet, composition and press work, cost nearly seven crowns, or nearly two pounds. Jamet Métayer paid twenty crowns for four sheets in Italics; he demanded three months for the work.
The primitive presses were wooden screw presses, and they so remained until the beginning of this century, when Lord Stanhope, a celebrated electrician, author, and politician, perfected them and gave his name to a new machine. His improvement consisted in that the bar was no longer fixed to the vice, but to a cylinder outside. A counter-weight brought back the platen at each blow. Pierre Didot had previously made metal platens. In 1820 the use of the Stanhope press commenced in France.
England had, besides, taken a preponderating place in typographical invention. The printer of the Times, John Walter, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, seeking to publish his journal quicker, associated himself with craftsmen who constructed mechanical presses for him. The Didots lost no time, and themselves made improvements.
In 1848, the presses of the Constitutionnel, thanks to the application of steam, produced twenty thousand papers an hour. In our time there are machines that print only on one side, as well as double machines, printing both sides at once. The rotary machines, with endless paper, take thirty-five thousand impressions an hour. In the newspaper machines of Marinoni, the great inventor, the paper is unrolled, printed, cut, and folded without leaving the machine, and falls into a place from which it is taken ready for the subscriber. The latest perfection of the printing press is the Walter press and the rotary machine of R. Hoe and Co., of New York, extensively used throughout the world. The elaborate book has little to do with these marvellous processes, although in its turn it largely benefits by the improvement of the printing machine.
It is apart from our purpose to speak at length on the manufacture of paper. It is certain that it was well made before the invention of printing, for most of the accounts of the fifteenth century are written on linen paper, very resisting and well sized. Later on rags were used in this manufacture; and here, in a few words, is how paper was made in the mould, or "hand-made" before the invention of machinery for the purpose: —
The rags, having been thoroughly cleansed, were put into vats, where they were worked up under a beating press until they were reduced to pulp. This pulp was thrown into hot water and stirred until the mixture was uniformly made. Then a mould of fine wire cloth, fixed upon a wooden frame, and having a "deckle" to determine the size of the sheet, was taken; in the middle of this frame was disposed, also in brass wire, a factory mark, intended to appear in white in the sheet of paper, and called the "water mark." This mould was dipped into the vat of pulp and drawn out again. After gently shaking it to and fro in a horizontal position, the fibres of the pulp became so connected as to form one uniform fabric; and the water escaped through the wires. The deckle was then removed from the mould, and the sheet of paper turned off upon a felt, in a pile with many others, a felt intervening between each sheet, and the whole subjected to great pressure, in order to absorb the superfluous water. After being dried and pressed without the felts, the sheets were dipped into a tub of size and again pressed to remove surplus size. This primitive method of paper-making is represented in fig. 104, and the same principle is still in use for the production of hand-made paper. Machinery has effected many improvements and economies in the production of woven paper.
China and Japan have their special paper manufacture. In Japan the material employed is the bark of the morus papifera sativa.
According to their fineness, size, and weight, papers have received different names, proceeding from the water mark.
Faust at Mayence used paper marked with a bull's head. Jenson at Venice used a balance of which the form varied. This latter came from a mill which furnished Vicenza, Perugia, and Rome. Jenson used, besides a crown, a cardinal's hat.
The bull's head underwent transformations, it had stars and roses, and was special to Germany, and it may sometimes be found in Italy.
The wires and bridges served to determine the size of a book. Looking at a folio leaf against the light, the wires will be seen to be horizontal, and the bridges vertical. In quarto they will be reversed, the paper having been folded in four instead of in two. The bridges become horizontal. They return to the vertical in octavo, and so on.
As for ink, it was from the beginning a composition of lampblack and oil of different quality and nature, mixed with resin to obtain a greater and quicker dryness. Ink for engravings was more carefully made. For coloured inks various powders are mixed with the oil and resin, and a title in red and black has to go through the press twice: once for the red and once for the black.
From the above it can be understood that illustrations in relief can easily be introduced into the composition, whether in combination with text or in separate pages. Another question presents itself: Did the old printers employ casting, or did they print directly from the wood block itself? In other words, the block having been cut, did they make with it a mould into which melted metal could be poured to obtain a more resistant relief? The fact is difficult to elucidate. It appears to-day that Simon Vostre, Verard, and others printed relief engravings on metal, but were they cut directly or obtained by casting, as they are now? It cannot be determined yet.
CHAPTER VIII
BOOKBINDING
The binding of the first printed books – Ancient German bindings – Binding in the time of Louis XII. – Italian bindings – Aldus – Maioli – Grolier – Francis I. – Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers – Catherine de Medicis – Henri III. – The Eves – The "fanfares" – Louis XIII. – Le Gascon – Florimond Badier – Louis XIV. – Morocco leathers – Cramoisy – The bindings of the time of Louis XIV. – The regency – Pasdeloup – The Deromes – Dubuisson – Thouvenin – Lesné – The nineteenth century – English binders – Roger Payne – Francis Bedford.
LEADING the reader now towards the final perfection of the Book: printing, which had stirred up and reversed so many things, created, so to speak, the art of binding. Previously the binder was simply a workman sewing together the leaves of a manuscript, with no science or device but to clasp the whole together solidly with cord and string. As luxury increased the old binder was no longer thought of. On the wooden boards which closed the Book, jewellers encrusted their wares, lavishing ivory and precious stones to the taste of the amateur or the bookseller. Generally these works covered books of precious miniatures, the Horœ, or manuscripts that were deemed worthy of such magnificent clothing, rarely copies without importance. Printing at once disordered the tribe of copyists as well as the binders did jewellers. The demand increasing, rich bindings were soon abandoned, and each bookseller applied himself to the work, or at least covered in his own house books intended for sale. The fashion was not then to expose for sale, as now, unbound books. Purchasers wanted an article easy to handle, and which they were not obliged to return for ulterior embellishment.
So to the public were presented the works laboriously composed by Gutenberg, Schoeffer, and Fust, somewhat after the manner of manuscripts, which they pretended to imitate, with their solid wooden boards covered with pig or calfskin. At the four corners, copper nails, with large heads, prevented rubbing against the shelves of the bookcase, for at that time books were ranged on their sides, and not as they are to-day. We must return to the bibliomaniac of the "Ship of Fools" to get an idea of these depositories; before him may be seen ranged on a desk large folios, with nails on their sides, in the shelves, so defying the dust, in place of being placed upright on their edges, which rendered them liable to spots and stains. (See fig. 23.)
Unhappily the wooden sides had in themselves a germ of destruction, the worm, capable first of reducing the sides to powder and then ravaging the body of the work, the ligatures and cords. Certain preparations destroy the insect, but the precaution often has no effect, and it is thus that the disappearance of volumes formerly so abundant, but almost impossible to find now, may be explained.
From the beginning the operations of the binder were what they still are, except for improvements. They consist in the collation of the sheets of a book, folding them, beating them to bring them together and give them cohesion, and sewing them, first together, then on the cords or strings, which form the five or six bands seen on the backs. Primitively these cords were united to the wooden boards, and over both was placed a resistant skin, on which from relief or metal engravings were struck the most pleasing decorative subjects. Pigskin, white and fine, lent itself, especially among the Germans, to these fine editions; and although they were issued in great number, the wooden boards have not permitted them all to exist in our time.
The most ancient that we are able to cite are German works of the time of Louis XI.; they are very strong and coarse. The cords in them form an enormous and massive projection. The inside of the board was often without lining of paper or stuff. In the case of fine editions a sombre velvet was sometimes used, such as Verard used to bind the books of the father of Francis I., as we have before said.
Art did not enter into these works of preservation until about the end of the fifteenth century, with arms and emblems. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, some bindings were ornamented for Louis XII. and the Queen, Anne de Bretagne; but not more than five or six specimens remain. They are of coarse aspect. The workman who tooled the binding here reproduced from the curious example of M. Dutuit, of Rouen, has thrown his subjects one upon another. Arms, porcupines, ermines, are treated so as to be confusing, and form a medley that is not pleasing. In recalling the delightful borders of Vostre and Pigouchet, contemporaries of this mediocre work, it is astonishing to see the degree of inferiority reached by a profession that should be inspired by graceful subjects of decoration.
It happened that France again found in Italy masters capable of revealing secrets of composition and arrangement to enable her to strike out a new road. The Italian wars would not have had these artistic results if it had not been for the enormous sums that they swallowed up. The curious part of the enterprise was that a war treasurer, a financier, employed by the French kings in these expeditions, through his relations of taste and friendship with the Alduses of Venice, brought to France the love of sumptuous bindings, of editions superbly clothed. He was named Jean Grolier, that bibliophile of the sixteenth century, who was, above all others, even King Francis, the first to appreciate the art of binding. It is not too much to say art, for if better had not been done before, it may safely be said that nothing better has been done since; and the books of Grolier remain as the most perfect and most admirable types of this kind of decoration.
Born of an Italian family established at Lyons, where most of his relatives did a great business, Jean Grolier had the good fortune to succeed his father, Stephen Grolier, treasurer of the Duke of Milan. He became in his turn Minister of Finances, and was called to accompany the kings in their expeditions in Italy. The situation of the treasurers during these campaigns was important; they handled the pence levied with great trouble in the cities of France "for making war." Many abused their trust, and were punished, and among others the Lallemants, whom documents show us to have been in connection with Grolier, and who suffered, with Semblançay, the most terrible trials of the time.
Italian art gave then a free course in the decoration of books. Of the interior we have spoken in our first chapters on the wood engravings; for the exterior, the cover of the volume, foliage, golden flowers worked with a hot iron, and polychromatic compartments obtained by coloured pastes were multiplied. Thus was produced on the outside that which it was not sought to obtain on the inside, the variation of tints so select among the Italians, and so forsaken since the invention of printing. In the midst of these literary men was a lover of books and fine connoisseur who, not content with choosing the best editions, such as those of Ferrara, Venice, and Basle, bound them superbly, with compartments of admirable tone, and had his name and device inscribed on the sides in the fashion of the time. He was named Thomas Maioli, and following the custom of the amateurs of the time, he offered the enjoyment of his library to his friends. "Tho. Maioli et amicorum," he inscribed, as did later Grolier, as also did others, but he somewhat modified the enthusiasm of his friendship by a sceptical device, "Ingratis servire nephas," which might very well be the cry of the owner of books betrayed by his borrowers.
Maioli did not alone use these devices; he had also a macaronic phrase of which the sense is not very clear: "Inimici mei mea michi, non me michi." He also sometimes used his monogram, which was composed of all the letters of his name.
The relations of Grolier with this unknown and mysterious bibliophile, whose name is not always found outside his volumes, are not doubtful. Brunet possessed a volume that had belonged to Maioli and had passed through the hands of Grolier. What better proof could be wished of the communion of ideas and tastes between the two collectors?
But these amateurs were not alone. Beside them were princes and great lords, lay and ecclesiastic. From the commencement of the sixteenth century bookbinding had received an enormous impulse from the tastes and the predilections for these lofty fancies. And it cannot be ascribed to the simple skill of the workmen experimenting in that line. In the century that saw Italian artists occupied in making designs for mounted plates and painting beautiful ladies, the courtesans of Venice could not be alarmed at finding them painting models for bindings, with compartments of varied tone and style. Maioli affected white on a dark background, that is to say on a background of dark leather. He made scrolls of foliage in white or clear paste with a very happy effect.
This was the time when Grolier travelled in Italy, in the suite of the French, and when he began his collections. He had adopted as his heraldic emblem the gooseberry bush, which in French came very near to his name —groseillier; and his motto was "Nec herba nec arbor" ("Neither tree nor herb"), explicative of the moderation of his wealth. He was soon in connection with the Alduses, and through them with the principal learned men and binders of the time, for it was not in the offices of the Manutiuses that could be found workmen, like those of the Chamber of Accounts in France, obliged to swear that they did not know how to read. The master was not hindered by details of difference of language, and it followed that his workmen understood Greek and Latin, for he often gave them instruction in those languages. How far off these erudite and conscientious workmen appear to-day!
Following the fashion, Grolier put his name on the upper side of his books – "Jo. Grolierii et amicorum" – in gold letters, and on the other side a pious motto, the sense of which was a hope often uttered by the financiers of the sixteenth century, imprisoned and hung every instant: "Portio mea, Domine, sit in terra viventium." Generally all the Grolier books which came from the Alduses have the name on the upper side and the motto on the other side; the title was placed above the name, and often disposed in rows. Some large volumes had the cover ornamented with an architectural design, like the Jamblichus of the Libri collection, which had on the front the façade of a temple, with the title in rows on the door. This volume was printed by Aldus in 1516, and probably decorated by him for the account of the great French amateur.