INVENTION OF PRINTING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 195, 22 December 1876, Page 15

INVENTION OF PRINTING.

tt ®Sf« M■ f * T* e iVr Ifc is ÜBUall y Btatea > that the »edit of this noble invention should be given to Guttenberg, to Coster, or to Faust or Schoeffer, who flourished about ihe middle of the HwSSi °T T' 7S ? rCe Ci * tieS ° £ Stattburg, Mayentz, and Harlaem, all claimed the honor of having originated the invention. The prize thus contended for was indeed a more glorious one than that of having given birth to Homer, which anciently excited such emulation among contending cities; but, according to the more generally received opinion, the city of Mayentz bore it away, and thl fc«l CrOfl V as b Ti 1 awar * ed 8»<**ol Germany to JoS Guttenberg. We would not pluck one leaf from the blooming wreath which decorates Ins brow; his glory is that of the ages of faith and of invention. The art of printing, as it now exists is cerSSe yy m m ° f r r^° lde^ date \ hanthe , fifteenth C<U »y I but Stas IS little more than the real revival of an art five centuries older, and which had been almost lost eight of in the confusion of the middle Bges. " Recent antiquarian search has established the important fact, that there was, as early as the, tenth century, a species of hand-printing, or Ckirotyfography, more or lew generally uaed. A learned Italian, th©

Abbate Requeno, in a work lately published at Borne, has set this matter in the clearest light. He has proved, that many ancient diplomas and other documents, hitherto viewed as manuscripts, were printed by a species of band-press. By a careful examination of tboße first specimens of printing, he has ascertained that the use of stereotype plates, as well as that of moveable types, was contemporary with the birth of the art. Thus, it appears, that in both stages of the invention — in the tenth and in the fifteenth century — the noble art leaped, as it were, to the highest point of perlection and to its fullest stature, at its very origin ; but, then, like a giant exhausted •with over exertion, it fell back into the cradle of infancy, to await the maturing of its strength, and the gradual development of its energies ; Guttenberg abandoned stereotype plates in favor of moveable types, because he conld not hit on any method for multiplying the former.

"If ever a man deserved a monument it was John Guttenberg.But the grateful Germans did a work of supererogation, when they recently erected one fco his memorr in the city of Mayentz ; one had been already erected. His own noble art of printing bestrides the world ; it is the most suitable monument that could have been raised to his honor. It is immensely more grand and. sublime than was the famed Colossus of Rhodes, reckoned erewhile among the wonders of the world. All the splendid libraries of modern times, owing, as they do, their origin to his great invention, constitute his most apI propriate cenotaph : he needs no other ! " The invention of the art of printing constitutes tie most important epoch in the history of libraries. It naturally marks the boundary line between the ancient libraries of manuscripts, and the modern ones of printed books. The ancient manuscript libraries are again naturally subdivided into two great classes : the classical and the Christian; or those of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and those of the middle ages."