< Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu
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THE DONATUS, OR BOY'S LATIN GRAMMAR.

lished at Rome in 1591. Rocca says that this statement is in the handwriting of Mariangelus Accursius, who affixed his name to it. On this page it is not necessary to point out the many errors of Accursius about the origin of the invention at Mentz; it is enough to show that he believed that the Donatus was printed in Holland before types were made in Germany. It is not known, however, whether he acquired this information from the Cologne Chronicle or from another source.

Joseph Justus Scaliger, an eminent scholar of the sixteenth century, says that printing was invented in Holland, and that the first block-book with text was a breviary or manual of devotion. It seems that this book was like the Horarium, of which a fac-simile will be shown on an advanced page.

Printing was invented at Dordrecht, by engraving on blocks, and the letters were run together as in writing. My grandmother had a psalter printed after this fashion with a cover two fingers thick. Inside of this cover was a little recess in which was placed a little crucifix of silver. The first book that was printed was a breviary or manual, and one would have thought that it had been written by hand. It belonged to the grandmother of Julius Cæsar Scaliger. A little dog destroyed it, much to his vexation, for the letters were conjoined, and had been printed from a block of wood, upon which the letters were so engraved that they could be used for this book and for no other. Afterward was invented a method of using the letters separately.

This record is of interest for its specification of Dordrecht in Holland as the birthplace of block-books, but it does not give any date, nor the name of the first printer. As it has not been corroborated by the testimony of any other chronicler, it is now regarded by the historians of typography as imperfect evidence — incorrect, probably, in its assertion of the priority of the breviary, but trustworthy so far as it shows that this learned antiquarian had some really valuable evidences concerning a very early practice of block-printing in Holland.

Sweinheym and Pannartz, the German printers, who introduced typography in Rome, and published more books than they could sell, in the year 1472 petitioned Pope Sixtus iv

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