All writers upon this subject have strangely overlooked the fact that the art of impressing or printing letters with a metallic stamp or type on parchment, as a substitute for pen-work, is about a thousand years older than the period above specified as the date of the invention of the modern art of printing. The Codex Argenteus, (the oldest translation of the entire Bible into any European language,) is a famous book, in the Library of the University of Upsala in Sweden.
(We give the particulars of its history in our Appendix.)
This "antique" is on purple vellum, (which is parchment made of calf-skin,) and all the letters are silver, (whence the name Codex Argenteus, the "silver book,") manifestly impressed on the page by a metallic stamp or type, each letter evidently being on a separate stock or handle, and applied by manual pressure. We give a specimen of this style of work. It may be called printing, but can not be denominated manuscript, for that is (literally) "hand-writing," which this certainly is not.
In our Appendix may be found still earlier instances of this art as practiced by the ancient Romans on a small scale, in signatures, trade-marks, &c.
