Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/304

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THE WORKS OF AN UNKNOWN PRINTER.

The Couplets of Cato, the curt treatise on the Roman Law, and the Praise of the Iliad, are, in size and subject, the books that would be suitable for a boy's school in the middle ages. The Treatises of Saliceto and Torquemada, the Witty Sayings of Great Men and the Eulogy of Pope Pius ii,
1. Experimental Letters Drawn on Wood.
[From De la Borde.]
may also be included in the list of books that were intended to be used in schools for the teaching of morals. The character of these works is more juvenile than that of any other typographic printer of that century. Whoever compares them with the ponderous theological works that were printed by Mentel, Gutenberg and Schœffer, and by numerous printers in Germany, and subsequently in the Netherlands, will at once see that this unknown printer made books for boys where other printers made books for men. Probably he could secure no other buyers. His workmanship
2. Experimental Letters Drawn on Wood.
[From De la Borde.]
was so rude that it could not be sold to an intelligent or critical reader. His process was suitable only for the cheapest work and the simplest tastes.

It is unnecessary to prove that the types of these books, like the types of the Speculum, were founded in a mould. They show the same features, and must have been made by the same process. It is, however, necessary to show that neither these types, nor