Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: From a Fifteenth-century Manuscript lamrcrnuitrt mmb Uftftuu0 aluum raario rimiittettt Borne aim tram MUtor ipra mate fug twotceira b uto mqDutuni tmt:iiuoi| tees tfoant au aqutlom " txiutui potto nro iilinnmtjiC'i tceo nut tdjqui ftant ounuau :1| abmtco From the 42-line Bible printed at Mainz before August 1456 my frendes,' 'in the wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery and not stedfast, myn eyen dimmed with overmoche lokyng on the whit paper.... Therfore I have practysed and lerned at my grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner and forme as ye may here see.' The primary effect of the invention of printing was to render multiplication of copies of a book cheaper and more expeditious. It was, of course, a manuscript that the early printer had in his mind's eye when he set to work to produce a book. The result was not so much something entirely new in the shape of a printed book, as the production of a number of copies which closely resembled a manuscript in appearance. Indeed, an early printed book often looks so like a manuscript of the same work written in the formal book-hand, that, if the two were placed side by side, an unpractised eye would find some difficulty in distinguishing between them. In designing his types, as the letters used in printing are called, the pioneer printer naturally followed the formal book-hand used in the district in which he was working, or the special hand customarily employed in the particular class of book which he proposed to print. Latin Bibles and liturgical works were generally printed in the black-letter which, under the unifying influence of the Church, it had become the habit to employ in writing booksfor use in her services. In Germany varying forms of gothic text wer...