Poor] would be about seventeen inches by ten, allowing for inner margins; and to obtain clear impressions from it by means of friction, on dry thick paper, and with mere water color ink, would be a task of such difficulty that I cannot conceive how it could be performed. No traces of points, by which the paper might be kept steady on the block, are perceptible; and I unhesitatingly assert, that no wood engraver of the present day could, by means of friction, take clear impressions from such a block on equally thick paper, and using mere distemper, instead of printer's ink. As the impressions in the History of the Virgin have unquestionably been taken by means of friction, it is evident to me that if the blocks were of the size that Mr. Ottley supposes, the old wood engravers, who did not use a press, must have resorted to some contrivance to keep the paper steady with which we are unacquainted."[1]
This last hypothesis of an imaginary contrivance that kept the paper steady, is as untenable as the proposition that blocks were unquestionably printed by friction. The feat which is impossible now was impossible then. There is nothing in the appearance of the presswork of the block-books really inconsistent with the theory, that the books were printed under a rude press which was deficient in many attachments that are needed by the printer. The peculiar appearance of the presswork of this and of other block-books will be most satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis that they were printed on a press. The hypothesis of printing by friction is a conjecture for which there is no good authority. It seems to have been invented for a purpose. If the early chroniclers of printing had not been so anxious to magnify the merits of the early typographers, and to belittle the printers of block-books, we should have heard nothing of printing by friction.
The designs of the first edition have more merit than those of the earlier manuscript copies — more than those of subsequent editions printed by imitators. Neither the rudeness of the engravings, nor the flagrant anachronisms in architecture and in the costumes of the figures, are gross enough to conceal the ability of the designer, whose skill in grouping figures is manifest on almost every page.
- ↑ Jackson and Chatto, Treatise on Wood Engraving, pp. 78-80.
