whatever they were, met with the approbation of his uncle John Gensfleisch, by whose permission he occupied the leased house[1] Zum Jungen, which he used not only for a dwelling, but as a printing office.
At this time Gutenberg was, no doubt, nearly perfect in his knowledge of the correct theory of type-founding, and had also acquired fair practice as a printer. Helbig thinks that he had ready the types of the Bible of 36 lines. Madden says that he was then, or very soon after, engaged in printing a small edition of this book. There is evidence that these types were in use at least as early as 1451. Two leaves of an early typographic edition of the Donatus, 27 lines to the page, printed on vellum from the types of the Bible of 36 lines, have been discovered near Mentz, in the original binding of an old account book of 1451.[2] In one word the letter i is reversed, a positive proof that it was printed from types, and not from blocks. The ink is still very black, but Fischer says that it will not resist water.[3] As this fragment shows the large types of the Bible of 36 lines in their most primitive form, it authorizes the belief that it should have been printed by Gutenberg soon after his return to Mentz.
During the interval between 1440 and 1451, about which history records so little, Gutenberg may have printed many trifles. He could not have been always unsuccessful: he could not have borrowed money for more than ten years, without
- ↑ Schaab says that there is on record in Mentz a document which proves that John Gensfleisch leased this house in October, 1443. Reasoning from the two disconnected facts, that this house was used by Gutenberg for a printing office, and that it had been leased by Gensfleisch in 1443, careless readers have assumed that John Gensfleisch was the first printer in Mentz, and that he was either the true inventor of printing, or the unfaithful workman who stole the invention of Coster or of Mentel. It is not necessary to repeat what has been written concerning the impossibility of a theft from the fictitious Coster, nor about the absurdity of representing the uncle as a printer.
- ↑ Fischer, Essai sur les monuments typographiques, p. 70.
- ↑ Bernard refuses this statement. He says that the fragments of other editions of the Donatus in this type, supposed to be of the same period, which he inspected in the British Museum, show ink that is permanent.
