of 42 lines, until they were crowded into the space of 40 lines. The page was made of full length by leading out, or by widening the lines with bands of stout parchment.
The first book published by Fust, after his separation from Gutenberg, was the Psalter[1] of 1457, a folio of 175 leaves, which is almost as famous as the Bible of 42 lines. Only seven fair copies of the edition of 1457 are known, and all of them are on vellum. The leaves of this book are nearly square, smaller in size than those of the Bible of 42 lines, but, like that book, they are made up, for the most part, in sections of ten nested leaves. The size of the printed page is irregular, but most pages are about 8 inches wide and 12 inches high. The Psalms are printed in types of Double-paragon body, and the introductory or connecting text in types of Double-great-primer body.[2] As the cut or fashion of these types is like that of the Bibles of Gutenberg, it is possible that they were designed by the same hand. The leaf was not broad enough for the large-sized types, but a very large portion of it was given up to the initial letters and their pendants, which are of unusual dimensions. The space allotted to the print is small: but a few lines of the large types could be put on a page, and on many pages it was necessary to use small types. The fault of uneven or ragged outline on the right side of the page, which has been noticed in the Bible of 42 lines, is repeated more strikingly in the Psalter. Here and there spaces were made for plain chant notes of music, parts of which appear in printing ink, while other parts seem to have been retraced with a pen.
It is obviously an imitation not only of the copyist's but of the illuminator's work upon a fine manuscript. It was intended that the book should show the full capacity of the newly discovered art. Letters and lines in red ink are to
- ↑ It could, with more propriety, be called a ritual. The psalms are followed by prayers, collects, litanies, the service for the dead, hymns, etc. But it is always described as a psalter.
- ↑ The rubricated capital letters on the larger body, which are very large and square, might be regarded as another incomplete font, for which small letters had not been provided.
