that Schœffer tried to imitate the work of the illuminator by the imitation of his method. To engrave the initial and the ornament around it on one block, to paint the letter in one color and the ornament in another, and to print both colors by one impression, seemed the surest way to do the work. That this was the intention of the designer of the letters is evident from the manner in which the colors are divided. Contrary to the usage of the illuminators, who were fond of interweaving colors, each color was kept apart in a mass, that it might be inked with greater facility. And this inking was probably done with a brush. Blue ink was painted on the letter, and red ink on the ornament, at a great sacrifice of time, but with neatness and without any interference of the colors.[1] It should not surprise us that exact register was secured, but it was more a feat of painting than of printing.[2]
Setting aside the colors, the workmanship of the Psalter is not neater than that of the Bible of 42 lines. The right side of every page is much more ragged[3] through bad spacing; typographical errors[4] are more frequent; the lines are often bowed or bent in the centre from careless locking up. The presswork is not good; the pages are dark and light from uneven inking, and the types have a grimy appearance, as if
- ↑ Blades shows fac-similes of the printed work of Colard Mansion, in which we see that his red and black were printed by the same impression. Life and Typography of William Caxton, vol. i, p. 43. Also, plates iii and viii.
- ↑ The modern printer who may regard this method of color-printing as puerile and wasteful of time, must be reminded that, slow as it may now seem, it was a quicker method than that of hand-drawing and painting. The difference between the the old and the modern process of printing in colors will be fully stated, by saying that Schœffer printed, probably, but forty copies of this initial in one day, and that the modern pressman on a machine press would be required to produce, from two impressions, about twenty-five hundred copies in one day. Far from being a specimen of the skill of the early printers, this initial B is a flagrant example of their inexperience and the rudeness of their methods.
- ↑ See fac-simile, plate 15, Humphrey's History of Printing.
- ↑ See fac-simile on page 455 for frequent transposition of the letters t and c. Also in first line of same fac-simile, Presen spalmorum for Presens psalmorum.
