ing a thin solution of glue, it was strong and of hard surface. But the qualities which commended the paper to the copyist were objectionable to the printer. The hard surface caused harsh impression, and strong sizing made the damp sheets stick together. It was soon discovered that unsized paper, which, according to Madden, was about half the price of the sized, was easier to print. It would take a clearer impression, and more thoroughly imbibe the oily ink. These advantages could not be overlooked, and, consequently, hard-sized papers went out of fashion. By far the largest part of the books printed during the last quarter of the fifteenth century were of unsized or half-sized paper.
The early printer tried to gratify luxurious tastes by printing copies on vellum, but its inordinate price, and the great difficulties then encountered in printing, obliged him to give it up as an impracticable material. When book-lovers found that able printers like Kerver and Pigouchet printed paper more neatly and evenly in color, vellum[1] went out of fashion.
We do not know what system or method was observed in early proof-reading. Madden has pointed out many curious errors in three distinct copies of a book printed at Weidenbach about 1464, which seem to show that the compositor of each copy read the proof of his own work, and read it badly. Possibly this was the method of many of, the amateur printers of that century, whose books, according to Schelhorn, bristle with horrid and squalid errors. It could not have been the method of Gutenberg, whose Bibles, although not free from faults, were obviously read with care. Nor was it the method of careful printers, for there is evidence that many of them
- ↑ Vellum was made out of the dressed skins of very young kids and lambs; parchment from the skins of sheep and goats. The vellum was very thin, flexible and highly polished; the parchment was thick and horn-like; but each substance was prepared by nearly the same process. The skin, when freed from hair, was put in a lime-pit, until it was deprived of its fat. It was then stretched on a frame, pared with a knife, rubbed with lime and pumice-stone, and repeatedly dried and wet, and rubbed and stretched, until the surface was made faultlessly smooth.
