be found among the enlightened legislators of this country, advocates for confining the means of knowledge and improvement; men who are so little acquainted with the theory of the human mind, as to oppose the diffusion of letters among the lower orders of society, lest it should eventually render them dissatisfied under a government which is the noblest monument of human wisdom, and which the accumulated experience of ages has contributed to rear. What are we to think of men who contend, that we are little indebted to the art of printing, because it is productive of so many literary abortions, and multiplies the means of propagating false science, which is worse than ignorance itself?
From what has been said, it follows, that we consider stereotype, or those kinds of it usually known by the description of block or plate printing, to have been anterior to letter-press, or printing with movable types; but the great modern improvements which have been made in stereotype, almost entitle it to be considered as a new branch of the art. The French claim the merit of the invention; and A. C. Camus, in a memoir read at the National Institute, assures us, upon the authority of Lottin, that stereotype was used by Vallayre, a printer, at Paris, in the seventeenth century. The Dutch certainly printed with solid types more than a hundred years ago; but we doubt very much whether any specimen can be produced equal to Fermin Didot’s stereotype. The Dutch types were the invention of J. Vander Mey, father of the well-known painter. Wm. Ged began to prosecute the art in 1725, and in 1730 obtained a privilege from the university of Cambridge, to print bibles and prayer-books; but he was unable to proceed in consequence of a combination between the compositors and pressmen. It appears, however, from his memoirs, that, in 1736, he stereotyped Sallust, with the assistance of his son, who “set up the forms in the night-time.” Mr. Tilloch, the ingenious editor of the Philosophical Magazine, has not only a copy of this work, but also one of the plates, as well as others of Mr. G.’s manufacture. Mr. Tilloch states, that, about fifty years afterwards, he made a similar discovery, without having any knowledge of Ged’s invention.
In 1784, letters patent[1] were grant-
- ↑ The Biographical Memoirs of Wm. Ged were published in 1781: the first part dictated by Ged, the second part by his daughter; and the third was a copy of proposals that had been published by Mr. Ged’s son in 1751, for reviving his father’s art; and to the whole was added Mr. More’s narrative on block-printing. In the Philosophical Magazine, No. 39, Mr. Tilloch says, “In the mean time, we learnt that our art, or one extremely similar, had been practised many years before by Mr. Ged.” Again, “At the time of the discovery, I flattered myself that we were original, and with these sanguine hopes, which are natural to a young man, indulged the hopes of reaping some fame at least from the discovery; nay, I was even weak enough to feel vexed when I afterwards found that we had been anticipated by a Mr. Ged, of Edinburgh, who had printed books from letter-press plates about fifty years before. The knowledge of this fact lessened the value of the discovery so much in my estimation, that I felt but little anxiety to be known as the second inventor. “Though we had reason to fear, from
