The chief objection urged against both the clay and sand methods as above described is their tediousness. The time occupied after the first engraving of the models in forming, drying and clearing the mould, in casting, extracting, touching up, and possibly perforating, the types would be little short of the expeditious performance of a practised xylographer. Still there would be a clear gain in the possession of a fount of movable types, which, even if the metal in which they were cast were only soft lead or pewter, might yet do duty in more than one forme, under a rough press, roughly handled. On the xylographic block, moreover, only one hand, and that a skilled one, could labour. Of the moulding and casting of these rude types, many hands could make light work. M. Bernard states that the artist who produced for him the few sand-cast types shown in his work, assured him that a workman could easily produce a thousand of such letters a day. He also states that though each letter required squaring after casting, there was no need in any instance to touch up the faces. M. Bernard’s experience may have been a specially fortunate one; still, making allowance for the superior workmanship and expedition of a modern artist, it must be admitted that, in point of time, cost and utility, a printer who succeeded in furnishing himself with these primitive cast types was as far ahead of the old engraver as the discoverer of the adjustable mould was in his turn ahead of him.[25] There remains yet another suggestion as to the method in which the types of the rude school were produced. This may be described as a system of what the founders of sixty years ago called “polytype.” Lambinet, who is responsible for the suggestion, under cover of a new translation of Trithemius’s wonderful narrative, explains this to mean nothing less than an early adoption of stereotype. He imagines[26] that the first printers may have discovered a way of moulding a page of some work—an _Abecedarium_—in cooling metal, so as to get a matrix-plate impression of the whole page. Upon this matrix they would pour a liquid metal, and by the aid of a roller or cylinder, press the fused matter evenly, so as to penetrate into all the hollows and corners of the letters. This tablet of tin or lead, being easily lifted and detached from the matrix, would then appear as a surface of metal in which the letters of the alphabet stood out reversed and in relief. These letters could easily be detached and rendered mobile by a knife or other sharp instrument; and the operation could be repeated a hundred times a day. The metal faces so produced would be fixed on wooden shanks, type high; and the fount would then be complete. {13}