It was an object with Faust and Scheffer to recommend their Psalter--probably the first work printed by them after Gutemberg had been obliged to withdraw from the partnership--by the beauty of its capitals and the sufficiency and distinctness of its “rubrications;”[IV-6] and it is evident that they did not fail in the attempt. The Psalter of 1457 is, with respect to ornamental printing, their greatest work; for in no subsequent production of their press does the typographic art appear to have reached a higher degree of excellence. It may with truth be said that the art of printing--be the inventor who he may--was perfected by Faust and Scheffer; for the earliest known production of their press remains to the present day unsurpassed as a specimen of skill in ornamental printing. [Footnote IV-6: This is intimated in the colophon, which, with the contracted words written at length, is as follows: “Presens Spalmorum codex venustate capitalium decoratus Rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus. Adinventione artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi absque calami ulla exaracione sic effigiatus. Et ad eusebiam dei industrie est consummatus. Per Johannem Fust, Civem maguntinum. Et Petrum Schoffer de Gernzheim, Anno domini Millesimo. cccc. lvii. In vigilia Assumpcionis.” In the second edition the mis-spelling, “Spalmorum” for “Psalmorum,” is corrected.] A fac-simile of the large B at the commencement of the Psalter, printed in colours the same as the original, is given in the first volume of Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana, and in Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing; but in neither of those works has the excellence of the original letter been attained. In the Bibliotheca Spenceriana, although the volume has been printed little more than twenty years, the red colour in which the body of the letter is printed has assumed a coppery hue, while in the original, executed nearly four hundred years ago, the freshness and purity of the colours remain unimpaired. In Savage’s work, though the letter and its ornaments are faithfully copied[IV-7] and tolerably well printed, yet the colours are not equal to those of the original. In the modern copy the blue is too faint; and the red, which in the original is like well impasted paint, has not sufficient body, but appears like a wash, through which in many places the white paper may be seen. The whole letter compared with the original seems like a water-colour copy compared with a painting in oil.