COLOPHONS AT MAINZ [Illustration: Latin Bible. Mainz: Fust and Schoeffer, 1462.] It was said at the end of our first chapter that the presence of a colophon in an old book is to be taken as a sign of its printer’s pride in his work. This being so, it would seem only reasonable to expect that the very earliest books of all, the books in which the new art made its first appearance before the book-buying world, should be found equipped with the most communicative of colophons, telling us the story of the struggles of the inventor, and expatiating on the greatness of his triumph. As every one knows, the exact reverse of this is the case, and a whole library of monographs and of often bitterly controversial pamphlets has been written for the lack of the information which a short paragraph apiece in three of the newly printed books could easily have given. What was the reason of this strange silence we are left to guess. It will be thought noteworthy, perhaps, that all three of these too reticent books are Latin Bibles—the 42-line Bible variously assigned to Gutenberg and to Fust and Schoeffer, the 36-line Bible variously assigned to Gutenberg and Pfister, and the 48-line Bible known to have proceeded from the press of Johann Mentelin of Strassburg. It is indeed a curious fact, and it is surprising that the folly of Protestant controversialists has not leapt at it, that not merely these three but the great majority of Latin Bibles printed before 1475 are completely silent as to their printers, place of imprint, and date. Of the fourteen editions which in the catalogue of the British Museum precede that which Franciscus de Hailbrun and Nicolaus of Frankfort printed at Venice in 1475, only three reveal their own origin—those printed at Mainz by Fust and Schoeffer in 1462 and by Schoeffer alone ten years later, and the edition of 1471, printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome. On the other hand, the three editions printed before 1462, as well as those of Eggestein and the “R-printer” at Strassburg and of Ruppel and Richel at Basel, are all anonymous. We might imagine that there was a fear that the natural conservatism of the church would look askance at the new art, and that therefore in printing the Bible it was thought best to say nothing about it. But, as a matter of fact, it was not only in their Bibles that these printers showed their reticence. Gutenberg never put his name in any book at all. Bertold Ruppel never dated one; Eggestein dated nothing till 1471, Mentelin nothing till 1473, Richel nothing till 1474. Most of their books are anonymous. When we remember that Mentelin was printing at Strassburg, a city with which Gutenberg had many relations, as early as 1458, and Eggestein not long after; that Ruppel was Gutenberg’s servant and Richel was Ruppel’s partner and successor, it would almost seem as if all this reticence were part of a distinct Gutenberg tradition, an attempt to keep