Difficulties were natural in the early days of the art, and must often have beset the path of the wandering printers who passed from town to town, or from monastery to monastery, printing one or two books at each. As late as 1493 one such printer, not yet identified, who started his press at Acqui, though he was engaged on only a humble school-book, the “Doctrinale” of Alexander Gallus, found himself in sore straits owing to the plague raging in the neighboring towns. Alexandri de villa Dei Doctrinale (Deo laudes) feliciter explicit. Impressum sat incommode, cum aliquarum rerum, quae ad hanc artem pertinent, impressori copia fieri non potuerit in huius artis initio: peste Genuae, Ast, alibique militante. Emendauit autem hoc ipsum opus Venturinus prior, Grammaticus eximius, ita diligenter, ut cum antea Doctrinale parum emendatum in plerisque locis librariorum vitio esse videretur, nunc illius cura et diligentia adhibita in manus hominum quam emendatissimum veniat. Imprimentur autem posthac libri alterius generis litteris, et eleganter arbitror. Nam et fabri et aliarum rerum, quarum hactenus promptor indigus fuit, illi nunc Dei munere copia est, qui cuncta disponit pro sue voluntatis arbitrio. Amen. The Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu (God be praised!) comes to a happy end. It has been printed amid enough inconveniences, since of several things which belong to this art the printer, in making a beginning with it, could obtain no proper supply, owing to the plague raging at Genoa, Asti, and elsewhere. Now this same work has been corrected by the prior Venturinus, a distinguished grammarian, and that so diligently that whereas previously the Doctrinale in many places seemed by the fault of booksellers too little corrected, now by the application of his care and diligence it will reach men’s hands in the most correct form possible. After this date books will be printed in type of another kind, and elegantly, I think; for both artificers and a sufficiency of other things of which hitherto the putter forth has been in need he now possesses by the gift of God, who disposes all things according to the judgment of his will. Amen. All these promises may have been carried out, but we know of no other book from this press, and it is more than likely that no other was issued. Nor was this the only press which was inconvenienced by the plague, since two years later the disease interrupted Conrad Kachelofen in the pious task of printing a missal at Leipzig, and caused him to become the first exponent of the art at Freiberg, as we duly learn from the colophon: [Illustration: Meissen Missal. Freiberg: Conrad Kachelofen, 1495. (Reduced.)]