The scholarly lovers of fine books in Germany regarded the new art at the outset with no little disapproval and criticism. The collectors who had brought together, with much labour and expenditure, stores of valuable manuscripts dreaded lest, through the multiplication of comparatively inexpensive copies of their texts, the value of their collections should be taken away. When the messengers of Cardinal Bessarion were shown by the Greek Laskaris (later the author of the first Greek grammar that came into print), a specimen of one of the earlier printed books, they spoke sneeringly of this so-called discovery which had been made by a barbarian from a German city.[429] The great manuscript-dealer, Vespasiano, writing in 1482 concerning the magnificent ducal library in Urbino, the volumes in which had been largely either collected or purchased by himself or under his own direction, says: “In this library all the volumes are of perfect beauty, all written, by skilled scribes, on parchment and many of them adorned with exquisite miniatures. The collection contains no single printed book. The Duke (Frederick) would be ashamed to have a printed book in his library.”[430] By collectors like Frederick and manuscript-dealers like Vespasiano, the new art was considered to be merely a mechanical method of producing inartistic volumes, with which none but uncultivated people could be satisfied. For a number of years, therefore, after the work of the first presses, there were still produced beautiful specimens of manuscripts, more particularly of Italian and French books of worship, and for this class of manuscripts the work of the hand illuminators and miniature painters continued to be utilised. In Germany there are various examples of books which had been printed, being again produced in written copy, as for instance, the _Chronicon Urspergense_, of Hroswitha.[431] It was also the case that for the production of large choir-books the work of the scribes continued to be useful. Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim, wrote to Gerlach, Abbot of Deutz, a letter which was printed in 1494 in Mayence, under the title, _De Laude Scriptorum Manualium_. In this he says: “A work written on parchment could be preserved for a thousand years, while it is probable that no volume printed on paper will last for more than two centuries. Many important works have not been printed, and the copies required of these must be prepared by scribes. The scribe who ceases his work because of the invention of the printing-press can be no true lover of books, in that, regarding only the present, he gives no due thought to the intellectual cultivation of his successors. The printer has no care for the beauty and the artistic form of books, while with the scribe this is a labour of love.”[432]