The first book with a printed date is the well-known _Psalmorum Codex_ of 1457, printed by Schœffer. Of this book nine copies are known, and all vary slightly from each other.[7] Only two types are used throughout the _Psalter_, but both are very large. Mr. Weale, on account of the variations observable in the letters, insists that the book was printed from cut and not cast type; but he gives no reason for this opinion; and when we consider that books had already been produced from cast type, it is impossible to understand why Schœffer should have resorted to so laborious a method. The dissimilarity of some letters is not so strong a proof of their having been cut, as the similarity of the greater number is of their having been cast. Bradshaw, who was of this opinion, had also noted some curious shrinkages in the type, resulting from the way the matrices for the type were formed. [7] For a very full account of this book see the Catalogue of MSS. and Printed Books exhibited at the Historical Music Loan Exhibition, by W. H. James Weale, London, 1886, 8vo, pp. 27-45. The most striking thing about the _Psalter_ are the wonderful capital letters; and how these were printed has always been a vexed question. In the editions of 1457 and 1459 they are in two colours, the letter in one colour and the surrounding ornamentation in another. Though it is impossible to determine exactly how they were produced, there is at any rate something to be settled on the question. In one case, in the edition of 1515, in which these initials were still used, the exterior ornament has been printed, but the letter itself and the interior ornament have not. This shows at any rate that the letter and the ornament were not on one block, and that the exterior and interior ornaments were on different blocks; and is also in favour of the suggestion put forward by Fischer, that the ornament and the letter, though on different blocks, were not printed at the same time. In support of his theory, Fischer mentioned a case of the letter overlapping the ornament in a copy of the edition of 1459, and such a slip could not have occurred had the letter and ornament been printed from inset blocks in the method new known as the Congreve process.