A period of ten years now passed by. Gutenberg, true to his convictions, resumed his typographic labours, and perfected “the mightiest engine of human intellect--the great leveller of power--the Demiurgus of the moral world--The Press.”[49] The statement made by Wimpheling,[50] in his _Epitome Rerum Germanicarum_, written in 1502, that in the year 1440 the art of printing was invented by John Gutenberg in Strasburg, though afterwards brought to perfection in Mentz, affords ground for believing that between the year 1439 and the date of his leaving Strasburg, Gutenberg actually printed a work or works in that city. It also gives colour to the conjecture of M. Bernard[51] that a “Donatus, printed in characters very closely resembling those of the Bible afterwards printed by Gutenberg at Mayence, may _possibly_ have been printed by him at Strasburg.” If M. Bernard be right in his conjecture, Mr. Humphreys is of opinion, (p. 74,) “that it would tend to prove that the characters used were of lead, as in the ‘Donatus’ in question the types show such symptoms of spreading and blurring, as would be sufficient to deter a man of Gutenberg’s taste and ambition from undertaking the printing of a more important work.” Other works may also have been printed, of which no trace remains, as in the case of the _Tracts_ of Peter of Spain, alleged by Junius to be one of the two works first printed at Mentz in the year 1442. Of the other, the _Doctrinal_ of Alexander Gallus, there is a supposed fragment preserved in the public Library at Treves, part of which is figured by Wetter, in Tab. XII. of the fac-similes accompanying his work;[52] but it is plainly the production of the printers of the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_, whoever they were, and of whom more will be said hereafter. The lines are irregular, the letters appearing to be of wood, strung together with a thread, a practice known to have been adopted by the first printers, and to which allusion is made by Theodor Bibliander (1548), Heinrich Spiegel (1549-1612), and other writers. [Illustration]