Before proceeding further it will be well to ascertain what there was in the plant of the printing establishment at the Zum Jungen which could occasion so great an outlay. We have already seen how much time and money had been spent in the experiments at Strasburg. It is not recorded how Gutenberg arranged with his partners there; but it may be fairly assumed, that in 1444 he brought with him to Mentz his original blocks, and types, as well as apparatus for setting up presses. The making of new founts of type would therefore be his chief concern. If the small works attributed to him by Fischer, Van Praet, and others, really issued from his press, (and there is no reason to doubt the fact,) three founts of type were already made, before the one for the Latin Bible was commenced. Now supposing that these three founts consisted of 10,000 letters in all, an equal number would, at least, be required to complete four pages of the Bible; for the printing of such a work could hardly have been begun with less type than would suffice for two formes of two pages each. How then were these letters made? The answer to this question is given in the statement of the Abbot Trithemius, who says, that to the engraved letters on solid blocks “succeeded a more ingenious invention, for they found out a way of _stamping the shapes_ of every letter of the Latin alphabet in what they called matrices, from which they afterwards _cast their letters_ in copper or tin, hard enough to be printed upon, _which they first cut with their own hands_.”[63] This information was given to the Abbot by Peter Schœffer of Gernszheim, one of Faust’s witnesses in the lawsuit with Gutenberg, the same who invented the art of type-founding as at present practised, and who moreover added, “that before the third quaternion (twelve sheets) of the bible was completed, no less a sum than 4000 florins had been expended.”[64] From this statement it is clear that the matrices consisted of a number of small troughs of uniform length, each one the size, in regard to depth and thickness, of the shape of a letter; that these shapes were stamped into a prepared mould of clay or plaster; that the fused metal was poured into these matrices; and that a considerable number of small ingots, or cast ‘blanks’ might thus be made at each pouring of the metal. The accompanying diagram, in which the border represents the rim of the mould, and the inside figures the matrices, renders further explanation unnecessary. On one end of each of these cast ‘blanks,’ a letter would be cut or engraved by hand, while the sides would be ‘dressed’ (with perhaps a greater amount of labour,) in the same way as ordinary type now-a-days. It is not at all unlikely that this method, called by some the _fuso-sculpte_, may have been suggested by the goldsmith John Dünne, the friend of Gutenberg at Strasburg; or if not, by Faust himself. [Illustration]