It is however not a little singular, that Ottley, who published all the documents in the case, and avowed his desire to treat the subject with the impartiality of an umpire,[66] should have allowed his Costerian proclivities to develope themselves in the following terms:--“On the whole I confess that after perusing and re-perusing the above document (the law process) with all the attention I am master of, the impression it leaves upon my mind, and indeed the only idea I can form of the transaction it refers to, that seems at all probable, is, that Fust, after four or five years’ patient trial, found that Gutenberg was incompetent to perform the task he had undertaken, whatever it was, or that from indolence he had neglected it; that his money was going very fast, and there was little to shew for it; and that he had discovered, as is hinted in the sentence,”[67] [how or where?] “that no small portion of it had been applied by Gutenberg to his own private purposes;” especially when he wrote immediately after,--“it is by no means improbable ... that, some years before the date of the above agreement, Fust had assisted with his wits and hands, as well as with his money, in perfecting the art and bringing it into operation.” Improbable it may not have been, but there is nothing whatever to shew that, in fact, such was the case; on the contrary, such facts as do appear lead to an opposite conclusion. We have now arrived at a point in the narrative where Peter Schœffer comes to the fore-front in the history of the art. Born in Gernszheim, after completing his education at the University of Paris,[68] and adopting, it would seem, the profession of a scribe,--a craft in which the more expert members combined with the art of writing that of illuminating the manuscript works they copied,--he betook himself to Mentz, where he was engaged by Gutenberg to assist in the printing operations at the Zum Junghen. As the first printed books were imitations of, and avowedly sold as, manuscripts, three reasons for this engagement may be seen,--the preparation of the MS. copy; the designing of the characters for the types; and the illuminating of the books when printed. “The afore-mentioned Peter Schœffer,” says the Abbot Trithemius, “being a person of great ingenuity, discovered an easier method of casting letters, and perfected the art as we now have it.”[69] This “easier method” was that of casting metal types complete, instead of cutting the letters on the ends of cast blanks; and in its success, he perfected an invention which formed the climax to the Art of Typography--an invention which has immortalized his name as the last, though not the least, of the associated Three to whom alone belong the title of the Fathers of the Typographic Art.