Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
organizing power needed to push through this heavy piece of work in the
way described, it is difficult to perceive any reason why the capitalist
Fust should have quarrelled with him, or to imagine how Gutenberg
exposed himself to such an action as that which Fust successfully
carried against him. On the supposition that the Bible was completed in
or soon after 1453 the difficulty becomes almost insuperable, for it is
inconceivable that if Gutenberg had produced the book within a few
months of receiving his second loan from Fust he should not, by the
autumn of 1455, have paid his creditor a single guilder, either for
principal or interest. After his quarrel with Fust, Gutenberg apparently
had dealings with two other men, with Albrecht Pfister who is found in
possession of a later casting of the heavier fount of type in which the
Astrological Calendar attributed to 1448 had been printed, and with a
Dr. Homery. He ended his days as a pensioner at the court of the
Archbishop of Mainz, while Fust, with the aid of Peter Schoeffer, whom
he made his son-in-law, developed a great business. The inventor who
lacks organizing power and whose invention never thrives till it has
passed into other hands is no unfamiliar figure, and such a conception
of Gutenberg perhaps accords better with the known facts of his career
than that of a living incarnation of heroism and business ability such
as his German eulogists love to depict. According to a theory developed
by the present writer in an article in _The Library_ for January, 1907
(Second Series, Vol. VIII), though no originality is claimed for it, the
key to the situation lies in the assertion[21] made on behalf of Peter
Schoeffer that his skill in engraving had enabled him to attain results
denied to the two Johns, Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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