[26] In its colophon the book is said to have been "a docto viro Bertolommeo Mates conditus et per P. Johannem Matoses Christi ministrum presbiterumque castigatus et emendatus sub impensis Guillermi ros et mira arte impressa per Johannem Gherlinc alamanum." Gherlinc is only heard of again in 1494, and then not at Barcelona. CHAPTER VI THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING One great cause of changes of fashion in book-collecting is that after any particular class of book has been hotly competed for by one generation of book-lovers, all the best prizes gradually get locked up in great public or private collections, and come so seldom into the market that new collectors prefer to take up some other department rather than one in which it is impossible for them to attain any striking success. The first-fruits of printing, if reckoned strictly chronologically, are probably as nearly exhausted as any class of book which can be named. No matter how rich a man may be, the chances of his ever obtaining a copy of the Thirty-six Line Bible, the 1457 Psalter, or the first book printed at Venice, are infinitesimally small. Other incunabula, if not hopelessly out of reach even of the very rich, are only likely to be acquired after many years of waiting and a heavy expenditure when the moment of possible acquisition arrives. Many of the books hitherto here mentioned belong to this class. And yet, from what may be called the logical as opposed to the chronological standpoint, incunabula little, if at all, less interesting are still to be obtained at quite small prices by any one who knows for what to look. Any collector who sets himself to illustrate the evolution of the printed book from its manuscript predecessors, and the ways of the early printers, will find that he has undertaken no impossible task, though one which will need considerable pursuit and good taste and judgment in the selection of appropriate specimens. [Illustration: VII. VENICE, JENSON, 1470 CICERO. RHETORICA (41^a)] Roughly speaking, it took about a century for printed books to shake off the influence of manuscript and establish their own traditions. The earliest books had no titlepage, no head-title, no running title, no pagination, and no printed chapter-headings, also no printed initials or illustrations, blank spaces being left often for the one and occasionally for the other to be supplied by hand. At the time when printing was invented the book trade in many large cities had attained a high degree of organization, so that the work of the calligrapher or scribe was clearly distinguished from that of the luminer or illuminator, and even from that of the rubricator (rubrisher). Take, for instance, this Bury St. Edmunds bill of 1467 for a Psalter, preserved among the Paston Letters: For viij hole vynets, prise the vynet xij^d viij^s Item for xxj demi-vynets ... prise the demi-vynett iiij^d vij^s