It was no mere accident that just at the beginning of this period, about 1450, the invention of printing was perfected. Books had been rising in value and in price, though the demand had been constantly increasing, until it was only to be expected that some method of making them available for a much larger number of people must come. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the need for a thing sets men's minds at work until they have obtained it. Caxton's experience, detailed further on in this chapter, is illuminating in this regard. Great, however, as is the invention, the credit for which apparently must be shared by the Germans Gutenberg, Fust and Schoeffer, the use that was made of that invention during the century that followed is deserving of still higher appreciation. It had indeed come to a worthy time, but not by accident, for any time receives its deserts and wins the rewards of its own interests and efforts. {147} [Illustration: BORDER FROM THE "BOOK OF HOURS" OF ANTHONY VERARD (1488)] If ordinary impressions were to be accepted, it might well be expected that printing having been invented about the middle of the fifteenth century, the first century would see industrious, but rather crude applications of the invention, until men became accustomed to its employment, and then gradually, by that progress which is so often assumed to be inevitable in mankind, printing would rise to be an art more and more beautiful as time went on, until in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries we would have the most beautiful examples of book-making. As a matter of fact, however, during the first half century, immediately after the preliminary tentative application of the art, printing rose to a perfection that has never been excelled since and only equalled in few periods. Between 1475 and 1525 some of the most beautiful printed books ever made were completed and {148} worthily bound. Columbus' Century can boast the production of the most beautiful books in the world. Succeeding centuries saw a decadence in the arts of book-making which was progressive until the latter half of the nineteenth century. At that time some of the worst books ever made, with poorly designed, cheap type, still cheaper but fortunately perishable paper, sadly inartistic illustrations and ugly bindings, were made (_perpetrated_ is the expression one book-lover has used). It must not be forgotten that this same decadence affected everything else, and that painting and sculpture and architecture reached their lowest ebb also in the nineteenth century, though the book continued to be in the depths for longer than any of the other products of the arts.