The century of ColumbusWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
The century of Columbus
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Renaissance
The following year, 1476, Caxton returned to England and set up his
own printing press at Westminster. The first issue from his press was
the "Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers," which bears the date
1477. Though he died fourteen years later, in 1491, he is said to have
issued ninety-six books from the Westminster Press in the intervening
brief period. His publications include the works of Chaucer and Gower,
Sir Thomas Malory's _"Morte d'Arthur"_ and a number of translations
from French, Latin and Dutch, most of them probably made by himself
and all of them under his editorial direction. He issued a number of
smaller pious books which show his deep religious interest. Though
brought up to a trade which he pursued successfully until he had made
money, he was a scholarly man who wrote excellent vigorous English and
had an ardent enthusiasm for literature. He is one of the greatest
forces in English prose before the sixteenth century, and with Sir
Thomas More helped to fix it in the form in which it was to pass to
the Elizabethans and be given our modern shape. His life is the best
possible evidence of the opportunities for education that abounded at
the beginning of Columbus' {153} Century, and which even those quite
outside of what would ordinarily be thought the possible chances for
the higher education might readily secure.
The story of the great printers of the Renaissance might well be
summed up in the work of the Venetian, Aldus Manutius, who was a
distinguished scholar as well as publisher. Born 1450, he was a pupil
of Guarino of Verona, and having studied Greek very faithfully,
resolved to print all the Greek classics. He adopted the handwriting
of Musurus as the model on which his Greek type was cast and then
proceeded to make arrangements for worthy publication. The ink was
made in the publishing house and only the best materials employed. He
had special paper from the mills of Fabriano, and the bookbinding was
done in a separate department of his own establishment. [Footnote 15]
The result was the magnificent set of Editiones Principes issued by
his house. The first of these was Musaeus, printed in 1493. Altogether
twenty-eight _editiones principes_ of the {154} Greek and Latin
classics were issued in some twenty-two years. His trade symbol, the
Dolphin and the Anchor, signifies speed and tenacity. In reference to
it, Aldus himself once said, "I have achieved much by patience (the
word he used was _cunctando_, literally by taking my time) and I work
without pause." As we have said, Aldus invented the form of type
called Italic, for which he received a patent from Pope Leo X. In 1500
Aldus printed the first leaf of a proposed Bible in Hebrew, Greek and
Latin--a Polyglot Bible which was never completed. His work was
carried on after his death in 1515 by the Asolani, his
brothers-in-law, and later by Paolo Manuzio, his son, and afterwards
by another Aldus, his grandson. In 1518 the Aeschylus was printed, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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