The signs of awakening intelligence, as manifested in the general appreciation of pictures, images, playing cards and books, were entirely disregarded by the authorized teachers of the age, who could have used the method of xylographic printing by which images and playing cards were made, and could have led people from the contemplation of images and allegories of the _Dance of Death_,[97] to the study of books and letters. They had all the means within reach. There were engravers and printers in Venice in 1400; there is an obscure notice of image-cutters or engravers on wood in the records of the fraternity of St. Luke in Paris[98] for the year 1391. But [p185] neither the doctors of the universities nor the book-makers of Paris ever attempted to print books or pictures. Nor can it be shown that any one of the many persons laboring for the revival of literature at the beginning of the fifteenth century had anything to do with printing. The significance of this fact should be fairly considered, for it is the proper explanation of the curious and childish literature of the block-books which followed the printed images. [Illustration: Reduced Fac-simile of the Dance of Death, as shown in the Nuremberg Chronicle. [Photographed from Mr. Bruce’s Copy.]] Early printed work was the outgrowth, not of scholarship, but of comparative ignorance. The first block-printers were men outside the pale of literature, and not indebted to any school or scholar for the suggestion of printing. The first merchantable products of printing on paper were not books, but playing cards and images. The earliest purchasers of [p186] printing were men who could neither read nor write. The card-makers, who labored for the amusement of boyish tastes, were the ignorant nurses of an art which has preserved the learning of the world. They have had grand success. The once despised fabric of paper has displaced vellum; types do the work of reed and pen, and the work of perpetuating the literature of the world is done by mechanics.[99] Nor has this great revolution been restricted to mechanical processes in book-making. Medieval books are more than out of date: they are dead, beyond all revival. They are known to book-lovers chiefly by reputation. The writings of Anselm, Dun Scotus, Abelard, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas and Ockham, are read only through curiosity; they are as obsolete as the works of the old Greek philosophers.[100]