It is not strange that the block-book printers should have imitated the work and the mannerisms of the typographers. It was easier to transfer the letters than to draw them; easier to cut the letters for a book of twenty or thirty pages than to cut the punches, make the moulds, and cast and compose the types. The blocks having been engraved, the block-printer had the superior advantage. His blocks, like modern stereotype plates, were always ready for use. He could print a large or small edition at pleasure. And what was of much more importance, he could print more legibly from his smooth plates of wood than the amateur typographer could from his uneven surface of lead. The significance of the fact that letters were engraved by block-printers after typographic models will be more plainly seen when we examine the editions of the _Speculum Salutis_, [p262] a book which has been claimed by Dutch historians as the first production of the newly invented art of typography. The irregular manner in which all the early xylographers drew and engraved letters on the block is fairly shown in this fac-simile of the imprint of Conrad Dinckmut, of Ulm, who affixed it to a _Donatus_ printed by him in 1480. It will be seen that parallel lines ruled between the printed lines would interfere with almost every ascending or descending letter. [Illustration: Reduced Fac-simile of the Imprint of Conrad Dinckmut. [From De la Borde.]] The _Donatus_ clearly shows the retrogressive tendencies of the teachers of that age. It was originally written for scholars who spoke in Latin, and who, when the book was first placed in their hands, knew the meaning of almost every word. In the fifteenth century Latin was a dead language, but the book that had been written a thousand years before received no modification adapting it to the capacities of the German or Dutch boys, to whom Latin was as strange as Chinese.[131] The [p263] rules and the explanations, as well as the text, were in Latin. The boy who began to study the book was compelled to translate the words and rules before he knew the simplest elements of the language. The difficulty of the task will be understood if we imagine an American boy beginning the study of German, not with a German grammar in which the explanations are in English, but with the grammar that is now used in the schools of Germany. We find no trace of any other school-book in the form of a block-book. There was no other book of equal popularity. To the scholar of the middle ages there was no science that could be compared with Latin; there was no knowledge like that of the words of the dead language. Words were held of more value than facts. The teachers of the fifteenth century clung to this obsolete book, and compelled their pupils to go through the same barren course of study that had been used in the fifth century. In this fixed purpose we see something more than the force of habit: there was a