It would be gratifying to know the form in which the idea of typography first presented itself to Gutenberg; but there is in this case, no story like that of Franklin and the kite, or of Newton and the apple. Zell, in the _Cologne Chronicle_, says that the first prefiguration of Gutenberg’s method was found in the _Donatuses_ published in Holland before 1440. That the xylographic _Donatus_, the only block-book without cuts, was the forerunner of all typographic books, may not be denied. That some stray copy of a now lost edition of the book may have suggested to Gutenberg the superior utility of typography is possible, but the suggestion was that of the feasibility of a grander result by an entirely different process. For, although typography took its beginnings in an earlier practice of xylography, it was not the outgrowth[236] of that practice. It took up the art of printing at a point [p393] where xylography had failed, and developed it by new ideas and new methods. Typography was an invention pure and simple. In the theory and practice of block-printing, there was nothing that could have been improved until it reached the discovery of the only proper method of making types. It may have been from his experience in the melting and pouring of lead, in the engraving of designs for the frames of his mirrors, in the use of a press for the moulding of the designs for these frames, that Gutenberg derived his first practical ideas of the true method of making types. Whatever the external impulse which led Gutenberg to printing, it was so strong that it compelled him to abandon the practice of all other arts. After this trial we hear no more of him as a maker of mirrors, or a polisher of gems. The record of the trial before Cune Nope is not the only evidence we have that Gutenberg’s unknown art was that of typography. Wimpheling, one of the most learned men of his age, and nearly contemporary with Gutenberg, gives the following testimony concerning early printing in Strasburg:[237] In the year of our Lord 1440, under the reign of Frederic III, Emperor of the Romans, John Gutenberg, of Strasburg, discovered a new method of writing, which is a great good, and almost a divine benefit to the world. He was the first in the city of Strasburg who invented that art of impressing which the Latin peoples call printing. He afterward went to Mentz, and happily perfected his invention. In another book, in which Wimpheling pays compliment to the intelligence of the people of Strasburg, he writes: Your city is acknowledged to excel most other cities by its origination of the art of printing, which was afterward perfected in Mentz. The _Chronicle of Cologne_[238] is as explicit as to date, but not as to place. It specifies 1440 as the date of the discovery of printing “in the manner that is now generally used.” [p394]