This book of Psalms, decorated with antique initials, and sufficiently emphasized with rubricated letters, has been thus made by the masterly invention of printing and also of type-making, without the writing of a pen, and is consummated to the service of God, through the industry of Johan Fust, citizen of Mentz, and Peter Schœffer of Gernszheim, in the year of our Lord 1457, on the eve of the Assumption [August 14]. This imprint is ingeniously worded. Fust and Schœffer do not say, in plain words, that they were the inventors of printing; they invite attention to the red ink and the two-colored initials which were here used in printing, with fine effect. They speak of rubricated printing and of the invention of printing as if they were inseparable. They suppress the name of Gutenberg, and induce the reader to believe that Fust and Schœffer were not only the first to print with letters in red ink, but the first to discover and use the masterly invention. This insinuated pretense had the effect which was, no doubt, intended. By many readers of that century, Peter Schœffer was regarded as the man who planned and printed the _Psalter_, the man who made the types, not only of this book, but of the _Bible of 42 lines_. Made bold by the silence of Gutenberg, Schœffer allowed, if he did not positively authorize, the statement to be made by his friends, that he was the true inventor of printing; that he took up the art where Gutenberg left it incomplete, and perfected it. Before this assertion can be examined, it will be proper to consider the date of 1457 in the imprint of the _Psalter_. If Schœffer planned and printed the book, he did all the work in the twenty-one months following Gutenberg’s expulsion from the partnership. This is an unreasonable proposition, for the book should have been in press or in preparation as long as the _Bible of 42 lines_. It is quite probable that the _Psalter_ was planned and left incomplete by Gutenberg. The types, which are like those of Gutenberg’s _Bible_, are unlike any types [p460] subsequently made by Schœffer. The great initials in colors are of the same design as the initials of the _Donatuses_ shown by Fischer, and by him attributed to Gutenberg. The careful manner in which they were engraved indicates experience as well as skill on the part of the engraver; but it is not possible that the engraver was Schœffer, or any workmen attached to his office, for Schœffer never after printed any engravings on wood of equal merit.[307] The sumptuous style of the _Psalter_ is unlike that of any book afterward made by Schœffer; it is in a style which he did not originate, and could not sustain. He reprinted it in 1459, in 1490, and in 1502, but the later editions were not printed so well as the first.[308] The inferiority of the later workmanship is evidence that the master mind who planned the work was not at the head of the printing office.