During his later years, Schœffer was made a judge. His official duties prevented him from giving close attention to his printing office; but printing was neglected by him because it had almost ceased to be profitable. He had competitors, not only in Rome, Paris and Venice, but in all the larger cities of Germany, and even in Mentz and Strasburg—competitors who were more skillful as printers and more shrewd as publishers. They had perceived that the art of printing would be of little advantage to them, and of little service to the world, if its practice was confined to the servile imitation of manuscript books, or if it expected to derive a generous support exclusively from the rich, or from men of taste and men of letters. The younger printers saw that it was necessary that books [p472] should be made more cheaply, and in more convenient forms. With this end in view, they introduced the cheaper size of octavo, which was much handier than the unwieldy folio or quarto. The rubricated letters and lines were supplanted by initials and borders engraved on wood and printed with the types in black ink. The fashion of surrounding a text with notes, and of making notes and text in measures of different width and length on every page, was abandoned: the text was put at the top and the notes at the bottom. Signatures, catch-words, paging-figures, blank spaces between chapters, and the division of matter in paragraphs, were introduced. But the greatest innovation was in the letters themselves. When Nicholas Jenson introduced Roman types, and proved the superior legibility of light and simple lines, the popularity of the sombre Gothic in Southern Europe came to an end. The new fashions were adopted by many printers in Germany, but they were not approved by Schœffer, who resisted them till his death. In his judgment, the only model for a printed book was the Gothic manuscript copy, and he copied it as closely as he could, with all its imperfections.[328]