This curt review of the works and workmanship of Peter Schœffer should be enough to show that his reputation as the father of letter-founders, and the inventor of matrices and the type-mould, is entirely undeserved. His types show that he had no skill as a letter-cutter or mechanic. It is not possible that a man who has shown such feeble evidences of mechanical ability could have been the first inventor of the matrices and the type-mould. While Gutenberg and Fust were living, Schœffer never made the claim that he was the inventor, or even a co-inventor, of printing. But when they were buried, he claimed that he was superior to both, and that he was really the first to enter the sanctuary of the art. In 1468, he [p473] falsely said that although Gutenberg was the first inventor, he was the man who perfected the art. It seems that he must have told his friends many things about his pretended services which he was unwilling to print. In 1503, John Schœffer said in his first book that he was a descendant of the inventor of the almost divine art of printing. In 1509, he says in another book that his grandfather was the first inventor of printing. In 1515,[329] he printed this extraordinary statement: The printing of this chronicle was completed in the year of our Lord 1515, in the vigil of the Virgin Margaret, in the noble and famous city of Mentz, where the art of printing was first developed, by John Schœffer, descendant of the honest man, John Fust, citizen of Mentz, and inventor of the before-mentioned art. It was in the year 1450, in the 13th indiction, under the reign of the very illustrious Roman Emperor Frederic III, the very reverend father in Christ, Lord Theodoric, grand cup-bearer of Erpach, prince elector, occupying the archiepiscopal chair in Mentz, that this John Fust began to devise, and finally invented, solely through his own genius, the art of printing. Aided by divine favor, in the year 1452, he had so far improved and developed his art, that he was able to print; in which work, however, he was indebted for many improvements to the ingenuity of Peter Schœffer of Gernszheim, his workman and his adopted son, to whom, in acknowledgment of his many services and his skill, he gave the hand of his daughter, Christina Fust. These two men, John Fust and Peter Schœffer, carefully retained to their own advantage the secrets of the art; and for this purpose, they demanded from their workmen and servants an oath that they should not in any way divulge the process. Notwithstanding this precaution, in the year 1462 the knowledge of the art was carried by their workmen to distant countries, and printing thereby secured a wide development. [p474]