There are many inaccuracies in this statement. Gutenberg and Fust are represented as foolishly squandering money in vain efforts to invent xylography, a method of printing then in common use in many cities of Germany, Italy and Holland. The _Catholicon_, which is mentioned as one of the productions of block-printing, was printed from metal types in 1460. In the beginning, Gutenberg is acknowledged as the inventor of printing, yet, a few lines further, we are told that Fust was the first inventor. And it seems that Gutenberg could do nothing with his invention until helped by the advice, as well as the money, of John Fust. After the improved invention,[331] Gutenberg and Fust fell in hopeless difficulties, having spent four thousand florins before they had completed sixty pages of the _Bible_. From these difficulties they were extricated by Peter Schœffer, “son-in-law of the first inventor,” who invented a more easy method of making types, and who gave the art its present perfection, and without whose aid the earlier inventions would have been of little value. The intention of the writer is plain: Gutenberg, Fust and Schœffer may be regarded as co-inventors, but Schœffer did the most effective service. It is a curious fact that this paper, which has been so often quoted as evidence in favor of Schœffer’s invention of matrices, [p476] positively says that matrices had already been used by Fust and Gutenberg. Before Schœffer’s name is mentioned, it is said that “they” [Fust and Gutenberg] discovered a method of making matrices. Trithemius says that Schœffer’s contribution to the invention was “a more easy method of founding types, by which he gave the art its present perfection.” He does not explain this easy method. We do not know whether his claimed improvement was in the mould or matrix, in its construction or in its manipulation; but it was not origination or invention, it was improvement only. The passage which seems to say that the first types were cut by hand does not require much comment. Trithemius may have misunderstood, and incorrectly reported, what he heard, or Schœffer may have misrepresented the facts. It is evident that Trithemius is in error; for cut types, cut either as to body or as to face, never were, never could have been used. The most trustworthy evidences tell us that the earliest types were cast in a mould.[332] If the word _formen_, which is found in the record of the trial of Strasburg, be construed as the same word must be construed in the colophon to the _Catholicon of 1460_, in the acknowledgment of Dr. Humery in 1468, and in the order of the King of France in 1458, then we have the most complete evidence that the matrices and the accompanying type-mould were used by Gutenberg long before he knew Schœffer.