Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science. Fyfe James Hamilton
yfe
Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science
Preface
"Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war." – Milton.
It is not difficult to account for the pre-eminence, generally assigned to the victories of war over the victories of peace in popular history. The noise and ostentation which attend the former, the air of romance which surrounds them, – lay firm hold of the imagination, while the directness and rapidity with which, in such transactions, the effect follows the cause, invest them with a peculiar charm for simple and superficial observers. As Schiller says, —
"Straight forward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon ball. Direct it flies, and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.
My son! the road the human being travels,
That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings:
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines,
Honouring the holy bounds of property!
And thus secure, though late, leads to its end."
The path of peace is long and devious, now dwindling into a mere foot-track, now lost to sight in some dense thicket; and the heroes who pursue it are often mocked at by the crowd as poor, half-witted souls, wandering either aimlessly or in foolish chase of some Jack o' lantern that ever recedes before them. The goal they aim at seems to the common eye so visionary, and their progress towards it so imperceptible, – and even when reached, it takes so long before the benefits of their achievement are generally recognised, – that it is perhaps no wonder we should be more attracted by the stirring narratives of war, than by the sad, simple histories of the great pioneers of industry and science.
Picturesque and imposing as deeds of arms appear, the victories of peace – the development of great discoveries and inventions, the performance of serene acts of beneficence, the achievements of social reform – possess a deeper interest and a truer romance for the seeing eye and the understanding heart. Wounds and death have to be encountered in the struggles of peace as well as in the contests of war; and peace has her martyrs as well as her heroes. The story of the cotton-spinning invention is at once as tragic and romantic as the story of the Peninsular war. There were "forlorn hopes" of brave men in both; but in the one case they were cheered by sympathy and association, in the other the desperate pioneers had to face a world of foes, "alone, unfriended, solitary, slow."
The following pages contain sketches of some of the more momentous victories of peace, and the heroes who took part in them. The reader need hardly be reminded that this brief list does not exhaust the catalogue either of such events or persons, and that only a few of a representative character are here selected.
In the present edition the different sections have been carefully revised, and the details brought down to the latest possible date.
The Art of Printing
"A creature he called to wait on his will,
Half iron, half vapour – a dread to behold —
Which evermore panted, and evermore rolled,
And uttered his words a millionfold.
Forth sprung they in air, down raining in dew,
And men fed upon them, and mighty they grew."Leigh Hunt, Sword and Pen.
I. – JOHN GUTENBERG
Some Dutch writers, inspired by a not unnatural feeling of patriotism, have endeavoured to claim the honour of inventing the Art of Printing for a countryman of their own, Laurence Coster of Haarlem. Their sole reliance, however, is upon the statements of one Hadrian Junius, who was born at Horn, in North Holland, in 1511. About 1575 he wrote a work, entitled "Batavia," in which the account of Coster first appeared. And, as an unimpeachable authority has remarked, almost every succeeding advocate of Coster's pretensions has taken the liberty of altering, amplifying, or contradicting the account of Junius, according as it might suit his own line of argument; but not one of them has succeeded in producing a solitary fact in confirmation of it. The accounts which are given of Coster's discovery by Junius and his successors present many contradictory features. Thus Junius says: "Walking in a neighbouring wood, as citizens are accustomed to do after dinner and on holidays, he began to cut letters of beech-bark, with which, for amusement – the letters being inverted as on a seal – he impressed short sentences on paper for the children of his son-in-law." A later writer, Scriverius, is more imaginative: "Coster," he says, "walking in the wood, picked up a small bough of a beech, or rather of an oak-tree, blown off by the wind; and after amusing himself with cutting some letters on it, wrapped it up in paper, and afterwards laid himself down to sleep. When he awoke, he perceived that the paper, by a shower of rain or some accident having got moist, had received an impression from these letters; which induced him to pursue the accidental discovery."
Not only are these accounts evidently deficient in authenticity, but it should be remarked that the earliest of them was not put before the world until Laurence Coster had been nearly a hundred and fifty years in his grave. The presumed writer of the narrative which first did justice to his memory had been also twelve years dead when his book was published. His information, or rather the information brought forward under cover of his name, was derived from an old man who, when a boy, had heard it from another old man who lived with Coster at the time of the robbery, and who had heard the account of the invention from his master. For, to explain the fact of the early appearance of typography in Germany, the Dutch writers are forced to the hypothesis that an apprentice of Coster's stole all his master's types and utensils, fleeing with them first to Amsterdam, second to Cologne, and lastly to Mentz! The whole story is too improbable to be accepted by any impartial inquirer; and the best authorities are agreed in dismissing the Dutch fiction with the contempt it deserves, and in ascribing to John Gutenberg, of Mentz, the honour to which he is justly entitled.
Of the career of Gutenberg we shall speak presently, but let us first point out that the invention of typography, like all great inventions, was no sudden conception of genius – not the birth of some singularly felicitous moment of inspiration – but the result of what may be called a gradual series of causes. Printing with movable types was the natural outcome of printing with blocks. We must go back, therefore, a few years, to examine into the origin of "block books."
Mr. Jackson observes that there cannot be a doubt that the principle on which wood engraving is founded – that of taking impressions on paper or parchment, with ink, from prominent lines – was known and practised in attesting documents in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Towards the end of the fourteenth, or about the beginning of the fifteenth century, he says, there seems reason to believe that this principle was adopted by the German card-makers for the purpose of marking the outlines of the figures on their cards, which they afterwards coloured by the practice called stencilling.
It was the Germans who first practised card-making as a trade, and as early as 1418 the name of a kartenmacher, or card-maker, occurs in the burgess-books of Augsburg. In the town-books of Nuremburg, the designation formschneider, or figure-cutter, is found in 1449; and we may presume that block books – that is, books each page of which was cut on a single block – were introduced about this time. These books were on religious subjects, and were intended, perhaps, by the monks as a kind of counterbalance against the playing-cards; "thus endeavouring to supply a remedy for the evil, and extracting from the serpent a cure for his bite."
The earliest woodcut known – one of St. Christopher – bears the date of 1432, and was found in a convent situated within about fifty miles of the city of Augsburg – the convent of Buxheim, near Memmingen. It was pasted on the inside of the right hand cover of a manuscript entitled Laus Virginis, and measures eleven and a quarter inches in height, by eight and one-eighth inches in width.
The following description of it