Having said enough, I think, of the ancients’ knowledge of type-forms and printing materials, I pass on to the recognized establishments of the art in the fifteenth century; for, whatever knowledge the ancients had of printing, it would appear to have yielded no immediate fruits to posterity.

But before I proceed to modern times, I am bound to note that the Chinese, who seem to have been many centuries in advance of Europe in most of the industral arts, are supposed to have practised block-printing, just as they do now, more than a thousand years ago.  Nor does the complicated nature of their written language, which consists of more than one hundred thousand word-signs, admit of any readier mode.  But they print, or rather rub off, impressions with such speed—­seven hundred sheets per hour—­that, until the introduction of steam, they far outstripped Europeans.  Gibbon, it will be remembered, regrets that the emperor Justinian, who lived in the sixth century, did not introduce the art of printing from the Chinese, instead of their silk manufacture.

Block-printing ushered in the great epoch; and the first dawn of it in Europe seems to have been single prints of saints and scriptural subjects, with a line or two of description engraved on the same wooden plate.  These are for the most part lost; but there is one in existence, large and exceedingly fine, of St. Christopher, with two lines of inscription, dated 1423, believed to have been printed with the ordinary printing-press.  It was found in the library of a monastery near Augsburg, and is therefore presumed to be of German execution.  Till lately this was the earliest-dated evidence of block-printing known; but there has since been discovered at Malines, and deposited at Brussels, a wood-cut of similar character, but assumed to be Dutch or Flemish, dated “MCCCCXVIII”; and though there seems no reason to doubt the genuineness of the cut, it is asserted that the date bears evidence of having been tampered with.

There is a vague tradition, depending entirely on the assertion of a writer named Papillon, not a very reliable authority, which would give the invention of wood-cut-printing to Venice, and at a very early period.  He asserts that he once saw a set of eight prints, depicting the deeds of Alexander the Great, each described in verse, which were engraved in relief, and printed by a brother and sister named Cunio, at Ravenna, in 1285.  But though the assertion is accredited by Mr. Ottley, it is generally disbelieved.

There is reason to suppose that playing-cards, from wooden blocks, were produced at Venice long before the block-books, even as early as 1250; but there is no positive evidence that they were printed; and some insist that they were produced either by friction or stencil-plates.  It seems, however, by no means unlikely that cards, which were in most extensive use in the Middle Ages, should, for the sake of cheapness, have been printed quite as early, if not earlier, than even figures of saints; and the same artists are presumed to have produced both.