While it is the main office of the present collection to set before the students of the University as a whole the more general features of the art of the early printer, a further service which it is prepared to render must not be overlooked.  To such as are prompted to go into the subject more deeply it offers an excellent body of the original material upon which any serious study must of necessity be based.

The two fine fifteenth century MSS. at the head of the collection, far from serving a merely ornamental purpose, like their own illuminated initials for example, are a needful introduction.  It is obvious that from such sources the first printers got the models of their types, and the MSS. in which Jenson found the prototypes of his famous roman characters, which in the judgment of some are still unsurpassed, could not have been very remote from these.  Some of the more striking features which distinguish the early printed books from the later were not original with them, but only survivals from the MSS.  The abbreviations and contractions in which both abound were the labor-saving devices of the copyists, adopted without hesitation by the printers who used the MSS. as copy and only slowly abandoned.  The copyist left spaces in his Ms. for initials to be supplied by the illuminator, without which his work was not considered complete, and for about a hundred years the printer continued to do the same.  If the copyist saw fit to attach his name to his work, we look for it at the end of the volume and there also the printer placed his colophon.  Signatures and catchwords, to guide the binder in the arrangement of the sheets, did not come in with the printed book, but had long been in use in the MSS.

Although out of the hundreds of presses active during the first century only a score are here represented, leaving wide gaps in the series, it is better, because more nearly in the natural line of development, that the books should be ranged under the country, the locality and the press to which they severally belong, than that they should be kept in strict chronological order.  A general chronological order underlies the geographical even where it does not come to the surface.  By right of seniority Germany stands at the head, and Mainz, the birthplace of printing, is followed by the other German towns in the order of their press age.  Next come the presses of Italy, France, Holland and England, arranged in like order.  To prevent, however, too wide a departure from the chronological succession which would result from the strict application of this rule, the later, i.e., the sixteenth century, Venice and Paris books are separated from the earlier and transferred to the end of the list, where in point of development they properly belong.  Placed in the order thus indicated, the books, as befits so small a total, are numbered consecutively in one series.  The conspectus, which brings into one view the titles, dates, places and printers’ names, will serve also as a sufficient index.