In Germany, some obscure
mechanics, at Harlem, at Mayence, and at Strasbourg, were at work upon a
machine which, if perfected, should at once extend letters a hundred-fold,
and by that process revolutionize literature. The writers before, few as
they were, had been almost as numerous as the readers; hereafter the
readers were to increase in a geometrical proportion, and each great
writer should address millions. Movable types, first of wood and then of
metal, were made, the latter as early as 1441. Schoeffer, Guttenberg, and
Faust brought them to such perfection that books were soon printed and
issued in large numbers. But so slowly did the art travel, partly on
account of want of communication, and partly because it was believed to
partake of necromancy, and partly, too, from the phlegmatic character of
the English people, that thirty years elapsed before it was brought into
England. The art of printing came in response to the demand of an age of
progress: it was needed before; it was called for by the increasing number
of readers, and when it came it multiplied that number largely.
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