Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/294

The great obscurity which envelops the history of the invention of printing is well illustrated by the present volume.

We had occasion recently, under the guidance of Dr. Van der Linde's book on what he calls the "Haarlem Legend,"^[1] to see how many collateral stories complicated the true story, and how hard a matter it has been to tell the true from the false. It is much better to make up our minds to the fact that the real history of the great invention is not known with any degree of certainty, and this, too, for a reason, which the discovery of the Testament at Lambeth puts prominently before us. It is this: The first printed books were made to look as like manuscripts as possible. They deceived the literary men of the 15th century, and they even deceived the bibliographers of the 18th century: the first, because they were not acquainted with printing, the second, because they were not thoroughly acquainted with writing of this character. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that this book has always been reckoned at Lambeth as a manuscript, a fine manuscript, no doubt, but not in any way specially remarkable among the crowd of more curious, more magnificent, or more important manuscripts in the same noble collection. During some joint researches conducted by Mr. Kershaw, the librarian, and Mr. Sims, of the British Museum, the identity of the book with part of the Mazarine Bible in the Museum was established, although it had even deceived so acute an observer as the late Dr. Todd, and was named in his catalogue of the Archiepiscopal manuscripts.

The Mazarine Bible is the first edition of the Vulgate. That, at least, is the technical description, and includes these minor points-that it is the first Bible printed, the first book printed with metal type, the first work of the first firm of