of the writing being usually ornamented with red ink, or illuminated in gold and colours
"According to Sansovino, certain stamps or types had been invented some time previously by Pietro di Natali, Bishop of Aquiloea.[21] These were made at Murano of glass, and were used to stamp or print the outline of the large initial letters of public documents, which were afterwards filled up by hand. … Pamphilo Castaldi improved on these glass types, by having others made of wood or metal, and having seen several Chinese books which the famous traveller Marco Polo had brought from China, and of which the entire text was printed with wooden blocks, he caused moveable wooden types to be made, each type containing a single letter; and with these he printed several broadsides and single leaves, at Venice, in the year 1426. Some of these single sheets are said to be preserved among the archives at Feltre. …
"The tradition continues that John Faust, of Mayence … became acquainted with Castaldi, and passed some time with him, at his Scriptorium, … at Feltre;"
and in short developed from the knowledge so acquired the great invention of printing. Mr. Curzon goes on to say that Panfilo Castaldi was born in 1398, and died in 1490, and that he gives the story as he found it in an article written by Dr. Jacopo Facen, of Feltre, in a (Venetian?) newspaper called Il Gondoliere, No. 103, of 27th December, 1843.
In a later paper Mr. Curzon thus recurs to the subject:[22]
"Though none of the early block-books have dates affixed to them, many of them are with reason supposed to be more ancient than any books printed with moveable types. Their resemblance to Chinese block-books is so exact, that they would almost seem to be copied from the books commonly used in China. The impressions are taken off on one side of the paper only, and in binding, both the Chinese, and ancient German, or Dutch block-books, the blank sides of the pages are placed opposite each other, and sometimes pasted together. … The impressions are not taken off with printer's ink, but with a brown paint or colour, of a much thinner description, more in the nature of Indian ink, as we call it, which is used in printing Chinese books. Altogether the German and Oriental block-books are so precisely alike, in almost every respect, that … we must suppose that the process of printing then must have been copied from ancient Chinese specimens, brought from that country by some early travellers, whose names have not been handed down to our times."
The writer then refers to the tradition about Guttemberg (so it is stated on this occasion, not Faust) having learned Castaldi's art, etc., mentioning a circumstance which he supposes to indicate that Guttemberg had relations with Venice; and appears to assent to the probability of the story of the art having been founded on specimens brought home by Marco Polo.
This story was in recent years diligently propagated in Northern Italy, and resulted in the erection at Feltre of a public statue of Panfilo Castaldi, bearing this inscription (besides others of like tenor):—
"To Panfilo Castaldi the illustrious Inventor of Movable Printing Types, Italy renders this Tribute of Honour, too long deferred."
In the first edition of this book I devoted a special note to the exposure of the worthlessness of the evidence for this story.[23] This note was, with the present Essay, translated and published at Venice by Comm. Berchet, but this challenge to the supporters of the patriotic romance, so far as I have heard, brought none of them into the lists in its defence.
But since Castaldi has got his statue from the printers of Lombardy, would it not be mere equity that the mariners of Spain should set up a statue at Huelva to the Pilot Alonzo Sanchez of that port, who, according to Spanish historians, after discovering the New World, died in the house of Columbus at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to appropriate his journals, and rob him of his fame?
Seriously; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real reputation of his native city, let him do his best to have that preposterous and discreditable fiction removed from the base of the statue. If Castaldi has deserved a statue on other and truer grounds let him stand; if not, let him be burnt into honest lime! I imagine that the original story that attracted Mr. Curzon was more jeu d'esprit than anything else; but that the author, finding what a stone he had set rolling, did not venture to retract.
[Sidenote: Frequent opportunities for such introduction in the age following Polo's.]
88. Mr. Curzon's own observations, which I have italicised about the resemblance of the two systems are, however, very striking, and seem clearly to indicate the derivation of the art from China. But I should suppose that in the tradition, if there ever was any genuine tradition of the kind at Feltre (a circumstance worthy of all doubt), the name of Marco Polo was introduced merely because it was so prominent a name in Eastern Travel. The fact has been generally overlooked and forgotten[24] that, for many years in the course of the 14th century, not only were missionaries of the Roman Church and Houses of the Franciscan Order established in the chief cities of China, but a regular trade was carried on overland between Italy and China, by way of Tana (or Azov), Astracan, Otrar and Kamul, insomuch that instructions for the Italian merchant following that route form the two first chapters in the Mercantile Handbook of Balducci Pegolotti (circa 1340).[25] Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might therefore have brought home the block-books. And this is the less to be ascribed to him because he so curiously omits to speak of the art of printing, when his subject seems absolutely to challenge its description.
[1] "They draw nowadays the map of the world in a laughable manner, for they draw the inhabited earth as a circle; but this is impossible, both from what we see and from reason." (Meteorolog. Lib. II. cap. 5.) Cf. Herodotus, iv. 36.
[2] In Dante's Cosmography, Jerusalem is the centre of our [Greek: oikouménae], whilst the Mount of Purgatory occupies the middle of the Antipodal hemisphere:—
"Come ciò sia, se'l vuoi poter pensare,
Dentro raccolto immagina Sion
Con questo monte in su la terra stare,
Sì, ch' ambodue hann' un solo orrizon
E diversi emisperi". …
—Purg. IV. 67.
[3] The belief, with this latter ground of it, is alluded to in curious verses by Jacopo Alighieri, Dante's son:—
"E molti gran Profeti Filosofi e Poeti Fanno il colco dell' Emme Dov' è Gerusalemme; _Se le loro scritture Hanno vere figure:
E per la Santa fede
Cristiana ancor si vede
Che' l' suo principio Cristo_
Nel suo mezzo conquisto Per cui prese morte E vi pose la sorte." —(Rime Antiche Toscane, III. 9.)
Though the general meaning of the second couplet is obvious, the expression il colco dell' Emme, "the couch of the M," is puzzling. The best solution that occurs to me is this: In looking at the world map of Marino Sanudo, noticed on p. 133, as engraved by Bongars in the Gesta Dei per Francos, you find geometrical lines laid down, connecting the N.E., N.W., S.E., and S.W. points, and thus forming a square inscribed in the circular disk of the Earth, with its diagonals passing through the Central Zion. The eye easily discerns in these a great M inscribed in the circle, with its middle angular point at Jerusalem. Gervasius of Tilbury (with some confusion in his mind between tropic and equinoxial, like that which Pliny makes in speaking of the Indian Mons Malleus) says that "some are of opinion that the Centre is in the place where the Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria at the well, for there, at the summer solstice, the noonday sun descends perpendicularly into the water of the well, casting no shadow; a thing which the philosophers say occurs at Syene"! (Otia
