Note 13 — INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER THE TYPES AND TYPEFOUNDING OF THE FIRST PRINTERS.

Skeen, in his Early Typography, Colombo, 1872, takes up the challenge thrown down by Dr. Van der Linde on the strength of Enschedé’s opinion, and shows a specimen of three letters cut in boxwood, pica size, one of which he exhibits again at the close of the book after 1,500 impressions. But the value of Skeen’s arguments and experiments is destroyed when he sums up with this absurd dictum: “Three letters are as good as 3,000 or 30,000 or 300,000 to demonstrate the fact that words are and can be, and that therefore pages and whole books may be (and therefore also that they may have been) printed from such separable wooden types.”—P. 424.