Note 14 — INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER THE TYPES AND TYPEFOUNDING OF THE FIRST PRINTERS.

Annales Hirsaugienses, ii, p. 421: “Post hæc inventis successerunt subtiliora, inveneruntque modum fundendi formas omnium Latini Alphabeti literarum quas ipsi matrices nominabant; ex quibus rursum æneos sive stanneos characteres fundebant, ad omnem pressuram sufficientes, quos prius manibus sculpebant.” Trithemius’ statement, as every student of typographical history is aware, has been made to fit every theory that has been propounded, but it is doubtful whether any other writer has stretched it quite as severely as Meerman in the above rendering of these few Latin lines.