Note 73 — Early Typography. CHAPTER III.

This Faust, whose ancestors came from Mentz, was a son of the councillor and judge of the imperial tribunal at Frankfort, who died in 1619. Writing from family papers and traditions, J. F. Faust (inheriting the jealousy against Gutenberg which was engendered by the lawsuit, his opposite politics, and the honours bestowed upon him by the Elector-Archbishop) attributes the origin of Typography to Faust of Mentz, but admits that Gutenberg was his assistant. With the exception of this change of persons, the account he gives of the origin of the art accords in its main facts with the statements made by Trithemius, Zell, Wimpheling, Arnold de Bergel, and other early writers on the subject. He mentions the block Alphabet and Donatus, and the separate wooden types made by cutting the engraved tablets into single letters,—which were all for a long time preserved in Faust’s house at Mentz; where his grandfather Dr. Johan Faust, had seen them. This Dr. Faust also left with the family a written description of these first beginnings of the art. J. F. Faust’s account, taken from Wetter, with some remarks by that author, will be found in the Appendix.