Note 411 — XXVI

The copyists, underpaid by the stationers, did their work recklessly, abbreviating words so freely that it was often impossible to discover the meaning of the author. The faults of the calligrapher, who preferred beauty to accuracy, and of the young scholar, who rashly undertook to correct errors—tended to the same result. Fichet, a professor of the University of Paris, who seems to have been the first man of letters who esteemed printing, said, in a complimentary letter to Gering, Crantz and Friburger, that books were becoming barbarous through the faults of the copyists. Bouhier, a later president of the University, said that the books of the copyists were monstrous, and often unintelligible.