PREFACE

The Pentateuch of Printing is not so fanciful a title for the present book as might at first sight appear. There is a self-evident analogy between the Genesis of the World and the Genesis of Printing. The spread of Typography is not inaptly typified by an Exodus; while the laws promulgated in Leviticus have a plain parallel in idea with the laws and observances necessary to be followed in making a book. Numbers certainly is not so directly suggestive of the many great names which figure upon the Printers’ Roll of Honour; but Deuteronomy at once suggests, by its very signification, the second birth and reinforcement of the vital conditions of Printing introduced by the steam-machine. No subject is nowadays complete without a knowledge of what specialists have previously written upon it, and the public generally are certain to form their opinions upon the published statements of the best Judges. We thus obtain six chapter-heads for our book, and whether the information offered under these heads is worth reading must now be left to the only Judge, against whose verdict it is useless to appeal—the Reading Public.