The first Book of any considerable magnitude printed with moveable metallic types, was the cele brated editioprinceps of the Bible, printed at Mentz, between the years 1450 and 1455. It is printed in large, but handsome, Gothic characters, to resemble manuscript, having two columns in the page, and consisting in whole of 637 leaves, divided into two, three, or four volumes, according to the taste of the binder. (Santander, Diction. Bibliog. Tom. II.) The advance from the rude Block Books, of a few leaves, to this noble monument of early Typography, is great indeed ; and it is impossible not to regret, that there should be still so much uncertainty as to the person whose ingenuity furnished the means of at once raising, almost to perfection, an art destined ever after to exercise so vast and so beneficial an influence on the affairs of the world. The Psalter, printed at Mentz by Faust and Schoiffer, in 1457, is the first Book which bears the Printer's name, with the date, and place of printing.
In general, in the very early printed Books, the name of the Printer, the date, and the place of printing, are either wholly omitted, or placed at the end of the Book, with some quaint ejaculation or doxology. The pages have no running title, or num ber, or catch-word, or signature-letters, to mark the order of the sheets. The character is uniformly Gothic, till 1467, when the Roman type was first in troduced. There were no capitals to begin senten ces ; the only points used were the colon and full stop ; and in almost every sentence there were ab breviations or contractions. In regard to these and other peculiarities of early printed Books, the reader may consult the following works : The General His tory of Printing, by Palmer (supposed, however, to have been chiefly written by the celebrated George Psalmanazer); Jungendres, De notis characteristicis librorutn a Typographice incunabilis ad an. 1500 impressontm ; and Recherches sur l'origine des Sig. natures, et des Chifirres de page, par Marolles.
Many of the early Printers had peculiar marks or vignettes, which they sometimes placed on the title page, and sometimes at the end of the Books printed by them ; and most of them, also, made use of mo nograms or cyphers, compounded of the initial or other letters of their names. These furnish a clue to the discovery of the Printer, where they oc cur on books without any Printer's name. An ac quaintance with them, therefore, is necessary to the Bibliographer, because questions occur as to early editions which can only be decided by ascertaining the Printer's name. For explanations of these marks, 'the following works may be consulted :--Orlandi's Origin e progressi della Stamps:, published at Bo one volume 4to, in 1722 ; and Scholtzius's IX:a ni Thesaurus Synsbolorum ac Emblematam, in one vo tame folio, published at Nuremberg, in 1730. The monograms of the early English printers are explain ed in Ames's Typographical Antiquities.
The following works are appropriated to the de scription of early printed Books : 1. Index Librorum ab inventa Typographia ad annum 1500, cam 2 vole. flvo, 1791. This work, by Laire, is one of the best of its kind. The descriptions are clear, the notes brief and instructive ; and there are four in dexes, which furnish the means of ready reference to all the names, titles, places, and Bibliographical notices contained in the work : 2. Dictiennaire Bi bliographique choisi du quinzieme siescle. Par Serna Santander, 3 vols. 8vo, 1805. This is a very learned and exact work ; and, like the preceding, embraces only the rarest and most interesting publications of the fifteenth century. 3. Bibliotheca Spenceriana, or a descriptive Catalogue of the books published in the fifteenth century, in the Library of Earl Spencer ; by the Rev. T. F. Dibdin ; 4 vole. 8vo, 1814. The abundance and beauty of the facsimiles and other embellishments, as well as the fineness of the paper and printing, render this by much the most splendid Bibliographical work ever published in any country. It contains some curious information, enveloped, however, in a much greater proportion of tasteless and irrelevant matter. 4. Annales Typographici ab drtis invents ()flew, by Michael Maittaire, published in 4to, as follows : In 1719, volume first, which em braces the period from the origin of printing to 1500 : volume second, published in 1722, extends the annals to 1536 ; and volume third, published in 1726, brings them down, according to the title-page, to l557; but there is an Appendix, which affords a partial continua tion to 1664. In the first volume was republished, with corrections and large additions, and is commonly called the fourth volume. The fifth and last volume, containing 1,ndexes, was published in 1741. As four of the volumes consist each of two parts, the work is sometimes bound in five, sometimes in nine volumes. Several Supplements have been published to this elaborate work ; the most valuable of them, that by Denis, in two volumes 4to, was published at Vienna in 1789 ; and contains 6811 articles omitted by Maittaire. The latter has eniiched his Annals with many learned Dissertations ; and the work is allowed to be the most important that has yet been com piled in England, in any department of Bibliography. But though written in this country, the last was the only volume published in it, the others having been published in Holland. 5. Annales Typogaphici ab artis inventce origine, ad annum 1500, post MA177'411E1? DENISH, aliorumque emendati et Audi ; opera S. W. PAUZER j 11 volumes 4to, published at Nuremberg, the first in 1793, the last in 1803. This work la bours under great defects, in point of arrangement ; but it is unquestionably the most complete of its kind that has yet appeared. It comes down to the year 1586, though the title-page of the first volume limits it to the fifteenth century.