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made referable to principles for the purposes of || religion, of morality, of knowledge, or of hapcorrection and modification, cannot be otherwise than calculated to produce much evil. But for such references sentiment originally founded in principle would be involved in the errors of opinion, and despoiled of her most salutary effects.

That there may be an accidental sense of good and beautiful, of evil and deformity, existing in the mind independent of instruction, I can easily conceive and readily grant; but that there should be a natural sense of those opposite qualities not only admits of doubt, but is incapable of demonstration. To the mind nothing is naturally right or wrong until it obtains an accidental, a revealed, or an acquired power of reasoning, comparing, and judging. For although we possess the faculty by which this power is applied to the purposes of want, yet the power itself is neither innate nor intuitive.

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Errors never can become principles; for all principles are truths. And whatever wears the certain and unequivocal stamp of error ceases to be the effect of principle. False principles (im- || properly so called) are neither more nor less than unfounded opinions. They are opinions of an Utopian origin, and owe their birth to the fertile inventions, and their existence to the visionary delusions of an imagination uncorrected by sober investigation; or to the sudden impulse of conceptions or sensations, the causes of which we may feel ourselves unable to account for, or unwilling to enquire into.

A separation between just principles and natural sentiment is conspicuous in many instances; nor can it be denied that a separation between just principle and pure sentiment is not unfre quently to be ascertained by any one who attentively watches and carefully examines the progress of his own conduct, reasonings, feelings, enquiries, and determinations; and compares the result of his observations with the principles he professes to believe, adopt, and maintain.

If "sentiment is the organ of sympathy" and "the first spring of all the social affections," which are propositions 1 cannot admit, it is no less the organ of envy and malice, and the first spring of all the unsocial affections; by which our rank in nature, and our obligations to do. mestic and political institutions are in a very high and lamentable degree concealed from our view.

All the "deductions made by reason from the experience of our own sentiments, or received from the sentiments of others whom we respect," are referable to principles, and the truth or fallacy, the purity or feculency of them must be determined by such reference. False principles have no existence in nature. And that which has no prior existence cannot be created by false deductions. It is more easy to suppose a man may be destitute of principles altogether than it is to suppose he can be actuated by what does not exist. False principles are visionary Nothing can properly be denominated senti- || offsprings of imaginary suppositions. We canment which does not in some way or another re- not embody them. They are ideal shadows to sult from the operation of the reasoning faculties. which no substances belong. They are inapSentiment is therefore totally inapplicable to the plicable to all the useful purposes of moral, nabrute creation. Nor in man can it be any other-tural, and religious enquiries. They are mists wise pure, just, and acceptable to the greas Cre-floating in the atmosphere of ignorance, geneator of all things, than in proportion as it is the effect of, or conformable to, principles. We are not required to improve talents until they are actually put into our possession. Principles are talents provided for our use. We cannot possess them without knowing that we do so. We cannot alter them; we cannot change them; but we can use them; we can apply them for the benefit, the improvement, and the felicity of ourselves and our fellow-creatures. By such an use of them, we shall beget sentiments the most noble, the most generous, the most lovely, the most humane, and the most sublime that our pre-knowledge ceases to be progressive. There the sent state of existence is capable of producing or enjoying. But if, instead of adverting to principles, we consult opinions, the justness of our inferences, and the purity of our intentions, will rest on no solid foundation; and the final result of our labours may be accompanied by sentiments in no respects favourable to the cause of

rated by a total perversion of talents, and supported by the ascendency of vice, which may for a while conceal the brilliancy of wisdom from the view, but which happily cannot prevent the influence of its operation on the heart.

Every thing that is not absolutely and in every respect consistent with principles, and strictly conformable to the plain, decided and requi-ite effects of their influence when the properties of them are properly applied, is altogether unfounded. The acquisition of knowledge implies certainty of principles Where no principles exist

superstructure of learning cannot be erected; for there no foundation can be found whereon to rear it. Vice and ignorance are equally destitute of all principles. Hence man in savage life lives and dies in a savage state: but, as in social life, he is not altogether vicious nor altogether ignorant, it is plain that he is capable of recognizing

principles when they are once submitted to his consideration; and from that recognition he enjoys the power, and is invested with the privilege of applying them where it is his interest, his duty, his inclination, or his humour to do so.

principles, no certain deductions can be made, no permanent uniformity of virtuous conduct can be inf rred.

Principles are the grounds of knowledge underivable by the art of man. They are communications made to him, by the proper application The dissimilarity of "the characteristics of which knowledge is attainable by him. Naassigned to sentiment" is warranted by experi-tural conceptions add nothing to the strength of ence; against which no arguments can counter-principles, and but little to the stock of knowvail. Seeming inconsistencies of representation ledge. And knowledge, whether derived from do not obviate the certainty of real absurdities in education, from accident, from observation, from opinion, nor the visibility of palpable contra- experience, or from study, is not a great support dictions in practice. of principle, but is itself supported by principle. Principles are truths than which nothing can be more strong, nothing more useful, nothing more perfect, nothing more satisfactory. The emanations of science can neither add to, nor diminish ought of their intrinsic value. Independent of sentiment, principles are an

The unerring purity of sentiment is incapable of being otherwise ascertained than by comparing its agreement or disagreement with the principles by which it should be governed and regulated.

If every primitive sentiment must be necessarily virtuous," every principle from whichchors of hope, and of consolation sure and cersuch sentiment emanates must be necessarily tain; on which we may always rely with confi good. dence and security.

If there are some who "perceive misery, and desire to relieve it," there are others who perceive misery, and desire to increase it. Sentiment is under the dominion of the passions as well as the affections; but this is not the case with principle. "From our primitive sentiments," independent of the controul of fixed

Were the legislation of principle and the precedents of experience to bow to the decisions of sentiment, the chancery of the mind wouldbecome despicable by its inconsistencies, and ridiculous by its determinations. July 6, 1806.

L. C.

ON THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.

with all the produce of ancient research, to refine our taste by all the specimens of early art, and to trace the gradual advancement of know

gives us, in our turn, the facility of imparting in an instant the result of our enquiries, and the effusions of our fancy, to the remotest corners where the language of our country is admired or understood: so that not a ray of genius emanates from the human soul which may not be caught, as it

To those who are in the habit of employing | Which, while it enables us to stock our minds their private resources, and availing themselves of public advantages, not as the mere engines for supplying immediate wants, but as a criterion from which they can estimate the progressive im-edge even to the times in which we live, also provement of the human mind, and the consequent advances of civilization and refinement, every thing must be valuable and interesting that can tend to elucidate the original, or follow the early steps of those arts and sciences which, while they effect the desirable and ordinary purposes of life, for society at large, afford to enquiring and contemplative minds, a source of satisfaction infinitely superior to the comfort which they, in common with the rest of the world, derive from the accomplishment of those ordinary purposes. Among these resources and advantages, perhaps there is none which has tended, in so eminent and conspicuous a degree, to the diffusion of wisdom, and of course to the improvement of society, as the art of printing :-that

were, in a prismatic glass, and reflected at once in innumerable directions. Yet, the source of this admirable invention, by which the regions of literature have been fertilized, and the fruits of genius matured, has, like the fountains of the Nile, for a succession of ages, defied the endeavours of every adventurer who has attempted, by tracing its current, to ascend to its primary streams. To say a few words on a subject so generally interesting, and convey, with as little heavy pedantry and dry chronology as possible, an understanding "Which stamps, renews, and multiplies of the general documents which we have been able to procure, may perhaps be a labour not

-"Magic skill,

"at will."

wholly unexceptionable to that part of our readers whom the privilege of the sex, and the triumphs of the toilette, withhold from the labours" of ponderous literature. Knowledge will seldom be refused admittance into the mind, if amusement be the coin which it offers at the door.

The time when this art was discovered is (within a very few years) a matter of pretty general agreement; the difficulty is to ascertain, among a number of competitors for the credit of the invention, amidst the confusion (and probably the chicanery) of partnerships and improvements, the real author of the inestimable discovery: For partners claim equality of merit with original proprietors; and subsequent im provers arrogate to themselves the title of inventors. Printing, then, first became known in Europe about the year 1440. But the birth-place of Homer has scarcely given rise to discussions more various or more animated, than the town and the individual to whom the honour is to be attributed. It is true that in China the art of printing has been known certainly from the year 930, and as some think for a long succession of centuries. But in China the art is a totally different science from the European system, though the ground-work and first principle are the same: for the Chinese printers, having an incredible number of letters, could not, as the Europeans do, who have only twenty-four, perform all their objects with a few types repeatedly combined in various relations, but were obliged to employ an immense quantity of types; so that they found it the most convenient plan to cut in, wood a block-type of every individual page in the books they had occasion to print, which type was of course totally useless to the artist for any other purpose than the re-printing of the same work. And though it be urged that Koster, of whom we must presently speak, printed two or three books from these wooden pages, yet it should be recollected, that at the time when Koster is said to have done this, the Chinese and Europeans had no medium of intercourse by which it was possible that such an invention could be communicated. When all these circumstances, the internal evidence of the manufacture, and the external evidence of dates, are considered with their due proportions, it will be pretty generally agreed that Germany, which, but for the priority of this Chinese claim, is acknowledged to have been the mother country of printing, has a fair title to the honour. Hence the old Latin lines:

"O Germania! Muneris Repertrix "Quo nihil utilius dedit Vetustas! "Libros scribere quæ doces premendo !" Which may be rendered:

"An art did you, ye German States, explore, "Which equalled all that skill had wrought before;

"You quickened Genius by the glaring hint, "And taught to write, by teaching how to print."

But to have settled that the art is originally German, will by no means be found a solution of the problem which we wish to see solved. It is necessary for us also to enquire, which, among those numberless principalities, whose aggregate constitutes the German empire, has the greatest show of justice on its side. It seems indeed most fair to conclude, with a great majority of the learned men who have entered upon those investigations, the results of which we are now briefly relating, that Mentz was the horizon in which this new luminary dawned; though there are not wanting many respectable authorities who attribute the priority to Haarlem, and many who support the claims of Strasburgh. Other smaller towns there are, nor nameless nor unsung;" but their defenders are not entitled to particular consideration in an abstract such as this, from either their number or their authority. In considering the question, we shall satisfy ourselves with giving an outline of the separate pretensions held forth by these three towns, without entering into any prolix detail of the proofs that support the respective arguments; and if any one shall wish to make a farther search, he will easily, by means of the authorities to which we shall refer, be enabled to fill up our general sketch.

The inhabitants, then, of Strasburgh contend, that the first printer was one Mantel, in their city; and this theory is supported by a physician of the same name at Paris, who declares that this Mantel, of Strasburgh, invented printing in 1442, and that, in consequence, he was presented by the Emperor, Frederick the Third, with a coat of arms, which had reference to his great discovery. But it may be urged, that a Sovereign's favour is by no means an irrefragable proof of merit or originality; nor, on the other hand, ought royal neglect to be considered as an argument of demerit or quackery. Christopher Columbus discovered the new world; but Americus Vesputius had the honour of giving it his

name.

According to Junius Hadrianus, Haarlem was the native city of this young science. He maintains that it was invented by Lawrence John Koster, an eminent Burgher of that place, as early as the year 1480-that Koster "made letters first "of the bark of trees, which he set and ranked "in order, and put with their heels upwards 66 upon paper, and so made the first essay of "this art: at first he made but a line or two,

"then whole pages, and then books, but printed << on one side only." The blank sides of the paper were then pasted together, and these rudiments of the art Junius Hadrianus says he actually saw in that very town. That, after some time, he discontinued the use of wood as his material for types, and "cut single letters in "steel, which he sunk into copper matrices, "and, fitting them into iron moulds, cast single "letters of metal into those matrices." Of these matrices the inventor appears (from a note written in a copy of Tully's Offices, which was print ed in the year 1445, and which has been preserved in the Bodleian Library,) to have been Peter Schaeffer, or Schoeffer. Koster having made this progress in the art, (continue the Haarlemers), associated with himself John Fust Faustemberg, or Faustus, whom, by-the-bye, some accounts confound with John Guttenberg, another early printer; and this faithless associate, having thoroughly acquainted himself with the principles and the practice of the art, took advantage of a morning when Koster was piously employed at church, and, stealing his tools, set up a new printing house at Mentz, where he asserted his claim to the original merit, before Koster had thought proper to publish his own pretensions. Now the first book that Faustus printed, say they, was produced in 1440, being the Doctrinal of Alexander Gallus; and all that is alledged in favour of Koster, is a bare assertion of the Haarlemers, that the Speculum Salutis, which was printed in their town in Dutch and Latin, was the first book ever printed. But, unluckily, they do not inform us when this work appeared; so that Koster's title to priority rests only on vague affirmation, while that of Faustus is supported by the strongest of all testimony, the internal evidence of his date. Nor indeed can we easily conceive why Koster, who is stated to have made his discovery in 1430, should have kept his own secret so long as ten years, from all the world except Faustus, particularly if he were so shabby a fellow as the Haarlemers would make us believe. And it seems not more reasonable to think that Koster invented what Faustus made known, than in conversation, when one man has uttered a very witty observation, it would be just to give the credit of it to another, who should tell us that he had also thought of the same thing. However, the Haarlemers are so perfectly convinced of the soundness of their own pretensions, that, over the house of this Lawrence John Koster, in the Market-place at Haarlem, Hegeuitz tells us these lines are written in golden letters: Typographie Ars, Artium Conservatrix, hic Primum Inventa, circa Ann. M,CCCC,XL. The art of printing, the guardian of other arts, Was here first invented about the year 1440.

Thus, by-the-bye, they shew that they thenselves know not how to believe their own asser tions, that the date of Koster's invention was 1430; and underneath the inscription which we have mentioned are these verses:

"Vana, quid Archetypos et Præla, Moguntia, jactas?

"Haarlemi Archetypos Prælaque nata scias. "Extulit hic, monstrante Deo, Laurentius

artem:

"Dissimulare virum hunc, dissimulare Deum est."

"Wherefore, vain Mentz, thy types and presses vaunt?

"At Haarlem born, those wonders went abroad.

"The secret here did God to Lawrence grant: "Belying this man is belying God."

Some

And now for the inhabtiants of Mentz. Faustus, whom the Haarlemers have called the disciple of Koster, and who is commonly known by the name of Dr. Faustus, appears in reality to have been the inventor of printing, about the year 1440; and the occasion of it was, like the occasions of many of our most useful and important discoveries, completely fortuitous. persons have supposed, that the idea was suggested by the mode in which playing-cards were engraved; but it is generally believed at Mentz, that he had been amusing himself one afternoon by cutting the letters that composed his name out of the bark of a young tree; these he laid upon his handkerchief, which was fine and white linen; so the bark, being green and full of sap, impressed on the clean surface the shapes into which it had itself been carved. This accident represented to him the practicability of making characters of metal, which, damped with a strong colour, would leave an impression upon paper. The citizens of Mentz, in support of this assertion of theirs, produce a copy of Tully's Offices, printed on parchment, and preserved in the library of Auxbourg, at the end of which is this memorandum :

"Præsens M. Tullii Opus clarissimum, Jo. Fust, moguntinus civis, non atramento, plumali cannâ, neque æreâ, sed arte quâdam perpulchrâ, manu Petri Gersheim, pueri mei, feliciter effeci. Finitum Anno 1440, die quarto, mens Feb."

"This celebrated work of Marcus Tullius, I, John Fust, citizen of Mentz, have, not with ink, with a pen of quill, nor with one of brass, but by a certain admirable art, completed successfully, through the labour of Peter Gersheim, my servant-boy. Finished the fourth of Febru ary, in the year 1440."

This refutes the Haarlem story about the pub. lication of Gallus's Doctrinal.

In England printing first became known in the reign of Henry the Eighth, who sent messenger: to Haarlem for the purpose of learning the art, and if possible, of bringing back with them some persons who should instruct the inhabitants of Great Britain in its exercise. Accordingly, Frederick Corseles, an under-workman, was pre

come over to England; and began at Oxford the exercise of that art, which has since been one of the most powerful engines in the hand of Providence for increasing our knowledge and

This Fust has been, unfortunately, the subject of much misapprehension. Posterity itself, which does justice to the merits of most men, even of those who have suffered from envy, from prejudice, and from party, in their life-time, has failed to clear the memory of Fust, from impu-vailed on, for a considerable sum of money, to tations the most absurd, as well as unjust. During his life, he had the misfortune to separate from those whom he had chosen as the partners of his newly found art; and this seems to afford a clue, as well for the claims of the different || improving our morals; since morality, though towns which we have mentioned, and to which those partners probably migrated, as for the Scandalous accusations which were thrown against him, of desertion from his employer, and felony in carrying off the tools. These were the inventions of the learned who envied, and of the partisans who opposed him, to deprecate his character with the higher orders of men; while, in order to impose upon the vulgar, those lies were propagated, which long tradition, and pantomimic spectacle have, in almost every country of Europe inseparably associated with the very name of Faustus. We are told of his compacts with the devil, and his skill in magic; we have seen him on the stage in the infernal regions, suffering punishment for having on earth been the benefactor of his fellow-creatures. And what To an invention so useful to mankind, it has was the cause of this popular belief in his necro- since been thought proper to annex ornament; mancy? Why this: A number of copies were and modern times have proceeded upon this de produced of Bibles printed by him, which, being || corating principle to such extremes, that literacompared together, was found exactly, even ture has been greatly enhanced in its price by its to the punctuation of a paragragh, even to the ornamental coadjutors. What was once cheap tittle of an iota correspondent, each with the and simple paper, is now a manufacture apother; and being avowedly too produced in a proaching to vellum. The spaces, which were space of time in which they could not have been originally left at the ends of chapters, have been finished by the ordinary mode of manuscript, swelled for the introduction of expensive vig. were positive evidence, in the eyes of the vulgar, nettes. Pages, which used to contain forty or that he, who could do more than man had ever fifty lines, now comprise only eighteen or twenty, Books fordone before, must possess means more powerful and those lines of a larger type. than man could command. Those means could merly printed in octavo, are now become quarbe only diabolical; though it was certainly a toes, past the purse of an ordinary reader, huge strange freak of his subterranean Majesty, to masses of literature, where, in the words of a select, for one of Faustus's earliest experiments witty and elegant writer," a rivulet of text in the new art, of all books in the world, the meanders through a meadow of margin." Bible!

not in every individual, yet certainly in every age, increases with the increase of knowledge.Who were the persons employed by the king, has been much disputed; but this is evident, that the deputies were fitted out and maintained at the charge of his majesty; and on that account printing, though it afterwards became a free trade, was many years thought as exclusively the king's prerogative, as coining. It was brought to London by William Caxton; and that, says Baker in his Chronicle, about the year 1471: but we have scarcely any copies of books printed in London earlier than 1480. The first printing. press was set up in Westminster Abbey, where Caxton worked; and this was the reason why || all printing-offices were afterwards called Chapels.

H.T.

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