The Booklover and His Books | Page 6

that typewriting is
print, though it lacks most of its condensation, and that the credit for its
superior legibility belongs to typography, of which the new art is
obviously a by-product. But we are not yet out of the manuscript period,
so far as private records are concerned, and it still is true, as it has been
for many generations, that print multiplies the years of every scholar's
and reader's life.
At this point we may even introduce a claim for print as a contributor to
literature. There are certainly many books of high literary standing that
never would have attained their present form without the intervention
of type. It is well known that Carlyle rewrote his books in proof, so that
the printer, instead of attempting to correct his galleys, reset them
outright. Balzac went a step further, and largely wrote his novels in
proof, if such an expression may be allowed. He so altered and
expanded them that what went to the printing office as copy for a

novelette finally came out of it a full-sized novel. Even where the
changes are not so extensive, as in the proof-sheets of the Waverley
Novels preserved in the Cornell University Library, it is interesting to
trace the alterations which the author was prompted to make by the
sight of his paragraphs clothed in the startling distinctness of print. Nor
is this at all surprising when one considers how much better the eye can
take in the thought and style of a composition from the printed page
than it can even from typewriting. The advantage is so marked that
some publishers, before starting on an expensive literary venture, are
accustomed to have the copy set up on the linotype for the benefit of
their critics. If the work is accepted, the revisions are made on these
sheets, and then, finally, the work is sent back to the composing room
to receive the more elaborate typographic dress in which it is to appear.
But to return to the advantages of type to the reader. Handwriting can
make distinctions, such as punctuation and paragraphing, but print can
greatly enforce them. The meaning of no written page leaps out to the
eye; but this is the regular experience of the reader with every
well-printed page. While printing can do nothing on a single page that
is beyond the power of a skillful penman, its ordinary resources are the
extraordinary ones of manuscript. It might not be physically impossible,
for instance, to duplicate with a pen a page of the Century Dictionary,
but it would be practically impossible, and, if the pen were our only
resource, we never should have such a marvel of condensation and
distinctness as that triumph of typography in the service of scholarship.
In ordinary text, printing has grown away from the distinctions to the
eye that were in vogue two hundred years ago--a gain to art and
perhaps to legibility also, though contemporary critics like Franklin
lamented the change--but in reference books we have attained to a finer
skill in making distinctions to the eye than our forefathers achieved
with all their typographic struggles. Nor are our reference pages lacking
in beauty. But our familiarity with works of this class tends to obscure
their wonderful merit as time-savers and eye-savers. It is only when we
take up some foreign dictionary, printed with little contrast of type,
perhaps in German text, and bristling with unmeaning abbreviations,
that we appreciate our privilege. Surely this is a marvelous mechanical

triumph, to present the words of an author in such a form that the eye,
to take it in, needs but to sweep rapidly down the page, or, if it merely
glances at the page, it shall have the meaning of the whole so focused
in a few leading words that it can turn at once to the passage sought, or
see that it must look elsewhere. The saving of time so effected may be
interpreted either as a lengthening of life or as an increased fullness of
life, but it means also a lessening of friction and thus an addition to
human comfort.
We have been speaking of prose; but print has done as much or more to
interpret the meaning of poetry. We have before us a facsimile of
nineteen lines from the oldest Vatican manuscript of Vergil. The
hexameters are written in single lines; but this is the only help to the
eye. The letters are capitals and are individually very beautiful, indeed,
the lines are like ribbons of rich decoration; but the words are not
separated, and the punctuation is inconspicuous and primitively simple,
consisting merely of faint dots. Modern poetry, especially lyric, with its
wealth and interplay of rhyme, affords a fine opportunity for the printer
to mediate between the poet