aving
examined the celebrated _Depositions in the law-suit between Fust and
Gutemberg_--so intimately connected with the history of early printing, and
so copiously treated upon by recent bibliographers.[217] I own that I
inspected these depositions (in the German language) with no ordinary
curiosity. They are doubtless most precious; yet I cannot help suspecting
that the _character_ or letter is _not_ of the time; namely of 1440. It
should rather seem to be of the sixteenth century. Perhaps at the
commencement of it. These documents are written in a small folio volume, in
one uniform hand--a kind of law-gothic--from beginning to end. The volume
has the following title on the exterior; "_Dicta Testium magni consilij
Anno dni m^o. cccc^o. Tricesimo nono_. The paper is strong and thick, and
has a pair of scales for the water-mark. The younger Schweighaeuser thinks
my doubts about its age not well founded; conceiving it to be a coeval
document. But this does not affect its authenticity, as it may have been an
accurate and attested copy--of an original which has now perished.
Certainly the whole book has very much the air of a _Copy_: and besides,
would not the originals have been upon separate rolls of parchment?[218]

I now come to the PRINTED BOOKS: of which, according to the MS. catalogue
by Oberlin, (who was head librarian here) there are not fewer _than four
thousand three hundred, printed before the year 1520_:--and of these,
again, upwards of _eleven hundred without dates_. This, at first hearing,
sounds, what the curious would call, promising; but I must say, that of the
_dated_ and _dateless_ books, printed before the year 1500, which I took
down, and carefully opened--and this number could not be less than four or
five hundred--there was scarcely one in five which repaid the toil of
examination: and this too, with a thermometer frequently standing at
eighty-nine and ninety, in the shade in the open air! Fortunately for my
health, and for the exertion of physical strength, the public library
happened to be very cool--while all the windows were opened, and through
the openings was frequently heard the sound of young voices, practising the
famous _Martin Luther's Hymn_--as it is called. This latter was
particularly grateful to me. I heard the master first sing a stave, and he
was in general accurately followed by his pupils--who displayed the
well-known early tact of Germans in the science of music. But to revert to