luminations, and
inventions, the one of the other?"--Bacon, On the Proficience and
Advancement of Learning.

Steam has proved as useful and potent in the printing of books as in
the printing of newspapers. Down to the end of last century, "the
divine art," as printing was called, had made comparatively little
progress. That is to say, although books could be beautifully printed
by hand labour, they could not be turned out in any large numbers.

The early printing press was rude. It consisted of a table, along
which the forme of type, furnished with a tympan and frisket, was
pushed by hand. The platen worked vertically between standards, and
was brought down for the impression, and raised after it, by a common
screw, worked by a bar handle. The inking was performed by balls
covered with skin pelts; they were blacked with ink, and beaten down on
the type by the pressman. The inking was consequently irregular.

In 1798, Earl Stanhope perfected the press that bears his name. He did
not patent it, but made his invention over to the public. In 1818, Mr.
Cowper greatly improved the inking of formes used in the Stanhope and
other presses, by the use of a hand roller covered with a composition
of glue and treacle, in combination with a distributing table. The ink
was thus applied in a more even manner, and with a considerable
decrease of labour. With the Stanhope Press, printing was as far
advanced as it could possibly be by means of hand labour. About 250
impressions could be taken off, on one side, in an hour.

But this, after all, was a very small result. When books could be
produced so slowly, there could be no popular literature. Books were
still articles for the few, instead of for the many. Steam power,
however, completely altered the state of affairs. When Koenig invented
his steam press, he showed by the printing of Clarkson's 'Life of
Penn'--the first sheets ever printed with a cylindrical press--that
books might be printed neatly, as well as cheaply, by the new machine.
Mr. Bensley continued the process, after Koenig left England; and in
1824, according to Johnson in his 'Typographia,' his son was "driving
an extensive business."

In the following year, 1825, Archibald Constable, of Edinburgh,
propounded his plan for revolutionising the art of bookselling. Instead
of books being articles of luxury, he proposed to bring them into
general consumption. He would sell them, not by thousands, but by
hundreds