rs, and
all other printing materials; which Baillet assures us amounted to
immense sums.[36]

In Italy, the three Manutii were more solicitous of correctness and
illustrations than of the beauty of their printing. They were ambitious
of the character of the scholar, not of the printer.

It is much to be regretted that our publishers are not literary men,
able to form their own critical decisions. Among the learned printers
formerly, a book was valued because it came from the presses of an Aldus
or a Stephens; and even in our own time the names of Bowyer and Dodsley
sanctioned a work. Pelisson, in his history of the French Academy,
mentions that Camusat was selected as their bookseller, from his
reputation for publishing only valuable works. "He was a man of some
literature and good sense, and rarely printed an indifferent work; and
when we were young I recollect that we always made it a rule to purchase
his publications. His name was a test of the goodness of the work." A
publisher of this character would be of the greatest utility to the
literary world: at home he would induce a number of ingenious men to
become authors, for it would be honourable to be inscribed in his
catalogue; and it would be a direction for the continental reader.

So valuable a union of learning and printing did not, unfortunately,
last. The printers of the seventeenth century became less charmed with
glory than with gain. Their correctors and their letters evinced as
little delicacy of choice.

The invention of what is now called the _Italic_ letter in printing was
made by Aldus Manutius, to whom learning owes much. He observed the
many inconveniences resulting from the vast number of _abbreviations_,
which were then so frequent among the printers, that a book was
difficult to understand; a treatise was actually written on the art of
reading a printed book, and this addressed to the learned! He contrived
an expedient, by which these abbreviations might be entirely got rid of,
and yet books suffer little increase in bulk. This he effected by
introducing what is now called the _Italic_ letter, though it formerly
was distinguished by the name of the inventor, and called the _Aldine_.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: China is the stronghold where antiquarian controversy
rests. Beaten in affixing the origin of any art elsewhere, the
controversialist enshrines himself within the Great Wall, and is allowed
to repose in peace. Opponents, like Arabs,