on, until it was perfected by founding metal types in a
matrix or mould, the essential characteristic of printing, as
distinguished from other arts that bear some analogy to it.

The first book that issued from the presses of Fust and his associates
at Mentz was an edition of the Vulgate, commonly called the Mazarine
Bible, a copy having been discovered in the library that owes its name
to Cardinal Mazarin at Paris. This is supposed to have been printed
between the years 1450 and 1455.[930] In 1457 an edition of the Psalter
appeared, and in this the invention was announced to the world in a
boasting colophon, though certainly not unreasonably bold.[931] Another
edition of the Psalter, one of an ecclesiastical book, Durand's account
of liturgical offices, one of the Constitutions of Pope Clement V., and
one of a popular treatise on general science, called the Catholicon,
filled up the interval till 1462, when the second Mentz Bible proceeded
from the same printers.[932] This, in the opinion of some, is the
earliest book in which cast types were employed--those of the Mazarine
Bible having been cut with the hand. But this is a controverted point.
In 1465 Fust and Schoeffer published an edition of Cicero's Offices,
the first tribute of the new art to polite literature. Two pupils of
their school, Sweynheim and Pannartz, migrated the same year into Italy,
and printed Donatus's grammar and the works of Lactantius at the
monastery of Subiaco, in the neighbourhood of Rome.[933] Venice had the
honour of extending her patronage to John of Spira, the first who
applied the art on an extensive scale to the publication of classical
writers.[934] Several Latin authors came forth from his press in 1470;
and during the next ten years a multitude of editions were published in
various parts of Italy. Though, as we may judge from their present
scarcity, these editions were by no means numerous in respect of
impressions, yet, contrasted with the dilatory process of copying
manuscripts, they were like a new mechanical power in machinery, and
gave a wonderfully accelerated impulse to the intellectual cultivation
of mankind. From the era of these first editions proceeding from the
Spiras, Zarot, Janson, or Sweynheim and Pannartz, literature must be
deemed to have altogether revived in Italy. The sun was now fully above
the horizon, though countries less fortunately circumstanced did not
immediately catch his beams; and the restoration of ancie