evidently intended to present the appearance of a manuscript; but it is
supposed, on good evidence, to have been printed between 1450 and 1455,
and it is not improbable the volumes were all that time, that is,
five years, and some say more, at press; for we know, by certain
technicalities, that every page was printed off singly.

These precious volumes, as splendid as they are wonderful, have excited
the admiration of all beholders. The sharpness and elegant uniformity of
the type, the lustre of the ink, and the purity of the paper leave that
first great monument of the typographic art unsurpassed by any subsequent
effort; nor could it be exceeded with all the appliances of the present
day.

"It is a striking circumstance," says Mr. Hallam, "that the high-minded
inventors of this great art tried, at the very outset, so bold a flight
as the printing of an entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing
success. It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength and
radiant armor, ready, at the moment of her nativity, to subdue and
destroy her enemies."

There is a curious story current about this Bible, which, as it is
connected with a popular fiction, I will venture to repeat. It is that
Faust went to Paris with some of his Bibles for sale, one of which,
printed on vellum and richly illuminated, he sold to the King for seven
hundred and fifty crowns, and another to the Archbishop of Paris for
three hundred crowns, and to the poorer clergy and the laity copies on
paper as low as fifty crowns, and even less. Faust does not appear to
have disclosed the secret of how they were produced, and probably let it
be supposed that they were manuscript; for the aim of the first printers
was to make their books equal in beauty to the finest manuscripts, and