a journeyman printer, he planned to have it done through a
Chinaman, a good Christian, who, seeing that the books of
P. Fr. Francisco were sure to be of great use, bestowed so
much care upon this undertaking that he finally succeeded,
aided by those who told him whatever they knew about it,
in learning everything necessary to do printing; and he
printed these books. . . . He [Blancas de San José] printed
a grammar to learn the Tagalog language, a memorial of the
Christian life, a book on the four last things, another on the
preparation for the communion, a confessionary, another on the
mysteries of the Rosary of Our Lady, and another to teach the
Tagalog Indians the Spanish language, and he left many very
pious and curious works in the language of these Indians." [20]


Blancas de San José, [21] as we have noted, came to the Philippines in
1595. He was at Abucay in Bataan from 1598 until 1602, and then spent
several years in and about Manila, preaching to the Indians and the
Chinese, whose language he also mastered. In 1614 he set out for Spain,
but died on the voyage before reaching Mexico. Of the books which he is
said to have had printed, only two are known to be extant, the _Arte
y Reglas de la Lengva Tagala_ [22] and the _Librong Pagaaralan nang
manga Tagalog nang uicang Castilla_ [23] (or _Libro en qve aprendan
los Tagalos, la lengua Castellana_), both printed at Bataan in 1610,
and until the discovery of the present Doctrina and the _Ordinationes_
of 1604 the earliest surviving Philippine imprints known.

We have not cited here in detail the account of Juan Lopez [24] in
the fifth part of his history of the Dominicans, because, although it
was printed nineteen years before the appearance of Aduarte's work,