In cutting and casting the first type a style of heavy-faced letter, much
like that written by the mediaeval monks--the so-called _Gothic_--was
used. Caxton, in England, used this at first, and the Germans have
continued its use up to the present time. The Italians, however, soon
devised a type with letters like those used by the old Romans--the so-
called Roman type, this type which was soon accepted in all non-German
European countries. The Italians also devised a compressed type--the
_Italic_--which enabled printers to get more words on a page.

Venice, almost from the first, became the center of the book trade, and
books literally poured from the presses there. By 1500 as many as five
thousand editions, often of as many as a thousand copies to an edition,
had been printed in Italy. [22] Of this number 2835 had been printed in
Venice, and most of them by the Aldine press of Aldus Manutius, and edited
by the _Academia_ (p. 250) connected therewith. [23] By 1500 many books
had also been printed in a number of northern cities, [24] and Lyons,
Paris, Basel, Nuremberg, Cologne, Leipzig, and London soon became centers
of the northern book trade. Caxton in England soon vied with Aldus in
Venice as a printer of beautiful books. When we remember that it required
fifty-three days (Sandys) to make by hand one copy of Quintilian's
_Institutes_, and forty-five copyists twenty-two months to reproduce two
hundred volumes for the Medicean Library at Florence (R. 130), the
enormous importance of an invention which would print rapidly a thousand
or more copies of a book, all exactly alike and free from copyist errors,
can be appreciated. It tremendously cheapened books, [25] made the
general use of the textbook method of teaching possible, and paved the way
for a great extension of schools and learning (R. 134). From now on the
press became a formidable rival to the pulpit and the sermon, and one of
the greatest of instruments for human progress and individual liberty.