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The Morgan Copy of Machlinia's
Speculum
Christiani
Curt F. Bühler
As the result of a slight mishap in the printing house of William de Machlinia in London, the copy of the Speculum Christiani [c. 1486; Duff 415, STC 26012] in the Pierpont Morgan Library differs from the dozen other copies with whose readings I am acquainted either by personal inspection or through correspondence. These examples are the following: Cambridge, University Library and Trinity College; Chatsworth, Duke of Devonshire; London, British Museum (two copies) and Lambeth Palace; Manchester, John Rylands; New York, Public Library and Mr. Carl H. Pforzheimer; Oxford, Bodleian; San Marino, Henry E. Huntington; and Washington, Folger. The Morgan example is distinguished from its fellows by an interruption in the text which no method of folding can obviate. In short, on the verso of the third folio of this copy is found the text which should appear on folio 5 verso and on the fourth folio that which belongs to the sixth leaf; conversely, the verso of folio 5 has the text properly found on the verso of the third leaf, while on the sixth that portion occurs which is appropriate to leaf 4. This error in the printing, the incorrect "perfection" of a sheet (if so contradictory a term be allowed), is reasonably familiar to students of early printing; its most conspicuous example among the earliest English books is that found in the Devonshire-Huntington copy of the first printed book in English, The Recuyell of the Hystoryes of Troye by Raoul Le Fevre [Bruges: Caxton, c. 1475; Blades, Life and Typography of William Caxton, II, 6].
The Speculum Christiani was printed as a quarto with the first (unsigned) quire consisting of eight leaves; it follows from this that the opening quire consisted of two sheets of paper either folded together or folded separately, with the folded second sheet laid into the folded first. If the first procedure had been followed, the "affected" pages of the Morgan copy would be spread over two different formes, with [1]3 v and [1]6 being found in the outer forme of the second sheet, and [1]4 and [1]5 v in the inner forme of the first. However, in the second method of folding all four pages would have been found in the same forme (inner of the second sheet) and this is doubtless the method of printing employed by Machlinia.
In that invaluable Vade mecum which the editor of Studies in Bibliography has thoughtfully provided for his grateful fellow-bibliographers (Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description, pp. 73-74), one finds this problem discussed with the
Quite recently Mr. Paul S. Dunkin (BSA XLV, 246-50) has reviewed this problem and has concluded that it was "unlikely that a turned sheet or heap often, if indeed ever, caused wrong perfecting in books printed on hand presses." His belief is founded on the use made of the "points" or pins attached to the tympan, whose function it was to achieve correct "register." For a short explanation of this process, the reader is referred to Mr. Dunkin's account.
Now it is obviously not impossible that the alternative explanation for such misprinting, suggested by McKerrow and quoted by Mr. Dunkin ("the second forme printed having been placed the wrong way round on the bed of the press"), may well have prevailed in the case of the Morgan sheet. Nevertheless, the fact that but a single copy with this particular error has survived as against a dozen correctly printed examples weighs rather heavily against this theory, at least in the opinion of the present writer. If the printer discovered the faulty imposition early in the course of machining, he could obviously cancel or destroy all leaves already perfected and thus completely eliminate the error from the entire edition. If he did not observe the fault until a goodly number had been printed and he needed the leaves to complete his edition, one would expect to find a percentage of copies with this misprint certainly far greater than the one in thirteen which is our highest possible estimate.
Though my knowledge of the eighteenth-century printing techniques is not such as to permit me to disagree with Mr. Dunkin's conclusion so far as it affects that period, I must nevertheless affirm that the recommendations set forth in Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (1683) were apparently not at all familiar to the earlier printers. According to one authority (BMC I:xiv), as many as ten pinholes to each leaf have been found in the 42-line (Gutenberg) Bible; again, Konrad Haebler (Handbuch der Inkunabelkunde, p. 67) records the occurrence of from six to eight such marks per sheet. At a very early date, the fifteenth-century printers reduced this number to four, and not much later to two, pinpoints. When four pinholes are present, these are normally not found in the middle fold of the early folios but in the four corners of the sheet, equidistant from the first (and the last) character of the first and last lines. In Ulrich Zell's early quartos, the pinholes are often found at the upper edge of the leaves, exactly parallel to the indentation of the text-page from the outer edge of the paper. In such positions, the points would not prevent the printer from turning the sheet the wrong way and still getting perfect register. This is certainly what might have happened in the present instance, assuming that the points were in such a position as not to prevent correct register when the sheet was turned the wrong way round. Just such cases as this doubtless brought about the practice recommended by Joseph Moxon, which would effectively eliminate misprintings of this sort, or at least have caused such misprinting that the sheet would have been quite useless for insertion in the book. If this be the true answer (as I believe it to be) for the origin of the faulty printing in the single case of the Morgan Speculum Christiani, I would further agree with Professor Bowers that this condition represents a variant copy, not a variant state, since it may well never have existed in more than this one example.
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