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
writer's customary incisiveness; we learn that such an error arose
either as a mistake in machining or through faulty imposition.
Thus, the interruption in the text of the Morgan copy of the
Speculum Christiani was due to the pressman who either
perfected the sheet by "turning it the wrong way" or who had
incorrectly imposed the type-pages, so that the already printed
pages would inevitably be "backed up" but not "perfectly
perfected."
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.