Frivolous Trifles and Weighty Tomes:
Early Proof-Reading at London, Oxford, and
Cambridge
by
James P.
Hammersmith
The procedures for proof-correcting English books of the sixteenth
and
seventeenth centuries are still imperfectly understood, partly because we
seem to have developed the vexatious habit of occasionally taking partial
knowledge for whole truths. Variables such as the subject matter of the
book
under investigation, the kind of press at which it was printed, the author's
attitude toward the book, the printer's ability and willingness to pay for
professional correction, and so on, often prevent useful and accurate
generalizations about the topic. Although most scholars of the period are
aware that a six-penny play printed at a London commercial house would
ordinarily be far less attentively corrected than a Latin treatise on the perils
of Papism printed at the Oxford University Press, the point seems to have
fallen more into the realm of faith than of demonstrated fact. It is the
purpose here to sort out the variables and to clear the air of some of the
misconceptions which have
arisen from the application of principles belonging to some classes of books
to all classes of books.
In 1935 Percy Simpson declared that one of the most "mischievous"
errors in modern thinking about the production of early books was "the
assumption that authors did not read proofs."[1] The first chapter of his book
contains an
impressive array of authors' apologies for failing to attend the press to read
proof, failures which resulted in more than the usual number of errors
having
crept into the text. Simpson drew the natural conclusion that these
disclaimers amount to testimony that authors did commonly read proof, or
at
least that they were expected to do so. He allowed, however, that in some
cases "the main motive which prompted this scrupulous proof-reading was
the theological purpose of the book" (p. 3). It is this qualifying factor which
has not received enough attention in recent years and the neglect of which
has led to fairly widespread acceptance of Simpson's general conclusion that
"ample evidence has now been accumulated to show that
proof-reading by authors was a common practice in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries; that it was, as common sense would suggest, a
business precaution which safe-guarded the interests of both author and
publisher" (p. 49). The limited truth in this conclusion is that authorial
proof-reading was common practice in those cases in which the author and
the publisher had, in fact, interests to
safe-guard, in cases, that is, of such things as legal books or theological
works, in which significant errors could bring the authors and publishers
afoul of the law. In the proof-reading of trade books of much less
consequence, such as pamphlets, almanacs, ballads, plays, and the like
(what
we might call popular literature), economic concerns or matters of pure
expediency often displaced the common-sense desire for an accurate text
which might otherwise have led authors and publishers and even printers to
desire authorial correction.
Fredson Bowers, certainly a man familiar with a great many dramatic
quartos, has remarked that "the keen concern for meaning manifested by the
proof-reader of an early dramatic text is usually a figment of the critic's
imagination."[2] And even more than
this,
"the automatic assumption is surely wrong that every forme of cheap
commercial printing was necessarily proofread. Any editor of Elizabethan
play quartos is familiar with some formes in which the typographical errors
are so gross as to make it seem impossible to suppose that these formes had
been read" (p. 136, n.1). Obviously, Bowers' findings do not square at all
with Simpson's contention that authors commonly read proof.[3] The discrepancy, however, does
not justify the
generalization opposite to Simpson's that "proofreading by authors was not
usual before the eighteenth century; indeed, early proofreading normally
consisted of a reading (by the master printer
or his assistant) of one of the first sheets printed off, without recourse to
the
copy, and marking any apparent errors for correction."[4] This, like Simpson's, is a partial
truth.
Simpson's data shows us beyond a doubt that proof-reading by authors was
indeed quite usual prior to the eighteenth century, but only for certain kinds
of books printed under certain conditions. What these conditions were may
be seen by examining the reasons behind the emergence of the Learned
Presses at Oxford and at Cambridge and by looking in a systematic way at
the proof-correction of several different classes of sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century books to clarify the distinctions between them and to
show how and why the procedures of proof-reading differed so widely
between each class.
The nature and purpose of the printing-house had a decided influence
upon the attitude toward the degree of accuracy the book should attain. The
Press at Oxford University did not become an official arm of the University
itself until late in the seventeenth century, but steps toward making it so had
begun at least a century earlier. The impulse behind the movement was the
desire to create a Learned Press, one that would provide a corrective to the
sorry, mercenary houses in London. Several of the documents relating to
the
history of the development of the Press at Oxford betray an undisguised
disdain for the quality of work going forward in London; indeed, the
slightness
of the books being printed there formed the basis of the argument for
establishing a Learned Press in the first place. Of course, not all books
printed in London during the period were ephemera; on the contrary, a vast
amount of learned printing, in Latin and in English, went forward in the
city.
In 1595, Andrew Maunsell, a London bookseller, assembled lists of the
important books printed in the vernacular. In
The First Part of the
Catalogue of English printed Bookes: Which concerneth such matters of
Diuinitie, as haue bin either written in our owne Tongue, or translated out
of
anie other language: And haue bin published, to the glory of God, and
edification of the Church of Christ in England (London: John
Windet,
1595), Maunsell compiled hundreds of titles of books, most printed in
London, which he grouped under the headings of "Diuinitie," "Bible,"
"Catechismes," "Prayers," and "Sermons"; in
The Seconde parte of
the
Catalogue . . . which concerneth the Sciences
Mathematicall,
as Arithmetick, Geometrie, Astronomie,
Astrologie,
Musick,
the Arte of Warre
and Nauigation . .
. (London:
James Roberts, 1595), he enumerated titles dealing with the secular
sciences.
(The two Parts are available in facsimile, ed. D. F. Foxon, Gregg Press,
1965.) In two essays treating information garnered from Latin books printed
in England (about which more will be said later), James Binns examined a
total of 75 volumes, 62 of which were printed at London, seven at Oxford,
and six at Cambridge. Hence, it would be a mistake to draw a simplistic,
radical distinction between mere trivia printed in London and serious works
printed at the University Presses. Nevertheless, as a casual glance at any
random pages of
The Short-Title Catalogue reveals, thousands
of
"trifles" of the popular sort mentioned earlier poured off the presses at
London, and, in their zeal to establish Learned Presses, the champions of
scholarly printing naturally
focused their attacks chiefly upon the ephemera, though shoddy
performance
in the printing of learned works in London did not entirely escape their
condemnation. The bias is evident in an anonymous, sixteenth-century
"brief
for the University's Chancellor, Robert Dudley, first Earl of Leicester, to
plead with the Queen for her leave to print at Oxford," a document which
puts the matter succinctly: "Finally, whereas nearly the whole of the
kingdom
abounds in frivolous trifles written in English, tending rather to corrupt
morality than to any sound and serious education, the young might by these
means be attracted to something healthier and more advanced."
[5] As trivial, licentious stuff in the
vernacular
poured off the presses in London, the more "important" manuscripts, those
treating the classics, law, religion, and philosophy, were in danger of
extinction for want of publishers and printers willing to preserve them.
Furthermore, as the
dissemination of such works declined, the quality of learning and skill in
the
Latin language likewise began to decline, in the view of the scholars, to
abysmally low levels. One prime reason, therefore, for establishing a
Learned
Press at Oxford was "the desire for the destruction of barbarism," which
amounted to the desire to forestall the decline of proper
Latin and to stem the rising tide of frivolous trifles in the vernacular
(Carter,
pp. 9-10).
The major obstacle to Learned printing was expense; it was a
financially
disastrous undertaking. The London presses indulged in the production of
trivialities in the mother tongue because such items appealed to a large
market and because the presses were in business to make money. They
were
self-supporting commercial houses, as, indeed, was the Oxford Press itself
before its attachment to the University was made official. The problem for
the Learned Press, of course, was that the market for learned books in
foreign languages was much more limited, and therefore less profitable,
than
that for broadside ballads, pamphlets, and plays in English. That profit
should be necessary to survival nevertheless infuriated Archbishop Laud,
who undertook the establishment of the Learned Press at Oxford in the first
half of the seventeenth century. The terms in which he couched his statute
providing for an overseer of the Press indicate an impatient contempt for
the
goings on in London:
Since the experience of the trade shows that these mechanic craftsmen
for the most part look for profit and saving of labour, caring not at all for
beauty of letters or good and seemly workmanship, and bundle out any kind
of rough and incorrect productions to the light of day, be it provided by this
statute that an Architypographus shall preside over the University's public
printing office, which is to be established in a building specially devoted to
this purpose (Carter, p. 31).
Of the character and accomplishments of this Architypographus more shall
be said later, but for the present it is sufficient to say that the tone of the
statute is remarkable for its hostility toward all things which smacked of
profit, particularly as the profit was made at the expense of learning and
accuracy. For Laud it was the profit motive which produced the deformed
work, the "rough and incorrect productions," in the London
printing-houses,
an implication which will be of great consequence in understanding the
procedures of proof-correction in the commercial establishments.
The Oxford project went on feet, not on wheels. When Fell took over
Laud's position as champion of the Learned Press later in the century, the
case had altered not one whit. In 1670/1 he wrote to Issac Vossius in
Holland: "We have it in mind, provided the Vice-Chancellor agrees, and
all
goes well, to set up in this place a press freed from mercenary artifices,
which will serve not so much to make profits for the booksellers as to
further
the interests and convenience of scholars" (Carter, p. 61). All did not go
well, either for Laud or for Fell, for although the Press devoted itself to
printing not only Bibles but works in Latin, Greek, and Oriental languages,
it
fell afoul of the inevitable financial troubles that such a project could be
expected to encounter. Consequently, the Press was forced to print some
items of more popular appeal, such as almanacs, to keep itself solvent. The
Stationers Company of London, however, viewed such efforts as a threat
to
their monopoly on
printing in the city; as a result, some very complicated arrangements were
made whereby the University Press received "forbearance" payments,
money
paid it by the Stationers in exchange for an agreement not to
print
such books as
would compete with those in the London market. Still, it was not enough;
the Press at times resorted to printing works not covered by the
forbearances
simply to produce enough revenue to keep the Press operating. Irked by the
apparent breach of faith, the Stationers repeatedly attempted, often
successfully, to legislate greater and greater restrictions upon the Press until
by 1692 at the latest, "it was the view of the Stationers that the two
Universities should confine their publishing to learned books" (Carter, p.
158).
Much the same situation obtained at the Cambridge University Press,
which, though it did not receive official sanction from the University until
very late in the seventeenth century, had nevertheless occupied itself with
the
printing of learned books since its inception. Not surprisingly, the
Cambridge
Press encountered the same kinds of difficulties that vexed the Press at
Oxford. D. F. McKenzie has pointed out that "in the very nature of things
learned works of this kind were produced by and for a small minority
group;
compared with the staple wares of the book trade, they were never very
numerous; they took a long time to prepare; requiring careful correction,
they passed through the Press more slowly than cheap popular works; they
were too costly to produce for their undertakers to make much of a profit;
and, in any case, being slow sellers, they lacked ready backers."[6] From the business perspective, the
Cambridge
Press does not appear to have
been any more successful a venture than its counterpart at Oxford, and,
indeed, Cambridge was also obliged to make arrangements with the
Stationers in order to remain afloat.
Despite the risks and the bleak prospects of financial success, the
Cambridge Press too persisted in its efforts to preserve high quality in
scholarly printing, partly from the same motives which impelled the Oxford
Press. As an anonymous writer in 1662 put the case,
The University'es priviledge is looked upon as a trust for the publick
good, & theire printing of these bookes will force the Londoners to
printe
something tolerably true (else they shall not be able to sell while better may
be had from Camb) who otherwise looking meerly at gaine will not care
how
Corruptly they print, witnes the 200 blasphemy's wch Mr B[uck] found in
their bibles; & the millions of faults in theire school bookes, increasing
in
every edition. . . . (McKenzie, I, 5)
The writer's confidence in the power of high-quality printing at Cambridge
to
inspire improvements in London was obviously misplaced, but once again
the idea of a Learned Press was based upon the conviction that the London
printers were careless, mercenary creatures incapable and unwilling to
bestow upon their works the attention necessary to produce accurate,
reliable texts even of important books. There needed to be a new conceptual
as well as financial approach to printing if scholarship and the learned
works
were to survive.
The whole body of evidence from the records of the University
Presses
indicates that they both regarded themselves as exceptional printing-houses.
They undertook a serious charge in the name of scholarship and the
preservation of cultural heritage, and in consequence they exhibited an
attitude toward profit which differed radically from that of their London
cousins. The wealth was in the learned works, the profit in the
dissemination
of knowledge. And not only were they dedicated to the preservation and
advancement of learning, but they were bent upon producing books of
higher
quality and accuracy than those turned out by the Londoners, even by those
who were engaged in printing learned works. In his introduction (I, xiii),
McKenzie declares that "the University Press, it is shown, was in some
respects untypical, but it would be misreading the evidence so to regard the
whole undertaking and therefore the invaluable witness it bears to the
organization and methods of hand printing. The people who ran it were
professionals and, as judged by their works, competent." The statement is
somewhat misleading because it tends too far
to level the distinctions which
did obtain between the Learned
Presses and the London houses; it is important to distinguish those
"respects" in which the University Press was "untypical" because those are
the features which will help to explain the differences in practical printing
procedures employed at each kind of press. That the people who ran the
University Press were "professionals" is one of those features, because the
most damning charge levelled repeatedly at the workers in the London
houses is that they were
not professionals; rather, they were
craftsmen, as Laud called them, tradesmen engaged in a business for the
purpose of earning a living. Their entire perspective on the office of
printing
was therefore governed by a different attitude toward means and ends. The
end of printing for the Learned Presses was the book itself; for the London
presses, the book was a means to the end of turning a profit. The difference
between a profession and a trade is
precisely the difference between a Learned Press and a Commercial
press.
One of the practical consequences of the differing perspectives on the
aims of printing is that the scholarly attainments of the men setting up and
correcting type for works in Latin, Greek, and Oriental languages would
naturally have to be considerably greater than those of men composing and
proofing works in the vernacular. The overseers of the Learned Presses
recognized the problem, of course, and they sought men capable of printing
the kinds of books they had in hand. It has long been recognized that the
quality of English printing, including type-founding, paper-making,
press-construction, and type-setting itself, lagged far behind the quality of
continental printing.[7] As a result,
many of
the material goods used in printing were imported from Holland, Germany,
and France. Sometimes the workmen themselves were brought from abroad
because, accustomed to working with better materials and to adhering to
higher standards, they were more
accomplished in all aspects of the trade. Printing having had a longer time
to
develop on the continent, the workers were better educated, more
responsible,
and more competent. It is not surprising, then, to find the Learned Presses
employing a higher proportion of foreign workmen than the London
Printers
did. In the mid-sixteenth-century records it is fairly easy to trace the influx
of
foreign workers because each one had to be admitted formally to the trade,
which meant that his name was entered in the Stationers' Register. By the
late seventeenth century the regulations concerning aliens, though not
relaxed, were more commonly ignored, making it more difficult "to assess
with any accuracy the true proportion" of workmen moving from the
continent to England (McKenzie, I, 61). The records of the Cambridge
Press
nevertheless indicate a preference for foreign employees:
With its Dutch overseer [Crownfield], however, and the favour of its
prime promoter [Bentley] well inclined towards continental achievement, the
Cambridge Press might well be expected to prove hospitable to journeymen
from abroad; and it is no surprise to find among its compositors the names
of
Willem de Groot, John Delie, Christian Michaelis, and Johannes Muckeus,
or
among its pressmen the name of Albert Coldenhoff. A Johannes Friedrich
Graevius also made a brief appearance at the Press in August 1701 when
he
laid two and prepared four pair of Greek cases (McKenzie, I, 61).
These men were French, Dutch, and German, and they represent all offices
in the craft or art of printing: compositors, pressmen, and the corrector,
Crownfield himself.
It is perhaps belaboring the obvious to point out that the workmen had
to be able to read and understand the language they were setting into type,
but it is a point necessary to help distinguish the nature of the corrector and
his duties as he performed them at Oxford or Cambridge from his character
and function as he performed them in London, depending, of course, upon
the nature of the book in question; although a London house could hire a
specialist proof-reader to attend to a particular scholarly book, it is unlikely
that each London printer retained a full-time learned corrector, since the
need of him would have been merely occasional. Rather, we are concerned
with the regular house corrector in London compared to the regular
proofreader at the Learned Presses. And as late as 1708 English printing
quality had not yet caught up to the continental standards, for Bentley was
complaining to Newton that "Our English compositors are ignorant &
print Latin books as they are used
to do English ones; if they are not set right by one used to observe the
beauties of ye best printing abroad" (McKenzie, I, 54). The English
workmen, those employed extensively in the commercial houses, did not
have the qualifications necessary to set and correct learned books. An
excellent early example of the disaster that could befall a book printed by
inadequately trained workmen is afforded by this apology which precedes
Florio's Firste Fruites (1578): "Gentle Reader, for such
faultes which
have escaped the Authors naughty pen, the Compositors wavering hande,
the Correctors dasling, and the Printers presse, we desire thee courteously
to
amend, for surely the Author writes scarce good English, and a ragged
hand
with all, and the Compositor understandes no Italian."[8]
In order to forestall such catastrophe in the more difficult task of
printing learned books, the promoters of both the Oxford and the
Cambridge
Presses made provision in their plans for what they called an
Architypographus. In Laud's statute, De typographis
Universitati
(1633-34), we find a sketch of the ideal character and duties of this officer
of
the Press:
He shall be a man thoroughly acquainted with Greek and Latin
literature
and deeply learned in philological studies. His functions shall be to
superintend the printing done in that place and to see that the material and
equipment, that is to say the paper, presses, type, and other implements of
this workshop shall be the best of their kind. In all work that comes from
the
University's public printing office he shall determine size of type, quality
of
paper, and width of margins, correct correctors' mistakes, and take
unremitting care of the good appearance and fine workmanship of the
product (Carter, p. 31).
This is no small charge; not only was the Architypographus to be
responsible
for checking and correcting the work of the regular correctors, but he was
also to see to it that the overall quality of the printing, in materials and
workmanship, compared favorably with the continental standard. Cambridge
too was careful to provide for its Press such a general supervisor: "The
Architypographus was a servant of the university, corrected, prescribed the
size of letter, etc., and had general oversight of the equipment" (McKenzie,
1, 97).
Despite these precautions, things were not all sweetness and light, at
least at Oxford. The ideal of the Architypographus was realized for only a
short time; "established as the supervisor of printing at Oxford, controlling
the academic printing-house, its equipment, staffing, and materials, a
corrector of copy and a superior proof-reader, he soon became little more
than a runner of errands between the Delegates and the printers and an
accountant before being suppressed in all but name" (Carter, p. 143).
Evidently what led to the demise of the office was a power struggle
between
the Delegates of the Press and the Architypographus, who, after all,
regarded it his duty to run the entire operation. It appears that the first
Architypographus at Oxford, Samuel Clarke, who took office in 1658, was
not only properly qualified in accordance with Laud's statute, but also took
the duties of his position as seriously as Laud would have expected. He was
"a student of Hebrew and Arabic who
had borne a share in the correction of the London Polyglot Bible and had
plans for more polyglot publishing. He was energetic and earned from
Anthony Wood the character of 'a most useful and necessary person' to the
University. He interested himself in the mechanics of printing, catalogued
the
Greek types brought to Oxford in Laud's time, and made inquiries in
Holland
for matrices and a letter-cutter" (Carter, p. 143). In short, he took control
of
the Press in all seriousness, a move which threatened the control which the
Delegates and the Vice-Chancellor felt more properly belonged to them.
That the Delegates grew weary of this Architypographus in short order is
evidenced by a note in the records a mere eleven years later when Thomas
Bennett succeeded Clarke as the corrector of the Press. Lest he "might try
to
be a sort of architypographus, the partners [i.e. Delegates] noted:
'Corrector not to intermeddle in any thing, but to mynde his businesse'"
(Carter, p. 145).
Though the Oxford Press kept Bennett tethered, they nevertheless did
retain this learned corrector. And all indications are that the Delegates were
satisfied with the quality of work turned out by their pressmen and
compositors, though Fell, when he took over the Press in the 1690s, soon
found himself nettled by the workmen's attitude toward the enterprise: "To
make them always attend their work, is I think beyond any Skill: Printers
having a peculiar obligation to be idle, as being paid for it: Holiday money
being a certain stile in their Bills" (Carter, p. 66). Despite their superior
skills
and talents, the men appear to have approached their tasks in the same spirit
as their fellow tradesmen in London approached theirs. Hence, as far as
attitudes, procedures, wages, and customs are concerned, Fell's remarks
about the Oxford employees lend support to McKenzie's claim that "the
workmen of the Cambridge University Press, notwithstanding their Dutch
master and their own mixed
nationalities and experience, were probably not unlike the journeymen and
apprentices who made up the staffs of most small, two-press printing-houses
of the seventeenth century. Their customs, as far as the evidence goes,
seem
to have been much the same as those Moxon mentions; and their rewards
in
years when production was reasonably well up were probably fairly similar
to those obtained in London" (I, 93). The real issue, though, is not one of
wages and customs but of the quality of the work they produced when they
did, in fact, work.
The judges we must rely upon to assess the quality of the
workmanship
are the authors of learned works themselves. The workers at the Learned
Presses certainly made errors, and authors apologized profusely for them,
but we do not find the kinds of vitriolic remarks directed at these men that
authors frequently aimed at their counterparts in London. Some of the
London houses were engaged in the printing of learned books, and, since
the
difficulties to be met and overcome would necessarily be the same no
matter
where the book was printed, the procedures for printing and correcting
ought to be equivalent. The quality of the results, however, would be
directly related to the abilities of the men printing the book. Bishop
Montagu, who had his Analecta ecclesiasticarum
exercitationem
printed in London in 1622, is one witness to the degree of success the city
printers attained. Montagu's work is especially significant because we
receive
from him the same complaints about
English workmen that generated the impulse toward establishing Learned
Presses in the first place; in his preface he writes, "On top of the six
hundred
difficulties with which we are afflicted we have unfortunately had to put up
with the stupidity and stinginess of the printers. For they are accustomed
to
work for profit, they only following a mercenary trade. And so they load
waggons and carts with two-penny ha'penny garbage. They have no taste
for
serious things. Latin writings are not read, and as for Greek, they exclaim
against them as if they were heretical."[9]
This
vituperous preface is a fair indication that conditions in the London
printing-houses were not those of the University Presses even when the
commercial houses were in fact printing learned works. In George
Blackwell's
Declaratio motuum ac turbationum, printed at
London in
1601 by Thomas Creede (probably), we find "another complaint that an
author had to use a printer who was not very good at Latin," and in John
Vicar's
Decapla in psalmos (London: Robert Young, 1639)
there
appears "a comment that errors have occurred in Syriac and Arabic words
because the printer is not accustomed to them."
[10] Montagu, Blackwell, and Vicars,
like Laud,
saw that the London workmen did not always possess the knowledge, skill,
and expertise to print books in foreign languages; worse, Montagu found
them altogether unconcerned about their failings because they did not take
important books seriously in all cases. And the culprit, as Montagu saw it,
is
again the
profit motive. The workmen at the Learned Presses were carefully selected
precisely to combat the "stupidity" and the "mercenary" considerations
which so plagued the production of books in the city. It is unlikely that the
printer of Montagu's book went to the expense of securing learned
compositors and correctors versed in the classical languages; if he hired
temporary help, his employees did not much care to exercise their
talents.
The best solution to the kinds of woes that beset Montagu, Blackwell,
and Vicars was, of course, for the author himself to attend the press to read
the proofs, and there is far more evidence that authors did so for scholarly
works, particularly those in foreign languages, than for any other kind of
book, whether printed commercially at London or at either University
Press.
From his first collection of prefaces detailing the trials and tribulations of
printing 47 Latin books ranging in date from 1543 to 1638, Binns
concludes:
Piecing together the evidence, we may surmise that a typical Latin
book
passed through the press in the following stages. A fair copy of the work
to
be printed was first made by a scribe in the employ of the printer. The
work
was then passed to the compositor or compositors, who might number as
many as four, who set the book up. The author was usually present during
the printing of the book, and proofs, both first and second, were read by
the
author and the press corrector. Errata which were
subsequently
discovered were then listed for the reader's attention, a distinction between
major and minor errors, or substantive and non-substantive variants, often
being drawn, the authors in particular displaying a precise awareness of the
difference that the omission, addition, or transposition of even a single
letter
or mark of punctuation can make to the meaning. The author and/or printer
then gave vent to some final comments on the quality of the printing and
the
difficulties
encountered, whilst, after the book was printed, any remaining errors in the
body of the text might be corrected in ink before the book was issued
(Binns, 32 [1977], 1-2).
One cannot help noticing the high proportion of responsibility for getting
things right that falls on the shoulders of the author. And indeed it is from
these books and books like them that we get most of our apologies for
authors' having failed to attend the press to read proofs, with the result, as
Bennett
remarks, "that Elizabethan books, whether first or later editions, often carry
a formidable errata list" (p. 286). Once the author was removed, by illness,
inconvenience, or business concerns, from the orderly process of the
printing, all kinds of havoc was likely to ensue, as the authors never tired
of
telling the Gentle Reader. At least this was so in the London printing-shops.
McKenzie (I, 152) suggests that it was not the case at Cambridge because
the learned correctors could fill in more successfully for the absent author
than the less well-educated correctors at London could do. It was even more
necessary to have capable correctors at Cambridge because the distance
from London meant an inconvenience to the authors, who were thus less
frequently able to proof-read their own works there than at London.
Furthermore, "the existence of the young band of scholars who acted as
correctors of the Press may have minimized . . . the primary need for an
author to see his proofs at all"
(McKenzie, I, 84), the primary need being the absence of an army of
scholar-correctors battling the monster Error in London. That the regularly
retained correctors in the city were less dependable is clear from what we
are
told happened to a book when the author was for some reason unable to
oversee the printing himself. Montagu was certainly unimpressed with the
diligence and care that the workmen accorded his
Analecta,
and
Scipione Gentili, whose
In xxv Davidis psalmos epicae
paraphrasis
was printed in London by John Wolfe in 1584, had some complaints about
the workmanship precede his errata list: "Through the great carelessness of
the man who set this book up by formes, it has come about that neither the
numbering of psalms, nor the page numbers, are correct. Although this
carelessness would indeed be intolerable in a major work, it ought to be
considered as a triviality in a work as slight as this, which can be read
almost
at a single glance, and it is not worth
reproach. But the errors of commission and omission made by the same
man
in the poems themselves ought to be corrected and restored thus" (Binns,
32
[1977], 11). Wolfe's compositor would no doubt have cast either Laud or
Fell into a catatonic stupor, but it is important to note that the errors in
pagination and numbering had nothing to do with the nature of the book
being printed; the compositor had simply gotten the imposition wrong. But
the same compositor also failed to set the text accurately, and this Gentili
is
not disposed to forgive; despite his disclaimer that his work is a "slight"
one,
not worth the intensive scrutiny of correction that a "major work" would
command, and despite his attempt to adopt a casual tone, his annoyance
over
the shoddy production is fairly evident. That Gentili prepared the errata list
from final printed sheets which seem to have shocked him indicates that he
could not have read proof himself. Whether the book was not proof-read at
all, which
seems likely considering the grossness of error, or whether it was read by
an
incompetent corrector, the results did not please the author; it was the
occurrence of just this kind of accident which induced Laud to plead for the
establishment of a Learned Press.
Binns's translations and interpretations of the Latin prefaces are
valuable
aids to a better understanding of printing in the period, but Binns, like
Simpson and Thorpe, generalizes just a little too far. Having pointed
out that the printers of Latin works printed English books as well, he avers
that "there is, however, no reason to doubt that the same processes applied
to the printing of books in English, to those works at any rate that were
seriously valued by their author or printer." That is as far as the conclusion
can legitimately go; Binns overstates the case slightly when he drops the
qualification regarding the "serious value" of the book in question to
conclude more generally, "The detailed record of [the Latin authors']
battles
with the press and their experiences with the proofs militates against any
notion that Elizabethan printing was a slap-dash affair, but accords well
enough with the suppositions of common sense and the assumptions about
Elizabethan printing arrived at by analogy with eighteenth-century practice"
(32 [1977], 24). That is but one more partial truth. Surely Laud, Fell, and
Bentley were not tilting at windmills. Just how slap-dash an affair
Elizabethan (and
seventeenth-century) printing could actually be is everywhere attested to by
editors (for whom Bowers, quoted earlier, shall for reasons of scope be
allowed to speak) of such works as were not seriously valued by their
authors or printers except insofar as they could be turned to commercial
advantage. And more importantly, as we shall shortly see, there is evidence
from the correctors themselves that some printers were loathe to hire
competent proof-readers and to compensate them commensurate with their
talents and efforts. The crux, again, was economic; popular books had to
be
produced cheaply and quickly if a reasonable profit was to be
realized.
The empirical data so far reviewed will help to put into perspective
the
earliest circumstantial account of the proof-reading procedures
recommended for use in English printing-houses, Joseph Moxon's
Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing (1683-84).[11] Moxon was himself periodically
a London
printer, though he was never made free of the Stationers' Company and
though he occupied himself with other trades as well, spending some of his
time on the continent, most frequently in Holland, whence his family had
emigrated to England.
In recent years there has been some controversy over the validity of
Moxon's discussion of proof-reading, particularly over the related questions
of whether Moxon accurately represents the practice of the trade in his own
time (especially of the London commercial houses in which nearly all plays
were printed), and if he does, whether his description holds true for the
earlier years of the seventeenth century. In short, we want to know, once
more, the extent to which a piece of evidence can safely be
generalized.[12]
Like the promoters of the University Presses, Moxon demanded that
the
corrector be a learned philologian. In fact, even by the standards of the
Learned Presses, the qualifications required by Moxon seem stringent: "A
Correcter should (besides the English Tongue)
be well skilled
in Languages,
especially in those that are used to be Printed with us,
viz. Latin,
Greek,
Hebrew, Syriack, Caldae, French, Spanish, Italian, High Dutch, Saxon,
Low
Dutch, Welch, &c. neither ought my innumerating only these
be a
stint to his skill in the number of them." He even suggests that the corrector
should know the language of the work in hand more thoroughly than the
author himself, who "has perhaps no more skill than the bare knowledge of
the Words and their Pronunciation, so that the Orthography (if the
Correcter have no knowledge of the Language) may not only
be false
to its Native Pronunciation, but the Words altered into other Words by a
little wrong Spelling," with the resultant distortion or destruction of the
sense. He must furthermore "be very knowing in Derivations and
Etymologies of Words" (to distinguish spelling variants from substantive
errors?) and be as well "skilful in the
Compositers whole
Task and
Obligation." Despite these apparently impossible
qualifications, Moxon seems to think that finding a man so blessed ought
to
be no great matter, for he casually refuses to discuss the matter further:
"But
I shall say no more of his Qualifications; but suppose him endowed with all
necessary accomplishments for that Office" (pp. 246-247). It is a
remarkable
supposition. One feels that either University Press would have been pleased
to have had such a corrector, and indeed Clarke seems to have filled the bill
nicely before being reduced to a supernumerary; even he, however, did not
come to the job with these kinds of qualifications.
For several reasons we cannot suppose each London printing-house
to
have retained a corrector of this calibre. Just on the face of it, it seems
impossible that many men of these achievements would have contented
themselves with unsteady, low-paying work in an unpredictable trade. There
is good evidence that expense was a major obstacle to printers' maintaining
full-time learned correctors. In 1578 Christopher Barker set forth to the
Queen the subscription terms for his Bible, and in them he explained the
price and his means of arriving at it:
Your said suppliant hauing bene at great charge aswell in preparing
furniture [i.e.,
type, &c.] as in retayning Journeymen
and three
learned men for a long time for the printing of the said
bibles, and
correcting such small faults as had escaped in the former prints thereof, so
as
if it were prised at xxx
s. it were scarce sufficient, (his
labour and cost
being well considered) yet he is content for present money by this meane
to
take for euery of the same
bibles bound
xxiiij.
s. and for euery of
the same vnbound xx.
s.
[13]
It is costly to retain three learned men to correct "small faults," and Barker
is
making it clear that he is not inflating the price of the books in order to
realize an unreasonable profit; no doubt the price is above cost, but the
explicit mention of the expense of correction indicates that it was no small
consideration in the printing of a book the accuracy of which was so
vital.
A few years later, when Barker reviewed the status of all current
printing
patents and grants, he raised the issue of correction again. In December
1582
he complained on behalf of the Stationers that the publishers and
booksellers
had all the best of the trade since they owned copies and patents but bore
no
expenses beyond the hiring of a printer. Increasing numbers of patents had
worsened conditions so far that "Booksellers being growen the greater and
wealthier nomber haue nowe many of the best Copies and keepe no printing
howse" and have not, therefore, the expenses attendant upon them. The
printers' costs continue to rise, "so that the artificer printer, growing every
Daye more and more vnable to provide letter and other furniture, requisite
for the execution of any good worke; or to gyve mayntenaunce to any suche
learned Correctours as are behouefull, will in tyme be an occasion of great
discredit to the proffesours of the arte, and in myne opinion preiudiciall to
the comon wealth" (Arber, I, 114-115). And the time when such discredit
would raise an outcry was not far in the future; the pleas for Learned
Presses
were prompted by just such a state of affairs as Barker describes, and
among
the contributing
factors is the expense of maintaining learned correctors. Given the
consequences Barker outlines, one must suppose that for many printers the
cost was prohibitively high.
The situation evidently had not improved by as late as 1634, for at
about
that time the four correctors of the King's Press petitioned Laud because the
salaries of correctors had been reduced, and the four sought to recover the
salary level of previous years; they explain that
your Peticioners haue bene for some yeares Correctours in the King's
Printhouse Conditioned with to haue the pay and priuiledges which formerly
the Correctours had; The ffarmers there haue abated almost
80li
per
annum of their paie, and abridged the number of Correctours
intending a
yet further Diminution: The worke notwithstanding is greater than euer and
they exact from your peticioners the [expense of] the reprinting of such
faults as escape (Arber, IV, 20).
One could understand reducing salaries or laying off workers if demand
were
down, but the petitioners claim that the demand is "greater than euer" for
their services. It appears, then, that throughout the period correctors
demanded pay commensurate with their abilities but that the profits of
printing were not sufficient to meet those demands. The printers therefore
hired less qualified men who were content with lower pay or they coped
with
correction matters as best they could on their own.
The best evidence we have on the subject details the problem from
the
corrector's point of view. The Dutchman Hornschuch, in a handbook
specifically addressed in 1608 to correctors of the press, describes the
attributes of a good corrector in order to stress the point that poorly printed
books are not always due to the failure of the proof-readers themselves but
to the failure of printers to hire qualified men for the job. At the time he
wrote his handbook Hornschuch was himself an unemployed skilled
corrector, and it is quite possible that his bitterness has taken the form of
hyperbolical complaint, but the substance of his argument fits squarely with
the other evidence concerning lack-lustre performance and the expenses to
the printer. The printers' failure to hire competent correctors he attributes
to
the avarice of those who refuse to pay men adequately, with the result that
"when they do the correctors' job themselves, they are unskilled, bungling,
and inadequate;
men educated in only the language that they were once taught by their
nurses." Unskilled men in such a delicate position are worse than useless,
"for since they understand nothing, so they care about nothing; rarely if
ever
do they check their work, or examine the care taken by the workmen, who
naturally become more lax when they know their task-masters are even
more
careless." Ultimately, such a casual attitude toward proof-reading renders
a
skilled corrector superfluous anyway, since "mistakes are often discovered
which the correctors may have made a note of, but the printers in their
carelessness have left alone."
[14] It
would
appear from Hornschuch's account that the employment of learned
correctors was by no means commonplace and that the men who filled their
places performed their duties in-differently. Moreover, we find here further
evidence that the profit motive prevented the London printers from
achieving the standards of correction sought by
the Learned Presses, since the printers themselves were acting as unskilled
correctors to save the expense of hiring skilled ones.
In assessing, therefore, the likely procedures of proof-reading any
given
book, we would do well to consider the kinds of books for which correctors
answering Laud's or Moxon's qualifications would be either necessary or
desirable. Obviously, for the "frivolous trifles written in English" of which
the Learned Presses complained, a full knowledge of the tongues,
derivations, and etymologies would be superfluous. A printer principally
engaged in the production of broadsides, pamphlets, and plays in the
vernacular would hardly concern himself with securing a corrector
knowledgeable in Hebrew or Syriac. Should a work requiring the services
of a
philologian come to his hands, the printer was presumably at liberty to hire
a
scholar temporarily to attend to the specific needs of the book or to insist
that the author himself oversee the printing and correction, but for the most
part a corrector well versed in his native tongue would suffice, if, indeed,
any were especially employed at all
for such work. And it does seem, despite Hornschuch's unhappiness over
the
state of affairs, to have been true that in the nature of the business retaining
a
full-time scholar-corrector was prohibitively expensive to the average
commercial printer. In order to turn a profit, the expenses of printing a
ha'penny ballad or a six-penny play must naturally have been held to a
minimum, especially since the Stationer's Company restricted the size of an
edition that could legally be printed from a single setting of type.
Hornschuch's unpleasant remarks about the avarice of printers must be kept
in perspective; if a printer hoped to earn a livelihood, he could not retain
an
expensive, learned Architypographus to correct the proofs of The
Blind
Beggar of Bednal Green, nor, quite plainly, would he have a need
to.
As Montagu's and Gentili's experiences testify, Hornschuch's account
of
the incompetence of untrained correctors probably does not distort the
picture at one end any more than Moxon's unrealistic decision to "suppose
him endowed with all necessary accomplishments for that Office" distorts
it
at the
other. But sweeping generalizations about proof-reading procedures in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will all be inaccurate to the degree that
they fail to take account of the nature of the book being printed and the
character of the printing-house printing it. The abilities of most correctors
in
the period no doubt lay somewhere between the extremes described by the
handbook authors, with the Learned Presses aiming more for Moxon's ideal
and the commercial houses tending by necessity toward a less exalted
standard. In the absence of external evidence, the internal evidence of each
book in question must be the witness to the likely proof-reading procedures
accorded it in view of the considerable leeway the printers allowed in
tolerable correction standards.
Notes