subject of important knowledge other than geographical, which various
persons have supposed that Marco Polo must have introduced from Eastern
Asia to Europe.
Respecting the mariner’s compass and gunpowder I shall say nothing, as
no one now, I believe, imagines Marco to have had anything to do with
their introduction. But from a highly respectable source in recent
years we have seen the introduction of Block-printing into Europe
connected with the name of our Traveller. The circumstances are stated
as follows:[20]
“In the beginning of the 15th century a man named Pamphilo
Castaldi, of Feltre ... was employed by the Seignory or Government
of the Republic, to engross deeds and public edicts of various
kinds ... the initial letters at the commencement of the writing
being usually ornamented with red ink, or illuminated in gold and
colours.
“According to Sansovino, certain stamps or types had been invented
some time previously by Pietro di Natali, Bishop of Aquilœa.[21]
These were made at Murano of glass, and were used to stamp or print
the outline of the large initial letters of public documents, which
were afterwards filled up by hand.... Pamphilo Castaldi improved
on these glass types, by having others made of wood or metal,
and having seen several Chinese books which the famous traveller
Marco Polo had brought from China, and of which the entire text
was printed with wooden blocks, he caused moveable wooden types to
be made, each type containing a single letter; and with these he
printed several broadsides and single leaves, at Venice, in the
year 1426. Some of these single sheets are said to be preserved
among the archives at Feltre....
“The tradition continues that John Faust, of Mayence ... became
acquainted with Castaldi, and passed some time with him, at his
_Scriptorium_, ... at Feltre;”
and in short developed from the knowledge so acquired the great
invention of printing. Mr. Curzon goes on to say that Panfilo Castaldi
was born in 1398, and died in 1490, and that he gives the story as
he found it in an article written by Dr. Jacopo Facen, of Feltre,
in a (Venetian?) newspaper called _Il Gondoliere_, No. 103, of 27th
December, 1843.
In a later paper Mr. Curzon thus recurs to the subject:[22]
“Though none of the early block-books have dates affixed to them,
many of them are with reason supposed to be more ancient than any
books printed with moveable types. Their resemblance to Chinese
block-books is so exact, that they would almost seem to be copied
from the books commonly used in China. _The impressions are taken
off on one side of the paper only, and in binding, both the
Chinese, and ancient German, or Dutch block-books, the blank sides
of the pages are placed opposite each other_, and sometimes pasted
together.... The impressions are not taken off with printer’s ink,
but _with a brown paint or colour, of a much thinner description,
more in the nature of Indian ink, as we call it, which is used
in printing Chinese books_. Altogether the German and Oriental
block-books are so precisely alike, in almost every respect, that
... we must suppose that the process of printing then must have
been copied from ancient Chinese specimens, brought from that
country by some early travellers, whose names have not been handed
down to our times.”
The writer then refers to the tradition about _Guttemberg_ (so it is
stated on this occasion, not Faust) having learned Castaldi’s art,
etc., mentioning a circumstance which he supposes to indicate that
Guttemberg had relations with Venice; and appears to assent to the
probability of the story of the art having been founded on specimens
brought home by Marco Polo.
This story was in recent years diligently propagated in Northern Italy,
and resulted in the erection at Feltre of a public statue of Panfilo
Castaldi, bearing this inscription (besides others of like tenor):—
“_To Panfilo Castaldi the illustrious Inventor of Movable Printing
Types, Italy renders this Tribute of Honour, too long deferred._”
In the first edition of this book I devoted a special note to the
exposure of the worthlessness of the evidence for this story.[23] This
note was, with the present Essay, translated and published at Venice by
Comm. Berchet, but this challenge to the supporters of the patriotic
romance, so far as I have heard, brought none of them into the lists in
its defence.
But since Castaldi has got his statue from the printers of Lombardy,
would it not be mere equity that the mariners of Spain should set up
a statue at Huelva to the Pilot Alonzo Sanchez of that port, who,
according to Spanish historians, after discovering the New World, died
in the house of Columbus at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to
appropriate his journals, and rob him of his fame?
Seriously; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real reputation of
his native city, let him do his best to have that preposterous and
discreditable fiction removed from the base of the statue. If Castaldi
has deserved a statue on other and truer grounds let _him_ stand; if
not, let him be burnt into honest lime! I imagine that the original
story that attracted Mr. Curzon was more _jeu d’esprit_ than anything
else; but that the author, finding what a stone he had set rolling, did
not venture to retract.
[Sidenote: Frequent opportunities for such introduction in the age
following Polo’s.]