1830.
Movable Metallic Types in Chinese.
249
page; the types are not justified, or spaced out in each column to the same length, the page being sufficiently tightened at the sides to pre- vent the types rising when inked. When the page is proved and corrected, it is printed in the ordinary Chinese way with a brusli.
The number of types which have been cast for these two fonts ex- ceeds 150,000, but what variety of characters is included in them we do not know. The principal motive Mr. Tang assigns for embarking in the enterprise was to print two sorts of lottery tickets with which his townspeople gamble very much; one of them, made from the Hun- dred Family Names, called Wei Sing Pú; and the other from the Tsien-tsz' Wan, or Millenary Classic. He uses them also for what- ever jobs may be required, but has never ventured the publication of a newspaper-or more likely has never thought of employing them for such a purpose.
In order to exhibit what is known respecting printing with movable types by the Chinese in former days, we here introduce a well digested paper by Stanislas Julien, translated for the China Mail; whether Mr. Tang has really read any of these notices we can not say, but he maintains the originality of his own invention, and we hope will not ultimately find it a losing undertaking.
Stereotype Plates in Wood.
According to Klaproth (Memoir upon the Mariner's Compass, p. 129), the earliest use of stereotype plates in wood goes back to the middle of the 10th century of our era:-
“Under the reign of Ming-taung, of the After Tång dynasty, in the 6th year of Chang-hing {A. D. $32). the ministers Faug Tău and Li Yu proposed to the Academy Kwoh-tez' kieu to revise the Dine Canonical Books, and to engrave them on plates of wood for the purpose of printing them for sale. The emperor adopted this advice, but it was only in the 2d year of the emperor Taitau of the After Chau dyuasty (A D 992), that the engraving of the plates of the Canonical Books was completed. They were then distributed and circulated over all the provisoss of the empire.”
M. Klaproth made the observation that printing invented in China, might have been known in Europe about 150 years before it was actually discovered there, if Europeans had been able to read and study the Persian historians: for the method of printing employed by the Chinese is found to be explained with sufficient distinctness in the Djemma'a et-tewarikh of Rachid-Eddin, who completed this immense work about the year A.D. 1310.
We would add that Europe might have known the art of printing more than 600 years before it was discovered there, if Europeans had been in relation with China a few years before the commencement of the 6th century. Thanks to this process, imperfect though it was in its original form, it might have been possible to reproduce from a few germs an immense number of the chef's d'œuvres of antiquity, both Greek and Roman, and to have preserved the greater number from a loss at this day irreparable.
The employment of engraving on wood for the purpose of reproducing texts and designs, is much more ancient in China than any one has hither- to believed. We read, in fact, the following in the Chinese encyclopædia
格致鏡原
Keh-chi King-yuen, vol. 39, page 2:—
"On the 8th day of the 19th moath of the 4th year of the reign of Káutaú, founder of the Sui dynasty (AD 583 ) it was commanded by a deoree to collect all the worn out designs, and unedit- ed texts and to engrave them on wool for publication. Thus occurred (adds the work we quote) the commencement of printing on plates of wood."
VOL. XIX. NO. V.
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