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Movable Metallic Types in Chinese.
MAY,
We see that it far preceded the era of Fung Ying-wáng or Fung-táu, to whom they attribute this invention about the year A.D. 932.
This quotation is found to be repeated in another Chinese encyclopædia, intituled Pu-t'ong-pien-lan, vol. 21, p. 10. According to another work of a similar kind, intituled P¤ Tsang, printing on wood was invented about the commencement of the house of Sui, (A.D. 581); it expanded sensibly under the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618 to 904); increased very much under the five small dynasties (A.D. 907 to 960); and at last arrived at its perfection and greatest development under the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960 to 1278).
With respect to movable types, a learned Chinese of the middle of the 11th century, whom I have constantly had occasion to quote, though he certainly does not mention the precise date of their invention, yet positively makes it reach back to more than 300 years before Fung Yingwing, to whom many Chinese writers (and after them many European savans) have given the honor of this discovery. One may also be allowed to suppose that this invention was already known and in use before A.D. 593, since they say that the Emperor commanded at that very time [alors] to print with plates of wood. If this had been an art altogether new, they would not have omitted to make known its origin and its author.
Impressions from Engraved Plates of Stone [en creux].
The discovery of this process, which had its origin intermediately between the invention of stereotype plates of wood, and that of movable types of baked earthenware, has not been known, so far as I can learn, by the French mission- aries, nor by any of the learned in Europe.
About the middle of the second century of onr era, they first began to engravo the ancient texts upon stone, in order to preserve their accuracy (which might be altered every day by the ignorance or negligence of copyists); but it does not appear that at this remote period they had any idea of making these engraved plates serve the purpose of reproducing and multiplying the principal monu- ments of Chinese literature :—
“In the annals of the Eastern Han dynasty we read in the biography of Tsú-yung : In the fourth year of the period Hi-p'ng [A. D. 175], Tani-yung presented to the Emperor a memoir in which he begged him to revise, correct, and accurately determine, the true text of the six Canonical Booka. He wrote them himself is red, apou tables of stone, and commissioned the most skilitul artists to engrave them. They placed these tables on the outside of the gates of the Great College, and the literati of every age came daily to consult them for the purpose of correcting their sample manuscripts of the siz Čanonical Booka"
The characters of these engraved texts were not reversed (when written), and consequently could not serve for multiplying copies of them, since, after the impression, such characters would come to be reversed. The sole use of these plates was, as we see, to answer the purpose of preserving the accuracy of the texts. Under several of the following dynasties these same plates were successively reproduced and copied, sometimes only in one form of writing, but occasionally in three different styles of character. Historians tell us that students were allowed one year for studying the six books in each form of writing, and that at the end of three years they ought to be in a condition to read them fluently in all the three forms. It was only towards the end of the Táng dynasty that they commenced engraving the texts upon stone in reverse, in order to print white characters on a black ground. Yn Yang-siunthus ex- presses himself in his Archæological Miscellany, entitled Tsikan-lo:-
“During the troubles which arose at the cloce of the Táng dynasty, Wan-iáll opened the im- perial tombs, and seized upon the books and pictures which had been shot up there. He took the gold and precious stones which ornamented their bandages and coverings, learing the latter however on the spot. Thus it was that the autograph manuscripts of the most celebrated men of the dyunsties Wei ard Tsin (and which the Emperors most sacredly preserved) came to be scat- tered about, and to fall into unworthy handa. In the 11th month of the 3d year of the period Yunghi (A ́D. 993], the Emperor Tai-tsung commanded by a decres, to engrave upon stone, and thus to reproduce by means of pressure, all the manuscripts of the kind which he had been able to buy and collect. They were printed by the hand, to avoid their being soiled by the ink.”
*The author wished to say, that after having inked the stone and extended the paper upon it, they passed the band over the hack of the paper, by which means it received a ttuiform imprez- sion. "At this day the Chinese make use of a soft brush, and thus obtain a more regular priat