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There have been exceptions to certain parts of the previ-viously stated details, but they appear to have insufficientforce to supplant them, as satisfactorily established by Dr.Middleton, Mr. Dowyer, and other respectable authorities.
The University press being discovered to be too remotefrom the seat of government, and too great a distance fromthe sea, other presses were soon established at St. Alban’sand the Abbey of Westminster .
Among the contending factions with respect to dates,persons, ifcc. Mr. Bowyer thinks he can discover from apassage in the Second Part of Shakspeare’s Henry VI. thatprinting was introduced into this kingdom more early thanhas been generally believed. From, perhaps, as equallygood authority, that passage of Job might be here adduced,to prove it existed in the days of Moses , admitting thatlegislator to have been its author, for our common transla-tion expressly speaks of the art in ch. xix. v. 23; and, per-haps, the translators spoke of it for no better reason thandid Shakspeare,—became it existed in their day. Shaks-peare, with all his confessed merit, was frequently gnilty ofanachronisms, which, were this the place, could be easilypointed out in various instances.
In 14(57, printing was established at Tours; at Reuthlin-gen and Venice , in 1409; and it is likely in the same periodat Paris , where Gering, Crantz, and Friburger, all Ger mans , were invited by the doctors of the Sorbonne, whoestablished a press in that learned house.
As yet there had been no printing but in the Latin andvulgar tongues; 1st, in, we conceive, German characters;2d, Roman letters, it is suspected, succeeded these; 3d, inGothic; and 4th, in Italic. But in 1480, or as has beensaid in 1470, the Italians cast a set of Greek types; andeither at Venice , Milan, or Florence, the first Greek editionappeared. The Italians also, have the honour of havingproduced the first Hebrew types, printed at the same timewith the Greek, at Soncino, a small city of Milan, under thedirection of two Jewish rabbins, Joshua and Moses , in theyear of the world 5244, and A.D. 1484.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, various editionsappeared in Syriac , Arabic , Persian , Armenian , Coptic,or Egyptian characters, chiefly for the gratification of thelearned and curious, and in part for liturgic purposes, forthe Christians of the Levant. Those were printed chieflyin Paris , whither M. Salary, then ambassador at the Porte,had sent punches and matrices.