18. Natchez, Mississipi Terri-Anonymous.

§ 4-British Colonies in America, and the West Indies.

1725. (About) Kingston, Jamaica, Anonymous.

1756. St. Jago de la Vega, Ja-Anonymous.

1730. Bridge-Town, Barbadoes, S David Harry.

1784. Saint George's, Bermuda, J. Stockdale.

The first productions of all these presses were, newspapers or colonial gazettes; and very few other works appear to have been printed in the West India Islands. This paucity of literary productions may probably be accounted for, by the facility and cheapness with which books can be imported and sold, from the presses of the mother-country.

§ 5. FRENCH ISLANDS.-It cannot be exactly determined, when printing was introduced into the West India Islands, formerly belonging, to France: Mr. Thomas has ascertained that there was a press at Port-au-Prince (in the French part of Saint Domingo) as early as 1750; at which, in 1751, an account was printed of a great earthquake which happened at that time in the Island. But the presses, in Saint Domingo, Martinique, and the other islands formerly belonging to France, were wholly for the use, and under the control, of their respective governments'.

'Thomas's Hist. of Printing, vol. ii. p. 395.

SECTION VI.

Improvements in the Art of Printing.

§ 1. STEREOTYPE PRINTING.-The history of the invention of stereotype, or printing with solid types, is involved in obscurity: this art is supposed to be by no means of modern origin, but to have been derived from the cotton and silk printing of the Indians, from the block printing of the Chinese, and the books of images'.

For a long time, various attempts had been made to preserve plates or forms of a whole work: but as this would require an extensive capital, and a large mass of printing types, few of these experiments appear to have produced favourable results. In the printing-office of the Orphan-House at Halle in Saxony, the standing types of bibles and books of devotion have been successfully preserved for many years; and hence such books have been sold at a much lower price than they could elsewhere be procured. Athias, a Jew of Amsterdam, is said to have ruined him. self in the attempt to preserve, for many years, all the forms of a great English bible*.

Ingenious men, in different countries, have

For a short notice of the principal books of images, see the Appendix, No. I.

2 Lelong, Bibliotheca Sacra, edit. 1723. p. 433. Camus, Histoire et Procédés du Polytypage et du Stereotypage, p. 8.

turned their attention towards reducing the expense of printing: of these efforts we shall endeavour to give a brief chronological account.

The earliest inventor of modern stereotype printing appears to be J. Vander May, father of the well-known painter of that name. About the end of the sixteenth century, he resided at Leyden; and with the assistance of M. Muller (pastor of the German congregation of that city), who carefully superintended the correction, he prepared and cast the plates for a quarto edition of the bible. This bible he also published in folio, with large margins ornamented with figures, the forms of which were (in 1801) in the possession of M. Elwe, a bookseller at Amsterdam. An edition of the N. T. in 24mo. was afterwards stereotyped, the plates or forms of which are or were in the hands of MM. Luchtmans, booksellers at Leyden: Vander May likewise published an English New Testament, and Schaaf's Syriac Lexicon, the forms of which have been broken up'.

Early in the 18th century, (in 1725) William Ged, an ingenious goldsmith, in Edinburgh, began to prosecute the making of metal plates,

Extract from the Niew Algemein Konst en Letter Bode for 1798, No. 232, in Philosophical Magazine, vol. x. p. 276. Camus, pp. 8-10.

for the purposes of printing. His invention was simply this:-from any types, of Greek, Roman, or other characters, he formed a plate for every page or sheet of a book, from which he printed, instead of using a type for every letter, as is practised in the common way. In order to execute his plan, Ged, in 1729, entered into partnership with William Fenner, a stationer of London, and John James the architect; whose brother Thomas James, a printer, and the inventor's son James Ged, were afterwards admitted into the concern. In 1730 they obtained a privilege from the University of Cambridge, for printing bibles and common prayer books, according to their improved method; but they finished only two prayer books; and, after sinking a considerable sum of money, they were obliged to relinquish the undertaking. It appears that one of the partners was averse to the success of the plan, and engaged such people for the work, as he thought most likely to spoil it: for the compositors, when they corrected one fault, designedly made six more; and the pressmen, aiding the combination of the compositors, purposely battered the letter in the absence of their employers. In consequence of these base proceedings, the books were suppres sed by authority; and the plates were sent first