printed a collection of ancient and standard works in six thousand octavo volumes. Of this edition, there are now in Paris, the History of Music in sixty volumes, the History of the Chinese Language in eighty volumes, and the History of Foreign Peoples in seventy-five volumes.[1] A printing office, in which movable types of cast metal are used, has been in operation in Peking since the year 1776. The types of this office are of home manufacture, made from punches of hard wood and matrices of baked porcelain. There may be other instances of an occasional use of types for special purposes, but they are exceptions to the general practice.
Ever since their invention of the art, the largest part of Chinese printed work has been done, as it is now done, by xylography. So long as they continue to use these peculiar characters, this simple method of printing must be preferred for its great cheapness and simplicity. We may smile at the clumsiness of the method, but we should not overlook the fact that it is efficient. "Every one," Du Halde says, "hath the liberty to print what he pleaseth, without the supervising, censure or licence of any one, and with so small charge, that for every hundred letters perfectly engraved in the manner above said, they pay four pence half-penny, yet every letter consists of many strokes." In no country are books so cheap and so abundant as they are in China. The American book or pamphlet in paper cover, sometimes sold for seventy-five cents, more frequently for one dollar, seems of exorbitantly high price when contrasted with a Chinese book of similar size, which can be had in China for the equivalent of eight or ten cents. If the Chinese have not derived great benefits from printing, it is obvious that their failure has not been produced by the high price of printed work.
There are many points of similarity between the Chinese method of printing and the early European practice of the art. The preliminary writing or drawing in ink of a design on paper; the transfer of lines from the paper upon the wood,
- ↑ American Encyclopedia of Printing, p. 104.
