The Song of the Printer.
Pick and click
Goes the type in the stick,
As the printer stands at his case;
His eyes glance quick, and his fingers pick
The type at a rapid pace;
And one by one as the letters go,
Words are piled up steady and slow—
Steady and slow,
But still they grow,
And words of fire they soon will glow;
Wonderful words, that without a sound
Traverse the earth to its utmost bound;
Words that shall make
The tyrant quake,
And the fetters of the oppress’d shall break;
Words that can crumble an army’s might,
Or treble its strength in a righteous fight.
Yet the types they look but leaden and dumb,
As he puts them in place with finger and thumb
But the printer smiles,
And his work beguiles
By chanting a song as the letters he piles,
With pick and click,
Like the world’s chronometer, tick! tick! tick!
O, where is the man with such simple tools
Can govern the world as I?
With a printing press, an iron stick,
And a little leaden die.
With paper of white, and ink of black,
I support the Right, and the Wrong attack.
Say, where is he, or who may he be,
That can rival the printer’s power?
To no monarchs that live the wall doth he give:
Their sway lasts only an hour;
While the printer still grows, and God only knows
When his might shall cease to tower!
Anon.
Hereby, tongues are known, knowledge groweth, judgment increaseth, books are dispersed, the Scripture is read, stories be opened, times compared, truth discerned, falsehood detected and with finger pointed, and (all as I said) through the benefit of Printing.
Fox’s Martyrs.
At the very epoch when the greatness of Burgundy was most swiftly ripening, another weapon was secretly forging, more potent in the great struggle for freedom than any which the wit or hand of man has ever devised or wielded. When Philip the Good, in the full blaze of his power, and flushed with the triumphs of territorial aggrandizement, was instituting at Bruges the order of the Golden Fleece, “to the glory of God, of the blessed Virgin, and of the holy Andrew, patron saint of the Burgundian family,” and enrolling the names of the kings and princes who were to be honoured with its symbols, at that very moment, an obscure citizen of Haarlem, one Lorenz Coster, or Lawrence the Sexton, succeeded in printing a little grammar, by means of movable types. The invention of printing was accomplished, but it was not ushered in with such a blaze of glory as heralded the contemporaneous erection of the Golden Fleece. The humble setter of types did not deem emperors and princes alone worthy his companionship. His invention sent no thrill of admiration throughout Christendom; and yet, what was the good Philip of Burgundy, with his Knights of the Golden Fleece, and all their effulgent trumpery, in the eye of humanity and civilization, compared with the poor sexton and his wooden type?
Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. i, 45.