A HIS­TORY OF THE OLD EN­GLISH LET­TER FOUN­DRIES.

58. Interior of Caslon’s Foundry in 1750. From the Universal Magazine. (The mould is described, p. [108]).

A HISTORY

OF THE

OLD ENGLISH LETTER FOUNDRIES,

WITH NOTES,

Historical and Bibliographical,

ON THE

RISE AND PROGRESS OF ENGLISH TYPOGRAPHY.

BY

TALBOT BAINES REED.

LONDON:

ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

1887.

PREFACE.

N this age of progress, when the fine arts are rapidly becoming trades, and the machine is on every side superseding that labour of head and hand which our fathers called Handicraft, we are in danger of losing sight of, or, at least, of undervaluing the genius of those who, with none of our mechanical advantages, established and made famous in our land those arts and handicrafts of which we are now the heritors.

The Art of Letter Founding hesitated long before yielding to the revolutionary impulses of modern progress. While kindred arts—and notably that art which preserves all others—were advancing by leaps and bounds, the founder, as late as half a century ago, was pursuing the even tenor of his ways by paths which had been trodden by De Worde and Day and Moxon. But the inevitable revolution came, and Letter Founding to-day bids fair to break all her old ties and take new departures undreamed of by those heroes of the punch and matrix and mould who made her what we found her.

At such a time, it seems not undutiful to attempt to gather together into a connected form the numerous records of the Old English Letter Founders scattered throughout our literary and {vi} typographical history, with a view to preserve the memory of those to whose labours English Printing is indebted for so much of its glory.

The present work represents the labour of several years in what may be considered some of the untrodden by-paths of English typographical history.

The curious Dissertation on English Typographical Founders and Founderies by the learned Edward Rowe Mores, published in 1778, is, in fact, the only work in the language purporting to treat of Letter Founding as distinct from the art which it fosters. This quaint and crabbed sketch, full of valuable but half-digested information, was intended to accompany a specimen of the types of John James, whose foundry had gradually absorbed all the minor English foundries, and, after the death of its owner, had become the property of Mores himself. The enthusiasm of the Oxford antiquary infused new life into the dry bones of this decayed collection. Working backwards, he restored in imagination the old foundries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as they had been before they became absorbed in his own. He tracked back a few famous historical types to their fountain-head, and even bridged over the mysterious gulf which divided the early sixteenth from the early seventeenth centuries of English letter-founding.

Mores’ Dissertation has necessarily formed the basis of my investigations, and is, indeed, almost wholly incorporated in the present volume. Of the additional and more anecdotal notes on the later founders, preserved by Nichols and Hansard, I have also freely made use; although in every case it has been my endeavour to take nothing on report which it has been possible to verify by reference to original sources. This effort has been rewarded by several interesting discoveries which it is hoped may be found to throw considerable fresh light on the history of our national typography.

The first century of English letter-founding is a period of great obscurity, to master which it is absolutely essential to have {vii} unlimited access to all the works of all the printers whose books were the only type specimens of their day. Such access it has been beyond my power fully to secure, and in this portion of my work I am bound to admit that I can lay claim to little originality of research. I have, however, endeavoured to examine as many of the specimens of these early presses as possible, and to satisfy myself that the observations of others, of which I have availed myself, are such as I can assent to.

In detailing the rise and progress of the various English Letter Foundries, it has been my endeavour to treat the subject, as far as possible, bibliographically—that is, to regard as type-specimens not merely the stated advertisements of the founder, but also the works for which his types were created and in which they were used. The Catena on Job, Walton’s Polyglot, Boyle’s Irish Testament, Bowyer’s Selden, thus rank as type specimens quite as interesting as, and far more valuable than, the ordinary letter founders’ catalogues. Proceeding on this principle, moreover, this History will be found to embody a pretty complete bibliography of works not only relating to, but illustrative of, English Letter Founding. At the same time, the particular bibliography of the subject has been kept distinct, by appending to each chapter a chronological list of the Specimen Books issued by the foundry to which it relates.

The introductory chapter on the Types and Type Founding of the First Printers may be considered somewhat foreign to the scope of this History. The importance, however, of a practical acquaintance with the processes and appliances of the Art of Letter Founding as a foundation to any complete study of typographical history—as well as the numerous misconceptions existing on the part even of accepted authorities on the subject—suggested the attempt to examine the various accounts of the Invention of Printing from a letter founder’s point of view, in the hope, if not of arriving at any very definite conclusions, at least of clearing the question of a few prevalent fallacies.

The two chapters on Type Bodies and Type Faces, although also {viii} to some extent foreign, are considered important by way of introduction to the history of English Letter Founding in which the “foreign and learned” characters have so conspicuously figured.

If this book—the imperfections of which are apparent to no one as painfully as they are to the writer—should in any way encourage the study of our national Typography, with a view to profit by the history of the past in an endeavour to promote its excellence in the future, the labour here concluded will be amply repaid.

The agreeable task remains of thanking the numerous friends to whose aid and encouragement this book is indebted for much of whatever value it may possess.

My foremost thanks are due to my honoured and valued friend, Mr. William Blades, to whom I am indebted for far more than unlimited access to his valuable typographical library, and the ungrudging use of his special knowledge on all subjects connected with English typography. These I have enjoyed, and what was of equal value his kindly advice and sympathy during the whole progress of a work which, but for his encouragement from the outset, might never have been completed.

Another friend who, brief as was our acquaintance, had taken a genuine interest in the progress of this History, and had enriched it by more than one valuable communication, has been snatched away by the hand of Death before the thanks he never coveted but constantly incurred can reach him. In Henry Bradshaw the world of books has lost a distinguished ornament, and this little book has lost a hearty friend.

To Mr. F. Madan, of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, I owe much valuable information as to early printing at that University; while to the kindness of Mr. Horace Hart, Controller of the University Press, I am indebted for full access to the highly interesting collection of typographical antiquities preserved at that Press, as well as for the specimens I am here enabled to show of some of the most interesting relics of the oldest Foundry in the country. {ix}

Mr. T. W. Smith has kindly given me similar facilities as regards the archives and historical specimens of the venerable Caslon Foundry.

Mr. Sam. Timmins most generously placed at my disposal much of the information embodied in my chapter on Baskerville, including the extracts from the letters forming part of his unique collection relating to that celebrated typographer.

To Mr. James Figgins I am obliged for many particulars relating to the early association of founders at the commencement of the present century; also for a specimen of one of the most noted founts of his distinguished ancestor.

Mr. Charles R. Rivington I have to thank for one or two valuable extracts from the Minutes of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, relating to Letter Founders.

To Messrs. Enschedé and Sons, of Haarlem, my thanks are also specially due for giving me specimens of some of their most curious and ancient types.

It is also my pleasure, as well as my duty, to thank the Secretary of the American Antiquarian Society for information regarding specimens in his possession; my friend, Dr. Wright, of the British and Foreign Bible Society, for free access to the highly interesting Library under his care; Messrs. Tuer, Bremner, Gill, and others for the kind loan of Specimens; the Librarian of the London Institution for permission to facsimile portions of the rare specimen of James’ Foundry in that Library; and the numerous other friends, who, by reading proofs and in other ways, have generously assisted me in my labours.

I also take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Prætorius and Mr. Manning for the care they have bestowed on the preparation of facsimiles for this work; and of expressing my obligations to the officials of the British Museum and Record Office for their invariable courtesy on all occasions on which their assistance has been invoked.

LONDON, January 1st, 1887.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

• [1].—Types cast from leaden matrices, circ. 1500 . . . 16
• [2].—Specimen illustrating the variations in the face of type, produced by bad casting . . . 18
• [3].—Type mould of Claude Garamond. Paris, 1540. From Duverger . . . 23
• [4].—Profile tracings from M. Claudin’s 15th century types . . . 21
• [5].—A 15th century type. From M. Madden’s Lettres d’un Bibliographe . . . 24
• [6].—A 15th century type. From Liber de Laudibus...Mariæ, circ. 1468 . . . 24
• [7].—Roman letter. From the Sophologium, Wiedenbach? 1465–70? . . . 42
• [8].—Roman and Black letter intermixed. From Traheron’s Exposition of St. John, 1552 . . . 45
• [9].—Robijn Italic, cut by Chr. van Dijk. From the original matrices . . . 52
• [10].—Gothic Type or Lettre de Forme, circ. 1480. From the original matrices . . . 53
• [11].—Philosophie Flamand engraved by Fleischman, 1743. From the original matrices . . . 54
• [12].—Lettre de Civilité, cut by Ameet Tavernier for Plantin, circ. 1570. From the original matrices . . . 56
• [13].—Blooming Initials. Oxford, circ. 1700 . . . 80
• [14].—Pierced Initial. Oxford, ante 1700 . . . 81
• [15].—Caxton’s Advertisement, in his Type 3 . . . face 88
• [16].—Caxton’s Type 4.* From the Golden Legend . . . face 88
• [17].—Black letter, supposed to be De Worde’s. From Palmer’s History of Printing . . . 90
• [18].—Pynson’s Roman letter. From the Oratio in Pace Nuperrimâ, 1518 . . . 92
• [18a].—Berthelet’s Black letter and Secretary type. From the Boke named the Governour, 1531 . . . 95
• [19].—Portrait of John Day, 1562. From Peter Martir’s Commentaries, 1568 . . . 99
• [20], [21], [22].—Day’s Saxon, Roman, and Italic. From the Ælfredi Res Gestæ, 1574 . . . face 96
• [23].—Letter Founding in Frankfort in 1568. From Jost Amman’s Stände und Handwerker . . . 104
• [24].—Letter Founding and Printing circ. 1548. From the Harleian MSS. . . . 105
• [25].—Letter Founding in 1683. From Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises . . . 109
• [26].—Letter Founding in France in 1718. From Thiboust’s Typographiæ Excellentia . . . 115
• [27].—Colophon of the Lyndewode, Oxford, n.d. Showing types [c], [d], [e], [f] . . . face 138
• [28].—Greek fount of the Eton Chrysostom, 1613 . . . face 140
• [29].—Greeks, Roman and Italic. From the Catena on Job, 1637 . . . face 140
• [30].—The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. From an old wood-block . . . 153
• [31].—The Clarendon Press, Oxford. From an old wood-block . . . 156
• [32].—Pica Roman and Italic, presented to Oxford by Dr. Fell, 1667 . . . 152
• [33].—Pica Roman and Italic, bought by Oxford University in 1692 . . . 152
• [34, 35, 36, 37, 38].—Hebrew, large and small, Coptic, Arabic, and Syriac, presented to Oxford by Dr. Fell, 1667. From the original matrices . . . 147
• [39].—Ethiopic, bought by Oxford University in 1692. From the original matrices . . . 154
• [40].—Ethiopic of Walton’s Polyglot, 1657. From the original matrices . . . 174
• [41].—Syriac of Walton’s Polyglot, 1657. From the original matrices . . . 174
• [42].—Samaritan of Walton’s Polyglot, 1657. From the original matrices . . . 174
• [43].—Specimen of Nicholas Nicholls, 1665. From the original . . . face 178
• [44].—Portrait of Joseph Moxon. From the Tutor to Astronomy and Geography, 4th ed., 1686, . . . face 180
• [45].—Moxon’s Irish type, 1680. From the original matrices . . . 189
• [46].—Dutch Initial Letters. From the original matrices . . . 80
• [47].—Nonpareil Rabbinical Hebrew in Andrews’ Foundry. From the original matrices . . . 194
• [48].—Saxon, cut by R. Andrews for Miss Elstob’s Grammar, 1715. From the original matrices . . . 196
• [49].—Old Dutch Blacks in R. Andrews’ Foundry. From the original matrices . . . 194
• [50].—Alexandrian Greek in Grover’s Foundry. From the Catalogue of James’ Sale, 1782 . . . 200
• [51].—Scriptorial in Grover’s Foundry. From the original matrices . . . 204
• [52].—Court Hand in Grover’s Foundry. From the original matrices . . . 204
• [53].—Union Pearl in Grover’s Foundry. From the original matrices . . . 204
• [54].—Walpergen’s Music type. Oxford, circ. 1675. From the original matrices . . . 208
• [55].—Pictorial pierced Initial. From an 18th century newspaper . . . 81
• [56].—Title-page of the Catalogue and Specimen of James’ Foundry, 1782. From the original . . . 226
• [57].—Portrait of William Caslon. From Hansard . . . face 232
• [58].—View of the Interior of Caslon’s Foundry in 1750. From the Universal Magazine . . . Frontispiece
• [59].—Pica Roman and Italic, cut by Caslon, 1720. From the original matrices . . . 236
• [60].—Black letter, cut by Caslon. From the original matrices . . . 239
• [61].—Arabic, cut by Caslon, 1720. From the original matrices . . . 235
• [62].—Coptic, cut by Caslon, ante 1731. From the original matrices . . . 236
• [63].—Armenian, cut by Caslon, ante 1736. From the original matrices . . . 239
• [64].—Etruscan, cut by Caslon, 1738. From the original matrices . . . 240
• [65].—Gothic, cut by Caslon, ante 1734. From the original matrices . . . 239
• [66].—Ethiopic, cut by Caslon. From the original matrices . . . 240
• [67].—Syriac, cut by Caslon II, circ. 1768. From the original matrices . . . 246
• [68].—Portrait of Alexander Wilson. From Hansard . . . face 258
• [69].—Greek, cut by Alex. Wilson, ante 1768. From the Glasgow Homer, 1768 . . . 262
• [70].—Portrait of John Baskerville. From Hansard . . . face 268
• [71].—Greek, cut by Baskerville for Oxford. From the Oxford Specimen, 1768–70 . . . face 274
• [72].—Roman and Italic, cut by Baskerville, 1758. From the Milton, Birmingham, 1758 . . . face 276
• [73].—Engrossing, cut by Cottrell, circ. 1768. From the original matrices . . . 289
• [73a].—Silhouette Portraits of Joseph and Edmund Fry. From the originals . . . face 298
• [74].—Alexandrian Greek (formerly Grover’s), rejustified by Dr. Fry. From the original matrices . . . 304
• [74a].—Hebrew, cut by Dr. Fry, circ. 1785. From the original matrices . . . 304
• [75].—Portrait of Joseph Jackson. From Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes . . . face 316
• [76].—Portrait of William Caslon III. From Hansard . . . face 326
• [77].—Two-line English Roman, cut by Vincent Figgins, 1792. From the original matrices . . . 337
• [78].—Samaritan, cut by Dummers for Caslon, circ. 1734. From the original matrices . . . 345

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

THE TYPES AND TYPEFOUNDING OF THE FIRST PRINTERS.

OR four centuries the noise of controversy has raged round the cradle of Typography. Volumes have been written, lives have been spent, fortunes have been wasted, communities have been stirred, societies have been organised, a literature has been developed, to find an answer to the famous triple question: “When, where, and by whom was found out the unspeakably useful art of printing books?” And yet the world to-day is little nearer a finite answer to the question than it was when Ulric Zel indited his memorable narrative to the Cologne Chronicle in 1499. Indeed, the dust of battle has added to, rather than diminished, the mysterious clouds which envelope the problem, and we are tempted to seek refuge in an agnosticism which almost refuses to believe that printing ever had an inventor.

It would be neither suitable nor profitable to encumber an investigation of that part of the History of Typography which relates to the types and type-making of the fifteenth century by any attempt to discuss the vexed question of the Invention of the Art. The man who invented Typography was doubtless the man who invented movable types. Where the one is discovered, we have also found the other. But, meanwhile, it is possible to avail ourselves of whatever evidence exists as to the nature of the types he and his successors used, and as to the methods by which those types were produced, and possibly to {2} arrive at some conclusions respecting the earliest practices of the Art of Typefounding in the land and in the age in which it first saw the light.

No one has done more to clear the way for a free investigation of all questions relating to the origin of printing than Dr. Van der Linde, in his able essay, The Haarlem Legend,[1] which, while disposing ruthlessly of the fiction of Coster’s invention, lays down the important principle, too often neglected by writers on the subject, that the essence of Typography consists in the mobility of the types, and that, therefore, it is not a development of the long practised art of printing from fixed blocks, but an entirely distinct invention.

The principle is so important, and Dr. Van der Linde’s words are so emphatic, that we make no apology for quoting them:—

“I cannot repeat often enough that, when we speak of Typography and its invention, nothing is meant, or rather nothing must be meant, but printing with loose (separate, moveable) types (be they letters, musical notes, or other figures), which therefore, in distinction from letters cut on wooden or metal plates, may be put together or separated according to inclination. One thing therefore is certain: he who did not invent printing with moveable types, did, as far as Typography goes, invent nothing. What material was used first of all in this invention; of what metal the first letters, the patrices (engraved punches) and matrices were made; by whom and when the leaden matrices and brass patrices were replaced by brass matrices and steel patrices; . . . . . all this belongs to the secondary question of the technical execution of the principal idea: multiplication of books by means of multiplication of letters, multiplication of letters by means of their durability, and repeated use of the same letters, i.e., by means of the independence (looseness) of each individual letter (moveableness).”—P. 19.

If this principle be adopted—and we can hardly imagine it questioned—it will be obvious that a large class of works which usually occupy a prominent place in inquiries into the origin of Printing, have but slight bearing on the history of Typography. The block books of the fifteenth century had little direct connection with the art that followed and eclipsed them.[2] In the one respect of marking the early use of printing for the instruction of mankind, the block books and the first works of Typography proper claim an equal interest; but, as regards their mechanical production, the one feature they possess in common is a quality shared also by the playing-cards, pictures, seals, stamps, {3} brands, and all the other applications of the principle of impression which had existed in one form or another from time immemorial.

It is reasonable to suppose that the first idea of movable type may have been suggested to the mind of the inventor by a study of the works of a xylographic printer, and an observation of the cumbrous and wearisome method by which his books were produced. The toil involved in first painfully tracing the characters and figures, reversed, on the wood, then of engraving them, and, finally, of printing them with the frotton, would appear—in the case, at any rate, of the small school-books, for the production of which this process was largely resorted to—scarcely less tedious than copying the required number by the deft pen of a scribe. And even if, at a later period, the bookmakers so far facilitated their labours as to write their text in the ordinary manner on prepared paper, or with prepared ink, and so transfer their copy, after the manner of the Chinese, on to the wood, the labour expended in proportion to the result, and the uselessness of the blocks when once their work was done, would doubtless impress an inventive genius with a sense of dissatisfaction and impatience. We can imagine him examining the first page of an Abecedarium, on which would be engraved, in three lines, with a clear space between each character, the letters of the alphabet, and speculating, as Cicero had speculated centuries before,[3] on the possibilities presented by the combination in indefinite variety of those twenty-five symbols. Being a practical man as well as a theorist, we may suppose he would attempt to experiment on the little wood block in his hand, and by sawing off first the lines, and then some of the letters in the lines, attempt to arrange his little types into a few short words. A momentous experiment, and fraught with the greatest revolution the world has ever known!

No question has aroused more interest, or excited keener discussion in the history of printing, than that of the use of movable wooden types as a first stage in the passage from Xylography to Typography. Those who write on the affirmative side of the question profess to see in the earlier typographical works, as well as in the historical statements handed down by the old authorities, the {4} clearest evidence that wooden types were used, and that several of the most famous works of the first printers were executed by their means.

As regards the latter source of their confidence, it is at least remarkable that no single writer of the fifteenth century makes the slightest allusion to the use of wooden types. Indeed, it was not till Bibliander, in 1548,[4] first mentioned and described them, that anything professing to be a record on the subject existed. “First they cut their letters,” he says, “on wood blocks the size of an entire page, but because the labour and cost of that way was so great, they devised movable wooden types, perforated and joined one to the other by a thread.”

The legend, once started, found no lack of sponsors, and the typographical histories of the sixteenth century and onward abound with testimonies confirmatory more or less of Bibliander’s statement. Of these testimonies, those only are worthy of attention which profess to be based on actual inspection of the alleged perforated wooden types. Specklin[5] (who died in 1589) asserts that he saw some of these relics at Strasburg. Angelo Roccha,[6] in 1591, vouches for the existence of similar letters (though he does not say whether wood or metal) at Venice. Paulus Pater,[7] in 1710, stated that he had once seen some belonging to Fust at Mentz; Bodman, as late as 1781, saw the same types in a worm-eaten condition at Mentz; while Fischer,[8] in 1802, stated that these precious relics were used as a sort of token of honour to be bestowed on worthy apprentices on the occasion of their finishing their term.

This testimony proves nothing beyond the fact that at Strasburg, Venice, and Mentz there existed at some time or other certain perforated wooden types which tradition ascribed to the first printers. But on the question whether any book was ever printed with such type, it is wholly inconclusive. It is possible to believe that certain early printers, uninitiated into the mystery of the punch and matrix, may have attempted to cut themselves wooden types, which, when they proved untractable under the press, they perforated and strung together in lines; {5} but it is beyond credit that any such rude experiment ever resulted in the production of a work like the Speculum.

It is true that many writers have asserted it was so. Fournier, a practical typographer, insists upon it from the fact that the letters vary among themselves in a manner which would not be the case had they been cast from a matrix in a mould. But, to be consistent, Fournier is compelled (as Bernard points out) to postpone the use of cast type till after the Gutenberg Bible and Mentz Psalter, both of which works display the same irregularities. And as the latest edition of the Psalter, printed in the old types, appeared in 1516, it would be necessary to suppose that movable wood type was in vogue up to that date. No one has yet demonstrated, or attempted seriously to demonstrate, the possibility of printing a book like the Speculum in movable wooden type. All the experiments hitherto made, even by the most ardent supporters of the theory, have been woful failures. Laborde[9] admits that to cut the 3,000 separate letters required for the Letters of Indulgence, engraved by him, would cost 450 francs; and even he, with the aid of modern tools to cut up his wooden cubes, can only show four widely spaced lines. Wetter[10] shows a page printed from perforated and threaded wooden types[11]; but these, though of large size, only prove by their {6} “naughty caprioles” the absurdity of supposing that the “unleaded” Speculum, a quarternion of which would require 40,000 distinct letters, could have been produced in 1440 by a method which even the modern cutting and modern presswork of 1836 failed to adapt to a single page of large-sized print.

John Enschedé, the famous Haarlem typefounder, though a strong adherent to the Coster legend, was compelled to admit the practical impossibility, in his day at any rate, of producing a single wood type which would stand the test of being mathematically square; nor would it be possible to square it after being cut. “No engraver,” he remarks, “is able to cut separate letters in wood in such a manner that they retain their quadrature (for that is the main thing of the line in type-casting).”[12] Admitting for a moment that some printer may have succeeded in putting together a page of these wooden types, without the aid of leads, into a chase: how can it be supposed that after their exposure to the warping influences of the sloppy ink and tight pressure during the impression, they could ever have survived to be distributed and recomposed into another forme?[13]

The claims set up on behalf of movable wood types as the means by which the Speculum or any other of the earliest books was printed, are not only historically unsupported, but the whole weight of practical evidence rejects them.

Dismissing them, therefore, from our consideration, a new theory confronts us, which at first blush seems to supply, if not a more probable, certainly a more possible, stepping-stone between Xylography and Typography. We refer to what Meerman, the great champion of this theory, calls the “sculpto-fusi” {7} characters: types, that is, the shanks of which have been cast in a quadrilateral mould, and the “faces” engraved by hand afterwards.

Meerman and those who agree with him engage a large array of testimony on their side. In the reference of Celtis, in 1502, to Mentz as the city “quæ prima sculpsit solidos ære characteres,” they see a clear confirmation of their theory; as also in the frequent recurrence of the same word “sculptus” in the colophons of the early printers. Meerman, indeed, goes so far as to ingeniously explain the famous account of the invention given by Trithemius in 1514,[14] in the light of his theory, to mean that, after the rejection of the first wooden types, “the inventors found out a method of casting the bodies only (fundendi formas) of all the letters of the Latin alphabet from what they called matrices, on which they cut the face of each letter; and from the same kind of matrices a method was in time discovered of casting the complete letters (æneos sive stanneos characteres) of sufficient hardness for the pressure they had to bear, which letters before—that is, when the bodies only were cast—they were obliged to cut.”[15]

After this bold flight of translation, it is not surprising to find that Meerman claims that the Speculum was printed in “sculpto-fusi” types, although in the one page of which he gives a facsimile there are nearly 1,700 separate types, of which 250 alone are e’s.

Schoepflin, claiming the same invention for the Strasburg printers, believes that all the earliest books printed there were produced by this means; and both Meer­man and Schoep­flin agree that engraved metal types were in use for many years after the invention of the punch and matrix, mentioning, among others so printed, the Mentz Psalter, the Catholicon of 1460, the Eggestein Bible of 1468, and even the Nideri Præ­cep­tor­ium, printed at Stras­burg as late as 1476, as “literis in ære sculptis.”

Almost the whole historical claim of the engraved metal types, indeed, turns on the recurrence of the term “sculptus” in the colophons of the early printers. Jenson, in 1471, calls himself a “cutter of books” (librorum exsculptor). Sen­sen­schmid, in 1475, says that the Codex Jus­tin­ianus is “cut” (insculptus), and that he has “cut” (sculpsit) the work of Lombardus in Psalterium. Husner of Strasburg, in 1472, applies the term “printed with letters cut of metal” (exsculptis {8} ære litteris) to the Speculum Durandi; and of the Præceptorium Nideri, printed in 1476, he says it is “printed in letters cut of metal by a very ingenious effort” (litteris exsculptis artificiali certe conatu ex ære). As Dr. Van der Linde points out, the use of the term in reference to all these books can mean nothing else than a figurative allusion to the first process towards producing the types, namely, the cutting of the punch[16]; just as when Schoeffer, in 1466, makes his Grammatica Vetus Rhythmica say, “I am cast at Mentz” (At Moguntia sum fusus in urbe libellus), he means nothing more than a figurative allusion to the casting of the types.

The theory of the sculpto-fusi types appears to have sprung up on no firmer foundation than the difficulty of accounting for the marked irregularities in the letters of the earliest printed books, and the lack of a theory more feasible than that of movable wood type to account for it. The method suggested by Meerman seemed to meet the requirements of the case, and with the aid of the very free translation of Trithemius’ story, and the very literal translation of certain colophons, it managed to get a footing on the typographical records.

Mr. Skeen seriously applies himself to demonstrate how the shanks could be cast in clay moulds stamped with a number of trough-like matrices representing the various widths of the blanks required, and calculates that at the rate of four a day, 6,000 of these blanks could be engraved on the end by one man in five years, the whole weighing 100 lb. when finished! “No wonder,” Mr. Skeen naïvely observes, “that Fust at last grew impatient.” We must confess that there seems less ground for believing in the use of “sculpto-fusi” types as the means by which any of the early books were produced, than in the perforated wood types. The enormous labour involved, in itself renders the idea improbable. As M. Bernard says, “How can we suppose that intelligent men like the first printers would not at once find out that they could easily cast the face and body of their types together?”[17] But admitting the possibility of producing type in this manner, and the possible obtuseness which could allow an inventor of printing to spend five years in laboriously engraving “shanks” enough for a single forme, the lack of any satisfactory evidence that such types were ever used, even experimentally, inclines us to deny them any place in the history of the origin of typography.

Putting aside, therefore, as improbable, and not proved, the two theories of {9} engraved movable types, the question arises, Did typography, like her patron goddess, spring fully armed from the brain of her inventor? in other words, did men pass at a single stride from xylography to the perfect typography of the punch, the matrix, and the mould? or are we still to seek for an intermediate stage in some ruder and more primitive process of production? To this question we cannot offer a better reply than that contained in the following passage from Mr. Blades’s admirable life of Caxton.[18] “The examination of many specimens,” he observes, “has led me to conclude that two schools of typography existed together . . . The ruder consisted of those printers who practised their art in Holland and the Low Countries, . . . and who, by degrees only, adopted the better and more perfect methods of the . . . school founded in Germany by the celebrated trio, Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer.”

It is impossible, we think, to resist the conclusion that all the earlier works of typography were the impression of cast metal types; but that the methods of casting employed were not always those of matured letter-founding, seems to us not only probable, but evident, from a study of the works themselves.

Mr. Theo. De Vinne, in his able treatise on the invention of printing,[19] speaking with the authority of a practical typographer, insists that the key to that invention is to be found, not in the press nor in the movable types, but in the adjustable type-mould, upon which, he argues, the existence of typography depends. While not prepared to go as far as Mr. De Vinne on this point, and still content to regard the invention of movable types as the real key to the invention of typography proper, we find in the mould not only the culminating achievement of the inventor, but also the key to the distinction between the two schools of early typography to which we have alluded.

The adjustable mould was undoubtedly the goal of the discovery, and those who reached it at once were the advanced typographers of the Mentz press. Those who groped after it through clumsy and tedious by-ways were the rude artists of the Donatus and Speculum.

In considering the primitive modes of type-casting, it must be frankly admitted that the inquirer stands in a field of pure conjecture. He has only negative evidence to assure him that such primitive modes undoubtedly did exist, and he searches in vain for any direct clue as to the nature and details of those methods.

We shall briefly refer to one or two theories which have been propounded, all with more or less of plausibility.

Casting in sand was an art not unknown to the silversmiths and {10} trinket-makers of the fifteenth century, and several writers have suggested that some of the early printers applied this process to typefounding. M. Bernard[20] considers that the types of the Speculum were sand-cast, and accounts for the varieties observable in the shapes of various letters, by explaining that several models would probably be made of each letter, and that the types when cast would, as is usual after sand-casting, require some touching up or finishing by hand. He shows a specimen of a word cast by himself by this process, which, as far as it goes, is a satisfactory proof of the possibility of casting letters in this way.[21] There are, indeed, many points in this theory which satisfactorily account for peculiarities in the appearance of books printed by the earliest rude Dutch School. Not only are the irregularities of the letters in body and line intelligible, but the specks between the lines, so frequently observable, would be accounted for by the roughness on the “shoulders” of the sand-cast bodies.[22]

An important difficulty to be overcome in type cast by this or any other primitive method would be the absence of uniformity in what letter founders term “height to paper.” Some types would stand higher than others, and the low ones, unless raised, would not only miss the ink, but would not appear at all in the impression. The comparative rarity of faults of this kind in the Speculum, leads one to suppose that if a process of sand-casting had been adopted, the difficulty of uneven heights had been surmounted either by locking up the forme face downwards, or by perforating the types either at the time of or after casting, and by means of a thread or wire holding them in their places. The uneven length of the lines favours such a supposition, and to the same cause Mr. Ottley[23] attributes the numerous misprints of the Speculum, to correct which in the type would have involved the unthreading of every line in which an error occurred. And as a still more striking proof that the lines were put into the forme one by one, in a piece, he shows a curious printer’s blunder at the end of one page, where the whole of the last reference-line is put in upside down, thus:—

{11}

A “turn” of this magnitude could hardly have occurred if the letters had been set in the forme type by type.

Another suggested mode is that of casting in clay moulds, by a method very similar to that used in the sand process, and resulting in similar peculiarities and variations in the types. Mr. Ottley, who is the chief exponent of this theory, suggests that the types were made by pouring melted lead or other soft metal, into moulds of earth or plaster, formed, while the earth or plaster was in a moist state, upon letters cut by hand in wood or metal; in the ordinary manner used from time immemorial in casting statues of bronze and other articles of metal, whether for use or ornament. The mould thus formed could not be of long duration; indeed, it could scarcely avail for a second casting, as it would be scarcely possible to extract the type after casting without breaking the clay, and even if that could be done, the shrinking of the metal in cooling would be apt to warp the mould beyond the possibility of further use.

Mr. Ottley thinks that the constant renewal of the moulds could be effected by using old types cast out of them, after being touched up by the graver, as models. And this he considers will account for the varieties observable in the different letters.

In this last conjecture we think Mr. Ottley goes out of his way to suggest an unnecessary difficulty. If, as he contends, the Speculum was printed two pages at a time, with soft types cast by the clay process and renewed from time to time by castings from fresh moulds formed upon the old letters touched up by the graver, we should witness a gradual deterioration and attenuation in the type, as the work progressed, which would leave the face of the letter, at the end, unrecognisable as that with which it began. It would be more reasonable to suppose that one set of models would be reserved for the periodical renewal of the moulds all through the work, and that the variations in the types would be due, not to the gradual paring of the faces of the models, but to the different skill and exactness with which the successive moulds would be taken.[24] {12}

The chief objection urged against both the clay and sand methods as above described is their tediousness. The time occupied after the first engraving of the models in forming, drying and clearing the mould, in casting, extracting, touching up, and possibly perforating, the types would be little short of the expeditious performance of a practised xylographer. Still there would be a clear gain in the possession of a fount of movable types, which, even if the metal in which they were cast were only soft lead or pewter, might yet do duty in more than one forme, under a rough press, roughly handled. On the xylographic block, moreover, only one hand, and that a skilled one, could labour. Of the moulding and casting of these rude types, many hands could make light work. M. Bernard states that the artist who produced for him the few sand-cast types shown in his work, assured him that a workman could easily produce a thousand of such letters a day. He also states that though each letter required squaring after casting, there was no need in any instance to touch up the faces. M. Bernard’s experience may have been a specially fortunate one; still, making allowance for the superior workmanship and expedition of a modern artist, it must be admitted that, in point of time, cost and utility, a printer who succeeded in furnishing himself with these primitive cast types was as far ahead of the old engraver as the discoverer of the adjustable mould was in his turn ahead of him.[25]

There remains yet another suggestion as to the method in which the types of the rude school were produced. This may be described as a system of what the founders of sixty years ago called “polytype.” Lambinet, who is responsible for the suggestion, under cover of a new translation of Trithemius’s wonderful narrative, explains this to mean nothing less than an early adoption of stereotype. He imagines[26] that the first printers may have discovered a way of moulding a page of some work—an Abecedarium—in cooling metal, so as to get a matrix-plate impression of the whole page. Upon this matrix they would pour a liquid metal, and by the aid of a roller or cylinder, press the fused matter evenly, so as to penetrate into all the hollows and corners of the letters. This tablet of tin or lead, being easily lifted and detached from the matrix, would then appear as a surface of metal in which the letters of the alphabet stood out reversed and in relief. These letters could easily be detached and rendered mobile by a knife or other sharp instrument; and the operation could be repeated a hundred times a day. The metal faces so produced would be fixed on wooden shanks, type high; and the fount would then be complete. {13}

Such is Lambinet’s hypothesis. Were it not for the fact that it was endorsed by the authority of M. Firmin Didot, the renowned typefounder and printer of Lambinet’s day, we should hardly be disposed to admit its claim to serious attention. The supposition that the Mentz Psalter, which these writers point to as a specimen of this mode of execution, is the impression, not of type at all, but of a collection of “casts” mounted on wood, is too fanciful. M. Didot, it must be remembered, was the enthusiastic French improver of Stereotype, and his enthusiasm appears to have led him to see in his method not only a revolution in the art of printing as it existed in his day, but also a solution of the mystery which had shrouded the early history of that art for upwards of three centuries.

It may be well, before quitting this subject, to take note of a certain phrase which has given rise to a considerable amount of conjecture and controversy in connection with the early methods of typography. The expression “getté en molle” occurred as early as the year 1446, in a record kept by Jean le Robert of Cambray, who stated that in January of that year he paid 20 sous for a printed Doctrinale, “getté en molle.” Bernard has assumed this expression to refer to the use of types cast from a mould, and cites a large number of instances where, being used in contradistinction to writing by hand, it is taken to signify typography.[27]

Dr. Van der Linde,[28] on the other hand, considers the term to mean, printed from a wooden form, i.e., a xylographic production, and nothing more, quoting similar instances of the use of the words to support his opinion; and Dr. Van Meurs, whose remarks are quoted in full in Mr. Hessel’s introduction to Dr. Van der Linde’s Coster Legend,[29] declines to apply the phrase to the methods by which the Doctrinale was printed at all; but dwelling on the distinction drawn in various documents between “en molle” and “en papier,” concludes that the reference is to the binding of the book, and nothing more; a bound book being “brought together in a form or binding,” while an unbound one is “in paper.” {14}

It is difficult to reconcile these conflicting interpretations, to which may be added as a fourth that of Mr. Skeen, who considers the phrase to refer to the indented appearance of the paper of a book after being printed. In the three last cases the expression is valueless as regards our present inquiry; but if we accept M. Bernard’s interpretation, which seems at least to have the weight of simplicity and reasonable testimony on its side, then it would be necessary to conclude that type-casting, either by a primitive or a finished process (but having regard to the date and the place, almost certainly the former), was practised in Flanders prior to January 1446. None of the illustrations, however, which M. Bernard cites points definitely to the use of cast type, but to printing in the abstract, irrespective of method or process. “Moulées par ordre de l’Assemblée” might equally well apply to a set of playing-cards or a broadside proclamation; “mettre en molle” does not necessarily mean anything more than put into “print”; while the recurring expressions “en molle” and “à la main,” point to nothing beyond the general distinction between manuscript and printed matter. In fact, the lack of definiteness in all the quotations given by M. Bernard weakens his own argument: for if we are to translate the word moulé throughout in the narrow sense in which he reads it, we must then believe that in every instance he cites, figurative language was employed where conventional would have answered equally well, and that the natural antithesis to the general term, “by hand,” must in all cases be assumed to be the particular term, “printed in cast metal types.” For ourselves, we see no justification for taxing the phrase beyond its broad interpretation of “print”; and in this light it appears possible to reconcile most of the conjectures to which the words have given rise.

Turning now from the conjectured primitive processes of the ruder school of early Typography, we come to consider the practice of that more mature school which, as has already been said, appears to have arrived at once at the secret of the punch, matrix and adjustable mould. We should be loth to assert that they arrived at once at the most perfect mechanism of these appliances; indeed, an examination of the earliest productions of the Mentz press, beautiful as they are, convinces one that the first printers were not finished typefounders. But even if their first punches were wood or copper, their first matrices lead, and their first mould no more than a clumsy adaptation of the composing-stick, they yet had the secret of the art; to perfect it was a mere matter of time.

Experiments have proved conclusively that the face of a wood-cut type may be without injury impressed into lead in a state of semi-fusion, and thus produce in creux an inverted image of itself in the matrix. It has also been shown that a lead matrix so formed is capable, after being squared and justified, {15} of being adapted to a mould, and producing a certain number of types in soft lead or pewter before yielding to the heat of the operation.[30] It has also been demonstrated that similar matrices formed in clay or plaster, by the application of the wood or metal models[31] while the substance is moist, are capable of similar use.

Dr. Franklin, in a well-known passage of his Autobiography, gives the following account of his experiences as a casual letter-founder in 1727. “Our press,” he says, “was frequently in want of the necessary quantity of letter; and there was no such trade as that of letter-founder in America. I had seen the practice of this art at the house of James, in London; but had at the time paid it very little attention. I, however, contrived to fabricate a mould. I made use of such letters as we had for punches, founded new letters of lead in matrices of clay, and thus supplied in a tolerable manner the wants that were most pressing.”[32] M. Bernard states that in his day the Chinese characters in the Imperial printing-office in Paris were cast by a somewhat similar process. The original wooden letters were moulded in plaster. Into the plaster mould types of a hard metal were cast, and these hard-metal types served as punches to strike matrices with in a softer metal.[33]

In the Enschedé foundry at Haarlem there exists to this day a set of matrices said to be nearly four hundred years old, which are described as leaden matrices from punches of copper, “suivant l’habitude des anciens fondeurs dans les premiers temps après l’invention de l’imprimerie.”[34] By {16} the kindness of Messrs. Enschedé, we are able to show a few letters from types cast in these venerable matrices.

1. Types cast from leaden matrices (circ. 1500?) now in the Enschedé foundry, Haarlem.

Lead matrices are frequently mentioned as having been in regular use in some of the early foundries of this country. A set of them in four-line pica was sold at the breaking up of James’s foundry in 1782, and in the oldest of the existing foundries to this day may be found relics of the same practice.

At Lubeck, Smith informs us in 1755,[35] a printer cast for his own use, “not only large-sized letters for titles, but also a sufficient quantity of two-lined English, after a peculiar manner, by cutting his punches on wood, and sinking them afterwards into leaden matrices; yet were the letters cast in them deeper than the French generally are.”

When, therefore, the printer of the Catholicon, in 1460, says of his book, “non calami styli aut pennæ suffragio, sed mirâ patronarum formarumque concordiâ proportione ac modulo impressus atque confectus est,” we have not necessarily to conclude that the types were produced in the modern way from copper matrices struck by steel punches. Indeed, probability seems to point to a gradual progress in the durability of the materials employed. In the first instance, the punches may have been of wood, and the matrices soft lead or clay[36]; then the attempt might be made to strike hard lead into soft; that failing, copper punches[37] might be used to form leaden matrices; then, when the necessity for a more durable substance than lead for the letter became urgent, copper would be used for the matrix, and brass, and finally steel, for the punch.

Of whatever substance the matrices were made, the first printers appear early to have mastered the art of justifying them, so that when cast in the mould they should not only stand, each letter true in itself, but all true to one another. Nothing amazes one more in examining these earliest printed works than the wonderful regularity of the type in body, height, and line; and if anything could be considered as evidence that those types were produced from matrices in {17} moulds, and not by the rude method of casting from matrices which comprehended body and face in the same moulding, this feature alone is conclusive. We may go further, and assert that not only must the matrices have been harmoniously justified, but the mould employed, whatever its form, must have had its adjustable parts finished with a near approach to mathematical accuracy, which left little to be accomplished in the way of further improvement.

Respecting this mould we have scarcely more material for conjecture than with regard to the first punches and matrices. The principle of the bipartite mould was, of course, well known already. The importance of absolute squareness in the body and height of the type would demand an appliance of greater precision than the uncertain hollowed cube of sand or clay; the heat of the molten lead would point to the use of a hard metal like iron or steel; and the varying widths of the sunk letters in the matrices would suggest the adoption of some system of slides whereby the mould could be expanded or contracted laterally, without prejudice to the invariable regularity of its body and height. By what crude methods the first typefounder contrived to combine these essential qualities, we have no means of judging[38]; but were they ever so crude, to him is due the honour of the culminating achievement of the invention of typography. “His type mould,” Mr. De Vinne remarks, “was not merely the first; it is the only practical mechanism for making types. For more than four hundred years this mould has been under critical examination, and many {18} attempts have been made to supplant it. . . . But in principle, and in all the more important features, the modern mould may be regarded as the mould of Gutenberg.”

2. Specimens illustrating the variations in the face of type produced by bad casting.

It may be asked, if the matrices were so truly justified, and the mould so accurately adjusted, how comes it that in the first books of these Mentz printers we still discover irregularites among the letters—fewer, indeed, but of the same kind as are to be found in books printed by the artists of the ruder school? To this we reply, that these irregularities are for the most part attributable neither to varieties in the original models, nor to defects in the matrix or the mould, but to the worn or unworn condition of the type, and to the skill or want of skill of the caster. Anyone versed in the practice of type-casting in hand-moulds, is aware that the manual exercise of casting a type is peculiar and difficult. With the same mould and the same matrix, one clever workman may turn out nineteen perfect types out of twenty; while a clumsy caster will scarcely succeed in producing a single perfect type out of the number. Different letters require different contortions to “coax” the metal into all the interstices of the matrix; and it is quite possible for the same workman to vary so in his work as to be as “lucky” one day as he is unprofitable the next. In modern times, of course, none but the perfect types ever find their way into the printer’s hands, but in the early days, when, with a perishable matrix, every type cast was of consequence, the censorship would be less severe,[39] and types would be allowed to {19} pass into use which differed as much from their original model as they did from one another. Let any inexperienced reader attempt to cast twenty Black-letter types from one mould and matrix, and let him take a proof of the types so produced in juxtaposition. The result of such an experiment would lead him to cease once and for all to wonder at irregularities observable in the Gutenberg Bible, or the Mentz Psalter, or the Catholicon.

With regard to the metal in which the earliest types were cast, we have more or less information afforded us in the colophons and statements of the printers themselves; although it must be borne in mind that the figurative language in which these artists were wont to describe their own labours is apt occasionally to lead to confusion, as to whether the expressions used refer to the punch, the matrix, or the cast types. We meet almost promiscuously with the terms,—“ære notas,” “æneis formulis,” “chalcographos,” “stanneis typis,” “stanneis formulis,” “ahenis formis,” “tabulis ahenis,” “ære legere,” “notas de duro orichalco,” etc. We look in vain for “plumbum,” the metal one would most naturally expect to find mentioned. The word æs, though strictly meaning bronze, is undoubtedly to be taken in its wider sense, already familiar in the fifteenth century, of metal in the abstract, and to include, at least, the lead, tin, or pewter in which the types were almost certainly cast. The reference to copper and bronze might either apply to the early punches or the later matrices; but in no case is it probable that types were cast in either metal.

Padre Fineschi gives an interesting extract from the cost-book of the Ripoli press, about 1480,[40] by which it appears that steel, brass, copper, tin, lead, and iron wire were all used in the manufacture of types at that period; the first two probably for the mould, the steel also for the punches, the copper for the matrices, the lead and tin for the types, and the iron wire for the mould, and possibly for stringing together the perforated type-models.

It is probable that an alloy was early introduced; first by the addition to the lead of tin and iron, and then gradually improved upon, till the discovery of {20} antimony at the end of the fifteenth century[41] supplied the ingredient requisite to render the types at once tough and sharp enough for the ordeal of the press. There is little doubt that at some time or other every known metal was tried experimentally in the mixture; but, from the earliest days of letter-casting, lead and tin have always been recognised as the staple ingredients of the alloy; the hard substance being usually either iron, bismuth, or antimony.

Turning now from type-casting appliances to the early types themselves, we are enabled, thanks to one or two recent discoveries, to form a tolerably good idea as to their appearance and peculiarities. We have already stated that, with regard to the traditional perforated wooden types seen by certain old writers, the probability is that, if these were the genuine relics they professed to be, they were model types used for forming moulds upon, or for impressing into matrices of moist clay or soft lead. We have also considered it possible, in regard to types cast in the primitive sand or clay moulds of the rude school, that to overcome the difficulties incident to irregular height to paper, uneven bodies, and loose locking-up, the expedient may have been attempted of perforating the types and passing a thread or wire through each line, to hold the intractable letters in their place.

This, however, is mere conjecture, and whether such types existed or not none of them have survived to our day. Their possessors, as they slowly discovered the secret of the punch, matrix and mould, would show little veneration, we imagine, for these clumsy relics of their ignorance, and value them only as old lead, to be remelted and recast by the newer and better method.

But though no relic of these primitive cast types remains, we are happily not without means for forming a judgment respecting some of the earliest types of the more finished school of printers. In 1878, in the bed of the river Saône, near Lyons,[42] opposite the site of one of the famous fifteenth century printing-houses of that city, a number of old types were discovered which there seems reason to believe belonged once to one of those presses, and were used by the early printers of Lyons. They came into the hands of M. Claudin of Paris, {21} the distinguished typographical antiquary, who, after careful examination and inquiry, has satisfied himself as to their antiquity and value as genuine relics of the infancy of the art of printing.

4. Profile tracings from M. Claudin’s Types. October 1883.

It has been our good fortune, by the kindness of M. Claudin, to have an opportunity of inspecting these precious relics. The following outline profile-sketches will give a good idea of the various forms and sizes represented in the collection. There is little doubt that they were all cast in a mould. The metal used is lead, slightly alloyed with some harder substance, which in the case of a few of the types seems to be iron. The chief point which strikes the observer is the variety in the “height to paper” of the different founts. Taking the six specimens shown in the illustration, it will be seen that no two of the types correspond in this particular. No. 4 corresponds as nearly as possible to our English standard height. No. 3 is considerably lower than an ordinary space height. No. 2 approaches some of the continental heights still to be met with, while Nos. 1, 5, and 6 are higher than any known standard. It is easy to imagine that an early printer who cast his own types would trouble himself very little as to the heights of his neighbours’ and rivals’ moulds, so that in a city like Lyons there might have been as many “heights to paper” as there were printers. It is even possible that a printer using one style and size of letter exclusively for one description of work, and another size and style for another description, might not be particular to assimilate the heights in his own office; and so, foreshadowing the improvidence of some of his modern followers, lay in founts of letter which would not work with any other, but which, as time went on, could hardly be dispensed with. Then, when the days of the itinerant typesellers and the type-markets began, he might still further add to his “heights” by the purchase of a German fount from one merchant, a Dutch from another, and so on.

The type No. 3, though lower than all the rest, has yet a letter upon its {22} end. But it seems likely that the old printers cut down their worn-out letters for spaces, not by ploughing off the face, but by shortening the type at the foot. So that No. 3 (presuming the bodies to have corresponded) might stand as a space to No. 4, or No. 4 to No. 1. At the same time, the collection includes a good number of plain spaces and quadrats (the latter generally about a square body), which may either have been cast as they now appear, or be old letters of which the face and shoulder have been cut off.

The small hole appearing in the side of type No. 4 is a perforation, and the collection contains several types, both letters and spaces, having the same peculiarity. Whether this hole was formed at the time of or after casting; whether the letters so perforated were originally model-types only, or types in actual use; whether the hole was intended for a thread or wire to hold the letters in their places during impression; or whether, for want of a type-case, it was used for stringing the types together for safety when not in use, it is as easy to conjecture as it is impossible to determine. The perforated types which we examined certainly did not appear to be older, and in most cases appeared less old than those not perforated,—the outline of type No. 4 itself shows it to be fairer and squarer than any of its companions.

Another peculiarity to be noted is the “shamfer,” or cutting away of one of the corners of the feet of types 2, 5, and 6. This appears to have been intentional, and may have served the same purpose as our nick, to guide the compositor in setting. None of the types have a nick, and types 1 and 3 have no distinguishing mark whatever. The two small indentations in the side of type 2 are air-holes produced in the casting.

With regard to the faces of the types, there are traces in most of the letters of the “shoulders” of the body having been tapered off by a knife or graver after casting, so as to leave the letter quite clear on the body. In most cases the letter stands in the centre of the body, which is, as a rule, larger than the size of the character actually requires. In point of thickness, however, the old printers appear to have been very sparing; and a great many of the letters, though possessing ample room “body-way,” actually overhang the sides, and are what we should style in modern terminology “kerned” letters. The difficulty, however, which would be experienced by printers to-day with these overhanging sorts, was obviated to a large extent in the case of the old printers by the numerous ligatures, contractions, and double letters with which their founts abounded, and which gave almost all the combinations in which an overhanging letter would be likely to clash with its neighbour.

One last peculiarity to be observed is the absence of what is known as the “break” at the foot of the type. The contrivance in the mould whereby the {23} foot of the type is cast square, and the “jet,” or superfluous metal left by the casting, is attached, not to the whole of the foot, but to a narrow ridge across the centre, from which it is easily detached, was probably unknown to the fifteenth century typefounders. Their types appear to have come out of the mould with a “jet” attaching to the entire foot, from which it could only be detached by a saw or cutter. The “shamfer” already pointed out in types 2, 5, 6, if produced in the mould, may indicate an early attempt to reduce the size of the jet, which, if attaching to the entire square of the foot of a type the size of No. 2, would involve both time and labour in removal. M. Duverger, in his clever essay to the invention of printing,[43] gives an illustration of the manner in which he imagines the old types would be detached from their jets; and considers that in the three points only of the want of a breaking “jet,” the want of a spring to hold the matrix to the mould, and the absence of a nick, the mould of the first printer differed essentially from that of the printer of his day.

3. Type Mould of Claude Garamond. Paris, 1540. (From Duverger.)

Such are some of the chief points of interest to be observed in these venerable relics of the old typographers. It is to be hoped that M. Claudin may before long favour the world with a full and detailed account of their many peculiarities. Yet, curious as they are, they prove that the types of the fifteenth century differed in no essential particular from those of the nineteenth. Ruder and rougher, and less durable they might be, but in substance and form, and in the mechanical principles of their manufacture, they claim kinship with the newest types of our most modern foundry. {24}

The old Lyonnaise relics are not the only guide we have as to the form and nature of the fifteenth century types.

M. Madden, in 1875, made a most valuable discovery in a book printed by Conrad Hamborch, at Cologne, in 1476, and entitled La Lèpre Morale, by John Nider, of the accidental impression of a type, pulled up from its place in the course of printing by the ink-ball, and laid at length upon the face of the forme, thus leaving its exact profile indented upon the page. We reproduce in facsimile M. Madden’s illustration of this type, which accompanies his own interesting letter on the subject.[44]

[Μ] 5. From M. Madden’s Lettres d’un Bibliographe. Ser. iv, p. 231.

[Μ] 6. From Liber de Laudibus ac Festis Gloriosæ Virginis. Cologne(?), 1468(?). Fol. 4 verso. (From the original.)

A similar discovery, equally valuable and interesting, was made not many months ago by the late Mr. Henry Bradshaw, of Cambridge, in a copy of a work entitled De Laudibus Gloriosæ Virginis Mariæ, sine notâ, but printed probably about 1468 at Cologne.[45] We are indebted to Mr. Bradshaw for the present opportunity of presenting for the first time the annexed facsimile of this curious relic, {25} photographed direct from the page on which it occurs.[46] These two impressions are particularly interesting in the light of the old Lyonnaise types still in existence. Like them, it will be seen they are without nick, and tapered off at the face. They are also without the jet-break. The height of both types (which is identical) is above the English standard, and more nearly approaches that of No. 2 of the Lyons letters; and M. Madden points out as remarkable that this height (24 millimètres) is exactly that fixed as the standard “height to paper” by the “réglement de la libraire” of 1723. The body of the types (assuming the letter to be laid sideways, of which there can be little doubt) is about the modern English, and so corresponds exactly to the body of the text on which it lies.

The chief point of interest, however, is in the small circle appearing in both near the top, which M. Madden (as regards the type of the Nider) thus explains: “This circle, the contour of which is exactly formed, shows that the letter was pierced laterally by a circular hole. This hole did not penetrate the whole thickness of the letter, and served, like the nick of our days, to enable the compositor to tell by touch which way to set the letter in his stick, so as to be right in the printed page. If the letter had been laid on its other side, the existence of this little circle would have been lost to us for ever.” It would, however, be quite possible for a perforated type, with the end of the hole slightly clogged with ink, to present precisely the same appearance as this, which M. Madden concludes was only slightly pierced; and were it not for the fact that the pulling-up of the letter from the forme is itself evidence that the line could not have been threaded, we should hesitate to affirm that either of the types shown was not perforated. The sharp edge of the circumference in the type of the De laudibus, leaving, as it does, in the original page, a clearly embossed circle in the paper, makes it evident that the depression was not the result of a mere flaw in the casting, although it is possible (as we have satisfied ourselves by experiment) for the surface of the side of a roughly-cast type to be depressed by air-holes, some of which assume a circular form, and may even perforate a thin type. Indeed, at the present day it is next to impossible to cast by hand a type which is not a little sunk on some part of its sides; and this roughness of surface we can imagine to have been far more apparent on the types {26} cast by the earliest printers. We doubt, therefore, whether, in types liable to these accidental depressions of surface, a small artificial hole thus easily simulated would be of any service as a guide to the compositor. A more probable explanation of the appearance seems to be that the head of a small screw or pin, used to fix the side-piece of the mould, projecting slightly on the surface of the piece it fixed, left its mark on the side of the types as they were cast, and thus caused the circular depression observable in the illustrations.[47]

Before leaving this subject it may be remarked that the clear impression of the printed matter, despite the laid-on types, which must in either case have been a thin sort, is strong evidence of the softness of the metal in which the fount was cast. The press appears to have crushed the truant types down into the letters on which it lay, and, unimpeded by the obstacle, to have taken as good an impression of the remainder of the forme as if that obstacle had never existed.

The quantity of type with which the earliest printers found it necessary to provide themselves, turns, of course, upon the question, did the first printers print only one page at a time, or more? M. Bernard considers that the Gutenberg Bible, which is usually collated in sections of five sheets, or twenty pages, containing about 2,688 types in a page, would require 60,000 types to print a single section; and if sufficient type was cast to enable the compositors to set one section while another was being worked, the fount would need to consist of 120,000 letters. Others consider that two pages, requiring, in the case of the Gutenberg Bible, only 6,000 types, were printed at one time. But even this estimate has been shown to be opposed to the evidence afforded by a considerable number of the incunabula, respecting which it is evident only one page was printed at a time. On this point we cannot do better than quote the words of Mr. Blades. “The scribe,” he says, “necessarily wrote but one page at a time, and, curiously enough, the early printers here also assimilated their practice. Whether from want of sufficient type to set up the requisite number of pages, or from the limited capability of the presses, there is strong evidence of the early books from Caxton’s press having been printed page by page. . . . . Instances are found of pages on the same side of the sheet being out of parallel, which could not occur if two pages were printed together. . . . A positive proof of the separate printing of the pages may be seen in a copy of the Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, in the Bodleian; {27} for the ninth recto of the third quaternion has never been printed at all, while the second verso (the page which must fall on the same side of the sheet) appears properly printed.”[48]

What is true of Caxton’s early works is also true of a large number of other fifteenth century printed books. Mr. Hessels, after quoting the testimony of Mr. Bradshaw of Cambridge, and Mr. Winter Jones of the British Museum, refers to a large number of incunabula in which he has found evidence that this mode of printing was the common practice of the early typographers.[49]

Assuming, then, that the first books were generally printed page by page, it will be seen that the stock of type necessary to enable the printer to proceed was but small. 2,700 letters would suffice for one page of the forty-two-line Bible; and for the Rationale Durandi, about 5,000 would be required. It is probable, however, that, as Bernard suggests, the printers would cast enough to enable one forme to be composed while the other was working, so that double these quantities would possibly be provided. Nor must it be forgotten that a “fount” of type in these days consisted not only of the ordinary letters of the alphabet, but of a very large number of double letters, abbreviations and contractions, which must have seriously complicated the labour of composition, as well as reduced the individual number of each type required to fill the typefounder’s “bill.” This feature, doubtless attributable to the attempt on the part of the early printers to imitate manuscript as closely as possible, as well as to the exigencies of justification in composition, which, in the absence of a variety of spaces, required various widths in the letters themselves, was common to both schools of early typography. M. Bernard states that, in the type of the forty-two-line Bible, each letter required at least three or four varieties; while with regard to Caxton’s type 1, which was designed and cast by Colard Mansion at Bruges, before 1472, Mr. Blades points out that the fount contained upwards of 163 sorts, and that there were only five letters of which there were not more than one matrix, either as single letters or in combination. Speaking of the Speculum, Mr. Skeen counts 1,430 types on one page, of which 22 are a, 61 e, 91 i, 73 o, 37 u, 22 d, 14 h, 30 m, 50 n, 42 s, and 41 t; besides which there are no less than ninety duplicate and triplicate characters, comprising one variation of a, 15 of c, 7 of d, 3 of e, 9 of f, 10 of g, 3 of i, 7 of l, 2 of o, 3 of n, 2 of p, 10 of r, 9 of s, 9 of t, varying in the frequency of their occurrence from once to eleven times, leaving but 541 other letters for the rest of the alphabet, including the capitals; {28} and of these last, from three to twenty would be the utmost of each required. Altogether, calculating 138 matrices (i.e., two alphabets of twenty-four letters each, and ninety double and treble letters) to be the least number of matrices required to make a complete fount,[50] the highest number of types of any one particular sort necessary to print a single page would be ninety-one. The average number of the eleven chief letters specified above would be about forty-four, while if we take into calculation the minor letters of the alphabet and the double letters, this average would be reduced to little more than ten. It will thus be seen that the founts of the earliest printers consisted of a small quantity each of a large variety of sorts. Mr. Astle, in his chapter on the Origin and Progress of Printing,[51] is, we believe, the only writer who has dwelt upon the difficulty which the first letter-founders would be likely to encounter in the arrangement of their “bill.” This venerable compilation was, he considers, made in the fifteenth century, probably by the ordinary method of casting-off copy. If so, it must have experienced considerable and frequent change during the time that the ligatures were falling into disuse, and until the printer’s alphabet had reduced itself to its present limits.

Of the face of type used by the earliest printers we shall have occasion to speak later on. Respecting the development of letter-founding as an industry, there is little that can be gathered in the history of the fifteenth century. At first the art of the inventor was a mystery divulged to none. But the sack of Mentz, in 1462, and the consequent dispersion of Gutenberg’s disciples, spread the secret broadcast over Europe. Italy, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Spain, England, in turn learned it, and after their fashion improved it. Italy, especially, guided by the master-hands of her early artists, brought it to rapid perfection. The migrations of Gutenberg’s types among the early presses of Bamberg, Eltville, and elsewhere, have led to the surmise that he may have sold matrices of his letter.[52] In 1468, Schoeffer put forward what may be considered the first advertisement in the annals of typography. “Every nation,” he says, in {29} the colophon to Justinian’s Institutes, “can now procure its own kind of letters, for he (i.e., Schoeffer himself) excels with all-prevailing pencil” (i.e., in designing and engraving all kinds of type).[53] For the most part printers were their own founders, and each printer had his own types. But type depôts and markets, and the wanderings of the itinerant typographers, as the demands of printing yearly increased, brought the founts of various presses and nations to various centres, and thus gave the first impulse to that gradual divorce between printing and typefounding which in the following century left the latter the distinct industry it still remains.

Such is a brief outline of the chief facts and opinions regarding the processes, appliances and practices of the earliest typefounders. It may be said that, after all, we know very little about the matter. The facts are very few, and the conjectures, in many instances, so contradictory, that it is impossible to erect a “system,” or draw any but general conclusions. These conclusions we very briefly summarise as follows.

Accepting as a fundamental principle that the essence of typography is in the mobility of the types, we dismiss, as beyond the scope of our inquiry, the xylographic works which preceded typography. Passing in review the alleged stepping-stones between the two arts, we fail to see in the evidence adduced as to the use of movable wooden perforated types anything to justify the conclusion that the earliest printers printed books by their means. Such types may have been cut experimentally, but the practical impossibility of cutting them square enough to be composed in a forme, and of producing a work of the size and character of the Speculum, is fatal to their claims. With regard to the sculpto-fusi types—types engraved on cast-metal bodies—the evidence in their favour is of the most unsatisfactory character, and, coupled with the practical difficulties of their production, reduces their claims to a minimum. The marked difference of style and excellence in the typography of certain of the earliest books leads us to accept the theory that two schools of typography existed side by side in the infancy of the art—one a rude school, which, not having the secret of the more perfect appliances of the inventors, cast its letters by some primitive method, probably using moulds of sand or clay, in which the entire type had been moulded. Such types may have been perforated and held together in lines by a wire. The suggestion that the earliest types were produced by a system of polytype, and that the face of each letter, sawn off a plate resembling a {30} stereotype-plate, was separately mounted on loose wooden shanks, we dismiss as purely fanciful.

Turning now to the processes adopted by the typographers of the more advanced school, we consider that in the first instance, although grasping the principle of the punch, the matrix and the adaptable mould, they may have made use of inferior appliances—possibly by forming their matrices in lead from wooden or leaden punches or models—advancing thence by degrees to the use of steel punches, copper matrices, and the bipartite iron mould. We hold that the variations observable in the early works of this school are due mainly to uneven casting and wear and tear of the types. As to the metal in which the type was cast, we find mention made of almost every metal, several of which, however, refer to the punches and matrices, leaving tin, lead, and antimony as the staple ingredients of the type-metal. Of the types themselves, we find these in most essential particulars to be the same as those cast at a later date. We see, however, evidence of perforated, mould-cast type, and, in the absence of a nick, a “shamfer” at the foot, from which the jet appears to have been sawn or cut, instead of being broken. We remark a great irregularity in the heights of different founts, the average of which height is beyond any modern English standard. The accidental impression of a type in two early German books, proves that about the year 1476 types were made differing only in the two points of the want of a nick and the want of a jet-break from the types of to-day. The quantity of types required by the earliest printers, we consider, would be small, since they appear in most instances to have printed only one page at a time; but the number of different sorts going to make up a fount would be very considerable, by reason of the numerous contractions, double letters and abbreviations used.

Finally, we consider that the art of letter-founding rapidly reached maturity after the general diffusion of printing consequent on the sack of Mentz; and that when the writer of the Cologne Chronicle, in the last year of the 15th century, spoke of “the art as now generally used,” he spoke of an art which, at the close of the 19th century, has been able to improve in no essential principle on the processes first made use of by the great inventors of Typography.

CHAPTER I

THE ENGLISH TYPE BODIES AND FACES.

E have laid before the reader, in the Introductory Chapter, such facts and conjectures as it is possible to gather together respecting the processes and appliances adopted by the first letter-founders, and shall, with a view to render the particular history of the English Letter Foundries more intelligible, endeavour to present here, in as concise a form as possible, a short historical sketch of the English type bodies and faces, tracing particularly the rise and development of the Roman, Italic, and Black letters before and subsequent to their introduction into this country; adding, in a following chapter, a similar notice of the types of the principal foreign and learned languages which have figured conspicuously in English typography.

TYPE-BODIES.

The origin of type-bodies and the nomenclature which has grown around them, is a branch of typographical antiquity which has always been shrouded in more or less obscurity. Imagining, as we do, that the moulds of the first printers were of a primitive construction, and, though conceived on true principles, were adjusted to the various sizes of letter they had to cast more by eye than by rule, it is easy to understand that founts would be cast on no other principle than that of ranging in body and line and height in themselves, irrespective of the body, height and line of other founts used in the same press. When two or more {32} founts were required to mix in the same work, then the necessity of a uniform standard of height would become apparent. When two or more founts were required to mix in the same line, a uniformity in body, and if possible in alignment, would be found necessary. When initials or marginal notes required to be incorporated with the text, then the advantage of a mathematical proportion between one body and another would suggest itself.

At first, doubtless, the printer would name his sizes of type according to the works for which they were used. His Canon type would be the large character in which he printed the canon of the Mass. His Cicero type would be the letter used in his editions of that classical author. His Saint Augustin, his Primer, his Brevier, his Philosophie, his Pica type, would be the names by which he would describe the sizes of letter he used for printing the works whose names they bore. It may also be assumed with tolerable certainty that in most of these cases, originally, the names described not only the body, but the “face” of their respective founts. At what period this confused and haphazard system of nomenclature resolved itself into the definite printer’s terminology it is difficult to determine. The process was probably a gradual one, and was not perfected until typefounding became a distinct and separate trade.

The earliest writers on the form and proportion of letters,—Dürer[54] in 1525, Tory[55] in 1529, and Ycair[56] in 1548,—though using terms to distinguish the different faces of letter, were apparently unaware of any distinguishing names for the bodies of types. Tory, indeed, mentions Canon and Bourgeoise; but in both cases he refers to the face of the letter; and Ycair’s distinction of “teste y glosa” applies generally to the large and small type used for the text and notes respectively of the same work.[57]

In England, type-bodies do not appear to have been reduced to a definite scale much before the end of the sixteenth century. Mores[58] failed to trace them further back than 1647; but in a Regulation of the Stationers’ Company, dated 1598,[59] Pica, English, Long Primer, and Brevier are mentioned by name as apparently well-established bodies at that time; and in a petition to the same Company in 1635,[60] Nonpareil and “two-line letters” are mentioned as equally familiar.

Moxon, our first writer on the subject, in his Mechanick Exercises, in 1683, {33} described ten regular bodies in common use in his day, and added to his list the number of types of each body that went to a foot, viz.:—

“We have one body more,” he adds, “which is sometimes used in England; that is, a Small Pica: but I account it no great discretion in a master-printer to provide it, because it differs so little from the Pica, that unless the workmen be carefuller than they sometimes are, it may be mingled with the Pica, and so the beauty of both founts may be spoiled.”

In this sentence we have the first record of the introduction of irregular bodies into English typography, an innovation destined very speedily to expand, and within half a century increase the number of English bodies by the seven following additions:

The origin of these irregular bodies it is easy to explain. Between Moxon’s time and 1720 the country was flooded with Dutch type. The English founders were beaten out of the field in their own market, and James, in self-defence, had to furnish his foundry entirely with Dutch moulds and matrices. Thus we had the typefounding of two nations carried on side by side. An English printer furnished with a Dutch fount would require additions to it to be cast to the Dutch standard, which might be smaller or larger than that laid down for English type by Moxon, and yet so near that even if it lost or gained a few types in the foot, it would still be called by its English name, which would thenceforth represent two different bodies. If, on the other hand, a new fount were imported, or cut by an ill-regulated artist here, which when finished was found to be as much too large for one regular body as it was too small for another, a body would be found to fit it between the two, and christened by a new name. In this manner, Minion, Bourgeois, Small Pica, Paragon, and two-line Pica insinuated themselves into the list of English bodies, and in this manner arose that ancient anomaly, the various body-standards of the English foundries. For a founder who was constantly called upon to alter his mould to accommodate a printer requiring a special body, would be likely to cast a quantity of the letter in excess of what was immediately ordered; and this store, if not sold in due time to the person for whom it was cast, would be disposed of to the first {34} comer who, requiring a new fount, and not particular as to body, provided the additions afterwards to be had were of the same gauge, would take it off the founder’s hands. Facilis descensus Averni ! Having taken the one downward step, the founder would be called upon constantly to repeat it, his moulds would remain set, some to the right, some to the wrong standard, and every type he cast would make it more impossible for him or his posterity to recover the simple standard from which he had erred.

Such we imagine to have been the origin of the irregular and ununiform bodies. Even in 1755, when Smith published his Printer’s Grammar, the mischief was beyond recall. In no single instance were the standards given by him identical with those of 1683. Indeed, where each founder had two or three variations of each body in his own foundry it is impossible to speak of a standard at all. Smith points out that, in the case of English and Pica alone, Caslon had four varieties of the former, and the Dutch two; while of the latter, Caslon had three, and James two. Nevertheless, he gives a scale of the bodies commonly in use in his day, which it will be interesting to compare with Moxon’s on the one hand, and the standard of the English foundries in 1841 as given by Savage, on the other.

This list does not include Trafalgar, Emerald, and Ruby, which, however, were in use before 1841. The first named has disappeared in England, as also has Paragon. The Printer’s Grammar of 1787 mentions a body in use at that time named “Primer,” between Great Primer and English.

It is not our purpose to pursue this comparison further or more minutely; nor does it come within the scope of this work to enter into a technical {35} examination of the various schemes which have been carried out abroad, and attempted in this country, to do away with the anomalies in type-bodies, and restore a uniform invariable standard. The above table will suffice as a brief historical note of the growth of these anomalies.

As early as 1725, in France, an attempt was made to regulate by a public decree, not only the standard height of a type, but the scale of bodies. But the system adopted was clumsy, and only added to the confusion it was designed to remove. Fournier, in 1737, invented his typographical points, the first successful attempt at a mathematical systematisation of type-bodies, which has since, with the alternative system of Didot, done much in simplifying French typography. England, Germany, and Holland have been more conservative, and therefore less fortunate. Attempts were made by Fergusson in 1824,[61] and by Bower of Sheffield about 1840,[62] and others, to arrive at a standard of uniformity; but their schemes were not warmly taken up, and failed.

Before proceeding to a brief historical notice of the different English type-bodies, we shall trouble the reader with a further table, compiled from specimen-books of the 18th century, showing what have been the names of the corresponding bodies in the foundries of other nations,—premising, however, that these names must be taken as representing the approximate, rather than the actual, equivalent in each case[63]:—

{36}

A few notes on the origin of the names of English type-bodies will conclude our observations on this subject.

CANON.

Passing the next four bodies, which with us are merely reduplications,[64] we note that—

DOUBLE PICA,

PARAGON,

GREAT PRIMER.

ENGLISH

PICA.

SMALL PICA,

LONG PRIMER,

BOURGEOIS.

BREVIER.

MINION,

NONPAREIL,

PEARL,

DIAMOND

It now remains to trace briefly the origin and development of the leading type-faces used in English Typography.

I.—ROMAN.

To trace the history of the Roman character would almost require a résumé of the works of all the greatest printers in each country of Europe. It must suffice to point out very briefly the changes it underwent before and after reaching England.

ITALY.

GERMANY.

[Μ] 7. From the Sophologium “à l’

bizarre.” Wiedenbach (?), 1465–70.

Roman type was adopted before 1473 by Mentelin of Strasburg, whose beautiful letter placed him in the front rank of German printers. Gunther Zainer, who settled at Augsburg in 1469, after printing some works in the round Gothic, also adopted, in 1472, the Roman of the Venetian School, founts of which he is said to have brought direct from Italy. The German name of Antiqua, applied to the Roman character, has generally been supposed to imply a reluctance to admit the claim of Italy to the credit of introducing this style of letter. As, however, the Italians themselves called the letter the “Lettera Antiqua tonda,” the imputation against Germany is unfounded.[82] The French, Dutch, and English called it “Roman” from the first. {43}

FRANCE.

NETHERLANDS.

SWITZERLAND

ENGLAND.

[Μ] 8. From Traheron’s Exposition of St. John. Wesel (?), 1557. Showing Roman and Black-letter intermixed.

The Roman made its way rapidly in English typography during the first half of the sixteenth century, and in the hands of such artists as Faques, Rastell, Wyer, Berthelet, and Day, maintained an average excellence. But it rapidly degenerated, and while other countries were dazzling Europe by the brilliancy of their impressions, the English Roman letter went from good to bad, and from bad to worse. No type is more beautiful than a beautiful Roman; and with equal truth it may be said, no type is more unsightly than an ill-fashioned and ill-worked Roman. While Claude Garamond[85] in France was carrying out into noble practice the theories of the form and proportion of letters set out by his master, Geofroy Tory; while the Estiennes at Paris, Sebastian Gryphe at Lyons, Froben at Basle, Froschouer at Zurich, and Christopher Plantin at Antwerp, were moulding and refining their alphabets into models which were to become {45} classical, English printers, manacled body and soul by their patents and monopolies and state persecutions, achieved nothing with the Roman type that was not retrograde. For a time a struggle appears to have existed between the Black-letter and the Roman for the mastery of the English press, and at one period the curious spectacle was presented of mixed founts of the two. We present our readers with a specimen of English printing at a foreign press in this transition period, as illustrative not only of the compromise between the two rival characters, but of the average unappetising appearance of the typography {46} of the day. Always impressionable and unoriginal, our national Roman letter, in the midst of many admirable models, chose the Dutch for its pattern, and tried to imitate Plantin and Elzevir, but with very little of the spirit of those great artists. No English work of the time, printed in English Roman type, reproduces within measurable distance the elegant embonpoint, the harmony, the symmetry of the types of the famous Dutch printers. The seeker after the beautiful looks almost in vain for anything to satisfy his eye in the English Roman-printed works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A few exceptions there are[86]; and when the English printers, giving up the attempt to cut Roman for themselves, went to Holland to buy it; or when, as in the case of Oxford and Thomas James, the English foundries became furnished with Dutch matrices, our country was able to produce a few books the appearance of which does not call forth a blush.

The first English Bible printed in Roman type was Bassendyne’s edition in Edinburgh, in 1576. We have it on the authority of Watson[87] that, from the earliest days of Scotch typography, a constant trade in type and labour was maintained between Holland and Scotland; and he exhibited in his specimen pages the Dutch Romans which at that day were the most approved letters in use in his country.

Utilitarian motives brought about one important departure from the first models of the Roman letter in the different countries where it flourished. The early printers were generous in their ideas, and cut their letters with a single eye to artistic beauty. But as printing gradually ceased to be an art, and became a trade, economical considerations suggested a distortion or cramping of these beautiful models, with a view to “getting more in.” In some cases the variation was made gracefully and inoffensively. The slender or compressed Roman letters of the French, Italian, and in some cases the Dutch printers, though not comparable with the round ones, are yet regular and neat; but in other cases, ours among them, there was little of either delicacy or skill in the innovation. The early part of the seventeenth century witnessed the creation abroad of some very small Roman faces, foremost among which were those of the beautiful little Sedan editions of Jannon,[88] which gave their name to the body of the microscopic letter {47} in which they were printed. Van Dijk cut a still smaller letter for the Dutch in Black-letter, and afterwards in Roman; and for many years the Dutch Diamond held the palm as the smallest fount in Europe. England followed the general tendency towards the minute, and though it is doubtful whether either Pearl or Diamond were cut by English founders before 1700, an English printer, Field, accomplished in 1653 the feat of printing a 32mo Bible in Pearl.[89] Among English printers in the seventeenth century who did credit to their profession, Roycroft is conspicuous, especially for the handsome large Romans in which he printed Ogilby’s Virgil,[90] and other works. Yet Roycroft’s handsomest letter—that in which he printed the Royal Dedication to the Polyglot of 1657—was the fount used nearly a century before by Day,[91] whose productions few English printers of the seventeenth century could equal, and none, certainly, could excel. Of Moxon’s attempt in 1683 to regenerate the Roman letter in England, we shall have occasion to speak elsewhere. His theories, as put into practice by himself, were eminently unsuccessful; and though the sign-boards of the day may have profited by his rules, it is doubtful if typography did. His enthusiastic praise of the Dutch letter of Van Dijk may have stimulated the trade between England and Holland; but at home his precepts fell flat for lack of an artist to carry them out.

That artist was forthcoming in William Caslon in 1720, and from the time he cut his first fount of pica, the Roman letter in England entered on a career of honour. Caslon went back to the Elzevirs for his models, and throwing into his labour the genius of an enlightened artistic taste, he reproduced their letters with a precision and uniformity hitherto unknown among us, preserving at the same time that freedom and grace of form which had made them of all others the most beautiful types in Europe. Caslon’s Roman became the fashion, and English typography was loyal to it for nearly 80 years. Baskerville’s exquisite letters were, as he himself acknowledged, inspired by those of Caslon. They were sharper and more delicate in outline, and when finely printed, as they always were, were more attractive to the eye.[92] But what they gained in brilliance they missed in sterling dignity; they dazzled the eye and fatigued it, and the fashion of the {48} national taste was not seriously diverted. Still less was it diverted by the experiments of a “nouvelle typographie,” which Luce, Fournier, and others were trying to introduce into France. The stiff, narrow, cramped Roman which these artists produced scarcely finds a place in any English work of the eighteenth century. The Dutch type was now no longer looked at. Wilson, whose letter adorned the works of the Foulis press, and Jackson, whose exquisite founts helped to make the fame of Bensley, as those of his successor Figgins helped to continue it, all adhered to the Caslon models. And all these artists, with Cottrell, Fry, and others, contributed to a scarcely less important reform in English letter-founding, namely, the production by each founder of his own uniform series of Roman sizes,—a feature wofully absent in the odd collections of the old founders before 1720. Towards the close of the century the Roman underwent a violent revolution. The few founders who had begun about 1760 in avowed imitation of Baskerville, had found it in their interest before 1780 to revert to the models of Caslon; and scarcely had they done so, when about 1790 the genius of Didot of Paris and Bodoni of Parma took the English press by storm, and brought about that complete abandonment of the Caslon-Elzevir models which marked, and in some cases disfigured, the last years of the eighteenth century. The famous presses of Bensley and Bulmer introduced the modern Roman under the most favourable auspices. The new letter was honest, businesslike, and trim; but in its stiff angles, its rigid geometrical precision, long hair-seriffs, and sharp contrasts of shade, there is little place for the luxuriant elegance of the old style.[93] In France, the new fashion, even with so able an exponent as Didot, had a competitor in the Baskerville type, which, rejected by us, was welcomed by the French literati. Nor was this the only instance in which the fashion went from England to France, for in 1818 the Imprimerie Royale itself, in want of a new typographie of the then fashionable Roman, came to London for the punches.

The typographical taste of the first quarter of the present century suffered a distinct vulgarisation in the unsightly heavy-faced Roman letters, which were not only offered by the founders, but extensively used by the printers; and the date at which we quit this brief survey is not a glorious one. The simple uniformity of faces which characterised the specimens of Caslon and his disciples had been corrupted by new fancies and fashions, demanded by the printer and conceded by the founder,—fashions which, as Mr. Hansard {49} neatly observed in 1825, “have left the specimen of a British letter-founder a heterogeneous compound, made up of fat-faces and lean-faces, wide-set and close-set, proportioned and disproportioned, all at once crying “Quousque tandem abutêre patientia nostra?”

Some of the coarsest of the new fashions were happily short-lived; and it is worth transgressing our limit to record the fact that in 1844 the beautiful old-face of Caslon was, in response to a demand from outside, revived, and has since, in rejuvenated forms, regained both at home and abroad much of its old popularity.

It will not be out of place to add a word, before leaving the Roman, in reference to letter-founders’ specimens. When printers were their own founders, the productions of their presses were naturally also the published specimens of their type. They might, like Schoeffer, in the colophon to the Justinian in 1468, call attention to their skill in cutting types; or, like Caxton, print a special advertisement in a special type; or, like Aldus, put forward a specimen of the types of a forthcoming work.[94] But none of these are letter-founders’ specimens; nor was it till letter-founding became a distinct trade that such documents became necessary. England was probably behind other nations when, in 1665, the tiny specimen of Nicholas Nicholls was laid under the Royal notice. It is doubtful whether any founder before Moxon issued a full specimen of his types. He used the sheet as a means of advertising not only his types, but his trade as a mathematical instrument maker; and his specimen, taken in connection with his rules for the formation of letters, is a sorry performance, and not comparable to the Oxford University specimen, which that press published in 1693, exhibiting the gifts of Dr. Fell and Junius. Of the other English founders before 1720, no type specimen has come down to us; that shown by Watson in his History of the Art of Printing being merely a specimen of bought Dutch types. Caslon’s sheet, in 1734, marked a new departure. It displayed at a glance the entire contents of the new foundry; and by printing the same passage in each size of Roman, gave the printer an opportunity of judging how one body compared with another for capacity. Caslon was the first to adopt the since familiar “Quousque tandem” for his Roman specimens. The Latin certainly tends to show off the Roman letter to best advantage; but it gives an inadequate idea of its appearance in any other tongue. “The Latin language,” says Dibdin, “presents to the eye a great uniformity or evenness of effect. The m and n, like the solid sirloin upon our table, have a substantial appearance; no garnishing with useless {50} herbs . . to disguise its real character. Now, in our own tongue, by the side of the m or n, or at no great distance from it, comes a crooked, long-tailed g, or a th, or some gawkishly ascending or descending letter of meagre form, which are the very flankings, herbs, or dressings of the aforesaid typographical dish, m or n. In short, the number of ascending or descending letters in our own language—the p’s, l’s, th’s, and sundry others of perpetual recurrence—render the effect of printing much less uniform and beautiful than in the Latin language. Caslon, therefore, and Messrs. Fry and Co. after him,”—and he might have added all the other founders of the eighteenth century,—“should have presented their specimens of printing-types in the English language; and then, as no disappointment could have ensued, so no imputation of deception would have attached.”[95] Several founders followed Caslon’s example by issuing their specimens on a broadside sheet, which could be hung up in a printing-office, or inset in a cyclopædia. Baskerville appears to have issued only specimens of this kind; but Caslon, Cottrell, Wilson and Fry, who all began with sheets, found it necessary to adopt the book form. These books were generally executed by a well-known printer, and are examples not only of good types, but of fine printing. Bodoni’s splendid specimens roused the emulation of our founders, and the small octavo volumes of the eighteenth century gave place at the commencement of the nineteenth to quarto, often elaborately, sometimes sumptuously got up. Mr. Figgins was the first to break through the traditional “Quousque tandem,” by adding, side by side with the Latin extract, a passage in the same-sized letter in English. But it has not been till comparatively recent years that the venerable Ciceronian denunciation has finally disappeared from English letter-founders’ specimens.

ITALIC.

The ITALIC letter, which is now an accessory of the Roman, claims an origin wholly independent of that character. It is said to be an imitation of the handwriting of Petrarch, and was introduced by Aldus Manutius of Venice, for the purpose of printing his projected small editions of the classics, which, either in the Roman or Gothic character, would have required bulky volumes. Chevillier informs us that a further object was to prevent the excessive number of contractions then in use, a feature which rendered the typography of the day often unintelligible, and always unsightly.[96] The execution of the Aldine Italic was entrusted {51} to Francesco da Bologna,[97] who, says Renouard, had already designed and cut the other characters of Aldus’ press. The fount is a “lower-case” only, the capitals being Roman in form. It contains a large number of tied letters, to imitate handwriting, but is quite free from contractions and ligatures. It was first used in the Virgil of 1501, and rapidly became famous throughout Europe. Aldus produced six different sizes between 1501–58. It was counterfeited almost immediately in Lyons and elsewhere. The Junta press at Florence produced editions scarcely distinguishable from those of Venice. Simon de Colines cut an Italic bolder and larger than that of Aldus, and introduced the character into France about 1521, prior to which date Froben of Basel had already made use of it at his famous press. Plantin used a large Italic in his Polyglot, but, like many other Italics of the period, it was defaced by a strange irregularity in the slopes of the letters. The character was originally called Venetian or Aldine, but subsequently took the name of Italic in all the countries into which it travelled, except Germany, which, acting with the same independence as had been displayed towards the Roman, called it “Cursiv.” The Italians also adopted the Latin name, “Characteres cursivos seu cancellarios.”

The Italic was at first intended and used for the entire text of a classical work. Subsequently, as it became more general, it was used to distinguish portions of a book not properly belonging to the work, such as introductions, prefaces, indexes, and notes; the text itself being in Roman. Later, it was used in the text for quotations; and finally served the double part of emphasising certain words[98] in some works, and in others, chiefly the translations of the Bible, of marking words not rightly forming a part of the text.

In England it was first used by De Worde, in Wakefield’s Oratio, in 1524. Day, about 1567, carried it to a high state of perfection; so much so, that his Italic remained in use for several generations. Vautrollier, also, in his New Testaments, made use of a beautiful small Italic, which, however, was probably of foreign cut. Like the Roman, the Italic suffered debasement during the century which followed Day, and the Dutch models were generally preferred {52} by English printers. These were carried down to a minute size, the “Robijn Italic” of Christopher Van Dijk being in its day the smallest in Europe.

[Μ] 9. Robijn Italic, cut by Chr. van Dijk. (From the matrices in the Enschedé foundry.)

It is not easy to fix the period at which the Roman and Italic became united and interdependent. Very few English works occur printed wholly in Italic, and there seems little doubt that before the close of the sixteenth century the founders cast Roman and Italic together as one fount. The Italic has undergone fewer marked changes than the Roman. Indeed, in many of the early foundries, and till a later date, one face of Italic served for two or more Romans of the same body. We find the same Italic side by side with a broad-faced Roman in one book, and a lean-faced in another. Frequently the same face is made to serve not only for its correct body, but for the bodies next above or below it, so that we may find an Italic of the Brevier face cast respectively on Brevier, Bourgeois, and Minion bodies. These irregularities were the more noticeable from the constant admixture in seventeenth and eighteenth century books of Roman and Italic in the same lines; the latter being commonly used for all proper names, as well as for emphatic words. The chief variations in form have been in the capital letters, and the long-tailed letters of the lower-case. The tendency to flourish these gradually diminished on the cessation of the Dutch influence, and led the way to the formal, tidy Italics of Caslon and the founders of the eighteenth century, some of whom, however, consoled themselves for their loss of liberty in regard to most of their letters, by more or less extravagance in the tail of the

which commenced the Quousque tandem of their specimens. As in the case of the Roman, Caslon cut a uniform series of Italics, having due relation, in the case of each body, to the size and proportions of the corresponding Roman. The extensive, and sometimes indiscriminate, use of Italic gradually corrected itself during the eighteenth century; and on the abandonment, both in Roman and Italic, of the long ſ and its combinations,[99] English books were left less disfigured than they used to be. {53}

BLACK LETTER.

10. Gothic type, or “Lettre de Forme,” said to have been engraved circa 1480.

(From the original matrices in the Enschedé foundry.)

The Gothic letter employed by the inventors of printing for the Bible, Psalter, and other sacred works, was an imitation of the formal hand of the German scribes, chiefly monastic, who supplied the clergy of the day with their books of devotion. This letter, as a typographical character, took the name of LETTRE DE FORME, as distinguished from the rounder and less regular manuscript-hand of the Germans of the fifteenth century, which was adopted by Schoeffer in the Rationale, the Catholicon, and other works, and which became known as LETTRE DE SOMME. The pointed Gothic, or LETTRE DE FORME, a name[100] generally supposed to have reference to the precision in the figure of the old ecclesiastical character (although some authorities have considered it to be a corrupt, rather than a standard form of handwriting), preserved its character with but little variation in all the countries to which it travelled. It is scarcely necessary to detail its first appearance at the various great centres of European typography, except to notice that in Italy and France it came later than the Roman.[101] In England it appears first in Caxton’s type No. 3,[102] and figures largely in nearly all the presses of our early printers. De Worde was, in all probability, the first to cut punches of it in this country, and to produce the letter which henceforth took the name of “English,” as being the national character of our early typography. De Worde’s English, or as it was subsequently styled, Black-letter, was for two centuries and a half looked upon as the model for all his successors in the art; indeed, to this day, a Black-letter {54} is held to be excellent, as it resembles most closely the character used by our earliest printers. The Black being employed in England to a late date, not only for Bibles, but for law books and royal proclamations and Acts of Parliament, has never wholly fallen into disuse among us. The most beautiful typography of which we as a nation can boast during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is to be found in the Black-letter impressions of our printers. The Old English was classed with the Roman and Italic by Moxon as one of the three orders of printing-letter; and in this particular our obligations to the Dutch are much less apparent than in any other branch of the printing art. Indeed, the English Black assumed characteristics of its own which distinguished it from the LETTRE FLAMAND of the Dutch on the one hand, and the FRACTUR of the Germans on the other. It has occasionally suffered compression in form, and very occasionally expansion; but till 1800 its form was not seriously tampered with. Caslon was praised for his faithful reproduction of the genuine Old English; other founders, like Baskerville, did not even attempt the letter; the old Blacks were looked upon as the most useful and interesting portion of James’s foundry at its sale[103]; and the Roxburgh Club, those Black-letter heroes of the early years of this century, dismissed all the new-fangled founts of modern founders in favour of the most venerable relics of the early English typographers. Of these newfangled Blacks, it will suffice to recall Dibdin’s outburst of righteous indignation—“Why does he (i.e., Mr. Whittingham), and many other hardly less distinguished printers, adopt that frightful, gouty, disproportionate, eye-distracting and taste-revolting form of Black-letter, too frequently visible on the frontispieces of his books? It is contrary to all classical precedent, and outrageously repulsive in itself. Let the ghost of Wynkin de Worde haunt him till he abandon it!”[104]

[Μ] 11. Philosophie Flamand, engraved by Fleischman, 1743. (From the matrices in the Enschedé foundry.)

The LETTRE DE SOMME of the Germans, which, as we have seen, was adopted by Schoeffer in 1459, became in the hands of the fifteenth century printers a rival to the Gothic. Whether, as some state, it was derived from the Gothic, or was a distinct hand used by the lay scribes, we need not here discuss. Its name has been generally supposed to owe its origin to the fact that among the earliest works printed in this character was the Summa fratris S. Thomas de Aquino.[105] {55} Others derive the name from the carelessly formed letters used in books of account. This letter developed in considerable variety among the early presses of the fifteenth century. Its main characteristics being that of a round Gothic,[106] or at least of a Gothic shorn of its angles, it lent itself readily to the influence of the Roman, and we find it, as in the case of the first Italian books, merging into that character; while in the case of many of the German and Netherlands presses we find it occasionally absorbing that character, adopting its form frequently in the capitals, and “Gothicising” it in the lower-case. But to arrive at an accurate idea of the changes and varieties of the LETTRE DE SOMME, it is necessary to study carefully the productions of the various presses and schools of typography in which it was used. In England it appeared, as might be expected, in some of the early works of the first Oxford press,[107] whither it was brought from Cologne. But it never took root in the country, and was speedily rejected for the national Gothic, only to reappear as an exotic or a curiosity.

SECRETARY.

The SECRETARY, or GROS-BÂTARDE, was the manuscript-hand employed by the English and Burgundian scribes in the fifteenth century. It was, therefore, only natural that Caxton, like his typographical tutor, Colard Mansion of Bruges, should adopt this character for his earliest works, in preference to the less familiar Gothic, Semi-Gothic, or Roman letter. The French possessed a similar character, which, according to Fournier, was first cut by a German named Heilman, resident in Paris about 1490. But several years before 1490 the Gros-Bâtarde was in use in France; in some cases the resemblance between the French and English types being remarkable. The Rouen printers, who executed some of the great law books for the London printers early in the sixteenth century, used a particularly neat small-sized letter of this character. Like the Semi-Gothic, the Secretary, after figuring in several of the early London and provincial presses, yielded to the English Black-letter, and after about 1534 did not reappear in English typography. It developed, however, several curious variations; the chief of which were what Rowe Mores describes as the SET-COURT, the BASE SECRETARY, and the RUNNING SECRETARY. Of the first named, James’s foundry in 1778 possessed two founts, come down from Grover’s[108]; but as the old deformed Norman law hand which they represented was abolished by law in 1733, the matrices, which at no time appear to have been much used, {56} became valueless. The name COURT HAND has since been appropriated for one of the modern scripts. Its place was taken in law work by the ENGROSSING hand, which Mores denominates as Base Secretary. Of this character, the only fount in England appears to have been that cut by Cottrell about 1760.[109] The RUNNING SECRETARY was another law hand, described by Mores as the law Cursive of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It was similar to the French Cursive, of which Nicolas Granjon in 1556 cut the first punches at Lyons. Granjon’s letter at first was called after its author, but subsequently became known as LETTRE DE CIVILITÉ, on account of its use, so Fournier informs us, in a work entitled la Civilité puerile et honnête, to teach children how to write. Plantin possessed a similar character in more than one size, which he made use of in dedications and other prefatory matter. The English fount in Grover’s foundry appears to have been the only one in this country.

[Μ] 12. Lettre de Civilité, cut by Ameet Tavernier for Plantin, circa 1570. (From the matrices in the Enschedé foundry.)

The SCRIPT, by which is meant the conventional copy-book writing hand, as distinguished from the Italic on the one hand and the law hand on the other, is another form of the Bâtarde, and is supposed to have originated with Pierre Moreau of Paris, whose widow in 1648 published a very curious Virgil, the first volume of which is printed in this character, in four or five sizes. The Dutch founders copied it, and the curious founts in Grover’s foundry were probably most of them of Dutch origin.[110] About 1760 Cottrell and Jackson both cut improved founts of this character. The Script, which the French have called LETTRE COULÉE and LETTRE DE FINANCE, and the Germans GESCHREVEN SCHRIFT, has undergone a good many changes, especially during the present century. M. Didot in 1815 introduced a series of ligatures, or connectors, which had the effect of making the letters in each word join continuously; and at the same time cast his letters on an inclined body, so as to fit closely together, and be self-supporting. His system, however, involved a large number of combination-letters and ligatures, which rendered it generally impracticable; and it was eventually replaced by a square-bodied Script, contrived to unite all the advantages, and obviate all the disadvantages, of his ingenious system.

CHAPTER II. TYPE FACES (CONTINUED).

THE LEARNED, FOREIGN, AND PECULIAR CHARACTERS.

GREEK.

REEK type first occurs in the Cicero de Officiis, printed at Mentz in 1465, at the press of Fust and Schoeffer. The fount used is exceedingly rude and imperfect, many of the letters being ordinary Latin.[111] In the same year Sweynheim and Pannartz at Subiaco used a good Greek letter for some of the quotations occurring in Lactantius; but the supply being short, the larger quotations were left blank, to be filled in by hand. The first book wholly printed in Greek was the Grammar of Lascaris, by Paravisinus, in Milan, in 1476, in types stated to be cut and cast by Demetrius of Crete. The fount (about a Great Primer in body) is a curious one, and contains breathings, accents and a few abbreviations. The headings to the chapters are wholly in capitals, which are very bold.[112] It is to the glory of Milan that not only was the first Greek book printed within its walls, but also the first Greek classic and the first portion of the Greek Scriptures. The former was the Æsop, printed, it is supposed, in 1480, but without printer’s name. The resemblance, however, {58} between the fount of this work and that of the Lactantius is so close that there seems much reason for crediting Paravisinus with the performance. The Greek of the Psalter of 1481 is very different, the lower-case being larger, and remarkably bold and compact in appearance. The capitals generally resemble the Lactantius fount.

Jenson, at Venice, appears to have cut Greek type as early as about 1470. In 1486 two Cretan printers produced respectively a Greek Psalter, with accents and breathings, and Homer’s Batrachomyomachia. It was, however, reserved to Florence to boast of the first complete edition of Homer, which was printed in that city in 1488. This work, one of the most glorious monuments of the typographic art, appears in a beautiful Great Primer type, of remarkable elegance and neatness, with few abbreviations. The printer was Demetrius of Crete.

But it was at Venice that Greek printing was destined to reach its greatest excellence in the fifteenth century, at the press of Aldus, who in 1495 produced his famous Aristotle, in a beautiful letter which eclipsed all its predecessors. His fount was about a Double Pica in body, and much bolder and more imposing than any which had yet appeared, as well as being better cast and justified. The splendid Greek impressions of the elder Aldus are too well known to need further notice here. Renouard mentions nine separate founts used at this press.

The fame of the Italian Greek presses early roused emulation in France. Among the first printers of Paris, however, the Greek quotations and words introduced in their works were scanty and indifferent. Gering used but a very few letters, and Jodocus Badius, in 1505, excused the poverty of his Annotationes in Nov. Testamentum, by pleading the paucity of his types. The early works of the first Henri Estienne were similarly defective. In 1507, however, Greek punches were cut and matrices struck by Gilles de Gourmont, and the first wholly Greek work was printed at his press in this year, being a Greek Alphabet, with rules for pronunciation and reading. In the same year he also printed the Batrachomyomachia. Greek printing, once started in Paris, made rapid progress. Jodocus Badius, Vidouvé, Colinæus, and Christian Wechel, all distinguished themselves. Geofroy Tory contributed largely to the improvement in the form of the character. But it was not till Robert Estienne, with the title of “Regius in Græcis Typographus,”[113] commenced his career, that Greek printing reached its greatest perfection in France. On the establishment of an Imprimerie Royale by Francis I,[114] Claude Garamond, the first typographical artist of his day, {59} was entrusted with the care of engraving punches and preparing matrices for three founts of Greek, about an English, Long Primer, and Double Pica in body, which henceforth became famous throughout Europe as the “Characteres Regii.”[115] These characters, modelled as to their capitals on the alphabet of Lascaris, and as to their “lower-case” and abbreviations from the beautiful Greek calligraphy of Angelus Vergetius of Candia, first appeared in the Eusebius, printed, in 1544,[116] by Robert Estienne, to whom the use of the types was, by virtue of his office, conceded, and who employed them in the production of some of the most brilliant Greek impressions Europe has ever seen.[117] During the seventeenth century the Royal Greek punches and matrices lay for the most part idle; but in 1691, Anisson, Director of the Imprimerie Royale, rescued them from obscurity, and caused new punches to be cut and matrices struck, to supply what were missing, by Grandjean, the famous Parisian founder.

In the Low Countries, as early as 1501, Thierry Martens, at Louvain, had Greek types with which he printed occasional words. He produced an edition of Æsop in 1513, and in 1516 a Grammar of Theodore de Gaza’s, and a little book of Hours, in Greek. The latter is considered an excellent piece of typography. Greek printing attained to considerable celebrity in the Low Countries. The Greek fount used in Plantin’s Polyglot, in 1569–72, is said to have been cut by the famous French founder and engraver, Le Bé.

Spain claims a prominent place in the history of early Greek printing in Europe, as it was at Alcala in that country that the famous Complutensian Polyglot of Cardinal Ximenes was printed in 1514–17,[118] including the entire text of the Bible in Greek. The fount employed in the New Testament is very grand and imposing, and is said to have been cut specially for the work on the models of Greek manuscripts of the eleventh or twelfth century.

Before the completion of this great work, Germany had secured the honour of producing the first entire Greek Testament at the press of Froben of Basle. Froben’s Greek is somewhat cramped and stiff. Oporinus, who printed in the {60} same city in 1551, besides using a fount identical with that of Froben, introduced a smaller and much neater letter at the same time. Numerous printers produced Greek works in Germany at this period, perhaps the most famous being Andrew Wechel, who began at Paris with types inherited from his father, but in 1573 established himself at Frankfort, where he printed several very fine works in a new and most elegant Greek, said to have been acquired from the Estiennes, to whose letter it bears the closest resemblance.

The first appearance of Greek type in England is observed in De Worde’s edition of Whitintoni Grammatices, printed in 1519, where a few words are introduced cut in wood. Cast types were used at Cambridge in a book entitled Galenus de Temperamentis, translated by Linacre, and printed by Siberch in 1521. Siberch styles himself the first Greek printer in England; but the quotations in the Galenus are very sparse, and he is not known to have printed any entire book in Greek. In 1524, Pynson also used some Greek words and lines, without accents or breathings, in Linacre’s De emendatâ structurâ Latini sermonis; but added an apology for the imperfections of the characters, which he said were but lately cast, and in a small quantity. The first printer who possessed Greek types in any quantity was Reginald Wolfe, who held a royal patent as printer in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and printed, in 1543, Two Homilies of Chrysostom, edited by Sir John Cheke, the first Greek Lecturer at Cambridge. Eight years later, in the first volume of Dr. Turner’s Herbal, printed at Mierdman’s press in London, the Greek words were given in Black, and quotations in Italic. In Edinburgh, in 1563, and as late as 1579, the space for Greek words was left blank in printing, to be filled in by hand. The Oxford University press, re-established in 1585, was well supplied with Greek types, which were used in the Chrysostom of 1586, and the Herodotus of 1591. The beautiful Greek fount used in the Eton Chrysostom[119] in 1610–12—a work which takes rank with the finest Greek impressions in Europe—is supposed to have been obtained from abroad, probably from Paris or Frankfort. Its similarity to the Greek of the Estiennes is remarkable. Indeed, the “characteres regii” of France were at that time, and for long afterwards, the envy and models for all Europe. The Eton Greek types, of which probably the matrices were not in England, were acquired by the Oxford University, to which body, in 1632, application was made by Cambridge for the loan of a Greek fount to print a Greek Testament, the sister University possessing no Greek types of her own. A Greek press was established in London in 1637, under peculiar circumstances, which are detailed in our account of the Oxford press. There is every reason to suppose that of the handsome Greek letter provided {61} for this press,[120] not only the types, but the matrices were acquired. After this, Greek printing became general in London and Oxford. The various typefounders all provided themselves with a good variety of sizes, some of which were very small and neat. There was a very fine Brevier Greek in Grover’s foundry in 1700, and a Nonpareil in that of Andrews in 1706; but for minute Greek printing, England could produce nothing to equal the Sedan Greek Testament, printed by Jannon in 1628.

As was the case with the Roman letter, many of our printers at the close of the seventeenth century preferred the Dutch Greeks, which at that time were good, particularly those cut by the Wetsteins. Thomas James, in 1710, brought over the matrices of four founts from Vosken’s foundry at Amsterdam. In 1700, Cambridge University, still badly off for Greek, made an offer for the purchase of a fount of the King’s Greek at Paris; but withdrew on the French Academy insisting as a condition that every work printed should bear the imprint, “Characteribus Græcis e Typographeo Regio Parisiensi.” The large number of ligatures and abbreviations in the Greek of that day made the production of a fount a serious business. The Oxford Augustin Greek comprised no fewer than 354 matrices, and the Great Primer as many as 456, and the Pica 508; Fournier, however, went beyond all these, and showed a fount containing 776 different sorts! The impracticability of such enormous founts brought about a gradual reduction of the Greek typographical ligatures—a reform for which the Dutch founders, under the guidance of Leusden, deserve the chief credit. Fournier, in 1764, stated that for some years previously, in Holland, Greek printing had been carried on with the simple letters of the alphabet. Wilson’s beautiful Double Pica Greek,[121] used in the Glasgow Homer of 1756, was in its day the finest Greek fount our country had ever seen. A new departure, however, was initiated by the production, in 1763, of Baskerville’s Greek fount[122] for the Oxford New Testament. The letter is neat, but stiff and cramped, and apparently formed on an arbitrary estimate of conventional taste, and without reference to any accepted model. The fount was praised, and provoked imitation. Baskerville’s apprentice, Martin, produced a letter still less Greek than his master’s, and the general tendency was countenanced by the form of Bodoni’s types, which were so much admired in this country at the close of the century. A reaction, however, had begun before Bodoni’s time. The Glasgow Greek kept its place in Wilson’s specimens; and Jackson, encouraged by the younger Bowyer’s remark, that the Greek types in common use “were no more Greek {62} than they were English,” cut a beautiful Pica about 1785 for his rising foundry. Early in the nineteenth century, a new fashion of Greek, for which Porson was sponsor and furnished the drawings, came into vogue, and has remained the prevailing form to this day. It may be doubted if the Porsonian letter would be recognised by an ancient Greek scribe as the character of his native land; but at any rate it is neat, elegant, and legible, and dispenses with all useless contractions and ligatures. In taking leave of this subject, it would be an omission not to mention the most beautiful little fount in which Pickering printed his Homer, in 1831. Probably no finer masterpiece of minute Greek printing exists anywhere.

HEBREW.

The first Hebrew types are generally supposed to have appeared in 1475, in a work printed by Conrad Fyner, at Esslingen in Wirtemburg, entitled Tractatus contra perfidos Judæos. In Pheibia, in Austrian Italy, also in 1475, a Hebrew work in four folio volumes, entitled the Arba Turim of Rabbi Jacob ben Ascher, is stated by De Rossi[123] to have been printed; while in the same year, a few months earlier, at Reggio in Italy, appeared Salamon Jarchi’s Commentary on the Pentateuch, by Abraham ben Garton ben Isaac. The type of this last-named work (which Schwab[124] considers without doubt to be the first Hebrew book printed) is in the Rabbinical character, somewhat rudely cut, but neat. Numerous other Hebrew works followed, earlier than 1488, at which date the first entire Hebrew Bible was printed at Soncino, by a family of German Jews. This rare Bible is printed with points, and is neat and regular in appearance. The volume itself is highly decorative, and shows a considerable amount of typographical skill on the part of its Jewish printers.

Hebrew printing did not spread very rapidly. De Rossi mentions several works printed at Constantinople during the fifteenth century, as also in the Italian towns to which the family of Soncino printers carried the art. Aldus was possessed of some rude Hebrew characters; but it was Bomberg, who established his Hebrew press in Venice in 1517, who raised the fame of that already famous city by the excellence of his types and workmanship. But as late as 1520, at Naples, in a treatise on the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin letters, by De Falco, the Hebrew words, for lack of types, were written in by hand.

In Western Europe, France was next to Italy in producing Hebrew type. Mention is made of an Alphabetum Hebraicum et Græcum, printed by Gilles de Gourmont in 1507; and in 1508 that able typographer, whose distinction as {63} the first cutter of Greek type in France we have already noticed, produced, under the conduct of his patron, Tissard, a Hebrew Grammar, together with the Oratio Dominica, and other passages in the sacred language. The types made use of were ill-formed and imperfect. Although thus early initiated, Hebrew printing made little or no progress for some years. Jodocus Badius showed a few lines in 1511; and in 1516 Gourmont printed an Alphabetum Hebraicum et Græcum. In 1519, Augustino Giustiniani, a native of Genoa, who had already distinguished himself by superintending the production of Porrus’ Polyglot Psalter at that city in 1516, being invited to Paris by the King, caused new punches and matrices of the Hebrew to be made by Gourmont. The work took a year and a half to complete; when, in 1520, was published the Grammar of the Rabbi Moses Kimhi, the first wholly printed Hebrew work produced in Paris. From this time Hebrew printing made steady progress in France. Most of the printers possessed types, the Wechels and the Estiennes being the most distinguished in their use of them.

In Spain the printers of the Complutensian Polyglot made use of a fine Hebrew fount in 1514–17.

In Germany, as early as 1501, in a book supposed to have been printed at Erfurt, Hebrew letters occur, cut rudely on wood; and at Basle, Strasburg, and Augsburg a similar primitive method was adopted, as it was also in the case of the Hebrew Grammar printed at Leipsic in 1520. In 1512, however, at Tübingen in Wirtemburg, the Septem psalmi pœnitentiales were printed in cast metal type. In 1534, at Basle, the first Hebrew Bible printed by a Gentile was produced at the press of Bebel. Froben’s Bible, in the same town, in 1536, is in a type inferior to that of Bomberg. The running titles are all in the Rabbinical character. In 1587, Elias Hutter printed at Hamburg a Hebrew Bible in large type, in which the “radical” letters appear black in the usual way, and the “serviles” are open, or in outline, while the “quiescents” are in smaller solid letters placed above the line. This Bible was reprinted in 1603, and is a typographical curiosity.

In the Low Countries, Hebrew words, probably cut in wood, occur in the Epistola apologetica Pauli de Middleburgo, printed at Louvain in 1488; and Gand[125] gives 1506 as the probable date of a Hebrew Dictionary, sine notâ, but attributed to Martens. This, however, appears doubtful, as in 1518 Martens first announced his intention to print in Hebrew. His first-dated Hebrew work was a Grammar, in 1528; though Schwab considers that the Dictionary above referred to properly belongs to the year 1520. Martens’ earliest founts were a large Hebrew with vowel points, and a small, without. Hebrew printing was also practised at {64} Leyden in 1520. The splendid type cut by Le Bé, the Frenchman, for Plantin’s Polyglot, printed at Antwerp in 1569–72, placed the Netherlands in the front rank of Hebrew typography. Amsterdam, during the seventeenth century, excelled all other cities in its Hebrew printing. Abraham and Bonaventura Elzevir printed here in Hebrew about 1630, and the Hebrew Bibles of Janson in 1639, Athias in 1667, and Van der Hooght in 1705, are justly regarded as masterpieces of Hebrew typography.

The first specimen of Hebrew printing in England occurs in Wakefield’s Oratio de laudibus et utilitate trium linguarum, printed by De Worde in 1524, where a few words appear, rudely cut on wood. In the same work the author complained that he was compelled to omit a third part, because the printer had no Hebrew types. Hebrew words cut in wood are also used in Humfrey’s Life of Bishop Jewell, printed by John Day in 1573; and Todd, in his Life of Walton, mentions a work of Dr. Peter Baro on Jonah, printed at the same press in 1579, in the preface to which occur several verses of Hebrew. As late as 1603 Dibdin points out that in a poem, published at Oxford, composed by Dr. Thorne, Regius Professor of Hebrew at that University, a phrase in Hebrew is added, with the remark, “Interserenda hoc in loco . . . sed enim Typographo deerant characteres.” Todd, however, mentions a work printed at Oxford in 1597, in which Hebrew type is used, while a translation from S. Chrysostom, of John Willoughbie, printed by Barnes in 1602, shows two distinct founts in use. The first English book in which any quantity of Hebrew type was made use of was Dr. Rhys’s Cambro-brytannicæ Cymræcæve linguæ institutiones, printed by Thomas Orwin in 1592. Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas, in 1617, printed by John Browne, shows Hebrew which serves not only for its own language, but also for the Syriac. And in 1621 John Bill used a newer and better letter for printing Dr. Davies’s Antiquæ linguæ Britannicæ . . rudimenta. The Hebrew fount made use of in Walton’s Polyglot in 1657 was probably the first important fount cut and cast in this country; and, as we shall have occasion to notice, was found fault with by the critics of that great undertaking. Oxford received a great and small Hebrew[126] among the matrices presented to her by Dr. Fell; and both there and in London several Hebrew works were printed at the close of the seventeenth century, although none of striking importance. It is significant of the superior reputation of the Oxford Hebrew, that the Hebrew and Chaldæan versions in the Oratio Dominica of 1700 were among the versions printed for the London publisher of that work in the University types. Thomas James, although he visited Amsterdam in 1710, at that time the centre of the best {65} Hebrew printing in Europe, failed to secure any matrices; and most of those which subsequently were added to his foundry appear to have been cut by English founders. Among them were four founts of Rabbinical Hebrew,[127] for which character there existed no matrices in England in Walton’s time, as he was compelled to cut the alphabet shown in his Prolegomena in wood. Mores counted as many as twenty-three different founts in James’s foundry in his day, eight of which were with points, the remainder without. For those without points it was early the practice to cast points on a minute body, to be worked in a separate line below the letter. Caslon cut several good founts of Hebrew (one of which was of the open or outline description first introduced by Hutter); and during the eighteenth century the character became a necessary part of the stock of every founder. It would be difficult, however, to point to any striking achievement in Hebrew typography earlier than Bagster’s Polyglot in 1817–21, in which the Hebrew text is printed in a very small and beautiful type cut by Vincent Figgins, which in its day had the reputation of being the smallest Hebrew with points in England, and of equalling in size and exceeding in beauty even the elegant letter of Jansson of Amsterdam, two centuries before.

ARABIC.

The first book printed in Arabic types is supposed to be a Diurnale græcorum Arabum, printed at Fano in Italy, in 1514. Two years later, Porrus’ Polyglot Psalter, comprising the Arabic version, was printed at Genoa; and two years later still, a Koran in Arabic is said to have been printed at Venice. Thus, says De Rossi, while no Arabic types were to be found in any other part of Europe, three towns of Italy possessed, and were making use of them at the same moment.

In 1505 an Arabic Vocabulary at Granada had the words printed in Gothic letter with the Arabic points placed over them; and in other presses where there were no Arabic types, the language was expressed in Hebrew letters or cut in wood. De Guignes and others mention a fount of Arabic used by Gromors in Paris, in 1539–40, to print Postel’s Grammar, and add that the fount subsequently disappeared and was lost; and as late as 1596, in a book printed at Paris, the Arabic words had to be rendered in Hebrew. In 1591 the Vatican press had a fine fount of Arabic, a specimen of which is given by Angelo Roccha in his Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, printed at that press. The Medicean and Borromean presses also had founts; and at Leyden, Raphlengius and Erpenius {66} were both celebrated for their Arabic letter. In 1636 the foundry of the Propaganda showed specimens of Arabic, previous to which date Savary de Brèves had had cut in Constantinople, and finished by Le Bé of Paris, the famous Arabic founts which were used to print the Psalter at Rome in 1614, and subsequently were purchased by Vitré for the French king,[128] and used in Le Jay’s magnificent Paris Polyglot of 1645. The punches and matrices of these founts still exist. Cotton mentions an Arabic press in Upsala in 1640.

In England it was not till early in the seventeenth century that Arabic printing began to be practised. In Wakefield’s Oratio de laudibus . . trium linguarum, Arabicæ, Chaldaicæ et Hebraicæ, printed by De Worde in 1524, a few rude Arabic letters are introduced, cut in wood. In Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas, 1617, the Arabic words are printed in Italic characters. Laud’s gift of Oriental MSS. to Oxford in 1635, and the appointment of an Arabic lecturer, was the first real incentive to the cultivation of the language by English scholars. Previous to this, it is stated that the Raphlengius Arabic press at Leyden had been purchased by the English Orientalist, William Bedwell; but if brought to this country, it does not appear that it was immediately made use of.[129] The Arabic words in Thomas Greave’s oration, De Linguæ Arabicæ Utilitate, printed at Oxford in 1639, were written in by hand; and the same author, when publishing his Elementa Linguæ Persicæ at the press of James Flesher at London, in 1649, explained in his preface that his work had been ready for publication nine years before, but having no types with which to print it, it had been delayed. A year earlier, in 1648, Miles Flesher, predecessor to James and one of the Star Chamber printers, had published in the same type, and at the same press, a work entitled De Siglis Arabum et Persarum Astronomis. James Flesher was the printer who printed in his own types the original specimen-page of the London Polyglot in 1652. His Arabic, however, is a smaller character than that subsequently made use of by Roycroft for this grand work. Dr. Fell’s gift of matrices to Oxford in 1667 included a fount of Arabic,[130] which appeared in the specimen of the foundry, and was used also in the Oratio Dominica of 1700. Prior to this, however, Pocock’s Carmen Tograi was printed at Oxford by Hall in 1661, “Typis Arabicis Academicis,” in a letter differing both from Flesher’s {67} and Dr. Fell’s. In 1721, William Caslon cut for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge the fount of Arabic for the Psalter of 1725, and the Testament of 1727. This fount,[131] with those of Oxford and the Polyglot, shared among them nearly all the Arabic printing in England for about a century later, when new faces began to be cut or imported. The Polyglot Arabics passed through Grover’s foundry into that of Thomas James, at the sale of which, in 1782, they were bought in an imperfect state by Dr. Edmund Fry for the Type Street foundry. Mores mentions three other Arabic founts cut by English founders, but includes them among the lost matrices in his collection.

SYRIAC.

Syriac type, probably cut in wood, first appeared in Postel’s Linguarum xii Alphabeta, printed in Paris in 1538; but the characters are so rude in form and execution as to be scarcely legible. In 1555, however, Postel assisted in cutting the punches for the famous Syriac Peshito New Testament, printed at Vienna, in two vols. 4to, the first portion of the Scriptures, and apparently the first book printed in that language. In 1569–72 Plantin at Antwerp included the Syriac New Testament in his Polyglot, and reissued it in separate form in 1574. The Vatican press had a good fount in 1591, which appears in Roccha’s Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. Mores mentions a Nomenclature by Ferrarius at Rome in 1622 with Syriac type. In 1636 the press of the Propaganda issued a specimen of the Estranghelo and Syriac alphabets, and in the same year Kircher’s Prodromus Coptus, published at the same press, contained passages in both these characters, and in Heraclean. A Syriac Testament was printed at Cothon, in Upper Saxony, in 1621, and at Hamburg in 1663; and later, Gutbier printed the same work in several editions. In France, after the disappearance of Postel’s types, there was no Syriac printing for nearly a century. Henri Estienne printed his Syriac New Testament in 1539, in Hebrew characters; and in Cajetan’s Paradigmata de iv lingis, which appeared in 1596, the Syriac character was cut on wood, and longer passages expressed in Hebrew type. In 1614 Savary de Brèves brought Syriac matrices along with those of other Oriental characters to Paris, and these were made use of by Vitré, in 1625, to print a Syriac and Latin Psalter, and appeared subsequently in the great Polyglot of Le Jay.

Syriac did not make its appearance in England till the middle of the seventeenth century. The language was usually expressed in the earlier works in Hebrew characters. A letter of Bishop Usher’s, in 1637, mentions a project to {68} purchase Syriac type abroad, and negotiations appear to have been made both in Paris (where the Bishop’s correspondent informed him there were at that time three or four founts) and at Geneva, with a view to procuring the characters.[132] But it was not till the prospectus and preliminary specimen of Walton’s Polyglot were issued in 1652 that we find Syriac type in use in this country. The Polyglot contains the entire Bible in Syriac. In 1661 there was a fount at Oxford, which appears in Pocock’s Carmen Tograi, and differs from the fount subsequently presented by Dr. Fell,[133] which was used in the Oratio Dominica of 1700, and other Oriental publications of the University. The Polyglot fount[134] found its way to Caslon’s foundry, who added two new founts of his own cutting. In 1778 Mores noted six founts altogether in the country. A fresh interest was taken in Syriac printing by the exertions of Dr. Claudius Buchanan, who, in 1815, had the Gospels and Acts printed in types cut and cast under his supervision by Vincent Figgins. After his death, his work fell into the hands of Dr. Lee to complete, who, objecting to the omission of the vowel points, printed the entire New Testament in 1816. In 1825 Dr. Fry produced the beautiful Nonpareil Syriac for Bagster’s Polyglot, and in 1829 Mr. Watts cast the fount of Estranghelo for the edition of the Bible published that year, which at the time was the only Syriac Bible in Nestorian characters printed in this country.

ARMENIAN.

The press of the Vatican at Rome possessed a good fount of this character in 1591, when Angelo Roccha showed a specimen in his Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. Previous to this a Psalter is said to have been printed at Rome in 1565, and Rowe Mores mentions doubtfully a Liturgy printed at Cracow in 1549. In 1662 the Armenian Bishops applied to France for assistance in printing an Armenian Bible, but being refused, although Armenian printing had been practised in Paris in 1633, went to Rome, where, as early as 1636, the press of the Propaganda had published a specimen of its Armenian matrices. The Patriarch, after fifteen months’ residence in Rome, removed to Amsterdam, where he established an Armenian press, and printed the Bible in 1666, followed, in 1668, by a separate edition of the New Testament. In 1669 the press was set up at Marseilles, where it continued for a time, and was ultimately removed to Constantinople.

In England the first Armenian types were those presented by Dr. Fell to {69} Oxford in 1667. In the Prolegomena of Walton’s Polyglot, the alphabet there given had been cut in wood. In 1736 Caslon cut a neat Armenian[135] for Whiston’s edition of Moses Chorenensis, and these two were the only founts in England before 1820.

ETHIOPIC.

The earliest type of this language appeared in Potken’s Psalter and Song of Solomon, printed at Rome in 1513. The work was reprinted at Cologne in 1518, in Potken’s polyglot Psalter. In 1548 the New Testament was printed at Rome by some Abyssinian priests. The press of the Propaganda issued a specimen of its fount in 1631, and again in Kircher’s Prodromus Coptus in 1636. Erpenius at Leyden had an Ethiopic fount, which in 1626 was acquired by the Elzevirs. Usher attempted to procure the fount for this country, but his attempt failing, punches were cut, and matrices prepared by the London founders for the London Polyglot, which showed the Psalms, Canticles, and New Testament in the Ethiopic version. Various portions of Scripture were printed at Leyden and Frankfort about the same time, of which the most important work was the Psalter, etc., of Ludolfus, printed at the latter place in 1701, in a letter bolder and larger than either the Vatican or London fount. The Oxford press possessed a fount of Ethiopic[136] prior to 1693, which appears, with the other Oxford Orientals, in the Oratio Dominica of 1700 and 1713—the Amharic being in the same character. Chamberlayne’s Oratio Dominica, printed at Amsterdam in 1715, shows these versions in copperplate. Mores mentions a second English fount in his list of the matrices of the “Anonymous” foundry, besides the fount cut by Caslon[137] for his foundry. There were thus four founts in England in 1778. The Polyglot fount[138] and that of the anonymous founder came into the possession of James, and at the sale of his matrices in 1782, were acquired by Dr. Fry. The reprint of Ludolfus’ Psalter by the Bible Society in 1815 was in the latter type. But the Ethiopic Gospels printed by the same society in 1826 were in a fount of types cast from the matrices presented by Ludolfus to the Frankfort Library in 1700. No new fount of Ethiopic in England had been added to the four already named, when Hansard wrote in 1825.

COPTIC.

Of this character the press of the Propaganda possessed a fount, of which a specimen was issued in 1636, in which year also Kircher’s Prodromus Coptus {70} appeared at the same press. No fount, however, appeared in England till 1667—the alphabets shown in the Introduction and Prolegomena to the London Polyglot in 1655 and 1657 being cut on wood. In 1667 Dr. Fell presented Coptic matrices[139] to Oxford, and it was from these that the types were cast for David Wilkins’ edition of the New Testament, printed in 1716. In 1731 the same scholar published an edition of the Pentateuch, this time at the press of Bowyer, in types specially cut by William Caslon.[140] Mores further mentions a Coptic fount cut by Voskens of Amsterdam; and abroad, besides the fount at Rome, there was one (or more) at Paris. A specimen is shown in Fournier; and in 1808, in Quatremère’s work on the Language and Literature of Europe, considerable portions of Scripture in Coptic were included. In our own country the Oxford and Caslon founts were the only two in 1778, when Mores wrote, nor had the number been increased when Hansard compiled his list of foreign founts in 1825.

SAMARITAN.

Samaritan type appears to have followed closely on the purchase of the celebrated MS. of the Samaritan Pentateuch, which was deposited in the Oratory at Paris in 1623. The press of the Propaganda had a fount in 1636, and the Paris Polyglot, completed in 1645, contained the entire Pentateuch in type of which the punches and matrices had been specially prepared under Le Jay’s direction. The fount used in the London Polyglot in 1657 is admitted to be an English production,[141] and was probably cut under the supervision of Usher, who between 1620 and 1630 was most active in procuring Samaritan MSS. for this country. Samaritan type was used in Scaliger’s De emendatione temporum, printed at Geneva in 1629; also in Leusden’s Schola Syriaca, at Utrecht, in 1672; besides which, Mores mentions a fount neatly cut by Voskens of Amsterdam. Another fount was included in Dr. Fell’s gift to Oxford in 1667, and this appears in the Oratio Dominica of 1700. The Polyglot Samaritan passed into Grover’s hands, thence to James, at whose sale it was bought, together with another fount of the same character, by Dr. Fry. The Leusdenian fount belonging to Andrews also came to James’s foundry, but was there lost. Caslon had a fount cut by Dummers,[142] which, with those of James and Oxford, were the only founts in the country in 1778.[143] In Hansard’s list of learned founts in 1825, these four founts were still the only Samaritans in the country. {71}

SCLAVONIC.

Types in this character existed at an early date, a Psalter having been printed at Cracow in 1491, and reprinted at Montenegro in 1495. In 1512 the Gospels were printed at Ugrovallachia, and again in 1552 at Belgrade, and in 1562 at Montenegro. There was, in 1553, a Sclavonic press established by the Czar Ivan Vasilievitch at Moscow, whence, in 1564, appeared the Acts and Epistles, a volume which has the distinction of being the first book printed in Russia. The type and material for this press are said to have been brought from Copenhagen. The first Russian printers were persecuted, but succeeded in producing several other works in Sclavonic type. In 1581 the first Bible in that language was printed at Ostrog, and after that printing became more general. The second Moscow press, established in 1644, was famous for its excellent typography; the second edition of the Bible, in 1663, is a splendid performance. Sclavonic printing appears to have been but little practised out of Russia, yet we find matrices with Voskens of Amsterdam about 1690; from which, probably, the improved types introduced into the Moscow press in 1707 were cast.

The only Sclavonic fount in England was that given by Dr. Fell to Oxford, and this, Mores states, was replaced in 1695 by a fount of the more modern Russian character, purchased probably at Amsterdam. The Oratio Dominica of 1700 gives a specimen of this fount, but renders the Hieronymian version in copperplate. Chamberlayne’s Oratio Dominica at Amsterdam in 1715 does the same; but the Cyrillian type differs from that of Oxford. The press of the Propaganda showed founts both of Cyrillian and Hieronymian in 1753, and founts occur in nearly all the Polyglot specimens of the chief European foundries.

The MODERN SCLAVONIC, better known to us as RUSSIAN, is said to have appeared first in portions of the Old Testament, printed at Prague in 1517–19. Ten years later there was Russian type in Venice. A Russian press was established at Stockholm in 1625, by order of Gustavus Adolphus, and in 1696 there were matrices in Amsterdam, from which came the types used in Ludolph’s Grammatica Russica, printed at Oxford in that year, and whence also, it is said, the types were procured which furnished the first St. Petersburg press, established in 1711 by Peter the Great. At Amsterdam, also, a second attempt to translate and print the Bible into Russian, begun about 1698, was frustrated by the loss of the MSS. and library of Ernest Gluck, the editor and translator, at the siege of Marienburg, in 1702. The presses at St. Petersburg increased, and it is probable that on the establishment of the press in connection with the Academy of Sciences, in 1727, Russian types were cast in that city. Breitkopf of Leipsic {72} had matrices prior to 1787; Fournier, at Paris, in 1766, showed a specimen of a fount in his foundry; Marcel, in his Oratio Dominica, 1805, showed another; and Bodoni of Parma, in his Manuale Tipografico, 1818, had no less than twenty-one sizes.

The Emperor Alexander, in 1813, promoted the publication of a Bible by the Russian Bible Society, which resulted in the printing of the Gospels in 1819, and of the entire New Testament in 1823.

In England, Mores notes that in 1778 there was no Russian type in the country, but that Cottrell was at that time engaged in preparing a fount. It does not appear that this project was carried out, and the earliest Russian we had was cut by Dr. Fry from alphabets in the Vocabularia, collected and published for the Empress of Russia in 1786–9. This fount appeared in the Pantographia in 1799. About 1820 Thorowgood procured matrices in two sizes from Breitkopf, and these three founts were the only ones enumerated by Hansard in 1825.

ETRUSCAN.

The fount of this character cut by William Caslon[144] about 1733 for Mr. Swinton of Oxford was apparently the first produced. Fournier, in 1766, showed an alphabet engraved in metal or wood. In 1771 the Propaganda published a specimen of their fount, and Bodoni of Parma, in 1806, exhibited a third in his Oratio Dominica. The character is one rarely used, and prior to 1820 it is doubtful whether there were more than the three founts above mentioned in existence.

RUNIC.

Types of this character were first used at Stockholm in a Runic and Swedish Alphabetarium, printed in 1611. The fount, which was cast at the expense of the king, was afterwards acquired by the University. About the same time Runic type was used at Upsala and at Copenhagen. Voskens, at Amsterdam, had matrices about the end of the century, and it was from Holland that Junius is supposed to have procured the matrices which in 1677 he presented to Oxford. This fount appears in the Oratio Dominica of 1700, and in Hickes’ Thesaurus, 1703–5. Mores mentions a second fount, incomplete, in James’s foundry, which, however, was lost; so that the Oxford fount remained the only one in the country. Fournier and Fry show the alphabet engraved. {73}

GOTHIC.

Matrices of this language were presented to Oxford by Junius in 1677. There appear to have been other matrices in Holland, as the neat Gothic type used in Chamberlayne’s Oratio Dominica at Amsterdam in 1715 differs from the Oxford fount which had appeared in the edition of 1700, as well as in Hickes’ Thesaurus. Mores speaks of another fount in James’s foundry, whither it had come from the “Anonymous” foundry. But the matrices were lost. Caslon, however, cut a fount,[145] which appeared in his first specimen in 1734. This and the Oxford fount were the only two in England in 1820.

ICELANDIC, SWEDISH AND DANISH.

Founts of these characters were also included in Junius’ gift to Oxford in 1677, and were probably specially prepared in Holland. The first-named is shown in the Oratio Dominica of 1700, and in Hickes’ Thesaurus. Printing had been practised in Iceland since 1531, when a Breviary was printed at Hoolum, in types rudely cut, it is alleged, in wood. In 1574, however, metal types were provided, and several works were produced. After a period of decline, printing was revived in 1773; and in 1810 Sir George McKenzie reported that the Hoolum press possessed eight founts of type, of which two were Roman, and the remainder of the common Icelandic character, which, like the Danish and Swedish, bears a close resemblance to the German.

SAXON.

The first type for this language was cut by John Day in 1567, under the direction of Archbishop Parker, and appeared in Ælfric’s Paschal Homily in that year, and in the Ælfredi Res Gestæ of Asser Menevensis, published in 1574. Parker, in his preface to the latter work, makes mention of Day as the first who had cut Saxon characters. This interesting fount[146] is rather less than a Great Primer in body, and in general appearance is handsomer than many of its successors. Day used the type in several other works, and added another fount on Pica body. Saxon type was used by Browne in 1617, in Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas; and Haviland, who printed the second edition of that work in 1626, had in 1623 already made use of the character in Lisle’s edition of Ælfric’s Homily. Another fount was used by Badger in 1640 for Spelman’s Saxon Psalter, {74} so that, as Mores points out, at that date there were already four founts in the country. Hodgkinson, one of the Star Chamber printers, had a Pica Saxon, which was used in Dugdale’s Monasticon, 1655; and Mores mentions two founts, a Great Primer and a Pica, in use at Cambridge in 1644, in Wheelock’s edition of Bede. In 1654 Francis Junius had a fount of Saxon “cut, matriculated, and cast,” at Amsterdam, which, after printing Cædmon’s Paraphrase of Genesis in 1655, and some other works in that town, he brought over to England, and in 1677 presented to the University of Oxford. As early as 1659 the University had possessed a Saxon fount, and a second had been included among the purchases made, probably, about the year 1672. Junius’ fount was used in Hickes’ Thesaurus, 1705, and his Saxon Grammar in 1711, but was not employed by the printer of the Oratio Dominica of 1700, where a different fount appears—the same, apparently, which in 1709 Bowyer used to print Miss Elstob’s Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory. The Amsterdam printers of the Oratio Dominica of 1715 used a handsome fount of their own. The great interest taken in the study of the Northern languages at this period in England produced many Saxon works, and some of our scholars devoted themselves to the study of the most beautiful of the old manuscripts, with a view to the improvement of the character in print. But the failure of the typefounder Robert Andrews to do justice to Humphrey Wanley’s drawings, in cutting the punches for Bowyer’s new fount in 1715,[147] apparently discouraged further endeavours. Miss Elstob’s Anglo-Saxon Grammar was printed in that year in the new type, the matrices of which were subsequently presented to Oxford, where they still remain.

Voskens, the Dutch founder, had Anglo-Saxon matrices at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but, except in England and Holland, the character was not used. Caslon and most of his successors cut Saxon founts. Mores noted eleven different founts existing in England in 1778. This number was afterwards increased by numerous new founts cut by Fry, Figgins, and Wilson; and Hansard enumerated twenty-three in 1825.

The Anglo-Norman Saxon character in which the Domesday Book was written, was twice imitated in type during the eighteenth century, once by Cottrell, whose attempt was not wholly successful, and again by Joseph Jackson, under the supervision of Abraham Farley, in 1783. Jackson’s types were used in the facsimile printed by Nichols in that year, and the matrices, it is stated, were deposited with the British Museum. {75}

IRISH.