Jr. Josiah H. Benton

“ He produced books that astonished people who were sufficiently interested to examine them, and delighted the smaller number who purchased them, but when one went into the manufacture of paper, type, and all the apparatus of printing, it was not enough that he should be called one of the best printers of the world, he needed profit. The fact was that English people did not concern themselves with Baskerville’s enterprise in printing because they knew little, and cared less, about fine printing. ”

“ Only one man, John Baskerville, seemed to have had the ambition, the skill, or the courage to make the business anything better than a plain trade. Even he, with money at his command, after six years of experiment and ten years of production, abandoned his attempt to create an English taste for fine printing. ”

“ John Baskerville, a great English type-founder and printer, was born in January, 1706, and died in January, 1775, having lived nearly the full period of threescore years and ten. To understand him and what he did, we must know something of the time and place in which he lived. It was a time when the great middle classes of England were coming into power. The divine right of kings was destroyed at Culloden in 1745. England was slowly awakening from the deadly languor of the corruption of Walpole’s government. ”

“ The typography of Baskerville is eminently beautiful—his letters are in general of a slender and delicate form, calculated for an octavo or even quarto, but not sufficiently bold to fill the space of an imperial folio, as is evident from a view of his great Bible. He united in a singularly happy manner the elegance of Plantin with the clearness of the Elzevirs: his 4to and 12mo Virgil, and small Prayer-book, or 12mo Horace of 1762, sufficiently [Pg 39] confirm the truth of this remark. ”

“ In 1759 Baskerville was ready to begin the Prayer Book printing at Cambridge. He writes to the Vice-Chancellor of the University, saying he was taking great pains in order to produce a striking title-page and also a specimen of the Bible which he hoped would be ready in about six weeks. He adds that “the importance of the work demands all my attention, not only for my own reputation, but also to convince the world that the University in the honour done me have not entirely misplaced their favours.” ”

“ Baskerville certainly brought the art of printing to a degree of perfection till then unknown in England. He trusted nothing to the manufacture of others. “He was at once his own manufacturer of ink, presses, chases, moulds for casting, and all the apparatus for printing, and he also made some of the paper upon which he printed his books. ”

“ No trades unions, no trade guilds, no companies existed. The system of apprentices was only partially known. Every man was free to come and go, to found, or to follow, or to leave a trade, just as he chose. Birmingham was emphatically the town of free trade, where no restrictions, commercial or municipal, existed.
Into this community young Baskerville came. ”

“ The old type, the old ink, the old paper, and the old way are good enough for me.” Baskerville was artistic, the English public was not. In the second place Baskerville’s books were so expensively produced that the man who bought one of them as a specimen of Baskerville’s work did not wish to buy another. It was the same thing that happens with every printer who does artistic work,—each production of his press exhausts his clientage more or less. And lastly, his books were reprints, and they were brought out at a time when the press was overloaded with productions of very brilliant men. ”

“ This remained the law with regard to type-founding until 1869; but happily the law was not enforced, except for a few years after it was passed. Printers received patents and monopolies for printing certain books. The result was great degeneracy in the quality of printing. A privileged printer, sure of his monopoly, had no inducement to execute good work at more cost or pains than was necessary. Old type would do as well as new, and bad type as well as good. The typography of the whole Stuart period is a disgrace to English art. ”

“ There was to be a new typography, and for its introduction four points were to be considered: First, the character of the types themselves; secondly, the press; thirdly, the paper and ink; and lastly, the actual mode of printing.
It is fortunate that in the preface to the second book which Baskerville printed—Milton’s “Paradise Lost”—he took the world into his confidence. It is the only preface written by him. He said: “Amongst the several mechanic Arts that have engaged my attention, there is no one which I have pursued with so much steadiness and pleasure, as that of Letter-Founding. ”

“ At any rate, there is here an explanation of the way in which the japanner’s interest became aroused in the designing and making of founts of type for purposes of printing. Much of the beauty of type depends upon the printer, and therefore Baskerville soon came to see that he must print with the types which he cut. From the very commencement of his experiments in type-founding he was determined to occupy himself both with type-founding and printing. ”

“ James, the only English founder who showed any vitality, owed his success chiefly, if not entirely, to the fact that all his letters were the product of Dutch matrices, and even these, in his hands, were so indifferently cast as to be often as bad as English type. ”

“ But the condition of printing was still anything but satisfactory; and although under the influence of Caslon’s genius the press was recovering from the reproach under which it lay at the beginning of the century, England was still very far behind her neighbors both in typographical enterprise and achievement. Fine printing was unknown. Once more it was left to an outsider to initiate a new departure; and in 1750 the art of printing found its deliverer in the person of an eccentric Birmingham japanner, Baskerville. ”

“ Dr. Harwood says that the first edition of Horace, printed in 1762, “is the most beautiful little book, both in regard to type and paper, I ever beheld. It is also the most correct of all Baskerville’s editions of the classics; for every sheet was carefully revised by Mr. Livie, who was an elegant scholar.” He also adds, “the Quarto edition of 1770 is a very beautiful and extremely scarce work, the rarest of all Baskerville’s editions. A good copy, with Gravelot’s plates inserted, is valued at £2.2.” ”

“ Derrick says: “He manufactures his own paper.” He states in several places that he bought paper for the Bible and for other books; that he has it not in his power to furnish paper which is required for the book, etc. But in his introduction to Milton he said that it gave him great satisfaction to find that his edition of Virgil had been so favorably received, and then he adds, “The improvement in the manufacture of the paper, the colour and firmness of the ink were not overlooked.” This clearly indicates that he had improved the manufacture of the paper. ”

“ Printing in England in the early part of the eighteenth century was in a sorry state. Official broadsides, political pamphlets, works of literature, and even Bibles show a depression and degeneration so marked that one is tempted to believe the art of printing was rapidly becoming lost in a wilderness of what may be termed “Brown sheets and sorry letter.” ”

“ Perhaps the greatest compliment paid to the memory of Baskerville was this edition of the works of Voltaire. The Kehl Press was finally broken up about 1810, although before that time some of the type was sent to Paris and sold. This is shown by the fact that certain books printed in Paris between 1790 and 1806 were printed with Baskerville’s type, and an advertisement of the sale of Baskerville type, printed with the types themselves in black and red, which is in the possession of the Merrymount Press, Boston, was issued early in the nineteenth century. ”

“ In erudition, correctness, or in the multiplicity of valuable publications, he is not to be compared with Bowyer: there are some even who indiscriminately despise all his editions of the classics; but his 4to and 12mo editions of Virgil and Horace defend him from the severity of this censure. Upon the whole, Baskerville was a truly original artist; he struck out a new method of printing in this country, and may be considered as the founder of that luxuriant style of typography which at present so generally prevails ”

“ When Baskerville began the work that made him famous, he [Pg 8] was a middle-aged man, fifty years old, who had amassed a large fortune, and was living in quiet comfort on his own estate. He was carrying on a very large and lucrative japanning business, which he continued to conduct during his life. He was a person of much consequence in Birmingham when he took up the matter of type-founding and printing. ”

“ But that learned body appear to have had a stronger inclination for making their privilege conducive to their worldly gain than for earning fame by the encouragement of printing. The university exacted from Mr. Baskerville £20 per thousand for the octavo, and £12.10 per thousand for the duodecimo editions of the Prayer Book; and the Stationers’ Company, which had a monopoly of printing, with like liberality took £32 for their permission to print one edition of the Psalms in metre, which was necessary to make the Prayer Book complete. ”

“ These trace the survival of the Baskerville types to a date twenty years later than that at which they are commonly supposed to have perished. “It is to be hoped,” says Reed, “that their discovery may in due time reward the patience of those whose ambition it is [Pg 53] to recover for their native land these precious relics of the most brilliant of all the English letter-founders.” [39] It is impossible to say precisely what became of the Baskerville founts which had gone to France, but so late as 1891, a book appeared in France professedly printed en Caractère Baskerville du xviii siècle. ”

“ There is a clearness, a soberness, a softness, and at the same time a spirit, altogether harmonizing in Baskerville’s book, that neither of the others, with which I am comparing it, can, I think, fairly claim.” [26] Dibdin says: “These lovely impressions of Baskerville appeared twice in octavo, 1758 and 1760—and once in 4to. 1759. But the octavos have a quarto aspect. I find that a delicious copy bound in the morocco of the day, is priced at £3.10. I know of no parlour-reading like that of Milton in one of the editions of Baskerville.” ”

“ Of course some of them are foxed, or spotted, but no more than other books of the time, while the most of them are in absolutely perfect condition.
“Baskerville first introduced into England what is generally termed ‘fine printing,’ by producing a type of superior elegance, and an ink which gave additional beauty to the type. The peculiar excellence attached to his types and the celebrity he consequently attained gave a stimulus to the exertions and called forth the emulation of British printers.” [36] Fine work has therefore been progressively improving. ”

“ He was very intimate with Dodsley, the bookseller, a man of great property and of irreproachable character, who stayed with him when in Birmingham, and with whom Baskerville stayed when he was in London. [17] His correspondence with Shenstone is quite voluminous, and with Benjamin Franklin he had very excellent relations. Franklin visited him in Birmingham, advised him in his printing affairs, and in the proposed sale of his type when he was about to give up business. It is not likely, if he had been profane and ignorant, that he would have remained on such terms with such people. ”

“ In fact, Baskerville always had his own way, and did things as he wished to do them, and whatever credit there is for his productions is due to him alone. Tedder says that “his social virtues were considerable—a good son, an affectionate father and kinsman, polite and hospitable to strangers—he was entirely without the jealousy commonly ascribed to the artist [Pg 17] and inventor. Birmingham has contributed many distinguished men to the industrial armies of England ”

“ In another letter he said: “There may be fifty or more preferable readings to what are received in this new Horace, yet you will find a better text there, upon the whole, than in any one edition extant. As to the beauty of type and press-work, it is too obvious to need vindication. The accuracy of the latter almost exceeds what was ever found in any other book.”
There was a good deal of fuss between Dodsley, who appears to have sold the book in London, and Baskerville and Shenstone, about plates for this book. ”

“ The plates were japanned and varnished to “produce fine glowing Mohogony Colour and Black no way inferior to the most perfect India goods, or an imitation of Tortoise shell which greatly excels Nature, both in Colour and Hardness.” It will be seen that this patent embodied to a great extent the same principle that Baskerville employed in his later treatment of paper. In the japan business Baskerville competed with Taylor, not so much in making the things Taylor made as in making better ones and different ones. ”