Talbot Baines Reed

“ From the pot His ladle nimbly feeds the curious mould, Whence straight the type in perfect fashion falls. The willing servant, he, of all the Schools, Whether in Latin they would write, or Greek, Or in the Hebrew tongue their minds disclose, Or in the German. He, for all prepared, Skilful, for each his character provides. See with what art the several types are cast, Each from its parent matrix; see how bright, Trimmed by the dresser’s cunning knife, they lie. He the redundant metal first breaks off, Then on the stick in order sets the type, And with his plane their equal height assures. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was probably more Dutch type in England between 1700 and 1720 than there was English. The Dutch artists appeared for the time to have the secret of the true shape of the Roman letter; their punches were more carefully finished, their matrices better justified, and their types of better metal, and better dressed, than any of which our country could boast. Nor was it till Caslon developed a native genius that English typography ceased to be more than half Dutch. ”

“ To remove in some measure your impatience, I have sent you an impression of fourteen punches of the Two-lines Great Primer, which have been begun and finished in nine days only, and contain all the letters Roman necessary in the Titles and Half-titles. I cannot forbear saying they please me, as I can make nothing more correct, nor shall you see anything of mine much less so. You’ll observe they strike the eye much more sensibly than the smaller characters, tho’ equally perfect, till the press shows them to more advantage. The press is creeping slowly towards perfection. ”

“ Mores and other chroniclers are, as we conceive, misleading, when they single out half a dozen names from the long list of printers between Caxton and Day, as if they only had been concerned in the development of the art of letter-cutting and founding. It is true that these names are the most distinguished; but it is necessary to bear in mind that the most obscure printer of that day, unless he succeeded in purchasing his founts from abroad, or in obtaining the reversion of the worn types of another printer, probably cast his letter in his own moulds, and from his own matrices. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The whole decree is in curious contrast with the Acts regulating English printing and founding. The French “compagnons” are forbidden to band together for military, festive, or religious purposes, to carry arms, to beat and neglect their apprentices, to leave any work incomplete, to use any printer’s marks but their own; and so great is the fatherly solicitude of the Crown for the honour of the press, that printers are made amenable to law for typographical errors in their books. (Lacroix, Histoire de l’Imprimerie. Paris, 8vo, pp. 124–8.) ”

“ ENGLISH is also a body which undoubtedly belongs to us. Until the end of last century the name served not only to denote a body, but the face of the English Black-letter; and many of the old founts used in the law books and Acts of Parliament were English both in body and face. As in Germany, where it is called Mittel, English was the middle size of the seven regular bodies in use among us: the Great Primer, Double Pica, and two-line English (the Tertia, Secunda, and Prima of the Germans) being on the ascending side, and Pica, Long Primer, and Brevier on the descending. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In many cases, especially with the originators of the great foundries, Caslon, Cottrell and Jackson, it was the master himself who designed and cut his own punches. It was not till the unusual demand for artists at the close of last century broke down this exclusiveness that outsiders arose to work for the trade in general. And even these, it was the policy and endeavour of each founder to attach to himself, treating him as a gentleman at large, and free from the obligations imposed on his other workmen. ”

“ Possibly the famous productions of these great artists impressed their readers with the notion that their beautiful and luxurious typography was the result of rare and costly material; and, ignoring the fact that silver type would not endure the press, they credited them with the absurdity of casting their letters in that costly material. It is difficult to believe that any practical printer, however magnificent, would make even his matrices of silver, when copper would be equally good and more durable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such is a brief and meagre outline of the contents of this first English book on printing and letter-founding. It is a work which no one interested in English typography can omit to consult. For almost a century it remained the only authority on the subject; subsequently it formed the basis of numerous other treatises, both at home and abroad, and to this day it is quoted and referred to, not only by the antiquary who desires to learn what the art once was, but by the practical printer, who may still on many subjects gather from it much advice and information as to what it should still be. ”

“ From a letter-founder’s point of view its chief interest consists in its being the earliest book printed in the type of the new Birmingham foundry. The fount used is a Great Primer, slender and delicate in form, combining, as Dibdin says, in a singularly happy manner, the elegance of Plantin with the clearness of the Elzevirs. The Italic letter was specially admired for its freedom and symmetry—qualities in which it excelled even the beautiful founts of Aldus and Colinæus. ”

“ No foundry existing is better stocked with matrices for those extraneous sorts which are cut more with a view to accommodation than profit; such as astronomical, geometrical, algebraical, physical, genealogical, and arithmetical sorts; and I feel it particularly incumbent on me to add that, as his specimen bears equal rank with any for the number and beauty of its founts, so he has strayed less into the folly of fat-faced preposterous disproportions, than either Thorne, Fry or Caslon. ”

“ How many men the Jew keeps at work I do not know, for he would not permit me to go up into his work-house. Foskins thought I wanted letter to be cast, but when he knew that I was a letter founder he looked very sly, and watched me as if I had been a thief, being I suppose very fearful that I should steal some of their art from them. Cupi was not very forward to let me see his work-house, and the first time avoided it by saying he could not stay for he was just going out, but the second time I did see it though he was as loth then as before, saying he believed there was nobody at work. ”

“ Old type would do as well as new, and bad type would do as well as good. Free trade and open competition were the great evils to be dreaded, because free trade and open competition would demand the best paper, and type and workmanship. The typography of the entire Stuart period is a disgrace to English art. Fine printing was an art unknown; and only a few works like Walton’s Polyglot, which were produced in an atmosphere untainted by mercenary considerations, stand out to redeem the period from unqualified reproach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Two people must be concerned; the one must name every letter, capital, point, reference, accent, etc., that is, in English, must spell every part of every word distinctly, and note down every difference in a book prepared on purpose. Pray oblige me in making the experiment with Mr. James Dodsley in four or five lines of {271} any two editions of an author, and you’ll be convinced that it’s scarcely possible for the least difference, even of a point, to escape notice. I would recommend and practise the same method in an English author, where most people imagine themselves capable of correcting. ”

“ Let heavy hearts beat with the tolling bell, And mourn the fatal hour when Jackson fell ! His were the gifts the Gods alone impart― A tow’ring genius and a tender heart ! A greatness equalled only by his skill― A goodness greater than his greatness still ; An ardent zeal each purpose to obtain, Which Virtue and the Arts might entertain. But Fate in jealous fury snatched him hence The moment he accomplished excellence ! ”

“ But as typography gradually made models for itself, the best artists, particularly those who aimed at producing regular Roman and Italic letters, discovered the utility and expediency of arriving at uniformity in design and contour, by the use of these counter-punches, which stamped on to the steel the impress of the hollow portions of the letters they were about to cut, leaving it to the hand of the engraver to cut round these hollows the form of the required character. ”

“ In excuse may be alleged that neither the Archi-typographus nor the Curators are Letter-founders; certainly that the matter has not been treated with that precision which in so learned a body should seem to be requisite. For one instance among others, which might be produced, take the Double Pica, Brevier and Nonpareil Hebrew, the only Hebrew types the University then had. They are two-line English, English and Long Primer. And this mistake has run through all the editions of the Oxford specimen, and in the last of 1770, the leanest and the worst of all, appears most glaringly. ”

“ Moxon’s proficiency in the processes of the art does not appear as yet to have attained the pitch of justifying his matrices to any regularity of line, or of casting his types square in body. Some lines of the specimen curve and wave so as to make it a marvel how others kept their places in the forme, and the press-work {182} and ink are so bad that at a first glance the beholder is tempted to mistake the larger letters with their sunken faces for open instead of solid-faced Romans. ”

“ In Ames’ Typographical Antiquities,479 published in 1749, appears a specimen of “Mr. Caslon’s Roman letter and the names of the sizes now in use,” the introductory note to which affords the first definite notice of the younger Caslon in connection with the foundry. “The art,” says Ames, “seems to be carried to its greatest perfection by Mr. William Caslon, and his son, who, besides the type of all manner of living languages now by him, has offered to perform the same for the dead, that can be recovered, to the satisfaction of any gentleman desirous of the same.” ”

“ Mores found himself the owner of a vast confused mass of matrices, many of them unjustified, and others imperfect, which to an ordinary observer might have been summarily condemned as rubbish, but which he, with an enthusiasm quite remarkable, set himself to catalogue and arrange in order, considering himself amply repaid for his pains by the discovery of a few veritable relics of Wynkyn de Worde and other old English printers. ”

“ This type Miss Elstob used in her Grammar, and in her Grammar only. In her capital undertaking, the publication of the Saxon Homilies, begun and left unfinished, whether because the type was thought unsightly to politer eyes, or whether because the University of Oxford had cast a new letter that she might print the work with them, or whether (as she expresses herself in a letter to her uncle, Dr. Elstob) , because ‘women are allowed the privilege of appearing in a richer garb and finer ornaments than men,’ she used a Saxon of the modern garb. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”