v» ■}' ■' u .’j* -»i ;:v ' ■ 22101192561 jj * . . ' Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Wellcome Library https://archive.org/details/b29979900_0002 PRINTING TYPES THEIR HISTORY, FORMS, AND USE PRINTING TYPES THEIR HISTORY, FORMS, AND USE A STUDY IN SURVIVALS BY DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS “ Nunca han temdo, ni tienen las artes otros enemigos que los ignorantes ” VOLUME II CAMBRIDGE HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS First Printing , August , 1922 Second Printing , January , 1923 D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A. TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME II CHAPTER Page XV. TYPES OF THE NETHERLANDS: 1500-1800 I. THE WORK OF THE PLANTIN PRESS 3 II. THE ELZEVIR EDITIONS 15 III. OTHER EXAMPLES OF NETHERLANDS PRINTING 23 § 1. XVI CENTURY 24 § 2. XVII CENTURY 28 § 3. XVIII CENTURY 32 IV. NETHERLANDS FOUNDRIES AND SPECIMENS 35 XVI. SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 I. EXAMPLES OF SPANISH PRINTING 45 § 1. XVI CENTURY 60 § 2. XVII CENTURY 67 § 3. XVIII CENTURY 70 II. SPANISH FOUNDRIES AND SPECIMENS 80 XVII. ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 I. FROM PYNSON TO WILLIAM CASLON 88 II. WILLIAM CASLON AND THE CASLON FOUNDRY 101 III. JOHN BASKERVILLE 107 IV. WILSON, FRY, MARTIN, AND OTHER FOUNDERS 116 V. EXAMPLES OF ENGLISH PRINTING 124 § 1. XVI CENTURY 125 § 2. XVII CENTURY 130 § 3. XVIII CENTURY 133 XVIII. TYPES USED IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES, AND SOME EARLY AMERICAN SPECIMENS 149 VI CONTENTS XIX. NINETEENTH CENTURY “ CLASSICAL ” TYPES. BODONI AND THE DIDOTS I. THE “CLASSICAL” MOVEMENT 159 II. GIAMBATTISTA BODONI 163 III. THE DIDOT FAMILY 176 IV. NINETEENTH CENTURY FRENCH FOUNDRIES AND SPECIMENS 181 XX. ENGLISH TYPES : 1800-1844 188 XXL REVIVAL OF CASLON AND FELL TYPES 198 XXII. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN REVIVAL OF EARLY TYPE- FORMS AND ITS EFFECT ON CONTINENTAL TYPES I. ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES 202 II. THE CONTINENT 219 XXIII. THE CHOICE OF TYPES FOR A COMPOSING-ROOM 226 XXIV. INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS OF THE PAST AND THEIR RELATION TO THE PRINTER’S PROBLEM TO-DAY I. INTRODUCTORY 245 II. EARLY CONDITIONS IN THE FRENCH PRINTING INDUSTRY 247 III. SOME SIXTEENTH CENTURY LABOUR TROUBLES 253 IV. PRINTING AT PARIS IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 258 V. THE CENSORSHIP 266 VI. RATE OF PRODUCTION, HOURS OF LABOUR, ETC. 270 VII. CONCLUSION 272 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SPECIMENS 279 INDEX 281 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME II The plates, excepting a few in the text of Volume I, either face the page designated, or are grouped immediately after it PAGE 193. Music Types employed in De la Helens Masses : Planting Antwerp , 1578 5 From Rooses’ Christophe Plantin, Antwerp, 1896 194. Roman and Italic Types: Plantin Specimen , Antwerp , 1567 7 From Rooses’ Christophe Plantin 195. Roman and Italic Types : Plantin Specimen , Antwerp , 1567 8 From Rooses’ Christophe Plantin 196. Roman , Italic , and Cursive Types : Plantin Specimen , Antwerp , 1567 8 From Rooses’ Christophe Plantin 197. Canon d’’ Espagne from Plantin Office 10 From Specimen des Caracteres employes dans V Imprimerie Plantinienne , Antwerp, 1905 198. Calligraphic Initials from Plantin Office 10 From Rooses ’ Christophe Plantin 199. Page of Roman Type from Biblia Polyglotta : Plantin , Antwerp , 1572 10 From Drue kschrif ten des XV bis XVIII Jahrhunderts 200. Text-page and Title in Plantin'1 s early manner , Ant¬ werp, 1567 10 From Claude Paradin’ s Symbola Heroica 201. Page from Rariorum Stirpium Hispanise Historia : Plantin , Antwerp , 1576 12 From a copy in Harvard College Library Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS 202. Page of Rechten , ende Costumen van Antwerpen , Plan- tin, 1582 12 From a copy in Harvard College Library 203. Page of Italic from Rembert Dodoen' s Stirpium His- toria: Plantin Office, Antwerp, 1616 14 From a copy in Harvard College Library 204. Fitle-page, Contents, and Text-page of one of Elzevir's Republics, Leyden, 1627 16 205. Pages of Cicero: Elzevir, Leyden, 1642 18 From a copy in Harvard College Library 206. Page of Caesar (octavo) : Elzevir, Amsterdam, 1661 18 From a copy in Harvard College Library 207. Sale-Specimen of Elzevir Types: Amsterdam, 1681 20 From facsimile in Willem’s Les Elzevier 208. Dutch Type used in Temple des Muses, Amsterdam, 1733 34 209. Type used in De Stad Haarlem en haare Geschiedenissen: Enschede and Bosch, Haarlem, 1765 34 From a copy in Harvard College Library 210. Script Type: Enschede's Proef van Letteren, Haarlem, 1768 38 211. Fleischman's Roman Types cut in 1734, 1753, and 1761: Enschede's Proef van Letteren, Haarlem, 1768 38 212. Fleischman's Black-letter: Enschede' s Proef van Let¬ teren, Haarlem, 1768 40 213. Seventeenth Century Civilite : Enschede' s Proef van Let¬ teren, Haarlem, 1768 40 214. Rosart's Caractere de Finance, from his Epreuve, Brus¬ sels ( after 1760) 42 215. Rosart's Music Types, from his Epreuve, Brussels ( after 1760) 42 ILLUSTRATIONS ix 216. Ros art's Ornaments, from his Epreuve , Brussels (after 1760) 42 217. Dutch Roman Types: Erhardt Foundry Specimen, Leip- sic, c. 1739 44 From Gessner’s Buchdruckerkunst und Sch riftg i essery 218. Dutch Italic Types: Erhardt Foundry Specimen, Leipsic, c. 1739 44 From Gessner’s Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiessery 219. Round Spanish Black-letter, from Lucas' Arte de Escri- vir, Madrid, 1577 47 From Strange’s Alphabets 220. Antique Black-letter: Specimen of La Fabrica del Con- vento de S. Joseph, Barcelona, 1777 48 221. Title-page of Bordazar s Plantifcacion, Valencia, 1732 50 222. Texto, Atanasia, and Letura Espaciosa from Bordazar' s Plantifcacion, Valencia, 1732 52 223. Page of Sallust: Ibarra, Madrid, 1772 56 224. Gothic Types in De las Tablas y Escalera Spiritual: Hagenbach, Toledo, 1504 61 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 225. Gothic Type used in Livy: Coci, Saragossa , 1520 62 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 226. Gothic Type used in Pulgar's El Gran Capitan: Crom- burger, Seville, 1527 62 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 227. Roman and Gothic Types used in Complutensian Poly¬ glot Bible: Guillen de Brocar, Alcala, 1514^17 64 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 228. Greek Type used in Complutensian Polyglot Bible (New Testament): Guillen de Brocar, Alcala, 1514— 17 64 From a copy in the Boston Public Library X ILLUSTRATIONS 229. Roman Type used in Latin translation of PulgaVs Chronicle: Sancho de Nehrija , Granada , 1545 G6 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 230. Roman Type used in Gomez de Castro1 s De Rebus Gestis a Francisco Ximenio , Cisnerio : Andres de Angulo , Al¬ cala, 1569 68 From a copy in Harvard College Library 231. Types used in first edition of Don fiiixote: Juan de la Cuesta , Madrid, , 1605 68 From a facsimile edition in the Boston Public Library 232. Opening of Solis 1 Conquista de Mexico (first edition): Villa- Diego, Madrid, 1684 70 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 233. Ltalic used for Spanish text of Sallust: Lbarra, Madrid, 1772 72 234. Title-page of Academy Edition of Don Quixote: Ibarra, Madrid, 1780 74 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 235. Types used in Academy Edition of Don Quixote: Lbarra, Madrid, 1780 74 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 236. Type used in Villegas 1 Las Eroticas: A. de Sancha, .Madrid, 1774 76 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 237. Opening of Solis1 Conquista de ALexico: Sancha, Madrid, 1783 76 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 238. Type used in Bayer1 s De Numis Hebraeo-Samaritanis : Monfort, Valencia, 1781 78 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 239. Page from Triarte1 s Obras Sueltas: Mena, Madrid, 1774 80 From a copy in the Boston Public Library ILLUSTRATIONS xi 240. Italic in Prefatory Address: Espinosa's Muestras de los Caracteres , etc., Madrid , 1771 82 241. Texto Gordo (roman) : Espinosa's Muestras , etc., Madrid , 1771 82 242. Texto Gordo (italic): Espinosa's Muestras, etc., Madrid, 1771 82 243. Italic of Letura Chica: Espinosa's Muestras, etc., Madrid, 1771 82 244. Entredos (roman and italic): Espinosa's Muestras, etc., Madrid, 1771 82 245. Roman cut by Gil: Specimen Real Biblioteca, Madrid, 1787 84 246. Italic cut by Gil: Specimen Real Biblioteca, Madrid, 1787 84 247. New Italic of Texto (showing French influence) : Speci¬ men Real Biblioteca, Madrid, 1787 84 248. Peticano, cut by Eudaldo Pradell: Muestras de la Viuda I Hijo de Pradell, Madrid, 1793 84 249. Ornaments from Muestras, etc., Pedro I fern, Madrid, 1795 86 250. Roman tending to u Modern Face)' from Muestras, etc., Imprenta Real, Madrid, 1799 86 251. Italic tending to u Modern Face," from Muestras, etc., Imprenta Real, Madrid, 1799 86 252. Ornaments from Muestras, etc., Imprenta Real, Madrid, 1799 86 253. Ornaments from Muestras, etc., Imprenta Real, Madrid, 1799 86 254. Court Hand, Secretary, and Scriptoricil Types from Sale Catalogue of the James Foundry, London, 1782 89 Xll ILLUSTRATIONS 255. Roman Types used in Norman’s Vulgaria: Pynson , London , 1519 90 From a copy in Harvard College Library 2 56. Roman Type used in JElfredi Regis Res Gestae: Day , London , 1574 92 From a copy in Harvard College Library 257. Ltalic used in JKlfredi Regis Res Gestae: Day , London , 1574 92 From a copy in Harvard College Library 258. Earliest English Specimen-sheet: Nicholas Nicholls , London , 1665 95 From Reed’s History of Old English Letter Foundries 259. Roman and Ltalic given by Dr. Fell to the University Press , Oxford 96 From Oxford University Press Specimen , 1695 260. Black-letter given by Dr. Fell to the University Press , Oxford 96 From the Oxford University Press Specimen , 1695 261. Dutch Types used in England: Watson Specimen , Edin¬ burgh, 1713 100 262. Tir.sf Broadside Specimen issued by William Caslon , 1734 102 From a copy in the Library of the American Type Founders Company , Jersey City 263. Roman and Ltalic: William Caslon &P Specimen , London , 1763 105 From a copy in the Library of the American Antiquarian So¬ ciety, Worcester 264. Black-letter: William Caslon U Specimen , Lon¬ don , 1763 From a copy in the Library of the American Antiquarian So¬ ciety, Worcester 106 ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 265. Ornaments: William Caslon & Son* s Specimen, London, 1763 108 From a copy in the Library of the American Antiquarian So¬ ciety, Worcester 266. Ornaments: William Caslon & Son's Specimen, London, 1763 108 From a copy in the Library of the American Antiquarian So¬ ciety, Worcester' 267. Page of Baskerville' s Preface to Milton, Birmingham, 1758 110 From a copy in the Boston Athenaeum 268. Title-page of Baskerville' s Virgil, Birmingham, 1757 112 269. Baskerville' s Type used in Virgil, Birmingham, 1757 112 270. Baskerville' s Broadside Specimen ( without border), Bir¬ mingham, c. 1762 114 271. Types from Baskerville' s bordered Broadside Specimen, Birmingham, c. 1762 114 From a copy in the Library of the American Antiquarian So¬ ciety, Worcester 272. Advertisement of Sale of Baskerville' s Types, Paris {after 1789) 114 273. Ornaments used by Baskerville 116 From Straus and Dent’s John Baskerville 274. Ornaments used by Baskerville s 116 From Straus and Dent’s John Baskerville 275. Portion of Wilson's Broadside Specimen, Glasgow, 1783 118 276. Broadside Specimen of Isaac Moore and Co., Bristol, 1766 118 277. Roman and Italic: Fry and Steele's Specimen, London, 1795 121 278. Ornaments: Fry and Steele s Specimen, London, 1795 122 XIV ILLUSTRATIONS 279. Transitional Types : Caslon Specimen, London, 1798 122 280. Ornaments : Caslon Specimen , London , 1798 122 281. Types used in Gorver’s Confessio Amantis: Berthe let, London , 1532 126 From a copy in Harvard College Library 282. Lettre Batarde used in jlrst complete edition of Chaucer : Godfrey , London , 1532 126 From a facsimile edition in the Boston Public Library 283. Lettre de Forme used in second complete edition of Chaucer: Pynson , London , 1542 126 From a copy in Harvard College Library 284. Page of Cunningham’s Cosmographicall Glasse: Day , London , 1559 126 From a copy in the John Carter Brown Library , Providence 285. o/r Ascham’s Scholemaster , showing Roman , Italic , an*/ Black-letter : Day , London , 1571 128 From a copy in Harvard College Library 286. and Ornaments in Tasso’s Godfrey of Bulloigne: Hatfield. , London , 1600 131 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 28 7. Pogr of Walton’s Lives: Newcomb , London , 1670 133 From a copy in Harvard College Library 288. Ptfg-e tf/' Eng lish- Saxon Homily : Bowyer, London, 1709 135 289. Roman used in Latin edition of Caesar: Tonson, Lon¬ don, 1712 136 290. use of Caslon’ s Roman Type, in Selden’s Opera: Bowyer, London, 1726 138 From a copy in the Boston Athenaeum 291. Engraved Text of Pine’s Horace, London, 1733-37 138 From a copy in Harvard College Library ILLUSTRATIONS xv 292. Type of Hammer's Shakespeare : University Press , Ox¬ ford , 1743-44 140 From a copy in Harvard College Library 293. Bastard Title-page of Ha rimer's Shakespeare : Univer¬ sity Press , Oxford , 1743—44 140 From a copy in Harvard College Library 294. Page of Sir Joshua Reynolds ’ Royal Academy Discourse: Cadell , London , 1781 142 From a copy in Harvard College Library 295. Type of folio Pope: Foulis , Glasgow , 1785 142 From a copy in Harvard College Library 296. Title-page of Letters of Charlotte , London , 1786 144 From a copy in Harvard College Library 297. William Martinis Type used in the u Boydell Shak- speare1'' : Bulmer , London , 1792-1802 144 From a copy in the Boston Public Library 298. William Martin's Two-line Small Pica Roman and Italic used in Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell: Bul¬ mer , London , 1795 147 299. William Martin's Great Primer Roman (Goldsmith and Parnell) and Italic (Somervile' s Chase) : Bulmer , Lon¬ don , 1795-96 148 300. William Martin's Pica Roman and Italic, used in So?n- ervile' s Chase: Bulmer , London , 1796 148 301. Binny & RonaldsorC s Type used in The Columbia d, Phil¬ adelphia, 1807 154 From a copy in the Boston Athenaeum 302. Black-letter : Binny Es? Ronaldsorl s Specimen , Philadel¬ phia. , 1812 156 303. Ornaments: Binny Ronaldsoii' s Specimen , Philadel¬ phia , 1812 156 XVI ILLUSTRATIONS 304. Title-page : Isaiah Thomas's Specimen , Worcester , 1785 158 From a copy in Harvard College Library 305. Greek from Iscrizioni Esotici: Bodoni , Parma , 1774 166 306. Roman and Italic from Bodoni' s Specimen , Parma , 1788 168 307. («) Title of Lettre a De Cubieres. (f) Text of Lettre a De Cubieres: Bodoni , Parma , 1785 168 308. of Signora Bodoni' s Discorso : Manuale Tipogra- fco , Parma , 1818 170 309. Pzgr of Bodoni' s Prefazione : Manuale Tipografco , Parma , 1818 170 310. Specimen of Bodoni s Ducalein three zveights: Manuale Tipografco, Parma, 1818 170 311. Largest, medium, and smallest Roman and Italic Capi¬ tals shown in Bodoni' s Manuale Tipografco, Parma, 1818 170 312. Ornaments: Bodoni' s Manuale Tipografco, Parma, 1818 170 313. Borders: Bodoni' s Manuale Tipografco, Parma, 1818 170 314. Roman in Epithalamia Exoticis Linguis Reddita: Bodoni, Parma, 1775 172 315. Italic in Epithalamia Exoticis Linguis Reddita: Bodoni, Parma, 1775 172 316. Roman and Italic: Amoretti's Saggio de' Caratteri, Parma, 1811 175 317. Ornaments: Amoretti's Saggio de' Caratteri, Parma, 1811 176 318. Italic in P. Didot I'aind's Specimen des Nouveaux Caractcres, Paris, 1819 178 319. Roman in P. Didot's Specimen, etc., Paris, 1819 180 320. Borders: Specimen of Gill I fls, Paris, 1808 182 ILLUSTRATIONS xvii 321. Broadside Specimen of GUM fls , Paris , c. 1808 182 322. Sheet from folio Specimen of MoM jeune , Paris , 1819 182 323. Broadside Specimen of L. Ldger, Paris , after 1806 184 324. Borders: Leger s Specimen des Divers Caracteres , Paris 184 325. Classic ” Types: Epreuves de Caracteres , Fonderie Gdnerale, Paris , 1843 186 326. French Old Style revived by De Berny, Paris , 1852 186 327. Comparative Table of Types used by the French National Printing House from its foundation to 1825 186 r From Notice sur tes Types Fir angers du Specimen de V Imprim- erie Roy ale , Paris, 1847 328. Types used in The Sovereign: Bensley , London , 1800 188 329. Types used in Poetry of the Anti- Jacobin: Bulmer , Lon¬ don , 1801 190 330. Types used in Freylinghausen’ s Doctrine of the Chris¬ tian Religion: Stereotype Office, London , 1804 190 331. Page of Bibliographical Decameron: Bulmer, London, 1817 190 From a copy belonging to Mr. C. F. Lauriat , Jr., Boston 332. Julian Hibberfs Uncial Greek Types used in Book of the Orphic Hymns, London, 1827 192 333. Modern Face Types: Alexander Wilson & Son’s Speci¬ men, Glasgow, 1833 194 334. Roman and Italic: W. Thorow good’’ s Specimen, London, 1824 196 335. Black-letter : W. Thorowgood’* s Specimen, London, 1824 196 336. Ornaments to accompany “ Fat- Face” Types: Henry Caslon, London, 1844 196 337. Ornaments to accompany u Fat- Face” Types: Henry Caslon, London, 1844 196 XV1I1 ILLUSTRATIONS 338. Types and Ornaments of Period of the Caslon Revival: Caslon Son and Livermore and Henry Caslon Specimens , London , 1844 196 339. Caslon Type as revived in Lady Willoughby' s Diary by Whittingham , London , 1844 198 340. Caslon Type used in u Pickering edition’’’' of The Temple , by George Herbert: Whittingham , London , 1850 200 341. Tirst use of Fell Types by the Daniel Press , Oxford, 1877 200 From A New Sermon of the Newest Fashion 342. Fell Types as used in Songs by Margaret L. Woods: Daniel Press , Oxford , 1896 200 343. F commoda,fimo- deratrix omnium rerum pm ft o eft fapentia: hinc adipjos qui eanu adept i fuwL>y lam , honor , dignitas conduit. i.dolnuenc. 194. Roman and Italic Types : Plantin Specimen, Antwerp, 1567 NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 7 to print rabbinical commentaries, as is done in the great Bible printed at Venice; I think you have several kinds of Hebrew letters, for my father cut them and sold them to M. Plantin, your father. If it is agreeable to you to ac¬ commodate me with a set of matrices of the aforesaid petit texte of Garamond’s on the above named conditions, I beg you to send me a reply. I am living at rue Saint Jehan de Beauvais, au clos Bruneau , and am a dealer in paper, and a master type-founder. By doing this you will impel me with all my heart to render you service wherever it may please you to command it ; praying God that He may pre¬ serve you, and remaining, Sir, your servant and friend, Guillaume Le Be. “I send you an impression of the letter I call petit textey which I wish to procure.” Some of Plantin’s fonts are shown in his Specimen of 1567. This Index , sive Specimen Characterum Christophori Plantini showed forty-one specimens — seven Hebrew, six Greek, twelve roman, ten italic, three cursive, and three gothic types. Rooses shows but six roman, four italic, and three cursive fonts.1 I hesitate to give these types attribu¬ tions, though the larger sizes of roman and italic appear very French in style {Jig. 194). Those headed De Claris Orat. and Pro Sestio appear to be from the office of De Colines {Jig. 195). The cursives headed Pro Flacco and I Ojfic. are the work of Granjon, whom Plantin frequently employed {Jig. 196). The cursive type headed III De Le gib. is attributed to another type-cutter. Various forms of cursive type are displayed in Plantin’s Polyglot Bible,2 and the Plantin office 1 Rooses’ Plantin , after page 232. His reproduction, from which our plates are taken, is slightly reduced. 2 Drue kschrif ten, pis. 8 and 30. 8 PRINTING TYPES at Leyden possessed fine fonts of it.1 A peculiarity of all these fonts is that lower-case letters to be used in the mid¬ dle of a word often differ entirely from those to be employed as final letters. Rut the Dutch vernacular types, which reproduced typo¬ graphically writing then current in the Netherlands, — the only “ national” character given by the Low Countries to typography, — we owe to Ameet Tavernier and Henric van der Keere. Tavernier, who, no doubt, had seen Granjon’s types, produced a similar character in Flemish style about 1559, which, because it was native, and not (like Granjon’s) foreign, had a great success, and was used by Plantin. Van der Keere (already mentioned as supplying Plantin with material) also made an essay of a letter fagon d'ecri- ture about 1575 ; his font comprising 110 characters. Spe¬ cimens of these types exist in the Enschede collection.2 Though not germane to our investigation, they are of con¬ siderable interest.3 Another “document” on Plan tin’s types is the publica¬ tion of the Plantin-Moretus Museum entitled Specimen des Caracteres employes dans Vlmprimene Plantinienne , is¬ sued in 1905. Forty-eight characters used by Plantin are displayed, although the basis on which the selection was made is not indicated. The monumental canon d'Espagne — a large, round gothic letter intended for liturgical books, and, I believe, cut for a Spanish Antiphonary ordered by the King of Spain but never printed — is a very good ex- 1 Enschede’s Fonderies de Caracteres et leur Materiel dans les Fays-Bas, du XVe au XIXe Siecle, pp. 44-47. 2 Ibid., pp. 40, 41, 47, 48, 49. For a valuable survey of these types see Fes Caracteres de Civilite de Rob¬ ert Granjon et les Imfirimeurs Flamands, Antwerp, 1921, by Maurits Sabbe (of the Musee Plantin ) and Marius Audin. It contains twelve reproductions of civilite fonts by Granjon, Tavernier, etc. V. TV5CYL. V. T V S C VL. O v it AE Philofophia dux , o virtu¬ es indagatrix , cxpulcrixque vitiorum ! qui nonmodonos^fcdomnino vita hominum finete cflepotuiflet?Tu vrbespeperifti, tu difsipatoshomines in focietatem vita? con- uocafti. Tueos inter fe primo dorfticiliis, deindcconiugiis, turn littcrarum &: vocum communionc iunxifti. Tu inuehtrixlegum, tu magiftramortim & difc'iplinaefuifti. Tu vita: tranquillitatem largita nobis csf & ter- rorem mortis fuftulifti. Thales Milefius,vt obiurgatores fuos co- uincerer, oftenderetque Philofophum, ft ei commodum eflet , pecuniam facerepofle5 omnemoleam antequam florere coepiftets in agro Milefio coemifle dicitur. Animad- uerterat fortafte quadam feientia olearum vbertatemfore. i.dcDiuinat. Qjii ceteris rebus pro nihilo habitis re- rum naturam ftudiofe intuencur, Scfapien- tiz ftudioft & Philofophi habentur. f-T nfc* Philofophi^virtutis magiHri. i.T ufatl. Non w fingulis vocibus Philofophi Jfe frauds fnnt , fed ex perpettiiiate & conftantia : resq ? Jpefrm oponety non verkd. InPhilofophia res ftefranttir } non verba pendnn~ tar • Orat. adBrmum. A Philofophoft adfem eloqtmiiam, uonafternor: ft non habeas ,non admodum defidero. i .Tufcul. Sunt qni in rebus contraries panm fibi confteut , voluptatemfeneripme contemnant, in dolore fiut mol- liores3gfariam neghgeitfrangautur infamia. i.Oflic. Vtfi granimaucum profcjfus JequiJfiam. i, Tufcul- In Simil. 20. Quotufquifque Philofophomm imenhttr, qui fit it a moratus , itaanimo dc vita confliintM ,.vt ratio poftu- lat3qni difeiplinam non o jlentatmem fckffli£,fed le¬ gem viu putet y qnlcfi ohemperet ipfe fibi , ac 'decrctU fuis parent ? Vidcre licet alios tanta Imitate dr iafta- tionefisvtfuerit non didicijfe melius: aliospeamia ch - pidos3non mtllosglorid :mnltos fibidhinmfemoSyVt cum comm vita miraahtcr pagnet oratio } quod quidem eft iurpiftimum . 2. Tufcul, MagsfmvimttiSj P hilofophi,- 2. Tufcul. D E CLARIS ORAT. P a c i s eft ccmesyatiiquc foda,& iam bene eonftitutae ciuitatisquafi alumna quaedam elo- quentia. Nemo eft qui nefeiar initio genus humanum inmontibus ac filuis diffipatum , prudentium confili is compulfum:& difettorum oratione dc- Kcitu, feoppidis.tnanibufq; fepldfe. 1 . de O rat. Fuit quoddam tcnipus, cum jn agris homines paffim beftiarum more vagabantur, & vidu feri- nofibivitam propagabant; nec ratione ammi quidquam , fed pleraque yiribus corporis admi- niftrabant. Nemo legitimas viderat nuptias, ne¬ mo ccrtos infpexerat libcros.QjJo rcmporc qui- dam magnus videlicet vir & fapiens > difperfos homines in agris, Sc in locis filueftribus abditos, ratione quadam compulit in vnura locu,«Sc con - gregauit, & eos cx feris & immanibus mites red- didit,& raanfuetos. 1 .delnutnt. Duar funt artes quq poflunt locate homines m amphirnno gradu dignitatis: vnaimperatoris,al- tera oiatoris boni . ab hoc enim pads ornamen- ta retinentur, ab 1II0 bclfipericula tcpeliuntur. Pro Atorapa, PRO SESTIO, Hoc tempore cum bomwesmitch'im najue mtura* Hyttequr *V * ‘ ‘Pitt defcrtptofiifi per agros, atque dijlerft y*igarentnr>t4ntnm el fj>e mdigentiumppel corum qutdejenfi Juflt prat m, ?. . Ofhc. Vt hominh decu ■ ef ingemum }fc ingtnij lumen t rji eloquent sa. Dc Claris Orat. 195. Roman and Italic Types: Plantin Specimen , Antwerp, 1567 ( reduced ) . . , ' ' ' . ■ t. Of Jl c. 9. O f P ! C. IN rebu* tnignivjitfnoria^u* digni*,eoniilia,pr!muw,JlTi*de-»fti foSeaeuentus fpe&antur.quod Jubites, srquuni lir.an iniquum.. NondebemusquiJquam agcre , cuiuinon pofsimus caufam probo* bilevn redderc. t.O ffe. Ad remgerendam qtii nccedif, eaueat, ne id modoeonfidcret.-'piirr. ■It j res lionefta fit.fedetiarn vc ljnbe.it efficiemli tamlta, ne am temcre del'perct propter ignauum, aue nimisconfidat propter cupidnatem. tn omnibus autemnegoiiis prius ^uJtn aggrediare , adhibenJa eft prrpnratio dil'gcns. «. Offc. Stium qiiilque nofca: iiigeuium, acrcnique (b,& vitiorum, & bono- rumfuortim iiHliccmprpbe.iiJoefceturiplu* qudm nos vjdranturtiabe- te prudmtir;ne've hiflrio videac in fcena.quod non videatfapiens in vi* ta. i.O ffc. Non eft ineotnmodum ex aliis iudicare ; vt fi quid dedeceat ir» alii*, titemut & ipfi-.fh enim neftio quo tnodo, xtmagis in aliiseemamui, quim in nobiimetipfis, liquid delinquitur. I. O/jfr. Vt pi Sores, & tj quifignaiabricaotur. i. Qfjic.iu Similil. 90. AD « ft "griefs, qas dulitah imret affaunr, 4 fl.il/re f.iminet dolt it Me. mnt,*e(eti4n>[u [*)itir, &■ quid ijt dt *ao-qutque iffcq gcaert pUcrs\ ixquireie. N«h eft fade indicate quid faciendum, non feciendumut /»,/rrf flare eliam epertet in co quod fl iudiratutn. t.dcFinib. M elim curanturca, qat ctfilie ierut.t*t,qt-im qua fwe ctufiio/tdmhiipr*. tor. i.de Inuenc. Oap»«r ta qua t/iU'ie £etitur,cmnilwt inflntMir cfl rclur.C,- sppdrathr, quant ca qua tcmert,& unlit conft/il adminifiralut. r. dehititnr. • Err* cilutii cut pTapeftut ffl fa/tienr, O* caHidm itupctal:T,tm’)ilut par- lilue ccmiucdiHS rrgiiur, qaatn itqui pultin * irmrmalr alicuiut 4 dmi- ii iprsiur. i.de Indent. the phrumqut fj, it pavitv piaiy P’ttnBucfrtV-z, fiattvit ptfi?- nicitufcs, it piontfamUit^atou^ Ctfpvit $t piufttuv& piaii) ^im- ^i^fnatiov) , couv^owg |Cc xtw P tt ^{attvitfr ouutvtti ^ : toutt& itfZ rtit& d)oft& atttnVtnt it& pvtttuvif' ‘dtnantG- gj yofftfJioyVzj itt4K(£ fyignitt^ , tiitfs- fivutnt a tug quano tfa fonx^ pvtftws-, tt it& Vciaifjcnt iov& quiiz—^ $t\) III.-DE LEGI 1). I . OFF I C* ^JfnV arkq fCwit p£rmcitux nux (jitQ: fljticqtant cotitvairCau £^vcid\Ct aux/3scix, ricq tnoituf- ^iutC&u. (jut fairC »| utC ijwc cfyofc far for ct , nprC^- <| uC ttpuGci^uC Ovtfict di- tnftitutCu /2sCif-/2l,Qixfc titnntnt c _ £ntrCCe(t Artttw, Cl. 11C commattVtnt d'etre attCit- Vucd-, VC- Uantaut dtmanVCviuftct amanVtmCiit VC toff Cnf7» iQro OTliT. Cc irtJt^Sat ui fvononcCr (tn/inec, •YfeS 01V jonntnne qtt'iC* C^~P #C»«, poiiw -F 43»«rC |t>« , ©M^irC cfjfj' iit t n*4i t3o»ttic e» pfw 197. Canon dy Espagne from Plantin OJfn 198. Calligraphic Initials from Plantin Offn ■ ' . $ fill f \ \ ■ t . * I ■ ♦ REGNI NEAPOLITANI P R I V I L E G I V M. PHILIPPVS DEI GRATIA REX C ASTELL ARAGON VM, VTRI VSQJE Sicilia, Hierv sale m, Vn garia, Dalmatia, et Croati£,&c. N ton i vs Perrenotus,S.R.C.Tit. San£ti Petri ad Vincula Prdby- ter, Cardinalis de Granuela,pr<£fatar Regiae Sc Catholics Maieflatis a confiliis flatus, Sc in hoc Regno locum tenens, Sc Capiraneusge- neralis, Sec. Magco viro Chriflop.horo Plantino, ciui Antuerpien- ^jfl, 8C praefatae Catholics Maiellatis Prototypographo fiideli Re- gio,dile£lo,gratiam Regiam Sc bonam voluntatem. Cum ex prx~ clarorumvirorumliteriscertioresfabli fimus,opus Bibliorum quinque linguarum, cum tribus Apparatuum tomis,celeberrimum,reique public^ Chriflian;e vtdiflimu, eiufdemferenifTimae Maieflatis iufTu, opeatqueaufpiciis, adpublicam totiusChri- flianiorbiscommoditatem Sc ornamentum, typis longeelegantiflimis, Sc praeflan- tilTimi viri Benedi£li ArixMo’ntaniprxcipuacura& fludio . quam emendatiflime iUeexcufumefTe,eiufdemq- exemplar fanbliflimo Domino noflro PP. Gregorio xih. oblatum, ita placuifle, vtpraefatae Maieflatis fanblos conatus, ScRegi Gathohcoin primis conuenientes, fummopere laudarit, Sc ampliffima tibi priuilegia ad hoc opus tuendum Motu proprio concefferiq Nosquoquecum naturali genio impellimurad fouendum praeclara quaeque ingenia, quae infigni quopiam conaru ad publica com- moda promouenda atque augenda afpirant- primum quidem longe praeclariffimum hoc fuae Maiellatis lludium , vtvereHeroicum Sc Ptolomqi, Eumenis, aliorumque olimeonatibusin Bibliothecis inllruendis eo praeflantius, quod non vanae flimuio gloriae,vt illi,fed re£tae Religionis conferuandx&C propagandas zelofufceptum,meri- to fufpicientes; deinde eximiam operam dobtiflimi B. Arias Montani,ac immortali laude dignam admirantes, rebuSque tui$,quernadmodu tuo nomineexpetitur, pro- fpicere cupientes, ne meritis frauderis frubtibus tantae opera s,8c impenfaSjquae fumma folicitudine Sc indullria in opusadfinem feliciter perducendum a teetiaminfumpta effeaccepimus-cumquecertb conftet,opus hoc nunquam hablenus hoc in Regno ex- cufum elfe, dignumque ipfo S. fedis Apoflolicaefuflragio lit iudicatum vt di uulgetur ac priuilegiis ornetur. Tuisigitur iufliflimisvotis, vtdeliberatoconfilio,ita alacri S C exporre&a frontelubenter annuentes*, tenore praefentium ex gratia fpeciali, praefatae Maieflatis nomine, cumdeliberatione &afliflentia Regij collateralis.confilij,{latiii- mus Sc decreuimus, ne quis intra viginti annos proximos,a die dat.praefentium dein- ceps numerandos, in hoc Regno dibtum Bibliorum opus, cum Apparatuum tomis coniun&is, vel Apparatus ipfos, aut eoru partem aliquam feorfum,citraipfIiisChri- ftophori,autcaufam Sc iusabipfo habentis,licentiam imprimere,autab aliis impreE- fa vendere,aur in fuis officinis vel alias tenere polTit. Volentes Sc.aecernetes exprefse, quod 199. Page from Biblia Polyglotta : Plantvi , Antwerp , 1572 (■ reduced ) < r\ • CO ►H ■*5 at e*3 •»% U 2; Q Vi o PJ ■» T-f < p— 1 Vi H-i >« o •< V-H c£ 2 o ♦ft < w >-# o « o P-. U o 2: o »-4 ►H ►m 2 xs . >* Vi (2 Q > CH ►ft ►ft < 0$ (a +— c XS p-1 < ►ft « ■s o • 5 ' 'S at cn U * « *> O £ *-« H *3 2S *5 o v_» E xs s: a T % c <^s . — < G o w Cft V-H < • ' f • H O t— i V-4 o M w a, -d > ♦ft P5 cu i— i w o d5 ft > > • ft H J2 # PW 2 u 2 < aj C • •— 4 o u o X M4 200. Text-page and Title in Plantin'1 s early manner, Antwerp, 1567 11 NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 ner1 (Jig- 20 1). This book deals with heliotrope, thyme, and other godless vegetation, and on the last page a Canon of Antwerp Cathedral attests that it contains nothing contrary to faith or morals. Since then we have learned that the mar¬ riage customs of plants would bring to the cheek “the blush that is now peculiar to the middle-aged.” The later Plantin fonts needed great space around them when in mass ; and this they have in that splendid Atlas by Abraham Ortel2 — Theatrum Orbis Terranim — first pub¬ lished in 1570. In a copy of the edition of 1584 in the Li¬ brary of Harvard College, the elaborate copper-plate title- page is made gorgeous by colour, and the portrait of Ortel is surrounded with a complicated framework which is a mass of illumination. The maps are gaily coloured, too, and their decorative cartouches are specially brilliant. The typog¬ raphy (in roman and italic fonts) stands up well under the strain of its coloured decoration. The prefatory type-matter is magnificent, especially the page of spaced capitals, arranged in a dedication to Philip II. The alphabetical index of maps, in spaced capital letters, the compliments to Ortel in Latin and Greek, and the tabular arrangement of type (in the Nomenclator Ptolemaicus generally bound with the Atlas), are all most distinguished. The final “privilege” in civilite , and directions to the binder, etc., on the last page, close a book in which a difficult problem is met with courage and solved with gusto. As the size of type used in each page is dictated by a desire to fill it, and the matter varies in amount, the volume is a sort of specimen-book of Plantin’s fonts. Plantin’s folio Opera of Tacitus, annotated by Lipsius, printed in 1585 (a third issue of this work) is also a beautiful 1 For other examples of Plantin’ s earlier way of working, see title-pages re¬ produced in Rooses’ Plantin , pp. 58, 60, 84. 2 Commonly known as Ortelius. 12 PRINTING TYPES book. It is very simply arranged. The Annals and History occupy a section by themselves, and Lipsius’ commentary to the former, and notes to the latter, occupy divisions marked by separate title-pages. This fine, lively piece of printing employs for its preliminary matter many of Plantin’s mel¬ lowest and most beautiful types. The opening addresses, composed in noble fonts of roman, or in an italic full of swing and movement, show the Gallic touch. In the body of the work the type used is a smaller size of excellent roman ; but the pages are so large, there are such masses of it, and it is so closely set, that the effect is a bit overpowering. Lipsius’ commentaries at the end show that sad mixture of roman and italic, spaced capitals, and Greek quotations, dear to the learned at that date. Yet in the main, the Tacitus is a fine piece of printing. Plantin also printed books in the Flemish black-letter current at that day. An example of this is the Rechten , ende Costumen van Antwerpen , printed at the expense of that city, in 1582. It is not by any means a “pure” black-letter book, for (as in some sixteenth century English books) roman was used as a display letter to a “norm” of black-letter — exactly reversing our present-day use of black-letter and roman. Its title, preface, and some displayed matter employ italic. A letter quoted in the black-letter “Confirmation of Privileges ” is set in roman type ; and passages in roman here and there occur. But the text, which runs to nearly four hundred quarto pages, is composed in a superb Flem¬ ish lettre de forme , massive and very fine. Some passages in civilite are interesting, and so are the decorated initials. This book is supplemented by a sort of “order of procedure” for meetings of city officers. Would that “municipal printing” to-day had such dignity ! {fig. 202). In addition to the Polyglot and other Bibles, and missals, US CAROLI CLVSII RARIORVM STIRPIVM HISTORIC, liber secvndvs. R b o r v m, fruticum & fuffruticum abfoluta Hiftoria, reliquarum ftirpium defcriptiones adgrediemur , inter quas Coronaria? ( quod infigni colorum va- rietate, omnium oculos ilico in fe conuertant, eofque mirum in modum recreent) merito primum locum fibi vendicare videntur. Inidum igitur a Bulbofis, vt- pote nobilioribus ,facientes , reliquas ordine deinde profequemur. De Narciflb. cap. i. DV o funtapud D iofcoridem N drciffi genera, ms- dio luteus , & medio purpurem. Ego , prater pa- fir emit (qui nonnullis N arbonenfis Gallia prat is ffion- te proucnit ) quatuor alia genera per Hifpanias obfir- turnip magnit udine forum filiorumtffirma & colors, fiorendi denife tempore inter fi differentia . Prior ergo Narcijfmterna ant quaterna folia habety virentia, oblonga, Pom filiis fimiha fire , can - ism concatmmy fir iatum, fine filiis ,pedem alt um, in¬ ter dum alt iorem y&in fiimmoflores (ex ant otto ,plu- resve , trianguhs pediculis infidentes , & emembrana trump entes , mcdiocriter amplos , cumgrauitnte quada &doratos fix filiis albis confiantes , quorum medium. -> saljx omnim lutw occupat >flnmina breuia fix cum. + H 3 totiderru i . Narcitfus medio Its.- ecus* 201. Page from Rarionim Stirpium Hispanix Histona Plantin , Antwerp , 1576 Rechten, ende Coftumen van Antwerpen. Uanbe 5unf6tttie. I. Nden eerften , fprekende r- t>an ntioerpen/ 10 mm btgnp pentir tiict alleenlijcb tgenebatbinnen be poo2tenoft mueren nanber ftabt be- fioten/maeroocfebat fiuptetyenbe bin* nen De UepljeptDet feluer ftabt gljele- gtien is. uaelcHe P?p!jept gaet enbe ftrect tot Dojne-biugge/enbe 11. a&eecljem/entjealfoo oooitsombeftabtoan ainttnerpen/ bolgbetibe tpnmlrgie bpDen ftcpfer ^arimiiianus net* leent in Bouembjti air. 1 4 s s.naetiJttmjfen naabe cljaerte tyer bpgljeuoegbt. Jtemallebe gliene/biebinnenbebooifrijicuen limiten m gebojen tooibeit/ 31m i^oojters/enbe b’lmnoonbers al* baee/ 31 jn Jngljcfetenen nan ^nttnerpen. 202. Page of Rechten, ende Costumen van Antzverpen , Plantin , 1582 ( reduced ) ■ . ■ . NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 13 breviaries, and such-like liturgical books, I recommend the student of Plantin’s work to examine the botanical books by Lobel, Dodoens, and Charles de l’Ecluse ; the atlases by Abraham Ortel; Luigi Guicciardini’s Description of the Low Countries in various languages ; the works of Arias Montano and Justus Lipsius ; the music of G. de la Hele, Cornet, and others; the emblem books of Junius, Alciati, Sambucus, etc., and the poetry of Houwaert. Plantin died in 1589. He was buried in Antwerp Cathe¬ dral, and on his tomb was inscribed : CHRISTOPHORUS SITUS HIC PLANTINUS, REGIS IBERI TYPOGRAPHUS, SED REX TYPOGRAPHUM IPSE FUIT Plantin’s two daughters were married to printers — the elder to Raphelengius, associated for many years with Plantin, and who previously taught Latin and Greek at Cambridge, and afterwards accepted the chair of Hebrew at Leyden. To this University he was also printer — as was Plantin himself for a brief period. The other daughter married Moretus, who, after Plantin’s death in 1589, in association with his widow, carried on the press — the Plantin-Moretus Office, as it was usually called. Its work, at its best, preserved much of the later Plantin style. Two examples of it must suffice. The first is Rembert Do- doen’s Stirpium Hisloria , printed by Plantin’s grandson, Johan Moretus, in 1616 — a revised Latin edition of the book earlier issued by Plantin. The preliminary matter is set in Plantin’s superb roman and italic fonts {Jig- 203). The actual book, most agreeably illustrated with brilliantly printed woodcuts of plants, is composed in a small size of roman type of great mellowness and beauty. Simple two- line initial letters start each chapter, the title of which is set in a small italic. It is a charming piece of work — ex- 14 PRINTING TYPES cept that the chapter-heads are too much crowded into the text— and a fine example of “the Plantin manner”; per¬ haps too much of a survival to be typical of Moretus. An odd feature is the final table of names of the plants de¬ scribed, in different languages. Arabic names, etc., are set in italic; Italian, Spanish, and French, in roman; but Ger¬ man, Bohemian, English, etc., equivalents are arranged in black-letter. Dodoens was among the great botanists of his day, and Plantin printed a number of his books. Another seventeenth century book from the Plantin Of¬ fice is the Jesuit Hugo’s Obsidio Bredana . This interesting folio gives an account of the siege of Breda- — familiar still through Velasquez’ great picture of its surrender. Its printing retains much of Plantin’s later manner. It is com¬ posed entirely in an ample roman type. It was issued in 1626 and is a very dignified piece of work. The Officina Plan tiniana— more a palace than a print¬ ing-house— in the Marche du Vendredi at Antwerp, has long been, and still is (as the Musee Plantin), one of the sights of Europe. It is probably the most beautiful building ■ — both inside and out — dedicated to the uses of printing, in the world; nor is there any other establishment which gives such an accurate idea of an early printing-house. The presses, type, and materials of Plantin, Moretus, and their successors have all been preserved, as well as their account- books and correspondence. Not the least valuable part of the collection is the original plates and blocks of ornaments, and designs drawn for the press by Rubens and other artists. To the student the most interesting of the rooms are the type-cutters’ work-shop, the letter-foundry, the press¬ room, and the proofreaders’ room, which are kept much in their primitive condition. The building and its con¬ tents were in the possession of successive members of the Largus opes propria* difundens folm in omnes , Sic hoc Script orum •vcterum monim'entu ruolumen Jllujlra t Jplendore fuo, noffiemq, recent unu aArte noua pulfa penitus cahgine undo#. Jure igitur Vmax, omnid perennius arc^ oPldaieJlate fua Jlabit 3nec firm jus ‘vllufru Olim cudtt opus “Vapida fornacibus xEtna Pyclopum lajfata manusferrofi coaBa Sudantis rara fub vefie Fyracmonis artes Sent if cent mi cariem prius , & folida fie_j Fraudatus S ter opes operam plorabit inert erru. O qua fama tuas oltm feBabitur evmbras? Venturi quant m populi memoraberis ore_j Dodonae pater? quanto celebrabere plaufu? Cum tibife pafiim debebunt plebsque , patresd, SeruatiJ fenes , ignarafi Virgo mariti? Funera quid metuis? Viuet poft bufia fuperfites Pars immenfa tui, nullod taceberis mo , oAtque ipfo d fenio fumet tna gloria Vires. SNfiam prius aflra polum toto radiantia calo cDeJlituent ferilesp fiagofum littus arena, Jnp autumnah noua palmite gemma tumebit, Et pede preffa filuet tepido Vmdemia V ere, Quam taceant nomencfi tuum, laudesq^ minores , Jrritap intereant opera conamina vejlra. 203. Page of Italic from Plantin Office, Antwerp , 1616 NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 15 Moretus family until 1875, when it was ceded to the city of Antwerp by Edouard Moretus, the last proprietor, who died at Antwerp in 1880. The place is full of charm, and its sunny, vine-clad courtyard a haunt of ancient peace. II ELZEVIR, the other great name in the history of print¬ ing in the Netherlands, belongs properly to the seven¬ teenth century. The founder of the family, Louis Elzevir, a bookseller and bookbinder at Louvain, removed to Ley¬ den for religious reasons — the Elzevirs were Protestants — in 1580, and began to publish books there three years later. Five of his sons carried on the Elzevir activities. Utrecht, Leyden, Amsterdam, all had members of the family at work there, and for nearly a century and a half they were the best known printers of the Low Countries. The great figures in the family were Bonaventure and a nephew Abraham — partners from the year 1625— who published editions of the classics in convenient format. “In the Elze¬ virs,” as Aldis says, “we have parted company with the scholar-printers who themselves edited and revised the texts which they presented to the learned world. We have, instead, intelligent printer-publishers, excellent men of busi¬ ness, anxious to produce books that both textually and typo¬ graphically should sustain their credit for good work. To secure correctness they employed scholars to edit their pub¬ lications and see them through the press.” The Elzevirs are popularly remembered nowadays by their little editions in 32mo, with engraved title-pages, narrow margins, and compact pages of a solid, monoto¬ nous type which is Dutch and looks so. These are the volumes which romantic novelists — who are seldom good 16 PRINTING TYPES bibliographers — like to call “ priceless Elzevirs,” though they were then, and are now, cheap books. These and other Elzevir editions had the merit of handy form, good edit¬ ing, and eminently common-sense qualities. But even this scarcely accounts for their tremendous popularity. The Abbe de Fontenai, writing in 1776, says that the Elzevirs “have made Holland celebrated for printing, through an elegance of type which the most famous printers of Eu¬ rope have never been able to attain, either before or since. This charm consists in the clearness, delicacy, and perfect uniformity of the letters, and in their very close fitting to each other”; and he adds that “the taste of young people for literature very often shows itself by a great fondness for these little Dutch editions, which give so much pleasure to the eye.” John Evelyn, who was in Leyden a hundred and twenty-five years earlier, was of the same mind, and speaks of visiting the printing-house and shop of the fa¬ mous Elzevir, “renowned, for the politeness of the characters and editions of what he has published, through Europe.” 1 As publishers, the Elzevirs held somewhat the relative position to the work of their time that Aldus did in his day. They were pioneers in the popularization of books through convenient format and low price. How modern in ideas as publishers the Elzevirs were, is shown by their series of travel-books called “The Republics” — little historical and geographical descriptions of European countries by vari¬ ous authors, put together by a judicious use of scissors and the paste-pot. The Helvetiorum Respublica, , devoted to Swit¬ zerland ; Respublica, sive Status Regni Scotix et Hibernix {ftg> 204), a similar volume on Scotland and Ireland — both issued in 1627; and a like book on France — Gallia , by 1 Evelyn also records that at Antwerp at ‘ ‘the shop of Plantine I bought some books for the namesake only of that famous printer.” O u _ 3 Lh .2" * C. • O M Z — ° O G. OJ VS U u > «| "X3 (3* w o „~ Q -a J2 >5 *“'3 0 .“ '-> a ,, c G R ^ &£>'”-£ _ ra wn 5 ^ a a s. A " fl r« & ^ VI •“• m u ^ - 3 2 6 ^ K- " o ,*S o . ^ ^ ^O t-O CO 2 a a fc-0 <2 t- <« ° C _G G H u (jj •** 3 TJ R 23 g o rS *'ttP •3 0^3 ^ w =3 D O O LT) X » v» to » •»« «$ •k» ■»-* R «is R <» • H ■»* *-=4 rA •*•4 tN» I <-? 1** O ^5 >-> ^ Co «■* § • •$£.2 i I "S **! :o § • ** •v» « *§ s R *$ R S"33 A Vs » o * <*a <3 • VOJ ■* *N> !> pr«4 9 i ^ ° ^ u*i-j • ■*■» M R .Ci s? 5- R £ sa & -gj *»■**»-» % .22 Q £ V2 * •§ «£ o •si k^Sj> R R 9 > *4 Sc confulacu deuenimus in me¬ dium rerum omnium certamen atquedifcrimen. Sc hoc tempus omne poft confulacum objecimus iis fluftibus, qui per nos a communi pelte depulfi, ia nofmetipfos reduadaiunc* Sed cameninhis vd Liber L tgy afperitatibus rerum , vel anguftiis temporis , oble- quar i'tudiis noftris : Sc , quantum mihi velfraus inimicorum, vel caufis amicorum.vel Relpublica tribuetotii, ad fcribendum potiffimum conferam. Tibi vero, frater, neque hortanti deero, neque ro- ganti. Nam neque autoricate quifquamapud me plus re valere poteft, neque voluntate. Ac mihi re- petendaefi veteris cujufdam memoris non fane fatis explicata recordatio, fed, vtarbitror , aptaad id, quod requiris, vt cognofcas qus viri omnium eloquentiflimi, claiifiimiquefenferintde omni ra- tione dicendi. Vis enim,vt mihi fspe dixifti, quo- niam qus pueris, aut adolefcentulis nobis ex com- mentariolis noftris inchoata atque rudia extide- lunt ,^vix hac state digna , Sc hoc vfu , quern ex cauflis , quas diximus , tot tantifque confecuti fu- mus, aliquid iifdem de rebus politius a nobis, pro- fediufque proferri : folefque nonnunquam hacde re a me in difputationibus noltrisdifiencire, quod ego emditiffimorum hominum artibus eloquen- tiam contineri flatuam: tu autem illam ab elegan- tia dottrins fegregajndamputes, Sc in quodam in¬ genii atque exercicationis genere ponendam. Ac mihi quidem , fspenumero in fummos homines, ac fummis ingeniisprsditosintuenti,qusrendum efie vifum eft, quid efiet,cur plures in omnibus ar- ribus quam in dicendo admirabiles extitifienti ram quocumque te animo,Sc cogitatione conuer- teris, permultos excellences in quoque genere vb- debis , non medioctium artium , fed prope maxi- marum. Quis enim eft, qui, fi clarorum hominum fcienciam return geftarum vel vtilitate, vel magni- tudine metiri velic , non anteponac orator! impe- ratorem ? Quis autem dubitet, quin belli duces ex hac vna ciuicace prsfUntifiimos pene innumera* M i bileis 205. Pages of Cicero: Elzevir, Leyden, 1642 6 1 Liber II. Hum elfet Caefar in citeriorc Gailia in hibernis, ita uti fupra dcmonflravimus, crcbri ad cum rumores afferebantur , literifque item Labie- ni certior fie bat > omnes Belgas> quam ter- tianrefle Gallia; partem dixeramus, contra populum R. conjurare , obfidefque inter Je dare. Conjurandi has die caulFas : primum, quod vererentur, nc, omni pa- cata Gailia , ad cos excrcitus noftcr adduceretur : delu¬ de quod ab nonnullis Gallis follicitarentur , partim qui Germanos diutius in Gallia verfari nollent ; ita populi R. exercitum hiemare atque inveterafeere in Gallia mo- lefte Vtim ejjet Cafar] Anno ab U.C.dcxcvii incepithoc tertium bellum , Coflf. P. Corndio P. F. Lentulo Splnthere , & Q^Cxcilio Q.F. Mctefto Ncpote. Montan. In cireriore Gallia ] Includebatur ahtiquitus Gallia Rheno flumine , O- ceano , Pyrensis jugis 6c Alpibus. At poftquam GalloriUn pars Italiae lolum occupavit , Alpcs tranfgrefia, termi¬ nus ab hoc latere fadlus eft Apenninus mons 6c ALfis amnis , ad Anconam uft que > maris Adriatici urbem. Totus autem hie tractus Romanis divifus eft in Gallianv ulteriorem 6c citeriorem : hxc ctiam Italica > Cifaipina , ut 6c To- j»ata promifeue difta eft. Vocis etymon ahi a quod lac Latinis, deri- vant , quia ladteos , id eft , albi coloris homines producit : Diodorus a Galata HeKulis lilia: infulse Bodinus Celris hoc nomen contigifle anmtitur proba- re , quod , ciim orbem terraxum per- agrarent , fe mutuo interrogarent , Oi* a lions -now? quo proficifamur ? ex quo VO- catos vu’.t Oualioncs ; 6c a Latinis, per G effeientibus , Gallos. Optime in hac caiigine videt do&iflimus Clurerius: qui a Celtica voce G alien ( quam nunc dicimus Wallen , indicatque iter face- re ) nomen derivat. Quum enim exun- dante domi multitudine , exteras re- giones peterc Galli coepiftent : parte il- lotum in Italiam , parte in Illyricum, atque inde in Griciam 6c Afiam , par¬ te in Germaniam delata : a re Tpsa in- vento vocabnlo , proximis Germanis Illyriilque didli lunt thi Gallcn,{ ive Cal¬ ler , 6c alia dialecto Waller 5 quod voce jcquipollenti vulgo dicimus die -wan¬ derer , Latinc peregrinatores. Ex hoc La- tini , vocabulum luo ori accommodan- tes , foimarunt Galli. Montan. Regna 206. Page of Caesar (octavo) : Elzevir , Amsterdam , 1661 NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 19 printed at the Elzevirs’ Leyden house in 1631, for the for¬ mula used in making it is about the same. Except for the condensed italic of the reprinted introduction to the first edition — quite a new note in italic type — the fonts used are larger versions of those in smaller books. Type well set and displayed by good presswork gives a general effect that is excellent, and the masses of Greek quotations make it look very learned. The same author’s Sicilia Antigua (some¬ times included as a supplement to the Italia Antigua of 1624), printed by the Elzevir office in folio in 1619, is less conventional in style. Both books have engraved titles and maps, and the Germania a good many copper-plate illus¬ trations. The Historia Naturalis Brasilia of Piso and Marc- gravius, issued in 1648 with the Amsterdam imprint of Louis Elzevir, is a good example of an Elzevir folio. The text is printed in a handsome but rather too regular roman, which is very Elzevirian indeed. In a letter written from Amsterdam in 1681 by the widow of Daniel Elzevir to the widow of Moretus, at Antwerp, we learn that the writer wished to dispose of part of the type-foundry inherited from her husband, Daniel Elzevir, which had descended in turn from Louis Elzevir. Some of its material was the work of Christoffel van Dyck, the great Dutch designer and type-cutter. “Not feeling myself competent to manage everything,” she writes, “I have decided to sell my type-foundry. It con¬ sists of twenty-seven sets of punches and fifty sets of ma¬ trices, which are the work of Christoffel van Dijk, the best master of his time, and of our own. This foundry is, consequently, the most famous which has ever existed. I have desired to inform you of the intended sale, and to send 20 PRINTING TYPES you specimens and catalogue so that, if agreeable to your plans, you can seize the occasion and profit by it.” With this letter she sent a broadside specimen -sheet which is reproduced, and the heading of which reads : “Proofs of types cut by the late Christoffel van Dyck such as will be sold at the residence of the widow of the late Daniel Elsevier, on the Canal, near the Papen-bridge, at the Elm, Wednesday, March 5, 1681” (Jig. 207). This broadside shows forty sorts of characters, if we include two music fonts. There are four kinds of capital letters, thirteen roman, twelve italic (the “pearl” not having any italic of its own), eight black-letter, one Greek, and two music fonts. Most of these types are recognizable as Dutch by their sturdy qualities of workmanship, and, particularly in the smaller sizes of roman and italic, by a tiresome even¬ ness of design. Their closely fitted, large face on a small body was preeminently practical, and adapted them for the small formats of the Elzevir publications. In a table given by Enschede in his Fonderies de Caracteres , he attributes but twenty-eight of these characters to Van Dyck.1 The forms of the types call for little attention ; the Augustijn Homey n and the Augustijn Cursijf (that in the second column) have certain swash letters which, in the roman, remind one of Plantin’s fonts. Some of the swash letters in the Kleene Kanon Cursijf (sixth in the first column) and the capital Q’s in the Paragon Cursijf (next to the last in the first col¬ umn) are interesting. It was from Dutch swash letters — so much admired by MoxoiV — that the variant capitals in 1 In the first column of the specimen, the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth types shown are his. In the second column, the first three, and the capitals of the Augustijn and Cursijf. In the third column, the first, third, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth, and the last one; and all the types in the fourth column. 2 Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises , or the Doctrine of Handy- Works a/ijilied to the Art of Printing, pi. 15. pr *1 1 "Y 1,1 " 1 o oi Ph Q >• Q 6s g £ 1 § ,,5* o Si £ *s Cl P4 W W $ ■45 S' rrl I®*™* S co •* w Q >co 2 M A V' -s feo- *1 I Ml ■Ou cr c» -§ *£ J *\s •s w *% r -Si -Si Sj •ft* % I a* * 6» • 2 8 Si 'Z&.2±* * g» &4^ II 5 ‘ H,M 3W iaS»t rSi^w i**:§UiSSs &i ??»€> ■f**' fll: is i$, ■■■> gSggIK inn li»ss •gAft* a8« Inn W tfW sc s S' s 5£^2 ' j- ~« s •S £ 3 /3 Qi -53*3'# >S± s£5V C"-1' 5 y»** . J^, «£■* "S«o# ■£ oS a 1 s — ^ ^ " set ft sifff;-- •s t? U 0 ©'S"f 1 • &§Js-lr IK « s S •s:sB*§liS:S r* rJ t/j ^ ^ 5 * ^ ° G 3*0 *5 <3J 3 a^P * 3 i: 8 ., - §-$4 ^r=§ g * - V s y» ^ •§ a> n v* Ci ^ w a > riP* ^ »' t gv« 3 S go g,9 y ofi-i 3.y -s-siEfall!* 6-.sj3l|«S§,S 'Sfllll s,§ . ” ’ S'. rs 1 1 * § 5 i. a -i o-^ —• §~Z g s-tila Sfc-S’Ep §'S'D jj 3 J-5 g g-S SQ 'S': g ^ ^$u 3 ” C 4# . O c ^ CJ4 o o rtG c <5 ^ M ^ o O c*r >; 3 b{i{ 4> > E &|(S-3.y-.2^ | «^|.§|l|oS S i§ i g.ssSi g •=- ^ . c soSSu.s^Ji^r S"§s ^ s s ?. ci v si m § s 3 § I gf|?!Sj &“«S ! «1| »| i S *$ °- 3 “•*■■ 2 i Sci ^ ^k..§ e , _ o 2 £U cS,a-S S« -*"2rt3w9S ^ fe, R ^ Si -s 8 h 5^ g s u ■S-l - «*iii .. a §.a 3 o ^ I S «g.|:|-2N •g g « g,3.S j;>,. 'oo°t,3cys- « g c'2-n 3 <2 ? S w I » <2 3* = a g'2,1 s ^:s I.,,. a, t 5* 5S -Si ■§ .^,-*it> r'S &4 c J g 5 wf « ‘tt 2: *-■ -a c g ^ te ^ § r? I p ^ «^4 I C3 ~C S- Q s a 5- a ", •ft, -Si S S c ^ fei M ■s«G ?v o r* « p t> H V) CJ s *5 § foj o •5S ^ *" ^ ^ "■ 3 • M ^ £ § o G ^ £ .S & s ^ 2 « § ? a sT ^ m — , 2 s So^ -i - 6 *■— ' » O *\ HH & *2 cH u P -H -i ; H HfH ^S’OiK^S ^H'x V-Ca •sr v i < QO?^ 1 wKiS wXi 3Qp4|c>: s^i»5 ^ -a 00 o I Co ”>* fv> s • *«w 5> $• -i «8 « 1- O CN NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 21 Caslon’s fonts were no doubt partly derived. In these old fonts, too, there were more unusual and tied letters than are now common. The black-letter shown in this specimen is heavy in its larger sizes, and the capitals are awkward and overcharged — like Flemish sixteenth century fonts too much elaborated. In the medium sizes, the types seem better. The Greek characters would to-day be obscure because of the number of ligatures. The two fonts of music type are those known as the “Music of the Huguenots.” The specimen ends with many good type “flowers.” The last three still hold their own, not merely because they are attractive in design, but because they print so well. This is due to the cross- hatching of the designs, which gives a pleasant tone and variety of colour to the ornament, and was intentionally employed to help the presswork. Mr. De Vinne, who attributed all these types to Van Dyck, — in the light of which his words should be read, — says,1 that “Liberal allowance should be made for the worn types and the bad printing of the original specimen-sheet, as well as for some falling-off, even from this low standard, in a facsimile. . . . Yet the good form and fitting-up of the Flemish Black Letters are but slightly obscured; . . . any punch -cutter might be justly proud of them. The smaller sizes of roman and italic make a creditable appearance, but all of the larger sizes are not so good : some are really bad. Letters more uncouth than those of the capitals of the 4 Dubbelde Augustijn Kapitalen ’ . . . were probably never shown by any reputable type-founder. Moxon’s tracings of the Van Dijck roman letter,2 although rudely done, showing undue sharpening of the lower serifs, give a clearer idea of 1 Historic Printing Types, New York, 1886, p. 43. 2 Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises , pis. 11 and 12. 22 PRINTING TYPES its peculiarities of style and of its real merit than can be had from the study of the Elzevir specimen-sheet. The general effect of this letter is shown to the best advantage in the larger types of some of the octavos of Daniel Elzevir. The smaller types of the duodecimos are too small to clearly show the peculiarities of cut. Van Dijck seems to have de¬ signed letters, with intent to have them resist the wear of the press. The body-marks were firm, and the counters of good width, not easily choked with ink. Hair lines were few and of positive thickness. The serifs were not noticeably short, but they were stubby, or so fairly bracketed to the body-mark that they could not be readily gapped or broken down. When printed, as much of the Elzevir printing was done, with strong impression and abundance of ink, the types were almost as bold and black as the style now known as Old Style Antique. This firmness of face explains the popularity of the so-called Elzevir letter. It may not be comely, but it is legible. The letters may be stubby, but they have no useless lines ; they were not made to show the punch-cutter’s skill in truthful curves and slender lines, but to be read easily and to wear well.” Mr. De Vinne appears oblivious of what seems so self- evident to some French writers- — that Van Dyck slavishly copied the design of Garamond’s fonts. Dutch authorities think differently. The punches and matrices of the types shown on the specimen-sheet were offered for sale in 1681, and were bought by a Spanish Jew named Athias — a Rabbi as well as a type-founder. Some twenty years earlier he had em¬ ployed Van Dyck to cut Hebrew fonts which were used in a Hebrew Bible, for which Athias was given a medal and a golden chain by the States of Holland and West Fries¬ land. In 1683, the following notice appeared in the Gazette ( NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 23 de Haarlem: “The attention of the public is called to the fact that the excellent and celebrated type-foundry of the late Christoffel van Dyck, sold by the heirs of the late D. Elzevir, together with other excellent matrices, Greek as well as Roman, brought together in the lifetime of the said Elzevir, has been reorganized at Amsterdam. Address Jan Bus in the house of Sr. Joseph Athias, where he is at work throughout the day. The price of the types is the same as in the time of Van Dyck and Elzevir.” A broadside speci¬ men1 which must have been brought out about the same time shows, according to Blades, five fonts of titling, sixteen of roman and italic, eight of black-letter, and two of music.2 Upon Athias’s death the foundry passed to a printer named Schipper; then to the Amsterdam founder Jan Ro¬ man. One-half of Roman’s collection was sold in 1767 to Enschede of Haarlem; the other half to the brothers Ploos van Amstel of Amsterdam. Later their portion was bought by Enschede, so that practically all Van Dyck’s work went to the Haarlem foundry. Unfortunately, the Enschedes’ un¬ bounded admiration for the tasteless German type-cutter Fleischman threw Van Dyck’s types into the shade, and their untoward end is described on another page. ill THE work of the Dutch press, outside that of the Elze¬ virs and Plantin, was not of great interest. There were three features, however, to which attention should be called: (l) The magnificent maps and atlases printed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Mercator, Ortel, 1 Proeven van Letteren die gesneden zijn door Wylen Christoffel van Dijck, welke gegoten werden by Jan Bus , ten huyse van Sr. Joseph Athias , etc. Bus had a reputation in his day as a clever workman. 2 Blades’s Early Type Specimen Books, pp. 14, 15. 24 PRINTING TYPES W aghenaer, Hondius, and the Biaeus, which, quite apart from their engraved plates, are imposing in their typog¬ raphy. (2) The books printed in French and other lan¬ guages during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some of these were works, now famous, issued in Holland in order to escape the restrictions placed on the press else¬ where — restrictions that proved most advantageous to the Netherlands book-trade.1 (3) The illustrated volumes pub¬ lished in the early eighteenth century by Bernard Picart and others — ambitious pieces of type-setting, which, though heavy in effect, were magnificent for the period.2 § 1 During the first half of the sixteenth century, printers in the Netherlands employed a great deal of gothic type of a square, heavy, monotonous cut. A few books were printed in a lettre batarde , but the black-letter fonts that were most used were of the lettre de forme family. A few of these fatter, “blockier” gothic types furnished an unfortunate historical precedent for the corpulent “ blacks” which disfigured Eng- 1 The small format of some editions of proscribed books was probably to adapt them to convenient transportation to the public they commanded out¬ side Holland. s Title-pages, etc., of books issued in the Netherlands during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (as well as manuscripts and incunabula) are repro¬ duced in J. ten Brink’s Geschiedenis der JVederlandsche Letter kunde, Am¬ sterdam, 1897. See also Stockum’s La Librairie , V Imfirimerie et la Presse en Hollande a tracers Quatre Siecles. Documents fiour servir a V Histoire de leurs Relations Internationales. La Haye, 1910. This gives reproductions of title-pages, etc., of works of foreign authors printed in Holland. For a guide to some of the best Dutch printing, consult the Catalogue of the Exhibition of Old and New Book-Making in the Netherlands, held at The Hague and Am¬ sterdam in 1920 under the auspices of the Joan Blaeu Society ( Catalogus van de Tentoonstelling van Oude en JVieuwe Boekkunst in de JVederlanden: Vereeniging Joan Blaeu) . The catalogue includes 378 items, and is valuable for titles of interesting sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century books, of well-printed volumes issued in the nineteenth century, and of those reflect¬ ing modern tendencies in type-cutting and book-making issued in recent years. NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 25 lish printing in the early nineteenth century. Along with these gothic types, roman types were used — a Dutch vari¬ ant of Italian roman types, with the same squarish quality in design which marked their black-letter companions. The italic employed resembled the Aldine character, and with it small roman capitals were used according to Venetian tra¬ dition. The general effect of type at this period w^as remi¬ niscent of the fifteenth century; indeed, the same general forms persisted in Dutch typography for a long time after 1600. Early Netherlands books were often decorated with woodcuts, occasionally effective, though usually coarse in de¬ sign and execution; and title-pages often bore elaborate and overcharged borders. Such types, square in shape, closely set, monotonous, and arranged without much sense of style, made books which can be readily recognized on the shelves of a library; volumes too thick for their height, in folio, quarto, and diminutive 32mo, mostly bound in vellum, which are as unappetizing in their outward appearance as the typography within. A general idea of Netherlands printing from 1500 to 1540 may conveniently be had by consulting the reproductions of titles and text-pages given in Nijhoff’s-ZA^t Typographique clans les Pays-Bas / and I indicate a series of plates from it which cover the different classes of types. The square, heavy lettre de forme is exemplified in some of the work of the Antwerp printer Willem Vorsterman, whose product is of a high average — for instance, the title-pages of both 1 Wouter Nijhoff, 1J Art Typographique dans les Pays-Bas (1500-1540). Reproduction en Facsimile des Car ac teres T yp o graph iques , des Marques d’ Bnprimeurs, des Gravures sur Bois et autres Ornements employes dans les Pays-Bas entre les Annees MD et MDXL. Avec JVotices Critiques et Bio- graphiques . La Haye, 1902. In the references to this work which follow, the numbers of the Livraisons in which the loose facsimiles were originally issued are given, but if the plates have been collated and bound, these numbers can be disregarded. 26 PRINTING TYPES Old and New Testaments in his Dutch Bible, issued re¬ spectively in 1528 and 1529. These plates show, too, the borders used in such books — although these are much above the ordinary in design.1 2 The same sort of type, but larger and finer in execution, was employed by Jan Seversz. in his title-page of Die Crony eke van Holland t, etc., of 15 17.* Yet another book that shows Dutch printing of the first order is the Delft edition of a Latin Psalter printed in 1530 by Cornells Henriczoon Lettersnijder — who certainly knew his business.3 His black-letter is very impressive and beau¬ tiful, though of a massive kind that betokens Dutch pro¬ venance.4 These show Dutch lettre de forme at its best. Scarcely less good — and more characteristic— are the types of Jan Lettersnijder of Antwerp as used in Hoveken van devocien (c. 1500). 5 Still more characteristic, and much less good, are the pages from Nicolas de Grave’s 1520 and 1529 editions of J. Boutillier’s Somme Ruyrael , the Segelijn van Jeruzalem (1517), and Leven van St Bernard ( 1 5 1 5).6 Roman type of this period is finely displayed in the open¬ ing page of a book printed by Thierry Martens of Alost at Louvain in 1517 — Summse argumenta Legum Romanorum of P. Aegidius7— in which the entire title is set in roman capitals of classical form. A title-page showing capital and 1 Nijhoff: Anvers, Willem Vorsterman, IV, No. 10 ( Livraison 3), and V, No. 11 ( Livraison 4). 2 Ibid., Leiden, Jan Seversz., Ill, No. 8 ( Livraison 3). 3 In connection with this man’s work, the cursive character used in his edi¬ tion of the New Testament in Dutch, printed at Delft in 1524, is sufficiently unusual to reward attention. See Nijhoff : Delft, Cornells Henriczoon Letter¬ snijder, Nos. 7 and 9 ( Livraison 1 1) . 4 Nijhoff : Delft, Cornelis Henriczoon Lettersnijder, V, No. 15 {Livraison 17) . 5 Ibid. , Anvers, Jan Lettersnijder, I, Nos. 1-3 ( Livraison 8). 6 Ibid., Anvers, Nicolas de Grave, III, Nos. 6-9 ( Livraison 10). 7 Ibid., Louvain, Theodoricus Martinus Alostensis, V, No. 19 ( Livraison 13). NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 27 lower-case letters appears in the Antwerp edition of Eras¬ mus’ De Contemptu Mundi , printed by Van Hoochstraten.1 Fonts of heavier roman were used in some other books printed by Thierry Martens — such as the Condemnatio Doc- trinse M. Lutheri of 1520, or Fischer’s Lversio Munition is, printed about 15 18, 2 3 or the somewhat better roman types used by Paffraet at Deventer in 1521 and 1525/ Examples of italic are to be found in a Leyden edition of Erasmus’ JDe vitando pernitioso aspectu of 1538, printed by Pieter Claes- zoon van Balen,4 and in the pages of Antonio de Nebrija’s Lexicon Juris Civilis of 1527, printed at Antwerp by Gra- pheus.5 These examples give a fair idea of the kind of ro¬ man and italic types generally employed in the Netherlands from 1500 to 1550. Two books in folio by Hubert Goltz (Goltzius) of about this date are interesting. The first is his Fivse Omnium fere Imperatorum Imagines , printed at Antwerp in 1557, and in its illustrations showing, says an authority, “the first use of the copper plate in connection with blocks engraved for chiaroscuro printing and also the first appearance in any form of the chiaroscuro as book illustration.” 6 7 Typograph¬ ically it is noteworthy for its display of italic types ; espe¬ cially imposing in the largest size/ which resembles some used by John Day. The prefatory and final matter is ar¬ ranged with great distinction — in capital letters mingled 1 Nijhoff: Anvers, Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten, XIV, No. 51 ( Livrai - son 15) . 2 Ibid.., Louvain, Theodoricus Martinus Alostensis, II, Nos. 6, 7, 8 ( Livrai - son 2) . 3 Ibid., Deventer, Albert Paflfraet, IV, Nos. 16, 18, 19 ( Livraison 2). 4 Ibid., Leiden, Pieter Claeszoon van Balen, I, Nos. 3, 4 ( Livraison 15). 6 Ibid., Anvers, J. Grapheus, II, Nos. 4, 5 ( Livraison 5). 0 Rudolph Ruzicka. 7 Facing pis. xli, xlii, etc. 28 PRINTING TYPES with an italic recalling Fell’s types. The sec6nd book is C. Julius Caesar sive Historix Imperatonim Cxsarumque Ro- manorum ex Antiquis Numismatihus Restitutx . It was printed at Bruges in 1563, and is a fine example of the sober use of some monumental roman types of a style much earlier than the date of the book. It is illustrated with copper¬ plates, and its engraved title-page and colophon are most distinguished. Luigi Guicciardini’s Descrittione di Tutti i Paesi Bassi was issued in folio at Antwerp, in 1567, by G. Silvius, royal printer. The roman type in which it is chiefly printed and the italic used in its prefatory verse are not unlike Plantin’s fonts, and the book is interesting because it suggests that Plantin’s style was not so peculiar to him as we are apt to think. Except for a copper-plate map and a view of the Hotel de Ville at Antwerp, the book is illustrated with large wood-engravings. The title-page and its two following leaves of dedication, engraved on wood, are fine, and so are the double-page plates : those of Ypres, Malines, and Lou¬ vain in particular being worth looking at. These blocks were ultimately bought of Silvius by Plantin, and are now in the Musee Plantin at Antwerp. On Silvius’ death at Ley¬ den (where he was printer to the States of Holland and the University), his widow sold his material to Plantin. §2 J. Hondius, the well-known Amsterdam publisher, brought out in 1611 a Latin history of that city by Pontanus — Rerum et Urbis Amstelodamensium Historia. It is printed entirely in roman and italic types — the latter the better of the two — which have the worthy but uninspired appear¬ ance of Elzevir fonts. There are engraved illustrations and woodcut initials — the latter rough but attractive. The same NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 29 publisher about this date printed a Dutch edition of this book, set in double column, in a spirited cut of lettre de forme with the usual italic and roman interspersed. The copper-plate illustrations — unintentionally diverting — of the Latin edition are used in the Dutch version. The two editions are interesting to compare. Samuel Ampzing’s Beschryvinge ende lof der Stad Haer- lem in Holland (Description and Praise of the City of Haar¬ lem), and Pieter Schrijver’s (Scriverius) Laure- Crans voor Laurens Coster van Haerlem , Lerste Finder vande Boeck- Druckery,\\ere printed together in a stout quarto at Haarlem by Adriaen Rooman in 1628, in a mixture of roman, italic, black-letter, and cursive letter, in various sizes. I do not attempt to describe it except as an unbelievable jumble of types not in themselves bad. Of the two unusual cursives, the smaller is well displayed on pp. 246-256 in the first book named, and the larger in the V oor Reden to the second. This last work, — u Laurel Wreath for Laurenz Coster,” — although issued separately, was added, in enlarged form, to Ampzing’s book to support his championship of Coster as the inventor of printing. Plates of Coster’s ill-favoured coun¬ tenance and of his printing-office enliven the treatise. The three-volume folio Atlas JVovus sive Descriptio geo - graphica Totius Orbis T erratum , by Mercator and Hondius, published at Amsterdam by J. Jansson and H. Hondius in 1638, and apparently printed by Hondius, is handsome typographically, apart from its maps. The text is printed in double column from old style roman and italic fonts ; and woodcut ornaments and initials are often employed. But it lacks the sense of style of Plantin’s edition of the Atlas by Ortel. Although the text is printed on the back of the engraved maps, the paper is so thick and good that it does not matter. 30 PRINTING TYPES Willem and Joan Blaeu’s Novus Atlas , in six enormous “ atlas folios,” is another able performance. In an edition in German, printed at Amsterdam in 1676, the text is set in fraktur, with — alas! — proper names in roman, and quota¬ tions in italic letter. But it is a very wonderful achievement, all the same. Evelyn, when on a tour in 1641 which seems to have been more or less bibliographical, visited (besides the establishment of “ that indefatigable person” Hondius, men¬ tioned above) Joan Janszoon Blaeu’s shop in Amsterdam to buy maps and atlases. This was Blaeu the younger, son of the better-known Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), in¬ ventor in 1620 of an improved style of printing-press which had considerable success in the Netherlands and in England. The elder Blaeu had earlier been associated with Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, from whom he got the idea of making globes and maps. Blaeu’s new press was intended to surmount difficulties in perfecting this work, for which the shop became famous. A contemporary account, describing the establishment much as Evelyn must have seen it, tells us that “on the Rlumengracht, near the third bridge, and the third alley, may be found the greatly renowned printing-house of John Blaeu, Counsellor and Magistrate, of this city. It is fur¬ nished with nine type-presses, named after the nine Muses, six presses for copper-plate printing, and a type-foundry. The entire establishment on the canal, with the adjoining house, in which the proprietor lives, is 75 feet in breadth, and stretches along the east side of a cross street 135 feet, or with the attached house 150 feet. Fronting on the canal is a room with cases in which the copper-plates are kept, from which the Atlases, the Book of the Cities of the Neth¬ erlands and of foreign countries, also the Mariners’ Atlases and other choice books are printed, and which must have NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 31 cost a ton of gold. Next to this first room is a press-room used for plate printing, and opening upon the cross street referred to above is a place where the types, from which impressions have been made, are washed; then follows in order the room for book-printing, which resembles a long hall with numerous windows on either side. In the extreme rear is a room in which the type and certain other mate¬ rials used in printing are stored. Opposite this store-room is a stairway leading to a small room above which is set apart for the use of the proofreaders, where first and sec¬ ond impressions are carefully looked over, and the errors corrected which have been made by the typesetters. In front of this last designated room is a long table or bench on which the final prints are placed as soon as they are brought from the press, and where they are left for a considerable time. In the story above is a table for the same purpose just indicated, at the extreme end of which, and over the room occupied by the proofreaders, is the type-foundry wherein the letters used in the printing of the various languages are moulded. “The foundation of this splendid building was laid in the year 1636, by John Blaeu’s oldest son Willem Blaeu, and on the 13th of the Fall month of the following year the printing establishment was here set in order. The original founder of the printing-house, who died in the following year, was John Blaeu’s art-loving father Willem, who, for a considerable time, had been a pupil of the great astrono¬ mer Tycho Brahe, whom he zealously followed, construct¬ ing many instruments for the advancement of astronomi¬ cal studies, for the promotion of the art of navigation, and of other sciences of like character, an interest in all of which he revived and furthered while at the same time he made new discoveries, as has become widely known from 32 PRINTING TYPES the publications which have issued from this printing- house.”1 P. and J. Blaeu printed at Amsterdam in 1698 a French edition of Gerard Brandt’s Life of Admiral de Ruyter — La Vie de Michel de Ruiter — a more or less commonplace performance of seven hundred folio pages. The book is com¬ posed in a light variety of old style roman, with the numer¬ ous quoted documents arranged in italic. It is illustrated with large copper-plates — which, unlike the text, leave nothing to be desired as to incident and movement §3 The name of Wetstein, the eminent Amsterdam printer- publisher, appears (with others) on the title-page of Hooft’s N ederlandsche Historian , printed in 1703. Its types are char¬ acteristic Dutch fonts of the eighteenth century, but more lively than those in most contemporary work. The italic used has some delightful characters. Except for copper¬ plates, the volume has no decorations save some nine-line Dutch “bloomers,” used at the beginning of each of the thirteen books into which the History is divided. They “ bloom ” energetically ! Peter the Great, on his last stay in Holland, from 1716 to 1717, was fired with the idea of improving printing in Russia, and he made various endeavours to this end. The history of the only effort that succeeded — and that but par¬ tially — is a curious incident in the annals of Dutch printing. There had been at the beginning of the seventeenth cen¬ tury a Dutch Bible printed at the command of the States- General of the United Provinces, and taking this for a basis, 1 Filips von Zesen’ s Beschreibung der Stadt Amsterdam, 1664, pp. 215, 216; quoted in E. L. Stevenson’s Willem Janszoon Blaeu, Hispanic Society, New York, 1914. For a list of the principal geographical works of the elder Blaeu, see Bibliography in the latter book. NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 33 the Czar ordered a Bible arranged in double column; the Dutch text (entirely in capital letters) on the right, the other column being left blank for a Slav translation of the Dutch text — to be printed later in Russia from Slavic types, cut and cast for this purpose by Clerk and Voskens, the Am¬ sterdam type-founders. The New Testament, in two folio volumes, was printed at The Hague in 1717, and the Old Testament, in four volumes, at Amsterdam. It appears that the greater part of the edition sent to Russia wras lost, and that only a few copies of the New Testament ever were com¬ pleted by the addition of the Slav text. Only four copies are now known.1 The quarto edition of Brieven . . . den Johan de Witt , issued by H. Scheurleer at The Hague in 1723, has a con¬ gested red and black title-page, and apart from this is a perfectly straightforward quarto, set from heavy, awkward old style types, moderately well printed, on moderately good paper, perfectly respectable, and as uninteresting as all this sounds. Wetstein and Luchtmans — both good names in Dutch printing and publishing — brought out at Amster¬ dam and Leyden in 1738 a quarto Livy in seven volumes — a monumental work, and, like most monuments, depress¬ ing. The type of the text is a very square cut of old style, the notes a colourless variety of Elzevir types. The crowded title, the allegorical frontispiece, the author’s portrait, the preface in enormous italic, and page after page of crowded text, make these two volumes of something over one thou¬ sand pages each, a very sleepy affair. Bernard Picart, a French engraver and seller of prints who resided at Amsterdam after 1710, contributed a deco¬ rative note to early eighteenth century Dutch printing. An 1 Stockum’s La Librairie, VIvip.rim.erie et la Presse en Hollande d. travel's Quatre SiZcles, facs. 153, 154. 34 PRINTING TYPES example of his work is the (Euvres Diverses de M. de Fontenelle , published in 1728 at The Hague by Gosse and Neaulme. The book is full of Picarfis exquisite engraved decorations, and is (except for the tiresome type border on every page) printed from old style types more French than Dutch in effect Another more imposing and more fa¬ miliar “Picart” book is the folio Temple des Muses , pub¬ lished at Amsterdam by Zacharie Chatelain in 1733, the year of Picart’s death. Apart from the engravings and the series of fine frameworks around them— so good that they have been often utilized by later printers and decorators — the typography is extremely handsome. The fonts used — of a bold, massive sort — are impressive in effect; and the composition, too, is adequate, and very much in the key of the pretentious plates {Jig. 208). Such books were, I sup¬ pose, bought for their pictures, and were intended as luxu¬ rious pieces of book-making. Still another illustrated Picart work is the Ceremonies et Coutumes Religieuses des Nations de tons les Peuples du Monde in eleven volumes, begun in 1723, of which an English edition was published. Johannes Enschede and Jan Bosch of Haarlem very ap¬ propriately printed G. W. van Oosten de Bruyn’s De Stad Haarlem en haare Geschiedenissen in 1765. It is not much of a performance. The dull, light, roman and italic types have lost all colour and spirit (Jig. 209). Some black-letter (possibly Fleischman’s) is here and there used for verse. Then, too, the composition of displayed and prefatory matter is tasteless and pretentious. As a whole, the book, — a folio, - — weak as it is in its types, is yet interesting, because showing new tendencies in printing. The eighteenth century Dutch press brought out a great many famous books which were prohibited or in danger of suppression in France. These are often good examples of 4^ Si ^ I * S i=? ^ ‘SoSL.i; $> « vs? ^ §*■>§ *•» ^ r>* ^ “ ^ <5j Q> ^ i ^ a « Q> ^ ^ *s b L>* ~C> ' ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ » *- ^ T^* ^ tai ’ ^ „ ^ r?5 £ (±5 od Ui > O a. Cj J4 u ! y ns w 'rS $ % 3 ? X G Oi O o u 3 O *“H Tt »—« W g-gfi *-< r~t co 0^- ^O *-* ~ 5-S 3 ^ O bQ-fa s-< ^-4 co VH r^ ^ <^> G co CO o^u *j'(J w bX)S 3^ -8 .£ C' ^ JG r3 d aj 3 ^ ^ '“O w « 52 Vfl ■% • nS D VU co OJ ^ rod rt bC<2 C O g ^ 5 .8 cT “ °° M Q 4-) ^ a > CO CO 1 <5j «c s r- «0 Oj Co Co ^3 t- «b co S i -G CD cd 5— I J G4 G • r— t S o cfcj on w >T3 « => ri CD -G 4-j CO ^-4-* 03 O £ G r 03 Xj 03 *-< CD XD G 03 5—i CD 03 . ■S o cd t> CD & ♦ *~H XS G CD 5—4 -03 „ C/D CD X* CD G N 03 CD > CD C ^ § - "O & _ G G X5 c3 13 ^ r~j co & w 8 Q bJ3 O G*-" ° o c ^ QJ —3 bA !R bo 0 Ji u T5 G G CD X? '£ CD XD s jCD CD > 03 03 J-H o 4-» CD s CD ei CD CD 4_> ^ o bo o G > CD 5— i 03 03 CD X> G CD X5 G CD N , CD CD XD ^CG G CD CD CD bo « CD ♦ _ CD bO o 03 x) CD G CD CD CD 5— < 03 03 1-4 CD 03 03 G CD X> CD XD CD CD £ o U-t G CD CD 13 . C3 bO > *G CD CD GD ° _G > -g X5 G CD G ’-G a *§ QJ bo CD CD 5— < GD N V I G O 5-h GD CD XD G O CD • v— H o o GD G O G M CD ^ L y i 'g G CD bo G r-j-* CD *—< CD 03 XD o3 CD CD G CD > CD CD f-4 CD > OO G 03 > CD G < < CD CD ^ CD s s W ^3 CJto G CD CD ^ ■*-' to G^ ^ CD CD i 5-. CD bO . u* XD r\ t-. 03 03 CD GU CD G CD G CD rs O X3 CD CD OT k . O § ^ bJD Fournier, have been discussed. The first still re¬ main at the Plantin Museum. The second were finally ac¬ quired by the Enschedes. The Enschede foundry at Haar¬ lem is one of the most interesting establishments in Europe, and is a “descendant” of the oldest foundries in Holland and of ancient foundries in Basle and Geneva. Begun in 1703, and flourishing to-day, it possesses probably the best col¬ lection of ancient types, in private hands, in the world. Be¬ sides portions of the Athias and Wetstein foundries, it includes material from those of Dirk Voskens, Blaeu, Van der Putte, Ploos van Amstel, Elzevir, and others— almost every establishment mentioned by Fournier. Some of its types date from the fifteenth century. Had not many of Van Dyck’s matrices been destroyed, it could have reproduced in type any Dutch book from the fifteenth century to our own. Its proprietors have been, from the first, learned men, and adepts in their work. Fleischman, a German, was employed by the Enschedes in the eighteenth century to cut types for their foundry, and his signature is found beneath many fonts shown in their specimen-books. In his hands their output was somewhat changed, though not much bettered. His types are singu¬ larly devoid of style, and usually show a drift toward the thinner, weaker typography which was coming in Holland as everywhere else. But Fleischman’s work was much the fashion in the eighteenth century, and it made such excellent fonts as Van Dyck’s appear hopelessly obsolete. In 1810, when Didot type was the mode, Van Dyck’s matrices and types were, without much thought, thrown into the melting- pot — a “gesture” no doubt regretted by later members of the Enschede family. Various books and broadside specimens of types and 38 PRINTING TYPES ornaments were published by the Enschedes. One of the earliest books was the Epreuve des Caracteres , qui se fondent dans la Nouvelle FonderiedeLettres d1 Isaac et J ean Enschede a Haarlem . Augmentee perfectionee jusqii 'a V An 1744. The preface alludes to the abilities of Rudolph Wetstein as a printer and type-founder, and mentions that the Enschedes bought his foundry in 1743 ; Wetstein having died the year before. The Greek types are mentioned with special pride; and the deep cutting of counters, and the solid way in which the types are constructed to escape wear, are emphasized. The roman and italic types shown are all old style. In 1768, the Enschedes published an elaborate specimen called Proef van Letteren , Welke gegooten worden in cle Nieuwe Haer- lemsche Letter gietery van J. Enschede^ prefaced by a portrait of Enschede and other engravings. An introduction, dated Haarlem, 1768, and signed by J. Enschede, is printed in a very ugly cursive script letter (Jig. 210) — a fearful decline from the splendid cursive fonts in use a hundred and fifty years earlier. This is followed by a portrait of J. M. Fleisch- man, their type-cutter.Then begins a series of types— capi¬ tal letters in roman and italic of a very Dutch and ugly cut, a series of shaded capital letters, and a great variety of faces of roman and italic types, in some of which the size of the body of lower-case letters is unduly large in proportion to the capitals. Many of the types that we come upon which look more “modern ” (some of them being as we should now say “condensed”) were cut by Fleischman — whose name appears beneath them. He uniformly extracted all interest from his fonts, partly through lightening the cut, which gave monotony of colour, and partly by his large, round lower-case letters, made more rolling in effect by shorten¬ ing the descenders in a very modern way (Jig. 211). The smaller types are extremely dull in colour, though here and 01 f! t| Ts ,8 *g ol *s ot *1 ol *1 Oi *| o! *1 Os « 01 Mo o Ol II 'O’ (0 *i o| 4-1 *1 01 -*s of Is x§ Ol '*' rf) ► V« vV . Of - ^ ^lf utrtreocee Lecermond ggo. resvzi&y&Y QfGdtdtJES Fr. Gannond d deux Points. 0 Cl 7* ^ircf dLonjten en f G eetenfcfapjsen zien filer fet twefe j yoor de GHfaerlemfofe Jfetter^leter^ qej!?reeden } Cpejtcfreeyen OTcfrijtt ; floor wi^Cen fen en ; er ooet en Wa&rdd , yew-eeft is ; en men ,dd fomen zac , o^eujsi \omen zat ; en 17 /- * 768 yodel feat : d ; n> fe zy,n lacepjke GJConJt-fV ei'ijk tiA yoor detze zi^nee &nn etteraeetene , e?i fe faatfle foor fern ae- dcL/t G\ . etteren ; dee '* riveter 1^ ? jmjdeefe G/lffatr^zen. zf n ycen yeefe A ffCecr JOjtVr 3%JGD€jC&JZ fFJffbJof G } den arooljden fonjtiqjben Gfetter-Ofter/i^ef fencer ; die * it It 10 m U 1* S *r* I it !$’ fo \\ iV /(,\ I $ fv ii'J »/ c/eeterep *\beuAye?e ; no^. door de C^efeefe fVceere/d met roem yermeid wo fen. J* * ft gy HA %X >yf io SUA. (JJ ^ p) d A ft 10 gf 10 It 1 If A J- 0 210. Script Type: Enschede"* s Proef van Letter en, Haarlem , 1768 v>f gj >;x>;xx;Caxxxxxxxxx>ckxx>0sX>c j ■%h? sf . Defcendiaan Romein , Eerfte Schrift. Fr. Pbilofophie Remain. Engl. Smal Pica Roman. Hoogd. DeJjfendian Antigua. II y a des gens qui les eftimentbeaucoup;quelques Proteftans memes les louent. Mr. Arnoldus indique plufieurs PafTages des Ecrivains Catholiques qui ont admird Rusbroch. Mais il ne devoit pas mettre de ce nombre Francois Svverrius. Apparemment ce qui l’a brouilld eft de s’etre fouvenu qu’il y a un Livre intitule Athenae Batavae , &c. fllfflffiffi ABCDE FGHIJKLMNOPQRSTVU WX Y Z: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTVUWXYZiE i 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 o § * f 1 J. M. Fleifchman fculpfit. 1734. Defcendiaan Romein, Tweede Schrift. At etiam literas, quas me fibi mifnTe diceret, re- ^ citavit homo & humanitatis expers, & vitae com- munis ignarus. Quis enim unquam,qui paulum mo- do bonorum confuetudinem nolfet, literas ad fe ab amico milfas, offenfione aliqua interpofita, in me- X dium protulit, palamque recitavit? Quid ell aliud, $ tollerere d vita vitae focietatem , quam tollere amit g ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV WXYZ /E. 1234567890. J. M. Fleifchman fculpfit. 1753* Laatfle Defcendiaan Romein , D^rde Schrift. Imprimis Mar. cum Tullium opponebat, cuius ^ $ Oratio optima fertur effe quae maxima. Plerifque enim 4%^ orationibus longiore tradlu vis quaedam & pondus ac- k cedit. Utque corpori ferrum. Sic oratio animo non ic- x tu magis quam mora imprimitur. Videmus , ut ftatuas £ figna , pidturas , hominum denique multorumque ani- k malium formas , arborum etiam , fi modo fint decorae. Nihil magis, quam amplitudo commendet : idem ora¬ tionibus evenit : quinetiam voluminibus autorita-AB CDEFGIilKLMNOPQRSTUV WXYZZEJ. ACDEHILMN OPSTUY 1761. J. M. Fleifchman fculpfit. 1761. xxxxxxx < ; 4^ 211. Fleischman? s Roman Types cut in 1734, 1753, and 1761 EnschedT s Proef van Letteren , Haarlem , 1768 \ I NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 39 there we find fonts with a good deal of movement, cut by Van Dyck. Fleischman’s black-letter (Jig. 212) is tortured and fanciful, and does not stand comparison with Van Dyck’s simpler and finer black-letter, still less with early Flemish gothic fonts. Fleischman’s music, both in round notes and square, is also shown. The caractere de Jinance , an unattractive script, was cut by Rosart. Beyond these faded- looking characters comes a page of fine old civilite (jig- 213). There is an interesting collection of Greek fonts, and the assortment of ligatured characters which supplement them should be examined. There are Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, and other exotic types by various hands, and the specimen closes with ornaments which are mostly flat renderings of current English and French designs. Every page in the book is surrounded by type borders, many of them ingen¬ iously contrived. A supplement shows newer fonts added to the foundry between 1768 and 1773, which are not im¬ portant. Two pages of splendid old Dutch black-letter fonts (Jigs. 45 and 46) and a folding view of the Enschede foun¬ dry at Haarlem close a representative eighteenth century Dutch specimen. Charles Enschede’s Fonderies de Caracteres et leur Mate¬ riel dans les Pays-Bas duXFe au XIXe Siecle contains every- thingin the early Enschede specimen-books, and reproduces interesting types from the Rosart, Decellier, and many other foundries. No other book on Dutch types is so valuable, and so complete. In illustrating it, the author had the enormous advantage of his own collection of types, and many of the examples are printed from them. He shows not only pages of type in mass, but also alphabets of capitals and lower-case letters, and the unusual “sorts,” of which there were many in Dutch fonts. For instance, in the civilite cut by Van der Keere, which was purchased by the Enschedes from Ploos 40 PRINTING TYPES van Amstel in 1799, the type is first displayed as it appears in Van Hout’s specimen. In an analysis of this font, its capi¬ tal letters, lower-case letters for the middle of words, and letters to be used at the ends of words, or phrases, are ex¬ hibited; together with double letters, punctuation, numerals, ligatured initials and medials, and final ligatures, with six ligatured forms of en,et,and in. This gives some idea of how thoroughly the work is done. Ornamental initials, deco¬ rations, and typographical borders are treated with equal fullness and completeness, and illustrated by a marvellous series of reproductions. No one who does not know this book can know much about Dutch printing from 1500 to 1800. A final specimen-book to be discussed is that of a certain Jacques Frangois Rosart (1714-1777), a native of Namur. He seems to have been self-taught, and to have established himself at Haarlem as type-founder in a small way, when about twenty years old. The establishment of the Enschede foundry there was a blow to him, although he cut many fonts for Enschede and so gained valuable experience. He thought, rightly or wrongly, that the Enschedes treated him shabbily and unduly favoured his rival, Fleischman. The dedication of Rosart’s specimen is printed in one of his disagreeable script fonts, somewhat like that used for the introduction to the Enschede specimen. In an address ato amateurs of the art of printing,” Rosart observes in a some¬ what acid manner that he does not praise the hardness of his type-metal, nor the depth of his counters, as some claim¬ ants do, who wish to make a great deal out of nothing. For printers whom he, Rosart, has had the honour to serve, know very well the quality of his types ! And he adds that he cannot conceal his surprise that the Enschedes in prais¬ ing Fleischman have forgotten to name the Artist who has brought honour to their foundry by supplying it with a & aft na fmtimfge bagrn fpjartt $aulu| tnt 25arnaBa^: 3£act nn£ lucbcrmn trccfim/ €n uufc ^neberl bcfoectoi bon? Sllte ftebeti / 3n telcfe , tun be? teerai i'Onu’b to | 1 iumbiijt jjclibm Ijnc fn fid) ® fiauben. <£’®€j# iSd3 Ct^> Text Oud Gefchreeven. ^ 5 rd-** m &JX,jc.aL ^{•XX. 'My°T P+| §.$ £+ft 2U,£«-,L^ 33333 *“/*■“ |4 ?>i 43 **' wS Auguftijn Oud Gefchreeven. p-|| d^cnv^y yair^ itu cctx t^QUu/ t prr p-g (vjf-vancc d-^T****^ '^Dvfvtfn-f/ &wtvc ^Yt?^,/ ^4> £d*£* Scncif/ (vft>vca^uicir^/ (JZcyyci a^iacxcntc4 j £d-|| au 4^xcnc£c^af 'he ^vv^oem^/ vu fen ^Zicufc^ H*|| nanf au fitffc ^ Q)(Vav|ciffc/ fafuf. (V\y^ ^cir- fd*$| (t ainie o^enevc (?dw^arn>/ *?a6itanf 'hetfa* ^<>ife fyiCtfc/ (nvui a -fiai( 8ivc g yemvn^fyey/ que ^-r, ^d*| Sc-f fen^j- few^ cpf ^g^yce 4 cn^i^ncirj &*£ gd-^ pfg |>VcWicYC.-£ eu <>Y4^ appYenSve "he ^<^ui/ (t ptwv s$-$3j _r_v ftir° *+^ p.<> ^Yan^ewenf 4 feuf4^cir° tci ^cy found/ /mef* ^d*( xK fvc^ pef^tv r>&Yl‘^mnr m 214. Rosart’’ s Caractere de Finance, from his Epreuve, Brussels ( after 1760) 3 CARACTERE DE MUSIQUE. *v -® N e W £■ -^1- -P: J - L f— /7 i — ^ tX/i! a/icf/tied toazment powr tin cotar ■: ,=^zTF=^sr^ — N -®33e fc^z^zfibf ten = ^£6 } ^ * cut = ^ mo- HL. <4 % Nu m: : lit m merit, qui doit de r cruize deazetvx, ct con= -S . . . g ••••^ — — % — \ fcr o- ± X2 tent. tStJi! ad aued tour- s£L o i Is. £ M (jj @ merit pour an coear ten =%>/ A at - -'m. O^T -J©- /— V- 14/ =Azc de mo = merit , (fid doit do jgg= i® 5 q: 5=F ?0 2 4/— >- 3E v- br- /- rendze deazeiuc et con-tent , ant Gooit do r 215. Rosa its Music Types, from his Epreuve , Brussels (< after 1760) • r ♦ «*■ ■■ I , . I M r~‘ DOUBLE PHILOSOPHIE. TSJ T . • & ° 0 -ifr * * ^fr ® rfr * -fff ■$: # 7^ ® 7K ® • Jf" * Tfr • rf: * 7t> ° rfr • :’fr ® N. 4. ' N. 5. N. 6. N. 7. N 8. N. 9. N. 10. 11. N. 12. r 216. Rosarfs Ornaments, from his Epreuve , Brussels ( after 1760) % NETHERLANDS TYPES: 1500-1800 43 chantment, old-fashioned, after the foundation of the Bata¬ vian Republic, and had to give place to characters of a more modern cut. . . . The name of Fournier, formerly so well-known among us, had already been eclipsed at this period by that of Didot. What Fleischman had formerly been | to Dutch type-founding] Didot was at that epoch.”1 There was not a single foundry which did not try to adver¬ tise itself by Didot types or copies of them, and this was the case not only in Holland, but in Germany, and indeed throughout Europe. Those who recall the end of the chap¬ ter on German types will remember how true this was of the output of Unger. So, too, the eighteenth century in Dutch typography closes under the influence of the faults and mer¬ its of the great French founder. England was largely supplied with Dutch printing types in the seventeenth century, as we know from the James correspondence quoted in Rowe Mores’ A Dissertation upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies , and from letters about Bishop Fell’s gift of types to the University Press, Oxford. The Fell types were procured in Holland about 1693, through the intervention of Rev. Thomas Mar¬ shall, preacher to the English merchants in Holland and afterwards Dean of Gloucester; and negotiations consumed some four years, largely because Marshall did not know a punch from a matrix ! Moxon, the first English writer on type-founding, says that the “common consent of Book-men assign the Garland to the Dutch-Letters,” and he himself greatly admired them. In the second paper of his Exercises he gives a very oft-quoted description of them, which I spare the reader.2 Moxon particularly praised Van Dyck’s 1 Enschede’s Fonderies de Caracferes, etc., pp. 382-386. 2 Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises , or the Doctrine of Handy- Works afi/died to the Art of Printing , Numb. II, IF 2, Of Letter; also pis. 11-17. 44 PRINTING TYPES types, and the engraved plates of them, enlarged, shown in his Mechanick Exercises , have already been alluded to. Dutch types were also in vogue in Germany at the end of the seventeenth century, and were imported in large quantities. Some roman and italic Dutch types of this date were shown in connection with Breitkopf’s specimen in Gessner’s Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiesserey , Leipsic, 1740. These came from a Leipsic foundry which Fournier considered second only to Breitkopf’s— that of Hr. Erhardt. A head-line (omitted in our reproduction) reads : “ Real Dutch types, and a great number of other characters, which are to be found in the Erhardt foundry here.” These fonts resemble those given by Fell to the Oxford Press, and in cut belong to the seventeenth century. Their provenance I do not know. Although heavy, they retain considerable vivacity of line, and have great capabilities when used with taste. Our illustrations (Jigs. 217 and 218) show the larger sizes of both roman and italic — the latter being the better of the two. The types which the Dutch supplied to England at the commencement of the eighteenth century are shown in the specimen printed at the beginning of W atson’s History of the Art of Printing ,x of 1713 (fig- 26 1). They had begun to assume a general uncouthness which helped the English to abandon their purchase for those more comfortable and “cheerful” roman letters designed by William Caslon about 1720. 1 Specimen of Typ.es in the Printing-House of James Watson, Edinburgh, 1713, pp. i-xlviii. «N GO CO ^ S(j “■So C cr e 3 3 c/T Q 03 03 GO 3 P d fa a 03 • ti3<0) 0.9. > "O s- 3 C3 r*~! S3 V"*— < S U g o -i.s Q C co H < O < OS ?-h Dh o J-H cx *h v £ 03 O u cr 4 W* 1 v I CO * p & O c3 & V V GO 3 a P b£ 0* G.fcj Oo3 C< • a ^ > c G G3 =j Ih 8-fta g^z • CTa 6 g bpc!n gcOXl g.2 Q §^CJ ° £ CJ Ew^ X o H »»N Oi °-S t cXT3 5 ttJ <*$<2 o ^ , Q oU CQ C< G s 3 * *^>4 ^1° ■N, 3 •§ ^ § s £* ■£ fe § s$ ^ g S -s* .?$ Ss^ * ^ K^S J^-S'S |4^ Q § ^ ^ <£>. • S3 is: 5u £ o e£ »- g u n o • — «4 G O T3 C o & S 5 ^.1 5-5 ^ • *rv §: G U G o to C3 E rS JS § .1 a ^ ts <\_> ^ ^ s *r '-> g .» 1 .5 <5 ^ « -§ ^ ^ rtl ■| §0 •ta s « § • >4 s.si^% & s: o^ CfcJ ^ C £ t* ^2 <-> § *fc 1 i-i ^ ^ 3 -ts * *ts "“S^ c?^| § I 5 ^ •b §§ *T\^ •> ®o "■§ ^ § -S ?S\*» ^ Si ^ tu S s; fs £ § ^ a ^ 5^ * ^ 'o ^ *^s Qj Si Q S 218. Dutch Italic Types : Erhardt Foundry Specimen , Leipsic , c. 1739 ' 1 i ' - 1 ■ ' \ CHAPTER XVI SPANISH TYPES! 1500-1800 THE great traditions of printing held their own in Spain during the first part of the sixteenth cen¬ tury somewhat persistently — perhaps more so than in other countries.1 This was no doubt due to Span¬ ish conservatism, and to the geographical position of the country, which isolated it from foreign fashions. Indeed, the Mozarabic Breviary of 1502, printed by Peter Hagen- bach, a German, at Toledo, the Mozarabic Missal of the same date, and some later volumes are — like very many Spanish fifteenth century books — simply copies of manu¬ scripts, rendered in type. The Hums printing-house at Saragossa produced fine work of this kind. The most re¬ nowned of its illustrated books, says Haebler, “is the edition of the Officia quotidiana of 1500, which contains some fifty woodcuts and more than one thousand magnificent initial letters. The copy printed on vellum and illuminated, which was in the hands of Don Jose Sancho Rayon when Hidalgo wrote his enthusiastic description of it, is one of the finest specimens executed at any time and at any place in the world, and reminds us of the beautiful illuminations of medi¬ aeval manuscripts.” The splendid Missale Romanian on vel¬ lum, printed in 1510 at Saragossa by “ George Coci Theu- 1 English authorities for the history of Spanish typography from 1500 to 1800 are few. There appears to be no readily accessible survey of Spanish printing for the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, even in Spanish ; although there are essays on presses (during the whole or part of this period) in Palencia, Seville, Alcala, Valencia, Toledo, Medina del Campo, Madrid, Cordova, Tarragona, Lerida, Leon, the kingdom of Aragon, etc., many of which are admirable. In English there is little in the way of a contin¬ uous narrative, though Mr. H. Thomas’s paper on The Outjiut of Sfianish Books in the Sixteenth Century (Transactions of the Bibliographical Soci¬ ety, Sept., 1920) may be consulted with advantage for this period . 46 PRINTING TYPES tonic,”1 a successor of Hums (and owner of this office after 1506), is executed in a very Italian letter, in red and black, with music, and with a representation of the Crucifixion op¬ posite the Canon, which is surrounded by elaborate borders. It is a book typical in style of the fifteenth century. In the early years of the sixteenth century — between 1514 and 1518 — one of the masterpieces of Spanish ty¬ pography appeared ; namely, the Polyglot Bible printed by Arnald Guillen de Brocar at Alcala; usually known as the Complutensian Poly got, from the Latin name of Alcala — Complu turn. This was published at the expense of Cardinal Ximenez (or, as he is commonly called in Spain, Cisneros), Primate of Spain, Archbishop of Toledo, and founder of the University of Alcala, whose patronage of learning and printing is now better remembered than his hand in the destruction of thousands of Arabic manuscripts — an or¬ thodox feat in which he was the principal actor ! This Bible — a very splendid performance for any period, and the first of the great Polyglots — was printed in Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, and Latin, between 1514 and 1518, as has been said; but it was not published until after the Cardinal’s death in 1522. The Greek types used in the New Testa¬ ment are particularly famous, for they preserve the char¬ acter of older Greek manuscripts, being based on an early book-hand and not (like the Aldine Greek fonts) on the fifteenth century cursive handwriting of Greek scholars. This font was possibly modelled on the Greek characters of a manuscript from the Vatican Library which the Pope lent Ximenez to aid in constituting his text. But the Com¬ plutensian Polyglot was printed under special and ad¬ vantageous conditions, and cannot be considered typical of Spanish work of its period. Its printer, Brocar, was ap- 1 A copy is in the Hispanic Society’s Library, New York. * ‘ • ■ SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 47 pointed typographer to Charles V, for whom he executed in 1517, at Logrono, the Cronica de Don Juan //, by Perez de Guzman, which Haebler calls a masterpiece of typogra¬ phy. This and the Polyglot Bible, I shall describe later. Of the ninety-two books printed by Brocar but sixteen appeared before 1500. For some time after his death (which occurred probably before 1523), his office continued to be one of the most famous in Spain. How strongly the old traditions of Spanish typography persisted, is proved by books printed even after 15 50, which are almost indistinguishable from incunabula. There was the same love of a massive black-letter for the text; the same enormous heraldic emblems were popular ; the same xylo- graphic inscriptions in large, round Spanish black-letter appeared on title-pages. This round Gothic letter in all its splendour was used in Spain for lettering titles on vellum- bound books — printed in roman type — all through the seventeenth and well into the eighteenth century; and the illustration of part of a Gothic alphabet in this hand {fig- 219) may be compared with Plantin’s canon d'Espagne {fig- 197), and some examples of old gothic fonts {fig- 220), which were its type equivalents. By 1560, as in other parts of Europe, there was a more general introduction of roman type, and a realization of the flexibility of printing when applied to preliminary matter; and this led to a change of style. The roman fonts used in these later books were of rather a coarse, rough kind, not particularly interesting, nor very distinguishable from the poorer roman types used in France and Italy at that date.1 In some folios, a tall, thin lower-case roman letter, something like the types of Gara- 1 For italic and roman alphabets of this period see Arte de Escrivir of Fran¬ cisco Lucas, Madrid, 1577. These are reproduced in Strange’s Al/ihabets (third edition), plates 57 and 70. They are called type-letters by Strange, but are really calligraphic. 48 PRINTING TYPES mond or certain Italian roman characters, was used with great effect for head-lines and running-titles ; and it was sometimes employed in liturgical books in connection with plain-song notation. The influence of the Netherlands on printing in Spain was considerable. Plantin of Antwerp produced the Polyglot Bible commonly called after him, under the patronage of Philip II— whose patronage was about all he gave to it! Plantin printed, besides liturgical books for Spain (for which he later obtained a special “privilege” enjoyed for a long time in the Plantin-Moretus family), a large number of books in Spanish. These were mostly composed in his deli¬ cate early manner, which was more interesting and distin¬ guished than his later somewhat overblown style. Spain, in the sixteenth century, had more books printed abroad than any other country, on account of its preponderating political importance — the Netherlands ranking first in this output, followed by Italy. These foreign productions influ¬ enced the native Spanish press in both format and typog¬ raphy, and there are many volumes of this period printed in Spain which, in their small roman type, restraint in ar¬ rangement, and delicacy of decoration, are plainly inspired by foreign influence. Plantin was invited to establish a printing-house in the Peninsula. Being asked by Philip II in 1572 to suggest which of his sons-in-law could take charge of it, Plantin, probably not wishing to deprive himself of the help of either Moretus or Raphelengius, replied with diplomacy that they might direct it together, but that neither was capable of doing it alone. That particular plan, therefore, came to noth¬ ing. He did recommend to the King, however, in 1576, a printer of Flemish origin, Matthew Gast, who had been for some years previously in Spain. This Matthew Gast, who - ..ux SS'fiftS "7V ' — *■ 1 La^c. © © tn © © © py • » •►•> SN A V SN ft o a ^ E 2 p £ ft o a. c= o u 7: <3 g W x: \ £l ~ g o O ,0 ^ o Jr; o , “ o ^ a. 3 o a* a- ^ O P ^ « 3 i— Si \ S> o o o o ft o o T3 rt 1— O *-» £ -p ~ _ ft \c — X 3 ^ — o Ui 00 ^ a. ^ o «r -a <» a ♦ ^ o O — O — a a 3 .Si O a o a. a- c* «- T5 o ft r-» a O o 5* o s> ft <3 x> o v* <3 rt o <3 p ft O £ a- 0 3 f — ■ o £E O o -c o i— o r\ ?— a o P <3 o to p <3 ft o <3 -a <3 o \ » o 3 a* ft 3 ■ M A A A ; 4 is A A SSflSK 220. Antique Black-letter : Specimen of La Fabrica del Convento de S. Joseph , Barcelona , 1777 SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 49 had an establishment in Salamanca, had himself found dif¬ ficulties in procuring types, for in 1574 we find him writ¬ ing to Plantin, asking him to send him a type-cutter. Plan- tin replied that since the death of the type-cutters Guyot and Tavernier, he himself had found only one man who was good for anything, and he had continually to be told what to do in any work demanding initiative or judg¬ ment. For Spanish printing, the seventeenth century was a dis¬ couraging period. The types in use were chiefly roman; the first edition of Don Quixote being printed from uncouth, old style roman fonts. The copper-plate title-pages in gen¬ eral European use had also some vogue there. As was the case wherever they appeared, printing fell off. Sometimes it only seemed to do so, because the contrast between the rough types of the time and the precision of a copper-plate was to the disadvantage of the typography; sometimes be¬ cause if the fashionable copper-plates were supplied, print¬ ers seemed to feel that they could print as badly as they chose — a point of view then current in England and else¬ where. Then, too, the close political relations with Italy played a part in Spanish printing, and Italian fashions in seventeenth and early eighteenth century printing were usu¬ ally bad. Spanish books of this period are much like the wretched productions of the Italian press — with congested title-pages, composed in letters too large for the page, ill- printed, and decorated (or at least supposed to be) with badly executed typographical ornaments. The type was generally a crude old style roman letter. The first quarter of the eighteenth century, however, saw some efforts toward more interest in national typography. The first Spanish king of the Bourbon family, Philip V, granted in 1716 certain privileges and exemptions for 50 PRINTING TYPES music-printing (not before attempted in Madrid), which had been begun on the initiative and at the expense of Don Joseph Torres, chief organist of the Chapel Royal. And in 1717 it was ordered that a press for liturgical books should be set up, so that both for Spain and in particular for the Indies, no foreign books of that class need be im¬ ported; but it was not done. In 1729, Antonio Bordazar, a native of Valencia (where he was born in 1671), proposed the establishment of a printing-house in Spain to produce liturgical works for the use of the Spanish Church. In old days, a monopoly of such volumes seems to have been main¬ tained by the monastery of the Escorial, which procured missals, breviaries, etc., from the Plantin-Moretus Office at Antwerp; and they were still, apparently, imported under this privilege. In 1731, a royal decree again approved the native printing of Spanish liturgical books, and called for a discussion of ways and means to this end. Bordazar had already submitted to Philip V a carefully drawn-up me¬ morial in which he represented that types, paper, and ink could be as easily procured, and books as successfully pro¬ duced, in Spain as in the Netherlands, and he now received the royal authority to print this document. This he did in the year 1732, at Valencia, under the title of Plantijicacion de la Imprenta de el Rezo Sagrado , que su Magestad ( Dios le guarde) se ha servido mandar que se estab- lezca en Espaha , in a handsomely printed tractate of some twenty folio pages {Jig- 22 1). It is divided under the heads of paper, type, engravings, materials for calendars and mu¬ sic, inks, estimates of costs, choice of liturgical books to be printed, presses, administration, and time necessary for in¬ stallation. The most interesting thing about it for our pur¬ pose is the specimen of types — Caracteres de Espaha — - which it was proposed to use. These are shown in twelve PLANTIFICACION LA IMPRENTA DE EL REZO SAGRADO QUE SU MAGESTAD ( DIOS LE GUARDE ) SE HA SERVIDO MANDAR Que fc eftablezca en Elpana. EN VALENCIA. For Antonio Bordazar de Artazu, Impreffor del Santo Oficio, ide laliuftre Ciudad, anode 1732. 221. Title-page of Bordazar s Plantificacion , Valencia, 1732 (■ reduced ) I SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 51 sizes — grancanon to glosilla; portions of Latin service- books, printed in red and black, being employed to display the types. These pages constitute the earliest Spanish speci¬ men of types that I have seen, though these types were not Spanish but were cast from matrices imported from Flan¬ ders. In the paragraph concerning them Bordazar says: “Given the paper, about which there is no doubt, corre¬ spondingly one can have no doubt about type, for Carlos II, of glorious memory, had matrices brought from Flanders, and these are the ones now in the keeping of Juan Gomez Morales, a skilful and intelligent1 type-founder of Madrid,2 whose variety of types, although they seem but few, are in¬ creased in different ways as may be required,3 by means of spaces either separating letter from letter4 or line from line, making in each book such combinations as elegant arrange¬ ment demands; without any need of using for 76 books a like number of kinds of type, or even two or three kinds for each book, as is said by those ignorant of the subject. For this would call for more than 200 varieties, a number that does not exist and has never existed in all the presses of Europe. Thus all the books which are now, or which ever have been, in the Royal Monastery of the Escoriai are com¬ binations and arrangements that can be obtained from the types of Juan Gomez Morales, which are the following” (here appears the specimen). Bordazar adds: “Regarding the durability and lasting sharpness which the contours of certain foreign types possess, because of which some per¬ sons have thought the moulds to have been made of silver, 1 curioso , i.e., virtuoso — a person curious about or interested in a subject — of an inquiring turn of mind. 2 en la Corte, i.e., Madrid. 3 Literally, “changing with the art that symmetry requires.” 4 Qy., word from word? 52 PRINTING TYPES types of the same quality may be cast in future, since the alloy has already been made in Valencia, and has been ap¬ proved by the founder, Juan Gomez Morales himself, who rated it as of the quality of Dutch type-metal and thought it was of foreign make.” The texto ( Jig . 222) was used in Yriarte’s Obras Sueltas , printed at Madrid by Francisco Manuel de Mena in 1774, and apparently, with the change of a few letters, in Bayer’s De JVumis Hebrseo- Samaritanis, printed at Valencia by Be¬ nito Monfort in 1781. Perez de Soto appears to have used it in the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis of 1760. Mendez says that these types came from the “incomparable printing-house of Plantin,” and that they were ultimately utilized in Carlos Ill’s time,1 which carries out the attribu¬ tion I have given the texto. This is still further confirmed by finding the same type, with a variant italic, in the Opera of Hubert Goltzius, published at Antw erp in 1708; whether an edition of Goltzius issued some sixty years earlier em¬ ployed the type, I have not been able to learn. It is one of the most beautiful roman fonts I have ever seen; and the best of the three forms of italic used with it — that in Obras Sueltas — is almost equally charming. Bordazar’s farseeing and enlightened proposals created some stir, but he did not live to witness their realization. After his death in 1744, Jose de Orga,2 also of Valencia, who had been brought up in Bordazar’s printing-house, where he seems to have been manager or foreman, took up the plan and petitioned (in 1748) Ferdinand VI to be al- 1 Mendez’ Tyfiografihia Esfianola, Madrid, 1796, p. 406. 2 An able printer, who was the ancestor of a very distinguished Valencian “praAnig; family.” Jose and Tomas de Orga, his sons, printed in 1790 an important edition of the Bible translated into Spanish, executed in types from the fonds of the Real Biblioteca de Madrid, and from the foundry of Eudaldo Pradell. 222. Texto , Atanasia , Letura Espaciosa from BordazaEs Plantificacion , Valencia , 1732 * ; .-v _ 1 >- ■ ■ I SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 53 lowed to establish a “liturgical” printing-press in Madrid for the use and honour of the Spanish nation — setting forth numerous difficulties and inconveniences caused by the ne¬ cessity of having such books printed abroad; and again al¬ leging that the work done earlier by Plantin and Moretus, and bv other printers in Venice and Holland, could be per¬ formed just as well in Spain, both as to material and exe¬ cution, at less cost, and without taking money out of the country.1 Grga removed to Madrid, where he died Febru¬ ary 19, 1756, and, as far as the native production of type was concerned, his efforts seem to have come to nothing at all. Fournier wrote, in 1766, “Spain is lacking in type- cutters: it has but two foundries, which are in Madrid; one belonging to the Jesuits, who let it for five or six hun¬ dred livres; the other was bought in Paris, from M. Cottin, who sold it for thirty thousand livres .” But the project to print liturgical books in Spain was finally taken up, in Carlos Ill’s reign, by a Compania de Impre sores y Lihreros, in conjunction with the authorities of the Escorial. This body obtained royal sanction, and the establishment of a com¬ pletely equipped printing-house for it was approved in 1787. A building was bought and the scheme was in operation when Mendez wrote of it in 179 6, 2 and in 1811 its director was Juan Josef Sigiienza y Vera- — a pupil of the famous Ibarra. This fruition of a long-considered and interminably de¬ ferred plan came to pass at the end of the eighteenth cen¬ tury, a moment when some excellent Spanish printing was 1 The various negotiations of Bordazar and Jose de Orga in relation to this subject are treated fully in Jose Serrano y Morales’ Resena Historica en forma de Diccionario de las Imfirentas que han existido en Valencia desde la Introduccion del Arte Tifiograjico en Esfiana hasta el ano 1868, etc. Valencia, 1898-99. 2 Mendez’ Tyfiografihia Esfianola , p. 410. 54 PRINTING TYPES done1- — the result of a general movement in industry and art at a prosperous national era. Carlos III, whose reign lasted for almost thirty years, and who died in 1788, was a Bourbon, half-brother to Ferdinand VI, and much influ¬ enced in his tastes by France. A most enlightened man, his efforts toward the rehabilitation or establishment of all kinds of Spanish industries, and his patronage of the fine arts, were very ably seconded by his ministers. It was under Carlos that the Buen Retiro porcelain was made, and the palace of San Ildefonso at La Granja was filled with charm¬ ing products from a glass factory there which he encour¬ aged. Trade in watches and optical instruments was fos¬ tered at Madrid; fine leathers were made at Cordova and Seville, and velvets at Avila. A royal decree of 1733 had already pronounced that hidalgos could engage in handi¬ crafts without loss of caste ! Then, too, the Crown granted various exemptions and privileges to the printing-trade. In 1763, a decree had exempted printers from military service, and this applied to type-cutters and type-founders. Metals used in the work of the latter were reduced in price by one- third, and divers privileges and rights were conceded to printers — partly to help the industry and partly to im¬ prove book-making. About the middle of the century, Gabriel Ramirez was doing good work, and Perez de Soto, royal printer, pro¬ duced creditable books ; but Joachin Ibarra, who was born 1 There was, too, an interest in printing in Portugal at this period. The Impressao Regia was established at Lisbon in 1769 through the influence of the Marquis de Pombal, the reforming minister of Joseph I (1750-1777). The scheme was a splendid one — a national press, which was to be at once a school of all branches of typography, and a means of producing books for the educational needs of Portugal. It was begun under direction of Miguel da Costa ; and still exists as the National Printing House of Portugal. Four¬ nier said (1766) that a type-foundry had been in existence at Lisbon for some thirty-five years, a Parisian named Villeneuve being its owner. SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 55 in Saragossa in 1725, was the Spanish printer who had the greatest reputation — not merely in Spain, but throughout Europe. Ibarra was evidently much influenced by Bodoni, and somewhat, perhaps, by Didot and Baskerville. To look to Bodoni was natural. Parma, like the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, was then in Bourbon hands, and the relation between the Spanish Court and that of Parma was close. Carlos III (whose mother, Elizabeth Farnese, was a Prin¬ cess of Parma) was himself made Duke of Parma in 1731. On his accession to the Kingdom of Naples, where he encouraged fine printing, — notably Baiardi’s great work, Delle Antichita cli Ercolano , alluded to by Mendez, — his brother Philip became Duke of Parma. Philip, in turn, was succeeded by a son, Ferdinand, who was Bodoni’s patron.1 Ibarra, therefore, as Spanish Court printer, must have been perfectly familiar with the books printed for Carlos Ill’s nephew by Bodoni, who held the same post in Parma that Ibarra held at Madrid. In fact, Bodoni had the honorary title of Printer to the Spanish King ; and this accounts for the beautifully printed memorial discourses issued at Parma by Bodoni in 1789, on the death of Carlos III — Botteri’s Ora - zione Funebre in lodi de Don Carlo III ; and the Oratio in Funere Caroli III of Ridolfi delivered in the Papal chapel at Rome on the same occasion. Ibarra’s magnificent Spanish and Latin edition of Sallust, printed in 1 772, is generally considered his masterpiece {fig. 223). Other great books printed by Ibarra were the Royal Academy edition of Don Quixote of 1780, an edition of the Bible, the Breviarium Gothicum ... ad usum Sacelli Mozara- 1 On the death of Ferdinand in 1802, the Duchy of Parma was governed by France, until, in 1815, the Congress of Vienna gave it to Marie Louise, wife of Napoleon I. This explains the dedication of the later books of Bodoni — who preferred rising to setting suns ! 56 PRINTING TYPES bicum or Mozarabic Breviary (1775), Mariana’s Historia de Espaha , and Antonio’s Bibliotheca Hispana , V etus et Nova (1783-88) — all of which are worth study. The Sallust, Don Quixote , and Antonio’s work are later discussed. Ibarra’s printing was greatly admired by book-lovers of that day all over Europe. The Chevalier de Bourgoing, writing in 1782 of the Academy edition of Don Quixote, calls it “ equally admirable for the quality of the ink, the beauty of the paper, the clearness of the character, and to be com¬ pared with the finest productions of the kind in any other nation. This is not the first proof the Spaniards have given of their ability in the art of printing. Every connoisseur is acquainted with, and prefers to the editions of Baskerville and Barbou, the Sallust, which the Infant Don Gabriel has translated into his own language, and some other works from the presses of Ibarra at Madrid, and from those of Benedict Montfort at Valencia, which are masterpieces of the typographical art, and will one day be sought after by posterity, as we now search for those of the Elzevirs.”1 Franklin, whose busy mind was always interested in the development of typography, was conversant with Ibarra’s editions. Writing from Passy, December 4, 1781, to William Strahan, he says: “A strong Emulation exists at Present between Paris and Madrid, with regard to beautiful Print¬ ing. Here a M. Didot le jeune has a Passion for the Art. . . . He has executed several charming Editions. But the cSal- ust’ [m*] and the ‘Don Quixote’ of Madrid are thought to excel them.” This rivalry between Didot and Ibarra per¬ haps explains a rather sour allusion to the latter in the j Epitre sur les Pro gres de /’ Imprimerie written by Didot fils 1 Travels in Sfiain, London, 1789, Yol. I, p. 244. De Bourgoing, who was secretary to the French embassy at Madrid, wrote a book about his travels, translated into English under the above title. LA CONJURACION DE CAT I LINA JOS CATO S A LUST 10 ' CRISPO. a \y st a. cos a es que /os hombres > que de- %sean aventajarse a los demas vivien- Tj$§.. tes > procuren con el map or empeno no pasav la vida en silencio como las bestias > a quienes naturaleza crib in- clinadas a la tierra p siervas de su vientre. Nues- tro vigor p facnltades consisten todas en el animo p el cuerpo * : de este usamos mas para el servicio ■> de a quel nos valemos para el mando : en lo uno somos i males a los Dioses > en lo otro a los brutos. For lda borrada: 'i oe fciencia mup enfe nada frap j&nibjofto moie dela ojden oelcs o ^ JS H Si ?? •£ <$z t- si 'S'F 'O' « H o S 2 ,®, C» o «“ — >■ 2 «ps o \cr*cf'T3 .- ? s- g b b^£ o o«2 ® « & § i£ . b ,2 d*S<= S'S « s S «e> ■^j • «Si <2 Cb e> CM CM SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 61 in quarto at Toledo by Peter Hagenbach by order of Car¬ dinal Ximenez in 15041 — Hagenbach being printer by ap¬ pointment to the Cardinal. It was therefore published under distinguished auspices. Its title-page bears a coat of arms, surmounted by a cardinal’s hat, and below, in a rich, round, Spanish gothic letter, is the title in four lines. The rest of the book is printed in a spirited Spanish black-letter set in double column — the principal divisions beginning with handsome block initials with black grounds, and the con¬ tents of each division being set in effective lines of large black-letter (Jig. 224). Running-titles are also composed in this large type, with folios on right-hand pages only. At the beginning and end of the book, these large characters run across the page, giving a very noble effect. The beau¬ tiful “texture” of the pages of type makes a very handsome book — but one which is practically a “fifteener” in gen¬ eral style. A similar black-letter volume— an edition of De la Na- tura Angelica by Franc. Ximenez (Burgos, 1516) — is inter¬ esting because it is an example of the work of Fadrique de Basilea, a famous printer, and one of the few in Spain who, in the fifteenth century, used roman type for entire books. Not so fine as the preceding, it is much the same in type and arrangement, except that the folios, similarly placed, are set in enormous capitals which much disfigure the page. “George Coci, Aleman,” who acquired the Hums office about 1506, and whom Haebler calls one of the most cele¬ brated printers of the century, issued some good editions of the classics at Saragossa in the early sixteenth century. 1 Of the volumes chosen as examples of sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century Spanish printing, some may be found in the Ticknor Collection of books on Spanish literature in the Boston Public Library, and others in the Library of Harvard College. 62 PRINTING TYPES His Livy of 1520 — Las quatorze decadas de Tito Livio — is magnificent. It contains the first example of “ colour printing,” as we now understand it, that I have found in a Spanish book. The title-page — a huge armorial device surrounded with the collar of the Golden Fleece — has be¬ neath it a scroll on which is the title and “privilege” in five lines of gothic letter, printed in red. The arms above are in four colours, black, red, yellow, and green, printed from wood-blocks. The text appears in a beautiful, rather con¬ densed gothic type, closely set (Jig. 225). The titles of the chapters are composed in a larger size of much the same font. Fine woodcuts extending the full width of the page are very freely introduced, and accord splendidly with the type of the book. Haebler calls it one of Coci’s most splen¬ did productions, and certainly it is a sumptuous perform¬ ance — -of its kind. All the books printed by Coci that I have seen are interesting and distinguished. In another fine book — Pulgar’s El GranCapitan — printed by Jacob Cromburger at Seville in 1527, much the same gothic type is used — a little rounder, perhaps — not so well printed or so finely imposed. The title is very characteris¬ tic — a large coat of arms, above three lines of title and two lines of “privilege,” all set in black-letter — the whole sur¬ rounded with rough woodcut borders. On the text pages (Jig. 226), the notes or glosses are set in a smaller size of gothic type. Many of the Spanish romances of the class of Amadis de Gaul (for instance, an illustrated small folio edi¬ tion of 1535) were printed by Cromburger, and had, typo¬ graphically, a finish and richness of appearance in contrast to like editions by other printers. They deserve careful at¬ tention. These books are good examples of the earlier form of Spanish volume, and their style survived in certain classes tf[£omicn$a d icgtmdo libzo bda pn'mera becada. f[£apttulo pjimero bda $lo:ia be 35mto : po:que ccbo be roma al rq> Zarquino,? be como elk nombte fne tan abonecidobelos romauos: que el nw rtdo be lucrecia fe l^ono be ^ be roma/potque fc llamaua £arqumo. § s.|2-l 3 85 rg § a " fc 2 o r; cl p S^oois ^ * V— r«- ^ J—T O ’T’t L» ^ ^ -U^> fft ^ 43 L> '"P »Q rr ^3 o P -t-i ^ fTS 2 o ^ x t: p 13 ££ = p 2 ~ us p o P.-2 p p p pcs 2*o 2 O ii’Tt § p*0 ^ ‘p ^ ST O 44 v ^ :2 .g s £> 2 v ^ « 8 ~ -o /5 JP P Hi* ST* o £> _ rr — ■" '»»■ '->♦ P ^3" t ^ £3 — _ _ - - _ _~o£3/DS',o~2o2^; 2-43 B f* ^<2 i ^2 <2 g v 3 c'H'^e 2^|5E§o£§2 o^32 ^-Tj 3 s ^'at2 " s s 2.0 gu X$% 5 © §.s»3 s^H*^-nS'S 2 12 sti p x\ P *T3 r*: p* p V <*> *s* P 53*5*0 h o p p .o ^ §>g 5 s.s-^J-2 s-g^ § J tl O 3 5-^3 SopgH fT* «- _» “T-t *2 P <— •■ j ***+ fft >■*— ► >2^J *V*t §■£ I1! Iglf |f -8 i-oJl a w 8 J« 1 1 g.ls'g s.l«w &§ S'l^feSi Sla o ♦ * 4.0 o^2 r> ^ o g p» Sf41 „ _io^i -0-2 S-^ S O ^ S 2° 2 8 £ g 2 go-8 S>3 '®fl§il'f l,g,i s = S e &8 8.=*a' O in « *D «0 Q Is Q Co c3 •• • (Vi ca ! fo.ij, it-lao figutemes glofasque enlasmar* gcr/8 Delia ob?a va:fon para oeclararalgunospaffcs Della efcuros:a los quelasjCojonicasromanasnolpanleEdo.ConotrasDeclaradonesque enella ercriuiovnletrado.elnomb:eDelqualnomamfefi:o po: temo? Dela tempeftadoclaslenguasDdosmurmuradojesque carecenDefenrido con ob:as/£ no con palab:as. si tmi>r gran rasoss fobe^ irano fenoj. ^fueftra mageftad £jr®ipi /capgjcaiR. , r Xa pojderto fiel o^fuera feguu vdlalo real fue* ^ f ftc -P??,1”* 4^iOtroa/?paminUndas:ob^arnienionenclruu(era ©SaSSmnm para feno:earclrellanteq cel mando Del mundo cdcnrevaromanflf _ _ _ _ __ a vueftraXat^oltca H^ageftad queda.ypo? enelfecbooelaear Ter ran jnftofu Defied ( con cu^dofo cu^dado) a piielfa bufqne enel gran mae como en loo montonoefusobMseftaspocasiqueDeparteDe fuvldacd mano lib:eoe ^diiesoelagucrra afidon ni odio feran efcritasjanfi De loq £>130 en y talia/como De lo q ob?o ?e r/o^f rr 1 ^ cn£fpgiia/DondeaEtalcoftub:eqloqennueftroriempovimosoei08 ve loqodfeefcriuecS 3inc8Della/menofcaba la fe oelas colas buenas;po?que quanto mas j'utas uernta gran bFfto. t Claras a nuefb a \>i(la Ton jtantomasleposEefcurasloscfcuros lascuen na.Wei quaioefuo tan.'ilantoeucopojquenoaEpalabsasqucbaftenaponerentanalfoefti mucbcsbccboojaci lo quato requiereefcreuir vida De tan claro varomoelqual en las mas par* D03 cola0 £02nc» q tcsoclamifma ytali'a valientes^ftojiadojescodiaadoenfa^ar lafama [caroueeU SbfSa conlasob?asDefbylluftreXapitanenp:ofaEenmetrolpan elmtooefu hofrontmoconios figura scfplando24inage/nque5as/^clandadDeglo:ia:queganoccn bon Eacedemoios po2» dadlpa3anasDeguerra/itratosDepa5.XafueDetatoval02 el p:ecioque quefuegaireefeef gano enella que fu notoe no fe aniatara en todaslasedades : pues q o^edo fallen: no folo co rusenemtgoseln6b:eDegraniCapitanatemo2i3auan.Srup2opjtore^^ tr^h6 mT *** naturalfenojicon mas el re^oena poles Don ^adriqueoe dragon leDie * deWclaroleocdr ron tanto Ipono: quanto lo manifidtan 'ZDlyn lospnuilegiosque Depar* raiqloo contraries teOefu8eftado8Efen02lo3leDicronttCuemaefta8letrasqtieelre£iCaffpo auiaacozdadoppn ticoE vueftra altC3aembiaronalaercelenreouquefafumuger:EDelo8p2e* bltcadoganandola mlegiosoe folosoo&pojnoocuparpomelascabe^as'ZritulosDeios du* VICt022a mataraloo cados De£>antangelo*£5efa po: fer lagrande5aDefu altoeftllo tal:qme I!SimJrQr|a ap:emioenpenrlo8aquK£nloqualfeverarermuclpoma8lo queen poco * bijosodoovencu papelfeD^equequantoaqulDelfeefcnueXuEotraflado eselfo dos conmaeoerro car a£bebao:od£i qualcaafalosrurosredbscrontalcozajeconqncvenderonlooencmlgoo.Scgnnda que con treoafctl pconc3:f.cccc.occaualloveaop2ofperamentealagranbnelleodO03lacedcmomo0.i£ic]ccrato Oeloo qualeo era Ml bit ? ferocienroeDe cauaUo:?. rjciuj.mil peonee;od qnal felce nuncaoudo acometerpefpe* rarafuoencmigooiqualeerquantoaquierquefuelten* b dte iparmenion fc eferiue fue general capstan del gran Slejeandre: el qual fue la caufa co que d rcy refnafle todas aqllae partesodmimdo que cucnta j&oihto £urdo. a i) 226. Gothic Type used by Cromburger , Seville , 1527 ( reduced ) SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 63 of literature almost through the sixteenth century. All of them were set in gothic types ; but the earliest type used in Spain was roman, and the most famous book of the sixteenth century — the Complutensian Polyglot — largely employed it. This, the first Polyglot Bible, the world owes to Cardi¬ nal Ximenez, who, to use his own phrase, produced it ato revive the hitherto dormant study of Holy Scripture.” It is in six folio volumes. In the first volume, the title appears in medium sizes of Spanish gothic type arranged in an in¬ verted pyramid placed at the bottom of the page ; and above it, printed in red, are the arms of Cisneros surmounted by a cardinal’s hat. At the top of the title-page, which is sur¬ rounded with a border of decorative strips of ornament, a four-line verse appears, in a smaller size of the gothic type used below. The prologue and introductory matter are set in a very handsome and Italian roman type, with head-lines of the fine gothic letter used in the title {Jig. 227). Then follows the polyglot Pentateuch in five divisions — first, Hebrew, in the outside column ; second, the Latin Vulgate, in a narrow column placed in the middle, set in roman; and on the inside, in irregularly spaced black-letter, a new Latin translation of the Greek Septuagint, which is printed be¬ neath it in a crabbed Greek type. The three versions are printed parallel to one another, line for line. Short lines in the Vulgate version are filled out with ornaments made up of circles, and a similar trick is resorted to in the Hebrew text. In a block on the inside of right-hand pages is a Chaldee version in Hebrew characters, and beside it a block of black-letter Latin translation, left-hand pages reversing this arrangement. Hebrew and Chaldee roots are given in the margin. Granted the great difficulty of the problem from the type-setting point of view, and the necessary variations 64 PRINTING TYPES of colour of Hebrew, roman, black-letter, and black-letter with Greek types interlined — not to mention side-notes— the general solidity of effect is remarkable. Still more re¬ markable is the evenness of colour in the presswork. This first volume completes the Pentateuch. In the second volume of the Old Testament the page is made up of three columns of equal length, though of un¬ equal width — Hebrew, Latin, and Greek and Latin inter¬ lined. The third volume runs on in much the same manner, except that there is no Hebrew text for certain books ; and the fourth, similarly arranged, completes the Old Testament and the Apocrypha — the latter given in two versions only. Minute letters refer from every word in the Vulgate to every Hebrew word throughout the Old Testament.1 In the New Testament, which occupies the fifth volume (though in point of date the first volume printed), no rubri¬ cation appears on the title-page, and the text-pages are di¬ vided into columns of Greek and Latin— the Latin being set in roman. In this— the first printed Greek Testament (though not published until after Froben’s 1516 edition, edited by Erasmus) — -the wonderful Greek type is what all Greek type should be in style- — a reversion to the fine early Greek manuscript-hands. It is very open and clear in de¬ sign and of a beautifully even strength of line throughout. Reference is made by small gothic letters above the text repeated in alphabetical order, from every word in the Greek text to each word in the Vulgate. While this somewhat dis¬ figures the page, it is so cleverly managed that it does not obtrude itself. To see how the famous Greek types look, normally printed, one must study such pages as that from which our illustration is taken {Jig. 228). The sixth volume 1 For a detailed account of the Complutensian Polyglot, see J. P. R. Ly ell’s Cardinal Ximenes , Illustrated, London, 1917, pp. 24-52. o o G CO \\ u* < £ 2 m — « e c *5 « C G! o LI H y 3 O * « I S •S c2 x w <3 J2 g'g C .to C 8 2 g c *g O o W TO . 1 to O a o W) t~< G TO 1 CL O «G n : >G Ui a « 4 CO 3 L> .\\ ^ CO G £* G O* Cl >p4 oe 1-4 /~v O o o Oe CO *«-* •G *« 4^ a o G o *s G 3 4-4 TO l-» L (" w, - V— 4 ^ .1 A W n r*5 8T.S cl>q tO TO O Vh on a ,— ' '**4 f—< — O , —3 *-i a a co -XT ^ *' a i; o Cr t— t o i5 co |^4 w w-« • ♦ B 3 B‘S §3^ “G £L*g X ‘S w to a G o o *a rL "G >»h C«» CL cr »>. cl cr CO G TO CO <2 o *G 2 :< tj *-» v-« O u CO »f-4 4-* G *G X CL Cl O* X G o cr G > f,i TO. 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G* Cl a *G ‘5 S * w (S G 2 O TO _ TO Cb o *»4 | r— * ° 3 CO ej TO P *4 1-4 G *C) O Li a-^ c ^ '5 ‘2 io 0(43 •*4 *7^» G c w V-i o ^ ito bP J2 •G 4i 2 5 'G -2 k-O TJ TO o J3 X » L> a^ a < a a o 5 -G s» O '3 deg <^4 a o G u O '»H Uh U • ■ 4-4 TO 4. * TO CL X o TO TO £03 TO TO CJ> O yj co 4— • V4 O T3 '*-4 TO CO ►£> o 5 G *G 'T tH i-H « f' « Cj c, V. oq -8 • ^ °q ■Lo 8 • *s» Co S I" G 8 • fs> l3 «o a Co Or<23.2 8^?3-c3-0 2 8 9-0 s-c<5* 5 ^ <" Vi ^ c/* S'* 2" O 2* ~> X- 3 ~X * **• ^ >* 2 > >'Q y S hk £ o x- ^ > ; >^K °v3 C"° cl, 9- B-^> " P ^ -) >- 0 O ?2* ;£, X ♦£ <\« o o^°^'° ° P“g ?q S-o >L“ o .°..S-2*W b«t?5 0-£<> £x gp ^ T K ♦ v D T*vD w .. \\ Ji vr it _ rt-0 ° O s^to _ . o ui^ h n* UA/ Qn CL^ Q Vj“ b >.b § g.j5 5>f d O vo Q o S b rjo K =x?> n-^T'-S -« “ y ^~ca ♦ ^ > >-0 >**9?q ri-X _ OroJ to-*- *-» CL, Xu O Ln d t £ X o o - £kK*3 O *-» ^cu fc- a, n o O ~-v> £-0 f~ ^ 5?0 ,gJr^. 3 fc . . _ w b v> o 2 0- ,0.3,0 * , * W ^i-o; h ^r^'qE - )>g'g 5 2? bO > ^5-1-' ^ fc.g oJ> p xof„3 qO o* 8^ ^ ^2 > b ob gt—" o’o'" § 6^3 =?,§-fc x3 ^-§.^8 o° 0^1 e o^-o-S-^r0 2 Q'3 5-oK^o S-OH,o«f^3 o g'O ®EbT 5"2-2 3^0 P'O q^o.q ^n s h - vr k p 8 2 ^ y w l a X-. O h \Z to -CO H O 2 ^ S.X* g E'S'O »,qL>'W X o-§.b 5?~ §■* =.-3 oS-S^g Bo S-|-o§5,s i ^'0->P ¥( ,% .S 2 ^C'^o S=J% o $ n-^q'g n. ^<-3* yr o"°”2 o-.§:> ^S- o ?3 j2 b?™ §“0-o ^“3 S.'S''^. p E* o£r*> '£ B.o> o g c O' ".CO h§.to^5sK? 2'd f’j^g'Z'S sj'o P'§^o§-o K b 2'0 =L(< X'X g-,p ^ C HuO ^ Vd ^ 5"?x p Xo D ?3 t> wO n ^5 .> oj-0'd o=- >' o stf q,o 0-8-3 o ^ VJ-,U^ o?3 >» p S- p ?= J« ^ “ SHo -O " o c o o 3- P 5c,v/ ~ r- sr ft- p 2 < Jt'M 9 ^ ?rr. Lo >-3 H X g O 3 X.O X* H .-l 8 o a> H _ '02 v(jb ''CO a ^ o b,§ o b b'^o 5 § g i'-?2 > g 6 b ^ § =u -'S'X x c*-o o eTP'jx >^a L h ■w?3 X'O > xk o-h ^9. Pj2 a 9 i-i i» 'X iS’aa-'OS'O h g o ^ ° H A^&'O jx pd ir^co c/*Ci P-. rx O lO ''CO •*< .x r,.r\ tX ^ , V C O 5“ b X H a O' $c b5 X^U> =? O 0^ cl, [3 o o 2 o p a 'X « sr iters e-|-|'«5iic O s'ss X O ^ 2tki. o'§ a l ♦ o o->-o > o o ^ o M ,a' W S ^ ^ q~?3 ® r-^ v- » X- rv,-^) 9-^SS £ *| O — ^ 0 Vi* P - w . m*°* CL. 2* rs v!) wO ^00 ^ c-r . - X 4 in S3 V. S3 CJ o c, oq •« s a <3 ho c <0 S S3 H -Si • oq Isi I? e S3 • Ho t e- L3 «c S cm CM Ofi Q * «Kd W M si ■ \ ( ' ■ - < ■ ■ \ SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 67 by Antonio de Nebrija — a small folio printed at Alcala by Miguel de Eguia, successor to Brocar, in 1525, with text in roman, surrounded with notes set in a nervous and beauti¬ fully cut Spanish gothic type — is also of interest, both for its arrangement — very romantic for a grammar — and its fine fonts. The same author’s edition of Persius, printed at Se¬ ville in 1504 by Cromburger, is another instance of text set in roman, surrounded bv notes in an intricate weave of deli- cate gothic characters. Its title-page (an inscription in roman capitals in a panel of ornament) is wonderfully handsome. In the smaller books later printed by Sancho de Nebrija at Granada, he seems to have relied on roman both for text and notes ; as in his father’s Hymnorum Recognition printed in 1549. Its title-page — though but a feeble copy of similar Basle books — and index will repay examination. One of the few beautiful Spanish books of the late six¬ teenth century, printed in a pure and elegant roman type, was Alvar Gomez de Castro’s De Rebus Gestis a Francisco Ximenio , Cisnerio — a contemporary life of Cardinal Xime- nez, still held as a very high authority. This book might have come from an Italian press, so spirited and delicate is the roman font used for it, compared with most contempo¬ rary Spanish roman fonts, and so simple and elegant is it in composition and imposition. To be sure, the title-page bears a pretentious wood-block, out of keeping with the severity of the text-pages, and the prefatory matter is obtrusive. But its simple text-pages are almost Jensonian in their re¬ liance upon pure typography for beauty. The book was printed by Andres de Angulo at Alcala in 1569 (Jig. 230). § 2 The great Spanish book of the seventeenth century, and of every century since, is Don Quixote. The first edition of 68 PRINTING TYPES the First Part was published by Juan de laCuesta at Madrid in 1605. It is a square octavo. As to its type-setting, after some preliminary matter in a dull, heavy roman type, and in an irregular italic, and the familiar introductory poetry addressed to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, arranged al¬ ternately in roman and italic, comes the text. This is very solidly set in the same heavy roman, but is managed most simply, and I think for that day it was probably considered a very modern sort of book. The argument of each chapter is set in italic ; the text, as I have said, in a rough old style roman (Jig. 23 1). When poetry occurs in the text, it is some¬ times composed in a pretty and gay sort of swinging italic letter, sometimes in italic of a more commonplace cut Each Book starts with a head-line of type ornament, and its text begins with a large block initial. At the end of the book the “ epitaphs,” etc., are set in italic with roman head-lines, and a table of chapters, chiefly in italic, closes this First Part. The Second Part, issued at Madrid by the same pub¬ lisher in 1615, resembles the First, except that chapter head¬ ings are smaller, and poetry is sometimes in single column in a roman letter like the text, or in double column in a size of italic slightly smaller. It is a respectable production, — nothing more, — but more readable than most seventeenth century editions of novels, which were usually very poorly printed.1 1 The Hispanic Society of America has reprinted in facsimile a number of rare and interesting Spanish books, the entries in their catalogue of publica¬ tions running to some sixty-live titles. Facsimiles are supplied of Juan de la Cuesta’s first Madrid edition of Don Quixote , both first and second parts, which appeared in 1605 and 1615, respectively. Title-pages of 611 editions of Don Quixote , extending from 1605 to 1905, are reproduced in facsimile in Iconografia de las Ediciones del Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Barcelona, 1905) . Spanish and Catalan titles alone run to 233 numbers. Al¬ most a history of Spanish printing after 1600 can be had by comparing the different editions from its first publication to the present day. -Si . n 3 m £ r 6JDir3 ' 3 V1 3 •"-1 2 > « C rt ^ rt S ^ 2 O S 3 y g CJ *H n cj *cj o» o *rj * g cj tb ei « c 3 o g • • -1 *~0 CJ ^ o -o o *-Q ctf G P-i « S -3-1 3 ^ <3 3 ci> g ^ w w P ^ » 'U sci r* 3 G O 3 =3 cr 3 3 G CJ o3 a ~ ° 3 . cj nJ 3 2 w CO o • —4 CJ 3 2d cj ‘O 3 a O G ■ rr_ n bf> c ,_ (3 rt vb^. n JS'trg Hj rj "b w- 3 G C 23 ~3 -3 •=: U y uC3 £ s £ I 3 Z cp *3 .£2 j 3 o . ~J 2 G G 03 Q t»— H ^ o co £ G 2 o=! 3 • g -3 -d ’ X g cj G !-i 3 O rt u, ..^ G O G G-i 3 *3 3 3 T 3 “ s § p s s t? CO T— * 3 ° c-1 > o G S?E-S«e-2s3 IJ-B'S 3^ S g 3^ ctb 3 S S O gT 42 G o bJO c ^ *3 G 'd G 5 C fl 1 * OC — > 3| m* *-. c ^cp cr1 o gj 3 * , . . _« G G "G • G *— G G - - * ; CJ rj -G 3 X (U G U 3 G O K 3 G CJ O o G w 3 P ^ 00 3 3 3 2 G 3 ^ « .y s ^ .° ^ - 3 Si? v m cr1' u g4 2 £ Oh & CJ G G CJ 8 S r? U 3 3^ o g 3 CJ G 3 u CJ G G CJ G 3 O 3 CO *— i 5-< d 3 G c5 2 3 CTG-< C • G /. V ^ • G G 2 < o3 3 G ^3 03 CJ Oh. a CJ G u G 3 3 ^O GJ • G c « 6 . . w 3 -o 4j 3S G G 3 3D rt o <~g “H ^ g-4— H »“H 03 *n ™i G ^ 3 CJ bo 3 § .2 c2 s o-1'^ -O •> jg d rt r ^ o o 2 c G 3.5 5 cr 3 *o g G o3 O B u? e>n G CJ 5h g G G CJ Oi to *0 C3 r- Co R -Cj Co F?" s S d co CN I Quixote de la Mancha. iy% prouechojdi en oluidalla.Y fi algo fe me a£uerda3cs iiquello del fobajada,digo del foberana fenora , v lo Ykimo, vueftro hakala muerte0 cl cauallerodela trifte Figura, Y emrsedio defUs dos cofas , le pufe mas de trezientas almas, y vidas,y ojos mios. C&fi XXXI. De los falrofos rdZfnamientos que pdjja - ton entrs den Quixote >y Sttncho *?anfa fa efeudz* roicon otros facejjos. O D O elTo no me defcontenta , profit gue adelantCjdixodon Quixote. Llegaf tc, y*que hazia aquella reynadelaher* mofura?a buen feguro*que la hallafte en» farcandoperlas 5 obordandoalgunaemprefa , con cro dc canunllo,para eke fu cautiuo cauallero, No la halle^rcfpondio SanchoXinoahechandodos anc~ gas de uigo3en vn corral de fu cafa. Pues haz cuen- £a>dixo don Quixote,quclos granos de aquelcrigo, eran granos deperlaSjtocadosdefusmanoSo Yfi mi- rake amigo,el trigo era candeal>o crecheRNo era fi no rubion, refpondio Sancbo. Pues yo teaffegorc, dixo don Quixote > que ahechado por fus man os hizo pan candeal5fin duda algunatperopafia a del an¬ te. Quandole dike mi carta bcfold Pufofcla fobre la cabe^hizo alguna ccremonia,digna de tai carta? © que hizo? Quando yofe layuaadar^refpddio San cho, ella ekauaenlafugaddmeneo 5 de vnabuena partede trigo,que teniaenlacriua. Y dixome,po* jicd amigo effa carta fobre aquel cortal, ^ nolapue* do leer hafU que acabe de acriua? todo lo que aqui Y 4 ' dial 231. Types used in first edition of Don Quixote Juan de la Cuesta , Madrid , 1G05 « I SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 69 A roughly executed but hue seventeenth century book is the folio edition of Pedro Salazar de Mendoza’s Cronica de el gran Cardenal de Espana , Don Pedro Gongalez de Men- doga , printed by Donna Maria Ortiz de Saravia at Toledo in 1625. Arranged in double columns, surrounded and sepa¬ rated by rules, it is greatly superior to most books of the time in its finished effect and unity of conception. Another more characteristic seventeenth century book — G. Gonzalez de Avila’s Teatro de las Grandezas de la Villa de Madrid of 1623 — has an engraved and much overloaded title-page, followed by an equally elaborate engraved dedi¬ cation, in which heraldic arms and a figure of the Blessed Virgin and Child play a large part; and after the prelim¬ inary “approbation” set in roman type, and some italic which looks very Italian in cut, a dedication follows, Al Pey Nuestro Senor , in handsome old style letter. The preface is set in old style roman type, and then the grandezas of the city are described in five hundred or more folio pages, gen¬ erally in double columns of roman type with italic cap¬ tions. Awkward and over-large ornaments appear here and there. Decorations made up of florets appear occasionally. The only thing consistent throughout is lack of unity and taste! — like poor seventeenth century printing everywhere. The book was issued at Madrid by Tomas Junta, royal typographer. Francisco de los Santos’ interminable Descripcion breve del Monasterio de S. Lorenzo el Real del Escorial , called by him Uunica maravilla del mundo ” (and by others the eighth), written after the completion of the Pantheon in 1654, was printed at the Imprenta Real (which I take to be merely a term) in 1657. This is a like book to the Grandezas , though a better one. It is set in a handsome old style roman type with patches of italic here and there. The presswork, how- 70 PRINTING TYPES ever, is miserable — most uneven in colour. The translation of royal bones to their gilt and marble charnel-house — corona de esta maravilla — and the discourses delivered on the occasion, close with a touch of horror a respectable and not very inspiriting piece of printing. A copy of the 1667 edition formed part of the library of Samuel Pepys. The first edition of Antonio de Solis’ Historia de la Con - quista de Mexico , printed at Madrid by Bernardo de Villa - Diego, printer to his Majesty, in 1684, is a good example of a late seventeenth century folio. The title-page, set almost wholly in various sizes of roman capitals, is surrounded with a badly printed type-border. Then follow approbations, civil and religious, among which appear dedications to the King and the Count of Oropesa, by whose hands (the title-page tells us) this volume was laid at the Royal Feet. The work itself is set in double column in a rather fine roman letter, interspersed with masses of a vivacious condensed italic, not without charm {Jig. 232). The book, which is a late ex¬ ample of many similar volumes, is interesting to compare, both as to type and arrangement, with Sancha’s edition of Solis, printed at the height of the “revival of printing” in the reign of Carlos III. § 3 For eighteenth century Spanish printing, our first exam¬ ple is a book printed at Madrid in 1726 by Francesco del Hurio, printer to the Spanish Academy — a folio Diccion- ario de la lengua Castellana in six volumes.1 Its title-page is 1 In a set of this Dictionary, given to the Library of Harvard College in 1767 by Thomas Hollis, a manuscript note from the donor reads : ‘ ‘ This Dictionary is much esteemed . There are good books in Spanish and I was willing to send it; that, as the N. Americans, many of them, are likely, more than ever, to partake of Spanish Wealth, some of them may also partake in Spanish Wis¬ dom and Literature.” DE LA CONQVISTA, POBLACION,Y PROGRESSOS D E L A AMERICA SEPTENTRIONAL, CONOCID A POR EL NOMBRE DE NUEVA ESPANA. LIBRO PRIMERO. CAPITVLO PRIMERO. M0T1V0S , QVE OBLIGAN A TEN ER POR neccjj'cirio.que fedivida en diferentes partes la Hijloria de las In di as, par a que pueda comprehenderfe * D'lficulta* des de la Hifloriagg *> tteraln 6 algunos dias en nueftra incli¬ nation* el inten- to de continuar laHiftoriaGene- raldelas Indias Occidentals, que dexo el Chronifta Antonio de Herrera, en el ano i $ $ 4, de la Reparation Humana. Y per- feverando en efte anlmofo dic- tamen,lo que tardo en defcu- brirfela dificultad , hemos lei- do,con diligente obfervacion, lo que antes , y defpues de fus Decadas, efcrivieron de aque- llos Defcubrimientos,y Con- quiftas,diferentesPlumasnatu- jtales?y eftrangeras$pero como A las 232. Opening of Solis ’ Conquista de Mexico ( first edition) Villa-Diego , Madrid \ 1684 ( reduced ) ■ SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 71 set in twenty-two lines of type, of which no less than ten are rubricated, and the name of Philip V (to whom it is dedicated) is as large as Diccionario — the first word of the title.1 This page is bordered with type ornaments, in red and black — a fashion much copied in colonial Spanish printing. All its prefatory matter is composed in various sizes of good, but rough, old style roman and italic, and the Dictionary itself is set in a smaller font which is pleasant in feeling. In the main, it is a sober, solid piece of work; but the woodcut head-pieces and common, ornamented initials em¬ ployed are ugly, and the press work is of varying degrees of badness. Perez de Soto of Madrid produced between 1760 and 1770 a work that was then, and still is, thought a great achievement in scholarly printing — Casiri’s Bibliotheca Ara- bico-Hlspana Escurialensis. Miguel Casiri was librarian of the Escorial, and this is a catalogue of the Arabic works in that library. It was printed in Latin and Arabic, in two volumes folio, at the expense of the Crown by Soto, who was printer by royal appointment. The roman and italic types used for the preface and text of this book — though much tried by too rough a paper— are remarkably beau¬ tiful, and appear to be the texto shown by Bordazar in his Plantijicacion of 1732. The Arabic characters accord de¬ lightfully in colour with the roman types. In spite of sprawl¬ ing head-pieces and ill-managed preliminary matter, the work is a wonderfully able piece of printing. Of Joachin Ibarra’s work, I describe first his Sallust — Cayo Salustio Crispo en Espanol — translated from the Latin by the Infante Don Gabriel Antonio de Borbon, second son 1 Placing the dedication on the title-page was a characteristic of many eigh¬ teenth century Spanish books. To honour the patron, his name was usually printed in very large letters, which sometimes overpowered the title of the volume. 72 PRINTING TYPES of Carlos III. It was printed in 1772 and vividly recalls Bodoni’s early manner. The title-page is entirely engraved; and besides a few full-page plates there are some hand¬ some engraved head and tail-pieces and initials designed by the court painter Maella and others, which are agreeably combined with type. The Prologue is set in a very calli¬ graphic italic, the Life in a beautiful font of roman — both fonts produced by Antonio Espinosa. The Spanish text of the book is set in the same beautiful clear italic, in a larger size, which has still more the look of writing. Beneath each page of translation the Latin text appears, set in a small roman letter in double column. It is very even in composi¬ tion, if we allow for the spaces necessary for the figures for notes ; though an odd feature is the equal space before and after commas, semicolons, and colons — -a trick common, however, in contemporary work ( Jig . 233). At the end of two hundred and eighty-eight pages of text come notes, a treatise on the language of the Phoenicians by Perez Bayer,1 and an index — these being set in double column, in a small, clear, old style roman type. Now this all sounds very simple — and it is; but as we turn page after page of this distinguished, lively, easily read italic and massive ro¬ man, we see how magnificent pure typography was made at an unexpected moment and place. It is really the beauty of these two fonts of type that, above all, makes such a won¬ derfully beautiful book. Like all great printing, it looks as if it could not have been planned in any other way; and like all great art, it appears so simple that only after seeing it repeatedly do we realize how fine it is. One hundred and twenty large-paper copies were printed on a rich, creamy, hand-made paper. Almost all of these were given away by 1 My own copy is one which was given by Bayer to a certain William Conyng- ham. 233. Italic used for Spanish text of Sallust: Ibarra , Madrid , 1172 I I 1 1 f SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 73 the translator, Don Gabriele, to the Royal Family, friends at court, persons of distinction, or learned institutions. He sent one to Franklin, then envoy to France, who (very character¬ istically) sent him in return the Proceedings of the Amer¬ ican Congress! The Sallust is one of the finest volumes produced in any country during the eighteenth century — though it could have been printed in this particular style only in Spain. Of Ibarra’s excellent editions of Don Quixote , there were three, all illustrated with copper-plates — that of 1771, in four volumes octavo; of 1780, in four volumes quarto ; and of 1782, in four volumes octavo. Of these the 1780 “Acad¬ emy Edition” w^as the most important — indeed, according to an authority1 on editions of Don Quixote , “the finest edi¬ tion which Spain has produced and perhaps altogether the most estimable one we have.” Ford, in his delightful dis¬ quisition on the book — too little known — speaks of this edi¬ tion, saying, “the finest, that ‘ de lujo ,’ was published for the Academy of Madrid by Ibarra, and no grand library should be without it.” 2 Ponz mentions as in process, in his account of the Academia Espahola, “a magnificent edition which is to be a definitive one, executed by the Academy under Royal patronage.”3 “There is now in hand,” wrote Henry Swinburne, who visited Spain in 1776, “an edition of Don Quixote , with prints taken from the original drawings of the dresses and landscapes of the country, which has employed all the best engravers for some time past. . . . This work . . . does great honour to the editors and printers. . . . The works of Calderon have been lately reprinted ; and a new 1 C. R. Ashbee. 2 Ford’s Guide-Book to Travellers in S/iain, London, 1845, Vol. I, pp. 314 et seq. 6 Ponz’s Viage de Esfiana , Madrid, Ibarra, 1776, Tomo Quinto, p. 176. 74 PRINTING TYPES edition of Lopez de la Vega, on excellent paper, and with very fine types, is in great forwardness : Printing seems of late to be the branch they most excel in.” 1 Of the “Academy Edition” in quarto, the first volume opens with a simple title-page set entirely in roman capi¬ tals, without engraved decoration (Jig. 234). The compli¬ cated preliminary matter- — that introductory to the actual book, and the preface, poetry, etc., which form part of Don Quixote — is managed with delicacy and restraint, and with an entire absence of fussiness. As to type, the opening parts and text are set in a kind of modernized old style roman and italic (Jig. 235). Where poetry occurs in the text, it is set in italic, as are the “arguments” to chapters. All the type used in the book hangs together wonderfully, and the fonts are so full of colour, and so original and lively in cut, that they seem like the work of a man unhampered by profes¬ sional and mechanical traditions. They were of Spanish de¬ sign, being made by Geronimo Gil for the printing-house of the Biblioteca Real, and loaned to the Academy for this edition. The roman appears to be the atanasia gorda en texto of the Real Biblioteca specimen of 1787. Engraved head-bands, head-pieces, and tail-pieces orna¬ ment the Prologo de la Academia and the text, but otherwise the book is severely plain, except for a portrait and many full-page plates designed and engraved — like the more agreeable decorations— by Spanish artists. Though well executed, these large plates are somewhat stiff and academic in design. The paper used for this edition is a creamy linen (made for it at the paper mills of Joseph Florens in Cata- luna); the ink a vivid black; the presswork clear and re¬ markably even, and the imposition of the pages easy and 1 Swinburne’s Travels through Spain, in the Years 1 775 and 1776 (second edition), London, 1787, Vol. II, p. 203. EL INGENIOSO HIDALGO DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA COMPUESTO POR MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. NUEVA EDICION CORREGIDA POR LA REAL ACADEMIA ESPAROLA. PARTE PRIMERA. TOMO I. CON SUPERIOR PERMISO: EN MADRID POR DON JOAQUIN IBARRA 1MPRESOR DE CAMARA DE S, M. Y DE LA REAL ACADEMIA. MDCCLXXX. 234. Title-page of Academy Edition of Don Ahiixott ( reduced ) PON QUIXOTE PE LA MANCHA tan Unda carta como aquella. tienesla todavia en la me- moria , Sancho? dixo Don Quixote. No senor , respon- dio Sancho , porque despues que la di , como vi que no habia de ser de mas provecho , dl en olvidalla : y si al¬ go se me acuerda , es aquello del sobajada , digo del So- berana Seriora , y lo ultimo : Vuestro hasta la muerte, El Caballero de la Triste Figura : y en medio destas dos cosas le puse mas de trecientas almas , y vidas , y ojos mios. CAPITULO XXXI. De los sabrosos razonamientos que pasaron entre Don Quixote y Sancho Panza su escudero, con otros sucesos. Todo eso no me descontenta, prosigue adelante , dixo Don Quixote. Llegaste z w G c* VO > Q Z > u w oo H > Cm < u I ' *>* •n N, 0$ 5 CJ "J on p Vi *** ^vk *S * *^4 (N* * *s> • V4 *$ •O * *N» *•»* CO s ?SS *§ Co V* Co * **4 <0 ^3 *5 CO V. Co O « S •** Co c$ -£} cs ’-Q Co «•*» o jS •S c 9 £ X ^2 — > r-1 on CJ J J P j P j^j P3 O £ CO g c £5 C| J j-J P O Oh P on co O <✓3 on P J i-t J Oh P P cr o c on To O P on Vo J > G P J P P <-V0 £ ^P o CJ P 5-0 Vo d3 J X _Q P CO o CJ Vo P P 00 O G -Q CJ U H 3 z « CJ VO CJ p s on • r— 1 P • M -p Vo CJ on J3 o E P Dh cj o £P Vo ^O CO ^ ^ P 3 P O P o rj ^ P • on • *-o (J on on J2 "Tj . T-O CO S*“0 C bJO OP p O P o > Tj <-o on Vo o QJ P Vo ■ . w& I CURS IF A DE TEXTO GORDO. , JfjlN quanto al Autor digo , que no pudo Vs| jf j serlo el que suena ; esto es , sugeto con- g| tempordnco dc algunos de los Maestros , que jv|^ nombra. 0 no huvo tal Firgilio Cordubense en kSp el Mundo , 6 si le huvo , no fue Autor del ma- M nuscrito en question ; 6 si lo fue , el tal Firgilio ^IJ, Cordubense era un hombre ignor antisimo , y men- tirosisimo. Dicese contemporaneo de Avicena , y sHi de Abcnrroiz , que nosotros llamamos Aver roes ; y X. ft-iV r> hJmJ- -t> rV •$. •$..$. s*f. •$. •$. X* -j j. A •£. X- X Ticne este grado en el redondo 34 matrices de ca- ja baja , de la alta65, de versales 29 , de versalillas 29 , de estas con acentos , y 33 de titulares. punzones de caja baja 3 5 , de alta 40 , de versales 28 , de versalillas 25 , con acentos solos para versales y versalillas 9 , y 33 de titulares. "RTF’ 33? l I ryrpr 245. Roman cut by Gil: Specimen Real Biblioteca Madrid , 1787 ■ . . 1 < ■ . ' , ■ i N? XXIX. 29 p PARANGONA. ues dime ahora ique ma¬ yor peligro y qn'e mayor mi- seria que vivir fuera de esta tut el a y cuidado paternal de Dios 3 y quedar expuesto d todos los encuentros del mun- do? P or que si le falta esta sombray favor de Dios ^que hard el solo y desannado e? 1- tre tan poderosos enemigos ? Hay en esta cvrsiva 32 matrices de caja ba}a , de aita 5 5 , de versales y versalillas 58 , de esras dos con acentos 52 , de vinetas 3 , de espacios de imprimir 2 , y 3 3 detitulares. tu nzojjes de caja baja 3 3 , de alta 31 , de versales 28, de versalillas 28, con acentos 2i,y33 de titulares. total de este grado: 441 matrices :y 344 pun- zones. ;eTV' f lit c L •7TF’ m I 3D 246. Italic cut by Gil: Specimen Real Biblioteca Madrid , 1787 krr - 1 ft 91 N? LXXIV. 74 CURSIVA NUEVA DE TEXTO. JBLegla es tambicn de pruden- cia no mirar d la antiguedad g novedad de las cosas para apro- barlas 6 condenarlas ; porque mu- chas cosas hay mug acostum- bradas g mug malas , g otras hag mug nuevas g mug buenas, y ni la vejez es parte para jus- tificar lo malo , ni la novedad debe ser para condenar lo hue - no , sino en todo g por todo hin- ca los ojos en los meritos de las cosas , g no en los anos. 7nf*'t & 247. Neiv Italic of Texto ( showing French influence) Specimen Real Bibliotecci , Madrid, 1787 j ' ' ' r. ( «- ■ . snap** N.° L P E T X C A N O. Este Rey Agesi- lao , como en su exer- cito tuviese poca gen- te de caballo, fuese a la Ciudad y tierra de GURS1VA. Efeso , habia gente may rica , y po- co codiciosa de guerra. El gran mandat o, &c. A ‘vn/f 248. Peticano , cut by Eudaldo Pradell Muestras de la Viuda e Hijo de Pradell , Madrid \ 1793 SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 85 collection as his mother-in-law’s more ambitious volume; but the paper is lighter and more attractive than the Pradell specimen, and shows off both types and ornaments better. The ornaments are not quite the same. Many of them are derived from French sources and some from English, but they are all treated in a very Spanish way (jig* 249). A final volume to be described is the 1799 specimen-book of the Imprenta Real of Madrid, which was at last started and which seems to have absorbed the material cut by Gil for the Biblioteca Real. Richard Ford in his classic Hand- Book for Travellers in Spain — athe best guide ever written for any country”1 — speaks of the Imprenta Real as being, in his day, in the Calle de Carreteras — the same street in which, about a hundred years earlier, Baretti,2 then trav¬ elling in Spain, visited a printing-office. Housed in a cum¬ brous building, the work of an architect named Turillo, it contained, Ford tells us, “the royal printing and engraving establishment. From this press have issued many splendid specimens of typography,” though he, unhappily, neglects to say what they were. This establishment was later situ¬ ated in the Calle del Cid, but to-day no longer exists. The title of this specimen is Muestras de los Punzones y Matrices de la Letra que se funde en el Obrador de la Im¬ prenta Beal ', Madrid, , Aho de 1799. The book is in two parts. 1 The famous edition is that of 1 845. Consult the amusing account of Spanish booksellers, Vol. I, pp. 138 et seq. 2 The Italian, Joseph Baretti (remembered chiefly for his Italian-English and Spanish- English lexicons, and as one of Dr. Johnson’s circle), who was in Madrid in 1760, mentions visiting “a large printing-office in the Calle de las Carretas [szc] , a street so called, and chiefly inhabited by printers and book¬ sellers.” Speaking of the fifty workmen employed in this printing-office and the rate of production, he says, “I asked two fellows at one press, how many sheets they could work off in a day, and was answered five and twenty hun¬ dred, which I thought a pretty good number, especially as they were none of the most muscular men.” Baretti’s Journey from London to Genoa , etc., London, 1770, Vol. Ill, pp. 8, 9. 86 PRINTING TYPES The first comprises an ambitious collection of excellent ro¬ man and italic types, followed by some Greek types (fine in the largest and smallest sizes), a few pages of Arabic, and a little Hebrew. Apart from Gil’s fonts, and others of that style, there are a number of lighter fonts, both in roman and italic, that, while distinctly “old style,” show the taste for lighter letter-forms which was then making headway in Spain. A second collection of type of decidedly more mod¬ ern cut begins on page 75. The tendency toward less “nour¬ ished,” lighter letters is clearly seen in these over-finished, monotonous characters (Jigs. 250 and 25 1) — types by no means so interesting as those in Part I. Following these is a large display of capital letters in roman and italic, shaded initials, Greek capital letters, and a repertoire of “ flowers,” some of which we reproduce (Jigs. 252 and 253). A few are original, but a great many of these “flowers” were de¬ rived from Holland,1 F ranee,2 and England,3 and others from various perfectly recognizable sources ; but they are ren¬ dered in such a way as to be transmuted into very Spanish design.4 Late eighteenth century Spanish specimen-books, when compared with English or French “specimens,” show (l) that the prevailing European taste was active in Spain, though retarded; (2) yet that type and ornaments both pos¬ sessed a marked national character ; and (3) that Spanish types — especially in italic fonts — had a surprisingly calli¬ graphic quality. This third point is perhaps capable of elucidation. These calligraphic types were (it seems to me) modelled directly 1 Page 138, No. 155 ; page 139, No. 172. 3 Page 131, No. 63. 2 Page 136, No. 132 ; page 137, No. 142. 4 The “modern face” type which was in use by 1800 in other parts of Europe does not appear to be commonly employed in Spain until some years later. CO F g> > # 4^ A & V 85^f» //Zv' M, %t *&p skl'c; m > & r/: •p*'; % V? S *vT 249. Ornaments from Muestras , etfc., Pedro Ifern , Madrid , 1795 CARNICERO. CARNIVORO. fstas voces conyienen porque son califi- caciones genericas de los animales que co¬ men carne. Difieren en que carnivoro sig- nifica simplemente el que come carne ; y carnicero el que hace su comida de ella. La primera designa el hecho , y la segunda el apetito natural, el habito constante. Ei animal carnicero no come otra cosa que carne; su naturaleza le obliga a vivir de ella sola ; el carnivoro es el que entre otras cosas come carne ; pero puede vivir sin co- merla, como que no es su unico y propio alimento. El tigre, el leon, el lobo se man- tienen solo de carne, y por consiguiente son carniceros. El hombre, el perro , el gato comen y gustan de carne ; pero no la nece- sitan para vivir, pues pueden pasar con otros alimentos , y de consiguiente son car- nivoros. En las especies carnivoras se Ha¬ inan carniceros los individuos que gustan mas de carne , y la comen mas a menudo que los otros ; pero ya en este caso se usa impropiamente de la voz carnicero. 250. Roman tending to u Modern Face” from Muestras , etc. Imprenta Real , Madrid , 1799 I ■ M ■ LECTURA. CARNICERO CARNIVORO E fstas voces convienen porque son caliji- caciones genericas de los animales que co¬ men came. Difteren en que carnivoro sig- nifica simplemente el que come came; y car¬ nicero cl que hace su comida de ella . La primer a designa el hecho > y la segunda el apetito natural > el habito constante. El ani¬ mal carnicero no come otra cosa que came; su naturaleza le obliga d vivir de ella sola , el carnivoro es el que entre otras cosas come came ; pero puede vivir sin comerla > co- mo que no es su unico y propio alimento . El tigre > el leon, el lobo se mantienen solo de came , y por consiguiente son carniceros. El hombre > el perro > el gato comen y gus- tan de came; pero no la necesitan para vi¬ vir) pues pueden pasar con otros alimentos; y de consiguiente son carnivoros . En las es- pecies carnivoras se llaman carniceros los individuos que gustan mas de came , y la comen mas d menudo que los otros ; pero ya en este caso se usa impropiamente de la voz carnicero . 251. Italic tending to u Modern Face” from Muestras , etc. Imprenta Real , Madrid , 1799 143 vinztas. DOS PUNTOS DE TEXTO. irtrtrwmrtrtnrtrtrinrTrtrtrTrtr 252. Ornaments from Muestras , etc., Imprenta Real Madrid , 1799 253. Ornaments from Muestras , etc., Imprenta Real Madrid , 1799 SPANISH TYPES: 1500-1800 87 on the Spanish handwriting then considered ideal for docu¬ ments or letters meant to be handsomely rendered. For in¬ stance, italic letters, in some fonts in these specimen-books, end in little adabs,” as if written with a pen overfull. This was much like some of the writing of the great seventeenth century Spanish calligrapher Diaz Morante, an edition of whose Arte Nueva de Escribir w as republished by Sancha in 1776. Morante and his son profoundly influenced Spanish writing for two centuries.1 Though craftsmen in other countries of Europe had learned the futility of copying too closely a written letter, an effort appears to have been made in Spain to translate the formal calligraphy of the eighteenth century into type- forms. This was a beginner’s blunder, but all earlier be¬ ginners had “begun” so long before, that for a moment the student of types is puzzled at the recurrence of the error, and takes it for something new. If Spanish specimen- books were filled with very calligraphic types, perhaps it was because the Spanish type-cutter — with no native tradi¬ tion or experience to guide him — was working out an old problem in his own way. 1 See plates in Rejlexiones y Arte de Escribir del Abate Dn Domingo Maria Servidori , Romano. Imprenta Real, Madrid, 1788. CHAPTER XVII English types: i 500-1 800 IF the earliest types cast in England were somewhat unattractive in design and rough in execution, it was not because the types were early types, for at that same time in other countries types were better; nor because of any lack of good models, for English black-letter manu¬ scripts were often very beautiful. But in England few early native types had what we should call u feeling.” Type-cut¬ ting and type-designing did not, apparently, at first come easily or instinctively to the English. Their best early types were imported. Most of Caxton’s types were poor in design compared with those chiefly employed on the Continent at the same epoch. In Caxton’s day, gothic letter was in vogue for all English printing. Later, this gothic crystallized into an English pointed black-letter character, similar to some of the black-letter of the Netherlands, from which, tempered perhaps by French influences, it was derived. It was the characteristic type of England, and we find it in the Eng¬ lish workrooms of De Worde, who greatly perfected it, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as well as in use by Pynson and Berthelet. This character was commonly em¬ ployed throughout the sixteenth century, and until the end of the seventeenth century, and even in the eighteenth cen¬ tury it was still used for law-books, proclamations, licenses, etc. The poet Gray, in a letter to his friend W est, who was discouraged about his legal studies, alluded to this when he said, “Had the Gothic character and bulkiness of those vol¬ umes ... no ill effect upon your eye? Are you sure, if Coke had been printed by Elzevir, and bound in twenty neat pocket volumes, instead of one folio, you should never have . . * . *4 <1 P3 Q ca rc5 a 4 PL ^ o> S.g P> •£®© ^ »>>»*.- . § S0 *«3 J * ^ §* *•** o CO >, Q 2 <5 £ H & D O u cd o CL? 3 3 O « « *-4 4^> * <7g © *Cj-> © "§^K> ®=f ^ o rr* 5-0 CO PQ g «e 43 O £ 0 ^ ^5 . g-* -0“ 2 «n *§ *gT *0* V> N"“l ""*• S § © S3 «3 © © <7^ « <7§ 4fc? e •e %= v"*^ -A © 2 r^j r ?*- . o _ . © <3 bJ3 G w a r§ O J, —1 53 <4— . *S Q « ^ S jc> ^} — * - J£> -><> «- © © ^ Oj ^ Q ccj JO o ^ OO <*&*£> <& « . p>--> vO rd ?3 ip V> " 15? . o 2 % s © S3 JO © S3 S3 <£5 ■o. S3 o & =3 ^ s> -*©» o “Q- Cl 4-> Atr. cc^ 4^> •V- 6 t'na&t^b ^ oV^^ov*^ dn ^ Qaftincj finite Stupes uuas founl out in tbi SV^orbpu^ ■j’rc+n a-nb 4-| }(tv) si m G 3) & & g % $ $C JLXJfO 9> $( £V /&> C ^>f&tr, J £ /cmoto Byddel n. Matrices 70. 89 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 taken him up for an hour, as you would a Tully, or drank your tea over him?”1 While there were some forms of gros- batarde types (like Mansion’s) used in England in the first thirty-five years of the sixteenth century, this pointed gothic letter drove them out. Types modelled on the old Nor¬ man law-hand called “set court,” “bas secretary” (or en¬ grossing), and “running secretary,” — the latter the cursive of the law courts of Queen Elizabeth’s time, — also existed (, Jig • 254); but (like the civilite in France) they were never much used, and made little impression on English typog¬ raphy. In England, the first roman types were sometimes called Italian letter or “ white-letter,” in distinction to the common English black-letter. Pynson’s Senno fratris Hieronymi de Ferrana appears to have contained the earliest roman letter used in England, but the first English books printed en¬ tirely in roman were his two 1518 editions of the Orcitio of Richard Pace. In the next year Pynson printed, in two sizes of roman type, a work by Horman, entitled V ulgaria {Jig. 255). Since he was of Norman birth and had intimate re¬ lations with printers at Rouen and with Froben at Basle, he may have bought these fonts abroad; although he cut some types of his own.2 Pynson succeeded Machlinia as a 1 Mason’s Life of Gray (second edition), London, 1775, pp. 100, 101. 2 “The frequent indications to be met with of the transmission of founts from one printer to another, as well as the passing on of worn types from the presses of the metropolis to those of the provinces, are suggestive of the exist¬ ence (very limited, indeed) of some sort of home trade in type even at that early date. For a considerable time, moreover, after the perfection of the art in England, the trade in foreign types, which dated back as early as the estab¬ lishment of printing in Westminster and Oxford, continued to flourish. With Normandy, especially, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a brisk commerce was maintained. Not only were many of the English liturgical and law books printed abroad by Norman artists, but Norman type found its way in considerable quantities into English presses. M. Claudin . . . states that Rouen, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was the great typo- 90 PRINTING TYPES 4 printer of English law-books — for which his knowledge of Norman F rench proved a recommendation. De W orde’s first roman type was introduced about 1520. This he used for printing entire books and also for emphasizing special words or quotations in books printed in black-letter. Apparently it was De Worde who first introduced an italic type into England, employing it for marginal notes in Wakefield’s Orcitio , published in 1524 — the first book printed in Eng¬ land showing Arabic and Hebrew types. De Worde’s skill in producing the best English black-letter forms has already been alluded to. He seems to have been his own type- cutter. Thomas Berthelet, royal printer and famous for his beau¬ tiful bindings, maintained good traditions in printing. So did Richard Grafton, Berth elet’s successor as King’s Printer; remembered for his Bibles and service-books, and espe¬ cially for the edition of Cranmer’s Bible which he printed in association with Whitchurch in 1539. Thomas Vautrollier was responsible for the printing of what is called one of the handsomest Elizabethan books — though a very tasteless performance in reality — North’s Plutarch, issued in 1579. In types and presswork he excelled most of his craft. But the London printer John Day left the most distinct mark on early sixteenth century English typography. He was graphical market which furnished type not to England only, but to other cities in France and to Switzerland. ‘It evidently had special typographical foun¬ dries,’ he observes. ‘ Richard Pynson, a London printer, was a Norman ; Will Faques learned typography from J. le Bourgeois, a printer at Rouen. These two printers had types cast expressly for themselves in Normandy. Wynkyn de Worde must have bought types in Normandy also, and very likely from Peter Olivier and Jean de Lorraine, printers in partnership at Rouen.’ And with regard to the first printer of Scotland, M. Claudin has no doubt that Myllar learned his art in Normandy, and that the types with which his ear¬ liest work was printed were those of the Rouen printer, Hostingue.” Reed’s History of Old English Letter Foundries , London, 1887, p. 103. DEPJETATE I pietate in deum vbi de vcra ieligi'one ct redo cultu cum fui's cerimonij s et vJtione circa ncgledum vel cotemptum eorudem. Cap* H E R E is no thynge in the worlde fo coueniet to a man as to be holy and to louegod and worfhyppc hym* Nihil m humanis religi o ne fadius / nihil hommi ram proprium <| pie ta¬ ns cultus* Man is naturallye dyfpofyd to hatie a mynde and tenet ence towarde god* Hommf ingenita eft religi'oms aira# There be many Sc diuerfe maners of worfhyppyng and doyngeoffacryfyce* Multiplex eft varia eg coledt deu ratio/mub tiplex facrorum ritus* Thereligyon that Adam tawght fyrft his chyls dreneand all that cam of them /was to be takyn for the moil ryght and fure way that ledytlie man to thepryuyte of god tyll Mofes law cam* Religio quarn prothoplaftus a principio Ifc bens et omni pofterita ti jppofuit/ omnium reftiftima fait Iogeq$ tutiffima cenfeda/qug ad veri nummis ducitara Mofaica ten^ lege Mofes tabuls we*e catyd with the Ar&e* 255. Roman Types used by Pynson , London , 1519 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 91 born in 1522, and began work on his own account in 1546. Taking refuge abroad during the Marian persecutions of Protestants, he returned and began printing again in 1557, and on the accession of Elizabeth (who merely persecuted Catholics), worked on a larger scale. Cunningham’s Cosmo - graphicall Glasse , which Day printed in 1559, was, from a decorative and pictorial point of view, an ambitious book. It is described on a later page. Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, was Day’s chief patron. Day cut a font of Saxon which was used in a book edited by the archbishop, issued about 1566, and in some later volumes, notably Parker’s edition of JfLlfredi Regis Res Gestas , printed in 1574. This book shows the re¬ sult of the best efforts in type-founding up to that time, and the archbishop’s preface alludes to Day’s skilful punch¬ cutting : “And inasmuch as Day, the printer, is the first (and, indeed, as far as I know, the only one) who has cut these letters in metal ; what things have been written in Saxon characters will be easily published in the same type.” The roman and italic used in the volume are of extreme importance in the history of early English type-founding. The roman, or, as it was then called, “Italian letter,” resem¬ bles some fine fonts used on the Continent (Jig. 256); and the italic (that used in the Cosmo gi~aphicall Glasse) is no less distinguished (Jig- 257). Reed says: “The typography of the jRlfredi is superior to that of almost any other work of the period. Dibdin considered it one of the rarest and most important volumes which issued from Day’s press. The archbishop’s preface is printed in a bold, flowing Double Pica Italic, and the Latin preface of St. Gregory at the end in a Roman of the same body, worthy of Plantin himself.”1 A new italic was first used in 1572 in Parker’s De Anti - Reed, p. 96. 1 92 PRINTING TYPES quitate Britannicse Ecclesise — the first privately printed book brought out in England. Day, by the way, was printer of the English edition in "black-letter of that very famous Pro¬ testant martyrologiumjFoxe’sj&ooA-q/" 'Martyrs, in 1563 ; and in 1569 he produced A Book of Christian Prayers , — com¬ monly called “ Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,” — a rough, tasteless black-letter volume, clumsily modelled on French Horse, but which had great popularity. He also cut a fine Greek letter and some attractive musical characters, and mathematical signs, etc., not before cast in type. The use of his roman and italic fonts was probably restricted to the See of Canterbury. Some of them were used a hundred years later by Roycroft in Bishop W alton’s Polyglot Bible. Day was one of the first English printers to cut roman and italic letters on uniform bodies. Before that time, roman and italic types had been considered characters without me¬ chanical interrelation; as examination of books in which they are both employed too plainly shows. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, the roman types used in England were respectable — in a few cases, handsome. By the middle of the century, however, there was a decline, attributable to a variety of reasons. English typography shared the general falling off which began as soon as the restraining traditions of the manuscript volumes had passed away. Then, too, as in other countries, new and more complex problems of book-making were coming into being — changes caused by a demand for cheaper books, by the realization of the possibilities of type, and by prob¬ lems arising from the difference between the arrangement of a modern book, as we understand it, and the old traditional manuscript volume. Nor was the English printer very skilful or tasteful in the arrangement of types — good or bad; and thus English books did not equal those printed by good 3 H3 O O* g Co ♦— < . *~a s ^ £> c 3 • ~ CL) O U r-r-t 3 0-1 C _Q G G r S ^ ^ rj u, 7! rt P*S * \ o . P * T — 4 ♦ fN X . hs 53 2 ’"Ho-cr* £-0 G (Q-, £ C w ^ u r > ^ fi ^ S P <-p-1 p 5 5 l> H c ^3 2 § ^ £ c •= ^ c* crua c =l ij-^gcs p *-Q 2 * ri ^ *-^ ctj C rt 2^0 rt'Ti „ c p -r-a 3 G £ o ~p g ^ §-« e 3 ■ *-i ^ CJ — V =0 a | S ^ .5 ^ * b *3 ^ $5 £ 1 ^ 2$ -s -£; 03 ^s s; \ § Si \ g si ^ .g ! s s,| S 8 .In Sfc ^ ^ § Ja . c> ^ ^ St * h >> ^ .So S •« ^3 S .•§ S ^ r* ^ .l*** , ssj 's; 5s fc§j.§ ^ • *0 fe ^ § ^ § -5 1 s -e , ., . s ^21 » « J3 R ^ 5s <£} O c^- ^1,5 Vs ^ .ir §= ’Is §8 ^ ^ 25s * S)g c ^ S >£ g f ^ Qi ^ O} *La • wv 27s* ^ ** ^ p -S ^3 .2 ^ S §-X So ^ 5 -$i ir 3^ -t »o ■§ K Q H r' >s Q •o <4j «0 a 4 10 G^ ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 93 presses on the Continent — either in workmanship, beauty, or correctness. The decline of typography from 1550 to 16 50, as McKer- row points out, was also due (l) to the fact that printing fell into the hands of a class of masters and men less able, enter¬ prising, and socially important, who looked at it solely from the commercial side; (2) that English presses printed books chiefly in the vernacular, and that more scholarly volumes, like the classics, were largely brought from abroad; (3) and chiefly, to the beginning of a burdensome censorship of the press, which became increasingly restrictive. Separately and collectively, all these contributed to the decline in Eng¬ land of printing as an art.1 “Some explanation,” says Reed, “of the marked supe¬ riority of our national typography at the close of the fif¬ teenth century over that of half a century later, is to be found in the fact that, whereas many of the first printers used types wholly cut and cast for them by expert foreign artists, their successors began first to cast for themselves from hired or purchased matrices, and finally to cut their own punches and justify their own matrices. Printing en¬ tered on a gloomy stage of its career in England after Day’s time, and as State restrictions gradually hemmed it in, crushing by its monopolies healthy competition, and by its jealousy foreign succour, every printer became his own letter- founder, not because he would, but because he must, and the art suffered in consequence.” The first man recorded as a 1 For the state of the sixteenth century English press (its relations to the gov¬ ernment, etc.), see the chapter by R. B. McKerrow on the “Booksellers’, Printers’, and Stationers’ Trade,” in Shakes/ieare’s England. , Oxford, 1916, Vol. II, chapter xxiii. For an account of earlier English legislation in reference to printing, publishing, and bookselling, see the Introductions to Mr. E. Gordon Duff’s Century of the English Book Trade , 1457-1557 ; to McKerrow ’ s Dictionary of Printers, 1557-1640; and to Vlomev’s Dictionary of Booksellers and Printers, 1641-1667. 94 PRINTING TYPES type-founder was Hubert Dauvillier, who came to England in 1553 and whose shop was in existence in 1594; the first Englishman in the trade being Benjamin Simpson, who worked as a type-founder in 1597. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the State had so seriously interfered with the liberty of printing, that by 1557 no press could be erected outside London except one each at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the seventeenth century, the Star Chamber decree of 16371 placed the number of letter-founders at four, vacancies being filled by a commission. From 1640 to 1662 was a period of liberty; but this restriction was revived in 1662 and lasted until the end of the century — or to be exact, 1693. “ During this period,” Pollard tells us, “of nearly a century and a half, no printing was permitted, and, with the most insignificant exceptions, no printing was done, except at London, Oxford, and Cambridge. If a school-book or a prayer-book, or a Bible, or a book of any kind were wanted at Falmouth or at Berwick-upon-Tweed, it was from London or Oxford or Cambridge that it had to be procured, and procured more¬ over from a closed ring, more or less able to charge what price it pleased. If a poll-tax of a few pence apiece had been imposed on the people of England the whole country would have been in revolt. But because this piece of oppression, which had no parallel in any other civilized country, had to do with books, this land of liberty bore it, apparently with¬ out a murmur.”2 The earliest English specimen-sheet was that of Nicho¬ las Nicholls, submitted to Charles II in 1665, with a peti¬ tion for the post of royal letter-founder — which two years 1 It was this decree which caused Milton to write his Areofiagitica. 2 A. W. Pollard in Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Yol. XIII, ' ■ * Augyfli(I\mo Monarchy & Sfrcruffim© Principi 8r Doraino C A B O l O (I1® Britanniarum, & Francis ftcgi Glorioiiffitno fidei Defenfofi ,&£ Hare voia ferjuenua Vjvas O Re» in pprpprmm Bfi(j7iV?u tu as diuJ ?un ni' • * V * l ♦*n \'w>p k'b>d Y9 9 v 4 M*J y^tXlD h : a/7m°r . aVF • pV?H,A •* A.MS’ i AllviU ; •aI «* ' 9 • ‘5* * ygiaJi ^o> ?> «> & k ?4> m is I >? & 258. Earliest English Specimen-sheet Nicholas JVichol Is, London , 1665 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 95 later he obtained. The types were probably cut expressly for the specimen, and besides roman include Greek, He¬ brew, Syriac, Samaritan, Ethiopic, and Arabic ( Jig. 258). Moxon, author of Mechanick Exercises / published a speci¬ men in 1669. A specimen of the Fell and Junius types was issued by the University Press, Oxford, in 1693. The Oxford Press began its work in 1585, and has been in continuous activity to our own day. In 1629, Sir Henry Savile1 2 * gave the press some fine Greek types (bought at Frankfort possibly from WechePs successors), called the “ Silver Letter,” in which the Eton Chrysostom had been printed.4 Later, Archbishop Laud obtained Letters Patent for it (allowing three printers, each to have two presses and two apprentices), and a Charter extending its rights, and he also presented it with some Oriental types. Between 1667 and 1672, the press received some fine types imported from Holland by Dr. John Fell, Dean of Christ Church and later Bishop of Oxford (Jigs. 259 and 260). A col- 1 It was Moxon who cut the symbols used in John Wilkins’ Essay towards a Real Character , printed for the Royal Society (of which Moxon was a fellow) in 1668. He also produced the small pica Irish type used in Daniels’ Irish New Testament in 1 681, both type and printing being paid for by Robert Boyle — until 1800, the only Irish font in England. 2 Savile (1549-1622), Provost of Eton and one of the most learned English¬ men of his time, was for years interested in producing an edition of St. Chrysostom, for which he. endeavoured to secure a font of the French “ Royal Greek” types. Failing in this, he purchased abroad a special Greek font for the work, the preparation of which cost him the enormous sum (for those days) of £8000. The edition, in eight volumes, was finished in 1613. Savile was a friend of Sir Thomas Bodley, and founded at Oxford the chairs of Geometry and Astronomy, which are still known by his name. An inter¬ esting account of his Greek type is given in Robert Proctor’s paper. The French Royal Greek Typ.es , and the Eton Chrysostom (Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Vol. VII). This “Silver Letter” was subsequently bequeathed by Savile to the University of Oxford, then loaned to the Uni¬ versity of Cambridge, and has since been lost. s Reed , facing p . 140. 96 PRINTING TYPES lection of Gothic, Runic, Icelandic, and Saxon characters was given also by a German, Francis Junius the younger, librarian to the Earl of Arundel.1 Rowe Mores says : “About the time of Mr. Junius’s gift to the Univ. the excellent Bp. Fell, most strenuous in the cause of learning, had regulated and advanced the learned press in the manner which had been intended by archb. Laud, and which would by him have been effected had not the iniquity of those anarchical and villainous times prevented. He gave to the Univ. a noble collection of letter, consisting (besides the common founts Rom. and Ital.) of Hebr. Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic (Persic, Turkish and Malayan bought of Dr. Hyde), Ar¬ menian, Coptic, TEthiopic, Greek, Runic, Saxon, English, and Sclavonian : Music, Astronomical and Mathematical signs and marks, flowers, &c. together with the punches and matrices from which they were cast, and all other uten¬ sils and apparatus necessary for a printing-house belong¬ ing to the University.”2 Fell employed Marshall, afterwards Dean of Gloucester, to buy some of these types in Holland, and Marshall’s negotiations for their purchase (between 1670 and 1672) were chiefly with Abraham van Dyck, son of Christoffel, the celebrated type-cutter, and Dirk Vos- kens. A phrase in one of Marshall’s letters is prophetic. “ I se,” he writes, “in this Printing-designe, we English must learn to use or own hands at last to cut Letters as well as 1 For the Fell types, see the rare Sp.ecim.en of the Several Sorts of Letter given to the University by Dr. John Fell , later Lord Bishop of Oxford. To which is added the Letter Given by Mr. F. Junius , Oxford. Printed at the Theatre , a.d. 1693. Other editions followed in 1695, 1706, 1768, 1787, 1794, etc. Some of these specimens are reproduced in Hart’s JVotes on a Century of Typography at the University F*r ess, Oxford , 1693-1794. Oxford, 1900. 2 A like benefaction for the University Press, Cambridge, had been attempted in 1626 by Archbishop Ussher, who tried to get matrices of Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Samaritan letters from Leyden, but was forestalled in this by the Elzevirs. Before the advent of Caslon, most of the material of the press was carefully chosen from Dutch foundries. See S. C. Roberts’ excellent History of the Cambridge University Press, 1521-1921. Cambridge, 1921. Double Pica Roman. ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQR STVUWXYZ ABCDEFGHIK- PAter nofter qui es in coelis, fan- (ftificetur nomen tuum. Veniat regnum tuum : fiat voluntas tua, ficut in coelo, ita etiam in terra. Panem no- ftrum quotidianum da nobis hodie. Et remitte nobis debita noftra, ficut & remittimus debitoribus noftris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, fed libera nos a billomalo. Amen. Double Pica Italick. c AABCDEFG HIJKLUMM NO P§^RSTFUWXTZ^£M il. Amen. New Englifh Englifh. a B o I s Ih OJ TJ C3 d s£ § 1-4 QJ 4— » 3 £ o j cn < Q £ SiSEH •°®§Sg " “-a 1 $5 & W >«4 B"4Ss se=»a ;Esae O ^ »G\ CtT\ te Hp o ■*-» <3l *rf CO o » v ^s§l°S ~sE-g g«p‘? ®®5 g o Iii| Jsll 3 'J n. «iO 3 E 5«< S 3 § SSi i u a cO <0 A o o ° }• 2* , o O J. w (C V3 ’S^.s « ” « " < > Cl C* ^ « » vi# ^ — : v” f H-S -<© x>° * «§'B ^ « £g ^ L, “ If. 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JT “ Xrty3 u 5 3 ^ h- fv.5. o e-S S-ls “ Sgo » J e£ • s §? e § o ^8 j 55 *73 S ccaGS-e si CU 3X£ WvC o E-.o^c ^ s-s^ji^ag *s, 3 >; OUJ „ -S^ E5 5-D- .0 .2 i.c^a0-- « |S -Uj .,siO S 3* - 1 J| x .2 S « o _ «o «, E 3 £ ^ -s >15* is « u. •S-i6§-§§&S 2 2 •« ^ ^ > *3 0 - « o "O [ 2* gJ3 — UJ Q.V C j o E - « j3 o _ > ,3 -- ^2 L. a-i: _. r3 v E— — H.c*s>a3 «C?.— o w,4— ^ ,C3 mO •Gal - W £.•> ^ ca-S^c'§i!S. •■ je|2s -. s-h = . s-a 1 too E - 3 0 §“^3 ^1- ”,c ^2 >9 5 eE-2Q -*TJ 0« co a s> vii 'o > •« ci 4 sl! sips «i8|gai|p « .s s c . I >% a 1 1 <2 c ^ o 3 _3 2 c 2, a o& issued in England,2 and from it some pages are reproduced 1 Manuel Tyfiografihique , Vol. II, p. xxxviii. 2 Also see Luckombe’s History of Printing , in which a reprint of that part of Caslon’s Specimen of 1763 which contains the types, is shown. The flowers are not the same. In Caslon’s specimens, variants of the same size of type are given, called ‘ ‘ No. 1 ’ ’ and “No. 2 ” — the former a little larger face than the latter, though cast on the same body— as in Luckombe’s re¬ print. In the Caslon Specimen of 1796, three faces of the same size of type are shown. Thus the name Caslon, says Mr. De Vinne, “ as applied to a distinct face of type, is consequently not exactly descriptive ; it may be somewhat mis¬ leading.” Two Lines Great Primer. Quoufque tandem abutere Catilina, p Quoujque tandem a- butere^ Catilina^pa- Two Lines English. Quoufque tandem abu¬ tere, Catilina, patient ia noftra? quamdiu nos e« Quoufque tandem abutere Catilina , patientia noftra? Two Lines Pica. Quouique tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia noftra ? qu Quoufque tandem abutere , Ca¬ tilina ^ patientia noftra l quam- 263. Roman and Italic: William Caslon & Son's Specimen London , 1763 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 105 (Jigs. 263 and 264). His son, W illiam Caslon II ( 1 720-17 7 8), succeeded him at his death, and maintained the place the house had won for itself. On the death of William Cas¬ lon II, the property was divided between his widow — Eliza¬ beth (Cartlitch) Caslon — and his two sons, William Cas¬ lon and Henry Caslon I. William Caslon III ( 1754-1 833), 1 who had a son William (1781-1869), disposed of his in¬ terest in 1792 to his mother, and to Elizabeth (Rowe) Cas¬ lon, the widow of his brother Henry. The latter lady, whose partner was Nathaniel Catherwood, had a son, Henry Cas¬ lon (1786-1850). He, in partnership with John James Catherwood, with Martin Livermore, and alone, continued the house, which finally descended to the last of the family, Henry William Caslon (1814-1874). On his death, the business was taken over, under the style of H. W. Caslon & Co., by his manager, T. W. Smith, whose sons ultimately assumed the name of Caslon, and the foundry remains in their hands to-day.2 The developments of the Caslons’ out¬ put during their long and honourable history are described on later pages. Why are William Caslon’s types so excellent and so famous? To explain this and make it really clear, is diffi¬ cult. While he modelled his letters on Dutch types, they were much better ; for he introduced into his fonts a quality of interest, a variety of design, and a delicacy of modelling, which few Dutch types possessed. Dutch fonts were mo¬ notonous, but Caslon’s fonts were not so. His letters when 1 This William Caslon III, though selling his interest in the family business, bought Joseph Jackson’s foundry (in operation from 1763 to 1792), which he managed under his own name until 1803 — the succeeding styles of the house being Caslon Sc Son and William Caslon (1807-19). 2 The account of the foundry which has been issued by the present owners under the title of Two Centuries of Tyfiefounding should be consulted. It is very fully illustrated by portraits, reproductions of types, ornaments, etc. 106 PRINTING TYPES analyzed, especially in the smaller sizes, are not perfect in¬ dividually; but in mass their effect is agreeable. That is, I think, their secret — a perfection of the whole, derived from harmonious but not necessarily perfect individual letter- forms. To say precisely how Caslon arrived at his effects is not simple ; but he did so because he was an artist. He knew how to make types, if ever a man did, that were (to quote once more Bernard’s phrase) “friendly to the eye,” or “comfortable” — to use Dibdin’s happy term. Further¬ more, his types are thoroughly English. There are other letters more elegant ; for the Caslon characters do not com¬ pare in that respect with the letters of Garamond or Grand- jean. But in their defects and qualities they are the result of a taste typically Anglo-Saxon, and represent to us the flowering of a sturdy English tradition in typography. Lack¬ ing a “national” form of letter, we in America (who are mainly governed by English printing traditions) have noth¬ ing better. Caslon types are, too, so beautiful in mass, and above all so legible and “common-sense,” that they can never be disregarded, and I doubt if they will ever be dis¬ placed. Caslon’s ornaments or flowers deserve in their way as much praise as his types. “To a designer’s eyes they have,” says Mr. W. A. Dwiggins, “taken as individual patterns, an inevitable quality, a finality of right construction that baf¬ fles any attempt to change or improve. . . . Excellent as single spots, the Caslon flowers multiply their beauties when composed in bands or borders as ornamentation for letter- press. They then become a true flowering of the letter forms — as though particular groups of words had been told off for special ornamental duty and had blossomed at com¬ mand into intricate, but always typographical patterns. Two Lines Great Primer Black. Qfntiktt further be rebp enacteu, Cfjat Double Pica Black. 6e it further fjereb^ tm tteti, Cjjat tfie JJtapo^ iSat life, o£ otfjer Ijcab 1 Great Primer Black. 2tn& be it further perebp enatteb, XI) at tl )e £paj>o?s, Bailiffs, o? 0* tper peafc £)Mcers of eberp Xoton anb place co?pojate, anb Ctt£ tott^ Englilh Black. anti tie it further fjciebg enaffeo, Cfeat tfee ega* go?s, 'Bailiffs, o? other fjeau ©fficets of ebetp Coton anti place co?po?ate, ant) Citg toitfjin tills Eealrn, feeing 3iufiice o? Juflices of Peace, tball bane tfee fame autfeoiitp tip feertue of tfeis aa, toitfein tfee limits anti p?ecinffs of tfeeit Ju- Englilh Black. No 2. and fee it further berets? enattefe, Cfeat tfee fi@apo?s, Bailiffs, 0? other feeafe £Dfficers of eoetp Coton anfe place cojpojate, anfe Cit? toitfein tfeis JRealm, being luttice 0? lattices of Peace, fljall feane tfee fame autfeo?itp, bp tjertue of tfeis an, toitfein tfee limits anfe pje= H 264. Black-letter : William Caslon & Son's Specimen London , 1763 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 107 This faculty possessed by the Caslon ornaments of keeping an unmistakable type quality through all their graceful evolutions sets them apart from the innumerable offerings of the type founders’ craft as a unique group. . . . From the point of view of the pressman, as practical working types for impressing ink into paper, they may be claimed to be better, so far as English and American designs are con¬ cerned, than any type-flowers made since their period. The proportion of printing surface to open paper ... is excel¬ lently adapted for the purposes of clean, sharp impression. Certain ones have elements broken by tint-lines into a clear- printing gray, and it will be observed that this tint is not the gray of copper-plate, but has the weight and solidity of a printing surface backed by metal” (Jigs. 265 and 266). ill B ASKER VILLE is the other great name in eighteenth century English type-founding. Here we have a very different influence emanating from a very different kind of man. His types were not so good as Caslon’s, though to an untrained eye their fonts seem much alike; but the slight touch of over-delicacy which the Baskerville letter pos¬ sessed was finally to develop a rival which would drive Caslon’s type, for a time, from the field. Baskerville’s char¬ acters had this advantage — that they were in line with the tendency toward lighter type-forms which was coming over European printing ; and although his fonts never had much vogue in England, they did have an enormous influence on the later development of English type-forms, and on the type-forms of Europe. John Baskerville was born in 1706. He was first a writ- 108 PRINTING TYPES ing-master at Birmingham, and then turned to the trade of japanning — of trays, snuff-boxes, etc. — in which he made a good deal of money. In 1750, he began to interest himself in typography. “M. Baskerville,” says Fournier, “a private individual of means, has established at Birmingham, the town where he lives — renowned for its metal manufactures — a paper-mill, printing-office, and type-foundry. He has spared neither pains nor expense to bring these to the high¬ est perfection. His types are cut with much spirit, his italic being the best in any foundry in England, though the ro¬ man characters are a little too broad. He has already pub¬ lished some editions printed from these new types, which, for brilliancy, are real masterpieces. Some are upon hot- pressed paper, and although they are a little fatiguing to the eye, one cannot deny that they are the most beautiful things to be seen in this sort of work.”1 What Caslon did for types, Baskerville, aided by the novel form of his letters, his black ink, and hot-pressed rag paper, did for eighteenth century presswork. His way of printing was so closely connected with the effects of his fonts that they cannot be considered apart from it. In printing a book, Baskerville had ready a succession of hot copper plates, and between such plates each wet sheet was inserted as it left the press — something no eigh¬ teenth century printer had up to that time attempted. The high finish of these hot-pressed sheets — the “gloss” of his paper — compared with that on modern papers, does not seem to us very noticeable. His contemporaries, however, thought otherwise, and the Abbe de Fontenai, in a notice of Baskerville, describes it as “so glossy and of such a per¬ fect polish that one would suppose the paper made of silk rather than of linen.” It is easier to understand his surprise 1 Manuel Tyjiografihique , Yol. II, p. xxxix. FLOWERS. Double Pica Flowers. 265. Ornaments: William Caslon td Son’s Specimen London , 1763 4 _ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ : _ _ . _ _ Pica Flowers. 266. Ornaments : William Caslon & Son's Specimen London , 1763 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 109 at Baskerville’s restraint in the use of decoration, for at that date most books did not depend for their effect on typog¬ raphy, but chiefly on engravings, or else woodcut ornaments or typographic flowers. This absence of plates in Basker¬ ville’s books struck men of that day very forcibly. “Con¬ tent with the simplicity of typographic art,” says De Fon- tenai, “the English printer has had no need to borrow aid from engraving ; nor do we find in the editions that he has so far published — which are admirable — plates, vignettes, tail-pieces, ornamental letters, or, in short, any of those ac¬ cessories which serve as passports, so to speak, for a worth¬ less lot of French verse which, without this useful precau¬ tion, would meet its just desert — oblivion.”1 Baskerville spent seven or eight years in experimenting with designs for type before a page of a book was printed, and he made not merely his own types (cut for him by a certain John Handy), but also his ink, and if he did not make his own paper, he superintended its manufacture. His first book, the Latin Virgil, which came out in 1757, estab¬ lished his reputation. And in 1758, Baskerville followed up this success with a Milton in two volumes royal octavo — a somewhat indifferent performance — which is chiefly inter¬ esting for the preface {Jig- 267) that he wrote for it. “Amongst the several mechanic Arts that have engaged my attention,” he says, “ there is no one which I have pursued with so much steadiness and pleasure, as that of Letter-Founding. Having been an early admirer of the beauty of Letters, I became insensibly desirous of contrib¬ uting to the perfection of them. I formed to my self Ideas of greater accuracy than had yet appeared, and have en¬ deavoured to produce a Sett of Types according to what I conceived to be their true proportion. 1 De Fontenai’s Dictionnaire des Artistes, Paris, 1776, Yol. I, p. 156. 110 PRINTING TYPES “Mr. Caslon is an Artist, to whom the Republic of Learn¬ ing has great obligations; his ingenuity has left a fairer copy for my emulation, than any other master. In his great variety of Characters I intend not to follow him ; the Ro¬ man and Italic are ail I have hitherto attempted ; if in these he has left room for improvement, it is probably more owing to that variety which divided his attention, than to any other cause. I honor his merit, and only wish to derive some small share of Reputation, from an Art which proves ac¬ cidentally to have been the object of our mutual pursuit. “After having spent many years, and not a little of my fortune in my endeavours to advance this art ; I must own it gives me great Satisfaction, to find that my Edition of Virgil has been so favourably received. The improvement in the Manufacture of the Paper, the Colour, and Firmness of the Ink were not overlooked ; nor did the accuracy of the workmanship in general, pass unregarded. If the judi¬ cious found some imperfections in the first attempt, I hope the present work will shew that a proper use has been made of their Criticisms : I am conscious of this at least, that I received them as I ever shall, with that degree of deference which every private man owes to the Opinion of the public. “It is not my desire to print many books; but such only, as are books of Consequence, of intrinsic merit, or estab¬ lished Reputation, and which the public may be pleased to see in an elegant dress, and to purchase at such a price, as will repay the extraordinary care and expence that must necessarily be bestowed upon them. Hence I was desirous of making an experiment upon some one of our best Eng¬ lish Authors, among those Milton appeared the most eli¬ gible.” Besides the fine and famous series of classical and Eng¬ lish authors that Baskerville continued to print on his own PREFACE. AMONGST the feveral mechanic Arts that have engaged my attention, there is no one which I have purfued with fo much Iteadinefs and pleafure, as that of Letter- Found¬ ing. Having been an early admirer of the beauty of Letters, I became infenfibly defirous of con¬ tributing to the perfection of them. I formed to my felf Ideas of greater accuracy than had yet appeared, and have endeavoured to pro¬ duce a Sett of Types according to what I con¬ ceived to be their true proportion. Mr. Caflon is an Artift, to whom the Repub¬ lic of Learning has great obligations ; his inge¬ nuity has left a fairer copy for my emulation, than any other mailer. In his great variety of Characters I intend not to follow him; the Ro¬ man and Italic are all I have hitherto attempt¬ ed; if in thefe he has left room for improve¬ ment, it is probably more owing to that variety which divided his attention, than to any other caufe. I honor his merit, and only wilh to derive fome fmall fhare of Reputation, from an Art which proves accidentally to have been the object of our mutual purliiit. After having fpent many years, and not a A 3 little 267. Page of Baskerville\s Preface to Milton , Birmingham , 1758 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 111 account, he had other irons in the fire. He cut Greek types — and very bad they were — for Oxford. He was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge, and produced edi¬ tions of the Bible and Praver Book — some of them most imposing — though his types did not seem “ solid” enough for this kind of work. I have chosen one or two typical volumes for description of his types and type-setting. The first one is the Virgil, which (in Macaulay’s phrase) “went forth to astonish all the librarians of Europe.” This book was issued in square quarto. The title-page is set in lines of widely spaced capitals — a very charac¬ teristic feature of Baskerville’s work. His rather condensed italic capitals are employed for two lines only (fig- 268). These italic capitals are used for running-titles, and else¬ where — the F, K, J, N, Q, Y, Z being peculiarly “Bas- kerville” in design. The book is set in great primer type, leaded. The folios and numbers to lines of the text employ a very calligraphic and rather disagreeable form of arabic figure. The book is printed on hot-pressed smooth paper, in my copy partly wove and partly laid. Very easy to read, the volume nevertheless does not seem to me a particularly agreeable or beautiful book, partly on account of its type, but chiefly because the type-page is too large for its paper, and the headings and running-titles, in restless italic capi¬ tals, become too much of a feature (fig- 269). The volume sold at a guinea, and among the subscribers was Benjamin Franklin, who took six copies. Perhaps among them was the copy given by him to the Library of Harvard College, of which he wrote (in April, 1758) that “It is thought to be the most curiously printed of any book hitherto done in the world.” However that may be, it is a very typical example of Baskerville’s merits and defects. In The Works of the Late Right Honorable Joseph Aclcli- 112 PRINTING TYPES son , Esq., in four quarto volumes, printed by Raskerville for J. and R. Tonson in 1761, we have a different kind of performance. The third volume I have chosen to discuss be¬ cause it is devoted to The Spectator, a book so often reprinted that its editions form a sort of conspectus of English typog¬ raphy for a hundred and fifty years. To my mind, Bas- kerville’s treatment of The Spectator was most unsuccess¬ ful. Running head-lines are set in italic capitals, much spaced, so that “The” which precedes the word “Specta¬ tor” has to be huddled to one side in upper and lower¬ case italic. The number of the issue and its date are set between two lines of very light type-ornament, wrhich is trivial and teasing. The text of the work is set in English roman of a monotonous roundness; for the height of the body of the letter calls for more leading and longer ascend¬ ers and descenders. On pages 432 and 433, observe the masses of italic — gray in colour, feeble and wiry in line, and annoyingly condensed in shape. The occasional lines of Greek are crabbed and disagreeable— to other Greek fonts what the italic is to “suaver” italics. The volumes may be vastly superior in brilliancy and clearness of effect to other books of the time, but for the text a Caslon, or even “Fell” letter, would have been better if the same attention had been given to press work. A much finer book — a really very fine book — is the Latin Juvenal and Persius, printed the same year ( 1761) in quarto. This is very simply arranged. The argument to each Satire is set in a large size of Baskerville’s italic, and the text in roman is more leaded than in the Virgil and accordingly much improved. Running-titles are set in spaced italic capi¬ tals. The imposition is elegant, the margins ample, the type clear. And some of Baskerville’s editions of the classics in 16mo are charming little books. PUBLII VI RGILII MARON1S B U C O L I G A, GEORGICA, AE N E I S. B / RM I KG H AMI AE: Typis JOHANNIS BASKERVILLE, MDCCLVII. 268. Title-page of Baskeruille’ s Virgil ( reduced ) WBMmm ^5 ME. Hac te nos fragili donabimus ante cicuta. Heec nos, Formofum Corydon ardebat Alexin : Haec eadem docmt, Cujum pecus? an Meliboei? MO. At tu lume pedum, quod, me quum faepe rogaret, IN on tulit Antigenes, (et erat turn dignus amarij 90 Formofum paribus nodis atque aere, Menalca. E C L 0 G A S E X T A. S I L E N U S. PR ima Syracofto dignata eft ludere verfu, Noftra nec erubuit filvas habitare Thalia. Quum canerem reges et preelia, Gynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit : paftorern, Tityre, pingues 269. Baskervi lie's Type used in Virgil, Birmingham, 1757 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 113 Baskerville’s specimen-sheet of about 1762,1 entitled A Specimen by J ohn Bciskerville of Birmingham, Letter- Founder and Printer, shows eight varieties of roman — from double pica to brevier — and six sizes of italic. On this specimen the roman types appear better than in the Addison. But as Latin is employed for the paragraph which displays them, this may be due to the many m’s, n’s, and u’s which Latin affords. The italic is better, though it is a very thin, starved sort of character. The italic capital K’s, and capi¬ tal Q’s and Z’s, both in roman and italic, are interesting (fg. 270). As our illustration of the broadside specimen is reduced, the reader is referred to the reproduction of Bas¬ kerville’s double pica roman and italic (a portion of another broadside specimen issued about the same time), which gives a somewhat more accurate idea of his type-design (fg- 271). Baskerville no doubt was eccentric, vain, and unattrac¬ tive as a man; but publishers and printers were jealous of him as a printer. They abused his type, they poked fun at his smooth paper, and in spite of his artistic success, finan¬ cially he found it by no means easy sailing. Franklin, who loved a practical joke, in a letter written to Baskerville in 1760, tells him that hearing a friend say that Baskerville’s types would be “the means of blinding all the Readers in the Nation owing to the thin and narrow strokes of the let¬ ters,” he produced a specimen of Caslon’s types with Cas- lon’s name torn from it, saying it was Baskerville’s, and ask¬ ing for specific criticism. He was at once favoured with a long discourse on faults so plainly apparent in the type that 1 This sheet is a rare one. My copy formerly belonged to A. A. Renouard, the French publisher and bibliophile. There is also an example in the Birming¬ ham Free Libraries. Baskerville issued specimens in 1757, c. 1762 (2, one of which is bordered), and in 1775 (2). 114 PRINTING TYPES before the critic had finished, he complained that his eyes were even then suffering from “Baskerville” pains!1 But Baskerville was tenacious, and persisted in printing and publishing, though his books did not pay. Several times during his latter years he tried to sell his types, — to the Imprimerie Royale (through Franklin in 1767), to the Aca- demie des Sciences at Paris, to the Court of Russia, to Denmark, to the English Government, — without success ; indeed, it is doubtful if he wished to succeed. For a time he placed his establishment in the hands of his foreman, Robert Martin, but later resumed its charge, and continued to print and to publish until his death in 1775. After Bas- kerville’s decease, his types were hawked about ; some of them were sold in England, and the remainder bought by Beaumarchais for his great edition of Voltaire. The chief part of his equipment, therefore, went to France. In the up¬ heaval consequent to the Revolution the history of his types becomes obscure. An advertisement of their sale in Paris, cer¬ tainly after 1789, is reproduced from the only copy known {Jig- 272). Later, Baskerville’s fonts were used to print the Gazette Nationale , oil he Moniteur U niversel , the official journal of the French Republic during “the terrible years.” Whittingham, early in the nineteenth century, used some of them.2 And of late his fonts have turned up in certain French foundries and printing-houses.3 Baskerville’s types and matrices, which should have been preserved to English typography, through indifference were lost to it. 1 Franklin’s amusing letter, which has been so often quoted, may be found in Straus and Dent’s John Baskerville , Cambridge, 1907, p. 19. 2 In 1827', Pickering published The Treaty se of Fysshynge wyth an Angle (attributed to Dame Juliana Berners) , printed with the types of John Bas¬ kerville. 3 See notice of Baskerville type in Marius Audin’s Le Livre, sa Technique , son Architecture, Lyon, 1921, pp. 42 et seq. ' CO p. w H £ W Q Z £d Ph i H w >»»«! >-s cq O'3 ! ! <0 <50 2* S S ►fi g o xg ^ ^ g .52 5 ^ P <0 *32 -S ^ * e^ *B**^ P. * ro . 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TANDEMaliquando, Quiri- tes! L. Catilinam furentem audacia, fcelus anhelantem, pe- ABCDEFGHIJKLMN. Great Primer Roman. - TANDEM aliquando, Quirites! L. Catilinam furentem audacia, fcelus anhelantem, peftem patriae nefarie moli- entem, vobis atque huic urbi ferrum flam- ABCDEFGHJJKLMNOP. Double Pica Italic. r A NDE M aliquando, Quirites l L . Catilinam furentem audacia, fcelus anhelantem, pejlem patriae nefarie moli - ABCDEFGHIJKLMK . Great Primer Italic. rANDEM aliquando , Quirites l L. Ca¬ tilinam furentem audacia, fcelus anhe- lantem , pefem patrice nefarie molientem, vobis atque huic urbi ferrum flammamque minitan- A B CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR. 271. Dupes from Baskerville's bordered Broadside Specimen Birmingham , c. 1762 DEPO T DES CARACTERES D E BASKERVILLE, PORTE SAINT- ANTOINE , entre la me Amelot et le Boulevard, N° 1 , vis-a-vis les mines de la Baflille. Le Depot de la Fonderie dc Baskerfille, qui piesente aux Imprimeurs une ressource nouvelle en ce genre, contient les Caracteres ci-apres denommes: Triple Cano-n. Double Canon. Gros Canon. Petit Canon. Palefline. S A V 0 I R, Gros Paranoon. O Petit Romain gros ceil. Petit Romain petit ceil. Petit Texte. Mig none. Nompareille. Gros Romain. Saint-Augustin. Cicero gros ceil. Cicero petit ceil. Ces Caracteres, fondus sur la meme hauteur, ne laissent rien a desirer pour la perfection de l’execution , et Ton n’a de raerae rien epargne pour la bonte de la matiere, objet dans lequel les Connaisseurs trouveront un avantage qui ne leur echappera pas. Ce Depot offre aux Citoyens" Imprimeurs et Amateurs en typographic, la facilite de se pourvoir sur le champ de tout ce dont ils peuvent avoir besoin, tant en Fontes qu’en Assortimens de toute espece. Le Directeur du Depot peut livrer sur le champ de quoi monter une Imprimerle de 3o Presses, en Fontes les plus amples, fussent-elles chacune de 2 5 a 3o feuiiles, depuis || le Gros Romain jusqu a la Mignone inclusivement. Cette Affiche, exccutee avec les Caracteres de Basicerville , indique aux uns et aux > I autres ce qu’ils peuvent se procurer pour tous les ouvrages de ce genre. Les Amateurs peuvent se procurer de ces Caracteres assortis en aussi petite quantite qu'ils le voudront, ainsi que tous les Assortimens, Ornemens, et en general tous Ustensiles d’Imprimerie. On dlstribuera un Essai dEpreuves desdits Caracteres, avec leurs pi ix . en attendant le Specimen ou Livre dtpreuoes m; de tout ce que contient la Fonderie de Basicerville, a la confection duquel on travaille. ftl/r S'adresser au Citoyen COLAS, Deposilalre desdits Caracteres , au Depot ci-clessns ; 011 a sa demeure, Jfj 3 rue Saint - Antoine , pres la Place de la Liberte , Porte coclere N° 161. Iinprimd par let toint , ct dans l lmprimctie dudit citoycu COLAS. 272. Advertisement of Sale of Baskerville> s Types, Paris, after 1789 ( reduced ) ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 115 The only ornaments Baskerville possessed were, appar¬ ently, fourteen forms of “flowers,” which, rather thin in de¬ sign, accorded very well with his types (Jigs. 273 and 274). But he seldom used them, and his best books have no orna¬ ments at all. As we look at Baskerville’s specimen-sheets, the fonts ap¬ pear very perfect, and yet somehow they have none of the homely charm of Caslon’s letter. It is true that the types try the eye. Baskerville’s contemporaries, who also thought so, attributed this to his glossy paper and dense black ink. Was this the real fault? The difficulty was, I fancy, that in his type-designs the hand of the writing-master betrayed itself, in making them too even, too perfect, too “genteel,” and so they charmed too apparently and artfully — with a kind of finical, sterile refinement. The excellent Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf remarked that these types re¬ sembled copper-plate engraving; and the Leipsic gentle¬ man was partly right. Nor was Baskerville’s type-setting as original as is nowa¬ days supposed. Tonson had printed title-pages without ru¬ brication or surrounding rules many years before, and he and William Bowyer,1 too, had used spaced roman and italic capitals in what we consider Baskerville’s peculiar manner. Hanmer’s edition of Shakespeare, which antedated Basker¬ ville’s first book, shows a method of employing “flowers” to which Baskerville was singularly addicted ; and he was no doubt greatly influenced by the Foulis editions in the open¬ ness of his title-pages. The more we think of Baskerville, the more he appears to be an eclectic, whose types were the result of fashions in calligraphy and whose presswork was an attempt to emu¬ late on paper the finish of japanning. He put his books to- 1 As in Bowyer’s edition of Pope’s Works, printed for Lintot in 1717. 116 PRINTING TYPES gether ingeniously; but they were in the nature of a pas¬ tiche, and not a simple, healthy growth- — or so it seems to me. Thus his editions, however ambitious, are not quite the “real thing.” If in most English printing of Baskerville’s dajq the presswork had not been strong and masculine, and much of the paper so rough in texture, perhaps the note of delicacy in his work would not have given it the reputation it enjoyed. Nevertheless, Baskerville was a great printer, because he had something individual to say — even though he perhaps “quoted” his more ornamental phrases — and he had the courage to say it, and say it persistently, and so he made himself heard. He was not among the world’s greatest printers, because what he had to say was not in itself great. When we look at his books we think of Bas¬ kerville ; while to look at the work of Jenson is to think but of its beauty, and almost to forget that it was made with hands ! IV THERE is no denying that Baskerville had great in¬ fluence on English type-forms. To know how much he had, look at the specimen-sheets of Wilson of Glasgow, of Moore and the Frys of Bristol and London, and indeed of the later Caslons, and see how his types were imitated. Types somewhat like these Baskerville types still exist, a letter transitional between the early Caslon fonts and those of the later period of W ilson ; and some of them are better than Baskerville’s and more useful for modern work than the more irregular types of Caslon. Wilson and Fry are important names in English type¬ founding. Alexander Wilson, a Scotchman, born in 1714, was educated as a physician. A chance visit to a type- foundry interested him so much that, with a friend named c273. Ornaments used by Baskervilh 274. Ornaments used by Baskerville ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 117 Baine, he attempted an improved system of type-casting. This coming to nothing, they set up on a small scale a type- foundry at St. Andrews in 1742. Baine later left Wilson to go into business for himself; and Wilson (who had mean¬ while removed his foundry to Camlachie) fell in with the famous brothers Foulis — Robert and Andrew — printers to the University of Glasgow. For them he cut some cele¬ brated Greek types which they used in their Homer. The foundry was removed to Glasgow, and Wilson accepting a post as professor of astronomy in the University, its man- agement fell to his sons. Their earliest specimen was dated 1772. A specimen in broadside form came out in 1783 and illustrated an article on printing in Chambers’ Cyclopaedia. It shows a selection only of Wilson’s types, but exhibits fonts of roman and italic from six-line pica to pearl, and five sizes of black-letter. Of Greek types there are five sizes (the double pica being that of the Homer), and there are six sizes of Hebrew. All these fonts (with the exception of the two larger “blacks”) have been made more regular and me¬ chanical than Caslon’s types, and, especially in mass, lack their colour {Jig. 275). If we compare Wilson’s specimen of 1783 with Caslon’s specimen of 1763, it is surprising to see how “rude” the Caslon letters appear. On the other hand, Wilson’s types are not Baskerville’s characters, for these were shorter and broader, and the italic much more like pen-work. Wilson’s fonts clearly show the Baskerville influence, and yet somehow quite miss Baskerville’s bril¬ liancy. The monotonous gray ness of the letter in pages, not disagreeably noticeable in large types, becomes marked as sizes decrease. It is particularly apparent in the fonts below pica, in the Specunen of Printing Types issued by Wilson at Glasgow in 1786 — which shows Wilson’s merits and defects better than the broadside just mentioned. 118 PRINTING TYPES Wilson’s types, as I have said, were almost entirely used by the brothers Foulis. Their smaller formats were cheaper, more popular, and better known than their folios, and in them they popularized invertebrate sorts of fonts which were lifeless and dull in effect ; and the reputation which they had made through the types of the folios cloaked the sins of the 12mos! Printers who did not use these types printed books that had the same faults— volumes like Dr. Charles Burney’s History of Music , in four quarto volumes (London, 1776-79), or the first edition of White’s Natural History of Selbome , printed by Bensley in 1789 in quarto; and other similarly “drab” performances. For some reason or other such books were often printed on a bluish-white paper, in an ink brown, rather than black. I fear we must count Foulis and Wilson as poor influences on contempo¬ rary English printing. The owners of the Fry type-foundry at Bristol were in¬ telligent, painstaking men, and its output stood very high in its day. Joseph Fry and William Pine, a Bristol printer, started the establishment in 1764, under the style of Fry & Pine. Fry — a typographic Vicar of Bray— was much in¬ fluenced by other people’s work; and at first, under the direc¬ tion of Isaac Moore, a type-founder who was made part¬ ner, this foundry produced letters modelled on Baskerville’s. The very rare specimen-sheet of Isaac Moore & Co., Bris¬ tol, shows their output in 1766 (fg. 276). But there was a prejudice against Baskerville’s types, and, Moore having retired about 1776, the firm — J. Fry & Co. — put aside their imitations of Baskerville and spent some years in imitating Caslon. They were able but bare-faced copyists, and openly announced in the advertisement to their specimen of 1785 that they had cut types “ which will mix with and be totally unknown from the most approved Founts made by the late Two Lines Great Primer. Ououfque tand¬ em abutere, Cati- lina, patientia no- A B C D E F G I Italick. Cpuoipque tandem a- butere, Catdina, pa¬ tientia nojlra ? quam- Two Lines English. Ououfque tandem a- butere, Catilina, pati¬ entia noftra? quam- ABCDEFGHI Italick . Spuoufque tandem abutere , Catilina , patientia nojlra ? 275. Portion of Wilson! s Broadside Specimen , Glasgow , 1783 2 r® Baaa* c/5 O O U -G G rd w c4 O O o * * % ■At ^5- <,• OS to S g Jj to -cj S ».S I |%o I <0 ^ g * ii o 2 ^ *o S ^ 2 C*L ^ 5 •'S 8 ^“.S s* <-S 53 ^ -w ^ S 3 sj 0£| *\ tij ( to * tO S S S g- g~ 3 ^ ^ m ^ _ vj 0 S SS. CV 5 s s co s « S g.s r S S S 3 ^ '>« p <=> ’ is s s> §4'£ ^ S' g 'ij s S V> ^ s sh *-5 • to “>* . 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S a,3*C O^ 1 3-7: 3 ^O "J ^ : p 5 c ^ ^ — w • r* . _ - E H-: §.g-P : -3 E 3 « 3 « - s c T3 cr* l. ^ - 5 u 5 -3 o *-1 : E 3 ° > oT c : u E a ‘C .?,D . • 'P 3 ^ O ^ r* ^ .-c ^ g 3 g ►_ 5 l-ilsl i ^ ‘B't: s»'= «S i*i 1 o rv c u-r - ^ v- -l ■*- n • — ^ c O ct^ '/5tr ^ o'- -a 5 _ c P *C b U2 3 w J5 is • 2 q C S « g ^ ,cr^88 < ) © ( \8Jt ) © < )©( ) © < ) © ( ) © f ) © ( rfe If ) © < ) © O © < CX/«*D fro*-' C-V*'J C?V3 COO CV3 tvo CVO CV3 (VO CO/*-J (VJ CVJ CV3 (VO r>i -o co>o 278. Ornaments : Fry and Steele’s Specimen , London , 1795 ■» ' < ■ ' 1 Great Primer Roman, No. 2. Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, pa- tientia nostra ? quamdiu nos etiam furor iste tuus eludet? quem ad finem sese ef- frenata jactabit audacia? nihilne te noc- turnum presidium palatii, nihil urbis vigilice, nihil timor populi, nihil consen¬ sus bonorum omnium, nihil hie muni- tissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil ho- rum ora vultusque moverunt ? patere tua consilia non sends ? constrictam jam omnium horum conscientia teneri con- jurationem tuam non vides? quid prox- ima, quid superiore, nocte egeris, ubi ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS 1234567890 Great Primer Italic, No. 2. Quousque tandem abutere , Catilina , pa- tientia nostra f quamdiu nos etiam furor iste tuus eludet f quem ad finem sese ef- frenata jactabit audacia f nihilne te noc- turnum presidium palatii , nihil urbis vi- gilia’, nihil timor populi , nihil consensus bonorum omnium , nihil hie munitissimus habendi senatus locus , nihil horum ora vidtusque moverunt f patere tua consilia A BCDEFGHIKLMN OPQR STU 1 23-4567 890 279. Transitional Types: Caslon Specimen , London , 1798 Great Primer Flowers. English Flowers. 280. Ornaments : Caslon Specimen , London , 1798 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 123 letter-press than either Caslon’s or Wilson’s types could supply. If Baskerville’s fonts had been available, no doubt they would have served; but some were scattered among English printers and the greater part were in France. So the next experiments in typography were made by a little coterie composed of the Boydells, the Nicols, the Bewicks (Thomas and John), and Bulmer. While the Foulis and Wilson influence had helped a taste for lighter effects in type, this new group sought brilliant effects for their print¬ ing. It was natural, therefore, to turn to a type-cutter who worked in the “tradition” of Baskerville. Such a one was William Martin, who learned his trade, apparently, at Baskerville’s foundry. He was brother to Rob¬ ert Martin, who was for a long time in Baskerville’s employ. About 1786, he came to London as punch-cutter to George Nicol (bookseller to George III), the originator of the plan for the “Boydell Shakspeare.” He was employed by Nicol “to cut sets of types after approved models in imitation of the sharp and fine letter used by the French and Italian printers” — by whom Didot and Bodoni were, I suppose, meant. Now this is just what Martin did — more Anglice . And when the Shakspeare Press was set up with Bulmer in command, Martin was master of a sort of “private foun¬ dry” in connection therewith. His types were used in the “Bovdell Shakspeare,” the first part of which appeared in 1791, in the Milton of 1794—97, and in Poems by Goldsmith and Parnell of 1795. These books will be discussed later. Martin’s types, both roman and italic, were cut to imitate Baskerville’s, but with certain fortunate individualities. A more “modern” quality had crept into these fonts, but they were very splendid of their kind. It has been the fashion to disparage the types of this post-Baskerville movement ; but when an authority says 124 PRINTING TYPES that “the revival or re-invention of wood engraving by Be¬ wick about 1780 had no good effect on printing, the new illustrations being too delicate to print well with type,” is this entirely fair? It is not true of books like the Goldsmith and Parnell, illustrated by the Bewicks and printed from Martin’s types. These new illustrations did print well with type, though with type some persons dislike. Whether or not we wholly approve of such types or books, the press- work is often splendid, the types are fine of their kind, the books reflect the taste of their day, and the performance as a whole “hangs together.” William Martin cut some Greek and Oriental fonts, but he will be best remembered by his wonderful roman and italic — fonts skilfully employed by McCreery in his poem The Press (1803) — and the splendid form of modern face letter used by Bulmer in Dibdin’s bibliographical works. Martin died in the summer of 1815. 1 am glad to place this sprig of rosemary to the memory of a master of his art, whose work closes a chapter in English letter-founding.1 V ENGLISH books between 1500 and 1800 are impor¬ tant to us as the sources from which most of our pres¬ ent-day styles in printing are derived. The sixteenth century is an archaic period typographically in England, and its 1 Martin never issued, I think, a specimen of his foundry, but a selection of his types, as employed by John McCreery of Liverpool, is shown — to no very great advantage — in A Specimen of Improved Types of G. F. Har¬ ris , Printer , successor to Mr. John McCreery , Houghton Street, Liverpool (1807) . This was the only provincial printing-house owning any of Martin’s fonts. They were cast for its collection by arrangement with Bulmer and Nicol. The Shakspeare ” types are said to be numbered 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, and 27. Martin’s foundry, for a short period after his death, was continued by Bulmer. A portion of its material appears to have been sold to the Caslons in 1817. ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 125 interest is mainly historical. While in the seventeenth cen¬ tury English books are less archaic, its traditions have but little effect on our printing to-day. But eighteenth century work, especially after the advent of Caslon, has a close con¬ nection with nineteenth and twentieth century printing; and the influence of its somewhat dubious taste is shown, in recent years, in American books and especially in ephem¬ eral typography. The books used to illustrate the progres¬ sion of English type-forms during these three centuries are chosen from the rank and file of volumes of their respective periods — although among them there are some remarkable specimens of book-making. §1 William Horman’s Vulgciria — a book of common Eng¬ lish phrases with their Latin equivalents — was printed by Pynson at London in 1519. The border on its title-page is an adaptation of a familiar Italian design. The title within it is set wholly in roman type. The prefatory matter em¬ ploys the same roman fonts, and the body of the book is set in two sizes of roman. Divisions of subject begin with woodcut initials, or spaces for painted initials. The book is an early example of a volume printed throughout in roman fonts ; and in appearance is rather more like Continental work than current English printing {Jig. 255). A second sixteenth century book is Gower’s Confessio Amantis , printed by Berthelet in 1532. The text is set chiefly in two sizes of black-letter midway between batarde and lettre de forme , but the preface employs a purely Eng¬ lish lettre de forme. Latin quotations are set in roman — a beautiful font — and running-titles in roman capitals. This mixture of roman and black-letter types is a sign of decadence, and prefigured a period when the role of the 126 PRINTING TYPES two types would be reversed, and black-letter would be used only for “ displayed” lines and such-like. Berthelet was a Frenchman, and this book has a certain workmanlike quality, and indeed elegance, which is somewhat French, and its title-page is ornamented after a design by Tory. The Gower, and books by Sir Thomas Elyot, are consid¬ ered among Berthelet’s best productions {Jig. 28 1). The year 1532 is also the date of the first collected edi¬ tion of Chaucer’s W orks / printed by Thomas Godfrey of London. The text is composed in a French lettre batarde , but an English lettre de forme is used as an ornamental letter, for display on the very handsome bordered title-page, and elsewhere. The Preface is also set in it — and a line of roman letter is used at least once {fig. 282). Ten years later (1542), a second edition appeared, printed by Pynson, also set in black-letter, but entirely of the English variety — a rather solid lettre de forme — a consistently Gothic book and purely English in type-forms and in taste. The poems in both these editions are set in double column {fig. 283). The Cosmo graphicall Glasse , by William Cunningham, a Norwich physician, was printed by John Day in 1559, and has been called “a real landmark in English book-pro¬ duction. In addition to its fine types, this book is noted for its woodcut diagrams and pictorial capitals, ornamental title- page, large map of Norwich and ... a strong and vigorous portrait of the author.”2 As a piece of printing, nothing bet¬ ter had hitherto appeared in England. It shows the influ¬ ence of foreign typography {fig. 284). Day’s device, which appears at the end of the volume, should be noticed. In 1570, John Day printed in folio the Elements of Ge- 1 The copy in the British Museum has been skilfully reproduced in facsimile by the Oxford University Press (1905). 2 Pollard’s Fine Books , p. 260. <* o Ut 6^ > a tz > u S3 g\ 5- *8 £ e:D a ^ o » H .5^ §J ’*■" .Qu‘~* o o & ^ o O T3 '’£ w ^ «-» <3 o 3 c* a 92 o X j_* 3 «> S3 ^ s**\ *-B = *- O g w ^37 ^ O ■*-* .u* — * ^ _*T W Xi'£. G JH 5 — i* 'T? 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Sas® ^ o o ss $3 ^ ,^f- « §s S3 ^ ej £$ £* ^ *£* /s t*^° ^ ,B ^ 'S" ^ -w C33 fS 25 »S^ S5 vS^ vriA vw O <2v* 4^ SQ^Ip>8i^^^§(=r m s g St R r^» C> o Oo R p» ^ k o “V r*o Q 6 R c> • fs» *+o ^2 4* o is feme, tljc bnfpoffes p?op?ietic of f be iLatin fong, euen lufjcn if teas, as tbe Grecians fap, in fijaf is, af § btgbett pifeb of all perfdtnes, 0? fome S>» r , rations of T.Limus, fuel) as bee botb longeftans plains®. TLm,,u' SCbefe babes, 31 Uioulobaue bint reaonoto, a grab scale af euerp lecture : fo? b& (ball not note Sfe saplp franflation, buf onelp conOruc agatne, arm parfc , tobere pc fufpea, is anp nice: per ,let ijim nof omiffe in tbefe babes, bis fojmer dercife, in marking ailigentlp , ano to?tfing ojserlp out bis fire potnfrs.Sno fo? f ranflaf ttig,bfc pou pour fclfcjcue* rp fcconD o? tljirts cap , fo ebafe out, feme CEpifile *d <*/f «*- cum, fomc nofable common place out of bis £D:aftons, o? fome other part of T ullie, bp pour siferetion , fobteb tour iutj. fcboler 285. Page of Ascharrls Scholemaster , showing Roman , Italic and Black-letter: Day , London , 1571 129 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 black-letter — as an u occasional” type for display or orna¬ ment. The unity of effect seen in the editions of Chaucer of 1532 and 1542 has disappeared; and black-letter type (which survived for poetry and romances into the next cen¬ tury, for Bibles and prayer books until the end of the seven¬ teenth century,1 and which was still used for legal books in the eighteenth century) is giving way to roman letters. This edition is interesting only for that reason. The end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the sev¬ enteenth century was signalized by the appearance of Shakespeare’s Plays, both separately in quarto, and collec¬ tively in folio. The first quarto was V enus and Adonis , printed in 1593. The first folio appeared in 1623. The quartos, now the most valuable, but then sold for about six¬ pence, were printed from rough roman types, with rather heavy title-pages, in which capitals and lower-case letters were used for titles quite indiscriminately. The folios were printed in double column, with the text in roman and the names of the characters in italic; and although the prefa¬ tory matter was set in handsome type, the body of the work had from a printer’s standpoint no particular typographi¬ cal interest. The quartos had no more beauty than one would expect in a cheap edition of a popular play. They are mentioned here solely because of their place in litera- 1 The first Prayer Book of Edward VI, printed by Whitchurch, appeared in 1549; and the Book of Common Praier, musically “noted” by Merbecke, was printed by Grafton, in 1550. These were black-letter books. Prayer books and liturgies were printed in black-letter until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The first English Bible (printed abroad, probably at Zurich), in 1535, was executed in black-letter. Cranmer’s English Bible of 1539 (Whitchurch) was a black-letter book. The first edition of the King James “Authorized Version” of 1611 was set in English black-letter, with contents of chapters set in roman. Bibles and prayer books are so much in a class by themselves, that I have not usually employed them as examples of printing. 130 PRINTING TYPES ture ; and they have a literature of their own. The first edi¬ tion of Shakespeare in which much typographical excel¬ lence wras attempted, was printed at the University Press, Oxford, in the eighteenth century.1 § 2 Seventeenth century English books, save legal works, some Bibles and prayer books, and survivals of “vernacular” black-letter in romances and poetry, were almost entirely printed from roman and italic fonts ; yet they have an ar¬ chaic appearance, due in part to crude types, but even more to antique spelling. Title-pages were sometimes decorated with engravings on metal, sometimes with impressions from wood-blocks, and more often merely surrounded with double rules or panels of type ornament Our first seventeenth century example is Philemon Hol¬ land’s translation of Pliny’s Natural History, printed in two folio volumes, by Adam Islip, in 1601. It is set throughout in roman and italic types of even (and early) cut. The first two or three lines of its title-page are, I think, printed from wood-blocks. The subject of each chapter is displayed in handsome italic, and the chapter itself usually begins with a three-line initial, except when a chapter contains but two lines ! Head-lines to pages are set in large old style lower¬ case roman letters; proems — or Arguments — in italic; marginal notes in tiny roman and italic types. Woodcut 1 An interesting comparison may be made between the Shakespeare Folios of 1623 and 1632 (issued in facsimile by Methuen & Co., London, in 1910 and 1909), Hanmer’s edition published in 1744, Bulmer’s quarto edition of 1791, the Vale Press Shakespeare of 1900, the Doves Press Hamlet of 1909, and the Stratford-Town edition of 1904, printed by Mr. A. H. Bulien at the Shakespeare Head Press — the latter the first complete edition printed in the poet’s native place. For the orthography of Shakespeare, especially in relation to printing, see Shakes/ieare’s England , Vol. II, Chapter xxx, Shakespeare’s English, by Henry Bradley (Section Orthography), pp. 546 etseq. 2,34* thirteenth hooke of ioy Thisfaid ,the people with a ioyfull ihoute Applaud his fpeeches and his words approue. And calm'd their griefc in hope the boafter ftoute Would kill the Prince* who late had fiaine his loue. O promife vaine ! it otherwife fell out : Men purpofe,but high Gods difpofe aboue. For vnderneath his fvvord this boafter dide. Whom thus he fcorn’d and threat'ned in his pride. The argument. Ifmeno fits to garde the for rest ould ' The wicked fintesyvho/e ongly fi apes affray K^And put to flight the menyvhofi labour would T o their darke jhades let in he an ns golden ray : T hither goes Tancrcd har die faithfully ould, But fool fh pi tie lets him not off ay Eh firength and courage : heat the ChriH'unpown Annoiesyxhom to refrefh Gods finds a fhowre . i BVt fcant diflolued into allies cold The fmoking towre fell on the fcorched grafle. When new deuife found out tb’enchanter old, By which the towne befieg*d,fecured was. Of timber fit his foes depriue he wold : Such terrour bred that late confuined mafic. So that the ftrength of Sions walles to fhake. They (hould no turrets,rammes,nor engins make. 286. Type and Ornaments in Tasso's Godfrey of Bulloigne Hatfield, London, 1600 131 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 head-bands and lines of type “flowers” are employed for ornament. It is a handsome book of its time, though pon¬ derous; and readable to-day — if to-day one wants to read Pliny — or folios ! For a contemporaneous book of poetry (1600), look at Fairfax’s translation of Tasso’s Godfrey of Bulloigne or the Recoverie of Jerusalem, printed in folio by Arnold Hatfield for J. Jaggard and M. Lownes. A simple and well-managed title-page in a generous panel of type-ornament opens the book. Some good italic is employed in the preliminary Ad¬ dress. The poem itself is set in an agreeable old style roman font, very even in design, with Arguments in a lively italic. Each Book begins with a head-band of type-ornament. It is a very readable edition, and good to look at for its clarity of effect and its more modern air (fig. 286). Recreations with the Muses, by William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, brought out at London in 1637 by Thomas Harper, a printer of reputation, is a small folio composed chiefly in a rough roman character. The head-lines are set in a coarse italic, between light rules, which also carry the folio. A handsome border to the title-page, some ungainly initials, and head-bands usually made up of “flowers” are its principal decoration. The type is rough, the presswork is rough, the paper harsh, and the whole book gives the effect of belonging to an ancient period. But no black-letter is used in it. The first edition of Thomas Fuller’s Holy and Profane State, in folio, was very well printed at Cambridge by Roger Daniel in 1642. An engraved title is followed by a title-page, set in type, very well composed, surrounded by a border of “flowers” within rules. An Address to the Reader follows in a large roman type of considerable distinction and delicacy of cut. The Index to Chapters employs a brilliant italic — 132 PRINTING TYPES very creditable for an English book of the time. The arabie figures used are remarkably good in design. The book proper begins with a woodcut head-piece, with the title be¬ neath it in a thin lower-case letter of rather F rench appear¬ ance. The body of the work is arranged in a handsome roman letter, with sentences which begin each new para¬ graph like a text, in italic. Each page is surrounded by rules, the side-notes being in marginal panels. The type and press- work are vastly clearer than in most English books then current. Walton’s great London Polyglot in six folio volumes, pub¬ lished between 1653 and 1657, does not come within the scope of our discussion. It is not the most beautiful of the Polyglots nor a normal example of book-making, for its remarkable feature is its employment of “learned” types; though some of Day’s fonts are utilized for the prefatory matter in the copies with the “Royal” dedication. Yet it is none the less to be examined as the greatest typographical achievement of the century, printed from types entirely cut by English hands. Its printer was Thomas Roycroft, whose fine editions of the classics,— Virgil, Homer, TEsop, etc., — translated by John Ogilby, may be consulted for examples of his work. He was appointed Printer in Oriental Lan¬ guages by Charles II. Roycroft died in 1677, and is buried at St. Bartholomew’s the Great, Smithheld. The name of this great scholar-printer has in our day become familiar in connection with a commercial venture of dubious typo¬ graphical value. A famous seventeenth century volume— Izaak Walton’s Lives — was printed by Newcomb in 1670. In this, head¬ lines are set in a lettre de forme , the text in a rough old style roman type — perhaps Dutch. Where correspondence is introduced, it is printed in italic. Each Life has its own The Life. GEorge Herbert was born the Third day of Jpril, in the Year of our R edemption 1593. The place of his Birth was near to theTown of Montgomery find in that Caftle that did then bear the name of that T own and County 5 that Caftle was then a place of Rate and ftrength, and had been fuccefiively happy In the Family of the Herberts, who had long pofleft it i and, with it, a plentiful Eftate, and hearts as liberal to their poor Neighbours. A Family, that hath been bleft with men of re¬ markable wifdom , and with a willingnefs to ferve their Countrey, and indeed, to do good to all Mankind > for which, they were eminent : But alas ! this Family did in the late Rebellion fuffer extremely in their Eftates 5 and the Heirs of that Caftle , faw it laid level with that earth that was too good to bury thofe Wretches that were the caufe of it. The Father of our George , was Richard Her¬ bert the Son of Edward Herbert Knight, the Son of Richard Herbert Knight, the Son of the famous Sir Richard Herbert of Colebrook in the County 287. Page of Walton’s Lives: Newcomb , London , 1670 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 133 title-page, in which the use of very large spaced capitals for unimportant words is a characteristic touch. In spite of its antiquated appearance, it is a readable volume with a certain agreeable flavour {Jig- 287). Other seventeenth century books of interest are Chis- well’s 1686 edition of Sir Thomas Browne’s Works and the folio edition of Shelton’s translation of Don Quixote , printed in 1675. Tonson’s folio edition of Dryden’s translation of the works of Virgil wTas printed in 1697, and we may close the cen¬ tury with this noble book. The title-page in red and black is set chiefly in enormous capital letters, used without much sense of value — “Works,” for instance, being much larger than “Virgil.” This title-page is surrounded with double rules, and the field of this page is again set off into com¬ partments by single rules — a favourite arrangement in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. An odd feature is a list of subscribers to the illustrations — engravings on copper described on the title-page as “Sculptures,” which cost the donor five guineas each. The actual book begins with the Eclogues. The poetry is set in roman type heavily leaded, and names of speakers in spaced italic capitals. Arguments are set in the inevitable italic, with proper names in roman. The narrow measure of the type-pages and the enormous margins give an air of great luxury. We begin to see a modern book here. §3 f The folio edition of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion , printed in 1702-4, at the Theatre,1 Oxford, in three volumes, is one of the fine eighteenth century books from the Oxford Press. The prefaces to each volume employ a large “Fell” 1 The Sheldonian Theatre, in which the Oxford Press was then housed. 134 PRINTING TYPES italic, very splendid in effect; the History itself being com¬ posed in a large roman letter solidly set, perhaps of Dutch cut, or one of the Fell types. Each division of the History has a displayed half-title; and every new Book is ornamented with an engraved head-piece and initial, and ends with a tail-piece— -imposing pieces of decoration. Though the presswork is uneven, the edition is both sumptuous and simple — a combination difficult to effect. “I know it will be said, what has a woman to do with learn¬ ing,” wrote Elizabeth Elstob, mistress of eight languages, in the preface to her translation of An English- Saxon Hom¬ ily on the Birth-day of Saint Gregory. This particular lady had a good deal to do with it, and she is interesting typo¬ graphically because her book, printed by the elder William Bowyer in 1709, employed some Anglo-Saxon types — in their day remarkable. The Homily is a good example of a well-made edition, issued by a careful publisher for a dis¬ tinguished company of subscribers. A crowded and rather seventeenth century title-page is followed by an Address to the Queen composed in a large old style roman letter. The principle in this and other dedications, typographically, was that the larger the type, the greater the patron ; and the smaller the name of the writer, the more grovelling was his abasement. The Homily— the two initial letters to which show Saint Gregory and the learned Elizabeth — -is set in double column, the original text on the left hand in Saxon types, and on the right hand the English translation in roman types. Notes run the full measure of the page, set in small roman letter with proper names in italic; for in almost all books of this period, proper names were picked out in italic if the text was roman, in roman if the text was italic. A Latin version, an appendix, notes, etc., close a good-look¬ ing volume. Its feature — from a printer’s standpoint— ’ 12 An Homily on the gepeaxobe :• Dpegopiup ]>a beheolb pxjia cnapena plite q beppan op hpil- cepe^Seobe hi gebpohte pa?pon. )>apaebehim man p hi op 6ngla lanbe pae- poll *] p j?apa j?eobe men- nipc ppa plmig p^pe :• 6pt pa, Erpegopiup be¬ ppan hp^ep pxj lanbep pole Lpipten pa?pe hx- ^ene ^ him man pa? be p hi hea^Sene paepon. Efpe- gopiup pa op mepeap- bpe heoptan langpume piccetungeteah cpa^. 1 Yx la pa. p ppa pa?- gpep hipep men f pynbon J?am ppeaptan beople nnbep ^eobbe :• Gps pa Lpegopiup beppan hu pxjie J>eobe nama pa?pe pe hi opeumon. him pay geanbpypb pxt hi Angle genemn- be pepon :• Da cpafS he pihclice hi pynbon Heads of Hair. And Gre¬ gory, when he faw the Beauty of the Young Men, enquired from what Coun¬ try they were brought, and the Men faid from England $ and that all the Men in that Nation were as beau¬ tiful. Then Gregory asked them whether the Men of that Land were Chriftians, or Heathens ^ and the Men faid unto him they were Heathens. Gregory then fetching a long Sigh from the very bottom of his Heart , faid , Alas i alas ! that Men of fo fair a Com¬ plexion fhould be fubjedt to the Prince of Darknefs. Af¬ ter that Gregory enquired how they call’d the Nation from whence they came. To which he was anflver’d, that they were called Angle [ that is , Englijh :] Then faid he, rightly they arc r men a IMP is in common ufe to this day in the North, to exprefs their Grief, or Surprize. f Spe appall beople. Word for word the Blac\ Devil the fawn Phrafe for the Prince of Darknefs. 288. Page of Homily : Bowyer, London, 1709 135 ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 is that the columns of Saxon and roman vary in width, so that each version ends a page approximately at the same word {Jig. 288). This required, for every page, exact cal¬ culation in order to know what measure for each version would accomplish it. It is done so well, that it often appears not to have been done at all ! 1 One of the fine folios of the early eighteenth century, pub¬ lished at London by Jacob Tonson in 1712, is a Latin edi¬ tion of the works of Caesar — C . Julii Caesaris quae extant — annotated by Samuel Clarke. The title-page with its spaced capitals, especially the lines of spaced italic capitals,2 and the absence of rubrication and surrounding rules, somewhat prefigures Baskerville’s title-pages. After the preliminary matter, the Commentaries begin, set in fine great primer old style types very generously leaded, notes being set mostly in small italic in the ample margins {Jig. 289). It is illus¬ trated with full-page copper-plates, and the magnificent head-pieces, tail-pieces, and initial letters are also engraved. Among other luxuriously printed editions with the Ton- son imprint were Ovid’s Metamorphoses , 1717, the splendid Prior’s Poems in folio of 1718, Addison’s W orks , 1721, a fine quarto Don Quixote in Spanish, 1738, and a folio Pope. Full-bodied editions such as the Theological Works of the Rev. Mr. Charles Leslie , published by subscription in two 1 A few years after this book was printed, its Anglo-Saxon types were de¬ stroyed by fire. New Anglo-Saxon fonts, much more picturesque than those of the Homily, were cut for Miss Elstob’s Anglo-Saxon Grammar , which appeared in 1715. These were subsequently given by Bowyer the younger to the University Press, Oxford, where they still are. The 1743 edition of Junius’s Rtymologicum Anglicanum , printed at the Theatre, Oxford — a fine edition — may be looked at for its use of the Junius Anglo-Saxon and other northern types. 2 The theory in using these spaced capitals was that capitals spaced dignified the important word of a title, and that such a word should fill the measure of the page. Hence the printer spaced such lines until the letters appeared (as De Vinne says) “dislocated by explosion.” 136 PRINTING TYPES volumes folio, by William Rowyer the elder in 1721, show a more modern point of view in book-making — old-fash¬ ioned, but not archaic. It is printed from old style types, no doubt Dutch, and the displayed half-titles and headings are interesting pieces of eighteenth century composition. Its head and tail-pieces are splendid examples of printer’s orna¬ ments of that epoch; and the head-bands of type “flowers” are handsome and cleverly managed. Leslie was a non¬ juror, and for some years Anglican chaplain to the Pre¬ tender at Rome, and his works were naturally printed by Bowyer, who was a non -juror himself. Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad (London, 1715), printed by Bowyer— for Lin tot — in three imposing folio volumes, is a good exam¬ ple of another luxurious contemporary edition. The W orks of Alexander Pope, also printed by Bowyer (London, 1717), is another instructive piece of type-setting. It is composed throughout in old style roman and italic, of a Dutch cut. Its enormously spaced half-titles, the running-titles in spaced italic capitals, and its open composition are all characteris¬ tic of early eighteenth century work. But Bowyer’s greatest achievement was the three volume folio edition of Selden’s Opera , collected by Dr. David Wil¬ kins, which was begun in 1722 and brought out in 1726. This was undertaken for a number of London publishers and issued by subscription. Bowyer printed the first vol¬ ume in two parts, the succeeding volumes (each in two parts also) being printed by S. Palmer and T. W ood. Wil¬ liam Caslon’s English types were first used for the body of this book. To the student who has been looking at earlier English books printed with Dutch fonts, the pages of the Selden are a relief to the eye — they are so easy to read, so clear and beautiful. In Volume I the dedication displays a large size of roman type ; the Address to the Reader is com- ■b M W . 3 o * T/D d> i-i co P _P OS 1 e> ( g 3 g ^ b.0 o T3 $-1 d> g ce a a c3 • r> w S a w c5 _y aj pL w C7* CL, a*J$ a u .Q • 1™^ > - < XJ C/5 • 3 a o 4-t CD C5 3 ^ Cl, _g • *-i Z«J o C/5 LO c<3 3 <3 a 3 oS 3 O o u ■S 6 c/5 3 jQ -i 9 ’5b *3 o 3 ^ i iJ c if « ai ^ i-H G ^ <3 S '■§ CL, -( (j C/D 3 a a • — , o 3 3 cs *3, & 05 O 3 « S « 3 3. 4> dC/ c5 • h b£ o Ph (L> C/D cu « « <5 a g 3 e 3 ▼H a as >S~> • H § a 3 03 O d> 3 c o •5 ^ *' *^3 ^ a g ^ as .3 * i i-> ^ i_ C.' * o P § G_i n; #-5 3 as a-* 9 4~» o3 G J3 O o G 03 CD a a o o w * CL, 3 a ^ a 3 3 «*v 4-» -3 G d) Ph c C/D G • **■< 4«5 CL) Cl, 03 4-^ 05 a 05 O a G 03 CO o -G 3 o td >u> • vH • 'M > o 3 cr4 1 _ \ eos G G • t—j rl 4«» o5 nd S 3 OS 4-> d> d) 3 G tJ ci QJ c$ TJ a . vH O G 3 • >H G Cr1 a o JW &1 CO • *— f 3 os a 5H O o a i^-3 | » o I * .2 a- * s d ^ Q ^ G ^ C*j * f r- d ^ 3 5 9-o.jg - h *o S 2 .y 2 o g 5°o ^ c^ =*- cy p e s - - ^o- 3.2 a g:SE^g j-^.a g | a “H b.§ « S Sb« .*! o « c ,=. G cJ b> §<£ I » J (/) J t- O s rt O ^ ^ O “12 J-, ^ ° 3 « S ^ a. H* .?;§ J 2^>=; « - s^w-g J3«> • f-l " s 13 £ -j Sc J-. iq «C 2 CJ * u ^ .5 nK a y <2 ^ *-+ nn s « ‘•^ sc *Sk vs, , . 5v ^ G b ^ • *» 5 ^ rJ rj =» ^ ~p G a, &S «- o-H~ *vtj •gSs-.fei 8 g Hs ^ O , ^ >G cj cp § ^ co 222 ^ ^ ^ Gl ~3 ^sJc^s'SE * £^$ c>> d » ;r? ^ ns s X 23 'o c3 i' 'g U S O *>Q - o> ^ .S3 ^ ^ ^ S .a sH-3 ,y s 2 a p 0J)2 §-5 2 ^ ±J ^ S GV^ ^ •3 a O Ju- 3-x Q .2"^ d a 3 a 3 G • *— « 23 O c“S P K ^ - -- b ^ <$ " 'a ^ *TG ^ d CJ G d G G O ^ G ^ r-, t..a^ § r>2 ^5 G O • •— • r“? • •— 1 #— i G P XD G d O O b< G Gu 4-* ^^5 2 E,i^G5FC! § n n c £> V^ ^"S^s 'S® c .Alifi ?C a.r2 's ^ X g 1 bi ^ ^ 1>4 ^3 cn G *r; GO g\ n
  • ^ s g ^ G ^ ^ ^ O * ^ «CS ^ ^ 3 O u a G v-. O C J G=, ^ . o G co B ^ CT'C gc*n 3 .5 Q_ y * — G O s_i d CJ e: G G a G . d CJ Cl. ^ ^ G Cl. G o ^ Cj — '“'*>• CJ G CJ G CJ *s 3-i CJ “O C-G G ti co G G h-> G— ^ p r *d C *GT>— ^ G 3£ v •G *n s "2 -o ^ ^ "o 54 ” n o d P-t d d O ^.jr^ *^3 5s Cl ^ ^ *-> X CJ ^5 G o G I- ^ c~b dp r^ ^ ^v 3 G U rG.r_‘ cr n 3 i 0 C a G ^g p , p. n ^ G P P V ^ D u L, p ^ ^3-?L • L. G ^ ^ cj 5^ • Ssi ^ ^ S1N' § g ^ V* G * ^ G ~V 1 H a o u *-G »G d CT '-O <-» ♦ L y ^ ^ cd g ^ ^ I _ ^ ^L> C5 oq b V. Cj 5b 8 »Cj ^0 8 • M r ' Cj E? 8 b S Oo -5 =0 cS b Cj =0 H G b G £ G CJ ^ ;h cj n-j cj ^ JO G 4O > G G • • *h tO c/T to CJ G *Tj • P G *"H a G cj aj CO p /£ CO ■4— ' • rH O *h t2 CJ G cj , W) cj 04 P Q oOj. <0? xfo vy *•*> *$ « y v. 0*« • *r* €o vV • ^ « <&■ $* # *» €<> <§> # » 4??A & # €$ * # g- cj Cj t»-XrIj QJ H ffi H # VJ? €* # jCn. *<& I~1 p£| £ Cj u oo > H u Vi* Vi <0 o • r— < CJ P vJ co ,”g w £ <5> r\ <-> ^0 G ^ << & 8 <3 #\ 0J p Q V 5? 292. Type of Hanmer’s Shakespeare: University Press , Oxford, , 1/43-44 THE WORKS O F MR WILLIAM SHAKESPEAR. VOLUME the FIRST. / CONSISTING OF CO M E D I E S. OXFORD : PRINTED AT THE THEATRE. MDCCXLIII. 293. Bastard ' Title-page of Ha rimer s Shakespeare ( reduced ) ENGLISH TYPES: 1500-1800 141 Latin classics, common to all countries, show how different nationalities treated the same problem. The same class of book can also be compared in this way: books on astron¬ omy, geometry, botany, architecture — and dictionaries. For instance, the earliest English vocabularies or dictionaries were printed in black-letter, both word and definition. Many seventeenth, and even some eighteenth century English dic¬ tionaries printed the words defined in black-letter, with defi¬ nitions in italic. In Florio’s New World of Words of 1611, italic was used for the definitions, but the words were set in roman. In the mid-eighteenth century, as in Johnson’s Dictionary , words were set in capitals or in capitals and small capitals, with definitions in roman lower-case. Later on, the words defined were almost always set in capitals, and this is continued, in such dictionaries as Webster’s or Worcester’s, to our own day. In the Century Dictionary , and in that wonderful piece of work, the New English Dictionary , printed at the University Press, Oxford, a bold¬ face upper and lower-case roman letter has been employed to pick out the “word” from the text. This is, in a way, a return to the black-letter of the earliest period. Diction¬ aries being popular books, and for that reason employing types familiar and easy for the eye to seize quickly, thus show, if examined chronologically, (l) what types were the most familiar at a particular epoch, and (2) the date when they became obsolete. I have not mentioned Baskerville’s work here, because the types he designed fall into a class by themselves, and because two or three of his editions have been already described. But the Baskerville manner was in full swing at the time that Caslon’s old style types had their vogue. “ Fashionable” English printing had become very open and light in effect by the last of the century — partly, I dare say, 142 PRINTING TYPES through Baskerville’s influence. Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Dis¬ course at the Opening of the Royal Academy in January, 1769, though printed from old style type, by its arrange¬ ment has an effect entirely different from the printing of fifty years earlier. A collection of these addresses delivered by Reynolds between 1769 and 1783, some of them the work of Cadell, printer to the Academy, is (like similar Spanish occasional addresses that have been mentioned) illuminat¬ ing because they were printed for a distinguished body of men, and represent the best taste of the day {fig- 294). The excessively spaced letters of the title-page, the large folios in spaced brackets, the open leading, the blank spaces be¬ tween paragraphs, and the wide margins, show a style of work which— handsome in quartos like these — became very thin and faded in smaller books which copied them. Then again, a new influence in typography was that of the Foulis brothers (of whom I have spoken), printers to the University of Glasgow since 1743, ¥/ho were employing Wilson’s lighter transitional types, and producing books which showed a new feeling in English printing. Their smaller formats , in which the classics were issued, are more characteristic of their work, or the faults of their work, than the folios. A “ Foulis edition” of the best sort is Andrew Foulis’s Poetical IF orks of Alexander Pope (1785), in three folio vol¬ umes. The effect of the pages of the poems is very noble and most readable, owing to the large size of fine type in which the text is set The smaller types used for the con¬ tents, advertisements, quoted poetry, etc., become, as they descend in size, gray and monotonous, without the colour of Caslon’s or the clearness of Baskerville’s small types. But the effect, as a whole, is exceedingly distinguished {fig. 295). Among the most celebrated Foulis editions in large format A DISCOURSE, &c. GENTLEMEN, HE honor which the Arts acquire by being permitted to take poffeflion of this noble habitation, is one of the mod confiderable of the many inftances we have received of his Majesty’s protedlion \ and the ftrongefl: proof of his defire to make the Academy refpedtable. Nothing has been left undone that might contribute to excite our purfuit, or to reward our attainments. We B have 294. Page of Sir Joshua Reynolds' Royal Academy Discourse Cadell , London , 1781 ( reduced ) fions a truth may be more ftrongly reprefented in nega¬ tive than even in pofitive expreflions, while they are, at P o 5—4 QJ Ph CG C-4— ( o 4-» P o a cj c • T— 1 QJ 43 CG 4- > • rM cj 5- 1 O QJ QJ <3 QJ 43 -a CD CJ 5-4 CJ co Wh 13 • i— < 45 qj 45 45 cj • i-H 45 £ c • rH CO b£ CO • *— 4 es • r-i CJ O PH u p O 43 p qj > • l— 4 bJQ CO' p cj *-< CG C4 • H 45 4-> CO • f-H 45 <-*-4 Uh O o b/D $-4 P QJ • r— 4 rM <45 & p a cj CD p p • ? ™ ^ cG t _ > a r\ P-4 QJ • X CJ CO G CO • fH P O • rH TJ QJ ft 4-> * r—4 4~*> cS o o 4-J p 45 4— » p cJ v£: f i < P 43 3 CG o O o f— — < 5—i 5-4 G QJ 4-J G QJ bO Cm 2 5-i QJ o CJ c2 45 QJ G cj H. Ph a t) c3 rG P P o £ O rG c$ 4— l • *-H u PQ g • ft 4-1 CJ cj rv G * o J-r • —4 QJ rG CTj M Ph CJ G u« >2 ~G G CJ u ci Pi rG CJ Ctf w o fc>0 u. QJ M i~> QJ G G < CO o Co • ^ *0 05 05 a, DCC,LXXX VI. 296. Title-page of Letters of Charlotte , London , 1786 fci o w CO O 33 w S < CO W 33 H O-. cu > cu o £3 * — 1 O 33 cd • pH 0) 3 Sh 03 33 H> PQ 4— > co • s o £ 3 4h rT5 cu CU ^3 a s 4-J o cs CU 3 r\ fl CU CU fl cu bO oT a £ *H 0 CU co CU co H s o ?>N o CO • o $H O CO cu $H pH o3 a <-s 3 o ^ CU H S o CU c3 •r-< &t*rj ^ o • pH CO 03 CU T3 ^ c3 w a o 03 C-|— t co CU c$ 33 Sh • pH cj 45 -W «T> C o 8 S 3! • rH Uh CU > £4 O QU rr^ 03 4— > r-j H a C3 CU Qh QU «\ 35 O CD CO CM o PS o « < hH PP 5 6 O CO • 8 o h3 d o **o ?H p t cc • PH d So • pH d r£ pq £ «\ •so O £ . o PH O CO bO cu O Pi 8 ♦ rH Pi bs 4-> CO CO O O rH PP CD rH rd d d 4-> O o pC 4-> o <3 pd CD H-> PS CO D CD DP > CO • pH D o D > CD d pH £ pi 4-4 • pH Ctf r— H PD g DP CO 2 DP PH d CO • pH pd DP o pi c ps • pH Ctf 5> PS co ) kv] O O Sh p£ co D d D 5-r d bO O D D nd PS o o ® rH H c rH ctf CO CO p* O O DP CO D~> CO *\ h3 ID d £ "d W CO *D nd • pva P bO +-> Pi CS 4-> o Hd 0) nd rH • pH Dh CD T3 D c\ o pi > 05 Sh 4-4 CO P^ C/5 pi r-i Ds PS t—> o cD .4-4 pO *4-H o •H4 Pi • pH D pd cD 4-4 o Pd C3 4-» CiQ 03 H a PS pH n ii >m>i '■! * 1 1 »i >i -i >i >r^T^i >t T^rriTT >i t>m >r ;t >i >r>iT>M >i >i >i -i -m >i >i >i a >i >i >i >HT>m 303. Ornaments : Binny £sP Ronaldson’ s Specimen Philadelphia , 1812 i . • ■ . . ■ ■ ■ / y EARLY AMERICAN SPECIMENS 157 Thomas himself. Thomas also printed music — the Worces¬ ter Collection of Sacred Harmony being his work. He was the author of that standard book, The History of Printing in America , published in 1810 ; and the founder of the Ameri¬ can Antiquarian Society of W orcester, of which he was the first president. The title-page of Thomas’s specimen shows his esteem for William Caslon ( fig . 304). He had a complete series of the Caslon fonts, with some large letters cut on wood. In a manuscript note in a copy of his specimen belong¬ ing to the American Antiquarian Society, Thomas says : “£2000 sterling and upwards, were added to this Speci¬ men, in types from Fry’s, Caslon’s and Wilson’s Foundries, between 1785 and 1784 [«c]. A great addition, and a great Variety of Types were added to the following after 1785. When complete the Printing materials were estimated at Nine Thousand Dollars.” His specimen shows a good assortment of mathematical, algebraical, and astronomical characters, a font of Greek, with some very good two-line Greek letters, and a small font of neat Hebrew. There are a number of type ornaments or “flowers,” some of which are very pretty. Of them Thomas says : “These ornamental types may be varied in a thousand different forms, but they are here inserted in the simple manner in which they are cast” ; though the compositor has tried his hand at new arrangements without great success. Set in a commonplace script is this concluding advertisement : “ I. Thomas, Printer, Worcester, Mafsachusetts, has with the greatest care and at¬ tention furnished himself with the best Printing Materials that could be made in Europe, and has purchafed these ar¬ ticles to a very large amount. — He has every thing requi¬ site for neat, elegant, or ornamental Printing, be the work small or large, and will be happy to execute every com- 158 PRINTING TYPES mand in the way of his Profefsion, on the most reasonable Terms, and with Dif patch” The book is rare, but a copy which Thomas gave to Harvard College may be seen in the library of the University. xMMXinixiiuxuMxiuixiinxmixiMXMMXiMlxtMxiiMximximxituxnx '^AA* A A AAA A a AAAAAAA* -v A AAA a, A AAAAAAA A^AA a A a ^AA©^' >=<^*""WI,IIII,IIJ SMwa«»*iE3a^^ f v>~/ A <4 .^, SPECIMEN Q F ISAIAH THOMAS'* PRINTING :<> i > _ i Being as large and complete an ASSORT¬ MENT as is to be met with in any one Printing-Office in America. Chiefly MANUFACTURED by that great Artift, WILLIAM CASLON, Efq; Of LONDON. printed at WORCESTER, Massachusetts, By ISAIAH THOMAS. MDCCLXXXV, :iiixixiixiixiu>riit\'iiv»uxm tuxiixuiviHxiHxmixiuxuixuuxuu: » 304. Title-page: Isaiah Thomas's Specimen, Worcester, 1785 CHAPTER XIX NINETEENTH CENTURY “ CLASSICAL ” TYPES BODONI AND THE DIDOTS THE pseudo-classical types which were in full pos¬ session of the European field in the first years of the nineteenth century, and which we best recog¬ nize by the term “Didot,” had their origin (l) in some special tendencies or influences in typography, and (2) in political and artistic movements,1 which must be described at some length if we are to understand the typographical revolution which they brought about. In typography, the first and earliest influence was the form of serif introduced into the French romain du roi by Grandjean in the reign of Louis XIV. This thin, straight serif, dazzling to the eye, rendered the romain du roi letter- form quite unlike anything that preceded it. Grandjean’s serif was discarded by Luce in the types cut by him in the time of Louis XV ; but it w'as revived in types cut after Luce’s period, notably by the Didots. The second influence was the fashion for more modelled types, with light strokes in greater contrast to heavy strokes, introduced in England by Baskerville. This style, although it never took root deeply in England, was greatly admired on the Continent, especially in France and Italy. For, as Baskerville said when he offered his fonts to the Academie des Sciences, “ I have never sold my Types, nor do I intend to sell any to London printers, as my Labours have always been treated with more Honour abroad than in my native Country.” To France Baskerville’s types ultimately went, and his influence on both Bodoni and Didot is undeniable. 1 For a full discussion of the latter, see Louis Hautecoeur’s Rome et la Renais¬ sance de V Antiquit e a la Jin du XV HR SRcle. Paris, 1912. * 160 PRINTING TYPES A third influence was the condensation of type-forms — as exhibited by Luce in his caraclere poetique , and by other founders in the fonts called serve or approche — by which letters appeared taller and narrower, . And finally, all these tendencies were accentuated by the taste throughout Europe for a lighter and more delicate style of typography; sometimes arrived at by actually cut¬ ting a lighter letter, sometimes by greater leading of the type. Chief among the artistic and political movements which affected type-forms was the revival of appreciation of the antique, which by 1800 dominated every phase of art. This revival was the result of something over a hundred years of unconscious preparation. Long before the discovery of Her¬ culaneum and Pompeii, excavations had been made in the neighbourhood of Rome, and the “grand tour” had made Roman antiquities familiar to travellers. Although the first discoveries at Pompeii were made as early as 1713, it was not until 1745 that Herculaneum was uncovered, and not until 1764 that the greater part of Pompeiian antiquities were found.1 Even before the latter date public interest was considerably aroused, and these discoveries were discussed in learned publications — Cochin, who visited Italy with Ma- rigny and Soufflot, writing on Herculaneum in 1751, and Carlos III in 1757 promoting Baiardi’s Antichita di Erco- lano. The vogue of antique art was heightened by Panini’s paintings, Piranesi’s engravings, and the sketches of Hu¬ bert Robert; encouraged by the French Academy at Rome and the new Academies in Naples, London, Madrid, Parma, 1 The decoration which marked the reign of Louis XVI, known as style Louis Seize outside France, was, owing to the classic motifs that inspired it, called in France a la grecque — the decorative work discovered at Herculaneum and Pompeii being often more Greek than Roman in quality. “CLASSICAL” TYPES 161 and elsewhere; and further stimulated by the sale of Sir William Hamilton’s Etruscan vases to the British Museum, the installation of Roman collections of sculpture, etc., and thejourneyings of the erudite to Naples, Psestum, and Sicily. The popularization of all these wonders by publications illustrating and describing them — by Caylus, St. Non, Vis¬ conti, Winckelmann, Mengs, and others — led people to consider Rome, in the language of the day, “the unique Emporium of the Beautiful and the Temple of Taste.” In architecture, painting, and sculpture men soon formu¬ lated what was supposed to be the underlying theory of an¬ tique art. Artists searched Plutarch for subjects ; sculptors chose living models on account of their likeness to antique statues ; and the Beau Ideal was to be attained by study¬ ing antiquity rather than life. In painting, these ideas were exemplified by such pictures as Le Serment des Horaces of David, by Flaxman’s illustrations for the Iliad, and by An¬ gelica Kauffmann’s pictures of antiquity a la mode. In sculp¬ ture, Canova held first place in this revival, and made his reputation by work which, because it was thought the last word in classicism then, makes us smile now. And in the minor arts all the forms of antique ornament were pressed into the service of decoration. In furniture, marble or mahogany was encumbered or enriched by clas¬ sical ornaments in metal. In porcelain, Etruscan motifs were used at Sevres; W edgwood named his potteries Etruria, and for him Flaxman made classical designs. Ruins became ink- stands, tripods turned into flower stands, porticoes formed clocks, and sphinxes, andirons. Pliny’s Doves in mosaic be¬ came table-tops, paper-weights, or brooches, buttons were a F antique, and even fabrics were printed from Huet’s de¬ signs of Roman ruins. By the year 1790, Greek and Roman antique art had com- 162 PRINTING TYPES pletely captured public taste — social and political events and ways of thinking in France being particularly favourable to such a development*; though French students and artists resident in Rome became so unpopular because of their revolutionary opinions and license of expression that they were driven out.1 But by 1796, the Pontifical States were invaded by France, and the rage for antiquity showed it¬ self in French demands. Paris must be a new Rome; and so it was needful to make Paris what Rome had been — the artistic centre of Europe. To effect this worthily we must, said the French, possess Roman monuments ; and they pro¬ ceeded to possess them. The Laocoon, the Dying Gladiator, the F aun of Praxiteles, all set out for Paris, accompanied by Raphael’s Transfiguration, Domenichino’s St. Jerome, and a mixed company of goddesses, saints, nymphs, martyrs, and emperors. There was even a plan to carry off Trajan’s Column, which proved, on investigation, so much too heavy that a lighter obelisk was sent instead. The greatest works of Italian art arrived in Paris by 1801, where they were received with public rejoicing. For by that time, politics, literature, art, all recalled the antique world. Government was confided to senators, tribunes, and consuls — and, more Romano , a victorious general was made Emperor. To us nowadays the antique seems something very hack¬ neyed, but it was to the men of those days brilliantly and thrillingly new — a resurrection from the dead; and, by an association of ideas, antique art — and even sterile and frigid imitations of it — symbolized that private virtue and public wisdom which was then hopefully supposed to have made its home on earth. The pseudo-classical tendency in paint- 1 To the Pontifical authorities the “last straw ” was an unfortunate work of art (somehow made into candelabra) showing Jupiter striking Aristocracy with Thunderbolts and Apollo trampling under foot Superstition. “CLASSICAL” TYPES 163 in g and sculpture made itself felt also in oratory and liter¬ ature. And thus it seemed necessary, in typography, to clothe new modes of expression in a new way, and new type-forms were demanded to doit.1 It required only a “man of the hour” to accomplish this — in France Didot, in Italy Bodoni. Thus artistic movements, political reforms, and dy¬ nastic changes, together with certain tendencies in design, contributed to the popularization of a kind of type which, however far from classicism it seems to us now, represented to the bibliophile of that epoch a return to “antique virtue” ! II IN bringing about this change in typographic practice, Bodoni showed great originality in his new type-forms, and in this respect was the man most to be reckoned with. The scholarly prestige of the Didots (in the long run a far greater force) was influential in popularizing these new styles of type. Giambattista Bodoni, the son of a printer, was born at Sa- luzzo in Piedmont in 1740. Leaving home as a lad, he made his way to Rome, where he served as apprentice in the press of the Propaganda Fide — la felice scuola. , as he called it — 1 As formal types called for a formal style of illustration, old decorators of the book had to change their manner. The beautiful Italian (1754) edition of Lucretius, — Della JVatura delle Cose, — translated by Marchetti, edited by F. Gerbault, and dedicated to the Marquis de Vandieres, brother to Madame de Pompadour, or Le Monnier’s Fetes des Bonnes-Gens de Canon , etc., pub¬ lished by Prault and others at Paris in 1778, with frontispiece by Moreau, are both printed in easy old style eighteenth century French types, with which the decorations admirably accord. On the other hand, the embellish¬ ments made for Didot’s folio Horace of 1799 by the architect Percier meet “Empire” requirements, and Moreau’s illustrations to Legouve’s Le Me- rite des Femmes et autres Poesies, brought out in Paris by A. A. Renouard in 1809, show a painful endeavour to do so. Both these books are printed in Didot’s “classical” fonts. 164 PRINTING TYPES for which he always retained his early affection. Its direc¬ tor, Ruggeri, a learned man, was kind to Bodoni, and en¬ couraged him in trying to improve himself — even at that early date we find Bodoni cutting types for the establish¬ ment. His stay there was not long. Ruggeri committed sui¬ cide, and Bodoni, unable to endure further employment at Rome, left the Press with the idea of seeking his fortune in England. On his way there, stopping at his parents’ house at Saluzzo, he fell ill ; and before he had a chance to continue his journey he was asked, in behalf of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, to take charge of the Stamperia Reale at Parma. This was in 1768. Bodoni’s work there was that of a private printer; he produced either such things as were needed at court, or interested the Duke ; or such work as he, on his own initiative, proposed. His first stock of types came from the Parisian foundry of Fournier, and he also cut type based on Fournier’s models. What this stock of type was in 1771 is shown in Bodoni’s specimen of that year, and to this period belong his Essai de caracteres Russes (1782); a Man- uale Tipografico in quarto, a folio Manuale , and a Greek specimen — Serie de* caratteri greet di Giambotista [sic] Bodoni — all three produced in 1788. By this time Bodoni had designed a great number of types, which, beginning as old style, by degrees took on a more modern appearance. His press became one of the sights of Europe, and was visited by the dilettanti and cognoscenti on the “ grand tour ” ; 1 his Arthur Young, in his Travels in Italy, writing from Parma, December 9, 1789, says : “ In the afternoon ... to the celebrated reale tyfiograjia of Sig¬ nore Bodoni, who shewed me many works of singular beauty. The types, I think, exceed those of Didot at Paris, who likewise often crowds the let¬ ters close, as if to save paper. The Dafihne and Chloe , and the Amynta, are beautifully executed; I bought the latter, as a specimen of this celebrated press, which really does honour to Italy. Signore Bodoni had the title of the printer to the king of Spain, but never received any salary, or even gratifi¬ cation, as I learned in Parma from another quarter; where I was also in- 165 “CLASSICAL” TYPES editions were admired and collected by bibliophiles every¬ where. After 1790, his situation — vis-a-vis the Duke of Parma — was improved. This came about through an offer which Bodoni received from De Azara, Spanish Minister to the Papal Court, who conceived the idea of starting a press there (to bring out editions of the classics), of which he invited Bodoni to take charge. This plan coming to the Duke’s ears, he made a counter proposal, with the result that Bodoni remained at Parma with a larger press and a more independent position, which permitted him liberty to print for any one who wished to employ him. So, besides Italian, Greek, and Latin books, Bodoni enlarged his field by printing French, Russian, German, and English books — Walpole, Gray, and Thomson being among the English authors for whom he produced editions. He was appointed printer to Carlos III of Spain; he received a pension from his son, Carlos IV ; he corresponded with Franklin; he was complimented by the Pope; the city of Parma struck a medal in his honour; he obtained a medal for his work at Paris; he received a pension from the Viceroy of Italy; Napoleon gave him another and a larger one, and in short he was a great personage. He was one of those fortunate mortals who, appearing at just the right moment, knew exactly what he wanted to do, attempted it, succeeded in it, was praised for it, and deserved (and highly enjoyed) the praise. What more could one ask? He departed this life at Parma in 1813, and even his funeral ceremonies appear formed, that the salary he has from the duke is only 150 zechins. His merit is great and distinguished, and his exertions are uncommon. He has 30,000 matrices of type. I was not a little pleased to find, that he has met with the best sort of patron, in Mr. Edwards, the bookseller, at London, who has made a contract with him for an impression of two hundred and fifty of four Greek poets, four Latin, and four Italian ones — Pindar, Sophocles, Homer, and Theocritus; Horace, Virgil, Lucretius, and Plautus; Dante, Petrarcha, Ari¬ osto, and Tasso.” 166 PRINTING TYPES it- to have been precisely what he would have wished them to be! As to Bodoni’s specimen-books (apart from the charm¬ ing little specimen of 1771, Fregi e Majuscole , described in a former chapter), the inscriptions in exotic types, — Is- crizioni Esotici a Caratteri novellamenti incisi e fusi , 1774, — printed to commemorate the baptism of the Prince of Parma, may be considered his first attempt to display his exotic characters. It is an interesting book — of 50 pages, quarto — and shows twenty of Bodoni’s “learned” fonts {Jig. 30 5). The magnificent Epithalamia in folio, printed in 1775 and later to be described, also falls into this class. Bodoni’s Man - uale Tipografico of 1788 I have never seen. It was appar¬ ently a quarto book of 360 pages, containing one hundred specimens of roman and fifty of cursive types, displayed in French and Italian on one side of the leaf. In it were also included twenty-eight sizes of Greek character, which were issued separately as well. This edition of the Manuale seems also to have been printed in octavo form on various special papers and on vellum. In the same year, 1788, Bodoni issued the finest and most imposing of his specimens — a folio collection of roman, italic, Russian, Greek, and Cancellereschi types. The book opens, unfortunately, with the last named, in fifteen sizes of a detestable form of script capital; but the twenty-eight alphabets of roman and twenty-seven of italic capitals which follow are perhaps the most magnificent of their kind ever displayed. The roman capital letters in larger sizes (from 1 to 5) are specially fine — brilliant in cut and splendidly printed in ink of a wonderfully rich black. Then, too, un¬ like Bodoni’s later books, the paper has a pleasant surface from which all the life has not been smoothed out. Nine alphabets of Greek capital letters follow, both in upright € 10 5 - ,@ Hellenistica E’doSctaSij to • fid8io[xa • dvtov iv " iZ'oSco * o/xoy • xarajteTdoiiaros xal • Xajxrpotris * fiXejipLatos * ay rou £ • co; Xapcrpotris ' fiXepjxaros ’ A'fjiXov Uepiedcoosv ’ dvr'ov o • Y\[wro<; • oroXi}v * 8o5riS xal * dvvUXsiav • xavxuixaros ivedvoev • ayrcv npodcorcoy • daroy • xaplrcov * jx eor'cv xal f 3'avjxaorbv cos ’ dori'ip • xal ’ as ' todov cpcoriCov • iv * veep eXats 865, ns” m 3 8 © 8 @| © 1 1 © © 8 ® © 8 © © 305. Greek from Iscrizioni Esotici: Bodoni , Parma , 1774 ■ . ' ' 167 “CLASSICAL” TYPES and cursive forms — though how legitimate Greek “ italic capitals” are is a question. The sizes from 1 to 4, or 5, are superb, especially number 1, in both italic and roman. Next come Russian capital letters in twelve sizes of roman and italic, and here again the cutting is brilliant and the im¬ pression effective to the last degree. From that point on, the types are upper and lower-case, beginning with roman and italic papale , imperiale, , reale, ducal e, in three weights of letter down to tresmegiste , below which roman and italic are shown in ten sizes of each ; followed by similar Russian fonts of great magnificence. Fonts of Greek follow in descending sizes, and a few specimens of roman and italic {fig. 306), which are much more old style than Bodoni’s later equiva¬ lent fonts. The splendour of this book depends upon pure typog¬ raphy. There is not an ornament in it — not even the little tablets by which Bodoni sometimes gave a dash of salt to his books, but with which less skilful printers have pep¬ pered their reproductions! From a passing allusion in Bo¬ doni’s preface to his Manuale of 1818, it appears that only a few copies of this specimen were printed.1 To this period also belongs Bodoni’s “Letter” to the Mar¬ quis de Cubieres2 in French and Italian, printed in 1785. Concerning it Franklin wrote the following letter to Bodoni, dated Philadelphia, October 14, 1787 : “I have had the very great pleasure of receiving and perusing your excellent Essai des Characteres [sic] de P Im- primerie. It is one of the most beautiful that Art has hith¬ erto produc’d. I should be glad to see a specimen of your 1 An example is in the Boston Public Library. 2 Lettre de J. B. Bodoni , Typ.ograp.he du Roi d’ Rspagne et Directeur de V Im- / irimerie de S. A. R. I* Infant Due de Parme , d. Monsieur le Marquis de Cubieres. Parma, 1785. 168 PRINTING TYPES other Founts besides this Italic & Roman of the Letter to the Marq.s de Cubieres ; and to be inform’d of the price of each kind. — I do not presume to criticise your Italic Capitals ; they are generally perfect : I would only beg leave to say, that to me the form of the T in the word EE T TRE of the Title Page [Jig- 307a] seems preferable to that of the T in the word Typographic in the next Page [Jig. 307 b] , as the downward stroke of Z, P, P, P, P, Z), IJ K , Z, Z, and some others, which in writing we begin at the top, natu¬ rally swells as the pen descends ; and it is only in the A and the M and N that those strokes are fine, because the pen begins them at the bottom.” De Lama says that Bodoni was overcome with joy to have from the President of the United States of America this flattering letter, which he considered a title to glory and preserved with religious care. Bodoni and De Lama, although a little mixed about the office which Franklin held in America, were quite right in being pleased; and this compliment so flattered Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, that he had the letter translated into Spanish, and sent it to his uncle, Carlos III, at Madrid, to whom Bodoni was honorary printer by appointment.1 In 1806, the Oratio Dominica in CLV Linguas Versa et Exoticis Characteribus Plerumque Expressa is another mas- 1 Bodoni was often called “the King of Typographers and the Typographer of Kings” — a phrase suggested by the epitaph on Plantin’ s tomb at Ant¬ werp. He was also styled “the Baskerville of Italy” — just as Didot was called “ the Bodoni of France,” the Foulis brothers “the Elzevirs of Glas¬ gow,” and Thomas “the Baskerville of America.” This rather ridiculous habit of calling somebody the something of somewhere else has always at¬ tracted a certain class of mind in this country. A worthy gentleman who lived in Rhode Island in the eighteenth century and collected pictures was styled “the Lorenzo de’ Medici of Newport,” and a Boston schoolboy de¬ scribed Demosthenes as “ the Edward Everett of Athens.” It was reserved, however, for Mrs. Piozzi to call Switzerland “the Derbyshire of Europe.” Adria,Cit- Adria^vil s> ^ s; 0-> ^ -■ 6 !Zj o • • ^B6?aa4 r^j CJ €N V 1 o ‘C * * h-H a <4H 306. Roman and Italic from Bodoni s Specimen , Parma , 1788 £CTT(HC SjS J. 33. SO&OZWJ Ti yyoyrapfie du dial u’ Sfyaqnc cl. LF)irecteuj~ c^e i c Lmpzmiezie de S. «/vA . >yv>. . >4vY>. . wv>4 * •••••• Q •<>••• •••&••• XVI wv0vw tw^vw wv Ovvv vwQvw ^T#jC wvOvwfnwvD vwVtvwOvw XVII CXXCCCCOQOCOaXXCQCrajOCOOC«XXXXXCOCXXXX>aO^^ XVIII -•***, »**•«,.«*'«, »***•« ■•***, »***•■»•***. .•**», ,,M», .«**«, »•**% >.• <• »-*--^»»* <• ^ .X1 *-*--~»- ■> • <•-* *-»~*> * -®-^-,j> * •$ ♦t - n - ,-» . !•■ if .*'*'.> — . « r» . < / . ir > . . • ", • . . ; * ' , . . • t • 4 • •' • ' ♦ *..«*,,• •.*• •»•• •••• •••* •••• •••• *••• •••• *«•• *••• •»*• •».* •..* •»•• •••• '•♦• • •«• *»«• •••• XIX O . C . O . O . O •'••••• <5 . *0 . o ••■■•• . *>J . o ••••■' <3 "—O' Uf f 313. Borders: Bo don: s Manuale Tipograjico , Pcirma , 1818 “CLASSICAL” TYPES 171 deserve mention. The music type is uninteresting, the plain- song notation in particular being too modern in effect. The work is probably the most elaborate specimen that the world has ever seen — an imposing tour cle force — and the acme of Bodoni’s late, chilly, dry manner. Bodoni’s work may be divided into two periods : (l) when he employed old style or transitional types and used decora¬ tions somewhat profusely, and (2) when he depended on his own type-designs and unadorned typography for his effects. His early printing shows French influence very distinctly, and in the specimen of 1 77 1 — Frege e Majuscole — the bor¬ der of Bodoni’s title-page is almost a copy of that of the second volume of Fournier’s Manuel Typographique. But earlier than that, the French fashion of printing appears in such books as Le Feste d\4pollo and the Pastorale of 1769 — which commemorate gala performances in honour of the marriage of the Duke of Parma. Some other early books of the Stamperia Reale — -such as Alberti’s Saggio di Poesie Italiane (1773) or Trenta’s tragedy UAuge , issued about 1774 — are so far from Bodoni’s later style that it is at first sight difficult to believe that he printed them. Such a book as the Epithalamia Exoticis Unguis Reddita of 1775, issued in honour of the marriage of Marie Adelaide Clotilde, sister of Louis XVI, printed in Bodoni’s “first manner” from old style types, is a masterpiece ; really magnificent in its types, their arrangement, and the superb engraved decorations which, for once, enhance the effect of the page {figs. 314 and 315). I think it one of his finest volumes. In 1784, Bodoni printed another very charming book in this early manner — Prose e Fersi per onorare la Memoria di Livia Doria Carajfa , a collection of poetry, prose, and inscriptions which is probably one of the most beautiful me¬ morial volumes ever produced. The fonts of delicate roman 172 PRINTING TYPES and italic type are distinctly old style, in 178 5, Bodoni’s edi¬ tion of Anacreon’s Odes , in quarto, was published — a most beautiful book (printed entirely in capital letters) in Greek and Latin, The volume In Funere Caroli III , of 1789, and the Orazione Funebre of Botteri (for the same occasion) are also good specimens of his earlier taste. The Greek and Ital¬ ian Callimachus of 1792 retains a great deal of his early style; and his Tavola di Cebete Tebano of 1793 is another delightful piece of printing — simple, and very character¬ istic. The Brief of Pius VI of 1792, of which there were but twelve copies printed in folio, may well have caused the Pope to exclaim that he must issue a second brief to praise the way in which Bodoni had printed the first one! Of all this work, a little 32mo Anacreon in Greek of 1791 is my favourite — one of his most exquisite bits of printing. Meanwhile, the increasing number of books prefiguring his later way of working — like the Horace and Imitation of 1791 and 1793 — show that he was feeling his way into the refrigerated manner of his last days. But his first period — less known, and when known, less considered — is his best. Of Bodoni’s second manner — which, roughly speaking, may be called his nineteenth century style — there are in¬ numerable examples, and in all these later books the area of unprinted space on his pages is great. Bodoni lightened the solidity of close-set composition by exaggerating his ascenders and descenders, and also by ingeniously plac¬ ing small faces of type on large bodies, which effectually prevented such fonts from being set solid. His quarto Taci¬ tus of 1804 is a fine book — transitional in style, perhaps. II Bardo della Selva Neva of 1806 is a full-blown exam¬ ple of his favourite and typical way of working. The Oratio Dominica of the same year, Tasso’s Gemsalemme Liberate of 1807, the Greek Iliad in three volumes folio of 1808, La B 3 ^H 3 s-h $H o T3 3 • i— i 3 a a 3 Vh 3 3 60 3 1 ? 5 l en im im • rH > 60 CJ e vH f"«H a CO • H • tH 3 3 CJ fi 3 T3 nd 3 33 rQ • pH 3 <03 o pH 3 a CJ 3 o 3 3 3 4-» 3 +H • pH 3 J-H -3 Hh 3 , 3 tr 3 o3 • rH CJ !_h • pH 3 60 3 3 3 3 cr fv 3 3 3 Jh 3 -i 3 3 CJ 3 4-J a 3 • pH d 4-> 3 4-» 3 3 O CJ 3 O r3 CJ • rH CJ , o *h -CJ 3 4-* 3 CO CJ CJ 3 a 4-> 3 4-» 3 03 Vr o y-H 3 3 3 CJ CJ CJ 3 o Sh Ctt O 3 o o r3 • rH CJ • rH Jcj <4h' 3 cS cj ^H 3 o J o> 3 3 .JLj X5 3 3 3 • rH u 3 3 cr u 3 nd 3 cj CJ 3 T3 cj CJ 3 • rH 3 O o CJ u 3 > O 3 CJ 3 3 O"4 i 3 O cj u 3 3 tr 3 • rH CJ 3-h CJ o CJ 3 X5 3 3 CO • pH S-H O • rH O CJ u O CJ T3 u 3 3 tr Jh 3 fV* 4-> 3 3 3 4-> • pH 3 Oh CJ a • H £ 3 <3 3 o a CO * rH A O C/5 3 • pH 4-» 3 3 CJ 4-> 3 > pH *H CJ 3 3 CJ 3 tr > pH ^H 3 co 3 rQ • pH • ■M 3 • pH "O 3 -d rH o u H 3 3 r3 3 pH 4-» 3 3 "3 3 3 CJ 3 CJ i— i CJ 3 3 • pH CJ CJ CJ 3 3 3 nd 60 4-> 0s JO 314. Roman in Epithalamia Exoticis Linguis Reddita , etc. : Bodoni , Parma , 1775 J ) ovum opus , nec, ut arbitror , poeniten- dum, ingenu plane meo periculo, ac la - •4, ’-0) a 2 .3 ?s» .8 5 a *>1 H 8 o O ro ^5 Qi *«» •§ QJ a 9. • ^ s 8 ■g ^ g <0 8 o X o :S3 'kj ^s 3f 8 • 3 315. Italic in Epithalamia Exoticis Linguis Reddita , etc.: Bodoni , Parma, 1775 173 “CLASSICAL” TYPES Rochefoucauld’s Maximes in F rench of 1 8 1 1, and the F rench Telemaque of 1812, which Bodoni thought perhaps his best work — all these are books showing originality of conception, even though the conception may not be of a very endearing kind. One of the last and most typical of his editions is La Giuditta of 1813 — begun but not finished by Bodoni — a book absolutely without ornament, and very fine in its way. Some smaller volumes of poems in 16mo, delicately printed from delicate types, on paper which is much like vellum in quality, are delightful of their kind. Such are Parini’s Odi of 1799 ; V ersi di Giordani , in four volumes, of 1809 ; and V ersi del Conte Aurelio Bemieri , 1811, in four volumes. Finally, Bodoni’s broadsides — inscriptions in capitals, framed in borders made up of ornaments — are among his most interesting performances. These are rare ; and while no reproduction gives much idea of them, I refer the reader to their facsimiles at the end of Bertieri’s admirable book.1 Bodoni’s larger volumes were certainly often magnificent. They were planned on a great scale. It has been very well said of him that those who came after might choose to do something else ; but that what he chose to do could never be done better. His first manner, in one way less character¬ istic of him, is, as I have said, much the more agreeable and sympathetic. He was then under the influenceof French styles, although perhaps he had given up employing French types; but there was about the books of this period — as in those of his rival Didot — real charm. The distinction of old style type was retained, but it was slightly refined. 1 For these and other interesting facsimiles see Bertieri and Fumagalli’s L? Arte di Giambattista Bodoni. Milan, 1913. The series of plates at the end show at a glance the difference between his early and late manner of printing. A chronological table of Bodoni’s editions forms Vol. II of De Lama’s Vita di Bodoni. Parma, 1816. 174 PRINTING TYPES But while it was in his first period that he produced his most beautiful books, he himself did not think so. It may be said that this is self-evident, because he soon changed his style for one which he must have considered an im¬ provement But it was not Bodoni, but the spirit of the art round about him, that made his later types more and more rigid, their heavy lines thicker, and their light lines thin¬ ner and more wiry. Wonderfully perfect as these types were in detail, they contributed to a style of printing that made these later books as official as a coronation, and as cold as the neighbouring Alps ! His volumes were to other printing what Canova’s statuary was to earlier sculpture. Many of Bodoni’s books lacked intimacy and charm, too, because of his conception of the function of his press. He cared nothing about printing as a means to popular instruc¬ tion. He did not despise the masses — - he forgot all about them ! Pie was a court printer, existing by the patronage of the Lucky Few. His editions were intended to be livres d' apparat} He not alone saw no harm in making them so, but the bigger and more pretentious they were, the better he liked them. In fact, he openly said so, and told Renouard, the P rench publisher, “ Je ne veux que du magnifique, et je ne travaille pas pour le vulgaire des lecteurs.” I am afraid, too, that he always retained an eighteenth century Italian carelessness about detail, which often gave Italian archi¬ tecture and painting of that period such delightful brio . But broad effects,” when applied to scholarship and proofread¬ ing, lead to disaster. Thus the texts of Bodoni’s classical editions have never been considered very correct, and his books, apart from their appearance, are not valuable to the A collection of Bodoni' s books in all their different editions, on large paper, special ” paper, vellum, etc., is preserved in the Ducal Library at Parma, where the matrices of Bodoni’s types are also exhibited. PARANGONE I. N’ayez de 1’ attachement, et de 1 5 amour pour le monde , qu’a proportion du temps que vous y devez etre . Celui qui voyage , ne doit point s’ ar Non abhiate attacco, ne amo¬ ve pel mondo, se non che a pro- porzione del tempo, che voi vi dovete dimorare . Quegli che ec . PARANGONE II. Iln’ya au monde que deux manieres de s’ elever; ou par sa propre industrie , ou par V imbe- cilite des autre s . On ne vole . ec Non ha V uomo che due mez- zi per aggrandire ; o la propria, industria , o V altrui imbecillitd. Non si vola colie stesse all etc . 316. Roman and Italic: AmorettP s Saggio de Caratteri Parma , 1811 175 “CLASSICAL” TYPES scholar. Didot, who published much better editions, but did not print so well, justly enough said that Bodoni’s books would figure on the shelves of collectors, but not in the libraries of savants — adding, “Comme litterateur je con- damne ses editions, comme typographe je les admire.” There were other eminent critics who took the same tone. Appar¬ ently it was not only in the classics that he sinned; for Horace Walpole, writing in 1790 to Mary Berry, who was then in Italy, says, “I am glad you did not get a Parmesan Otranto. A copy is come so full of faults that it is not fit to be sold here.” But whatever Bodoni’s faults were, he was perfectly characteristic of his period, and expressed it in his work. Because he was so characteristic of his time is perhaps the chief reason that he is a great printer. Andrea Amoretti, a learned Italian priest, who, renoun¬ cing his calling, engraved some of Bodoni’s types, and who printed some pretty books himself, issued a delightful little specimen, Saggio de> Caratteri e Fregi della Fonderia dei Fratelli Amoretti Incisori e Fonditori in San Pancrazio presso Parma ( 1 8 1 1), and this book shows how the Italian output had been influenced by Bodoni and Didot1 (fig- 316). The clear-cut ornaments, which are to earlier ornaments what the Amoretti types of 1 8 1 1 are to earlier types, are very per¬ fect, very brilliant, and extremely characteristic of the fash¬ ionable style in printing at that period (fig. 317). Indeed, Bo¬ doni’s work was much copied by such presses as that of the Vicenzi at Modena and in other parts of Italy. The luxurious books of the Tipografia della Societa Letter aria at Pisa (now almost forgotten), which employed Amoretti’s fonts, were important and collected by amateurs of printing. The effect ‘The Amorettis also issued in 1830 another specimen — Nuorvo Saggio de’ Caratteri e Fregi della Fonderia dei Fratelli Amoretti Incisori e Fonditori in Parma. It is inferior to the first one and shows some types in the English manner of Thome. 176 PRINTING TYPES of Amoretti’s fonts is shown in the folio Poesie di Catullo , in Italian and Latin, issued at Pisa in 1815. This book recalls Bodoni’s manner, but just misses its excellence; somehovr the types seem commonplace, and their arrangement lacks Bodoni’s clever touch. Amoretti’s types are also used in Tasso’s Aminta, printed in Pisa in 1804 at the same press; but here the types are too much spaced and look weak, not only on that account, but because they are so. Ill OOME account of the manifold activities of the Didot LJ family is given in a previous chapter, but we must now consider their important part in the development of nine¬ teenth century type-forms. Their eighteenth century influ¬ ence in the movement toward lighter types is shown by F rangois Ambroise Didot’s fonts cut by Waflard about 1775, 1 in that interesting book already spoken of \Epitre sur les Pro- gres de Plmprimene , written and put forth by Didot Paine in 1 7 84, and in the delightful Essai de Fables F'ouvelles , in which the Epitre was reprinted in 1786. It is but fair to say that mid-eighteenth century French specimens were full of very light fonts, in what was then called the gout nouveau, , and it was these that the Didots somewhat re¬ fined upon. On the other hand, some of the graceful and spirited but attenuated old style types used by the Didots about 1780 were very beautiful, and have not been suffi¬ ciently noticed — types just on the turn of the tide — fore¬ shadowing the coming change in style, but by no means I have not been able to examine any volumes showing large sizes of the Waflard types, which were quickly superseded by Vibert’s fonts, for which Pierre Didot was responsible. Alphabets of Waflard’ s characters are shown in Phibaudeau s La Lettre d lTnft.rinn.evie , Vol. I, pis. 15 and 16. The date of their appearance there given (1757) would appear to be open to question. 317. Ornaments: AmorettP s Saggio de' Caratteri Parma , 1811 / -I ■ ' ■ - “CLASSICAL” TYPES T t~4 f-* 1 / / disfigured by it. None of these characters (save possibly Waflard’s) prepare us for the fonts cut by Firmin Didot about 1800 for the Racine and also used in the composition of the Constitution de la Republique . The famous edition du Louvre of Racine (1801-5) was printed by Pierre Didot in three folio volumes, and con¬ sidered his chef d'ceuvre. “The splendid execution of this book,” says Rouchot, “ was a true typographical revolution. Never in any country had scrupulous perfection of detail been joined to so masterly a knowledge of arrangement and form of characters. The great artists of the Davidian school were anxious of the honour of seeing their drawings repro¬ duced as illustrations, and . . . designed the fifty-seven plates with which the edition w^as adorned.” Two hundred and fifty copies were printed, one hundred of which had proofs of the plates before letters. It was published by subscription at 1200 francs for the ordinary edition, and with proofs at 1800 francs. The series of typical “Didot” characters used in it is dis¬ tinguished by the violent contrast of their thick and thin lines. The heavy strokes of the letters are very strong, the thin lines and the serifs are exaggerated and lightened to a mere hair-line. The italic is almost as if engraved. The effect as a whole is perfect, but dazzling ; it sticks into, rather than strikes, the eye. All the agreeable, mellow feel¬ ing of the letter of Jenson and Garamond is gone. “ Didot in¬ contestably realized,” says Thibaudeau, “a pompous roman alphabet instinct with majestic grandeur, but of extreme dryness and absolutely glacial rigidity of line.” He adds that a whole school of typography sprang up around this Didot “formula-type.” There existed, however, a minority who did not accept Didot’s fonts without criticism and protest. 178 PRINTING TYPES W e can understand the enthusiasm excited by such books as Didot’s Horace and Racine only when we realize that the men chosen to illustrate them were part and parcel of the movement in Art that I have already outlined, and that printing was itself but a tiny current in the far-reach¬ ing sweep of this tide. Lifeless and pretentious as such work seems to us now, to the public of that day it appeared the quintessence of the antique spirit. For it must be observed — and this observation has a moral for the printer — that what the contemporaries of Didot saw and admired in his print¬ ing is not what we see and admire now. Men of that day saw, or thought they saw, in Didot’s great folios, antiquity; to us the only interesting thing about them is that they ex¬ hibit Didot’s idea of it. And since the Didot idea was not particularly interesting, or his manner charming, neither his types nor the books he printed with them much interest us. The only “period” a printer can work in so as to give pleasure at subsequent periods appears to be his own. The development of this Didot letter is shown in the Specimen des JYouveaux Caracteres . . . de P. Didot Paine of 1819 (Jig. 318). Here we see a new style of French type in lull swing. Pierre Didot says these fonts were engraved under his personal supervision by the type-cutter Vibert, whom he assisted (and probably inordinately tormented) for three hours a day for ten years to get things to his mind. ranqois Ambroise Didot, it should be remembered, had reformulated a system of type-measurement — one reason why his style of type became so popular with printers. His son applied this mathematical sense to type-design, with a resultant rigidity which is a mark of early nineteenth century classic” French fonts. Almost every trace of pen- quality vanishes in these types. It is an alphabet “regular¬ ized ’ to a painful degree ; though very perfect and very Co o. I 3 to 3 3 o£ 3 ‘ 3 3 to 3 3 3 •2 «o 3 , « I <45 2 *3 p^*- pO ^ Po’S •ft • ft •ft 05 p £ <0 3 a o •s 'g r* ft O j ■3 3 3 O 3 =3 N * ft *40 ■ f> . a a 5 S-tO I | I .. 3 W s ft 3 3 *ft <0 •ft 3 3 33 •3> 3 , • to 3 o£ *3 ft, 3 ft, *" * .s » 2 <*"* ^ c* 2r> O PS - SO So • <0 ^ Hw to 3 O •<» ft 3 ftj c .2 ‘ * ft CD <<0 $c •ft J"s "3 3 *0 3 3 3 3 • Ss 3 to 3 "3 3 .3 "3 ft 3 S to ft 3 O ft ft. <^> ”"Ift ft • cd s c ^3 ftj r>. *y « S ^ 5 "« S' a. «*o • o ^ co ^ O <**• 3 .3 ft* 2 ,0 q3 ft- 3 3 ^3 3 2 ft, ^ ^ S CL5 to -g ^ S <5 ~§-3 *g I S S« 33^ g ■O ^2 *to to Mo 3 3) 3) 8 3 3 ^5 o 3 So 3 3 3) -3 CO ft 3 ■ ."3 •o 3 3 '^> to 3 V<« 3> 3 2 3 3, a T~ *3 'o so 3) *\ t/> to 3) S*j ; 3 o> o 3) 3 ™ 3 t** ^ *" -*3 5 42 3 g -2 3 3 -ft,. 3 >.3 ? o -“o * * to to o ti) ■ - 3 3 3 So 5 2^ft3 -(O go 3 3) o 3 g ^ 7- O ft, s ^ . QJ Ca> , ^ ^ ^r> 3 ^ o ^3 »**» fs> 3) 3 3 So 3 3> so 3 3^ 50 3 t' ^ 3 -3 3 to Kl 3) 3 rs to o 3 So 3 .3) •W 3 3 1 ft. P 3 3> 3 O 3 ft, --2 3 CO ^30 V) 3) si ft. 2 so .p3 so ft 3 "ft po v ClT'j ^ ^ g O fto ~ -s °- § g 3i 3) ^ O P 52 ^ - So o 3 3 o 3> •b •fco o oi .ft to CD 3 '3> So 3) 3 -*S o ft 3 0 S 51 S WN O 3 <0 2 - ft; 3 'o 3 to /CD C> So 3) to 3) to o 3 ft 3 3> CO 3 3 3 3 3 ft o 3 2 so 5> •2 ^ H ft3 . ^ 3 3 '3 -ft! .3 ^ "3 ^3 ^ a S a. ^ . g S a £ 3 § *3 3 * ft ,3 3 •a -2" « ft 3,^ ^ -3 ft _. 3 <0 *N **o •ft o ft. 3 O 3 3 3 3 to SO O 3 3 to Jb .2 ftft ^ I 3 ^ 3 P S>o <0 3 ^3 3 o 3 r co « <0 s ro 3 3 3 .ft rv cd 3^ •-o 3 CN* 3 O ft 3 3 c CD •ft 3 •"2 •2 ft • ft rs 3 .H ft ft • o CO ft <*> Ct •ft .3 3 CO *^n) rp to •§ ft , *2 * - W 3 3 "3 "ftS ^ v3 ^ ^ ^ 3 3 * CD Co c* O 3 Sqj • to 3 3 3 3 3ft so 3 3 to to 3 O 2 <0 3 3ft 1 5 3 5ft 3 3 CD C> rs .3 Co 3 'o O “3 S' g- .2 .ft 0 3 *> 3 2 "§ 3 co 3 ft ft 2 -;s ■2 ^ 3 *£ . <*•> ">» ft - 'ft qj 3 So to 3 3 3 "“-“* ^ 3 3 ft r _ • csi 'p 3 3 ci C c. 3 3 ft- to ?-»S»*'s8^.„=.s §, I. &• § -s « J •S tft o ft ^ «2 vj ft w 3ft ^ 2 g 3^ 3'^fto ft %3.ftft to P"ft 3>3 3^ ,3p3 3^> 3 3 to *s O ft fto So 3/3 o £ Qh p ft 3 3 3 3 3 ^ ft "ft 3 -o q P oft *s 3 3,. 3 to §.*S5 ^ -Q >2 S ^3 > S ^ 3 3 ft 3 3 ft 3 ~ o ,0 ■ 3 ^to -O Co 3 3 to «* 3 ftftj 3 3 o£ r** c-d c*D -ft 3 3 3 ft to" 3 ft ft ^ o o2 co .S ft-S ft; 52 13 3 to . . to 3 2 3 3 ft • ^ •ft ft '3 3 ft 3 3 •o • So 3 3 '3 Ps £ 3 v3 3 c, 2 * CD ►'•ft 0) 3 3 ft rs 3 £ C * CD oP £ ft .ft CD '3 .3% ft * C*D ft •H ft ft ■S) •ft ►•ft ft to 3> 3 ft CD O 3 'ft 3 3 'S 3 <*> o C. $ ft _3 3 ft C^> 3 3 so 3 ft 3 £ ft 4> -2 3 ^2 •to 30 o ^ 3 t 3 ft . ft 3 • ,0 o ft S 3 . •2 ^2 3 S "§ ft ^ w ft p ^2 c_> 05 t-S 00 co •to 3 C, 2 '3 So 3 3 ft a 3 3 -s CD I 3 3 • Cj 3 rv ft 3 ^to 3 So ft • to Q 3 • ft 3 ft 06 rH co * 179 “CLASSICAL” TYPES brilliant. There are marked and disagreeable peculiarities in some letters (Jig. 319), and its disabled g and wounded y warn us of the danger of too much fussing over details. Some very horrid characters engraved for the Imprim- erie in 1818 by Jacquemin were a reflection of those heavier types introduced by Thorne in England ; for after the down¬ fall of Napoleon, English fashions were popular. They had a counterpart in those of Henri Didot’s nephew, Marcel- lin Legrand, whose fonts of 1825 — a sort of mechanical version of Didot’s 1819 fonts — were followed by the same engraver’s unpleasantly condensed types of 1847. The effect of types of the Didot school may be seen in books published in France by different members of the Didot family, by Renouard, and other progressive publishers, be¬ tween 1800 and 1850. The following volumes, selected at random, show a certain progression in style of type as the century advanced. In the BucoUques of Virgil and the Iclylles of Theocri¬ tus, translated and printed by Firmin Didot, his caractleres cPecriture were first used in 1806. In 1811, Renouard pub¬ lished, in two volumes 12mo, an illustrated edition of the Fables of La Fontaine, which was an important book in its time and a characteristic piece of early nineteenth century typography. The fonts used in the 1817 edition of Moliere’s works — in octavo, printed by Pierre Didot Paine- — show further progression toward modern face types, as we now understand the term.Baour-Lormian’s translation of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivree , published by Delaunay and printed by Didot le jeune in 1819, though virile compared with later type effects, is a very frigid and tiresome performance. Poesies et Traductions en V ers de Firmin Didot. Paris , de la Typographic de V Auteur, 1822, shows Didot’s own views 180 PRINTING TYPES as to what a book should look like; and AApoleon et ses Contemporains, a series of engravings with text by A. P. de Chambure (1824,/, published by Rossange and printed by Lachevardierep'z/,?, is a good example of fashionable typog¬ raphy of a little later time. Lettres de Napoleon a Josephine , etc. (1796—1814), published and printed by Firmin Didot Freres in 1833, in two volumes octavo, is also an example of what the Didot house at that period thought fit to present to the public. Paulin’s edition of Lesage’s Gil Blas { 1835), with its hundreds of vignettes by Gigoux, and Curmer’s edition of St. Pierre’s Paid et Virginia (1838) were consid¬ ered delightful novelties in book-making. In the latter, be¬ sides many full-page wood-engravings by Tony Johannot, the text was smothered with innumerable woodcuts de¬ signed and executed by the best hands — French and Eng¬ lish — in the “romantic” manner of the day. These two books interest us : first, as endeavours to make what were then considered (and, in a sense, still are) remarkable edi¬ tions ; second, because in them all unity of illustration and typography was thrown overboard. This style in the mak¬ ing of gift-books persisted in all countries for many years. Finally, Horace’s Opera , printed by Firmin Didot in 1855 from very tiny types, is worth examination. Ambroise Fir¬ min Bidot’s address Au Lecteur gives some typographical details about the edition. The smallest type in the book (cast by Laurent & De Berny) is used in the notes to Didot’s address — not so small, however, as Henri Didot’s micro¬ scopic types used in 1827 in a minute edition of La Roche¬ foucauld’s Maximes. Except for the reconstitution of books of that period, types of the Didot school have little practical value to us now. LE TREIZE. Conjurant la melancolie, La <1 efiance et ses detours, La fi oideur, et la jalousie, En ont confie Fheureux cours A ITIymen sensible, aux Amours, A la raison, k la folie: Heureux qui sait regler ton jours Leur accord, leur douce harmonic! Let, des dieux respirant la vie, LTIymen, par sa feconditd, L Hymen, que mon coeur deifie, Entretient, augmente, et varie L amour, Fespoir, et la gaiete; La douce paix, la liberte, Y president de compagnie, Versant, offrant de tout cote Et le nectar et Fambrosie. Comme, apres un beau jour d’ete, La nuit, plus calme et non meins belle, 9 319. Roman in P. Didot's Specimen, etc., Paris , 1819 CLASSICAL” TYPES 181 IV OF early nineteenth century French specimens to becon- sidered, the first is that of J. G. Gille Jils, who in 1808 issued a folio specimen entitled Recueil des Divers Carac- teres Vignettes et Omemens de la Fonderie et Imprimerie de J . G. Gille } The series of book-types shown are just on the verge of modern face. The titling-letters are of the extreme “ Didot” form. The best fonts in this book are the beauti¬ ful series of caracteres d’ecriture in ronde , batarde , and conle, which (especially in larger sizes) have much movement and style. These were used with great success for administra¬ tive and commercial printing. The vignettes or type-borders are distinctive, particularly those with black backgrounds, which are among the handsomest of their kind {Jig. 320). The collection of decorations cut on wood and reproduced in polytype is an important feature. All kinds of interesting ornaments are displayed. Many of them are in the pseudo¬ classic taste of the period, which was taken uncommonly seriously by Gille. In a prospectus about his designs for print¬ ers, he alludes slightingly to the borders and tail-pieces in Louis XV style, holding Luce up to ridicule, who, he says, “did not consult the immortal and enchanting cartons of Ra¬ phael. . . . But in our day,” he adds,“Percier, Fontaine, and other great architects have appeared. They have opened our eyes, and iron, marble, steel, wood, all should breathe the spirit of Raphael” — though I do not think Raphael would easily recognize his “spirit” in Gille’s type ornaments ! An idea of the collection may be had from our reproduc- 1 This foundry existed in the eighteenth century, when it was presided over by a certain J. Gille, who published an interesting octavo specimen in 1773, and another of 16mo form in 1778, entitled Caracteres de la Fonderie de J. Gille , Graveur et Fondeur du Roi, etc. About 1790, his son acquired the foundry. 182 PRINTING TYPES tion of a broadside specimen of his types, probably issued also about 1808 {Jig. 321). In this, examples are shown of the roman and italic types and the caracteres cPecriture just spoken of, and the sheet is surrounded with one of Gille’s fine borders. A less important specimen of about this period is the folio book of Vignettes et Fleurons engraved by Besnard and pub¬ lished by him in 1812, printed by Mame, and interesting for its pretty ornaments designed in light style. At the Exposition du Louvre of 1819, the Parisian type¬ founder Mole jeune, who began life as a painter and designer, exhibited a series of fourteen great broadsides, surrounded with wide borders, which is one of the most magnificent type-specimens known. These sheets exhibit the result of twenty-seven years of personal labour — 206 varieties of roman, italic, civilite , Greek, Hebrew, Rabbinical Hebrew, Arabic, Samaritan, Syriac, and also a fine series of roman titling-letters. In addition there are 468 borders (very varied in design and many of great beauty), rules, etc. The roman and italic are of the Didot style, and (except for the titling- letters) are less mechanical than is usual in such fonts. They show this kind of type at its best, though owing much to the splendid presswork of Pierre Didot Paine. We repro¬ duce the sixth plate of the series {Jig. 322). The Jury of the Exposition commended “this immense and magnificent col¬ lection as the work of an artist who greatly merits notice, not merely for his admirable work, but for the labour, pains, and immense sacrifices he has made to arrive at so high a degree of perfection.” As a conspectus of the best French type of its day, Mole’s fourteen Tableaux are classic. French typographic ornament of this period, like type- form, was much influenced by England, and an English en¬ graver, Charles Thompson, — brother of the better known 320. Borders : Giltt jils Specimen , Paris , 1808 ^racteredJ dO laD S (Xv'uz.., tfd moccupo d‘utt> Guvzayo 4uu* tuotij cdztj c/y joiudzai fco ^o/Tectioto cW> Tgpe.Xs dej at a Tfoitdezie, joifj cW* JCattgucj vivautej , 4o/u dc<0 JCaitguezO tuozlcdj. Tfo pze'jeutej , era attctidaiiL } cctte tciuuoto de Jouxautc-Dio; CiaiaclcicCL' f ttapzttne'dj c/tezj utot , eu' d’uro jetiT coup do Sazzcato. Jo |diaij>atoitto uue &>Cfccticr) 4)0 sue ceut«rlent niRniiwnl one .t'rpoiilion • rar«nl«r»u '• r*f f.-clionnor IrS Aril, l-r ctrmt i'en Irou.f ntlurrllrmrol ibni noire ripril , el 3 »’y freonde par one Biullilode de reworll c.chri- L'ou{t el IVrperienee tonl aVtolunenl ne'e t*opr4t <4«i Art. , ** * “ ir leoe* «uc«e»teur». Lormu'on .oil qu'one enlrepriie i _ _ r_. , ... „ .. te ijoi o tromp? povrinn el te» Artutc* doWetil corulunmeol rludier let produeliontde leor* ieur»: ear let ftulrt del inrenleun tonl ordmaircrnml Ae prlcie » tuccetieurt. L«r«)u‘o« toil qu'one enlrepriie ne r/uuit ut . loi trle«leloppe sous laquelle un homme vcrlueux doit comtamment se moo her aux yeux de tout le monde P ROMAIN GROS OEIL. Pour nous trouver constaminent heureux il (aut contempler la foule des malhcureux qui envienl le sort dont nous nous plaignons. Si 1'on ofTroit h la plupart des mecontens de mctlre en commun tous les maux de I’univers, et de les partager egalemcnt, il n’csl pas un seul homme qui acceptat celte proposition. I Vous sornmes souvent peu contens de nous, lorsque consultant les hommes sur noire conduite nous nen recevons que dcs applaudissemcns. P ROMAIN OEIL GRAS. N ayons pour veritable ami qiuin homme verlueux , qu'il soil continueilcment present a noire esprit, vivons comme si nous etions constammcnt sous ses yeux, ct comme sil examinoil toutes nos actions. 11 doit clre un gouvcrncur et un censeur severe qui nous accompngne en tous lieux. L‘ occupation et le travail sont necessaires d Vhommc : ils le preservent du poison dc l’ ennui. Une vie oisive est un pesant fardcau. PHILO SOPH IE. Les hommes corrompus font Ic bicn ct le trial indislinctcment pour contenter leur ambition, et certainenicnt il leur en coute moins pour commc-ttre une mauvoise action qu’une bonne. Leur ame ne connoit aucun sentiment vraiment sublime. On donne une pretax de peu d'esprit, en s' o/Jcnsant d' une impertinence ; on devroit s’en amuscr comme des autres ridicules ■ .U© A. PH ] I Plus les homnu tc plus ils l’aimeront 5 repenlir d’avoir e c aura seulement re ses charmes , de praliquee constair Le bonheur ou t general , ne ddpenc^ i dc leur humeur qu CICERO 1 La moderation qui nous serf on -i heureusement 1 contribue encoit; diminuer nos c 9 succes de nos e Nous p/aisor. s le commerce d „ i bonnes qualites ■u-. A CICERiJ En examinant de nos maux, el reellement, noi les bommes, et (• pas continuellei de l immuable ] L’ ambition , y ideas sur V avert a i ordinairement a< ■ CICERO Combien de nous etonnent (S certain terns no; ne se trouvent d’autre merite oii seule fait notre Un homme d i aisement dans h continueilcment • ‘k CICERO L’amitie est s vide de sens ; le; indistinctcmenti ct ils donnent c d’ami a la perso o li’ont meme auc : Nous n’aimor connoissancede nous n’aimons p mm. :ii till * 'I 'M <1 'll 321. Broadside Specimen of v ■ ■1. IE. 3nt la vertu ft ne pourra se pour ellc; on on connoitra oint suivie et 'cs homines en ommumiment ti [AIRE. : verla ulile »t a terminer Jems, et elle rablement a Ic mam ais p uvent dans i, avec nos ridicules. HCiBNAIRE. lent la cause consistent Iperons pas rmurerons les decrcts t toulcs nos > permet pas j !c present. A- - A UGUS T I N Un liormne qui consomme son hien imprudemment porte a ses enfans un dommage considerable et produit les incommodites dune misere souvent prejudiciable. L 'urbanite montre les homines coniine ils dcoroienl ctre. OYEN. Is le monde pendant un C lion, et qui munement eeaute , qui ion. re tombera e lui tend etc. I A S. it un mot en servent |t le monde nit Ic noin laqucUc ils •ration. \vailler a la pnree <]uc wniltcs. A. AUGUSTIN. Letude des livres est un doux amusement pour ceux qui aiment 1 instruction ; elle leur diminuc les desagremens qu'on eprouve dans le commerce des homines. La tranquilhtd de l ame prouve dvidemment la bonne conscience. G. TEXTE. Les homines que Ton croit communement heureux en ce monde, ont infiniment motns de parfait contentement, que dc soucis et d’amertumes. L’ irresolution cst un defaut (juinuita noire avancemcnt. G. R 0 MAI N. Evitons conslamment la rencontre de ces homines dc eommunication libre et parlant continucllement. Les hommes devroient se secourtr mutuellement. P. PARANG ON. Souvent l'homme ne peut se rendre raison du motif qui le determine. Un homme vraiment instruit est rnocleste. G. PARANG ON. Lunmense fortune do nn e de la vanite a 1 homme commun. La mort d un homme de bien est un malheur. A. G. 110MAIN. L’ostentation d'opulence est communement la manic des hommes qui n’ont point dc merite personnel. La loi la plus cxactcment obs erode csl la bienseance. 'Him i ■ t imm •» <•< MMSii'Ci mm i «<«l|'«. t'l ’ll P. CANON. Commun ement les hommes sont emportes vers L admiration . G. CANON. Commune. Estimation D. CANON. amour amitie S ur /MU it Parangon. Let- Q>mnuSJairea_j>re'j)OJe((_ aj> lexamen deJ complete— — _ Let- cJLclioiutaize-et— 9e fa Qatficj Qco dZ>teujaiJlutce_) ^ S ur gros Parangon. VouiL- eted— invite a voutL _ trouver cO fCCdtSembfeeJ. deauceJ puShqueO dcJ faj> doaetlJ detc- CCtUz_ S ur Petit Canon . 0~CouS — cotmucunlotnY aj — toutCA — UcHtuuiatiafcioitA _ Sur ijuatre Points de Cicero. 9 TiunitionnairecL _ fils, Paris , c. 1808 ( reduced ) ■ ■ . ' . . ' ■ ■ . . ■> so*::* •> <• «;•♦!<& •> ?s: •>;» •> <• m»;:n us- ♦ ♦ «:*;«■♦ *.::> :<»'❖ | ' f - , f*;.« e i X o a X a as .a s ^5 &N a X ia s .X a D D I «V Si JO •i; ^ <2 £ l> ite Sj ^3 ^ S3 <3 3 b *1 5 N ■H *S J3 23 >* 32 S ^o» Osi 53 O) >-n o CS o M o5 hJ 3 Ph < f P £ o z w C/5 c n O p£ O OJ cZ) }:| tanftT ✓!* >>»v w 1« ?ffi* kS 1 3®s€ §h8 Wi Ife ,>® feg 4fll M ^3 Sj V. 8 C • fo o -■iS Kl ^0 (N CO ■ ■* , ( . ..... . s. ...... .. . . . • . _ • , . 183 CLASSICAL ” TYPES John Thompson, — contributed to this. Settling in Paris in 1816, his engraved decorations were very much the mode, and their multiplication by the process known as poly ty page put them at the disposal of the ordinary printer. Thomp¬ son published, in 1826, the first of a quarterly series of collections of his ornaments, entitled Recueil de Vignettes gravees surbois et poly type es par Thompson . This thin quarto, printed by J. Pinard, shows his work, with prices for the cuts affixed to each. They were not very charming produc¬ tions, for though well engraved, they were somewhat dry both in design and in line. But Thompson set a style which was much followed in France. Many of the cuts in the Gille fils specimen of 1808 are repeated in Epreuves des Divers Caracteres , Vignettes et Or - nemens de la Fonderie de J. A. Pasteur , Paris, 1823; a fuller and in some ways more interesting collection. Though Pas¬ teur appears to have succeeded to some of Gille’s collection, probably the largest part went to Laurent, Balzac, and Bar- bier. After the failure and death of Gille fils , Laurent, a former employee, had charge of the sale of his material in 1827. Later, he became a partner in the firm of Laurent & De Berny.1 The type-founder L. Leger issued a brilliant broadside which shows the persistence of those extreme “classic” type- forms which the Didots made fashionable ( fig . 323). He brought out, some time between 1831 and 1844, a quarto volume of types and ornaments, entitled Specimen des Di- 1 The De Berny foundry had an interesting history. With Laurent, and a printer named Barbier, the novelist Honore de Balzac formed an historic but disastrous association in 1827, in a scheme to erect a foundry, printing-office, and publishing-house all in one. In 1828, the firm broke up, leaving Laurent in possession of the foundry, who was joined by Alexandre de Berny (placed there by his mother, whose sentimental relations with Balzac greatly influ¬ enced the novelist’s career) . This firm — Laurent & De Berny — existed until 1848, when the business was continued by De Berny alone. 184 PRINTING TYPES vers Caracteres Vignettes et Fleurons des Fonderie et Stereo - typie de L. Leger, , Graveur, neveu et successur de F. F. Didot , which, according to its compiler, represented the results ol twenty-five years’ labour. The ornaments and borders are distinctly light in effect, black backgrounds having mostly disappeared (Jig. 324). The types, less excellent than the ornaments, are still in the Didot style. An extremely characteristic showing of types in popular use in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century is made in the Specimen Typographique de P Imprimerie Roy ale. These two folio volumes (I, 1845; II, 1851), display a number of fonts modelled on the Didot plan, and also make a distin¬ guished showing of exotic fonts by Jacquemin. An index at the end of the first volume tells who cut the various types displayed — Firmin Didot, Marcellin Legrand, and Leger Didot figuring among their designers ; while among ancient fonts are those from Garamond, the Propaganda and Me¬ dici offices, and Savary de Breves. The Didot foundry remained in the possession of the family until sold by Ambroise Firmin Didot, when its types became part of the Fonderie Generale of Paris. In this house were consolidated the establishments of Firmin Didot, Mole, Crosnier, and Everat. The 1839 specimen of the Fonderie Generale, issued by E. Tarbe, who presided over it, shows text types in the “classic” Didot style, and many of the or¬ naments designed to accompany them — as well as vignettes in the “romantic manner” which are very characteristic of that time and very amusing in this. Another important spe¬ cimen of the Fonderie Generale, then managed by Biesta, Laboulaye & Cie, issued in 1843, showed, in addition to the collections mentioned, those of Lion, Tarbe, and Laboulaye Freres. The preliminary Avis supplies references by which the types cut by different designers may be identified. The ' l$gp rvv: #K3? \./> PAA &»&» m&aZi \oi \ i:u G PAR LEGER, FONDE NEVEU ET SUCCESSEUR DE DII Deux Points dc Petit Romain. AVRANCHES. Deux Points do Philosophic. CARCASSONNE. Deux Points d j) ERMENOI' BEAUMONT. DUSSELDORF. FAR MO It Deux Points do Gros Romain. Deux Points de Petit Parangon. Deux Points dc Ct , MOULINS. ORLEANS. QUIA! NANTE-S. PAMPERS. ROAR Deux Points dc Trismegiste. Mojennes dc Ponte. YPRES Nota. Ces CaraclereS ont cle fomlus par un nouveau Procede qui oftre plusicurs avanlagcs faciles a apprecier. 11 est propre a la Enfin, les leUrcs, depuis le Gros Romain jusqu’aux Grosses de fonte, sont fondues sur un corps creux , ce qui economise un cinqui benefice duquel je suis coproprietaire } et une Medaille al’exposiiion de l’an 1S0G. asm IM Pill M HU I G 323. Broadside Specimen of I. TITRES EN CAKACTEreS, JAI DES AUGUSTINS, A PARIS. *E. i. a X y -J % Deux Points de Saint Augustin. GRENOBLE. HONFLEUR. Deux Points dc Palestine. STENAY. TURIN. Deux Points de Gros Teste. JOINYILLE. LEUCATE. Deux Points de Petit Canon. UTREC II I / / V YES. dc Fonte. Deux Points de Gros Canon. w ( h;ms tdement dcs Lettres dc deux points, niais encore dcs Vignettes et dcs Caraclcrcs d’ecritnre , qn’il rend anssi purs qttc Ie poinQOii. kre , comparativemcnt a la maniere ordinaire dc fondre. Cc sont ces avantages qui ont merite a cc Precede un Brevet d'invcniion, du FT- ■r:E gg 'V)->om'>-»ivs'yi^s-vyvvy3'»o'WVvs<>fvy>^-»->oo<>iO'>os . ■% r ■ y 1 : i . 324. Borders: Lagers Specimen des Divers Caracteres , Paris I 185 CLASSICAL ” TYPES book is important to any one desiring to reconstitute the typography of a somewhat hopeless period. It has also the doubtful honour of being one of the earliest specimen-books in which a series of condensed letters for titling was shown though the Didots used them in their own printing much earlier. Types of the Didot variety, — “classic” types, as they were called, — though degraded by condensation from the best Didot form, remained in general favour until about 18501 {Jig. 325). Only a few years after the revival of the original Cas- lon types in England, Alexandre de Berny brought out (in 1852) a sort of French old style letter modelled on earlier fonts (Jig. 326), which, to quote an associate of De Berny’s, “belonged to the Latin family of letters — letters charac¬ terized by the substitution of more robust — ‘plus nourries'1 — lines for the fine lines of the ‘classic’ types.” Similar types were designed about the same time by the Lyons publisher Louis Perrin, who used them in De Boissieu’s Inscriptions Antiques de Lyon . These types were made familiar to the readers of a generation ago in the publications of the Paris¬ ian house of Lemerre. “Elzevir” types were also issued by Beaudoire (Fonderie Generate) of Paris. All these offered agreeable relief from the monotony of fonts of the Didot school — though much resented by the adherents of “Di- dotery.” J Since that time, many different kinds of old style fonts have been brought out by French founders; such as the Serie XV IIe Siecle Elzevier, , a useful series of types with attractive ornaments copied from Elzevir decorations ; and imitations of seventeenth century cursive fonts and initial 1 Werdet’s Etudes Biblio graph iques sur la Fa mi lie des Didot (Paris, Dentu, 1864) should be consulted for an account of the chief books and types pro¬ duced by the Didots. 186 PRINTING TYPES letters, produced by the Fonderie Mayeur. The utilization of fonts of older style was later helped by such men as Jules Claye (predecessor of A. Quantin et Cie.), who published in 1875 Types de Caracteres et d1 Ornements Anciens, , an inter¬ esting showing of “special ” types employed by him. These were cast from the original matrices of ancient fonts which he called Elzevirien. , and for them he produced some ex¬ cellent ornaments and initials — those in the Lyons style being particularly successful. “Modern designers,” says M. Audin, “have wisely reacted against the tendency intro¬ duced by Grandjean in his types, a tendency that Basker- ville and Bodoni did not know how to escape and that Didot carried to its extreme. A better balance between the thin and thick strokes, a little fancifulness also in line, has changed entirely the physiognomy of modern typography.” 1 While types showing Didot influence are still much used in France, the most carefully printed books are now often set in French old style fonts. During the present century, the “historical types” of the Imprimerie Nationale have been increasingly employed and appreciated — in works like Claudin s Histoire de P Imprimerie en France , and in the agreeable editions of Balzac, Flaubert, and De Maupassant printed by the Imprimerie for the Paris publisher Conard. And some modern Parisian type-founders have resuscitated eighteenth century styles in fonts and ornaments, with most charming results. To see how early nineteenth century fonts compare with the historical fonts which preceded them, look at the compara¬ tive table of roman and italic types employed by the French National Printing-House from 1640 to 1825 (Jig. 327). It is one of the most enlightening documents about French type- 1 Audin’ s Le Lrure , p. 50. ONZE Si° 1G — 3 FR. 30 CENT. LE KILO. Ego multos homines excellenti animo ac virtute fuisse, el sine doctrina, naturae ipsius habitu prope divino, per seipsos et moderatos et graves exstitisse faleor : etiam illud adjungo, saepius ad laudem atque virtutem naturam sine doctrina, quam sine natura valuisse doctrinam. Atque idem ego contendo, cum ad naturam eximiam atque illustrem accesserit ratio quaedam, conformatioque doctrinae; turn illud nescio quid praeclarum ac singulare solere existere. Ex hoc esse hunc numero, quern pa- tres nostri viderunt, divinum hominem, Africanum : ex hoc C. Laelium, L. Furium, moderatissimos homines et continentissi- mos: ex hoc fortissimum virum et illis temporibus doctissimum, M. Catonem ilium senem : qui profecto, si nihil ad percipien- dam colendamque virtutem litteris adjuvarcntur, nunquam se ad earum studium contulissent. Quod si non hie tantus fructus ostenderetur , et si ex his studiis delectatio sola peteretur: ta- men, ut opinor, hanc animi remissionem, humanissimam ac li- beralissimam judicaretis. Nam caeterae neque temporum sunt, neque aetatum omnium, neque locorum : haec studia adolescen- tiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunl foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur ac rusticantur. Quod si ipsi haec neque attingere, neque sensu nostro gustare posse- mus, tamen ea mirari deberemus. Quis .nostrum tarn animo Ego multos homines excellenti animo ac virtute fuisse, et sine doctrina, naturae ipsius habitu prope divino, per seipsos et moderatos et graves exstitisse fateor : etiam illud adjungo, saepius ad laudem atque virtutem naturam sine doctrina, quam sine natura valuisse doctrinam. Atque idem ego contendo, cum ad naturam eximiam atque illustrem, accesserit ratio quaedam, IMPRIMERIE. fonderie. 123456789 0. Fuit autem et animo magno , et corpore , imperatoriaque forma, ut ipso aspectu cuivis injiceret admirationem sui. Sed Fonderie Generate, rue Madame, n° 22, a Paris. 325. “ Classic ” Types: Epreuves de Car act e res, Fonderie G Mr ale Paris , 1843 I I' I - . ■ c’est ia famille des lettres Latines, lettres caract£ris£e$ par la substitution de traits plus nourris aux traits fins du type classique et par le leger raccord des empattements termines en pointe, qui delimitent les traits, avec ces traits eux-memes. C’est la une creation vraiment originale, qui a ouvert un champ nouveau a la Fonderie de caracteres, champ si vaste qu’on peut dire que la plupart de ses creations se rattachent a ces types, depuis leur apparition premiere, en 1852. La Typographic a multiplie leur emploi dans toutes les impressions si variees des ouvrages de ville, pour rompre la monotonie resultant de Femploi unique des lettres d£riv£es du type classique. II n’est pas tem^raire d’affirmer que cette substitution sera plus complete dans un jour prochain, et que des caracteres ordinaires proce- dant des memes principes remplaceront nos types actuels dans presque tous les travaux de rimprimerie. La Typographic reconnaissante rapportera le m£rite de cette evolution, d£ja si feconde, a son initiateur, et associera aux noms de ses illustres devan ciers, les Didot et les Fournier, celui de de Berny. 326. French Old Style revived by De Berny , Paris , in 1852 “CLASSICAL” TYPES 187 faces in existence.1 The letters of the Garamond fonts of 1540 are most irregular, and this is true of the characters cut by Grandjean in 1693 and finished by Alexandre, and those of Luce of 1740 — when compared with the greater mechanical perfection of roman letters in Didot’s font of 181 1. The older types make elegant, easy, readable pages, but pages set from Didot types appear rigid, formal, and tire¬ some. This is still truer of the fonts of Jacquemin and of Marcellin Legrand, who cut a more condensed version of his type in 1847 — which by no means bettered its design. Compare the Garamond types of 1540 with the Legrand types of 1825, and it is plain enough that mechanical per¬ fection does not necessarily make a fine font. And yet these types were intended to supersede the splendid romain da roi of earlier days. All this came about in French typography through Grandjean’s mischievous serif, Baskerville’s influ¬ ence, the later printing of Bodoni and the Didots — and some English fashions, which must now be considered. From JVotes sur les Tyfies Rtr angers du Specimen de V Imfirimerie Roy ale (Paris, 1847) . There is a similar table in Duprat’s Histoire de V Imfirimerie Imfieriale de France (Paris, 1861). CHAPTER XX ENGLISH TYPES : l800-l844 IN England, a change in type-forms, analogous to that which was taking place in France, and a like final crys¬ tallization, brought about a new style of English type. Transitional fonts which were far on the way to this, we have seen in the work of English presses at the end of the eighteenth century. It is their nineteenth century develop¬ ment of which we have now to speak. Classification of types by centuries is an arbitrary thing. Typographical style does not, of course, change because im¬ prints are dated 1800 instead of 1799, and many books pro¬ duced in England early in the new century resembled, in type-forms and manner, those issued during the last years of the old. For instance, a poem in folio entitled The Sover¬ eign. Addressed to His Imperial Majesty Paul , Emperour of all the Russias , by Charles Small Pybus, London, Bensley, 1800, is a superb showing of transitional English types just about to become modern face(t/z^. 328). Dibdin wrote in 1817 that he considered this book the finest piece of print¬ ing that Bensley had produced. Tasso’s Jerusalem Deliv¬ ered \ printed by Bensley and brought out in 1803, is a quarto showing the use of old style type, much leaded, which was one of the ways of obtaining the light effects then the mode. Another book by Bensley which is interesting to the student of transitional types is Macklin’s beautifully printed folio Bible of 1800 — an imposing work of great reputation, in¬ tended to rival Bulmer’s Boy dell Shakspeare.” Hume’s History of England , in five folio volumes, printed for Rob¬ ert Bowyer in 1806 by Bensley, was highly praised by the lovers of fine books of that day. Then again, Blair’s Grave , printed by Bensley and published by Ackermann in I8l3y u THOU, great Monarch of a pow’rful reign, That more than doubles Europe’s whole domain! 328. Types used in The Sovereign : Bensley , London , 1800 189 ENGLISH TYPES: 1800-1844 with vivid and beautiful illustrations by William Blake, * is a book in which the fine types used in the introduction and the poem itself are merely in the direction of what we to-day call modern face. In the same class falls The Press , a Poem. Published as a Specimen of Typography. By John Me - Creery. Liverpool , Printed by J. McCreery , and sold by Ca- dell Davies , London , 1803 — a beautiful book in quarto, with wood-engravings by Henry Hole, pupil of Bewick, after designs by Thurston. It is set in a charming great primer character cut by Martin, much leaded, with Argu¬ ments set in italic, and was printed with a special ink made by McCreery himself. There were, however, English books published in the earliest years of the nineteenth century which did show a distinct change in type-forms. For example, in 1801, Bul- mer printed for J. Wright of London a quarto edition of a book called Poetry of the Anti- J acobin, a very charming per¬ formance, in which the beautiful types are losing the last vestiges of old style and are running into modern face. This book is a collection of prose, poetry, and drama, and shows very well the effect of these new types in various forms of composition {fig. 329). In Scotland, James Ballantyne of Edinburgh was printing in similar style. A good specimen of his work is a quarto edition of Johnson’s Rasselas , illustrated by Smirke, published in London in 1805. The Rev. John Anastasius Freylinghausen was author of a somewhat dreary book entitled An Abstract of the Whole Doctrine of the Christian Religion , which he was able to present in two hundred and sixteen pages — quite a feat when one stops to think about it ! This excellent work was edited to conform to the doctrines of the Church of England, and, the Preface says, ‘"'stood so high in the good opinions of the Greatest Female Personage in this Kingdom, that 190 PRINTING TYPES vit was translated into English for the use of her illustrious daughters” — the “Female Personage” being no other than Queen Charlotte. This book was the first volume stereo¬ typed by Earl Stanhope’s process, and is interesting on that account. The standard rules of the Stereotype Office affixed to this book state that nothing is to be printed against Re¬ ligion, everything is to be avoided upon the subject of Pol¬ itics offensive to any Party, that the Characters of Individ¬ uals are not to be attacked, and — what concerns us most — that every Work which is stereotyped in this Office is to be composed with beautiful Types. This notice throws a certain light on the innocuous role which the Stereotype Office proposed for itself, and also shows that they thought this book printed from good types — it being the first of their publications. These types are not old style at all. They are what we now term modern face, and the book is men¬ tioned because it shows an early use (1804) of this type- form {fig- 330). An extremely good specimen of a real modern face roman type was used in Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s Bibliographical Decameron, printed in 1817 by Buhner in three volumes {fig. 33 1). This work is one of the most successful typo¬ graphical achievements of the early nineteenth century. The typography is excellent, the pages splendidly imposed, and the reproductions of old printers’ marks and other illustra¬ tions beyond praise. In presswork it is one of the finest of modern volumes. It needed, however, all that the printer could do for it ; for its author wrote in an affectedly playful style which makes his books among the most tiresome and irritating in the language. Bulmer’s fine edition of Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities of Great Britain (V olumes II, III, IV) and the Bibliotheca Spenceriana (1814—15) are also worth examining. Though thy disloyal sons, a feeble band, Sound the loud blast of treason through the land : Scoff at thy dangers with unnatural mirth, And execrate the soil which gave them birth, With jaundiced eye thy splendid triumphs view, And give to France, the palm to Britain due: Or, — when loud strains of gratulation ring, And lowly bending to the eternal King, Thy Sovereign bids a nation's praise arise In grateful incense to the fav'ring skies — Cast o'er each solemn scene a scornful glance, And only sigh for anarchy and France. Yes ! unsupported Treasons standard falls, Sedition vainly on her children calls ; While cities, cottages, and camps contend, Their King, their Laws, their Country to defend. Raise, Britain, raise thy sea-encircled head, Round the wide world behold thy glory spread ; Firm as thy guardian oaks thou still shall stand. The dread and wonder of each hostile land ! 329. Types used in Poetry of the Anti- Jacobin: Bulmer , London , 1801 STANDING RULES OF The Stereotype Office. 1. Nothing is to be printed against Religion. 2. Every thing is to be avoided, upon the subject of Politics, which is offensive to any Party. 3. The Characters of Individuals are not to be at¬ tacked. 4. Every Work which is stereotyped at this Office, is to be composed with beautiful Types. 5. All the Stereotype Plates are to be made accord¬ ing to the improved Process discovered by EARL STANHOPE. 6. School Books, and all Works for the Instruction of Youth, will be stereotyped at a lower Price than any other. 330. Types used by the Stereotype Office, London, 1804 ' . J NINTH DAY. 43 see you in this field of contest, brandishing your unerring lance, or quietly reposing beneath the panoply of your seven-bulls-hide shield ! . . Lysander. This must be a very extraordinary cham¬ pion. Li sardo. 4 In his way ’ (as they call it) he hath absolutely no compeer ; and Magliabecchi yields entirely to his ascen¬ dant genius — for Nennius not only loves bohes as lustily as did the librarian of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but he hath something more than a mere title-jpage acquaintance with them. His memory also is equally faithful and well- furnished— and such a gluttonous bibliomaniacal appetite doth he possess, that even Burner, the Gallia Christiana , and Bouquet’s Recueil des Historiens des Gaules , will scarcely suffice him for a twelvemonth’s c victualling.’ Mabillon, Montfaucon, and Muratori are his dear delights as foreign authors ; while his deal-shelves groan beneath the weight of annotation upon our home historians ; such as Gildas, Jeffrey, his namesake, Ingulph, Hoveden, Malmesbury, Matthew Paris, Ralph de Diceto, and Benedictus Abbas, &c. &c. — and then for the * scribbled margins’ (asWarburton used to express it) of his Leland, Camden, Twysden, Gale, Sparke, Hearne, Batteley, Grose, King, and others of the like character — oh, ’twould do your heart good only to have a glimpse of them ! Lorenzo. More and more wondrous ! Lisakdo. I have not yet done with Nennius. He hath no small knowledge of the art of design ; and brandishes his pencil upon castles, cathedrals, and churches, that it were a marvel to see how his drawers and portfolios are crammed with the same. There is not a church, nor place of worship, nor castle, within the counties of Sussex , Kent , and Bedford , 331. Page of Bibliographical Decameron: Bulmer , London , 1817 ENGLISH TYPES: 1800-1844 191 Other examples of the employment of these modern face types are found in the text of Rudolph Ackermann’s cele¬ brated series of illustrated quartos on Westminster Abbey ( 1 8 12) and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge (1814-15), and in the inimitable Microcosm of London (l 808-1 1), etc., the coloured plates of which are so delight¬ ful that they have obscured the merit of their straightfor¬ ward typography — some of it Bensley’s work. Another edi¬ tion which shows this kind of type (and also its falling off) is John Murray’s 16mo edition of Lord Byron’s Works , published in five volumes in 1823. Here we begin to see what such types were coming to when less well cut, less well printed, and less well imposed, and also how poor they were in smaller sizes. For printers at that date found the same trouble with delicate modern face types that we do now. In fact, Dibdin, in one of the few directly written passages in the Bibliographical Decameron , mentions this difficulty, and (somewhat surprisingly) seems to feel that old style types were better than the modern cut of letter in which his own book had been printed. “ In regard to Modem Printing ,” he says, “you ask me whether we are not arrived at the top¬ most pitch of excellence in the art? I answer, not quite at the topmost pitch : for our types are, in general, too square, or sharp; and the finer parts of the letters are so very fine , that they soon break, and, excepting in the very first im¬ pressions, you will rarely find the types in a completely per¬ fect state. There is more roundness, or evenness, or, if you will allow the word, more comfortableness of appearance, in the publications of Tonson and Knapton, than in those of modern times.” Now Tonson’s and Knapton’s types were old style. As in all periods when particular attention was paid by printers to making fine books, the cultivated amateur was 192 PRINTING TYPES not lacking, and one such man, now forgotten, was Julian Hibbert. He was an interesting character who, besides hav¬ ing a hand in the social and political reforms of his day, undertook to reform the Greek fonts then used in printing. In 1827, he brought out at his private press in his house in London, The Book of the Orphic Hymns , “ in uncial letters, as a typographical experiment” (Jig. 332). Hibbert says of his alphabet that it “was first composed from the inspection of Inscriptions in the Museums of London and Paris, and thus it is no wonder, if it still retains more of a sculptitory than of a scriptitory appearance.” After reading Montfau- con’s Palseographia Grxca and examining facsimiles of the Herculanean manuscripts, he altered the forms of many of the letters. “If I had adopted the Alphabet of any one cele¬ brated ms.,” Hibbert says, “I should have had less trouble. ... As it is, I have taken each letter separately from such mss. as I thought best represented the beau ideal of an uncial type ; ... yet as placed side by side, they look very different from a ms.” But he calls it “ a Greek type, which, at the same time that it is calculated for ordinary use, approaches nearer to old mss. than types that have been hitherto used,” and “represents with tolerable accuracy the forms of the letters used by the Greeks themselves, in the brightest days of their literature. ... I do not mean,” he adds, “a type like that used in Bodoni’s Callimachus, . . . ornamented (or rather disfigured) by the additions of what, I believe, type-founders call syrifs , or cerefs ,.”1 Two books were printed by this fore¬ runner of Robert Proctor, who was indeed vox clamantis! The fonts had considerable charm, but were at the time considered — if they were considered at all — as complete failures; and were afterwards melted. 1 See “ Preface addressed by the Printer to Greek Scholars” in The Book of the Orphic Hymns. Y M N O I . LV . 31 LV . (54) € i c A({>pOAITHN y M N O C . OypANIH . nOAYYMNG , C^AOMMeiAHC A(J>POAITH . noNTorcNHC . reN€TeipA ©ga . ^lAonANNyxe , ccmnh , NyKTGpiH . Z6YKT€IP^ • AOAORAOKG . MHTGp ANATKHC : OANTA TAP GK CG0GN GCTIN , Yr'ez6Y5C0 A€ T€ KOCMON } KAI KpATGGIC TpiCCCON MOipCON . rGNNAIC AG TA HANTA : 5 OCCA T GN OYP^NWI GCTI , KAI GN TAIHt ROA yK Ap/ICO I , €N noNToy tg By©coi . cgmnh BAKXOIO RApeApe , T€pr\OM€NM 0AAIHICI . TAMOCTOA6 . MHTep GpCOTCON I nei©01 A€KTpOX ApHC , KpY<£lH • XApiACOTI ANACCA , 4>ainom€nh t , ac{) anhc t , epATonAOKAM , eyRATepeiA . 30 nym<|)Iaih . cynaaitg > ©gcon ckhrtoyxs . aykaina ; reNNOAOTeipA , <|)lAANAp€ . nO0€INOTATH , BIOACOTI f GNZGy^ACA BpOTOYC AXAAINCOTOICIN ANATKAIC . KAI SHpWN nOAY 4>Yaon • €p COM AN6C0N Yno 4>IATpC0N ? epxeo . Kynpor€N€C ©eiON tcnoc r eiT gn OAYM/1COI 15 ecci . eeA bacia€i a , kaacoi rH©o ycA npocconcoi ; eiTe kai €YAipAN©Y CYplHC €aoc am^iroagygic ; cits cy r gn neAioici cy^ apmaci xpyceoTeYKToic AirynTOY katgxgic tepHC TONIMCOACA AoyTpA . H KAI Ky^NGOICIN OXOIC GRI •nONTION OIAMA 20 epxOMGNH XAipeiC NGROACON KyK'AIHICI XOpGlAIC J h nym(J)A!C repnHi k y ancoricin gn .xgoni AIM . eyiAc en aitiaaoic ^ammcoagcin aamati kc>y4>coi ; GIT GN KYHpCOI . ANACCA , TpO^COI CGO i GN0A KAAAI CG nAp©GNOI AAMHTAl N y M({)A I T ANA RANT GN I AyTON 25 yMNOyCIN CG . MAKAipA . KAI AMBpOTON ATNON AACONIN . GA06 . M A K A I p A G6A . MAA GRHp A T ON GIAOC GXOyCA ; lyXHI TAP CG KAACO CGMNHI ATIOICl AOTOICIN . 332. Julian Hibberfs Uncial Greek Types, London, 1827 ENGLISH TYPES: 1800-1844 193 It is to Scotch founders that we must turn for the next step in the development of the modern face type-family. Alexander Wilson, who in the eighteenth century made types for the brothers Foulis, had left a foundry which was still maintaining scholarly traditions. The taste which led to the adoption of lighter type-forms had been followed consistently by his house ; and, probably still further influ¬ enced by Didot types, the Wilson foundry early in the nine¬ teenth century produced an English version of them — the best English variant of this form of letter that we have. It is sturdier and pleasanter to read than parallel French types, and we are much more at home with it. It is not as good a type as the Caslon character, but as produced by Wilson it is a very handsome and serviceable letter, and in it we have another English type-family — the Scotch modern face. It is an English equivalent of the fonts shown in the 1819 speci¬ men of the Didots. The fonts, practically as we have them to-day, are beau¬ tifully shown in the Specimen of Modern Printing Types cast at the Letter-Foundry of Alex. Wilson Son , at Glasgow , 1833. This quarto specimen is in two parts. In an “Ad¬ dress to the Printers,” which prefaces the volume, the Wil¬ sons say : “ In conformity with ancient, immemorial usage, we have, in Part I. displayed our Founts in the Roman garb — the venerable Qjuousque tandem; but lest it should be supposed that we had chosen the flowing drapery of Rome for the purpose of shading or concealing defects, we have in Part II. shown off our Founts in a dress entirely English.” Two pages of titling-letters are displayed before we come to the first body type — a spirited and fine cut of great primer. Then follow varieties of roman, from pica to dia¬ mond. A page of double pica Greek (used in the Homer printed by the Foulis brothers) is followed by Greek fonts 194 PRINTING TYPES down to “ mignon,” and two pages of Hebrew. The roman and italic types are again displayed in Part II, set in Eng¬ lish, sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry, and variously leaded. A broadside specimen of Wilson’s newspaper fonts ends the book.1 Every roman and italic type in it is mod¬ ern face. We show a pica font {Jig- 333). “The Foundry of Messrs. Wilson,” says Savage (writing in 1822), “at Glas¬ gow, has been long established, and for many years enjoyed a monopoly of letter founding in Scotland. They have, how¬ ever, of late experienced a formidable competition from Mr. Miller of Edinburgh, who derived his knowledge of the art from them, and whose types so much resemble theirs as to require a minute and accurate inspection to be dis¬ tinguished.”2 3 William Blades considered “the year 1820 as a boundary line between the old and new style of punch -cutting. About that time great changes were initiated in the faces of types of all kinds. The thick strokes were made much thicker and the fine strokes much finer, the old ligatures were abolished and a mechanical primness given to the page, which, ar¬ tistically, could scarcely be called improvement. At the same time, printers began to crowd their racks with fancy founts of all degrees of grotesqueness, many painfully bad to the eye and unprofitable alike to founder and printer.”0 Thus taste, which in England had sanctioned very light types, began to change to heavier faces about 1815.4 Exactly as 1 A similar quarto specimen was issued in the same year by the Edinburgh branch house of Wilsons & Sinclair, which may be also consulted. 2 Decorative Printing, p. 73. 3 Blades’ Early Tyfie Specimen Books of England , Holland, France, Italy , and Germany , London, 1875, pp. 21, 22. 4 Blades says 1820, but Vincent Figgins’ specimen of 1815 is full of these dropsical types, and Thorne’s specimen of these letters appeared as early as 1803. Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nos¬ tra? quamdiu nos etiam furor iste tuus eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata jactabit audacia? nihilne te nocturnum presidium palatii, nihil ur- bis vigilise, nihil timor populi, nihil consensus bo- norum omnium, nihil hie munitissimus liabendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt? patere tua consilia non sentis? constrictam jam omnium horum conscientia teneri conjurationem tuam non vides? quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consilii ceperis, quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris? O tempora, o mores! Senatus hoc intelligit, consul vidit: hie tamen vivit. vivit? immo vero etiam in senatum venit: fit publici consilii particeps: notat et designat oculis ad ceedem unumquemque nos¬ trum. Nos autem, viri fortes, satisfacere reipub- ABCDEFGHXJKLMNOPQRSTUV* ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ £0123456789 Pica Italic , No. 3. Quousque tandem abutere , Catilina , patientia nos - tra ? quamdiu nos etiam furor iste tuus eludet ? quem ad finem sese effrenata jactabit audacia ? ni¬ hilne te nocturnum prcesidium palatii , nihil urbis vigilice, nihil timor populi , nihil consensus bonorum omnium , nihil hie munitissimus habendi senatus locus , nihil horum ora vultusque moverunt; patere tua consilia non sentis ; constrictam jam omnium horum conscientia teneri conjurationem tuam non vides ? quid proxima , quid superiore nocte egeris , ubi fueris , quos convocaveris , quid consilii ceperis , quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris ? O teynpora , o mores ! Senatus hoc intelligit , consul vidit , hie tamen vivit . vivit ? immo vero etiam in senatum venit: fit publici consilii particeps: notat et designat oculis ad ccedem unumquemque nostrum . Nos autem , viri fortes , satisfacere reipub . videmury si istius furorem ABCDEFG II IJKLMNOPQRS AnCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWX YZJECE 333. Modern Face Types: Alexander Wilson & Son's Specimen Glasgow , 1833 ■ -4 r II ■ ■ • - • ENGLISH TYPES: 1800-1844 195 in France, the weight of these new type-faces was at first gained, not by a greater weight of line throughout , but by a dis¬ proportionate thickening of heavy strokes of letters, which left their hair-lines much as before. This reaction from fra¬ gile to sturdy letters was a change which, if it only had been guided by some one familiar with early type-forms, might have led to better results. But at that time materials for the comparative study of types were not readily assembled. The further development of these fashions brought about a kind of swollen type-form1 in which all the lines of a letter were of nearly equal strength, and these were the types of which Savage says: “The founders have now introduced another change in the proportions of letters, and have gone to a barbarous extreme, from their first improvement. The rage is now, which of them can produce a type in the shape of a letter, with the thickest lines, and with the least white in the interior parts.” He adds that the founders said that such types were meant for printing hand-bills, etc., and if they were introduced into book-work, that it was contrary to the original intention. Savage displays sheets in which original Caslon types are shown in contrast to the current Caslon types. If these are bad types, he says, “it may be attributed to the bad taste of others, whom the founders are desirous of obliging” — but this is merely an ancient and poor excuse for not sticking to one’s principles! These hid¬ eous fashions for a time drove original Caslon types to the wall. Hansard, writing in 1825, says : “Caslon’s fonts rarely occur in modern use, but they have too frequently been su- 1 These characters were often called in type-specimens and elsewhere “Egyp¬ tian” (no doubt in allusion to their “darkness”); and a London jest-book of 1806, under the heading “Fashionable Egyptian Sign-Boards,” says : “An Irishman describing the Egyptian letters which at present deface the Me¬ tropolis, declared that the thin strokes were exactly the same size as the thick 196 PRINTING TYPES perseded by others which can claim no excellence over them. In fact, the book-printing of the present day is disgraced by a mixture of fat, lean, and heterogeneous types, which to the eye of taste is truly disgusting.”1 In London, Robert Thorne, successor to Thomas Cottrell, is responsible for the vilest form of type invented — up to that time. Thorne’s specimen-book of “Improved (!) Types” of 1803 should be looked at as a warning of what fashion can make men do. His “jobbing types” look as their name suggests ! Plis black-letter is perhaps the worst that ever ap¬ peared in England. In Vincent Figgins’ specimen of 1815, and in Fry’s specimen of 1816, and naturally in the speci¬ men of William Thorowgood (Thorne’s successor) of 1824, 1832, and 1837, the new styles are triumphant {Jigs. 334 and 335). Fashions like these, as Hansard says, “have left the specimens of a British letter-founder a heterogeneous com¬ pound, made up of fat-faces and lean faces, wide-set and close-set, all at once crying Quousque tandem abutere patientia nostra ?” The Caslon specimen of 1844 shows the adop¬ tion of some of the worst current fashions in types; and we exhibit a selection of the unattractive ornaments intended to accompany the “ fat-face ” fonts produced by this famous house {Jigs. 336 and 337). A tide of bad taste had swept everything before it by 1844 — the precise year of the revi¬ val of Caslon’s earliest types! Much the same thing was happening on the Continent, and the curious may consult such “documents” as the Sup¬ plement to the Specimen of the Spanish founders, J. B. Cle- ment-Sturme y Compahia, published at Valencia in 1833, which is full of types of this kind ; the Didot, Legrand et Cie. Hansard’s Tyfiografihia, London, 1825, p. 355. As early as 1805 the Cas- lons ceased to show in their specimen the original types cut by the first William Caslon. English No. 2. Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quamdiu nos etiarn furor iste tuns elu- det? quem ad finem sese effrenata jactabit au- dacia? nihilne te nocturnum presidium palatii nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil consensus bonorum omnium, nihil hie muni- tissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum or vultusque moverunt? patere tua consilia non ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWNYZ M GE £1234567890 ABODE FG III J IvLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZJSGG Quousque tandem abutcre , Catilina , patientia nostra ? quamdiu nos etiarn furor iste tuns elu- det ? quem ad finem sese ejjrenat a jactabit au - dacia ? nihilne te nocturnum presidium palatii nihil urbis vigil ice, nihil timor populi , nihil consensus bonorum omnium , nihil hie muni - tissimus habendi senatus locus , nihil horum or vultusque moverunt ? patere tuaABCDEFGH IJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZMGE MX English No. 2, on Pica Body. Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quamdiu nos etiarn furor iste tuus elu~ det? quem ad finem sese effrenata jactabit au- dacia? nihilne te nocturnum presidium palatii nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil consensus bonorum omnium, nihil hie muni- tissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum or vultusque moverunt? patere tua consilia non ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ Mt E £1234567890 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ^CE Quousque tandem abutere , Catilina , patientia nostra ¥ quamdiu nos etiarn furor iste tuus elu- det ? quem ad finem sese effrenata jactabit au - dacia t nihilne te nocturnum presidium palatii 334. Roman and Italic: W. Thorowgood')s Specimen , London , 1824 DOUBLE PICA PLAIN BLACK, No. 1. &nfo foe ft furtfoer foerefop en- actcfo, tfoat tfoe jtta#ot£, Bat lifted or otfocr foeafo #fftcerg of efoerp &ofom attfo place eotpo rate, foetng a ^Justice or 3Jtt£ DOUBLE PICA OPEN BLACK, No. 1. m®r fet ft Irrtfig fttuftflr^ ~ \$ 2$aflfflEj£ or otftrr ftratlr ®fBtrr^ of ^oSow or pi in tor® » itetejj it ffr^tfer GREAT PRIMER PLAIN BLACK, No. 1. tie it further focreli# enactetr, tftat tfte jwagorg, 93atltff£, or otfoer foealt ^ffiteer^ of efoerg Zotem anfo place to x porate, anti ©ttg tot tfom ting 2&ealtn, foetng $fwMw or ^ttstttceS of peace k GREAT PRIMER OPEN BLACK, No. 1. ftutlr foe it fmrtfoer foerefop ewrfelr trfoaf tie ptapor^ Mmiiffl0> or otier ieafo i^fleero1 of efoerg> Whittingham , London , 1850 1 have printed this ' Sermon from a MS. m eral Literature of the Civil War time enables of the xviith. 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I § 'Tt 'vt co N CERTAIN CONFUSIONS OF MODERN LIFE, ESPECIALLY IN LITERATURE: AN ESSAY READ, AT OXFORD, TO THE GRYPHON CLUB OF TRINITY COLLEGE. If I were in need of a single word to express the idea which I wish to follow out in this essay, I could scarcely, I think, find one in English ; none, at least, that would completely fit my meaning : I should have to fall back upon the Greek. We translate the word xoo-pos by order, beauty, or world, according to the context ; but we have no single phrase that combines and identifies in our minds, as this word did in the minds of Greeks, the beauty of harmo¬ nious arrangement with the beauty of the visible world. We do not seem, indeed, to have at all the same quick perception of this kind of beauty that they appear to have had. The Author of “ Modern Painters ” has pointed out that, in the Odyssey, when Hermes approaches Calypso’s cave, what he admires is, not so much the wild beauty of the island, as the trimness of the goddess’s own domain, her four fountains 345. Type used in The Hobby Horse : Chiswick Press , London , 1890 CASLON AND FELL REVIVALS 201 letter-founders, and for many years have successfully used “revived old style” and also characters of the modern face family.1 Constable employed an interesting Scotch modern face for David Nutt’s distinguished series of Tudor Trans¬ lations. The fine revived old style or (as I should prefer to call them) modernized old style fonts were used by the same printer in the three volumes of Bibliographica (1895); and Mr. J. P. Morgan’s monumental Catalogue of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books from the Libraries of Morris , Ben¬ nett, etc. (1907), is a magnificent example of the skilful use of these types by the Chiswick Press. In smaller sizes this type was delightfully employed by the same press in their reprint of Sir Henry Wotton’s Elements of Architecture , issued by Longmans in 1903 (fg. 344). But the early and “classic” use of this type was in Her¬ bert Horne’s periodical, The Century Guild Hobby Horse (1886-92). Its later volumes (beginning in 1888), printed in a large size of the “modernized old style” character, with delightful decorations drawn by Mr. Horne, are most dis¬ tinguished pieces of typography {fg. 345). Of The Hobby Horse not many volumes were issued, but they will always hold a place in the annals of the revival of printing at the end of the last century. In Mr. Horne’s typographical venture, William Mor¬ ris had a hand ; but as Morris rode a very Gothic hobby¬ horse of his own, and Mr. Horne’s charger was much more Italian than Gothic in its behaviour, it is easy to see why Morris soon turned his attention to printing in a way more to his mind. His endeavours, their results, and the influ¬ ence they have had on modern printing have now to be con¬ sidered. 1 In England Caslon types are called “old face”; what we call “modernized old style ” is there termed “revived old style ” — a type designed about 1850. CHAPTER XXII ENGLISH AND AMERICAN REVIVAL OF EARLY TYPE- FORMS AND ITS EFFECT ON CONTINENTAL TYPES WILLIAM Morris was born in 1834 — the son of prosperous middle-class people, who lived freely and pleasantly. He was educated at Marl¬ borough School and Exeter College, Oxford, where he formed a lasting friendship with Burne-Jones. Originally intending to take Holy Orders, he changed his mind, and studied ar¬ chitecture for a year or two under Street ; then, between 1857 and 1862, through Rossetti’s influence, he took up painting. Meanwhile he had begun to write — his Defence of Guene- vere appearing in 1858. From then until his death he wrote many volumes of poetry and prose, most of it of a very high order. Painting proved unsatisfactory, so he began about the year 1870 to work as a decorator, eventually turning his hand to illumination, — in which he was expert,- — to the making of wall-papers, rugs, hangings, and stained glass, and to house decoration. It was an era of pattern, and though in Morris’s hands the pattern was often magnificent, houses decorated or furnished by him would now appear rather tiresome and affected. In socialism Morris was seriously interested. It was the somewhat romantic socialism of a well-to-do, fastidious man, which had the added attraction of placing him in the oppo¬ sition; for he somewhat enjoyed “otherwise-mindedness.” Morris never went into the slums and lived with the people — indeed, he gave scant attention to the particular individ¬ ual in his large and roomy movements — it was not the manner of his time. He desired with great desire to see the life of workmen improved by being made more like his own, rather than to get nearer the workmen’s point of view REVIVAL OF EARLY FORMS 203 by making his life more like theirs. Yet he was thoroughly in earnest about his socialism. That the workman’s life was so sordid made him miserable. He loved mediaevalism because it appeared to him — I think rather unhistorically — a close approach to the life he wished to see commonly lived in the world. None the less, he had sometimes impos¬ sible manners, often a furious temper, always short patience with fools, and there was a bit of pose and “ bow-wow” about his daily walk and conversation. In his character, as in his wall-papers, one was a little too conscious of the pattern, but the pattern was fine, and there was lots of it ! Over and above all this he was an educated, cultivated man, tremen¬ dously observant and shrewd, and his driving power was enormous. Like Bodoni (whose work Morris detested), no man knew better what he wanted to do. Morris’s motto was “ If I can,” and by hard work, enthusiasm, and — we must admit — a fixed income and a good deal of incidental pros¬ perity, he usually “could.” Morris’s style of printing, therefore, may be partly ex¬ plained by the interiors of his own houses or those he deco¬ rated ; and its motive by his idea of socialism, which, through a kind of Religion of Beauty, was to produce the regenera¬ tion of a work-a-day world. It was to be a wonderful world, and it was, potentially, very real to him. His printing was for it, or was to help to its realization by others. If his deco¬ rations now appear a bit mannered and excessive, and his socialism somewhat romantic and unreal, it is because Mor¬ ris was very much of his period. Thus (again like Bodoni, though from diametrically opposite theories) Morris made magnificent books, but not for ordinary readers — nor, for the matter of that, for ordinary purses — but only for a cer¬ tain fortunate group of his own time. To understand the work of the Kelmscott Press we must 204 PRINTING TYPES understand this much of the environment and ways of thinking of a man as forcible and sincere as he was many- sided. Some years before Mr. Morris set up any press of his own, he had made a few essays in printing. The Roots of the Mountains , which was issued in 1889, was printed for him at the Chiswick Press in a character cut some fifty years earlier, belonging to the Whittinghams, and modelled on an old Basle font; and in 1890, the Gunnlaug Saga was printed in a type copied from one of Caxton’s fonts. In 1891, almost fifty years after the Whittinghams’ revival of Cas- lon’s type, and some fifteen years after the Fell types were resuscitated, Morris established the Kelmscott Press, named after Kelmscott Manor House (on the upper Thames, about thirty miles from Oxford), which Morris acquired in 1871. The first “Kelmscott” book that he issued was The Story of the Glittering Plain , and its effect upon lovers of fine books was instantaneous. Opinion was at once divided about Mor¬ ris’s printing. To a limited public, the Kelmscott editions opened the millennium in book-making. Others were irri¬ tated at what they considered their affectation and faddish¬ ness, and condemned them utterly, as unreadable — which was only a half-truth. The effect on printing in general that Morris was to have through his types and type-setting en¬ tirely escaped most printers, as did the sources from which he derived his methods. Because they knew very little about early manuscripts or early books, about the characters of the one or the types of the other, the Kelmscott books appeared to them to have fallen from the sky — either very new and wonderful or else very freakish and senseless — just as they would to anybody who knew nothing whatever about it ! On the great English public, or the majority of English print- REVIVAL OF EARLY FORMS 205 ers, Morris’s books had — at that time — scarcely any effect at all. Indeed, Mr. Morris was a much more widespread popular force in America and Germany than in England, where his work was known only to a comparatively small artistic group. “I began printing books,” said Mr. Morris, “with the hope of producing some which would have a definite claim to beauty, while at the same time they should be easy to read and should not dazzle the eye, or trouble the intellect of the reader by eccentricity of form in the letters. I have always been a great admirer of the calligraphy of the Middle Ages, and of the earlier printing which took its place. As to the fif¬ teenth century books, I had noticed that they were always beautiful by force of the mere typography, even without the added ornament, with which many of them are so lavishly supplied. And it was the essence of my undertaking to pro¬ duce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of printing and arrangement of type. Looking at my adventure from this point of view then, I found I had to consider chiefly the following things : the paper, the form of the type, the relative spacing of the letters, the words, and the lines ; and lastly the position of the printed matter on the page. . . . “Next as to type. By instinct rather than by conscious thinking it over, I began by getting myself a fount of Ro¬ man type. And here what I wanted was letter pure in form; severe, without needless excrescences ; solid, without the thickening and thinning of the line, which is the essential fault of the ordinary modern type, and which makes it dif¬ ficult to read ; and not compressed laterally, as all later type has grown to be owing to commercial exigencies. There was only one source from which to take examples of this per¬ fected Roman type, to wit, the works of the great Venetian 206 PRINTING TYPES printers of the fifteenth century, of whom Nicholas Jenson produced the completest and most Roman characters from 1470 to 1476. This type I studied with much care, getting it photographed to a big scale, and drawing it over many times before I began designing my own letter; so that though I think I mastered the essence of it, I did not copy it ser¬ vilely; in fact, my Roman type, especially in the lower case, tends rather more to the Gothic than does Jenson’s. “ After a while I felt that I must have a Gothic as well as a Roman fount ; and herein the task I set myself was to redeem the Gothic character from the charge of unreadable¬ ness which is commonly brought against it. And I felt that this charge could not be reasonably brought against the types of the first two decades of printing ; that Schoeffer at Mainz, Men telin at Strasburg, and Gunther Zainer at Augs¬ burg, avoided the spiky ends and undue compression which lay some of the later type open to the above charge. . . . Keeping my end steadily in view, I designed a black-letter type which I think I may claim to be as readable as a Roman one, and to say the truth I prefer it to the Roman. “ It was only natural that I, a decorator by profession, should attempt to ornament my books suitably: about this matter, I will only say that I have always tried to keep in mind the necessity for making my decoration a part of the page of type.”1 Morris’s three types (two black-letter and one roman) were as follows : A roman letter, called the Golden Type, cut in English size, finished in 1890, and first used in his Golden Legend , issued in 1892 {jig* 346). 1 A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press. Together with a Short Description of the Press by S. C. Cockerell, Cf an Annotated List of the Books Printed Thereat. Hammersmith, London, 1908. THE ARGUMENT. UCIUSTarq uinius (forhisexcesx sive pride surnamed Superbus) afx ter hee had caused his owne father in law Servius T ullius to be cruelly murd'red,and contrarie to the Rox maine lawes and customes,not rex quiring or staying for the people's suffrages, had possessed himselfe of the kingdome : went accomx ganyed with his sonnes and other noble men of ome, to besiege Ardea, during which siege, the principall men of the Army meeting one evening at the tent of Sextus T arquinius the king' s sonne, in their discourses after supper every one comment ded the vertues of his owne wife: among whom Colatinus extolled the incomparable chastity of his wife Lucretia. In that pleasant humor they all posted to Rome, & intending bv theyr secret and sodainearrivall to maketriall or that which every one had before avouched, onely Colatinus finds his wife (though it were late in the night) spinning amongest her maides, the other ladies were all found dauncing and revelling, or in severall disx ports: whereupon the noble men yeelded Colax tinus the victory, and his wife the fame* At that time Sextus T arquinius being enflamed with Lux crece beauty, yet smoothering his passions for the present, departed with the rest backe to the campe : 55 346. Morris's Golden Type: Kelmscott Press ■ ■ ! . . REVIVAL OF EARLY FORMS 207 A black-letter great primer font, called the Troy Type, showing the influence of Schoeffer of Mainz, Zainer of Augsburg, and Koberger of Nuremberg, although different from any of these, and first used in the History es of Troye , issued the same year (fig. 347). A black-letter, called the Chaucer Type, differing from the Troy type only in size, being pica instead of great primer. This was used in some parts of the Historyes of Troye , but was first employed for an entire book in The Order of Chivalry , published in 1893 (fig 348). Morris also designed a fourth type, based on the fonts used by Sweynheym and Pannartz in St. Augustine’s De Civitate T)ei, but it was never cut. All Morris’s types were finally left to trustees, and their use is occasionally permitted for special books. The wood-blocks of illustrations to his editions have been placed in the British Museum. As we look at Morris’s typographical achievements in per¬ spective, they seem to be more those of a decorator apply¬ ing his decorative talents to printing, than the work of a printer. His books are not always what he said books should be — easy to read, not dazzling to the eye, or troublesome to the reader by eccentricities of letter-form. He says he admired fifteenth century books because they were beau¬ tiful “by force of the mere typography, even without the added ornament, with which many of them are so lavishly supplied.” But what is true of those books is only partly true about his own. He did make books which it was a plea¬ sure to look at — as arrangements of type and fine pieces of printing — but he did not make books that it was a pleasure to read. If Morris admired Jenson’s fonts, it is hard to see why he did not copy their best points more closely. One has only to take a Kelmscott book and compare it with a good 208 PRINTING TYPES specimen of Jenson’s printing to see how far away one is from the other. On the other hand, many people did not at all under¬ stand Morris’s greatness — for great he was. As he was both visionary and practical, his visions bothered the practical man, while his practicality somewhat disturbed the vision¬ ary. “ Perhaps this kind of character is rare in our time,” says Mr. Glutton -Brock, “only because craftsmen are rare; for the craftsman, if he is to excel, must be both industrious and a visionary, as Morris was. He must have honesty and common sense as well as invention; and his work devel¬ ops and harmonizes both sets of qualities. We shall under¬ stand Morris best if we think of him as a craftsman, . . . as one who could never see raw material without wishing to make something out of it, and who at last saw society itself as a very raw material which set his fingers itching.”1 I doubt if Morris himself realized the enormous effect his work would have upon typography. Neither did he know that, while his types were not particularly good types, and his decorations were often unduly heavy, by this very over¬ statement in the colour of the type on its paper, in making characters which loudly called attention to earlier ones, and in designing somewhat over-splendid decorations (which, nevertheless, were in harmony with his type), he led the printer of his particular moment to see how imposing, and even magnificent, masses of strong type, closely set and well inked, combined with fine decorations, may be. And Morris taught a lesson in the unity of effect in books for which the modern printer is deeply in his debt — a unity now influ¬ encing volumes very far removed from those rather precious productions in which it was first exemplified. Nowadays, 1 William Morris : His Work and Influence , by A. Clutton-Brock, London, 1914, p. 208. such as choose to seek it: it is neither prison , n or palace, bu t a decen t hom e. ll mmcf) i jsei/ TTfjGR praise nor blame, but say that so itis: some people praise this homeli¬ ness overmuch, as if the land were the very axle/tree of the world; so do not X, nor any unblind- ed by pride in themselvesandall that belongs to them: others there are who scorn it and the tameness of it: not X any the more: though it would in¬ deed be hard if there were nothing else in the world, no wonders, no ter¬ rors, no unspeakable beauties. Yct when we think what a small part of the world s history, past, present, & to come, is this land we live in, and howmuch smaller still in the history of the arts, & yet how our forefathers clung to it, and with what care and 6 7 347. Morris' s Troy Type : Kelmscott Press pains they adorned it, this unromantic, un¬ even tful/looking lan d of Sn gland, surely by this too our hearts may be touched and our hope quickened. |OR as was the land, such was the art of it while folk yet troub¬ led themselves about such things ; it strove little to impress peo¬ ple either by pomp or ingenuity : notunsel- dom it fell into com¬ monplace, rarely itrose into majesty ; yet was it never oppres/ sive, never a slave’s nightmare or an insolent boast: & at its best it bad an inventiveness, an individuality, that grander styles have never overpass¬ ed: its best too, and that was in its very heart, was given as freely to the yeoman’s house, and the bumble vil¬ lage church, as to the lord’s palace or the mighty cathedral: never coarse, though often rude enough, sweet, na¬ tural & unaffected, an art of peasants rather than of merchant princes orcourt/ iers, it must be a bard heart, X think, that doesnot love it: wbetberaman has been born among it like ourselves, or has come wonder/ 68 348. Morris's Chaucer Type: Kelmscott Press ' * • hi REVIVAL OF EARLY FORMS 209 the old-fashioned method of using various fonts of type on a title-page, or an unnecessary number of sizes of type in a volume, has been given up — even in the commonest com¬ mercial work. And, too, Morris’s reforms have extended to illustrations, which are at present almost always by one hand, and not, as in old-fashioned illustrated books, by half a dozen different designers and drawn without any relation to the type-page. These newer and better fashions in book-making may be directly traced to sounder concep¬ tions of what a book ought to be; and Morris — as with the weapon of the Viking heroes he loved so well — ham¬ mered this conception into the consciousness of gentlemen who will even use Truth, if it appears to be an “ asset”! For no man ever had the courage of his convictions more than Morris, or a heartier contempt for foolish opponents. When asked to hear the other side, he replied (like Garrison on the slavery question), “ There is n’t any ! ” This very intolerance made Morris a tremendous force in typography; for, in spite of certain conscious overstatements, it was a sincere intol¬ erance, and was aimed not at people, but at their shallow views of things. In the last year of his life, when in failing health, he attended a public meeting, and returning from it with a friend, showed signs of weakness. The friend, more amiable than discreet, suggested that this was the worst time of the year. aNo, it ain’t,” said Morris, “it’s a very fine time of the year indeed. I ’m gettingold, that ’s what it is.” In short, Morris hated humbug, though he sometimes mistook for humbug, opinions with which he disagreed — as ’t is human to do. He was a great printer because he was a great man who printed greatly, as he did much else. When Morris began to work with types of his own in his own way, other people (most of whom knew rather less 210 PRINTING TYPES about it) began to design their own types and print with them too. Charles Ricketts of London, who was already interested in making fine books, instituted the Vale Press. Mr. Ricketts’ books were actually printed at the Ballantyne Press, but the types were designed by him and arranged under his direction, and some very charming decorations for the Vale Press books were by his hand. In a paper issued in 1899, called A Defence of the Revival of Printing (which no one had seriously attacked), he contrasted the work of the great Venetian printers and of William Morris, with his own. Morris, as was well known, hated the Renaissance,1 but Mr. Ricketts called it ua charmed time in the develop¬ ment of man.” Admitting himself u utterly won over and fascinated by the sunny pages of the Venetian printers,” he defined the pages of a fine Kelmscott book as “full of wine” and those of an Italian book as “ full of light.” This being Mr. Ricketts’ point of view, it is surprising that his type appeared so much like Mr. Morris’s! For it is fair to sup¬ pose that the types which he designed looked precisely as he meant that they should. Apparently the Vale Press in¬ tended to deal not in “wine” but in “light,” and it must be terribly uncomfortable when you want light to get wine ! But in spite of this rather affected Defence , the Vale books had style and distinction — being more classical in feeling 1 Mr. Mackail says, in his life of Morris : “With the noble Italian art of the earlier Renaissance he had but little sympathy : for that of the later Renais¬ sance and the academic traditions he had nothing but unmixed detestation. Some time in these years [c. 1873], his old fellow-pupil, Mr. Bliss, then engaged on researches among the archives of the Vatican, met him in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and pressed him to come with him to Rome. His reply was too characteristic to be forgotten. ‘Do you suppose,’ he said, ‘ that I should see anything in Rome that I can’t see in Whitechapel? ’ Even the earlier and, to his mind, the far more interesting and beautiful work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Italy did not appeal to him in the same way as the contemporary art of England or Northern France. ’ ’ Mackail adds: “He much preferred Iceland to Italy.” CAPUT LXXXIIL pinacothecamperveni, varlogcncre tabu~ larum mirabilem : nam et Zeuxidos manus vidi, nondum vctustatis injuria victas ; ct Protogenis rudimenta, cum ipsius naturae vcritate certantia, non sine quodam horrore tractavi. Jam vcro Apellis, quam Graeci monochromon appellant, etiam adoravi. Tanta enim subtilitate extremis tates imaginum erant ad similitudinem praecisae, ut crederes etiam animorum esse picturam. Hinc aquila ferebat, coelo sublimis, deum. Illinc can- didus Hylas repellebat improbam Naida. Dam- nabat Apollo noxias manus, lyramque resolutam modo nato flore honorabat. Inter quos etiam pic- torum amantium vultus, tanquam in solitudine exclamavi: Ergo amor etiam deos tangit,^ Jupiter in coelo suo noninvenit quod eligeret, et,peccca- turus in terris, nemini tamen injuriam fecit. Hy- lam Nympha praedata imperasset amori suo, si venturum ad interdictum Herculem credidisset. Apollo pueri umbram revocavit in florem,et om- nes fabulae quoque habuerunt sine aemulo com^- plexus. At ego in societatem recepi hospitem, Lycurgo crudeliorem. Ecce autem, ego dum cum ventis litigo, intravit pinacothecam senex canus, exercitati vultus, et qui videretur nescio quid magnum promittere; sed cultu non proinde speciosus, ut facile appareret eum ex hac nota litteratorum esse, quos odisse divites solent. Is ergo, ut ad latus constitit meum. Ego, inquit, xxxv 349. The Vale Fount: Vale Press ' * . 3^*Ejusmodi fabulae vibrabant, quum Trimalchio intravit, et, detersa fronte, unguento manus lavit, spatioque minimo inten- posito: Ignoscite mihi (inquit), amici, multis jam diebus venter mihi non respondit: nec medici se inveniunt; profuit mihi tamen malicorium, et taeda ex aceto. Spero tamen jam ventrem pudorem sibi imponere; alioquin circa stomachum mihi sonat, putes taurum. Itaque, si quis vestrum voluerit suae rei causa facere, non est quod ilium pudeatur. Nemo nostrum solide natus est. Ego nullum puto tarn magnum tormentum esse, quam continere. Hoc solum vetare ne Jovis potest. Rides, Fortunata! quae soles me nocte desomnem facere. Nec tamen in triclinio ullum vetui facere quod se juvet: et medici vetant continere; vel, si quid plus venit, omnia foras parata sunt: aqua, lasanum, et cetera minutalia. Cre«- dite mihi, anathymiasis si in cerebrum it, in toto corpore fluctum facit. Multos scio sic periisse, dum nolunt sibi verum dicere. Gratias agimus liberalitati indulgentiaeque ejus, et subinde casti-- gamus crebris potiunculis risum. Nec adhuc sciebamus nos in medio lautitiarum, quod aiunt, clivo laborare. Nam communda^ tis ad symphoniam mensis, tres albi sues in triclinium adducti sunt,capistris et tintinnabulis culti, quorum unum bimum nomen- culator esse dicebat, alterum trimum, tertium vero jam senem. Ego putabam, petauristarios intrasse, et porcos, sicut in circuits mos est, portenta aliqua facturos. Sed Trimalchio, exspectatione discussa: Quern, inquit, ex eis vultis in coenam statim fieri/ Galium enim gallinaceum, phasianum, et ejusmodi naenias rustici faciunt: mei coci etiam vitulos, aeno coctos, solent facere. Conti<- nuoque cocum vocari jussit, et, non exspectata electione nostra, maximum natu jussit occidi; et clara voce: Ex quota decuria es/ Quum ille, ex quadragesima, respondisset: Emtitius, an, inquit, domi natus es/ Neutrum, inquit cocus, sed testamento Pansae tibi relictus sum. Vide ergo, ait, ut diligenter ponas; si non, te jubebo in decuriamvillicorum conjici. Et quidem cocus, potentiae admonitus, in culinam obsomum duxit. CAPUT XLVIII. ^S-Trimalchio autem miti ad nos vultu respexit; et, Vinum, in~ quit, si non placet, mutabo: vos lllud, oportet, bonum faciatis. Deorum beneficio non emo, sed nunc, quidquid ad salivam facit, in suburbano nascitur meo, quod ego adhuc non novi. Dicitur confine esse Tarracmensibus et Tarentinis. Nunc conjungere xxxvii 350. The Avon Fount: Vale Press ' ■ ' ' ■ Quane non Facimus.^ Turn eqo, totIgs exci*- totus, plane vehemenTen excandui, ct ned^ didi illi voces suas: Aut dornni, out eqo iam paTni dicam. CAPUT LXXXVIIL 3^3>0necTushissGnmonibus,consule«epnuden'- Tiones coepi aerraTes Tabulanum, gt quaedam anqumenTa mihi obscima, simulque causam de^- sidiae pnacsenTis excuTene, quum pulchennimae ajRTes peniissenT, inTen quas picTuna ne mini*- mum quidem sui vesTiqium neliquissGT. Turn ille : Pecuniae, inqurr, cupidrras haecTnopica in*- stituit. >^VeRumf ut ad plasTas convenTan, Lysippum, STaxuac unius lineamenTis inhaenen- Tem, inopia exsxinxiT: gt Mynon, qui paene hominum animas Fenanumque acne compne- hendiT, non inveniT henedem. At nos, vino scoivrisque demensi, ne panaTas quidem anxes audemus coqnoscene; sed, accusaTones anxi»- qurraTis, viTia TanTum docemus ex discimus. Ubi gst dialecTica.^ ubi asxnonomia / ubi sa- pienTiae consulxissima via S Qiiis, inquam, veniT in Templum, gt voTum FeciT, si ad eloquenxiam penvenisseT S quis, si philosophise FonTem qt- TiqisseT.^ Ac ne bonam quidem valexudinem peTunT : sed sTaTim, anTequam limen CapiTolii TanqanT,aliusdonumpnomixTiT,sipnopinquum diviTem exTuleniT: alius, si Thesaunum gffO'- deniT : alius, si ad TnecenTies HS. salvus penve*- neniT. Ipse senaTus,necTibonique pnaeccpTOH, xxxix 351. The King's Fount: Vale Press ■ I ■ > - REVIVAL OF EARLY FORMS 211 than the Kelmscott books, and less so than those of the Doves Press. The Bibliography (the last book issued by the Vale Press, in 1904) is printed in Vale type, and at the end a page of Latin text is shown in the Vale Fount (Jig. 349); another in the Avon Fount — a smaller roman type more successful, to my eye, than the Vale (Jig. 350); and a third in the King’s Fount, which is less happy through the introduction in its lower-case of some capital letter-forms (Jig. 35l). The first Vale Press book was Milton’s Early Poems , issued in 1896. The Avon seems to have been first used in 1902. Unfor- tunatelv, most of the wood-blocks of the ornaments were lost in a fire at the Ballantyne Press ; and the punches, ma¬ trices, and type were destroyed on the issue of the last of the Vale publications. The tendency in these books was cer¬ tainly toward Italian models, but so much influenced were Messrs. Hacon and Ricketts — like every one else at that moment — by Morris’s work, that they did not get as far from it as they either thought or intended. Four years after Morris’s death in 1896, T. J. Cobden- Sanderson, with Emery Walker, Morris’s learned associ¬ ate in the work of the Kelmscott Press and a man who (as every one but himself would admit) has been the mov¬ ing spirit in most of the good and scholarly ventures in modern English typography, founded the Doves Press. It owes its odd name to an old riverside inn at Hammersmith on the Thames, familiar to rowing men, which in turn gave its name to a cottage which Mr. Cobden-Sanderson (who had already set up a bindery) used as a work-shop. The Doves Press was founded, says Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, in his Catalogue published in 1908, “to attack the problem of pure Typography, as presented by ordinary books in the various forms of prose, verse, and dialogue, and keeping 212 PRINTING TYPES always in view the principle . . . that "The whole duty of Typography is to communicate to the imagination, without loss by the way, the thought or image intended to be con¬ veyed by the Author,’ to attempt its solution rather by the arrangement of the whole book, as a whole, with due regard to its parts and the emphasis of its divisions, than by the splendour of ornament, intermittent, page after page.” For this press, a single roman font was cut, and the first book produced in it (in 1891) was the Agricola of Tacitus. This Doves type discarded the extreme blackness of Morris’s fonts, and was more Italian in character than any which had hitherto appeared in England. It is based on Jenson’s roman font, “freed from the accidental irregularities due to imper¬ fect cutting and casting,” — perhaps a fault rather than a virtue, — “and the serifs altered in some cases.” It is a very beautiful type, although its regularity, and the rigidity of the descender in the y,1 make it thin and spiky in appearance, and thus a little difficult to read; nor has it the agreeable “opulence” of the best Italian fonts (Jig' 352). The Doves Press books have been, however, among the very best of those printed under the influence of the Morris revival. The Doves Bible (1903) is a masterpiece of restrained style; and although in one or two later volumes a commonplace italic is introduced into the fine roman text, the Doves books have delightful consistency and simplicity. All ornament is es¬ chewed in them, but fine, free initials give a decorative note to the pages here and there. Mr. Walker withdrew from the undertaking in 1909. Mr. Cobden-Sanderson, with con¬ siderable elegiac ceremony, brought its work to a close a few years later. He died in 1922. 1 A test of the excellence of any type is this — that whatever the combination of letters, no individual character stands out from the rest — a severe require¬ ment to which all permanently successful types conform. between the seen and the unseen, the finite and the infinite, the human and the superhuman, and is a monumental work of the eighteenth as distinguished from the seventeenth century, the century of the Bible and of Milton. Finally, in the nineteenth cen¬ tury, Sartor Resartus, the Essays of Emerson, and Unto this Last, are related & characteristic attempts to turn back the Everlasting Nay of scepticism into the Everlasting Yea of affirmation, & in the presence of the admittedly inexplicable & sublime mystery of the whole, to set man again at work upon the creation of the fit, the seemly, and the beautiful. Browning’s Men & Women, now in the press, conceived about the same time, is a more direCt presentment of the same positive solution. U These Books printed, as a first essay, the whole field of literature remains open to seleCt from. To-day there is an immense reproduction in an admirable cheap form, of all Books which in any language have stood the test of time. But such reproduction is not a substitute for the more monumental production of the same works, & whether by The Doves Press or some other press or presses, such monumental pro¬ duction, expressive of man’s admiration, is a legiti¬ mate ambition and a public duty. Great thoughts deserve & demand a great setting, whether in build¬ ing, sculpture, ceremonial, or otherwise; & the great works of literature have again and again to be set forth in forms suitable to their magnitude. And this 352. Doves Type: Doves Press ■ ' ■ ■ REVIVAL OF EARLY FORMS 213 A private venture which has produced comparatively few books, but among them some of the greatest beauty, is the Ashendene Press, established in 1895, and directed by C. H. St. John Hornby of London. Its first books employed the Caslon and Fell characters — up to 1902. Later, an Ital¬ ian semi-gothic character, closely resembling the Subiaco type of Sweynheym and Pannartz, was designed for this press by Mr. Walker and Mr. Cockerell (Jig. 353). This type was first used in Dante’s Inferno , issued in 1902. The splendid Dante of 1909 — the works entire, with illustra¬ tions by C. M. Gere; Le Morte Darthnr (19 13) ; and the beautiful Boccaccio (1913-20), with rubrication, and initials designed by Graily Hewitt, are among its greatest achieve¬ ments. The Dante ranks with the Doves Bible and the Kelmscott Chaucer — described as the “three ideal books of modern typography,” from the three ideal presses of the Revival.1 In many books the initials are in colour, and some¬ times in gold. Lucien Pissarro’s Eragny Press (like the Kelmscott and the Doves Press, placed at Hammersmith) took its name from Eragny, the Normandy village where Mr. Pissarro was born, and where he studied and worked wdth his father. His earlier books were printed in the Vale type designed by Ricketts. The Brook type, in which an account of the Eragny Press was printed in 1903, is an agreeable roman letter designed by Pissarro on the lines of the Vale type, with a pleasant movement and admirable legibility (fig. 354). The superiority of its appearance to that of the Vale fonts is due partly to the paper generally used, w hich is most delightful. Wood-blocks printed in colours are a favourite feature of the Eragny Press books, and the text is their ac¬ companiment. The designing, wood-engraving, and print- 1 See Peddie’s Cantor Lectures on Printing. London, 1915. 214 PRINTING TYPES ing are all the work of Pissarro and his wife, though some¬ times the illustrations are by other hands. The Essex House Press, although its first issues were brought out in Caslon types, produced, in 1903, a font called the Prayer Book type — ambitious, but not entirely suc¬ cessful. It was designed by C. R. Ashbee, the director of this press. There are some curiously unfortunate characters in its lower-case letters — the g and f, e and n, for instance — which resemble pen-work, and not very pleasant pen-work at that. His Endeavour type, which in 1901 preceded the Prayer Book font — a letter smaller in size, but with many of the same eccentricities — is obscure and dazzling. And set in these types, it is not surprising that the Essex House books have no great merit. Its work in Caslon types was much the best — and was (as when combined with Edmund New’s delightful illustrations in Wren’s Parentalia ) harmo¬ nious and simple. As for the Cambridge type of the Uni¬ versity Press, Cambridge, it is an unattractive letter, which combines many of the defects of the fonts we owe to the modern revival. It is difficult to see why it was ever cut at all. Herbert P. Horne designed three types of importance — the Montallegro, the Florence, and the Riccardi. These may be called sister types, for they show a certain progression of idea, and all attack the problem of what a fine type for commercial printing should be — elegant, yet readable from a present day standpoint. The Montallegro type came first. This type was mod¬ elled, as were the others, on an early Florentine font, and was intended to be a good “reading type,” which should have rather more flexibility and grace than the fonts based on older Italian forms. It was first used in Condi vi’s Life of Michelagnolo Buonarroti by the Merrymount Press, Bos- OD1 profanum vulgus &z arceo ; Favete Unguis : carmina non prius Audita Musarum saccrdos Virginibus puerisq$ canto. Regum timendorum in proprios greges Reges in ipsos imperium cst lovis, Clari Gtganteo triumpbo, Cuncla supercilio moventis. Est ut viro vir latius ordinet Arbusta sulcis, hie generosior Desccndat in Campum petitor, Moribus hie meliorque fama Contendat, illt turba clicntium Sit maior : aequa lege Necessitas Sortitur insignis SZ imos ; Omne capax movet urna nomen. Destrtclus ensis cut super impia Cervice pendet, non Siculae dapes Dulcem elaborabunt sapor em, Hon avium citbaraeq$ cantus H 353. Type used by the Ashendene Press A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ERAGNY PRESS. MR. PISSARRO firstlearned to draw from his father, in the fields far from any art school. One day M. Lep&re, the well/known engraver, showed him how his tools were held, & finding him interested, gave him two gravers and a scorper. Thus furnished with the means he made a start and taught himself; with the re/ suit that in 1886 F. G- Dumas, editor of the «Re/ vue IIlustr£e», commissioned him to illustrate a story, «Mait' Liziard», by Octave Mirbeau. Four woodcuts appeared, but the subscribers to the Review expressed so much disapproval of these illustrations, conceived and executed in the uncompromising spirit of Charles Keene's work, which Mr. Pissarro greatly admired, that his collaboration was cut short there and then. He learnt later that this epistolary demonstra/ tion against his work, which inundated Mr. Dumas' office, was the work of some students in the atelier of a well/known painter. Dis/ appointed, and having heard that in England there was a group of young artists who were ardently engaged in the revival of wood/en/ graving, he crossed the Channel with the in/ tention of joining them, having in his pocket an introduction from F£lix Fenton to John 4 Gray 354. Brook Type : Eragny Press # . . • ■ . • . ' REVIVAL OF EARLY FORMS 215 ton, in 1905, and since in the volumes of The Humanists' Library (Jig. 355 a). This type was cut under Air. Horne’s direction by E. P. Prince of London, an English crafts¬ man of great ability and experience, and — within a nar¬ row circle — of great reputation. The types of the Kelmscott, Doves, and other English private presses were from his hand, as well as the Florence and Medici fonts. The Florence type of 1909 came next. It is somewhat smaller in face and simpler in form than the Montallegro; and is perhaps the most successful of the three. It was cut for Messrs. Chatto & Windus of London (Jig. 355 b). The last was the Riccardi type, also cut in 1909, based on fonts cut by Miscomini. It has been used in the “Ric¬ cardi Press” editions published by the Medici Society of London. A little monotonous in effect and gathering too much colour in printing unless carefully managed, it is so practical that it loses the elegance of the other two fonts (Jig. 355 c). A smaller size of the type (ll -point) has been cut for the same series of volumes.1 Among other interesting typographical experiments of the later nineteenth century was a Greek type designed by Selwyn Image. This was cut in two sizes, both used in a Greek Testament issued in 1895 (Jig. 356). It was based on the letter-forms of early Greek manuscripts, modified as little as might be by concessions to the familiar cursive Greek characters of Aldus, which have so unhappily in¬ fluenced Greek typography. These types are not particu¬ larly successful. Robert Proctor’s very fine Greek type — the “Otter” — used in the Oresteia of Aeschylus, printed in 1904, was another important essay in Greek type-forms 1 There are other modern private fonts on which I have not touched. For fac¬ similes of some of them, see Steele’s Revival of Printing, London, 1912, and The Art of the Book (a Special Number of The Studio) , London, 1914. Also The Saturday Revie%v , London, November, 1919. 216 PRINTING TYPES (Jig. 357). It was based on the noble Greek characters em¬ ployed in the New Testament in the Complutensian Poly¬ glot Bible, printed at Alcala in 1514. For this type Proctor designed the capital letters — except the II.1 It is fully de¬ scribed by Proctor in a note at the end of the volume ; which was produced at the Chiswick Press, for Emery Walker, S. C. Cockerell, and A. W. Pollard.2 Next to English special types, similar American fonts are perhaps the most interesting. The fine Montaigne font designed by Bruce Rogers for the Riverside Press, Cam¬ bridge, was cut in 1901 for a monumental edition of the Essays of Montaigne , published in 1903. This, Mr. Rogers said, “ was an attempt to meet a want that was felt for a large type-face that should avoid, on the one hand, the ex¬ treme blackness of the types which Morris’s work had made popular, and, on the other, the somewhat thin effect of the 1 Proctor says that with this exception the original font had no capital letters ; but according to other authorities it actually had nine. See J. P. R. Lyell’s Cardinal Ximenes, London, 1917, p. 47. 2 It would be an injustice to think that all the best energies of modem Eng¬ lish printing (which for books I think at present the ‘ ‘ soundest ’ ’ in the world) were exhausted in the work of special presses or the use of specially designed types. All along there has been a steady flow of admirably printed English books of a more normal kind, printed from old style, modem face, and other fonts commonly obtainable. In these types the best English printers have con¬ sistently produced a certain class of memoir and many books on architecture, painting, and the fine arts, which are delightful — agreeable to look at, to han¬ dle, and to read. The Oxford University Press, the Chiswick Press, the Ar¬ den Press, the houses of Constable and of Ballantyne have printed many such books, and there are other less famous presses which almost, and sometimes quite, equal them. Work like this is what the student must look to for some of the best and most characteristic English typography of to-day. Though American ephemeral printing has generally been superior to English, of late some English presses have turned out such work most successfully. The cir¬ culars, placards, etc., of the Pelican, Cloister, and Curwen presses are most agreeable in feeling, and their striking effects have been arrived at with com¬ mendable simplicity of attack and economy of means. And if you set him beneath as good a man as him self at the table: that is against his honour. If you doe not visite him at home at his house: then you knowenotyourdutie. Theismaner of fashions and behaviours, bring men to such scorne and disdaine of their doings : that there is no man, almost, can abide to beholde them : for they love them selves to farre beyonde measure, and busie them selves so much in that, that they finde litle leisure to (a) La lungheza di decta chiesa insulata e braccia du- cento sexanta: la quale difuori e tuctadi uarii marmi incrustata, con statue di marmo et porphiri molto adornata per mano di nobili sculptori; maxime di Donato ui e il gigante primo, dalla porta della As- sumptione marmorea per mano di Iohanni Banchi, sopra la Annuntiata di musiuo per manodi Domenico Grillandaro. Nella facciatadinanzieuno euangelista a sedere et una statua di uno che si piegha, et in sul cantone uno uecchio, tucte per mano di Donato. Ma a dirti la uerita, decta facciata, la quale Lorenzo be’ (*) and it is no exaggeration to say that in no printed book between the closing years of the fifteenth century and those of the nineteenth was any at¬ tempt made to obtain them all, though the tra¬ ditions of good craftsmanship ensured that some of them were preserved in many cases. The fifteenth-century book was avowedly an imita¬ tion of a fine manuscript; its type was a copy of the current writing hand, the arrangement of its page was that of a manuscript, its spacing (?) 355. Herbert Horne's Montallegro , Florence , and Riccardi Types ’ ' , . i 1 1 EN AE TAIZ HMEPAIZ exeiNaic napariNeTai ’Igoonhc 2 6 Banncrnc KHpucccoN gn th epHJuep thc ’Ioubakie Xgtcom 3 MgtonogTtg, HrriKGN rap h BaciXcia toon oupaNcoN. Outoc rap gctin 6 pHecic bia ’Hcaiou toO npo9HTOu Xcr ©ntoc CONH BoGONTOC CN TH £pHJUW 'ETouudcaTe thn 6c36n Kupiou, cuedac noieiTe t&c Tpifiouc aCuou. 4 Autoc be 6 ’Icoonhc gTxgn to gnBujulq qutcO anb TpixcioN KajutHXou Kai zconhn bepjuLaTiNHN ncpi thn 0C9UN auToO, 5 h be Tpo9H hn auToO axpibcc Kai julgXi arpioN. Totg GsenopGueTo npoc auTON ’IcpocoXujua Kai naca h ’loubaia 6 Kai naca h ncpixcopoc toO ’IopbaNou, Kai cfianTizoNTO gn too ’lopbaNH noTajuoo un’ auTou czcjuloXotoujuignoi toc 7 ajuiapTjac outoon. ’IBoon be noXXouc toon 0apicaiooN Kai ZabbouKaiooN GpxojuLeNouc cni to Banncua clneN auTOic r CNNHJULaTa gxiBncon, tic unebeizcN ujulTn 9utgTn anb 8 thc jugXXouchc oprftc ; noiHcaTG oun . KapnoN azioN thc 9 JUGTQNoiac * Kai julh bbzHTG XereiN gn goutoic FlaTGpa cxojulcn ton ’ABpacLu., Xerc© rap ujulTn bn bunaTai b eeoc gk toon Xigcon toutoon creTpai tgknq too ’Aflpadu. 356. Sehvyn Image's Greek Type . I .. ■ • •• ' , ■ ‘ r ' rus, you Phalerian, will you not wait a minute?' — I waited for him, and as soon as he overtook me, 'I have just been looking for you, Apollodorus,' he said, Tor I wish to hear what those discussions were on Love, which took place at the party, when Agathon, Soc^ rates, Alcibiades, and some others met at supper. Some one who heard it from Phoenix, the son of Philip, told me that you could give a full account, but he could relate nothing distinctly hinv 358. Bruce Rogers' Montaigne Type CTHE CENTAUR. WRITTEN BY MAURICE DE GUERIN AND NOW TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY GEORGE B. IVES. Was born in a cavern of these mountains. Like the river in yonder valley, whose first drops flow from some cliff that weeps in a deep grotto, the first moments of my life sped amidst the shadows of a secluded re/ treat, nor vexed its silence. As our mothers draw near their term, they retire to the cav/ erns, and in the innermost recesses of the wildest of them all, where the darkness is most dense, they bring forth, uncomplaining, offspring as silent as themselves. Their strength/giving milk enables us to endure with/ out weakness or dubious struggles the first difficulties of life; yet 359. Bruce Rogers ’ Centaur Type »r . a :4 * . . ■ ■: . . OMINE omnipotens, Deus patrum nostrorum Abraham, et Isaac et Jacob, et seminis eorum justi, qui fecisti ccelum et ter' ram cum omni ornatu eorum; qui ligasti mare verbo praecepti J2 Oh ■ * u a. V G £3 * pH G ; « g § O hn 2 d •rt .Sr 3 *ri co co co G *3 g * a *s a ■■ p -s ^ U ^ !fi O -M i- 5 c r Oh-g — ’ u H * Oh d 2 s g~ co & G .2 a nj G 43 g 5 Gn'g ! S M,s c t) S S3 6 o g, £ > .3 w I S .g -2 o- c hO > * SL’g nj U •G CG G G ♦-H >H p o G O U 3 o 3 0 g '■* f3 S3 g d 3 •’ ♦ ♦. a d^g ■M -f-> niJ fr*a s-6 i.23 c S .3 e ^ rH hM O P C H • -rH > •=. •> * d^ S d ^H o 360. Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue's Merrymount Type THE CONTINENTAL REVIVAL 219 well, to which these fonts are not suited at all. The conven¬ tion which is properly required in their employ restricts their use. For in “artistic” types, as in so much else, art to the Anglo-Saxon is thought out, not felt — conscious rather than instinctive. So-called aesthetic printing, — be it English, American, or German, — taken en bloc , is, in the long run, a bit tiresome. It is so much in earnest that it charms too wisely rather than too well, and fails in the purpose for which all types and books exist. These fonts have not, I think, directly accomplished all that the designers in their enthusiasm expected. But they are indirectly of value in making us think about earlier and purer type-forms. Students of typography must be familiar with them; and it is only the student who can place them in their proper perspective, and, because he does so, appraise them at their relative and therefore true value. And if type¬ founders who produce new fonts will continue to study (as they are at last beginning to do) the originals which usu¬ ally inspired these modern essays, they will recognize how much men have to hark back for good models to the older types, after all. So in spite of some faults and impractical qualities, such essays stimulate the eye and remind print¬ ers of standards set by the past. It is from this point of view that they are one of the important contributions of late years to the appreciation and practice of good book¬ making. II OUTSIDE of England, Germany was most influenced by the English revival of twenty years ago; more “popularly” influenced than England itself. Up to the time of the War there was a sort of renaissance in German type¬ founding and printing. The German books of the early nine- 220 PRINTING TYPES teenth century were not well printed, — neither type nor paper was good, — but they were simple in their poverty, “poor but honest.” From 1850 to 1880, the ordinary Ger¬ man book was very bad indeed, because it was at once so cheap and so pretentious. But a new “secession” movement began about 1890, not only in painting but in other fields pertaining to the arts. As far as printing was concerned, the first important note of this revival was struck by George’s Blatter furdieKunst; followed in 1894 by the appearance of the secessionist periodical Pan , which introduced Morris’s books to the German public, and the typographical style of which greatly influenced contemporary German printers. This was followed in 1899 by the Insel, a similar review, from which grew the Insel-Verlag, Leipsic, whose entire product took on a fine and thoughtful typographical form. Some of its books were printed in modified German gothic types. Books printed in roman type show the influence of English models. Its ventures were effectively supported by the public. Private presses were also set up, and some fine special types were cut for them. Great attention was paid to good calligraphic lettering,1 for which instructors were brought over from England by the German Government. The volumes brought out by the Hyperion- Verlag and Cen¬ tury Press of Munich (Hans von Weber), by the Tempel- Verlag, the Insel-Verlag, and the Janus Press at Leipsic, the “ special editions” of Ernst Rowohlt (Drugulin-Dmcke) of Leipsic, the books of Diederichs of Jena, and of Georg Muller of Munich show the best book-making of this mod¬ ern German revival. As to types, besides the best current German and roman 1 For Austrian work in calligraphy see Rudolph von Larisch’s Unterricht in Ornamentaler Schrift. K. K. Hof- und Staats druckerei, Vienna, 1913 — an important and interesting study. In this connection a roman type designed by C. O. Czeschka — the Czeschka Antiqua — should be looked at. THE CONTINENTAL REVIVAL 221 types obtainable, fonts in both were specially designed and cut for the work of these houses — notably the modified gothic character designed by E. R. Weiss. This Weiss- Fraktur was highly considered in Germany, and was an attempt to solve the problem of a “book face” of German script which should be agreeable and readable. The types designed by Behrens, Koch, Tiemann, Wieynk, Kleukens, Konig, Holzl, and Ehmcke, are characteristic of the merits and defects of this school of type-design. Of the results of all this effort, it is less easy to speak. While the cheap , popular books were admirable, the more ambitious German volumes were mannered and intentional. Like most modern German work in other forms of artistic endeavour, they produce a certain sensation, but not that of pleasure; they astonish rather than charm. To one who possessed a modern “ secession” house, with a classic-hy¬ gienic-penal looking library, I suppose such books would be the only kind to have.1 For these determined volumes, as we view them in perspective, seem to have run true to form and to have been characteristic of the life about them — but alas, that is another story! For us, German book-making closed memorably with the beautiful exhibition held at Leipsic in the summer of 1914. No doubt a certain northern quality in Morris’s work commended itself more to Teutonic than to Latin taste. So in Italy the “revival” showed itself chiefly in a return to old forms of roman letter. A type closely modelled on Mor¬ ris’s Golden type was used by theFratelli Treves of Milan in an edition of D’Annunzio’s Francesca da Rimini issued in 1902. Since that time there have been many similar books, 1 For illustrative material I refer the reader to the Times Printing Number, London, 1912 ( Pine Printing in Germany, pp. 58 etseq. ), and The Art of the Book, Special Number of The Studio, 1914 ( The Art of the Book in Germany, by L. Deubner, with specimens of types described) . 222 PRINTING TYPES but the tendency has been toward lighter types and free and sometimes startling unconventionality in decoration. The Milanese magazine Risorgimento Grafico employs a roman type of free design based on a font of Ratdolt’s. It was brought out in 1911 by the Societa Augusta of Turin. While agreeable to the eye, there is too much space between individual letters to make it wholly successful ( fig . 36l). In Holland, there is evidence of the spread of the move¬ ment toward earlier letter-forms in the Distel type designed for J. F. van Royen’s Zilverdistel Press at The Hague, by Lucien Pissarro. This is intended to imitate old Nether¬ lands writing (Jig. 362). The narrowing of paragraph- marks is a clever way of subduing an obstreperous char¬ acter in such fonts. The Zilver type (Jig. 363), on the order of the Doves Press font, was cut for the Zilverdistel, and the historic Enschede types have been employed for some of its work. Interest in typography is also evidenced by the existence of the Typografische Bibliotheek at Amsterdam. In Belgium, the Musee du Livre at Brussels is a somewhat similar establishment. The latter lately issued Sept Etudes publiees a V occasion du Quatrieme Centenaire de Christophe Planting printed from old types — more curious than beau¬ tiful — in the Musee Plantin at Antwerp. Although in France the Morris revival never had much vogue, it is interesting to recall that a year or two before the founding of the Kelmscott Press some delightful gothic types — a clever rendering of the best form of lettre botorde — were cut by E. Mouchon for a reproduction of Simon Vostre’s Heures a P Usage de Rome of 1498, of which a page is reproduced (jig. 364). The book was printed by O. Jouaust and published in 1890 by L. Gauthier, who was, by the way, eleve and successor to Curmer of Paid et Virginie celebrity. Save for this and a few similar exam- \ c d> e nj 4-4 Vi V U ns P3 O £ ns i-l b^ - . ^ £ \ I t ns \ • o \ • , , 4-J ns Vi ns 13 P3 Vi ns P^ c ns Vi 4-4 • tH O d) O 4-4 C2 'd> T— 4 > o G 4— » Vi ns ns P3 d) O o G # yH GO o • 11 o G 13 4— > c C/i Oh d> P3 4— < d> d) d> Vi ns r* * -H Vi 4— > J GO u ♦ »s vG Uh 00 V d> ns G • i— i r-1 ns Vi d) V ns . £0 Vh o 00 •■w nS £* wd E nJ (V) E ~ 3 'c u< E * r-H (U *-> OU.^ o> n VS VS g o> * ^ 3 a a- c C o Oh G k d> El GO u VS o G • ii d> pG o VS VS d) o o d> ns • >— i > d) Vi GO G> ns d> d) ns Oh GO o • rH 4-> c ns 0.0 d) G cr »-i \ 4_) d) 2 GO n 23 o C Jl) -G 13 G CP d> « c d> E d> > d> vi GO \ • *~i G ° IT W vi GS U U GO O ° O JU G 13 G ‘ G D- g d> P3 •s d) Vi d> 4— ) 4-4 d) ns O P3 Vi ns G 00 ns • n > d) Vi GO G G P3 d> P3 g «* S • i-i o d) ■ •’-« CL^ V. VI ns ^ O o -ti • E ""2 Cg o 4_> g ^ n3 'G ,9 N 2 < s *— i . G > - W 4* cd P cQ u CQ -C < © PL) « d) d> GO d) d> G OO ns Pi _d) "d> G ns K 3 * & ^ d) G d> ▼-H ^ Vi o o Oh U o * ^ * 1— < ft JU — - * O 4-J C G £ ' ns 53 {3 d> ^ 0-4 d" E GO Vi ns d> G O • i— i VS UO * i-i P3 d) P3 G ns Vi 00 d> GO GO d) P3 d) "G d> V) N V) E ^ G ^ cL GO d> J2 0) d) V G ns O d) V* EE ns d) O ^ o o G ^ Vi G ns . d) d> VI G H3 O Vi V5 gb^ w o 2 «* ^ G cu-g E ^ i-i ns Vi 4-4 u ^ v Vi Vi C d) G CP C o G • n • i c G d> 00 • n • H P^ CO 00 Vi ns O o d) 4-J GO Vi . Oh ns 4-4 ♦k pG TO CL n • i id C ns 4H CO ns ♦ , 1 E p^ G 00 “1 ns vs •G vs O u o Oh d> GO o * T-H 4-> C ns "d) C fH G O G ^ O * r* G 00 V2 o C O u v O c d> E d> d) d) G ^ Vi "G d> ‘ Q Oh ^ d) O Vi d) V V d) 4—1 O Oh C o G -s d) O \ d> v V ns Oh U G d) Vi d) 2 ^ G r° & ^ m G Oh O v vs ns Vi 1G S -a 5“l »” nS GO .vj d) O K*” _ d) c O g y. S E - C jx, ns GO ns ♦v ns v v d> u d) G ns ns G V* m Gj G d> d> TJ ,n O u d) O u d> v ns U rl 4— > G ns Vh o v O G ns d> vs d> • 1-1 GO u u d) > 13 c O G* C ^ ns ts c G G o c d) G CP d> Oh ijU d) t t o. # TO CLi W o 2 3 3 CL, d> U lH V ns 4—4 V d) G CP ns G d> Vi d> > ns 00 Vi d> Oh ns Vi O v 00 d) G PO d) f“d d) ns ns Vi G d> ti c d> E ■ ^ b o • G d) 0^,-H V Pj ns G O !-« Vi ns vs Oh W d) d) GO • i-« v V O ns Vi d> Vh d> V V d) PJ «- ns 4-4 • H V Vi ns O vs ns 13 i d) 4-4 G O * CL, 4> T> 361. u Inkunabula” type , «6‘ isz Risorgimento Grafico: Bertieri and Vanzetti , Milan , 1921 , * . . (fOJie fel den bogben dans verftaen Dar nigben dar fwigben dar frille fraen Dar fweuen omme ende omme Dar rreden van dar fweuen an Die fnelle bogbe fprongbe |TDie minne fra er die minnegaer Die minne fingber die minne fprtngber Die minne rufr in der minnen Die minneflaepr die minne waecr UJiemacbdiralverfinnen f Die blenkendeclederfijnalgbefpreir Die duerbaer vaer fijn al bereir Glc nae fijn beboren Al war dar in den boue dienr Dar beefr d ie minne vercoren |[Die duerbaer vaer van bogben fcbijn (Diredelen cruden mirpuren wijn Si bouden edel wife Si ronen baren edelen aerr Die minne die wilfeprifen $TUarvroecbdemacb in den boue fijn Daer alfo milde fcbenkers fijn Die bogbe vroecbde maken 362. Distel Type: Zilverdistel Press , The Hague, 1918 DECEMBER MCMXV. If DE ZILVERDISTEL BRENGT TER KENNISNEMING: If HET IS ONS DOELNIET, DOOR DIT SCHRYVENTE WYZEN OP DE WERKZAAMHEID VAN DE ZILVERDISTEL In een uiteenzetting, die afzon/ derlijk wordt uitgegeven, zal men alles omtrent haar grondbeginfelen, haar ftreven, haar programma kun, nen lezen. Dit gefchrift dient flechts, om een vastere werkwijze te verzekeren voor een deel onzer voor, nemens. If De ervaring heeft geleerd, dat ons ftreven in het buitenland alle waardeering vindt, die het mo, gelijk maakt om de door ons overwogen ferie buiten/ landfche boeken uit te geven; naaft deze willen wij echter die van Nederlandfche litteratuur niet ter zij de laten. Veeleer dringt zij zich het eerft aan onze aan, dacht op. Zij is het, aan wier meesterwerken wij in de eerfte plaats de zorgen van DE ZILVERDISTEL wenfchen te befteden, opdat zij de boekkunftige ver, werkelij king vinden, waar toe wij naar ons inzicht hen als gerechtigd, ons als verplicht erkennen. De erva, ring heeft nochtans mede geleerd, dat voor het uitvoe/ ren van onze plannen op dit gebied een andere werk wijze ware te volgen, dan voor onze boeken voor het buitenland beftemd. Kleiner immers is ons land, ge, ringer het aantal van hen, die tegelijkertijd &n in de Nederlandfche letterkunde &n in de vaderlandfche boekkunft belangftellen; en al weten wij door onder, vinding, dat een voldoende getal perfonen, die de be, 5 363. Zilver Type: Zilverdistel Press , The Hague , 1915 > . / . ■ v ' ffl y GL. bee matieteo. -Jfetea mo6tfc6 cafenbnet petpctuef. pztctea bu matu). pnctc au f&aint'/jEfoxit jConfectatiot) an facte ^Cceur. puetea bu fair. Pfaume ]0e ptofunbis, (i o^'jfibeftutt). iDibmatte be fa (Peffe. jCantique b’actione be gtdceo, pepiea bu ]0tmanc0e. ^ompfiea. Pepteo be fa famte pierce. £a toatimte be Potte^eigneut, £’£p ipfjanie be Pottc'/peigneut. £e ©tmancffc be fa a^efurrection. f’Sfcenftot) be Pofte^eigneut. fa^ete be fa pentecote. fa-jfete bu ^amtf^actemcnt. f'&fjompttot) be fa famte Pictge. * £a pjFete be tons fca >S)amt6. Pcptea bea (Poito. (Pefje be fentettemenf. pnetea pout fe factement be penitence, puetea pout fa jCommuniot). ^>af ute bu ^amt^actement. £etemomc6 and vp used to begin words, and the ^ for use at the ends of words. These swash letters, as employed by thoughtless compositors or designers, have sometimes pro¬ duced very absurd effects. Only certain of the swash italic capitals can be successfully placed in the middle of a word, the design of the rest suggesting their position either as initial or final letters. Used “discreetly, advisedly, soberly,” swash letters give variety and movement to pages of type. Furthermore, both in roman and italic, long s and its com¬ binations with ascending letters are interesting letter-forms.1 Some tied letters lately supplied in the reproduction of an his¬ torical font are : as , is , us , fr, 11 , J^>, J ?, tt. It is to be wished that terminal a’s, e’s, m’s, and n’s, with tails intended to fill out lines, were available. Apart from the agreeable appearance of these specially old-fashioned characters, they are useful in reprints of old books. And so, too, are superior letters, which are desirable for reprints of old work, or for modern books printed in antique style. In old style fonts, signs to indicate notes — star, dagger, double dagger,etc. — are more interest¬ ing and picturesque, typographically, than superior figures, which I prefer not to use with an old style type. They are particularly appropriate to books of an historical or genea¬ logical nature. For liturgical books the common liturgical signs must also be supplied, and of these peculiar sorts I sug¬ gest — at the risk of repetition — that there must be enough of each of them to allow work to go on unimpeded by an in¬ adequate supply of a kind of material that at short notice it is hard to get. Finally, the original old style arabic figures — nowadays called “non-ranging” — should be used with all old style 1 The abolition of the long s, it is popularly thought, we owe to the London publisher John Bell, who in his British Theatre , issued about 1775, discarded it. Franklin, writing in 1786, says that “ the Round s begins to be the Mode 'and in nice printing the Long f is rejected entirely.” 230 PRINTING TYPES fonts. Such figures as those in the Dutch types given by Dr. John Fell to the Oxford University printing-house are among the best of their kind ; and Caslon’s old style arabic numerals are lively and agreeable type-forms.1 Of these, the numbers 1, 2, and 0 cover only the middle of the body ; 6 and 8 are the ascending, and 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9 the descending figures (Jig. 366). “In no characters,” said Mr. Morris, “is the contrast between the ugly and vulgar illegibility of the modern type and the elegance and legibility of the ancient more striking than in the arabic numerals. In the old print each figure has its definite individuality, and one cannot be mistaken for the other ; in reading the modern figures the eyes must be strained before the reader can have any rea¬ sonable assurance that he has a 5, an 8 or a 3 before him, unless the press-work is of the best.” Second in the first class of types stands the modern face known in America as “ Scotch.” In this type the letters are more regular in design than in old style fonts. Perhaps the most beautiful form of it ever brought out was that cut by William Martin; and a very close copy if not actually the same face was produced in Scotland in the last century — notably in the “Series of Old Founts” by Messrs. Miller Sc Richard of Edinburgh. The W ayside Series of the Ameri¬ can Type Founders Company — if in its original form, with long descenders — is a fairly satisfactory equivalent. Modern face types appear, at first sight, clearer to the eye and more easily read than old style, but they are really less so in the long run. Our newspapers are printed in various poor forms of “modern face,” which is, therefore, familiar 1 The old-fashioned figures were employed until about 1785, when Hunter introduced into his logarithmic tables the new form called “ranging.” In them a larger size was needful for legibility. About 1843, both the Royal As¬ tronomical Society and the Superintendent of the (English) Nautical Almanac decided to restore the non-ranging figures. partes . ^