Mores mentions as having founded in 1690,1 could hardly (if the date be correctly given) be the same man who was a practised letter-founder in 1637. To this last-named founder no doubt belongs the fount of Great Primer Roman and Italic acquired by the Oxford University Press, which had the unenviable distinction of being designated in their Specimen of 1695, as “cut by Mr. Nichols-not good." The following is the only specimen we have to note in this place :— (1665). Specimen sheet of minute printing in several languages, addressed to the King by Nicholas Nicholls, Letter Founder. (State Papers, Domestic, 1665, vol. 142, No. 174.) 1 Dissertation, p. 46. 2 See ante, p. 148. JOSEPH MOXON, whose distinction it is to have been the first practical English writer on the mechanics of typography, was born at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, on August 8, 1627, and appears to have been brought up as a mathematical instrument maker, in which profession he showed himself highly proficient. In the year 1659, being either already settled in the metropolis, or having come thither for the purpose, he added to his stated business that of a typefounder, in which, according to Mores, he continued till 1683. It is difficult to fix the precise condition of the laws relating to typefounders in the last year of the Commonwealth. The Ordinances of 1647 and 1649, which reimposed the main provisions of the Star Chamber Decree of 1637, remained nominally in force till the Restoration, so that we are to suppose that Moxon, unless he practised his art surreptitiously or sub rosâ, was formally installed into a vacancy in the body of authorised founders on execution of the usual bond to the Company of Stationers. If, as seems probable, he commenced operations with little or no previous experience, and with no plant ready to his hand, the progress of the new foundry must at first have been very slow, particularly as he appears to have devoted much of his time to his other scientific pursuits, to which in 1665 he added that of hydrographer to the king. To this office a considerable salary was attached. In the same year, Mores informs us, he lived at the sign of the "Atlas" on Ludgate Hill, near Fleet Bridge, but the Fire of London in 1666 caused him to |