and of these last, from three to twenty would be the utmost of each required. Altogether, calculating 138 matrices (ie., two alphabets of twenty-four letters each, and ninety double and treble letters) to be the least number of matrices required to make a complete fount,1 the highest number of types of any one particular sort necessary to print a single page would be ninety-one. The average number of the eleven chief letters specified above would be about fortyfour, while if we take into calculation the minor letters of the alphabet and the double letters, this average would be reduced to little more than ten. It will thus be seen that the founts of the earliest printers consisted of a small quantity each of a large variety of sorts. Mr. Astle, in his chapter on the Origin and Progress of Printing, is, we believe, the only writer who has dwelt upon the difficulty which the first letter-founders would be likely to encounter in the arrangement of their "bill." This venerable compilation was, he considers, made in the fifteenth century, probably by the ordinary method of casting-off copy. If so, it must have experienced considerable and frequent change during the time that the ligatures were falling into disuse, and until the printer's alphabet had reduced itself to its present limits.

Of the face of type used by the earliest printers we shall have occasion to speak later on. Respecting the development of letter-founding as an industry, there is little that can be gathered in the history of the fifteenth century. At first the art of the inventor was a mystery divulged to none. But the sack of Mentz, in 1462, and the consequent dispersion of Gutenberg's disciples, spread the secret broadcast over Europe. Italy, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Spain, England, in turn learned it, and after their fashion improved it. Italy, especially, guided by the master-hands of her early artists, brought it to rapid perfection. The migrations of Gutenberg's types among the early presses of Bamberg, Eltville, and elsewhere, have led to the surmise that he may have sold matrices of his letter. In 1468, Schoeffer put forward what may be considered the first advertisement in the annals of typography. "Every nation," he says, in

1 Mr. Skeen (Early Typography, p. 299) speaks of 300 matrices as constituting a complete fount; he appears accidentally, in calculating for two pages instead of one, to have assumed that a double number of matrices would be requisite for the double quantity of type. 2 Origin and Progress of Writing. London, 1803. 4to. Chapter ix.

3 The cost-book of the Ripoli press contains several entries pointing to an early trade in type and matrices. In 1477 the directors paid ten florins of gold to one John of Mentz, for a set of Roman matrices. At another time they paid 110 livres for two founts of Roman and one of Gothic: and further, purchased of the goldsmith, Banco of Florence, 100 little initials, three large initials, three copper vignettes, and the copper for an entire set of Greek matrices.

the colophon to Fustinian's Institutes, “can now procure its own kind of letters, for he (ie., Schoeffer himself) excels with all-prevailing pencil" (ie., in designing and engraving all kinds of type).3 For the most part printers were their own founders, and each printer had his own types. But type depôts and markets, and the wanderings of the itinerant typographers, as the demands of printing yearly increased, brought the founts of various presses and nations to various centres, and thus gave the first impulse to that gradual divorce between printing and typefounding which in the following century left the latter the distinct industry it still remains.

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

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

1 "Natio quæque suum poterit reperire caragma
Secum nempe stilo præminet omnigeno."

type-plate, was separately mounted on loose wooden shanks, we dismiss as purely fanciful.

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

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

W

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

TYPE-BODIES.

The origin of type-bodies and the nomenclature which has grown around them, is a branch of typographical antiquity which has always been shrouded in more or less obscurity. Imagining, as we do, that the moulds of the first printers were of a primitive construction, and, though conceived on true principles, were adjusted to the various sizes of letter they had to cast more by eye than by rule, it is easy to understand that founts would be cast on no other principle than that of ranging in body and line and height in themselves, irrespective of the body, height and line of other founts used in the same press. When two or more

founts were required to mix in the same work, then the necessity of a uniform standard of height would become apparent. When two or more founts were required to mix in the same line, a uniformity in body, and if possible in alignment, would be found necessary. When initials or marginal notes required to be incorporated with the text, then the advantage of a mathematical proportion between one body and another would suggest itself.

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

The earliest writers on the form and proportion of letters,-Dürer1 in 1525, Tory2 in 1529, and Ycair3 in 1548,-though using terms to distinguish the different faces of letter, were apparently unaware of any distinguishing names for the bodies of types. Tory, indeed, mentions Canon and Bourgeoise; but in both cases he refers to the face of the letter; and Ycair's distinction of "teste y glosa❞ applies generally to the large and small type used for the text and notes respectively of the same work.4

In England, type-bodies do not appear to have been reduced to a definite scale much before the end of the sixteenth century. Mores failed to trace them further back than 1647; but in a Regulation of the Stationers' Company, dated 1598, Pica, English, Long Primer, and Brevier are mentioned by name as apparently well-established bodies at that time; and in a petition to the same Company in 1635,7 Nonpareil and “two-line letters" are mentioned as equally familiar. Moxon, our first writer on the subject, in his Mechanick Exercises, in 1683,

1 Unterweisung der Messung. Nuremberg, 1525. Fo. Champfleury. Paris, 1529. 8vo.

3 Orthographia Practica. Caragoça, 1548. 4to.

Both Testo and Glosilla subsequently became the names of Spanish type-bodies, the fromer being approximately equivalent to our Great Primer, and the latter to our Minion. • Dissertation upon English Typographical Founders and Founderies. London, 1778. 8vo. See post, chap. v. 7 Sec post, chap. v.