large number of punches and moulds of all sizes. A bench extends along one side of the room, doubtless for the use of the dressers or rubbers.

In all these points we recognise that even in Plantin's day the general appointments of a letter-foundry differed very little from those of the modern foundry before the introduction of machinery. Although we have no description of any English foundry before Moxon's time, we know that the processes in use among us boast a much earlier origin. Moxon described no new method, but the old-established practice which had obtained, if not from the infancy of the art, at least from the commencement of that gradual divorce between printing and letter-founding which led, about 1585, to the establishment of foundries for the public use. We have no reason to suppose that the foundries connected with the presses of Day, Wolfe and others differed in practice from those of their Frankfort and Antwerp contemporaries, or that when, in 1597, Benjamin Sympson, a letter-founder, gave bond to the Stationers' Company not to cast type for the printers without due notice, he, or the founders who followed him, knew any other methods of producing their type than those already familiar to every printer at home and abroad.

Turning now to Moxon's account of English letter-founding as it was in his day, we find no lack of detail as to every branch of the art and every appliance in use by the artist. It is not our purpose here to follow these descriptions further than as they give a general idea of the practice and method of letterfounding two centuries ago,-a practice and method which, as we have said, existed long before his day, and were destined to be in common use for nearly a century and a half after. We shall best indicate the processes and appliances he describes by giving a brief analysis of that portion of his book which is

endure the press, they credited them with the absurdity of casting their letters in that costly material. It is difficult to believe that any practical printer, however magnificent, would make even his matrices of silver, when copper would be equally good and more durable. Didot was said, as late as 1820, to have cast his new Script from steel matrices inlaid with silver. The use of the term “silver" as a figurative mode of describing beautiful typography is not uncommon. Sir Henry Savile's Greek types, says Bagford, "on account of their beauty were called the Silver types.” Field's Pearl Bible in 1653 has been spoken of as printed in silver types. Smith, in 1755, referred to the fiction, still credited, that "the Dutch print with silver types.” On the other hand, we have the distinct mention in the inventory of John Baskett's printing-office at Oxford, in 1720, of “a sett of Silver Initiall Letters," which we can hardly believe to be a purely poetic description, and probably referred to the coating of the face of the letter with a silver wash. It should be stated here that Ratdolt, the Venetian printer, in 1482 was reported to have printed one work in types of gold !

1 Among the itinerant punch-cutters of Plantin's day was the famous French artist Le Bé who came to Antwerp to strike the punches for the Antwerp Polyglot.

devoted to the mechanics of letter-founding,' reserving for a later chapter a general summary of the complete work.

Naturally beginning with punch-cutting, he first describes in detail the various tools made use of by the engraver, viz., the forge, the using file, the flat gauge, the sliding gauges, the face gauges, the Italic and other standing gauges, the liner, the flat table, the tach, and other furniture of the bench. Every one of these tools is to be found in the punch-cutter's room of the present day, scarcely changed in form or use from the woodcuts which illustrate Moxon's description.

Turning from the tools to the workman, Moxon next proceeds to describe his choice of steel for the punches; the making and striking of the counter-punches on the polished face of the punch; the "graving and sculping” of the insides of the letters; together with certain rules in the use of the gravers, small files, etc., employed in this delicate operation.

With regard to the process described as counter-punching, it is necessary to admit that this constituted a refinement of the art of punch-cutting apparently unknown to the first printers. The freedom of their letters, consequent on the imitation of handwriting, which served as their earliest models, makes it evident that they cut by eye, rather than by mathematical rule. But as typography gradually made models for itself, the best artists, particularly those who aimed at producing regular Roman and Italic letters, discovered the utility and expediency of arriving at uniformity in design and contour, by the use of these counter-punches, which stamped on to the steel the impress of the hollow portions of the letters they were about to cut, leaving it to the hand of the engraver to cut round these hollows the form of the required character.

The punches being cut, finished and hardened, Moxon next deals with the various parts of the type-mould, describing in turn the “Making” of the mould: The Carriage,? (a); the Body, (b); the Male Gauge, (c); the Mouthpiece, (d e); the Register, (fi); the Female Gauge, (g); the Hag, (h); the Bottom Plate, (a); the Wood, (6); the Mouth, (c); the Throat, (d); the Pallat, (e d); the Nick, 0); the Stool, (8); the Spring, (2).

Here again we have described, with scarcely a difference, the mould in which scores of men yet living have in their day cast types for the trade. The

1 Mechanick Exercises, or the Doctrine of Handy-Works applied to the Art of Printing. The Second Volume. London, 1683. 4to.

2 The index-letters following each part refer to Moxon's illustration of a mould in the Mechanick Exercises, a reduced copy of which is placed by the artist of the Universal Magazine, 1750, at the foot of his View of the Interior of Caslon's Foundry, of which we give a facsimile in the frontispiece,

justification of the mould is then described ; after which the important operation of striking the steel punch into copper, and forming and justifying the matrix, is treated of, with instructions for "botching" matrices in the event of a mistake in the latter process. The matrices being thus ready, the founder is instructed how to adjust them to the mould in preparation for casting,—a solemn process which may be best described in the writer's own language :

“Wherefore, placing the under-half of the Mold in his left hand, with the Hook or Hag forward, he clutches the ends of its Wood between the lower part of the Ball of his Thumb and his three hind-Fingers. Then he lays the upper half of the Mold upon the under half, so as the Male-Gages may fall into the Female Gages, and at the same time the foot of the Matrice place itself upon the Stool. And clasping his left-hand Thumb strong over the upper half of the Mold, he nimbly catches hold of the Bow or Spring with his right-hand Fingers at the top of it, and his Thumb under it, and places the point of it against the middle of the Notch in the backside of the Matrice, pressing it as well forwards towards the Mold, as downwards by the Sholder of the Notch close upon the Stool, while at the same time with his hinder-Fingers as aforesaid, he draws the under half of the Mold towards the Ball of his Thumb, and thrusts by the Ball of his Thumb the upper part towards his Fingers, that both the Registers of the Mold may press against both sides of the Matrice, and his Thumb and Fingers press both Halves of the Mold close together. Then he takes the Handle of the Ladle in his right Hand, and with the Boll of it gives a Stroak two or three outwards upon the Surface of the Melted Mettal to scum or cleer it from the Film or Dust that may swim upon it. Then he takes up the Ladle full of Mettal, and having his Mold as aforesaid in his left hand, he a little twists the left side of his Body from the Furnace, and brings the Geat of his Ladle, (full of Mettal) to the Mouth of the Mold, and twists the upper part of his right-hand towards him to turn the Mettal into it, while at the same moment of Time he Jilts the Mold in his left hand forwards to receive the Mettal with a strong Shake (as it is call’d) not only into the Bodies of the Mold, but while the Mettal is yet hot, running swift and strongly into the very Face of the Matrice to receive its perfect Form there as well as in the Shanck."

This done, the mould is opened, and the type released ; Moxon adding that a workman will ordinarily cast 4,000 such letters in a day.

Then follow rules to be observed in breaking off, rubbing, kerning, settingup and dressing, with descriptions of the dressing-sticks, block-groove, hook, knife and "plow." That these operations, as well as the casting, had undergone no alteration nearly a century after Moxon's day, may be judged from the fact that Moxon's descriptions are used verbatim to accompany the view of the