BODI

Yet, as printing became cheaper, it did not become better. It retrograded, rather than improved, as it should, with the progress of time. But strange as the fact appears it may be very naturally explained.

TYPE-FOUNDERS.

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Anciently a printer was what we should now call a "Jack of all trades." Just as the weaver made his own loom and shuttle, so the printer cut the punches, formed the matrices, and cast the type himself. But this system was terminated by law. In the year 1637 the Star Chamber decreed that there should be no more than four founders of letters at one time in England, and that the vacancies as they occurred should be filled up either by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London, and six other high Commissioners. The object of the Star Chamber was to prevent the secret printing of sedition. But though the restriction may have served this purpose, it retarded the improvement of printing. The printers, being debarred from casting type for themselves, imported it from Holland. The Dutch type, too, was the best made. For whilst the four English type-founders, working entirely by the eye and the hand, and guessing the proportions of the letters, had done little or nothing to improve the shape, the numerous Dutch type-founders, emulating each

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other, had carried type-founding to a high state of perfection. Moxon, the author of a work called Mechanic Exercises, published in 1667, tells us that having magnified some very small Dutch letters by means of a glass, he was astonished to witness their beautiful proportions. The thickness, shape, and all the other features, he says, were as true as if they had been set off by a pair of fairy-like compasses. But no sooner was the decree of the Star Chamber repealed in 1693, than typefounding began to make progress in England. William Caslon was the first person who became eminent in the art. About the year 1700, Caslon was employed in cutting letters and ornaments used by bookbinders, and in engraving on gun barrels. He had executed some punches for lettering the backs of books so beautifully that he was encouraged by Mr. Watts, an eminent printer, to attempt cutting punches for type-founding; and he was first employed by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for which he executed a beautiful Italic fount in 1722. Caslon grew even more expert as he gained experience; and the result was, that the tide turned in the art of type-founding; for instead of type being imported into England from Holland, it was exported from England to Holland.

In 1750 John Baskerville greatly improved the art of type-founding, Baskerville was a man of active mind and versatile talents, at

one time following the vocation of a schoolmaster, at another that of a japanner, and lastly that of a type-founder and printer. Thousands of pounds which he acquired by japanning, were exhausted by his experiments in printing. He had so much difficulty in pleasing himself, that he spent 600l. before he had cast a single letter to his taste. He manufactured his own presses, ink, paper, and, in truth, the whole of the apparatus used in the trade. His printing was very beautiful, the letters used being of slender and delicate form. The Italic letters are distinguished beyond all comparison by their elegance, freedom, and perfect symmetry; and the books printed by him possess, even at this day, a high value throughout Europe, for accuracy as well as for typographical beauty. Indeed, so elegant were his types, that in 1791, four years after his death, a literary society at Paris purchased them for 3,700l.

Yet so little taste existed during Baskerville's lifetime for good printing, that he could not get employment. The booksellers preferred the wretched printing that was then common, although Baskerville offered his superior work for an advance of 5l. per cent. on the ordinary prices. No wonder, then, that he declared himself heartily tired of the business of printing, and that he repented ever entering into it. "Is it not to the last degree provoking," he wrote to Dr. Franklin," that after having

obtained the reputation of excelling in the most useful art known to mankind, I cannot get even, bread by it?" Baskerville, we may add, was very eccentric. Each panel of his carriage was a perfect picture, which might be considered a pattern card of his trade. He was buried, as he had desired by his will, in his own garden at Birmingham. His grave was covered with a cone of masonry, but this monument was destroyed in 1791. Some persons of that town having assembled to celebrate the dawn of the French revolution, a riot was provoked, and the populace wreaked their vengeance on this tomb, Baskerville having avowed sentiments contrary to the doctrines of Christianity.

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The art of type-founding was kept secret as long as possible, just as printing had been. The workmen were bound to silence; and so faithful do they seem to have been, that there was some risk of type-founding becoming one of the lost arts. For," writes Moxon, "I could not learn any one had taught it to any other, but that every one that had used it had learned it of his own genuine inclinatioa." If this be so, then the art of type-founding has been discovered again and again, as generation after generation has disappeared. Indeed so far had silence become the custom as regards typefounding, that when two Scotchmen, the celebrated Alexander Wilson and his friend Bain, commenced their experiments for the improve

ment of types, they never attempted to gain any insight whatever into the processes then used, from the workmen employed in the existing foundries, though some of them might have given them information of which they stood in want. They failed repeatedly rather than be dishonest, and the merit by which their type-foundry at Glasgow has become the first in Europe, is all their own. Again, Mr. Caslon kept the mode of making punches a profound secret, when he was engaged in the work locking himself in a room specially arranged for the purpose. Yet this precaution provoked rather than prevented its discovery. Jackson, his apprentice, was as desirous of learning the art, as his master was unwilling to teach him; Jackson therefore bored a hole in the wainscot of the room in which the two Caslons, father and son, were at work, and overlooked their operations. Thus instructed, Jackson made a punch, and presented it to his master. But instead of being rewarded for his ingenuity, as Schoeffer was by Faust, Caslon beat him, threatening, moreover, that if he ever again offended by such cleverness, he should be sent to Bridewell. Jackson afterwards became a great type-founder.

There is, of course, a separate mould or matrix for each separate letter of the alphabet, and no less than 320 punches, and, of course, the same number of matrices, are necessary for the different varieties of letters, capitals,