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Types, and their history.

Historic Printing Types, a Lecture read before the Grolier Club of New York, January 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations, by Theo. L. DeVinne. New York: The DeVinne Press, 1886. (4to., pp. 180.)

A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, with notes, historical and bibliographical, on the rise and progress of English typography. By Talbot Baines Reed. London: Elliot Stock, 1887. (4to., pp. xiv—380.)

We know no more fascinating subject of research than is dealt with in the two volumes before us. The two works—one by an American printer, the other by an English typefounder—though quite different in plan of construction, in many respects cover the same ground. Caxton and Caslon cannot fail to figure prominently in any account of historic types; and the historian of the English foundries is of necessity compelled to refer freely to the general history of the art.

Mr DeVinne brings to his task the qualities of keen observation, industrious research, and accurate reasoning which have characterized his former contributions to the history of typography. As a printer, he is at the head of the craft; to him no operation is unfamiliar, and no detail is trivial or unimportant; and he is, moreover, acquainted with the processes of type-manufacture. In the beautiful book before us, he traces the development of the printed character, from the heavy black-letter of the Great Bible of 42 lines—the earliest and most precious of printed books—to the beautifully-formed roman letters of modern typography. The illustrations are numerous and valuable, and the author must possess a veritable museum of quaint faces from all parts of Europe, many of his specimens of ancient styles being composed from founts in his possession. The last specimen shewn is the eccentric « Harper, » of which, and kindred styles, Mr DeVinne briefly remarks, « They do not put the standard or approved form of Roman letter out of fashion. » What strikes us as an omission is, that there is no specimen of or even allusion to the « reformed » roman of M. Motteroz, a gentleman who has ideas of his own as to what constitutes legibility in type, and can afford to carry them into effect. Several important works have been printed in the character, and intensely ugly as it is, it has its admirers, and may fairly claim a place among « historic printing types. » Mr DeVinne's little book concludes as follows:

That the Roman letter is not free from fault, every one will admit. There are letters that might be altered with advantage; there are sounds that need new characters; but every attempt at the radical reformation of our letters has failed—and there have been many between the « real character » of Bishop Wilkins and the phonotypes of Isaac Pitman. The art of printing seems to have fixed the forms beyond the possibility of reconstruction.

It is scarcely safe to venture a forecast of this kind. Ten years ago the same writer regarded a reformed system of type bodies as impossible,—to-day it seems within measurable distance.

Mr Reed's book is the work of a practical typefounder and a diligent student of the early annals of the art. It is a large and elaborate work, representing, as the author says, « the labor of several years in what may be considered some of the untrodden by-paths of English typography. » It is interesting to note, that as regards the methods of the early type-manufacturers, Mr Reed holds substantially the same views as Van der Linde and De Vinne. The theory of movable types cut in wood he unhesitatingly rejects, and the more plausible suggestion of « sculpto-fusi » types—engraved on cast metal bodies— he examines and discards. Mr DeVinne dates the invention of printing properly so-called from the invention of the type-mould on the modern principle. Mr Reed thinks the adjustable mould was not known to all the early printers, and that it was kept a profound secret by those who possessed it. He says:

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 interesting discovery, in 1878, of a handful of fifteenth-century types in the bed of the river Saône, near Lyons, does not throw much light on the matter. The fact that some of these were perforated gives color to the theory that the earliest types were wired or threaded in lines; but the object of the hole is uncertain. Mr Reed suggests that the types so pierced were models used in forming clay moulds, and that they were strung together when not in use. Mr Ottley looks upon a turned line in the Speculum as strong presumptive evidence that the types were threaded. This is a very doubtful argument. It is easy, and not uncommon, for a careless compositor, in correcting, to replace a line in an inverted position. Ancient types had no nick, but the same purpose seems to have been partly served by chamfering off one angle at the foot. In the first chapter, Mr Reed writes of the old xylographs as having been printed with the frotton. Mr DeVinne, in his Invention of Printing, has given reasons which to a printer amount to a demonstration, that the frotton process was an impracticable and entirely imaginary one, and that some kind of press must have been used from the first.

It is not only to the student of typography that Mr Reed's book is of interest. It throws valuable side-lights on many passages in the national and religious history of the last four centuries. Particularly noticeable in this respect is the chapter on « The Star-Chamber Founders and the London Polyglot, » which we take to be a hitherto unwritten page of English history. A passage like this has more than a technical interest:

The original preface to the Polyglot contained an honorable reference to Cromwell, who had, from the first, encouraged the undertaking and materially assisted it by remitting the tax on the paper imported from abroad for the use of the work. But the Protector's death took place in the year after the publication; and the Restoration, which followed two years later, was made the occasion for a somewhat ignoble act of time-service on the part of Walton, who cancelled the last three leaves of the preface, and added a Dedication to Charles II, in which, among other attacks on the memory of his former patron, he referred to Cromwell as « Draco ille magnus. »

Mr Reed and Mr DeVinne are in full agreement as to the debased character of the earlier modern-faced romans—the flat-serifed, fat-faced, hair-lined founts that continued in vogue up to about 1820, and still survive in publications like the Quarterly Review. However, this type marked the transition period between the ill-balanced slope-serifed old-face, and the beautiful modern roman—the most perfect and artistic character ever devised; and which, in point of beauty, is not likely ever to be surpassed, though changes of some importance may yet be made in our very imperfect alphabet. The reversion to the old-face of the last century has Mr Reed's approval. To our mind it is a blot on the typography of the age—a pitiful sham and an anachronism at the best.

Mr DeVinne's book is beautifully printed on superb paper, in one of the most graceful and symmetrical of modern founts. Mr Reed's, in paper, type, and binding, is modelled on the books of last century,—and if inked with balls and printed on an old hand-press, would have been a very fair imitation. The margin at the head of the pages is mean, and is in some places reduced by bad folding. Books like this will in days to come be the despair of bibliographers. The old-style craze was at its height twenty years ago, when nearly every printing-office had caught the infection; but we are glad to see many signs of its steady decline. The printing is exceedingly correct;—with the exception of a letter drawn out or broken off here and there, we have noted only one typographic error— « Applegarth » for « Applegath. » Mr Reed's book is one of the most valuable contripage 21butions yet made to typographic literature, and its value is enhanced by an exhaustive index, containing, as nearly as we can judge without actual count, between three and four thousand references. We hope that industrious continental experts will take up a similar field of research. If the work were carried out as fully and as conscientiously in Germany and Holland as it has been done in England by Mr Reed, much new light would be thrown on the early history of the typographic art.