CHAPTER III. THE PRINTER LETTER-FOUNDERS, FROM CAXTON TO DAY.

I N taking a brief survey of that early period of English Typography when printers are assumed to have been their own letter-founders, we shall attempt no more than to gather together, as concisely as possible, any facts which may throw light on the first days of English letter-founding, leaving it to the historian of Printing to describe the productions which, as we have already stated, must be regarded, not only as the works of our earliest printers, but as the specimen-books of our earliest letter-founders. Mores and other chroniclers are, as we conceive, misleading, when they single out half a dozen names from the long list of printers between Caxton and Day, as if they only had been concerned in the development of the art of letter-cutting and founding. It is true that these names are the most distinguished; but it is necessary to bear in mind that the most obscure printer of that day, unless he succeeded in purchasing his founts from abroad, or in obtaining the reversion of the worn types of another printer, probably cast his letter in his own moulds, and from his own matrices.

Respecting many of our early printers, our information especially with regard to their mechanical operations, is extremely meagre. But the researches of Mr. William Blades153 have thrown a stream of light upon the typography of {84} Caxton and his contemporaries, of which we gladly avail ourselves in recording the following facts and conjectures as to the letter-founding of the period in which they flourished. Adopting as a fundamental rule “that the bibliographer should make such an accurate and methodical study of the types used and habits of printing observable at different presses, as to enable him to observe and be guided by these characteristics in settling the date of a book which bears no date upon the surface,” Mr. Blades has succeeded not only in establishing a precise chronology of the productions of the first English printer, but an exhaustive catalogue of his several types, such as has never before been successfully accomplished.

Previous writers, many of them practical printers, have all failed in this particular. Most of them lacked the patience or the opportunity to make a systematic study of the specimens of Caxton’s press, and have been content to perpetuate the account of others who, like Bagford, Ames, Herbert and Dibdin, had ample opportunity for such a study, but failed to bring to bear upon their investigations that practical experience which would have saved them from the inaccuracies with which their descriptions abound. Among such writers few have been more unfortunate than Rowe Mores, whose account of Caxton’s types (although endorsed by the authority of his editor, John Nichols) is as misleading as it is meagre.

As we are concerned with Caxton only in his capacity as letter-founder, we must refer the reader for all details respecting his life and literary industry to Mr. Blades’ admirable biography; merely stating here that he made his first essay at printing in the year 1474–5, in the office of Colard Mansion at Bruges; that in 1477, if not earlier, he settled as printer at Westminster, where he remained an industrious and prolific worker until the year of his death in 1491.

As we have already observed, the history of the introduction of printing into England differs from that of its origin in most other countries in this important particular, that whereas in Germany, Italy, France and the Low Countries letter-founding is supposed to have preceded printing, in our own country it followed it. Caxton had already run through one fount of type before he reached this country, and it appears to be quite certain that his Type No. 2, with which he established his press at Westminster, was brought over by him from Bruges, where it had been cast for him, and already made use of by his preceptor, Colard Mansion. The English origin of his Type No. 3 is also open to question. There seems, however, reasonable ground for supposing that Type No. 4 was both cut and cast in England; so that Caxton had probably been at work for a year or two in this country as a printer, before he became a letter-founder. It must be admitted that any conclusion we may come to as to {85} Caxton’s operations as a letter-founder are wholly conjectural. In none of his own works (in several of which he discourses freely on his labour as a translator and a printer) does he make the slightest allusion to the casting of his types, nor does there remain any relic or contemporary record calculated to throw light on so interesting a topic.

That Caxton made use of cast types, it is hardly needful here to assert. Even admitting the possibility of a middle stage between Xylography and Typography, the general identity of his letters, the constant recurrence of certain flaws among his types, and the solidity of his pages, may be taken as sufficient evidence that his types were cast, and not separately engraved by hand.

It is scarcely likely that during his residence at Bruges, where, as he himself states in the prologue to the third book of the Recuyell, “I have practysed and lerned at my grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte,” he would omit to make himself acquainted with the methods used in the Low Countries for the production and multiplication of types; and it is at least reasonable to suppose that, once established in this country, and removed from the source of his former supplies, he would put into practice this branch of his knowledge, and produce for himself the remaining founts of which he made use.

As to the particular process he employed, we have, as Mr. Blades points out, only negative evidence on which to rely. The frequent unevenness and irregularity of his lines, as well as the variations of the letters themselves, lead to the conclusion that the method employed was a rude one, inferior not only to that now in use, but even to that adopted by the advanced German School of Typography of his own day. Rude, however, as his method may have been, we are not disposed to allow that Caxton could have produced the types he did without the use of a matrix and an adjustable mould. Despite his rough workmanship, his types are as superior to those of the Speculum and Donatus as they are inferior to those of the Mentz Bible and the Catholicon; and we consider it out of the question that works like the Dictes, or the Polychronicon, or the Fifteen O’s, could have been produced from types cast by a clay or sand process, which we have elsewhere described as possibly employed in the most primitive practice of the art.

It is more probable that both Colard Mansion and Caxton, possessing the principle of the punch, matrix and adjustable mould, but ill-furnished with the mechanical appliances for putting that principle into practice, made use of rough and perishable materials in all three branches of the manufacture. Some such rough appliances we have already suggested in our introductory chapter. . His {86} punches, as Mr. Blades has pointed out, were, in the case of at least two of his founts, touched-up types of a fount previously in use. A matrix formed from such a punch, either in soft lead or plaster, could not be anything but rough and fragile; and such a matrix, when justified and applied to a mould of which the adjustable parts may have lacked mathematical finish and accuracy, could scarcely be expected to produce types of faultless precision.

As we have freely admitted, it is impossible on this subject to go beyond the regions of speculation, but we decidedly incline to the opinion that the irregularities and defects of Caxton’s types may be accounted for in the way here suggested, rather than by the assumption that he made use of a method of casting differing wholly in principle from that which was presently to become the universal practice.

Such is a brief summary of the types of our first printer. It would be interesting, were it possible, to continue in an equally detailed manner an examination of the types of all the early English printers. But the rapid increase of printing which followed Caxton’s death would render such a task one of great labour and difficulty. We shall content ourselves with collecting such references to typefounding as may throw general light on the progress of the art during the first century of its existence.

We have elsewhere stated our reasons for supposing that the first Oxford press was commenced with types brought from abroad. Of the St. Alban’s printer and his contemporaries, Lettou and Machlinia, in the city of London, we know very little. The types of both presses were extremely rude, and might therefore suggest that an attempt was made to produce them by untrained English artists, or, as is equally probable, that the old and worn-out soft lead types of an earlier printer were made use of.

This piece of evidence is not very convincing. It is more to the point that some of his early types are not to be observed in books from the press by any foreign printer at that time; which could scarcely have been had he, along with other English printers, purchased founts from some of the foreign founders at that time carrying on a brisk trade with this country. It is, however, to be borne in mind that every printer cut or provided himself with Black as regularly as with Roman and Italic; and the Black-letter, especially in the large sizes, being easy to imitate, the general resemblance among the founts of that period may mean nothing more than that De Worde’s models were faithfully copied by his imitators.

De Worde introduced a larger variety in body than Caxton, and in some of {91} his works, as in the Whitintoni Lucubrationes, in 1527, used a very small Black-letter, apparently, as Herbert remarks, because he had no Roman or Italic small enough. In his Black founts he used a large number of abbreviations, though not so many as were at that time used by printers abroad. He has been erroneously credited by some writers with having been the first to introduce the Roman letter into this country. It appears, however, that he closely followed Pynson in this innovation157; and, in his later works, made considerable use of that character, both for printing entire books, and for distinguishing remarkable words or quotations in his Black-letter text.

Although characterised as a better printer than scholar, he was the first to introduce letters of some of the learned languages into his books. In 1519, in Whitintonus de concinitate grammatices, he used some Greek words, the first in England, cut in wood. Later, in 1524, in Wakefield’s Oratio,158 printed in Roman characters with marginal notes in Italic,159 he printed some Greek words in movable types, and showed Arabic and Hebrew cut in wood, the first used in this country. The Hebrew is Rabbinical, and the author complains that he has been obliged to omit a third part, because the printer lacked Hebrew types. As early as 1495, moreover, De Worde, as we have elsewhere noted, in his edition of the Polychronicon, used the first music-types known in typography.

He died in 1534, after printing upwards of 400 books.

In 1518 he printed his first work in Roman type, the Oratio in Pace nuperrimâ,161 by Richard Pace. Only one fount is used throughout this interesting little work, of which we here reproduce the colophon.

A document still preserved in the Record Office, dated June 28, 1519, contains an interesting mention of Pynson’s types. It is an indenture between Wm. Horman, Clerk and Fellow of the King’s College at Eton, and Pynson, for printing 800 copies of such Vulgars as be contained in the copy delivered to him, “in suffycient and suyng stuff of papyr, after thre dyverse letters, on for the englysh, an other for the laten, and a thyrde of great romayne letter for the tytyllys of the booke.” {93}

In 1524 Pynson possessed a fount of Greek which he used in Linacre’s De Emendatâ Structurâ.162 This is of special interest, since the preface contains the first distinct reference to letter-founding which occurs in any English book. The Greek accents and breathings, it appears, were not sufficient for the whole of the quotations in the book, and their paucity is made the subject of the following interesting apology: “Lectori. S. Pro tuo candore optime lector æquo animo feras, si quæ literæ in exemplis Hellenissimi vel tonis vel spiritibus vel affectionibus careant. Iis enim non satis erat instructus typographus videlicet recens ab eo fusis characteribus græcis, nec parata ea copia, quod ad hoc agendum opus est.”163 The Linacre is printed in a good Great Primer Roman type, with which the Greek ranges fairly. The letters of the latter character are cast wide, so that each letter stands apart from the next, instead of joining close.

A further mention of Pynson’s types occurs in a Latin letter of his own, printed at the end of the Lytylton Tenures of 1527, in which he thus inveighs against the piracy of his rival and contemporary, Robert Redman: “Richard Pynson, the Royal printer, salutation to the Reader. Behold, I now give to thee, candid Reader, a Lyttleton corrected (not deceitfully), of the errors which occurred in him; I have been careful that not my printing only should be amended, but also that with a more elegant type it should go forth to the day: that which hath escaped from the hands of Robert Redman, but more truly Rudeman, because he is the rudest out of a thousand men, is not easily understood.”

The new fount here referred to must have been among the latest productions of this printer’s industrious labours, as he ceased printing in 1528, having issued upwards of 210 works.

With Faques and Pynson early English Typography seems to have reached for a time its high-water mark. A slow deterioration set in, probably consequent on the withdrawal of the foreign trade in type, and the necessity thereupon for every printer to become his own punch-cutter and typefounder.

Mores, in passing, is careful to rescue a few names from reproach. “COPLAND THE ELDER,” he says, “(who had been servant to De Worde) and WYER and REDMAN, had founts of two-line Great Primer, the letter good and beautiful. . . WILL. RASTEL used Italic in 1531. . . Redman164 used a Secretary type in the edition of Rastell’s Grete Abridgement, printed in the year 1534, which Secretary is the last Secretary we remember. BERTHELET had a fount of English Roman with a face as thick as English” (Black-letter), “but pretty.”

We annex a specimen of the curious semi-Gothic fount used by this last-named printer in 1531 for printing Sir Thomas Elyot’s Boke named the Governour. The face is of rare occurrence in English typography, and was probably procured {95} from abroad. The small Secretary type mixed with it is doubtless English, and was one of the latest founts of its kind used in the country.

There appears to be no special reason, as we have stated, why the names and types of any particular printers at this period should be selected to the exclusion of others who equally with them produced types for their own use. We may, however, mention REYNOLD WOLFE, who in 1543 held the first patent as printer to the king in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and printed the first entire Greek and Latin book in England, being Sir John Cheke’s edition of Chrysostom’s two Homilies.165 He appears, however, to have printed nothing in Hebrew.

He was born in 1522, and began business about 1546, in St. Sepulchre’s parish. In 1549 he removed to Aldersgate, where he continued until 1572. The persecutions of Queen Mary’s reign caused him to seek refuge abroad, but he returned in 1556, in which year he was the first person admitted to the livery of the Stationers’ Company, newly incorporated by the charter of Philip and Mary. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he became an important printer, and was chosen Warden of the Company in 1564 and three subsequent years, and Master in 1580.

Early in the Queen’s reign he found a generous patron in Archbishop Parker, under whose auspices he cut some of his most famous founts. One of the earliest of these was the fount of Saxon, which appeared first in Ælfric’s Saxon Homily, edited by the Archbishop under the title of A Testimonie of Antiquitie, and printed in 1567. It was used again in Lambard’s Archaionomia in the following year, in the Saxon Gospels, printed in 1571, and subsequently in the Archbishop’s famous edition of Asser Menevensis’ Ælfredi Res Gestæ in 1574.166

This last-named work, which may be regarded as one of the first historical monuments of English letter-founding, contained a preface by Parker, in which {96} Day’s performance in cutting the punches is thus particularly alluded to:—“Jam vero cum Dayus typographus primus (et omnium certè quod sciam solus) has formas æri inciderit; facilè quæ Saxonicis literis perscripta sunt, iisdem typis divulgabuntur.”167

The Saxon fount, as will be seen by the facsimile, is an English in body, very clear and bold. Of the capitals, eight only, including two diphthongs, are distinctively Saxon, the remaining eighteen letters being ordinary Roman; while in the lower-case there are twelve Saxon letters as against fifteen of the Roman. The accuracy and regularity with which this fount was cut and cast is highly creditable to Day’s excellence as a founder.168 He subsequently cut a smaller size of Saxon on Pica body.

The typography of the Ælfredi is superior to that of almost any other work of the period. Dibdin considered it one of the rarest and most important volumes which issued from Day’s press. The Archbishop’s preface is printed in a bold, flowing Double Pica Italic, and the Latin preface of St. Gregory at the end in a Roman of the same body, worthy of Plantin himself. It is at least a curious circumstance, pointing to a community of founts among printers even at that day, that in Binneman’s169 edition of Walsingham’s Historia, bound up with Day’s Asser and the Ypodigma Neustriæ, this same large Roman and Italic is made use of.

Respecting an Italic fount cut by Day in 1572, several interesting particulars are preserved, which tend to throw further light on our printer’s operations as a punch-cutter and letter-founder.

It appears that in that year, at the time when Day removed his shop from {97} Aldersgate to St. Paul’s Churchyard, Archbishop Parker was engaged in providing replies to a Popish polemic of Nicholas Sanders, entitled De Visibili Monarchia. Dr. Clerke of Cambridge was selected for the task, and his Responsio was entrusted to Day to print. In a letter to Lord Burleigh, dated December 13, 1572, the Archbishop thus refers to the typography of the forthcoming work170:

“To the better accomplishment of this worke and other that shall followe, I have spoken to Daie the printer to cast a new Italian letter, which he is doinge, and it will cost him xl marks; and loth he and other printers be to printe any Lattin booke, because they will not heare be uttered and for that Bookes printed in Englande be in suspition abroad.”

Strype, referring to the transaction, adds a note: “For our Black English letter was not proper for the printing of a Latin Book; and neither he (Day) nor any one else, as yet had printed any Latin books.”171 This misleading statement is corrected by Herbert,172 who points out that many Latin books had been printed, few of which, after 1520, had been in Black-letter, and he believed none at all after 1530. Moreover, many English books had long before 1572 been printed in Roman or Italic, and even such as had generally been printed in Black-letter usually had the notes and quotations in Roman or Italic.

It is singular that, after this announcement by the Archbishop, neither of the replies to Sanders was printed in Italic type. Clerke’s Responsio,173 in 1573, appeared in a new Great Primer Roman type, with the quotations only in Italic, the headings being set in the large Italic afterwards used in the Asser. Acworth’s De Visibili Romanarchia,174 another rejoinder, in the same year, was in an English Roman, with a corresponding Italic and Greek. In Parker’s great work, however, De Antiquitate Britannicæ Ecclesiæ,175 published the year before (1572), and supposed by some to have been printed by Day at a private press of the Archbishop’s at Lambeth, the entire text, consisting of 524 pages, was in the English Italic, which Dibdin describes as “a full-sized, close, but flowing Italic letter.” The preface only to this work was in Roman; the various titles and sub-titles being in the larger founts of the Responsio and Asser.

Day was among the first English printers who cut the Roman and Italic to range as one and the same fount. Hitherto the two letters had been but seldom {98} intermixed, and when they were, they frequently exhibited a disparity in size and an irregularity in line which was disfiguring.176 Day, however, cut uniform founts.

In addition to the characters already mentioned, he greatly improved the Greek letter of the day. The Christianæ Pietatis Prima Institutio, printed by him in 1578, is in a beautiful type, which is considered to be equal to that of the great Greek typographers of Paris—the Estiennes.

Among his further enterprises in letter-cutting may be mentioned the Hebrew words, cut in wood, which he used in Humphrey’s Life of Jewell, in 1573, and in Baro’s Readings on Jonah, in 1579; and the musical notes which he introduced into his editions of the metrical Psalter. These notes are chiefly lozenge-shaped and hollow, differing from those used by Grafton in 1550, in Merbecke’s Booke of Common Praier, noted, which are mostly square and solid. He also, as he himself stated in a book printed in 1582, “caused a new print of note to be made, with letters to be joined to every note, whereby thou mayest know how to call every note by its right name.” Besides these, he made use of a considerable number of signs, mathematical and other, not before cast in type; while his works abound with handsome woodcut initials, vignettes and portraits, besides a considerable variety of metal “flowers.” Of the disposal of Day’s punches and matrices after his death we have no precise information, but the reappearance of the beautiful Double Pica Roman and Italic of the Ælfredi, in the Bibles printed by the Barkers, in Young’s Catena on Job in 1637, in Walton’s Polyglot in 1657, and other works, most of them executed by the royal printers, suggests that these founts at any rate were retained (probably under archiepiscopal control), and handed down for the service of the privileged presses.

In Strype’s Life of Parker, already quoted, is preserved an interesting account of Day’s business, with which we close this short notice: “And with the Archbishop’s engravers, we may joyn his printer Day, who printed his British Antiquities and divers other books by his order . . . for whom the Archbishop had a particular kindness . . . Day was more ingenious and industrious in his art and probably richer too, than the rest, and so became envied by the rest of his fraternity, who hindered, what they could, the sale of his books; and he had in the year 1572, upon his hands, to the value of two or three thousand pounds worth, a great summ in those days. But living under Aldersgate, an obscure corner of the city, he wanted a good vent for them. {101} Whereupon his friends, who were the learned, procured him from the Dean and Chapter of St. Pauls, a lease of a little shop to be set up in St. Pauls Churchyard. Whereupon he got framed a neat handsome shop. It was but little and low, and flat-roofed and leaded like a terrace, railed and posted, fit for men to stand upon in any triumph or show; but could not in anywise hurt or deface the same. This cost him forty or fifty pounds. But . . . his brethren the booksellers envied him and by their interest got the mayor and aldermen to forbid him setting it up, though they had nothing to do there, but by power. Upon this the Archbishop brought his business before the Lord Treasurer, and interceded for him, that he would move the Queen to set her hand to certain letters that he had drawn up in the Queen’s name to the city, in effect, that Day might be permitted to go forward with his building. Whereby, he said, his honour would deserve well of Christ’s Church, and of the prince and State.”—P. 541.