J OSEPH MOXON, whose distinction it is to have been the first practical English writer on the mechanics of typography, was born at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, on August 8, 1627, and appears to have been brought up as a mathematical instrument maker, in which profession he showed himself highly proficient. In the year 1659, being either already settled in the metropolis, or having come thither for the purpose, he added to his stated business that of a typefounder, in which, according to Mores, he continued till 1683.
It is difficult to fix the precise condition of the laws relating to typefounders in the last year of the Commonwealth. The Ordinances of 1647 and 1649, which reimposed the main provisions of the Star Chamber Decree of 1637, remained nominally in force till the Restoration, so that we are to suppose that Moxon, unless he practised his art surreptitiously or sub rosâ, was formally installed into a vacancy in the body of authorised founders on execution of the usual bond to the Company of Stationers.
If, as seems probable, he commenced operations with little or no previous experience, and with no plant ready to his hand, the progress of the new foundry must at first have been very slow, particularly as he appears to have devoted much of his time to his other scientific pursuits, to which in 1665 he added that of hydrographer to the king. To this office a considerable salary was attached. In the same year, Mores informs us, he lived at the sign of the “Atlas” on Ludgate Hill, near Fleet Bridge, but the Fire of London in 1666 caused him to {181} quit that abode for another of the same sign in Warwick Lane. From Warwick Lane, where he was living in 1668, he appears to have removed to Westminster, to the sign of the “Atlas” in Russell Street, whence in 1669 was issued his famous specimen of types, the first complete typefounders’ specimen known in England.335
In a passage in the Mechanick Exercises, published several years later, Moxon speaks of the art of letter-cutting as a mystery, “kept so conceal’d among the Artificers of it, that I cannot learn anyone hath taught it any other, but every one that has used it, Learnt it of his own Genuine Inclination.” If this be the writer’s own experience—though his subsequent intimate acquaintance with the minutest details of the art almost disproves it—his specimen must be taken as the production of a self-taught typographer after ten years’ intermittent practice. Viewed in this light, the exceedingly poor performance which the sheet presents can to some extent be accounted for. It must also be borne in mind that Moxon’s theoretical and mathematical studies of the proportions and form of letters had not yet been begun, or, at least, elaborated; so that in no sense is his Specimen to be assumed to be a reduction into practice of those theories.