The following account is extracted from Hansard’s “Typographia.”

“A more simple and cheap apparatus for this purpose was immediately got up by Mr. Foster, the inventor of the composition balls. It is a stand having its two legs and feet of cast-iron; and its top, upon which the ink is distributed, instead of lead, as in the former apparatus just described, is mahogany. Behind this, elevated about two inches, is the stage for taking the ink on to the roller. At either end of the stage is a recess for receiving the contrivance which contains the ink. This is similar in shape to the brayer formerly used; but turned hollow, with the handle and top to screw on; at the bottom are holes, and when the ink is wanted on the stage, the workman, taking hold of this bottle-brayer, moves it from one recess to the other, drawing it slowly along the stage. In this movement the ink, by its own gravity, will issue out from the holes at the bottom, and leave a portion on the stage, more or less, according to the rapidity or frequency of its transit. [See figure, p. 421.]

“Mr. Arding soon improved upon Foster’s apparatus, by making the ink-stage of cast-iron, with circular recesses; and the whole table more of a solid form; both makers now adopt the same pattern: but the bottle-brayer has not been found to answer, as the ink soon clogs up the holes, and the wood is liable to be split by the screw at the top; and an old servant of the press-room, the common brayer, has again been found the most effective for this purpose.

“I have had several of these inking tables at work, and find a decided preference due to the last described. The mahogany surface seems more congenial to the temperament of the ink and roller, than either the lead or iron. The ink is taken better, and distributes better. A line of colour is taken as perfectly from the stage as from a cylinder, since the roller, being cylindrical, can only touch the ink in a line, and it is only giving the roller a portion of a revolution on the stage to make it take a greater quantity of colour if necessary. More of the flue and dirt, inseparable from the working of paper, is held by the wood than by the lead; and consequently, the roller keeps cleaner, and the forme works better. The table is easily washed by the lye-brush, and no further waste of ink is occasioned.

“This apparatus has been further improved by substituting a box and cylinder for the stage and brayer. The advantage of which will be, that the quantity of ink on the cylinder to come in contact with the roller, is regulated by a pressure at the top, out of the body of the ink, instead of at the bottom against which the ink must rest.

“The cylinder is of mahogany, and, as here shown, moves in a box or trough which contains the ink; and which has a lid moving on hinges coming nearly over the top of the cylinder. To the under edge of this top is nailed a slip of thick butt or sole leather. This, by its naturally elastic quality, will always press upon the cylinder according as the lid is more or less tightly screwed down by thumb-screws. This leather will also intercept in its way any filth which may arise from the depôt of ink before it can reach the cylinder: and which, when accumulated, may, by unscrewing the lid and throwing it open, as in the figure, be instantly scraped away with one stroke of the knife; and no further waste of the ink incurred. No part of the ink in this apparatus is exposed when the lid is down: and only a very small portion of the cylinder at the time of working.”

A wooden table after the pattern of Foster’s apparatus is now generally used, the top is covered with lead on which the ink is distributed on the rollers; the stage on which the ink is taken is not raised more than about a quarter of an inch, and at the two back corners are two recesses, one for the supply of ink, and the other for the brayer, when not in use. See Rollers.

INNER FORM.

The form that has the second page in it; it is always worked before the outer form, except there be some particular reason to the contrary. See Lay on.

INNER TYMPAN.

A frame covered with parchment, which fits into the outer tympan; two flat points slip under the head-band of the outer tympan, which secure that end in its place; and the sides are kept down by two hooks on each side of the outer tympan which turn into eyes screwed into the sides of the inner tympan; in iron presses the hooks turn round studs, under the heads.

In page. See Out page.

INSERTION.

If the compositor have left out words or lines, the corrector inserts it, and makes this mark ‸ where it is left out, which is called the mark for insertion.—M. This is now called an “Out;” an insertion is when the author makes any addition in the proof sent to him.

INSET.

The same as offcut: with printers it is called an offcut; when the work comes into the hands of the bookbinder, and the sheets are folded, it then becomes an inset, being inserted in the middle of the sheet, to complete the regular succession of pages.

INSIDE QUIRES.

The regular and perfect quires of paper, of twenty-four good sheets each; they are thus designated to distinguish them from the outside or corded quires.

Interrogation. See Punctuation.

INSOLVENT DEBTORS.

IRISH.

“Mr. Innes, in his Essay on the Antiquities of Scotland and Ireland, delivers it as his opinion, that the Beth Louis Nion, or alphabet of the Irish, was nothing but an invention of the Irish Seanachies, who, since they received the use of Letters, put the Latin alphabet into a new arbitrary order, and assigned to each letter a name of some Tree; and that this was not a genuine alphabet of the Irish in ancient times, or peculiar to them; but was a bare inversion of the Latin alphabet.

“Colonel Vallancey, (in his Irish Grammar,) gives three different alphabets of the Irish language, which vary from each other in name, order, and number; the first consists of twenty-five letters, the second of twenty-six, and the last of seventeen. As for the Irish letters being different in power from those of other nations, it must be observed, that the powers of letters differ in every language, and the mode of pronouncing the same letters is various in different countries: the Irish characters are said to be of Asiatic original—granted.—But they appear to have been transmitted to the inhabitants of that country from those who had adopted the Roman letters.

“It is singular, but it is no less true, that the Norman characters were generally used in England from the coming of William the First, and that the Saxon characters were intirely disused in the very beginning of the twelfth century; but the Irish and Scots preserved the ancient forms of their characters till the end of the sixteenth century.”—Astle.

The most ancient grammar of the Irish language now extant, is the Uraiceact na Neigeas, or Primer of the Bards, written by Forchern some few years before our vulgar æra, transcribed and illustrated by Ceannfaolidh na foghlama, or Kinfaolidh the learned, an author of the seventh century. The alphabet, according to this author, was originally named bobel, loth, &c. from the names of certain masters who assisted in composing the Japhetan language soon after the confusion of tongues.

As the Grecians gave the name of alphabet to the table of their letters from the two initial letters, Alpha, Beta; and the Latins called their table Abcdarium from their three first letters, A, B, C. So the Irish gave the name of Bobel, Loth, to their ancient elements, from the two first letters B, L; and to their more modern alphabet, that of Bethluisnon, from B, L, N, which proves that N did formerly possess the third place; whereas in the present alphabet it takes up the fifth. The last and most modern name of the Irish alphabet, in conformity to the Abcdarium of the Romans, is Abgiter.

The Number, Order, and Names of the Letters, according to Forchern’s Uraiceact.

It is remarkable in all the Irish alphabets, (except the modern one, the order of which is copied from the Roman, and introduced since Christianity,) that the vowels follow each other; an instance not known in any other language, yet the labials, dentals and linguals, are intermixed without order.

The Number, Order, and Names of the Letters, according to O’Flaherty, from the Book of Lecane.

Of these letters, the five last are diphthongs. Q, Ng, Z, are reckoned superfluous consonants, and are thrown out of the modern alphabet, so that the remaining letters are only 17, which compose the abgitur or alphabet now in use, and are placed in order as the Latin abcdarium.

The ancient grammarians called the alphabet Faoidh, or Faodh, i.e. a a voice, a sound or language; because such letters are expressive of the voice and language. The moderns, to support their hypothesis, have corrupted this word to Feadh, a wood; and from hence have denominated the letters after certain trees, three of which they are at a loss to expound. According to Neuman, the Hebrew letters do each separately signify the idea either of motion, space, or matter; hence each Hebrew word is at once a name, and a definition of the subject, and all objects in the natural and moral world must be known as soon as their names are known, and their separate letters considered. The proper names of men being borrowed from such ideas as Adam, i.e. red earth, it is more rational to suppose our learned ancestors named their letters according to Forchern, from men, rather than from trees.—A Grammar of the Iberno-Celtic, or Irish Language. By Major Charles Vallancey. 4to. Dublin, 1773.

The Modern Alphabet.

In addition to the above eighteen letters, the ancients used the following in their alphabet:—

Table of Mutable Consonants and of Eclipses.

[Irish-English Guide to the Irish Language. By Thaddæus Connellan, 12mo. Lond. 1824.]

The vowels are five in number, a, o, u, e, i, whereof the three first, a, o, u, are broad, and the two last, e, i, are narrow.

In words of two or more syllables, regard must be had to the correspondence of the vowels, for when the last vowel of the former syllable is a broad vowel, the first vowel of the following syllable must be broad also; and when in some latter syllable the vowel is small, the last of the immediately preceding must be small also. Example, du-ne, a man, is false orthography, because the last syllable ending in a small vowel, the first must end in a small one also, as dui-ne.

No vowel is ever to be doubled as ee, oo, &c. in the same syllable.

The diphthongs, or union of two vowels, are thirteen.

The triphthongs are five,

Vallancey, by omitting the letter R, reduces the modern alphabet to seventeen letters; Connellan, by admitting this letter, increases it to eighteen.

Hibernian or Irish Types in the British Founderies.

ITS OWN PAPER.

When one, two, three, or more copies of a sheet of a work, or a job, are printed on the paper that the whole is intended to be worked on, it is said to be Pulled on its own Paper. This is frequently done at the commencement of a work, when a proof of the first sheet is sent to the author, or bookseller, or both; that they may see the effect produced before it is proceeded with.