THE PRINTER LETTER-FOUNDERS, FROM CAXTON TO DAY.
In 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 Blades[153] 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.
We shall now briefly follow Mr. Blades’ chronological summary of
Caxton’s six types, with a view to point out such particulars
respecting them as may have special bearing on the object of this work.
TYPE 1.—This type, as already pointed out, was never used in England,
but appears in the works of the Bruges press between the years 1472 and
a date later than 1476. Bernard considers that it was modelled on the
handwriting of Colard Mansion. Although this type was chiefly used by
Mansion, Caxton appears to have used it in at least two English books
printed under Mansion’s roof, the _Recuyell_ and the _Chess Book_, the
former of which was the first book printed in the English language. The
body of the type corresponds to the present Great Primer; and a fount
comprised 163 sorts, of which a considerable number were varieties of
the same letters, “there being only five sorts for which there were not
more than one matrix, either as single letters or in combination.”
TYPE 2 was the fount with which Caxton printed, in 1477, at
Westminster, the _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_. Although
this is the first dated book printed in England, there is some reason
for supposing that the undated _Jason_, and possibly some of the small
quarto poems, printed in the same type may have preceded it. The
fount was cut probably by Colard Mansion, in imitation of the Gros
Bâtarde type already in use at his press, but in a smaller size; and
it is supposed that before Caxton brought it over to England it had
been used at Bruges to print _Les Quatre Derrenieres Choses_. Twenty
works in all are known to have been printed in Type 2, which is on a
body equal to two-line Long Primer, or “Paragon,” and consists of 217
sorts. The capital letters are extremely irregular, not only in size
but in design, some being of the simplest possible construction, while
others have spurs, lines and flourishes. It was used from 1477 to
1479, when, on its becoming worn out, selected letters were trimmed up
with a graver, new matrices formed, and a recasting made. {87} This
recasting, known as Type 2*, is the same body as Type 2, but in all
cases the letters are slightly thinner, while in the case of ascending
and descending types it is found that the process of trimming has
resulted in the amputation of certain portions of the letters. There
are also some thirty-seven sorts more in the second fount, consisting
largely of double and compound letters, which do not appear in the
first. To Type 2* belongs the honour of being in all probability the
first fount _cast_ in England. It was used from 1479 to 1481, and
nine books are known to have been printed in it, including the second
edition of the _Game and Play of the Chesse_, from which Mr. Vincent
Figgins[154] in 1855 took the models for his facsimile of the “Caxton
Black.”
TYPE 3.—This handsome fount appears to have been used from about 1479
to 1483, chiefly for head-lines, although one or two small church
books, as well as Caxton’s _Advertisement_, were printed entirely in
it. The body is the same as that of Type 2, with which it is sometimes
used, to distinguish proper names. The fount consists of 194 sorts, of
which the points are remarkable as being smaller than those of Type
2. It is the first appearance of the “Lettre de Forme” in English
typography; although, as Mr. Blades has pointed out, this character
belongs only to the “lower-case” letters, the capitals partaking more
of the features of Mansion’s “Gros Bâtarde”. The fount possesses a
special interest in being the first letter put forward as an English
printer’s Type-specimen. In the _Advertisement_, which we reproduce
in facsimile (No. 15), Caxton calls attention to the fact that he is
prepared to sell cheap copies of the Pica or Ordinary of the Salisbury
service, printed in the same type as the specimen shown, to anyone,
spiritual or temporal, who may come to his shop at the Red Pale,
Westminster. There is nothing to show whether this fount was brought
by Caxton from Bruges, or whether it is entitled to the distinction of
being the first fount wholly cut and cast in this country. The German
cut of the “lower-case,” as well as the slight use which Caxton made
of it, would almost suggest that it was not the product of his own
genius. On the other hand, the frequent use which De Worde made of the
fount after his master’s death, seems to point to the existence of the
matrices, as well as the types, in this country.
TYPE 4.—This letter was in use by Caxton from 1480 to 1484, and there
is strong reason for believing that (whatever may have been the case
with Type 3) it was both cut and cast in this country. That Caxton
possessed punches of it {88} appears highly probable from the fact
that in the recasting of the fount as Type 4* we do not find the face
of the old letters to have been trimmed up, as was the case with Type
2*. On the contrary, as far as face is concerned, the two founts are
identical—a result which could hardly be expected had the matrices for
the second fount been produced by any means but a re-striking of the
original punches. The fount is smaller in size than Type 2, though the
design is similar. It consists of 194 sorts, of which seven were not
re-struck for 4*. Ten works were wholly printed in Type 4, and two
partly in 4 and 4*. The one difference between the first and second
fount is, that whereas Type 4 is very close to English body, Type
4* is cast on a body equal to two-lines Minion; or more precisely,
nineteen types of Type 4* are equivalent to twenty types of Type 4.
It appears, therefore, that, either purposely or accidentally, Caxton
shifted his mould between the two castings. It is easy to imagine that
his supply of moulds might be very limited; and even that it might be
limited to but one mould capable of being varied in “body,” as well
as in “thickness,” which he would adapt as necessity required to cast
any size of letter; so that if, for instance, after casting Type 4, he
had had occasion to “break” his mould in order to cast some additional
letters in Type 3, he might easily fail to readjust it to the precise
body of his former fount, particularly if he used a worn or foul type
by which to “set” it. The fact that in the _Confessio Amantis_, and
the _Knight of the Tower_, both castings are used, shows at least that
4* was intended to supplement, rather than replace its predecessor.
Besides the two partly printed works, sixteen entire works were printed
in Type 4* between 1483–85, from one of which, the _Golden Legend_, our
facsimile, No. 16, is taken.
TYPE 5.—In this fount the “Lettre de Forme,” first introduced with Type
3, reappears in a smaller, but very similar form. Eleven books were
printed in it between about 1487–91, the majority of which were Latin
works of devotion. The body is rather larger than two-line Brevier,
and the fount consists of only 153 sorts, there being very few double
letters. With this fount is a set of bold Lombardic capitals, cast full
on the body, and used as initials. These Caxton afterwards cut down for
quadrats, shortening them, as was usual at that time, at the foot-end
of the type, and so not destroying the face.
TYPE 6.—This fount was for the most part produced from matrices formed
from trimmed-up letters of Types 2 and 2*, supplemented by a few new
letters and some from other founts. The body on which it is cast is
considerably smaller than Type 2, being nearly a Great Primer as
against a two-line Long Primer. This reduction in size necessitated the
compression of a number of full-faced letters of the original founts,
some of which have been forcibly squeezed into the compass and others
truncated. The fount comprises only 141 sorts, {89} and has a set of
Lombardic capitals. It was used by Caxton between 1489 and the time of
his death in 1491, during which period eighteen works were printed in
it. In the _Treatise of Love_, printed in the same type, and supposed
to have been produced by De Worde after his master’s death, appears
an initial line in a new type, which might be reckoned as Type No. 7;
although, if the work was wholly posthumous, its claim to be included
as one of Caxton’s founts holds only as regards the cutting and
founding of it.
[Illustration: 15. Advertisement of William Caxton. Type 3.]
[Illustration: 16. From the _Golden Legend_. Westminster, 1482. Caxton
Type 4*.]
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
WYNKYN DE WORDE was the most brilliant, as he was the most prolific,
English printer of the fifteenth century. Inheriting some, if not all,
of his master Caxton’s matrices, he cut a large number of new letters
for himself, and appears in the execution of these founts to have
perfected the manual processes of the manufacture, so as to leave no
doubt that his types were produced in true adjustable moulds, out of
durable matrices, impressed with hard metal punches. His letters are
clear and regularly cast; indeed, his English or Black-letter was so
excellent that it became a model for all future letter-cutters, and was
closely imitated, not only in England, but, apparently, abroad. Some
writers have considered that De Worde supplied duplicate matrices of
his Black-letter to some of his contemporaries, or else cast founts
from his own matrices for the trade. The close resemblance between
some of his founts and those of other English printers of the period,
seems to give colour to such a suggestion, although the probability
is that his old discarded types occasionally found their way into the
provinces, where (as at the press of Goes of York) they appeared during
the lifetime of their original founder. Palmer (or Psalmanazar) makes
the following {90} note on this subject: “There is one circumstance,”
he says,[155] “that induces me to think he was his own letter-founder;
which is, that in some of his first printed books, the very letter he
made use of, is the same used by all the printers in London to this
day; and, I believe, were struck from his puncheons. The first is the
two lin’d Great Primmer Black, the next is the Great Primmer Black.”
Of each of these two founts he shows a specimen (a facsimile of which
is here given), which, as Rowe Mores explains, were taken from the
matrices at that time (1732) in Grover’s foundry, where they were
reputed at one time to have belonged to De Worde.[156]
[Illustration: 17. Black Letter, supposed to be from De Worde’s
matrices. (From Palmer’s _General History of Printing_.)]
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 innovation[157]; 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.
* * * * *
His contemporary, PYNSON, who also acknowledged Caxton as his
“Worshipful Master,” appears to have been in regular correspondence
with the typographers of Rouen, one of whom printed in his name.[160]
It is also supposed that he was on friendly terms with Froben of
Basle, whose woodcut designs occasionally figure in his works. It is,
therefore, probable he may have imported some of his founts, including
the Roman, which he had the honour of first introducing into England
in 1518, from abroad. His first types, which appeared in the _Dives
and Pauper_, printed by him in 1493, were extremely rude; but in this
particular he seems to have made rapid progress, and some of his
later {92} works are distinguished as fine specimens of typography.
Mores’ account of Pynson’s types is incomplete, and in one particular
at least, that of the Roman letter in 1499, incorrect. He says: “His
types in the year 1496 were Double Pica, Great Primer and Long Primer
English (_i.e._, Black-letter), all clear and good; a rude English
English, an English and a Long Primer Roman in 1499 (_sic_), an English
and a Pica Roman with which was printed Bishop Tonstal’s book, _De
Arte Supputandi_, in 1522. They are thick, but they stand well in line
. . . He had another and better fount of Great Primer English, with
which was printed the _Gallicantus_ of Bishop Alcock . . . in 1498.”
The pretty Secretary letter, which Mores mentions as having been used
in _Statham’s_ and _Fitzherbert’s Abridgments_ belonged to Le Tailleur,
the Rouen printer, whom Pynson employed to print several law books,
on account, it is supposed, of the greater correctness of the Norman
compositors in setting the law language of the day. “However,” says
Ames, “he had such helps afterwards that all statutes, etc., were
printed here at home.”
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.
[Illustration: 18. From the _Oratio in Pace nuperrimâ_. Printed by
Pynson, 1518.]
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.
* * * * *
WILLIAM FAQUES, another contemporary of De Worde’s, who printed in
London between 1504 and 1511, appears to have had a more direct
connection with the Norman typographers than any of his fellow
printers. He learned his art at Rouen with Jean le Bourgeois, and
probably came over to this country furnished with types, if not with
matrices, from that market. He is praised with justice as an excellent
workman, and some of his Black-letter founts are described by Mores as
equalling in beauty any which were to be found in {94} England as late
as his day (1778). It is supposed that De Worde became possessed of
some of these letters after Faques’ death, which occurred in 1511.
* * * * *
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. . . Redman[164]
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.”
[Illustration: 18A. From the _Boke named the Governour_. Printed by
Berthelet, 1531.]
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.
* * * * *
JOHN DAY occupies an important place in the history of early English
letter-founding. What is mainly conjecture with regard to most of
his predecessors we are able to state on the authority of historical
records with regard to him, namely, that he was his own letter-founder;
and from his day English letter-founding may be said to have started on
a separate career.
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’s[169] 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.
[Illustration: 20. Day’s Saxon Fount. (From the _Ælfredi Res Gestæ_,
1574.)]
[Illustration: 21. Day’s Double Pica Roman. (From the _Ælfredi Res
Gestæ_, 1574.)]
[Illustration: 22. Day’s Double Pica Italic. (From the _Ælfredi Res
Gestæ_, 1574.)
(The extract is Parker’s reference to Day as a 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 work[170]:
“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.
[Illustration: 19. Portrait of JOHN DAY, 1562. (From the Colophon to
Peter Martir’s _Commentaries on the Romans_, 1568.)]
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.
Day died in 1584, aged 62, and was buried at Bradley Parva. He
published about 250 works. “He seems indeed,” says Dibdin, “(if we
except Grafton) the Plantin of Old English Typographers; while his
character and reputation scarcely suffer diminution from a comparison
with those of his illustrious contemporary just mentioned.”
[Illustration]
{102}
[Illustration]