in the annals of printing. He had been in turn a footman, a writing
teacher, an engraver of slate gravestones, and the proprietor of a
successful japanning establishment. He showed no special interest
in types or books until middle age, and after he had amassed
a fortune. Then, suddenly, he designed and cut types which
competed successfully with the famous Caslon fonts, and produced his
_Virgil_, which, as Benjamin Franklin wrote in presenting a copy
to the Harvard College Library, was “thought to be the most curiously
printed of any book hitherto done in the world.” Macaulay called it,
“The first of those magnificent editions which went forth to astonish
all the librarians of Europe.”
The Baskerville types were at first received with scant praise,
although even the severest critics admitted that the Italic characters,
from which was eliminated that cramped design seen in the Italics of
other foundries of the period, were essentially beautiful. A letter
written by Benjamin Franklin to Baskerville in 1760 is of amusing
interest:
_Let me give you a pleasant instance of the prejudice some
have entertained against your work. Soon after I returned,
discoursing with a gentleman concerning the artists of
Birmingham, he said you would be the means of blinding all the
readers of the nation, for the strokes of your letters being
too thin and narrow, hurt the eye, and he could never read
a line of them without pain. “I thought,” said I, “you were
going to complain of the gloss on the paper some object to.”
“No, no,” said he, “I have heard that mentioned, but it is not
that; it is in the form and cut of the letters themselves, they
have not that height and thickness of the stroke which makes
the common printing so much more comfortable to the eye.” You
see this gentleman was a connoisseur. In vain I endeavored
to support your character against the charge; he knew what
he felt, and could see the reason of it, and several other
gentlemen among his friends had made the same observation, etc._
_Yesterday he called to visit me, when, mischievously bent to
try his judgment, I stepped into my closet, tore off the top
of Mr. Caslon’s Specimen, and produced it to him as yours,
brought with me from Birmingham, saying, I had been examining
it, since he spoke to me, and could not for my life perceive
the disproportion he mentioned, desiring him to point it out
to me. He readily undertook it, and went over the several
founts, showing me everywhere what he thought instances of
that disproportion; and declared, that he could not then read
the specimen without feeling very strongly the pain he had
mentioned to me. I spared him that time the confusion of being
told, that these were the types he had been reading all his
life, with so much ease to his eyes; the types his adored
Newton is printed with, on which he has pored not a little;
nay, the very types his own book is printed with (for he is
himself an author), and yet never discovered the painful
disproportion in them, till he thought they were yours._
[Illustration: Title Page of Baskerville’s _Virgil_, Birmingham, 1757
(8½ × 5⅜ inches)]
[Illustration: Text Page of Baskerville’s _Virgil_, Birmingham, 1757
(8½ × 5⅜ inches)]
The _Virgil_ itself, beyond the interest that exists in its type,
shows grace and dignity in its composition and margins. For the first
time we have a type title (_page 247_) that shows a printer’s
appreciation of its possibilities. Baskerville affected extreme
simplicity, employing no head or tail pieces and no ornamental initials
to accomplish his effects (_page 249_).
The copy of Baskerville’s _Virgil_ in my library contains a
copper-plate frontispiece. The advertisement which particularly
emphasized this feature excited my curiosity, as no book of
Baskerville’s is known to have contained illustrations. When I secured
the copy I found that the frontispiece was a steel engraving stamped on
water-marked paper which indicated its age to be at least two hundred
years earlier than the publication of the book. The owner of this
particular copy had inserted the illustration in re-binding, and it was
no part of the original edition!
The glossy paper referred to in Franklin’s letter was an outcome of
Baskerville’s earlier business experience. It occurred to him that
type would print better upon highly finished paper, and that this
finish could be secured by pressing the regular book paper of the time
between heated japan plates made at his own establishment. Baskerville
is entitled to the credit of having been the first printer to use
highly finished paper, and, beyond this, as Dibdin says of him, “He
united, in a singularly happy manner, the elegance of Plantin with the
clearness of the Elzevirs.”
* * * * *
Interest in the Baskerville books, and in fact in all books printed
in what is known as “old-style” type, ceased suddenly with the
inexplicable popularity attained about 1800 by the so-called “modern”
face. The characteristics of the old-style letter are heavy ascending
and descending strokes with small serifs, whereas the modern face
accentuates the difference between the light and the heavy lines,
and has more angular serifs. The engraved work of Thomas Bewick, in
England, the publication of the _Racine_ by the Didots, and the
Bodoni volumes in Italy, offered the public an absolute innovation
from the types with which they had been familiar since the invention
of printing, and the new designs leaped into such popular favor that
many of the foundries destroyed the matrices of their old-style faces,
believing that the call for them had forever disappeared. As a matter
of fact, it was not until the London publisher Pickering revived the
old-style letter in 1844, that the modern face had any competition.
Since then the two styles have been maintained side by side.
Thus the second supremacy of France came from a change in public taste
rather than from economic causes. For a time there was a question
whether Bodoni would win the distinction for Italy or the Didots for
France, but the French printers possessed a typographical background
that Bodoni lacked, and in their _Racine_ produced a masterpiece
which surpasses any production from the Bodoni Press. The Didots
were not only printers and publishers, but manufactured paper and
invented the process of stereotyping. While Minister to France, in
1780, Benjamin Franklin visited the Didot establishment, and, seizing
the handle of a press, struck off several copies of a form with such
professional familiarity as to cause astonishment.
“Don’t be surprised,” Franklin exclaimed smiling. “This, you know, is
my real business.”
In 1797, the French Minister of the Interior placed at the disposal
of Pierre Didot _l’aîné_ that portion of the Louvre which had
formerly been occupied by the _Imprimerie Royale_. Here was
begun, and completed in 1801, an edition of _Racine_ in three
volumes that aroused the enthusiasm of booklovers all over the world,
and brought to Pierre Didot the glory of being recognized as a
master-printer worthy to assume the mantle of Robert Étienne. This is
the typographic achievement I would select as the masterpiece of its
period.
[Illustration: DIDOT’S _RACINE_, Paris, 1801
_A Frontispiece_
Designed by Prud’hon. Engraved by Marius (12 × 8 inches)]
[Illustration: Title Page of Didot’s _Racine_, Paris, 1801 (12 × 8
inches)]
[Illustration: Opening Page of Didot’s _Racine_, Paris, 1801]
[Illustration: Text Page of Didot’s _Racine_, Paris, 1801]
[Illustration: FIRMIN DIDOT, 1730-1804
From Engraving by Pierre Gustave Eugene Staal (1817-1882)]
The large quarto volumes contain nearly five hundred pages each. The
type was designed and cut by Firmin Didot in conjunction with, or
possibly in collaboration with Giambattista Bodoni, of Parma, Italy.
So closely do the two faces match that the similarity of their design
could scarcely have been a coincidence (see _page 81_). There is
a peculiar charm in the unusual length of the ascending and descending
characters; there is a grace in the slender capitals in spite of the
ultra-refinement; there is satisfaction in having the weight of the
Italic letter approach that of the Roman, thus preventing the usual
blemish which the lighter faced Italic gives to an otherwise perfectly
balanced page. The figures, really a cross between the old style
and the modern, have a distinct individuality entirely lost in the
so-called “lining” figures which those who have copied this face in
America have introduced as an “improvement.”
The _Racine_ contains magnificent steel engravings, of which
one is reproduced at page 253. The handmade paper is a return to the
beautiful sheets of the fifteenth century, and the presswork--the type
just biting into the paper without leaving an impression on the reverse
side--is superbly characteristic of the best French workmanship. The
vellum copies show the work at its best. The engravings stand out
almost as original etchings. The ink is the densest black I ever saw.
Didot succeeded in overcoming the oil in the vellum without the chalk
surface that is given to the Morris vellum, the ink being so heavy that
it is slightly raised. I was particularly interested in this after my
own experiments in printing my humanistic _Petrarch_ on vellum.
At the Exposition of 1801, in Paris, the _Racine_ was proclaimed
by a French jury the “most perfect typographic product of any country
and of any age.” Is this not too high praise? To have equaled the
Italian masterpieces of the fifteenth century would have been enough
glory for any printer to claim!
* * * * *
The _Racine_ was a step in the direction of reclaiming typography
from the trade which it had become, but it was left for William Morris
to place printing squarely back among the arts.
[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS, 1834-1896
From Portrait by G. F. Watts, R. A. Painted in 1880
National Portrait Gallery, London]
Morris was nearly sixty years of age when he finally settled upon the
book as the medium through which to express his message to the world.
The Morris wall papers, the Morris chair, the Morris end papers,
are among his earlier experiments, all sufficiently unique to
perpetuate his name; yet his work as a printer is what gave him undying
glory. The _Kelmscott Chaucer_ is his masterpiece, and must be
included whenever great typographic monuments are named. For this the
decorator-printer cut a smaller size of his Gothic font, secured the
co-operation of Sir Edward Burne-Jones as illustrator, and set himself
the task of designing the initial letters, borders, and decorations.
This was in 1892, and for four years they worked upon it, one delay
following another to make Morris fearful that the work might never be
completed.
[Illustration: SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, _Bart._, 1833-1898
From Photograph at the British Museum]
The decoration for the first page was finished in March, 1893. Morris
was entirely satisfied with it, exclaiming, “My eyes! how good it is!”
Then he laid the whole project aside for over a year, while he devoted
himself to his metrical version of _Beowulf_. In the meantime
Burne-Jones was experiencing great difficulty in having his designs
satisfactorily translated onto wood, and Morris dolefully remarked,
after comparing notes with his friend and collaborator, “We shall be
twenty years at this rate in getting it out!”
It was June, 1894, before the great work was fairly under way.
“_Chaucer_ getting on well,” Morris notes in his diary,--“such
lovely designs.” At the end of June he records his expectation of
beginning the actual printing within a month, and that in about three
months more all the pictures and nearly all the borders would be ready
for the whole of the Canterbury Tales.
About this time Morris was asked if he would accept the
poet-laureateship of England, made vacant by Tennyson’s death, if
offered to him, and he unhesitatingly declined. His health and strength
were noticeably failing, yet at the beginning of 1895, less than two
years before his death, he was completely submerged by multifarious
occupations. Two presses were running upon the _Chaucer_ and still
a third upon smaller books. He was designing new paper hangings
and writing new romances; he was collaborating in the translation
of _Heimskringla_ and was supervising its production for the Saga
Library; he was engaged in getting together his splendid collection of
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century illuminated manuscripts.
It was not all smooth sailing with the _Chaucer_. In 1895 Morris
discovered that many of the sheets had become discolored by some
unfortunate ingredient of the ink, but to his immense relief he
succeeded in removing the yellow stains by bleaching. “The check of
the _Chaucer_,” he writes, “flattens life for me somewhat, but I am
going hard into the matter, and in about a fortnight hope to know the
worst of it.”
In December the _Chaucer_ was sufficiently near completion to
encourage him to design a binding for it. Even here he found another
difficulty. “Leather is not good now,” he complained; “what used to
take nine months to cure is now done in three. They used to say ‘What’s
longest in the tanyard stays least time in the market,’ but that no
longer holds good. People don’t know how to buy now; they’ll take
anything.”
Morris’ anxiety over the _Chaucer_ increased as it came nearer
to completion. “I’d like it finished tomorrow!” he exclaimed. “Every
day beyond tomorrow that it isn’t done is one too many.” To a visitor,
looking through the printed sheets in his library, who remarked upon
the added beauty of those sheets that follow the Canterbury Tales,
where the picture pages face one another in pairs, Morris exclaimed in
alarm, “Now don’t you go saying that to Burne-Jones or he’ll be wanting
to do the first part over again; and the worst of that would be that
he’d want to do all the rest over again because the other would be so
much better, and then we should never get done, but be always going
round and round in a circle.”
The daily progress of the work upon the _Chaucer_ was the one
interest that sustained his waning energies. The last three blocks were
brought to him on March 21, 1896. The Easter holidays almost killed
him. “Four mouldy Sundays in a mouldy row,” he writes in his diary.
“The press shut and _Chaucer_ at a standstill.”
On May 6 all the picture sheets were printed and the block for the
title page was submitted for Morris’ approval, the final printing being
completed two days later. On June 2 the first two bound copies were
delivered to him, one of which he immediately sent to Burne-Jones, the
other he placed in his own library.
Thus the _Kelmscott Chaucer_ came to completion. Four months later
William Morris was dead. The _Chaucer_ had been nearly five years
in preparation and three and a half years in execution. The printing
alone had consumed a year and nine months. The volumes contain, besides
eighty-seven illustrations by Burne-Jones, a full-page woodcut title,
fourteen large borders, eighteen frames for pictures, and twenty-six
large initial words, all designed by Morris, together with the smaller
initials and the design for binding, which was in white pigskin with
silver clasps, executed by Douglas Cockerell.
[Illustration: Text Page of Kelmscott _Chaucer_, London, 1896 (15 × 10¼
inches)]
I have never felt that the Kelmscott volumes were books at all, but
were, rather, supreme examples of a master-decorator’s taste and skill.
After all, a book is made to read, and the _Kelmscott Chaucer_ is
made to be looked at. The principles which should control the design of
the ideal book as laid down by William Morris cannot be improved upon,
but when he undertook to put them into execution he found himself so
wholly under the control of his decorating tendencies that he departed
far from his text. William Morris’ work is far greater than is shown in
the volumes he printed. He awoke throughout the world an interest in
printing as an art beyond what any other man has ever accomplished, the
results of which have been a vital factor in bringing modern bookmaking
to its present high estate.
* * * * *
It remained for T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, Morris’ friend, admirer, and
disciple, to put Morris’ principles into operation at the Doves Press,
London, supplemented by Emery Walker, who designed the Doves type,--to
me the most beautiful type face in existence. Cobden-Sanderson,
undisturbed by counter interests, plodded along, producing volumes
into which he translated Morris’ ideals far more consistently than
did Morris himself. “The Book Beautiful,” Cobden-Sanderson wrote in
his little masterpiece, _The Ideal Book_, “is a composite thing
made up of many parts and may be made beautiful by the beauty of each
of its parts--its literary content, its material or materials, its
writing or printing, its illumination or illustration, its binding
and decoration--of each of its parts in subordination to the whole
which collectively they constitute; or it may be made beautiful by
the supreme beauty of one or more of its parts, all the other parts
subordinating or even effacing themselves for the sake of this one or
more, and each in turn being capable of playing this supreme part and
each in its own peculiar and characteristic way. On the other hand
each contributory craft may usurp the functions of the rest and of the
whole, and growing beautiful beyond all bounds ruin for its own the
common cause.”
The _Doves Bible_ is Cobden-Sanderson’s masterpiece, and one
turns to it with relief after the riotous beauty of the Morris pages.
It is printed throughout in one size of type with no leads between
the lines and with no paragraphs, the divisions being indicated by
heavy paragraph marks. The only decorative feature of any description
consists of exceedingly graceful initial letters at the beginning of
each new book. The type is based flatly upon Jenson’s Roman face, and
exactly answers Morris’ definition of the type ideal, “Pure in form,
severe, without needless excrescences, solid without the thickening and
thinning of the lines, and not compressed laterally.” The presswork is
superb.
[Illustration: Title Page of _Doves Bible_, London, 1905 (8 × 6
inches)]
[Illustration: Text Page of _Doves Bible_, London, 1905 (8 × 6
inches)]
* * * * *
Surely no form of bibliomania can yield greater rewards in return for
study and perseverance. The great typographical monuments, dating from
1456 to 1905, have given me a composite picture of man’s successful
struggle to free himself from the bonds of ignorance. I have mingled
with Lorenzo the Magnificent and with the oppressed people of Florence;
I have been a part of François I’s sumptuous Court, and have seen the
anxious faces of the clerical faction as they read the writing on
the wall; I have listened to the preaching of Luther, and have heard
the Spanish guns bombarding Antwerp; I have stood with the brave
defenders of Leyden, and have watched the center of learning find its
place in Holland; I have enjoyed Ben Franklin’s participation in the
typographical efforts of Baskerville and Didot; I have received the
inspiration of seeing William Morris and Cobden-Sanderson put a great
art back into its rightful place. These triumphs of the printing press
are far more than books. They stand as landmarks charting the path of
culture and learning through four marvelous centuries
What volume of the twentieth century and what master-printer shall
be included? That is yet to be determined by the test of retrospect;
but the choice will be more difficult to make. In America and England
history is being made in printing as an art, and the results are full
of hopefulness and promise
VII
THE SPELL OF THE LAURENZIANA
The most fascinating city in all Europe is Florence, and the most
alluring spot in all Florence is the Laurenziana Library. They say
that there is something in the peculiar atmosphere of antiquity that
reacts curiously upon the Anglo-Saxon temperament, producing an
obsession so definite as to cause indifference to all except the magic
lure of culture and learning. This is not difficult to believe after
working, as I have, for weeks at a time, in a cell-like alcove of
the Laurenziana; for such work, amid such surroundings, possesses an
indescribable lure.
Yet my first approach to the Laurenziana was a bitter disappointment;
for the bleak, unfinished façade is almost repelling. Perhaps it was
more of a shock because I came upon it directly from the sheer beauty
of the Baptistery and Giotto’s Campanile. Michelangelo planned to make
this façade the loveliest of all in Florence, built of marble and
broken by many niches, in each of which was to stand the figure of a
saint. The plans, drawn before America was discovered, still exist,
yet work has never even been begun. The façade remains unfinished,
without a window and unbroken save by three uninviting doors.
Conquering my dread of disillusionment, I approached the nearest
entrance, which happened to be that at the extreme right of the
building and led me directly into the old Church of San Lorenzo.
Drawing aside the heavy crimson curtains, I passed at once into a
calm, majestic quiet and peace which made the past seem very near. I
drew back into the shadow of a great pillar in order to gain my poise.
How completely the twentieth century turned back to the fifteenth! On
either side, were the bronze pulpits from which Savonarola thundered
against the tyranny and intrigue of the Medici. I seemed to see the
militant figure standing there, his eyes flashing, his voice vibrating
as he proclaimed his indifference to the penalty he well knew he drew
upon himself by exhorting his hearers to oppose the machinations of the
powerful family within whose precincts he stood. Then, what a contrast!
The masses vanished, and I seemed to be witnessing the gorgeous beauty
of a Medici marriage procession. Alessandro de’ Medici was standing
beneath a _baldacchino_, surrounded by the pomp and glory of all
Florence, to espouse the daughter of Charles V. Again the scene changes
and the colors fade. I leave my place of vantage and join the reverent
throng surrounding the casket which contains the mortal remains of
Michelangelo, and listen with bowed head to Varchi’s eloquent tribute
to the great humanist.
The spell was on me! Walking down the nave, I turned to the left and
found myself in the Old Sacristy. Verrocchio’s beautiful sarcophagus
in bronze and porphyry recalled for a moment the personalities and
deeds of Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici. Then on, into the “New”
Sacristy,--new, yet built four centuries ago! Again I paused, this
time before Michelangelo’s tomb for Lorenzo the Magnificent, from
which arise those marvelous monuments, “Day and Night” and “Dawn and
Twilight,”--the masterpieces of a super-sculptor to perpetuate the
memory of a superman!
A few steps more took me to the Martelli Chapel, and, opening an
inconspicuous door, I passed out into the cloister. It was a relief
for the moment to breathe the soft air and to find myself in the
presence of nature after the tenseness that came from standing before
such masterpieces of man. Maurice Hewlett had prepared me for the
“great, mildewed cloister with a covered-in walk all around it, built
on arches. In the middle a green garth with cypresses and yews dotted
about; when you look up, the blue sky cut square and the hot tiles of a
huge dome staring up into it.”
From the cloister I climbed an ancient stone staircase and found myself
at the foot of one of the most famous stairways in the world. At that
moment I did not stop to realize how famous it was, for my mind had
turned again on books, and I was intent on reaching the Library itself.
At the top of the stairway I paused for a moment at the entrance to the
great hall, the _Sala di Michelangiolo_. At last I was face to
face with the Laurenziana!
[Illustration: SALA DI MICHELANGIOLO
Laurenziana Library, Florence]