TYPOGRAPHY
THE PASSAGE from the Written Book to the Printed Book was sudden & complete. Nor is it wonderful that the earliest productions of the printing press are the most beautiful & that the history of its subsequent career is but the history of its decadence. The Printer carried on into Type the tradition of the Calligrapher & of the Calligrapher at his best. As this tradition died out in the distance, the craft of the Printer declined. It is the function of the Calligrapher to revive & restore the craft of the Printer to its original purity of intention & accomplishment. The Printer must at the same time be a Calligrapher, or in touch with him, & there must be in association with the Printing Press a Scriptorium where beautiful writing may be practised and the art of letter-designing kept alive. And there is this further evidence of the dependence of printing upon writing: the great revival in printing which is taking place under our own eyes, is the work of a Printer who before he was a Printer was a Calligrapher & an Illuminator, WILLIAM MORRIS.
¶ The whole duty of Typography, as of Calligraphy, is to communicate to the imagination, without loss by the way, the thought or image intended to be communicated by the Author. And the whole duty of beautiful typography is not to substitute for the beauty or interest of the thing thought and intended to be conveyed by the symbol, a beauty or interest of its own, but, on the one hand, to win access for that communication by the clearness & beauty of the vehicle, and on the other hand, to take advantage of every pause or stage in that communication to interpose some characteristic & restful beauty in its own art. We thus have a reason for the clearness and beauty of the text as a whole, for the especial beauty of the first or introductory page and of the title, and for the especial beauty of the headings of chapters, capital or initial letters, & so on, and an opening for the illustrator as we shall see by and by.
¶ Further, in the case of Poetry, verse, in my opinion, appeals by its form to the eye, as well as to the ear, & should be placed on the page so that its structure may be taken in at a glance and distinctively appreciated, and anything which interferes with this swiftness of apprehension and appreciation, however beautiful in itself, is in relation to the book as a whole a typographical impertinence.