13. JOHN BASKERVILLE, 1752

[543] There still exists, in Mr. Timmins’ collection of Baskerville relics, a slate tablet beautifully engraved with the words “Grave Stones cut in any of the Hands by John Baskervill, Writing Master,” in which the admirable models of Roman and Italic for which he afterwards became famous are clearly prefigured.

[544] “His carriage,” says Nichols, “each panel of which was a distinct picture, might be considered the pattern-card of his trade, and was drawn by a beautiful pair of cream-coloured horses” (Lit. Anec., iii, 451).

[545] He appears to have continued his original business to the end of his days. Writing in 1760, Mr. Derrick, in a letter to the Earl of Cork, dated July that year, after describing Baskerville’s printing achievements, adds: “This ingenious artist carries on a great trade in the Japan way, in which he showed me several useful articles, such as candlesticks, stands, salvers, waiters, bread-baskets, tea-boards, etc., elegantly designed and highly finished.” The name of Baskerville had previously been associated with typography, as we find in the lists of the Stationers’ Company a Gabriel Baskerville, who took up his freedom in 1622, and a John Baskerville, who took up his freedom in 1639.

[546] Dibdin (Intr. to Classics, ii, 555) says £800.

[547] “Towards the end of 1792 died Mr. John Handy, the artist who cut the punches for Baskerville’s types, and for twelve years was employed in a similar way at the Birmingham Typefoundry of Mr. Swinney.” (Gent. Mag., 1793, p. 91.)

[548] “John Baskerville proposes, by the advice and assistance of several learned men, to print from the Cambridge Edition, corrected with all possible care, an elegant edition of Virgil. The work will be printed in quarto, on a very fine writing Royal paper, and with the above letter. The price of the Volume in sheets will be one guinea, no part of which will be required till the Book is delivered. It will be put to press as soon as the number of subscribers shall amount to five hundred, whose names will be prefixt to the work. All persons who are inclined to encourage the undertaking, are desired to send their names to John Baskerville in Birmingham, who will give specimens of the work to all who are desirous of seeing them. Subscriptions are also taken in, and specimens delivered by Messieurs R. and J. Dodsley, Booksellers in Pall Mall, London.”

[549] Of the two copies in the possession of Mr. S. Timmins, one is printed on very fine banknote paper, and the other, more heavily, on a coarse brown.

[550] Publii Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, et Æneis. Birminghamiæ Typis Johannis Baskerville. 1757. 4to. As Baskerville reprinted this work in 1771 with the old date 1757 on the title-page, it is necessary to note that, in the genuine edition, among other peculiarities, the 10th and 11th Books of the Æneid are headed “Liber Decimus. Æneidos”, and “Liber Undecimus. Æneidos”, whereas in the re-impression they appear, uniform with the other titles, “Æneidos Liber Decimus.” “Æneidos Liber Undecimus.” A Virgil was printed in 8vo, in 1766.

[551] “I have always considered this beautiful production as one of the most finished specimens of typography” (Dibdin, Introduction to the Classics, 2nd ed. II, 335).

[552] “My neighbour Baskerville at the close of this month (March 1757) publishes his fine edition of Virgil; it will for type and paper be a perfect curiosity” (Shenstone’s Letters and Works, 1791, Letter 88).

[553] Other type was used for this work.

[554] Lit. Anec., ii, 411.

[555] “Η Καινη Διαθηκη”. Novum Testamentum juxta exemplar Millianum. Typis Joannis Baskerville. Oxonii e Typographeo Clarendoniano. 1763. Sumptibus Academiæ, 4to and 8vo.

[556] Some of the Punches were exhibited by the University Press at the Caxton Exhibition in 1877. Since then, thanks to the energy of the present Controller, Mr. Horace Hart, to whom we are indebted for the above extracts and specimens, the matrices of the fount have come to light as well as the punches and matrices of the two-line letters and figures belonging to it. These were exhibited at the British Association Meeting at Birmingham in August 1886, being catalogued as follows:—

Still more recently, Mr. Horace Hart has been fortunate enough to discover part of the actual type in its original cases. It is interesting to note that these types, which are of rather a soft metal, are cast to the Oxford Learned-Side “height-to-paper.”

[557] Paradise Lost, etc., Paradise Regain’d, etc. Birmingham, 1758. 2 vols., 4to. The work was also published in the same year in 8vo, and again in 4to in 1759. The 4to edition of 1758 appears to be overlooked by some bibliographers, Hansard, among others, who refers in the extract here given to the reprint of 1759.

[558] Typographia, p. 310. It is worthy of note that the very high gloss on the paper which characterised most of Baskerville’s later works, is not always observable either in the Virgil of 1757, or the Milton of 1758.

[559] Catalogue de la Bibliothéque d’um Amateur, i, 310. After noticing the folio specimen following, he says: “Un autre essai de Baskerville, sur une plus petite feuille, contient seulment quatre caractères romains et deux en italique . . . Outre cette épreuve de grand essai, j’ai l’un et l’autre réunis à la fin de son Virgile in 4.” The only example we have met with is that bound up with Lord Spencer’s beautiful copy of the Virgil in the Althorp Library.

[560] Writing to Mr. R. Richardson of Durham on Oct. 29, 1758, Dr. Bedford says: “By Baskerville’s specimen of his types, you will perceive how much the elegance of them is owing to his paper, which he makes himself, as well as the types and ink also; and I was informed whenever they came to be used by common pressmen and with common materials they will lose of their beauty considerably. Hence, perhaps, this specimen may become very curious (when he is no more, and the types cannot be set off in the same perfection), and a great piece of vertû.” (Nichols, Illust. Lit., i, 813).

[561] Amongst which should be particularly singled out the Horace in 12mo printed in 1762, which Dr. Harwood describes as “the most beautiful little book, both in regard to type and paper, I ever beheld.”

[562] The Press, a poem. Published as a Specimen of Typography by John McCreery. Liverpool, 1803, 4to. p. 19.

[563] An interesting notice of Lord Orford’s famous private press at Strawberry Hill, with a Catalogue of the—many of them—finely printed works that issued from it, is given in Lemoine’s Typographical Antiquities, p. 91.

[564] The original of this important letter, with the specimen attached, is in Mr. Timmins’s possession.

[565] The Holy Bible, containing the Old Testament and the New, translated out of the Original Tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised. By His Majesty’s special command. Appointed to be read in Churches. Cambridge: printed by John Baskerville, Printer to the University. 1763. Cum Privilegio. Fol. The prospectus of this work, with a specimen of the type, appeared in 1760. The folio Bible, printed at Birmingham in 1772, is a much inferior performance.

[566] The Book of Common Prayer, Cambridge, 1760, roy. 8vo, (with long lines); 1760, roy. 8vo, (in double columns); 1761, roy. 8vo; 1762, roy. 8vo (with long lines): 1762, 12mo.

[567] He appears always to have kept a large number of hot plates of copper always ready, between which, as soon as printed, just as they were discharged from the tympan, the sheets were inserted. The moisture was thus expelled, the ink set, and the smooth, glossy surface put on all simultaneously. However well the method may have answered at the time, the discoloration of his books still preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere, shows that the brilliance thus imparted was most tawdry and ephemeral.

[568] “Les caractères sont gravés avec beaucoup de hardiesse, les italiques sont les meilleures qu’il y ait dans toutes les Fonderies d’Angleterre, mais les romains sont un peu trop larges.” . . And of his editions he adds, “Quoiqu’elles fatiguent un peu la vue, on ne peut disconvenir que ce ne soit la plus belle chose qu’on ait encore vue en ce genre.” (Man. Typ., ii, xxxix.)

[569] “Mr. Baskerville . . . made some attempts at letter-cutting, but desisted, with good reason. The Greek cut by him or his for the University of Oxford is execrable. Indeed, he can hardly claim a place amongst letter-cutters. His typographical excellence lay more in trim, glossy paper to dim the sight.” (Dissert., p. 86.)

[570] The Life of Benjamin Franklin, written by himself, etc. (Bigelow’s edition). Philadelphia, 1875, i, 413. Nichols, in error, gives the date of this letter as 1764.

[571] The apparatus was first offered, it is said, to the French Ambassador in London for £8,000. Subsequently Baskerville wrote, on Sept. 7, 1767: “Suppose we reduce the price to £6,000. . . . Let the reason of my parting with it be the death of my son and intended successor, and having acquired a moderate fortune, I wish to consult my ease in the afternoon of life.”

[572] The following works were printed by Martin between 1766 and 1769, viz., Christians’ Useful Companion, 1766, 8vo; Somerville’s Chace, 1767, 8vo; Shakespeare, 9 vols., 1768, 12mo; Bible with cuts, 1769, 4to; and editions of the Lady’s Preceptor.

[573] Letter dated 21 Sept. 1773. “You speak of enlarging your Foundery” (Works, viii, 88).

[574] The remaining copies of Baskerville’s impressions, were, after his death purchased for £1,100 by W. Smart, bookseller, of Worcester, and publisher of the Worcester Guide.

[575] Hutton, History of Birmingham, 1835, p. 197.

[576] Biographical History of England, ii, 362.

[577]

Touching this epitaph Archdeacon Nares has the following note:—“I heard John Wilkes, after praising Baskerville, add, “But he was a terrible infidel; he used to shock me !”

[578] “On Friday last, Mr. Baskerville, of this town, was married to Mrs. Eaves, widow of the late Richard Eaves, Esq., deceased” (Birmingham Register, June 7, 1765). Mrs. Baskerville d. 1788. Two works exist, printed at Birmingham, with the imprint, Sarah Baskerville.

[579] In 1776, Chapman used Baskerville’s type for Dr. W. Sherlock’s Discourses concerning Death. 8vo.

[580] This preference was so marked, that about this time the proprietors of Fry and Pine’s foundry, who had begun with an avowed imitation of the Baskerville models, were constrained to admit their mistake, and discard that fashion for new founts cut on the model of Caslon.

[581] As early as 1775, Dr. Harwood, in the preface to his View of the Editions of the Classics, had pleaded urgently for the purchase of Baskerville’s types, and Wilson’s famous Greek, as the nucleus of a Royal Typography in England.

[582] Lit. Anec., iii, 460.

[583] Proposals for Printing by Subscription a Complete Edition of the Works of Voltaire, printed with the Types of Baskerville for the Literary and Typographical Society, 1782, 12 pp. 8vo, with 2 pp. specimens of the type. The French proposal appears to have been put forward in 1780.

[584] Beaumarchais and His Times. Translated by H. S. Edwards. London, 1856. 4 vols. 8vo (iii, chap. 24).

[585] Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire. De l’Imprimerie de la Société litteraire et typographique, (Kehl) 1784–1789. 70 vols. in 8vo; and 92 vols. in 12mo.

[586] Renouard mentions having seen at Paris a broadside specimen of all the Baskerville types transported to Beaumarchais’ establishment: “Ce sont les mêmes types,” he adds, “mais quelle différence dans leur emploi!” (Catalogue, i, 310).

[587]

[588] The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle. Attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, reprinted from the Book of St. Albans. London; printed with the types of John Baskerville for William Pickering. (Thos. White, imp.) 1827. 8vo.

[589] A statement that they were acquired at the beginning of the century for the printing offices of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg, appears, after careful inquiry, to rest on no further foundation than rumour.