—Lovés Labours Lost, II, 1.
A small type, called nonpareil, was introduced into English printing houses from Holland about the year 1650, and became admired and preferred beyond the others in common use. It seems to have become a favorite type with Shakespeare, who calls many of his lady characters "Nonpareils." Prospero calls his daughter "a Nonpareil." (Tempest, Act III, Scene 2d) Olivia, in "Twelfth Night," is the "Nonpareil of Beauty" (Act I, Scene 5), and in Cymbeline, Posthumous is made to call Imogen the "Nonpareil of her time" (Act II, Scene 5).
When a certain number of pages of type have been composed they are placed in an iron frame called a "chase," laid upon an "imposing" stone, a piece of beveled wood, called a "sidestick," is placed beside the pages, and small wedges of beveled hard wood, called "coigns," or "quoins," are tightly driven in, holding the pages firmly in their places, and making a compact "form." Surely there is an allusion to this in Pericles III, 1.
"By the four opposing coigns
Which the world together joins."
Before tlie "form" is taken from the stone to be put on the press, the quoins are made very tight with a "mallet" to insure its "lifting" safely.
"There is no more conceit in him than there is in a mallet."
—2 Henry IV, 2.
which process is called "locking-up," and when completed, the form is said, technically, to be "locked-up," or fast.
"fast locked-up in sleep."