“The passage from the Written Book to the Printed Book was sudden and complete. Nor is it wonderful that the earliest productions of the printing press are the most beautiful, and 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 and 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 and restore the craft of the Printer to its original purity of intention and accomplishment. The Printer must at the same time be a Calligrapher, or in touch with him, and 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 and an Illuminator, WILLIAM MORRIS.
“The whole duty of Typography, as of Calligraphy, is to communicate to the imagination, without loss by the [p369] 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 and beauty of the vehicle, and on the other hand, to take advantage of every pause or stage in that communication to interpose some characteristic and restful beauty in its own art.”
Early Printing was in some points inferior in technical excellence to the best modern typography. But the best early printers used finer founts of type and better proportions in the arrangement and spacing of their printed pages; and it is now generally agreed that early printed books are the most beautiful. It would repay a modern printer to endeavour to find out the real grounds for this opinion, the underlying principles of the early work, and, where possible, to put them into practice.
Freedom.—The treatment or “planning” of early printing—and generally of all pieces of lettering which are most pleasing—is strongly marked by freedom. This freedom of former times is frequently referred to now as “spontaneity”—sometimes it would seem to be implied that there was a lawless irresponsibility in the early craftsman, incompatible with modern conditions. True spontaneity, however, seems to come from working by rule, but not being bound by it.
For example, the old Herbal from which figs. [135] to [141] are taken contains many woodcuts of plants, &c., devoting a complete page to each. When a long explanation of a cut is required, a smaller type is used (comp. figs. [135] & [138]); when [p370] the explanation is very short, it does not fill the page. This is a free and natural treatment of the greatest convenience to the reader, for illustration and text are always in juxtaposition. And though the size of the type and the amount of the text are varied, yet the uniform top margins, and the uniform treatment and arrangement of the woodcuts, harmonise the pages, and give to the whole book an agreeable effect of freedom combined with method.
An old way of treating a text and its commentary is indicated by the diagram (fig. [202]). The text is printed in large type, the commentary, in smaller type, surrounds it; such portion of the text being printed on each page as will allow sufficient surrounding space for the accompanying [p371] commentary on that portion. The proportions and treatment of every page are uniform (note, particularly, the uniformity of the upper parts of the pages, five lines of commentary being allowed to enclose the text, or bound it above, on every page) with the exception that the height of the text-column varies—one page having as few as three lines of text to the column, another having fifty-nine lines. This free treatment of the text gives a charming variety to the pages.
Poetry.—A broader and freer treatment is desirable in the printing of poetry. The original lines and the arrangement of the verses should be more generally preserved. And though the opening lines of a poem may sometimes be magnified by printing them in capitals—which necessitate their division—to sacrifice the naturally varying line to the “even page” is questionable, and to destroy the form of a poem in order to compress it is a “typographical impertinence” (see p. [95]).
