Let us be more specific. Let us take the department of lettering alone. If an author publishes a work on lettering, and he is a cultivated man, he must examine the many styles of the past. He examines the monumental letter of classic Rome and the monumental letter of the Renaissance; the Caroline letter of 700 A. D., as well as the Gothic and the Visigothic. It is not his business to place one above the other, but to explain the beauty of all. If, however, you are a printer of today, and the Morris style of type is most in vogue, and you have stocked your cases with it, it is the Gothic letter you are most interested in, because it is what you are using and what your customer has just been trained to like; so the most practical part of a book on lettering would be that which would treat of the Gothic letter, and its offspring, the Old English; while the chapter on Visigothic, with its twisted letters, would seem quite {156}
NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION. From the Paris Figaro, showing harmony of drawing, type, and rules—a method of drawing that could easily be imitated on chalk plate.
{157}
COVER DESIGN OF THE WESTMINSTER BUDGET. Printed on light weight yellow paper, 10 by 13. An excellent example of the use of silhouette in design.
{158} impractical to you as you could not use the examples given. Yet it would be the business of the writer on alphabets to analyze them thoroughly, otherwise his work would be incomplete.
Now then, I shall try to be practical, and in the chapter on lettering bear in mind that the modern fonts are the Morris, Caxton, Jenson, Erhard Ratdolt, Old English and Touraine. I shall try to give a little more attention to the letters after which these are patterned than I shall to the Phœnician or Etruscan, the Visigothic, the Aldine, and the Irish text letter. But, on the other hand, no printer can be educated without knowing something about these latter alphabets. And so you must bear with me while I analyze them, though they may not be practical.
Once more, suppose you do agree that a style of lettering not now in vogue is a pleasing style, and one worth imitating, the question arises, How much time can you give to the study of it in order to use it? Nearly all artistic work requires hand labor, and hand labor is slow.
In our chapter on wood engraving, we shall recommend the study of that art, both because it can be used and because it trains you to appreciate good designing; but how many printers can neglect their business in order to spend hours and hours in practicing an eminently slow art, when rapid and cheap photo-engraving will serve the purpose almost as well? Very few, I fear.