The "Cheltenham Old Style," [65], is the other Roman face recently designed by the same artist. It was cut for the Cheltenham Press of New York City; and embodies in its present form many ideas suggested by Mr. Ingalls Kimball of that press. Observe especially the excess in length of the ascenders over the descenders, and that the serifs have been reduced to the minimum. Contrary to the usual custom in type cutting, the round letters do not run above or below the guide lines. The capitals compose excellently; but the small letters are too closely spaced and seem too square for the best effect, and weight has been obtained by so thickening the lines that much delicacy and variety has been lost.
The "Cheltenham Old Style" is, however, very legible when composed into words, and is effective on the page.
Any attempt to get the effect of Blackletter with the Roman form is likely to result clumsily. The celebrated Roman faces designed by William Morris (too familiar to require reproduction here) are, despite their real beauty, over-black on the page, and awkward when examined in detail. While the stimulus Morris's work gave to typography was much needed at that time, the present reaction toward more refined faces is most gratifying. By precept and example Mr. Morris produced a salutary revolt against the too thin and light and mechanical type faces before in use, but he went too far in the opposite direction, and we are now certainly falling back upon a more desirable mean.
Mr. Herbert P. Horne is at present designing a new fount of type for the Merrymount Press, Boston, to be
known as the "Mont' Allegro," which seems, from the designs so far as at present completed, likely to prove in some respects the most scholarly and severe of modern faces.
The Greek type designed for the Macmillan Company of England, by Mr. Selwyn Image, [66], is of sufficient interest to be shown here, despite the fact that it is not strictly germane to our subject. In this face Mr. Image has
returned to the more classic Greek form, although the result may at first glance seem illegible to the reader familiar with the more common cursive letters.
The type shown in [67] is a new English face designed by Mr. C. R. Ashbee for a prayerbook for the King. Interesting as it is, it seems in many ways too extreme and eccentric to be wholly satisfactory: the very metal of type would seem to postulate a less "tricky" treatment.
It is interesting to attempt a discrimination between the various national styles of pen letters which the recently revived interest in the art of lettering is producing; and it is especially worth while to note that the activity seems, even in Germany, to be devoted almost exclusively to the development and variation of the Roman forms. It is noteworthy, too, after so long a period of the dull copying of bad forms, and particularly of bad type forms, that the modern trend is distinctly in the direction of freedom; though this freedom is more marked in French and German