We hear of him again in connection with this situation, which he did not succeed in obtaining, in an advertisement in the Morning Post, 30th of July, 1784.
‘To the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, &c.
‘The Report, which a few days ago was credited by few, is now confirmed by many, and believed by all men, that a Coalition has been formed for the purpose of forcing you to bestow the emoluments of the Principal Land Coal Meter Office on two Aldermen, and it has been agreed that, on the day of the Election, one of them shall decline the Contest, and make a transfer to the other of the votes which some of you were pleased to engage to him....
‘My pretensions I submit to the Corporation at large, and I strongly solicit the assistance of the merchants and traders of the Metropolis to join their efforts, and endeavour to wrest the power of appointment from the hands of a Junto, and restore the freedom of Election. Assert your independence, and consequence, in time; with your breath you can blast the Coalition in its infancy; but, if you suffer it to conquer you in its present state, it will become a Hydra that will swallow up your Franchises, and leave you, like a Cathedral Chapter, the liberty of obeying a congé d’èlire sent to you by a self-constituted faction.
‘I am, &c., &c., ‘John Walter. ‘Printing House Square, Blackfriars.’
How did he come to this (to us) familiar address? It was by a chance which came in his way, and he seized it. In 1782 he, somehow, became acquainted with a compositor named Henry Johnson, who pointed out the trouble and loss of time occasioned by setting up words with types of a single letter, and proposed that at all events those words mostly in use should be cast in one. These were called ‘Logotypes’ (or word types), and printing, therefore, was called ‘Logography.’ Caslon at first made the types—but there is evidence that they quarrelled, for in a letter of August 12, 1785, in the Daily Universal Register of that date, which he reprinted in broadside form, he says, ‘Mr. Caslon, the founder (whom I at first employed to cast my types), calumniated my plan, he censured what he did not understand, wantonly disappointed me in the work he engaged to execute, and would meanly have sacrificed me, to establish the fallacious opinion he had promulgated.’
People had their little jokes about the ‘Logotypes,’ and Mr. Knight Hunt, in his ‘Fourth Estate,’ writes, ‘It was said that the orders to the type-founder ran after this fashion, “Send me a hundred-weight of heat, cold, wet, dry, murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, and alarming explosion.”’ That he obtained not only literary, but royal recognition of his pet type, is shown by a foot-note to the letter above quoted (respecting Mr. Caslon),
‘Any gentleman who chuses may inspect the Logographic Founts and Types, at the Printing-office, or at the British Museum, to which place they have been removed from the Queen’s Palace.’
Where he got his money from he does not say, but on the 17th of May, 1784, he advertised that ‘Mr. Walter begs to inform the public that he has purchased the printing-house formerly occupied by Mr. Basket near Apothecaries Hall, which will be opened on the first day of next month for printing words entire, under his Majesty’s Patent;’ and he commenced business June 1, 1784.
Printing House Square stands on the site of the old Monastery of Blackfriars. After the dissolution of the monasteries, in Henry the Eighth’s time, it passed through several hands, until it became the workshop of the royal printer. Here was printed, in 1666, the London Gazette, the oldest surviving paper in England; and, the same year, the all-devouring Great Fire completely destroyed it. Phœnix-like, it arose from its ashes, more beautiful than before—for the writer of ‘A New View of London,’ published in 1708, thus describes it: Printing House Lane, on the E side of Blackfryars: a passage to the Queen’s Printing House (which is a stately building).’