Baskerville appears to have kept a large number “of hot plates of copper ready, between which, as soon as printed (aye, as they were discharged from the tympan) the sheets were inserted; the wet was thus expelled, the ink set, and the trim glossy surface put on all simultaneously.”[20] The peculiar gloss which characterizes the productions of the Baskerville Press is to be found in no other books of the eighteenth century.
Again, as to ink, a black in an impure state had been used by printers for nearly two hundred years, and it was not until Baskerville that any attention was turned to this most essential article. It was reserved for him to discover a superior kind of black for the purpose required. Hansard thinks that to this success may be attributed, in a great measure, the excellence of his printing.
Hansard gives the recipe of Baskerville’s ink: “He took of the finest and oldest linseed oil three gallons, this was put into a vessel capable of holding four times the quantity, and boiled with a long-continued fire till it acquired a certain thickness or tenacity, according to the quality of the work it was intended to print, and which was judged of by putting small quantities upon a stone to cool, and then taking it up between the finger and thumb; on opening which, if it drew into a thread an inch long or more, it was considered sufficiently boiled. This mode of boiling can only be acquired by long practice, and requires particular skill and care in the person who superintends the operation, as, for want of this, the most serious consequences ... have very frequently occurred; the oil thus prepared was suffered to cool, and had then a small quantity of black or amber rosin dissolved in it, after which it was allowed some months to subside; it was then mixed with the fine black, before named, to a proper thickness, and ground for use.”[21]
The lamp-black of commerce is crude and impure, but for two hundred years it satisfied the makers of printing-ink, who made no improvement in their ink. “It was not until the days of the celebrated Baskerville ... that any attention was turned to this most essential article.... It was reserved for him to discover ... a superior kind of black, ... and to this success it is said that the superiority of his printing may be attributed.”[22] Certain it is that it stimulated rivalry in the trade, and a few out of many other attempts to improve were partially successful.
Finally there was the text. Baskerville wrote Dodsley his scheme for obtaining absolutely correct texts of the works he was about to print, as follows: “’Tis this. Two people must be concerned; the one must name every letter, capital, point, reference, accent, etc., that is, in English, must spell every part of every word distinctly, and note down every difference in a book prepared on purpose. Pray oblige me in making the experiment with Mr. James Dodsley in four or five lines of any two editions of an author, and you’ll be convinced that it’s scarcely possible for the least difference, even of a point, to escape notice. I would recommend and practise the same method in an English author, where most people imagine themselves capable of correcting. Here’s another great advantage to me in this humble scheme; at the same time that a proof sheet is correcting, I shall find out the least imperfection in any of the Types that has escaped the founder’s notice.”
“Meanwhile he had laboured assiduously to complete his promised series of the Roman and Italic faces. At the time of the publication of the Virgil, he put forward a quarto sheet containing specimens of the Great Primer, English, Pica, and Brevier Roman, and Great Primer and Pica Italic, beautifully printed. This sheet, which is noted by Renouard, and which is occasionally found bound up with copies of the Virgil, was very shortly followed, about the end of the year 1758, by a larger and more general specimen, consisting entirely of Roman and Italic letter in eight sizes, viz.:—Double Pica, Great Primer, English, Pica, Small Pica, Long Primer, Bourgeois, and Brevier. Of the last two, Roman only is shown. The whole is arranged in two columns on a broadside sheet, with appropriate titlings, and forms a beautiful display. Although the only copy we have seen is printed on a greenish paper, somewhat coarse, the specimen exceeds in elegance and uniformity most, if not all, the productions of contemporary founders.”[23]
The Virgil was then advertised as follows: “John Baskerville proposes, by the advice and assistance of several learned men, to print from the Cambridge Edition, corrected with all possible care, an elegant edition of Virgil. The work will be printed in quarto, on a very fine writing Royal paper, and with the above letter. The price of the Volume in sheets will be one guinea, no part of which will be required till the Book is delivered. It will be put to press as soon as the number of subscribers shall amount to five hundred, whose names will be prefixt to the work.”
Finally, after many delays caused by the desire of Baskerville to have the book perfect, the Virgil went to press in 1757, after seven years of careful, patient, persistent work upon it. It was a surprise to the literary world. It was the first fine book printed in England,—the first of those magnificent editions which, as Macaulay said, “went forth to astonish all the librarians of Europe.”[24] Every part of the volume was in harmony with every other part. There was no disproportion. The book has been well said to be a landmark in the history of typography. In looking at it to-day we wonder how it was done when it was done. It seems as though the Birmingham artist had come before his time.
The list of subscribers printed in the book comprises 513 names, and it is a wonderful list. Scholars and libraries throughout the country are upon it. There is one subscriber from Copenhagen, another from Berlin, and another from the Island of Barbadoes. Dr. Samuel Johnson ordered one copy for his old Oxford College. It is interesting for us to see that the Public Library, Philadelphia, subscribed for a copy, and that “The Library Company at Charles-Town, South Carolina,” and “Mr. Isaac Mazyck of Charles-Town in South Carolina,” took each a copy, while Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia subscribed for six. The conservatism of the English bookseller, however, was such that no bookseller subscribed for more than one copy except Dodsley, who was concerned in the making of the book, and took twenty copies.
This first issue of Virgil was in royal quarto, and it was the first book printed on wove paper; that is, as I understand it, on paper laid on flannel or flats, and showing no marks of wires. The critical Harwood pronounced it “the best printed book that the typographical art ever produced.”[25] Dibdin said of it: “I have always considered this beautiful production as one of the most finished specimens of typography. It was the earliest publication of Baskerville, and all the care and attention of that ingenious printer were devoted to render it unrivalled. He secured his reputation by it, and though it has a few typographical errors, yet it is esteemed by all collectors.”