About the year 1768 the Chiswell Street foundry was called upon to supply a Syriac fount for the Oxford University Press, and Caslon produced the Long Primer Syriac which occurs in his subsequent specimens. He had previously supplied the University with a Long Primer Hebrew, and the old ledgers of the foundry show that numerous transactions of a similar kind took place during the latter half of last century.

In 1770, besides the specimen of Luckombe, another indirect specimen of the Caslon types was issued by a Mr. Cornish, printer, in Blackfriars, in a very {247} small form—32mo—exhibiting a series of Romans, two founts of Black, and three pages of flowers.

It was probably on the Specimen of 1766 that Rowe Mores founded his summary of the contents of the Caslon foundry; and it will be interesting to reproduce this list, as it presents a view of the state of the foundry as it then existed, and, at the same time, distinguishes the authors of the several founts with which it was supplied.

Rowe Mores seizes the opportunity afforded by this enumeration for another sneer at Caslon II. “This is the best account,” he says, “we can give of this capital and beautiful foundery, the possessor of which refused to answer the natural questions, because, forsooth, ‘answering would be of no advantage to us; if we wanted letter to be cast, he would cast it.’ But this we can do ourselves.”[493]

The summary is as follows:—

Caslon II died in 1778, aged 58, and was buried in the family vault at St. Luke’s, the following line being added to his father’s inscription: Also W. Caslon, Esq. (son of the above) ob. 17 Aug., 1778, ætat. 58 years.

Of him, too, an excellent oil portrait is preserved at Chiswell Street. He had married a Miss Elizabeth Cartlitch,[503] a lady of beauty, understanding, and fortune, who, during the latter years of her husband’s life, had taken an active share in the management of the foundry.

Mr. Caslon dying intestate, his property was divided equally between his widow and her two sons, William and Henry, the chief superintendence of the business devolving on William Caslon III, at that time quite a young man. The chief event of the new régime was the issue of the admirable Specimen Book of 1785, a work which, for its completeness and excellent execution, has received high approbation. It consists of sixty sheets, twenty-one of which are devoted to Romans and Italics, ten to “learned” letter[504] and Blacks, two to Music, two to {249} Script, and no fewer than twenty-six to flowers arranged in artistic combinations and designs. The volume is dedicated to King George III, Mr. Caslon assuming the title allowed a century earlier to Nicholas Nicholls, of “Letter Founder to His Majesty.”

The “Address to the Public,” which prefaces this Specimen, naturally lays claim on behalf of the Caslon Foundry to the merit of having rescued the type trade in England from the hands of foreigners. But it also suggests, by the somewhat acrid tone in which it refers to its “opponents,” that the competition of the newly-established foundries of Cottrell, Fry, Wilson, and Jackson was already beginning to tell on the temper of the third of the Caslons, who evidently did not regard as flattery the avowed imitation of the Caslon models by some of his rivals.[505]