The final destination of Baskerville’s types is shrouded in mystery. Most writers assert that the printing establishment at Kehl was entirely destroyed at the commencement of the French Revolution, and many suggest that the types performed their last service in the shape of bullets. Plausible as this story is, it is disproved by the existence of four works of Alfieri, all bearing the imprint, dalla Tipografia di Kehl, co’ caratteri di Baskerville, and dated severally 1786, 1795, 1800 and 1809.[587] These works, to whose existence no writer on Baskerville appears hitherto to have called attention, bear the strongest internal evidence of the accuracy of their claims, and thus enable us to trace the survival of these famous types to a date twenty years later than that at which they are commonly supposed to have perished. In England, some of Baskerville’s types are said to have been in use in the office of Messrs. Harris, in Liverpool, in 1820; and seven years later, we find a work printed by Thomas White, of Crane Court, London, for Pickering, claiming to be “with the types of John Baskerville”.[588] But though a fount or two of the types may have survived, all search as to the ultimate fate of the punches or matrices is baffled. They may still exist, {287} neglected, in the dusty drawers of some foreign press or foundry.[589] If so, it is to be hoped that their discovery may in due time reward the patience of those whose ambition it is to recover for their native land these precious relics of the most brilliant of all the English letter-founders.

LIST OF BASKERVILLE’S SPECIMENS.

CHAPTER XIV.

THOMAS COTTRELL, 1757.