“A short time after this, he put out a small specimen of one fount; which his former young master carried to Bethnal Green with an air of contempt. The good old justice treated it otherwise; and desired his son ‘to take it home and {317} preserve it; and whenever he went to cutting again to look well at it.’ It is but justice to the third William Caslon to add that he always acknowledged the abilities of Mr. Jackson; and though rivals in an art which requires the greatest exertions of ingenuity, they lived in habits of reciprocal friendship.”

It is much to be regretted that no copy of Jackson’s first specimen sheet (which we may assume to have been issued about 1665) is now to be discovered.

Business increasing, he removed from Cock Lane to more commodious premises in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, and here his foundry and reputation made rapid advances.

“About the year 1771”, Nichols relates, “he was applied to by the Duke of Norfolk to make a mould to cast a hollow square. Telling the Duke that he thought this was practicable, his Grace observed that he had applied to all the skilful mechanicks in London, Mr. Caslon not excepted, who declared it impossible. He soon convinced the Duke of his abilities, and in the course of three months, producing what his Grace had been years in search of, was ever after held in great estimation by the Duke, who considered him as the first mechanick in the kingdom.”

In 1773, it would appear that Jackson issued a further specimen of his now increasing foundry. Of this performance Rowe Mores makes flattering mention in presenting his summary of the contents of the foundry as it stood in that year:—

“Mr. Jackson,” he says, “lives in Salisbury Court in Fleet Street. He is obliging and communicative, and his Specimen will, adjuvante numine, have place amongst the literate specimens of English letter cutters. The prognostics are these:—

“He has likewise Proscription letters beginning at 12-line Pica, the same with those of Mr. Cottrell, the first who cut letters of this dimension.”

With regard to the Bengalee letter, Rowe Mores states that this was cut by Jackson “for Mr. William Bolts, Judge of the Mayor’s Court of Calcutta, for a work in which he had been engaged at the time of his sudden departure from England about 1774.”[648] {318}

The work here referred to was the Grammar of the Bengal Language, projected by the East India Company as part of a scheme for the dissemination of a knowledge of the Indian Languages in Europe. It appears, however, that although Mr. Bolts was supposed to be in every way competent for the fabrication of this intricate character, his models, as copied by Jackson, failed to give satisfaction, and the work was for the time abandoned;[649] to be revived and executed some few years later in a more masterly and accurate manner by Mr. Charles Wilkins,[650] then in the service of the East India Company in Bengal, {319} who with an extraordinary combination of talents, succeeded, by the work of his own hand, in designing, engraving, casting and printing the Grammar published at Hoogly in 1778.