Mr. Bolts’ failure in this particular reflects no discredit on Jackson, who faithfully reproduced the models given him, and who displayed his talent in the same direction shortly after by the production of a fount of Deva Nagari, cut under the direction of Captain William Kirkpatrick, of the East India Service, and Persian Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief for India, for the purpose of printing a Grammar and Dictionary in that language.
Of this fount a specimen remains—the only specimen extant, we believe, bearing Jackson’s name. It is a broadside, displaying in table form the alphabet and combinations of the Sanscrit, and exhibits no small delicacy of workmanship, not only in the Oriental character itself, but in the few lines of Roman letter composing the title. There is no date to the specimen.
Captain Kirkpatrick’s Dictionary was never completed. One part only appeared in 1785,[651] containing the Glossary of the Arabic and Persian words incorporated with the Hindu, and in this no Nagari is used. All the remaining parts of the work, as first projected, depended on the new type; but as they never appeared, the object for which the fount was cut was lost.
The next important undertaking which engaged Jackson’s talents was one of national interest. The House of Lords had, in the year 1767, determined upon printing the Journals and Parliamentary records, “a work, which,” says {320} Nichols, “will ever reflect honour on the good taste and munificence of the present reign” (George III). Jackson had been employed to cut several varieties of letter for this work; and he was now called upon to assist in a further outcome of the same good taste and munificence, in the production of type for the splendid facsimile of the Domesday Book, begun in 1773. This important work was projected and carried through by Dr. Nichols himself, and a brief account of the circumstances under which it saw the light may be interesting and not out of place here.
The Lords, it appears, being petitioned to sanction the printing of the Domesday Book, the most important of the Anglo-Saxon records, as a matter of national importance, referred, through the Treasury Board, to the Society of Antiquaries as to the mode in which it should be published, whether by printing-types, or by having a copy of the manuscript engraved in facsimile. By the examination of several eminent printers, it was learned that according to the first plan very many unavoidable errors would occur; a tracing of the record was then proposed, to be transferred to copper plates. An estimate of the expense of this was next ordered by the Treasury Board, which amounted to £20,000 for the printing and engraving of 1250 copies, each containing 1664 plates; but this sum, however proportionate, was considered too large, and the first plan was again reverted to.
It was then proposed by the learned Dr. Morton that a fount of facsimile types should be cut under his superintendence. This undertaking, however, failed, and Dr. Morton received £500 for doing little or nothing, and nearly £200 more for types that were of no use. The founder to whom Dr. Morton applied was Thomas Cottrell, a specimen of whose unsuccessful fount appeared shortly afterwards in Luckombe’s History of Printing, 1770.
Dr. Morton’s plan being abandoned, on account of the difficulty of producing in type letters which, in the manuscript, were constantly differing in their forms, the work was entrusted to Mr. Abraham Farley, F.R.S., a gentleman of great Record learning, and who had had access to the ancient MSS. for upwards of forty years. His knowledge, however, did not induce him to differ from his original in a single instance, even when he found an apparent error; he preserved in his transcript every interlineation and contraction, and his copy was ultimately placed in Mr. Nichols’ hands. Jackson was then employed to cut the types, and successfully accomplished the difficult undertaking.[652] The work occupied ten {321} years in printing, and appeared in 1783, in two folio volumes.[653] The type was destroyed in the fire which consumed the printing-office of Mr. Nichols in 1808, previous to which, however, it was used in Kelham’s Introduction and Glossary to the Domesday Book in 1788.[654]
It was Jackson’s success, no doubt, in his facsimile letter for the Domesday Book, which led to his selection shortly afterwards by Mr. Nichols to cut the type for Dr. Woide’s[655] facsimile of the New Testament of the Alexandrian Codex in the British Museum. To the history of this priceless relic reference has been made once or twice in the course of this work.[656] Only one attempt had previously been made to reproduce its character in type,—that of Dr. Patrick Young, in 1643, within a few years of the arrival of the manuscript in this country. In this letter was printed a specimen containing the first chapter of Genesis. But the project was abandoned, and the matrices, there is reason to believe, subsequently passed into Grover’s Foundry, and afterwards, through James, into the possession of Dr. Fry in 1782.[657] That Mr. Nichols was acquainted with their existence in 1778 is almost certain, since they are mentioned in Rowe Mores’ Dissertation, which he himself edited and annotated. But not being sufficiently exact for the purpose, and, at the same time, it being decided that the facsimile should be produced through the medium of type in preference to other process,[658] Mr. Jackson was fixed on to cut a new set of punches from the transcript made by Dr. Woide’s own hand. To this task he proved fully equal, and the work issued from Mr. Nichols’ press in 1786[659]—a splendid folio edition, worthy alike of {322} its subject and the artists who produced it. The unusual compliment was, in this instance, paid to the letter-founder of mentioning his name on the title-page as the author of the types employed in the work.
The matrices were afterwards deposited in the British Museum, and were again brought into requisition when, in 1812, Mr. Baber produced his facsimile of the Psalms[660] from the Alexandrian MS., and afterwards, in 1816–21, at the press of Messrs. R. and A. Taylor, completed the entire Old Testament.[661] Thus concluded this great enterprise, which has been justly characterised by the Abbé Jager as “opus plane aureum.”
Jackson having now become famous for his skill in this particular branch of his art, was called upon shortly before his death to execute a work of scarcely less importance than the facsimile of the Alexandrian Greek. This was to cut the punches for Dr. Kipling’s facsimile of the celebrated Codex Bezæ preserved at the University of Cambridge. The character of this MS. differs considerably from that of the Alexandrine; and, being less regular in its execution, the difficulty of reproducing it in type is proportionately greater. Jackson, however, accomplished his task faithfully and with marked success. Unhappily his death in 1792 prevented him from seeing in print the fruit of his labours, as the work did not appear till the following year, when it was published at Cambridge in two beautiful folio volumes,[662]—a work which, says its reviewer, “reflects honour on the University of Cambridge, and its editor, and, we may add, on the late excellent letter-founder, Mr. Jackson, who cut the types for this handsome book, as well as for the Alexandrine MS. and for Domesday.”[663]