WILLIAM MARTIN, 1790.
ILLIAM MARTIN was brother to Robert Martin,[679] Baskerville’s apprentice and successor. He appears to have acquired his first knowledge of the art at the Birmingham foundry, and about the year 1786 to have come to London and entered into the service of Mr. George Nicol,[680] as a punch cutter. Mr. Nicol was at that time engaged in maturing his plans for the production of a magnificent edition of Shakespeare, and kept Martin at his own house “to cut sets of types after approved models in imitation of the sharp and fine letter used by the French and Italian printers.”
On the establishment of the famous “Shakespeare Press,”[681] by Messrs. {331} Boydell and Nicol, in 1790, at Cleveland Row, St. James’s, with William Bulmer as presiding genius, Martin was established in premises hard by, in Duke Street; his foundry being a sort of private foundry in connection with the Press. Here it was that he produced the founts in which the magnificent works, issued during the next twenty years from Bulmer’s Press, were printed.
The appearance of the first part of the Shakespeare[682] in 1791 at once established the fame of the printer and his types; and the completion of the work, in nine volumes, in 1810, may be regarded as marking an epoch in British typography. “No work of equal magnitude”, says the enthusiastic Dibdin, “ever presented such complete accuracy and uniform excellence of execution. There is scarcely one perceptible shade of variation from the first page of the first volume, to the last page of the work, either in the colour of the ink, the hue of the paper, or the clearness and sharpness of the types.”[683]
The Milton,[684] which followed, is considered a still finer specimen of typography. The enthusiasm animating all concerned in the new undertaking was remarkable, and attracted universal attention. “The nation,” says Dibdin, “appeared to be not less struck than astonished; and our venerable monarch, George III, felt anxious not only to give such a magnificent establishment every degree of royal support, but, infected with the matrix and puncheon mania, he had even contemplated the creation of a royal printing office within the walls of his own palace.” One of the King’s great ambitions was for England to rival Parma in the productions of Bodoni,[685] and Dibdin alludes to a story current at the time of “his majesty being completely and joyfully taken in, by bestowing upon the efforts of Mr. Bulmer’s press that eulogy which he had supposed was due exclusively to Bodoni’s”.[686]
In the advertisement of his edition of the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell,[687] printed in 1795 and dedicated to the Messrs. Boydell and Nicol, the founders of the Shakespeare Press, Bulmer thus bears testimony to the talents of those who had contributed to the performance:—“The present volume, in addition to {332} the Shakespeare, the Milton, and many other valuable works of elegance which have already been given to the world through the medium of the Shakespeare Press, are (sic) particularly meant to combine the various beauties of printing, type founding, engraving, and paper making; as well as with a view to ascertain the near approach to perfection which those arts have attained to (in) this country, as to invite a fair competition with the typographical productions of other nations. How far the different artists who have contributed their exertions to this great object have succeeded in the attempt, the public will now be fully able to judge.”
In all these encomiums, Martin claims a share; and, regarded simply as type specimens, the productions of the Shakespeare Press justify his reputation as a worthy disciple of his great master Baskerville. His Roman and Italic types were cut in decided imitation of the famous Birmingham models; although Hansard points out with disapproval that in certain particulars he attempted unwisely to vary the design. “As to the type”, he says, “the modern artist, Mr. Martin, has made an effort to cut the ceriphs and hair strokes excessively sharp and fine; the long ſ is discarded, and some trifling changes are introduced; but the letter does not stand so true or well in line as Baskerville’s, and, as to the Italic, the Birmingham artist will be found to far excel.”[688]
The Shakespeare Press, along with all the other presses of the land, had to bow before the revolution which in the closing years of last century swept aside the beautiful old-face Roman, and set up in its stead the modern character; and Hansard’s strictures above-quoted doubtless refer to Martin’s endeavour, while adhering to the Baskerville form as his model, to modify it so as to conform to the new fashion. We are among those who deplore the change thus inaugurated; but at the same time it must be admitted that Martin succeeded as well in the new departure as any of his contemporaries.
Nor did he confine himself to Roman and Italic. He produced several founts of Greeks and Orientals, which eventually came to form the most valuable part of his collection.[689] His Greek character, however, like the Greeks attempted by Baskerville and Bodoni, was not a success; and the otherwise beautiful edition of Musæus, printed in 1797,[690] and bearing on the title-page his name as the cutter of the type, is marred by the cramped and inelegant effect of that character. {333}