One of the first public appearances of the English fount was in the 8vo edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, begun in 1794 in monthly parts, and published {338} by Parsons in 1796.[703] The announcement accompanying Part I makes special reference to “a new and beautiful Type cast on purpose for this work by Vincent Figgins.” The Italic of this fount is specially elegant.
Mr. Figgins’ indefatigable industry enabled him to issue in the next year an enlarged Specimen Book with the same title and address as before, but containing twelve sheets of specimens, four of which were dated 1794.
He met with further encouragement in his new undertaking by the patronage of the Delegates of the Oxford Press, under whose direction he completed a fount of Double Pica Greek, the progress of which had been interrupted by the death of Mr. Jackson. In connection with this circumstance, Mr. Vincent Figgins the younger, in the remarks appended to his facsimile reprint of Caxton’s Game of the Chesse, has preserved an anecdote, which it will be interesting to repeat here, not only as having reference to Mr. Figgins’ early productions, but as illustrating a curious phase of the mystery of type founding at that day:—
“The mystery thrown over the operations of a Type foundry,” says Mr. Vincent Figgins II in 1855, “within my own recollection (thirty-four years), and the still greater secrecy which had existed in my father’s experience, testifies that the art had been perpetuated by a kind of Druidical or Masonic induction from the first. An anecdote of my father’s early struggles may illustrate this. At the death of Mr. Joseph Jackson, whom my father had served ten years as apprentice and foreman, there was in progress for the University Press of Oxford a new fount of Double Pica Greek, which had progressed under my father’s entire management. The then delegates of that Press—the Rev. Dr. Randolph and the Rev. W. Jackson—suggested that Mr. Figgins should finish the fount himself. This, with other offers of support from those who had previously known him, was the germ of his prosperity (which was always gratefully acknowledged). But when he had undertaken this work, the difficulty presented itself that he did not know where to find the punch-cutter. No one knew his address; but he was supposed to be a tall man, who came in a mysterious way occasionally, whose name no one knew, but he went by the sobriquet of ‘The Black Man.’ This old gentleman, a very clever mechanic, lived to be a pensioner on my father’s bounty—gratitude is, perhaps, the better word. I knew him, and could never understand the origin of his sobriquet, unless Black was meant for dark, mysterious, from the manner of his coming and going from Mr. Jackson’s foundry.”
Shortly after the completion of the Greek fount, Mr. Figgins was called upon {339} to execute a fount of Persian under the direction of the eminent Orientalist, Sir William Ouseley.[704] This type was used in Francis Gladwin’s Persian Moonshee[705] in 1801, and other works; and was commended by Dr. Adam Clarke as a beautiful letter in the finest form of the Nustaleek character.
About the same time, he cut a fount of English Télegú from a MS., for the East India Company, in whose library, says Hansard, the “matrices or moulds” were afterwards deposited. Of this fount he issued two specimens about 1802, one a folio, the other a quarto; and about the same time put forward a specimen of “Two-line letters” in the same form.
In the year 1800, Mr. Figgins was engaged by Messrs. Eyre and Strahan, His Majesty’s Printers, to cut and cast an improved fount of Small Pica Domesday; and, in 1805, a new Pica of the same character, expressly for the purpose of printing the splendid and valuable publications of the Commission of Enquiry into the State of the Records of the Kingdom.[706] In the years 1807 and 1808, he was also employed by His Majesty’s Printers in Scotland on three further {340} founts (Pica, Long Primer, and Brevier) for the purpose of printing the Records of that portion of the Empire.[707] This improved Domesday (a specimen of which may be seen in Johnson’s Typographia), differs considerably from that of Jackson, in which the Domesday Book had been printed in 1783,[708] and became, subsequently, the uniform character adopted for extracts from Domesday and other ancient Charters and Records quoted in modern topographical works.
Mr. Figgins’ good fortune in the first results of his new business was somewhat tempered by the fact that, within a few years of the establishment of his foundry, the public taste with regard to the ordinary Roman letter experienced a complete revolution, setting aside the elegant models on which the punches of Jackson and his contemporaries had been cut, in favour of the new fashion which came in with the nineteenth century.
To accommodate himself to this fashion must have involved Mr. Figgins in a considerable sacrifice of his early labour and industry, and the circumstance may possibly account for the somewhat remarkable absence of any specimen bearing his name for a lengthened period.
In the appendix to Stower’s Printers’ Grammar, 1808, which exhibits the “modern faces” of Caslon and Fry, the compiler regrets not being able to show specimens of the new cut types from Mr. Figgins’ foundry, “but understands that in a few months Mr. F. will have fully completed his specimens.”