Finally, we consider that the art of letter-founding rapidly reached maturity after the general diffusion of printing consequent on the sack of Mentz; and that when the writer of the Cologne Chronicle, in the last year of the 15th century, spoke of “the art as now generally used,” he spoke of an art which, at the close of the 19th century, has been able to improve in no essential principle on the processes first made use of by the great inventors of Typography.
CHAPTER I
THE ENGLISH TYPE BODIES AND FACES.
E have laid before the reader, in the Introductory Chapter, such facts and conjectures as it is possible to gather together respecting the processes and appliances adopted by the first letter-founders, and shall, with a view to render the particular history of the English Letter Foundries more intelligible, endeavour to present here, in as concise a form as possible, a short historical sketch of the English type bodies and faces, tracing particularly the rise and development of the Roman, Italic, and Black letters before and subsequent to their introduction into this country; adding, in a following chapter, a similar notice of the types of the principal foreign and learned languages which have figured conspicuously in English typography.
TYPE-BODIES.
The origin of type-bodies and the nomenclature which has grown around them, is a branch of typographical antiquity which has always been shrouded in more or less obscurity. Imagining, as we do, that the moulds of the first printers were of a primitive construction, and, though conceived on true principles, were adjusted to the various sizes of letter they had to cast more by eye than by rule, it is easy to understand that founts would be cast on no other principle than that of ranging in body and line and height in themselves, irrespective of the body, height and line of other founts used in the same press. When two or more {32} founts were required to mix in the same work, then the necessity of a uniform standard of height would become apparent. When two or more founts were required to mix in the same line, a uniformity in body, and if possible in alignment, would be found necessary. When initials or marginal notes required to be incorporated with the text, then the advantage of a mathematical proportion between one body and another would suggest itself.