At first, doubtless, the printer would name his sizes of type according to the works for which they were used. His Canon type would be the large character in which he printed the canon of the Mass. His Cicero type would be the letter used in his editions of that classical author. His Saint Augustin, his Primer, his Brevier, his Philosophie, his Pica type, would be the names by which he would describe the sizes of letter he used for printing the works whose names they bore. It may also be assumed with tolerable certainty that in most of these cases, originally, the names described not only the body, but the “face” of their respective founts. At what period this confused and haphazard system of nomenclature resolved itself into the definite printer’s terminology it is difficult to determine. The process was probably a gradual one, and was not perfected until typefounding became a distinct and separate trade.
The earliest writers on the form and proportion of letters,—Dürer[54] in 1525, Tory[55] in 1529, and Ycair[56] in 1548,—though using terms to distinguish the different faces of letter, were apparently unaware of any distinguishing names for the bodies of types. Tory, indeed, mentions Canon and Bourgeoise; but in both cases he refers to the face of the letter; and Ycair’s distinction of “teste y glosa” applies generally to the large and small type used for the text and notes respectively of the same work.[57]
In England, type-bodies do not appear to have been reduced to a definite scale much before the end of the sixteenth century. Mores[58] failed to trace them further back than 1647; but in a Regulation of the Stationers’ Company, dated 1598,[59] Pica, English, Long Primer, and Brevier are mentioned by name as apparently well-established bodies at that time; and in a petition to the same Company in 1635,[60] Nonpareil and “two-line letters” are mentioned as equally familiar.
Moxon, our first writer on the subject, in his Mechanick Exercises, in 1683, {33} described ten regular bodies in common use in his day, and added to his list the number of types of each body that went to a foot, viz.:—
| Pearl | 184 | to a foot |
| Nonpareil | 150 | ″ |
| Brevier | 112 | ″ |
| Long Primer | 92 | ″ |
| Pica | 75 | ″ |
| English | 66 | ″ |
| Great Primer | 50 | ″ |
| Double Pica | 38 | ″ |
| 2-line English | 33 | ″ |
| French Canon | 17 1⁄2 | ″ |
“We have one body more,” he adds, “which is sometimes used in England; that is, a Small Pica: but I account it no great discretion in a master-printer to provide it, because it differs so little from the Pica, that unless the workmen be carefuller than they sometimes are, it may be mingled with the Pica, and so the beauty of both founts may be spoiled.”
In this sentence we have the first record of the introduction of irregular bodies into English typography, an innovation destined very speedily to expand, and within half a century increase the number of English bodies by the seven following additions:
| Minion | 132 | to a foot |
| Bourgeois | 100 | ″ |
| Small Pica | 76 | ″ |
| Paragon | 46 | ″ |
| 2-line Pica | 37 1⁄2 | ″ |
| 2-line Great Primer | 25 | ″ |
| 2-line Double Pica | 19 | ″ |
The origin of these irregular bodies it is easy to explain. Between Moxon’s time and 1720 the country was flooded with Dutch type. The English founders were beaten out of the field in their own market, and James, in self-defence, had to furnish his foundry entirely with Dutch moulds and matrices. Thus we had the typefounding of two nations carried on side by side. An English printer furnished with a Dutch fount would require additions to it to be cast to the Dutch standard, which might be smaller or larger than that laid down for English type by Moxon, and yet so near that even if it lost or gained a few types in the foot, it would still be called by its English name, which would thenceforth represent two different bodies. If, on the other hand, a new fount were imported, or cut by an ill-regulated artist here, which when finished was found to be as much too large for one regular body as it was too small for another, a body would be found to fit it between the two, and christened by a new name. In this manner, Minion, Bourgeois, Small Pica, Paragon, and two-line Pica insinuated themselves into the list of English bodies, and in this manner arose that ancient anomaly, the various body-standards of the English foundries. For a founder who was constantly called upon to alter his mould to accommodate a printer requiring a special body, would be likely to cast a quantity of the letter in excess of what was immediately ordered; and this store, if not sold in due time to the person for whom it was cast, would be disposed of to the first {34} comer who, requiring a new fount, and not particular as to body, provided the additions afterwards to be had were of the same gauge, would take it off the founder’s hands. Facilis descensus Averni ! Having taken the one downward step, the founder would be called upon constantly to repeat it, his moulds would remain set, some to the right, some to the wrong standard, and every type he cast would make it more impossible for him or his posterity to recover the simple standard from which he had erred.
Such we imagine to have been the origin of the irregular and ununiform bodies. Even in 1755, when Smith published his Printer’s Grammar, the mischief was beyond recall. In no single instance were the standards given by him identical with those of 1683. Indeed, where each founder had two or three variations of each body in his own foundry it is impossible to speak of a standard at all. Smith points out that, in the case of English and Pica alone, Caslon had four varieties of the former, and the Dutch two; while of the latter, Caslon had three, and James two. Nevertheless, he gives a scale of the bodies commonly in use in his day, which it will be interesting to compare with Moxon’s on the one hand, and the standard of the English foundries in 1841 as given by Savage, on the other.