In Western Europe, France was next to Italy in producing Hebrew type. Mention is made of an Alphabetum Hebraicum et Græcum, printed by Gilles de Gourmont in 1507; and in 1508 that able typographer, whose distinction as {63} the first cutter of Greek type in France we have already noticed, produced, under the conduct of his patron, Tissard, a Hebrew Grammar, together with the Oratio Dominica, and other passages in the sacred language. The types made use of were ill-formed and imperfect. Although thus early initiated, Hebrew printing made little or no progress for some years. Jodocus Badius showed a few lines in 1511; and in 1516 Gourmont printed an Alphabetum Hebraicum et Græcum. In 1519, Augustino Giustiniani, a native of Genoa, who had already distinguished himself by superintending the production of Porrus’ Polyglot Psalter at that city in 1516, being invited to Paris by the King, caused new punches and matrices of the Hebrew to be made by Gourmont. The work took a year and a half to complete; when, in 1520, was published the Grammar of the Rabbi Moses Kimhi, the first wholly printed Hebrew work produced in Paris. From this time Hebrew printing made steady progress in France. Most of the printers possessed types, the Wechels and the Estiennes being the most distinguished in their use of them.
In Spain the printers of the Complutensian Polyglot made use of a fine Hebrew fount in 1514–17.
In Germany, as early as 1501, in a book supposed to have been printed at Erfurt, Hebrew letters occur, cut rudely on wood; and at Basle, Strasburg, and Augsburg a similar primitive method was adopted, as it was also in the case of the Hebrew Grammar printed at Leipsic in 1520. In 1512, however, at Tübingen in Wirtemburg, the Septem psalmi pœnitentiales were printed in cast metal type. In 1534, at Basle, the first Hebrew Bible printed by a Gentile was produced at the press of Bebel. Froben’s Bible, in the same town, in 1536, is in a type inferior to that of Bomberg. The running titles are all in the Rabbinical character. In 1587, Elias Hutter printed at Hamburg a Hebrew Bible in large type, in which the “radical” letters appear black in the usual way, and the “serviles” are open, or in outline, while the “quiescents” are in smaller solid letters placed above the line. This Bible was reprinted in 1603, and is a typographical curiosity.
In the Low Countries, Hebrew words, probably cut in wood, occur in the Epistola apologetica Pauli de Middleburgo, printed at Louvain in 1488; and Gand[125] gives 1506 as the probable date of a Hebrew Dictionary, sine notâ, but attributed to Martens. This, however, appears doubtful, as in 1518 Martens first announced his intention to print in Hebrew. His first-dated Hebrew work was a Grammar, in 1528; though Schwab considers that the Dictionary above referred to properly belongs to the year 1520. Martens’ earliest founts were a large Hebrew with vowel points, and a small, without. Hebrew printing was also practised at {64} Leyden in 1520. The splendid type cut by Le Bé, the Frenchman, for Plantin’s Polyglot, printed at Antwerp in 1569–72, placed the Netherlands in the front rank of Hebrew typography. Amsterdam, during the seventeenth century, excelled all other cities in its Hebrew printing. Abraham and Bonaventura Elzevir printed here in Hebrew about 1630, and the Hebrew Bibles of Janson in 1639, Athias in 1667, and Van der Hooght in 1705, are justly regarded as masterpieces of Hebrew typography.
The first specimen of Hebrew printing in England occurs in Wakefield’s Oratio de laudibus et utilitate trium linguarum, printed by De Worde in 1524, where a few words appear, rudely cut on wood. In the same work the author complained that he was compelled to omit a third part, because the printer had no Hebrew types. Hebrew words cut in wood are also used in Humfrey’s Life of Bishop Jewell, printed by John Day in 1573; and Todd, in his Life of Walton, mentions a work of Dr. Peter Baro on Jonah, printed at the same press in 1579, in the preface to which occur several verses of Hebrew. As late as 1603 Dibdin points out that in a poem, published at Oxford, composed by Dr. Thorne, Regius Professor of Hebrew at that University, a phrase in Hebrew is added, with the remark, “Interserenda hoc in loco . . . sed enim Typographo deerant characteres.” Todd, however, mentions a work printed at Oxford in 1597, in which Hebrew type is used, while a translation from S. Chrysostom, of John Willoughbie, printed by Barnes in 1602, shows two distinct founts in use. The first English book in which any quantity of Hebrew type was made use of was Dr. Rhys’s Cambro-brytannicæ Cymræcæve linguæ institutiones, printed by Thomas Orwin in 1592. Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas, in 1617, printed by John Browne, shows Hebrew which serves not only for its own language, but also for the Syriac. And in 1621 John Bill used a newer and better letter for printing Dr. Davies’s Antiquæ linguæ Britannicæ . . rudimenta. The Hebrew fount made use of in Walton’s Polyglot in 1657 was probably the first important fount cut and cast in this country; and, as we shall have occasion to notice, was found fault with by the critics of that great undertaking. Oxford received a great and small Hebrew[126] among the matrices presented to her by Dr. Fell; and both there and in London several Hebrew works were printed at the close of the seventeenth century, although none of striking importance. It is significant of the superior reputation of the Oxford Hebrew, that the Hebrew and Chaldæan versions in the Oratio Dominica of 1700 were among the versions printed for the London publisher of that work in the University types. Thomas James, although he visited Amsterdam in 1710, at that time the centre of the best {65} Hebrew printing in Europe, failed to secure any matrices; and most of those which subsequently were added to his foundry appear to have been cut by English founders. Among them were four founts of Rabbinical Hebrew,[127] for which character there existed no matrices in England in Walton’s time, as he was compelled to cut the alphabet shown in his Prolegomena in wood. Mores counted as many as twenty-three different founts in James’s foundry in his day, eight of which were with points, the remainder without. For those without points it was early the practice to cast points on a minute body, to be worked in a separate line below the letter. Caslon cut several good founts of Hebrew (one of which was of the open or outline description first introduced by Hutter); and during the eighteenth century the character became a necessary part of the stock of every founder. It would be difficult, however, to point to any striking achievement in Hebrew typography earlier than Bagster’s Polyglot in 1817–21, in which the Hebrew text is printed in a very small and beautiful type cut by Vincent Figgins, which in its day had the reputation of being the smallest Hebrew with points in England, and of equalling in size and exceeding in beauty even the elegant letter of Jansson of Amsterdam, two centuries before.
ARABIC.
The first book printed in Arabic types is supposed to be a Diurnale græcorum Arabum, printed at Fano in Italy, in 1514. Two years later, Porrus’ Polyglot Psalter, comprising the Arabic version, was printed at Genoa; and two years later still, a Koran in Arabic is said to have been printed at Venice. Thus, says De Rossi, while no Arabic types were to be found in any other part of Europe, three towns of Italy possessed, and were making use of them at the same moment.
In 1505 an Arabic Vocabulary at Granada had the words printed in Gothic letter with the Arabic points placed over them; and in other presses where there were no Arabic types, the language was expressed in Hebrew letters or cut in wood. De Guignes and others mention a fount of Arabic used by Gromors in Paris, in 1539–40, to print Postel’s Grammar, and add that the fount subsequently disappeared and was lost; and as late as 1596, in a book printed at Paris, the Arabic words had to be rendered in Hebrew. In 1591 the Vatican press had a fine fount of Arabic, a specimen of which is given by Angelo Roccha in his Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, printed at that press. The Medicean and Borromean presses also had founts; and at Leyden, Raphlengius and Erpenius {66} were both celebrated for their Arabic letter. In 1636 the foundry of the Propaganda showed specimens of Arabic, previous to which date Savary de Brèves had had cut in Constantinople, and finished by Le Bé of Paris, the famous Arabic founts which were used to print the Psalter at Rome in 1614, and subsequently were purchased by Vitré for the French king,[128] and used in Le Jay’s magnificent Paris Polyglot of 1645. The punches and matrices of these founts still exist. Cotton mentions an Arabic press in Upsala in 1640.
In England it was not till early in the seventeenth century that Arabic printing began to be practised. In Wakefield’s Oratio de laudibus . . trium linguarum, Arabicæ, Chaldaicæ et Hebraicæ, printed by De Worde in 1524, a few rude Arabic letters are introduced, cut in wood. In Minsheu’s Ductor in Linguas, 1617, the Arabic words are printed in Italic characters. Laud’s gift of Oriental MSS. to Oxford in 1635, and the appointment of an Arabic lecturer, was the first real incentive to the cultivation of the language by English scholars. Previous to this, it is stated that the Raphlengius Arabic press at Leyden had been purchased by the English Orientalist, William Bedwell; but if brought to this country, it does not appear that it was immediately made use of.[129] The Arabic words in Thomas Greave’s oration, De Linguæ Arabicæ Utilitate, printed at Oxford in 1639, were written in by hand; and the same author, when publishing his Elementa Linguæ Persicæ at the press of James Flesher at London, in 1649, explained in his preface that his work had been ready for publication nine years before, but having no types with which to print it, it had been delayed. A year earlier, in 1648, Miles Flesher, predecessor to James and one of the Star Chamber printers, had published in the same type, and at the same press, a work entitled De Siglis Arabum et Persarum Astronomis. James Flesher was the printer who printed in his own types the original specimen-page of the London Polyglot in 1652. His Arabic, however, is a smaller character than that subsequently made use of by Roycroft for this grand work. Dr. Fell’s gift of matrices to Oxford in 1667 included a fount of Arabic,[130] which appeared in the specimen of the foundry, and was used also in the Oratio Dominica of 1700. Prior to this, however, Pocock’s Carmen Tograi was printed at Oxford by Hall in 1661, “Typis Arabicis Academicis,” in a letter differing both from Flesher’s {67} and Dr. Fell’s. In 1721, William Caslon cut for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge the fount of Arabic for the Psalter of 1725, and the Testament of 1727. This fount,[131] with those of Oxford and the Polyglot, shared among them nearly all the Arabic printing in England for about a century later, when new faces began to be cut or imported. The Polyglot Arabics passed through Grover’s foundry into that of Thomas James, at the sale of which, in 1782, they were bought in an imperfect state by Dr. Edmund Fry for the Type Street foundry. Mores mentions three other Arabic founts cut by English founders, but includes them among the lost matrices in his collection.