[97] Sir A. Panizzi, in his tract, Chi era Francesco da Bologna ? London, 1858, 16mo, shows that this artist was the same as the great Italian painter, Francesco Francia.
[98] The German practice of inserting proper names and quotations, occurring in a German book, in Roman type, probably suggested a similar use of the Italic in books printed in the Roman letter.
[99] This reform, which was an incident in the general typographical revolution at the close of last century, is usually credited to John Bell, who discarded the long ſ in his British Theatre, about 1791. Long before Bell’s time, however, in 1749, Ames had done the same thing in his Typographical Antiquities, and was noted as an eccentric in consequence. Hansard notes the retention of the long ſ in books printed at the Oxford University press as late as 1824.
[100] The suggestion that Lettres de Forme may have meant merely letters commonly used in print (adopting the early printers’ use of the word forma as type), appears to be somewhat far-fetched. The term, though apparently distinctly typographical, was used both by Tory and Ycair to denote a class of letter which the former denominated Canon, or cut according to rule, as opposed to the more fanciful lettres bâtardes.
[101] Petrarch expressed a strong aversion to the character; but some Italian and French printers adopted it, to the exclusion of the Roman, and, like Nicholas Prevost in 1525, boasted of it as the type “most beautiful and most becoming for polite literature.” Gothic printing began in Italy about 1475 and in France in 1473.
[102] See specimen No. 15, post.
[103] See specimen No. 49, post.
[104] Bibliographical Decameron, ii, 407.
[105] The first part of this work is without date or printer’s name; but the types are those of the 1462 Bible. The Secunda Secundæ was printed by Schoeffer at Mentz in 1467, in the types of the Rationale.
[106] See specimens Nos. 5 and 6, ante, and 18A, post.