N this age of progress, when the fine arts are rapidly becoming trades, and the machine is on every side superseding that labour of head and hand which our fathers called Handicraft, we are in danger of losing sight of, or, at least, of undervaluing the genius of those who, with none of our mechanical advantages, established and made famous in our land those arts and handicrafts of which we are now the heritors.
The Art of Letter Founding hesitated long before yielding to the revolutionary impulses of modern progress. While kindred arts—and notably that art which preserves all others—were advancing by leaps and bounds, the founder, as late as half a century ago, was pursuing the even tenor of his ways by paths which had been trodden by De Worde and Day and Moxon. But the inevitable revolution came, and Letter Founding to-day bids fair to break all her old ties and take new departures undreamed of by those heroes of the punch and matrix and mould who made her what we found her.
At such a time, it seems not undutiful to attempt to gather together into a connected form the numerous records of the Old English Letter Founders scattered throughout our literary and {vi} typographical history, with a view to preserve the memory of those to whose labours English Printing is indebted for so much of its glory.
The present work represents the labour of several years in what may be considered some of the untrodden by-paths of English typographical history.
The curious Dissertation on English Typographical Founders and Founderies by the learned Edward Rowe Mores, published in 1778, is, in fact, the only work in the language purporting to treat of Letter Founding as distinct from the art which it fosters. This quaint and crabbed sketch, full of valuable but half-digested information, was intended to accompany a specimen of the types of John James, whose foundry had gradually absorbed all the minor English foundries, and, after the death of its owner, had become the property of Mores himself. The enthusiasm of the Oxford antiquary infused new life into the dry bones of this decayed collection. Working backwards, he restored in imagination the old foundries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as they had been before they became absorbed in his own. He tracked back a few famous historical types to their fountain-head, and even bridged over the mysterious gulf which divided the early sixteenth from the early seventeenth centuries of English letter-founding.
Mores’ Dissertation has necessarily formed the basis of my investigations, and is, indeed, almost wholly incorporated in the present volume. Of the additional and more anecdotal notes on the later founders, preserved by Nichols and Hansard, I have also freely made use; although in every case it has been my endeavour to take nothing on report which it has been possible to verify by reference to original sources. This effort has been rewarded by several interesting discoveries which it is hoped may be found to throw considerable fresh light on the history of our national typography.
The first century of English letter-founding is a period of great obscurity, to master which it is absolutely essential to have {vii} unlimited access to all the works of all the printers whose books were the only type specimens of their day. Such access it has been beyond my power fully to secure, and in this portion of my work I am bound to admit that I can lay claim to little originality of research. I have, however, endeavoured to examine as many of the specimens of these early presses as possible, and to satisfy myself that the observations of others, of which I have availed myself, are such as I can assent to.
In detailing the rise and progress of the various English Letter Foundries, it has been my endeavour to treat the subject, as far as possible, bibliographically—that is, to regard as type-specimens not merely the stated advertisements of the founder, but also the works for which his types were created and in which they were used. The Catena on Job, Walton’s Polyglot, Boyle’s Irish Testament, Bowyer’s Selden, thus rank as type specimens quite as interesting as, and far more valuable than, the ordinary letter founders’ catalogues. Proceeding on this principle, moreover, this History will be found to embody a pretty complete bibliography of works not only relating to, but illustrative of, English Letter Founding. At the same time, the particular bibliography of the subject has been kept distinct, by appending to each chapter a chronological list of the Specimen Books issued by the foundry to which it relates.
The introductory chapter on the Types and Type Founding of the First Printers may be considered somewhat foreign to the scope of this History. The importance, however, of a practical acquaintance with the processes and appliances of the Art of Letter Founding as a foundation to any complete study of typographical history—as well as the numerous misconceptions existing on the part even of accepted authorities on the subject—suggested the attempt to examine the various accounts of the Invention of Printing from a letter founder’s point of view, in the hope, if not of arriving at any very definite conclusions, at least of clearing the question of a few prevalent fallacies.
The two chapters on Type Bodies and Type Faces, although also {viii} to some extent foreign, are considered important by way of introduction to the history of English Letter Founding in which the “foreign and learned” characters have so conspicuously figured.