[284] It is interesting to note that among the money contributors on this occasion (a list of whom is preserved in Nichols’ Anecdotes of Bowyer, pp. 496–7), Robert Andrews and Thomas James, the letter-founders, appear as donors of five guineas each, and Thomas Grover of two guineas.
[285] Humphrey Wanley, son of Nathaniel Wanley, was secretary to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and afterwards librarian to the Earl of Oxford. He was an adept in the Saxon antiquities and calligraphy, and was an important contributor to Hickes’ Thesaurus, for which work he compiled the historical and critical catalogue of Saxon and other MSS. He died in 1726, aged fifty-four. Much of his correspondence is preserved among the Harleian MSS.
[286] Nichols’ Anecdotes of William Bowyer. London, 1782, 4to., p. 498.
[287] The Rudiments of Grammar for the English Saxon Tongue. London, 1715. 4to. A specimen of the letter is given in chapter ix, post.
[288] “This type Miss Elstob used in her Grammar, and in her Grammar only. In her capital undertaking, the publication of the Saxon Homilies, begun and left unfinished, whether because the type was thought unsightly to politer eyes, or whether because the University of Oxford had cast a new letter that she might print the work with them, or whether (as she expresses herself in a letter to her uncle, Dr. Elstob), because ‘women are allowed the privilege of appearing in a richer garb and finer ornaments than men,’ she used a Saxon of the modern garb. But not one of these reasons is of any weight with an antiquary, who will always prefer the natural face to ‘richer garb and finer ornaments.’ And on his side is reason uncontrovertible.” (Rowe Mores, Dissert., p. 29.)
[289] i.e., William Caslon.
[290] Nichols’ Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 319. Literary Anecdotes, ii, 361, etc.
[291] Dissertation, p. 28.
[292] A few of the punches and matrices were shown in the Caxton Exhibition of 1877.
[293] The Great Charter and Charter of the Forest. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1759, 4to. This fine work is printed in Caslon’s Great Primer Roman. The copperplate initials and vignettes are very fine, the former containing views of several of the different colleges and public buildings at Oxford.