[386] See post, chap. xvi.
[387] The matrices of all these curious founts have survived to the present day, and, indeed, lie before us as we write. They bear strong evidence of having been justified and finished by the same hand.
[388] From this assertion we except, of course, the letter of the first printers, which, if not imitating the actual handwriting of one particular scribe, was a copy of the conventional book-writing hand of the period. Some of the earliest scripts, italics and cursives are also reputed to have been modelled on the handwriting of some famous caligrapher or artist. One of the first instances of printing with facsimile types was the copy of the famous Medicean Virgil, produced at Florence in 1741. The types are for the most part ordinary Roman capital letters with a certain number of “discrepants” or peculiar characters. The title of this fine work is:—P. VergiliI Maronis Codex Antiquissimus . . qui nunc Florentiæ in Bibliotheca Mediceo-Laurentiana adservatur. Bono publico Typis descriptus Anno MDCCXLI. Florentiæ. Typis Mannianis. 8vo.
[389] This is possibly the printer respecting whom Nichols (Illust. Lit., viii, 464) notes that on Nov. 20, 1732, John Mears, bookseller, was taken into custody for publishing a Philosophical Dissertation on Death . . . Meares succeeded to the business of Richard Nutt, and printed the Historical Register. Among the Bagford Collections (Harl. MS. No. 5915) is a Specimen by H. Meere, printer, at the Black Fryar, in Blackfriars, London. No date.
[390] Richard Nutt, printer in the Savoy, died March 11, 1780, aged 80 years.
[391] Grover contributed £2 2s. in 1712 towards defraying the loss incurred by the elder Bowyer on the occasion of the fire at his printing-house.
[392] His name occurs in the List of Masters and Workmen Printers in 1681; see ante, p. [166].
[394] Cotton’s Typographical Gazetteer. Second Series, 1866, p. 17.
[395] Vol. ii, p. 120.