[445] Lit. Anec., iii, 438.
[446] See our facsimiles from the Specimen at pages [200] and [204], ante.
11. WILLIAM CASLON, 1720
[447] In 1703, in the Convocation of Clergy in the Lower House, a complaint was exhibited against the printers of the Bible for the careless and defective way in which it was printed by the patentees. The editions specially complained of were those printed by Hayes, of Cambridge, in 1677 and 1678, and an edition in folio printed in London in 1701. The printers continued, however, to print the Bible carelessly, with a defective type, on bad paper; and when printed, to sell copies at an exorbitant price.
[448] The following sketch of William Caslon is mainly taken, and in parts quoted, from the interesting particulars of his career preserved in Nichols’ Anecdotes of Bowyer and the larger work into which that was subsequently expanded. The elder Bowyer’s intimate connection with Caslon’s first ventures in letter-founding give Nichols’ work a special authority in the matter. At the same time there exists a certain confusion in the earlier part of the narrative which it is difficult completely to harmonise.
[449] John Watts, a printer of first-rate eminence, for some time partner with Jacob Tonson II in Covent Garden. It was in Watts’ printing office in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn, that Benjamin Franklin worked as journeyman in 1725. Watts died in 1763, aged 85.
[450] William Bowyer, the elder, regarded as one of the foremost printers of his time, was born in 1663. In 1699 he had his office in Dogwell Court, Whitefriars. His premises were burnt in 1713, and in the conflagration he lost all his types and presses. By the liberality of his fellow-printers, however, this loss (estimated at over £5,000) was partly made good, and he was enabled to start again and rise once more to a foremost place in his profession. For all particulars respecting Mr. Bowyer and his learned son, see Nichols’ Anecdotes of William Bowyer, London, 1782, 4to, and Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century, London 1812–15, 9 vols., 8vo, a work the foundation of which is a bibliography of the productions of this celebrated press. See also ante, p. [157].
[451] James Bettenham, husband of the elder Bowyer’s step-daughter, was born 1683. He printed in St. John’s Lane, and attained to considerable eminence as a printer, although after sixty years’ labour he left behind him only £400. “He died,” says Rowe Mores, “in 1774, ferè centenarius sanæque mentis et memoriæ.”
[452] Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 585.
[453] A tradition in the Caslon family that William Caslon began his career as a letter-founder in 1716, induced the late Mr. H. W. Caslon to adopt this as the date of the establishment of the Foundry. In the absence, however, of any testimony in support of the statement, and in the face of the clear announcement by Caslon himself that his Foundry was begun in the year 1720, there seems to be no ground for attaching any importance to the use of this earlier date.