[504] With the addition of the Long Primer Syriac cut for Oxford University, the “learned” founts in the 1785 Specimen are precisely the same as those which appeared in the book of 1764.
[505] The address is a literary curiosity: “The acknowledged excellence of this Foundry, with its rapid success, as well as its unexampled Productions having gained universal Ecomiums on its ingenious Improver and Perfecter (whose uncommon Genius transferred the Letter Foundry Business from HOLLAND to ENGLAND, which, for above Sixty years, has received, for its beauty and Symmetry, the unbounded praises of the Literati, and the liberal encouragement of all the Master Printers and Booksellers, not only in this Country but of all EUROPE and AMERICA) has excited the Jealousy of the Envious and the Desires of the enterprising, to become Partakers of the Reward due to the Descendants of the Improver of this most useful and important Art.
“They endeavour, by every method to withdraw, from this Foundry, that which they silently acknowledge is its indisputable Right: Which is conspicuous by their very Address to the Public, wherein they promise (in Order to induce Attention and Encouragement) that they will use their utmost Endeavours to IMITATE the Productions of this Foundry; which assertion, on inspection, will be found impracticable, as the Imperfections cannot correspond in size.
“The Proprietor of this Foundry, ever desirous of retaining the decisive Superiority in his Favour, and full of the sincerest Gratitude for the distinguished Honour, by every Work of Reputation being printed from the elegant Types of the Chiswell Street Manufactory, hopes, by every Improvement, to retain and merit a Continuance of their established Approbation, which, in all Quarters of the Globe, has given it so acknowledged an Ascendency over that of his Opponents.”
The address prefixed to the 1785 Specimen Book of the Worship Street Foundry had evidently been the inspiration of this tirade, which in turn evoked a spirited reply from the Frys in the following year. See post, chap. xv.
[506] The sheets appear (along with some of Fry & Son’s and Wilson’s) in Chambers’ Cyclopædia—incorporated in one Alphabet by Abraham Rees, London, 1784–86. 4 vols. folio.
[507] These are sometimes (as in the case of the British Museum copy) bound up with the 1785 8vo specimen book as folding plates.
[508] See ante, p. [200]. Hansard observes that besides Queen Elizabeth’s Ambassador, the same family had produced Sir Henry Rowe, a Lord Mayor of London; and Owen Rowe, the Regicide.
[509] This celebrated typographer was born at Saluzzo, in the Sardinian States, in 1740. At an early age he visited Rome, and obtained a situation in the printing office of the Propaganda, where he gained great credit for his printing. In 1768 he settled at Parma, where he published many famous works, and established a European reputation. His Homer in 3 vols. folio, published in 1808, is his most famous work. He never visited England, although one or two works were printed by him in our language, viz., Lord Orford’s Castle of Otranto, 1791, 8vo, Gray’s Poems, 1793, 4to, Thomson’s Seasons, 1794, folio and quarto. He died in 1813, and his widow finished and published in 1818 the Manuale Tipografico, 2 vols., royal 4to, a most sumptuous work, containing upwards of 250 exquisite specimens of type and ornaments. A monument was erected to him in Saluzzo in 1872. Of Bodoni’s office at Parma the following interesting particulars are preserved in Dr. Smith’s Tour on the Continent, 2nd edit., vol. iii: “A very great curiosity in its way, is the Parma printing-office, carried on under the direction of M. Bodoni, who has brought that art to a degree of perfection hardly known before him. Nothing could exceed his civility in showing us numbers of the beautiful productions of his press, of which he gave us some specimens, as well as the operations of casting and finishing the letters. The materials of his type are antimony and lead, as in other places, but he showed us some of steel. He has sets of all the known alphabets, with diphthongs, accents, and other peculiarities in the greatest perfection. His Greek types are peculiarly beautiful, though of a different kind of beauty from those of old Stephens, and perhaps less free and flowing in their forms.”
[510] Typographia, p. 352.