[635] The Rev. Samuel Lee, B.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, was a constant visitor at Type Street, and personally directed the cutting of many of the founts.
[636] Dr. Fry’s system was virtually that first introduced by Mr. Alston, of Glasgow, to which reference is made ante, p. [78], where details are also given as to the other principal systems of type for the Blind. A “lower-case” was subsequently added to Dr. Fry’s fount by his successors, and in this form the type was largely used by the various Type Schools following Mr. Alston’s method. Full particulars of this award, with specimens, maybe seen in Vol. I of the Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts.
[637] Hansard mentions a Two-line English Engrossing, two sizes of Music, and the matrices of Dr. Wilkins’ Philosophical Character; none of which, however, formed part of this Foundry.
[638] Of the supposed antiquity of this interesting fount an account has already been given at pages 200–5, ante. By a curious confusion of names and dates, Dr. Fry, in his specimens stated that “this character was cut by Wynkyn de Worde, in exact imitation of the Codex Alexandrinus in the British Museum” ! This absurd anachronism—the more extraordinary as emanating from an antiquary of Dr. Fry’s standing—appears to have arisen from the fact that at the sale of James’ Foundry the matrices lay in a drawer which bore the name, “De Worde.” This circumstance misled Paterson, the auctioneer, into advertising the fount as the genuine handiwork of De Worde, a printer who lived a century before the Codex was brought into this country. The further coincidence that Dr. Woide of the British Museum was, at the time of the sale, engaged in producing an edition of the Codex, with facsimile types prepared by Jackson the founder, doubtless added—by the similarity of the names De Worde and Dr. Woide—to the confusion. After its purchase, the fount first appeared in Joseph Fry and Sons’ Specimen of 1786, without note. But, in the subsequent specimens of the Foundry, bearing his own name, Dr. Fry introduced the fiction, which remained unchallenged for a quarter of a century.
[639] In addition to which Dr. Fry possessed, in an imperfect condition (many of the characters having been recut), the Great Primer Arabic of Walton’s Polyglot. According to Hansard he also had a set of matrices, English body, from the first punches cut by William Caslon; but this seems to be an error.
[640] Used in Bagster’s Polyglot. The same fount was cast on Long Primer with movable points. Hansard is in error in stating that Dr. Fry cut a Nonpareil Syriac.
[641] An error still less explicable than that of the Alexandrian Greek, but which not only Dr. Fry’s successors, but Hansard himself has copied. The following seems to be the “good authority” on which the assertion is based. In 1819, Mr. Bulmer, the eminent printer, printed for the Roxburghe Club, Mr. Hibbert’s transcript of the MS. fragment of the translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, made by Caxton about 1480, and preserved in the library of Pepys at Magdalen College, Cambridge. The body of the work was set in the English Black bought by Dr. Fry at James’ Sale—but in two places a smaller size of type was required to print passages omitted in Caxton’s translation, but supplied by the Editor in the original French of Colard Mansion’s edition. For these passages the Pica Black was selected, and as the French text contained several accents and contractions, these had to be specially cut. This task Dr. Fry performed, and understanding that the letter was to be used for printing a work of Caxton’s, he appears, without further enquiry, to have assumed that the work in question was a fac-simile reprint, and that his old matrices had been discovered to bear the impress of the veritable character used by that famous man. Had he seen the book in question he would have discovered that not only was it a transcript from a MS. of which no printed copy had ever been known to exist, but that the very passages in which the boasted type was used, were passages which did not even appear in a work of Caxton at all. The matrices are very old. They were in Andrews’ foundry about 1700, and in all probability came there from Holland, as they closely resemble the other old Dutch Blacks in James’ Foundry.
[642] In the Small Pica, No. 2, was printed The Two First Books of the Pentateuch, or Books of Moses, as a preparation for learners to read the Holy Scriptures. The types cut by Mr. Edmund Fry, Letter Founder to His Majesty, from Original Irish Manuscripts, under the care and direction of T. Connellan (2nd Edit.) Printed at the Apollo Press, London, J. Johnson, Brook Street, Holborn, 1819. 12mo.
[643] Whatever singularity M. Didot may have indulged in in the first strikes from his famous punches for his own use, the matrices now in the possession of Dr. Fry’s successors are of most unmistakeable copper throughout. And it does not appear that more than one set of the strikes was needed to meet all the demands made upon this complicated letter by the printers of the day.
[644] Gentleman’s Magazine, May, 1836.