16. JOSEPH JACKSON, 1763
[645] Nichols’ Lit. Anec., ii, 358–9; and Gentleman’s Magazine, 1792, p. 93.
[646] Dissert., p. 83.
[647] Probably as a rubber, in which occupation he is represented as engaged in the View of the Caslon Foundry given in the Universal Magazine for June 1750 (see frontispiece).
[648] Dissertation, p. 83.
[649] Mr. Halhed thus refers to this circumstance in the introduction to his Bengal Grammar (see post): “That the Bengal letter is very difficult to be imitated in steel will readily be allowed by every person who shall examine the intricacies of the strokes, the unequal length and size of the characters, and the variety of their positions and combinations. It was no easy task to procure a writer accurate enough to prepare an alphabet of a similar and proportionate body throughout, with that symmetrical exactness which is necessary to the regularity and neatness of a fount. Mr. Bolts (who is supposed to be well versed in this language) attempted to fabricate a set of types for it with the assistance of the ablest artists in London. But, as he has egregiously failed in executing even the easiest part, or primary alphabet, of which he has published a specimen, there is no reason to suppose that his project when completed would have advanced beyond the usual state of imperfection to which new inventions are constantly exposed.”
[650] This distinguished scholar and self-made typographer was born in the year 1751. He entered the East India Company’s Civil Service, where he devoted himself not only to the study of the Oriental languages, but to the actual production of the types necessary to extend the study of those languages among his fellow-countrymen, with extraordinary skill and perseverance. He succeeded in cutting the punches and casting the types for Halhed’s Grammar of the Bengal Language, published at Hoogly in Bengal in 1778, 4to. In his preface to that work, Mr. Halhed, after referring to Mr. Bolts’ failure, in the passage quoted in the preceding note, thus describes the undertaking:—“The advice and even solicitation of the Governor-General prevailed upon Mr. Wilkins, a gentleman who has been some years in the India Company’s Civil Service in Bengal, to undertake a set of Bengal Types. He did, and his success has exceeded every expectation. In a country so remote from all connection with European artists, he has been obliged to charge himself with all the various occupations of the Metallurgist, the Engraver, the Founder, and the Printer. To the merit of invention he was compelled to add the application of personal labour. With a rapidity unknown in Europe, he surmounted all the obstacles which necessarily clog the first rudiments of a difficult art, as well as the disadvantages of solitary experiment; and has thus singly, on the first effort, exhibited his work in a state of perfection which in every part of the world has appeared to require the united improvements of different projectors and the gradual polish of successive ages.” Mr. Wilkins persevered in his noble undertaking of rendering the Oriental languages available to the English scholar through the medium of typography. With this view he compiled from the most celebrated native Grammars and Commentaries a work entirely new to England on the Structure of the Sanskrita tongue. Of the difficulties and discouragements attendant on the execution of this self-imposed task he thus speaks in his Preface:—“At the commencement of the year in 1795, residing in the country and having much leisure, I began to arrange my materials and prepare them for publication. I cut letters in steel, made matrices and moulds, and cast from them a fount of types of the Deva Nagari character, all with my own hands; and, with the assistance of such mechanics as a country village could afford, I very speedily prepared all the other implements of printing in my own dwelling-house; for by the second of May of the same year I had taken proofs of 16 pages, differing but little from those now exhibited in the first two sheets. Till two o’clock on that day everything had succeeded to my expectations; when alas! the premises were discovered to be in flames, which, spreading too rapidly to be extinguished, the whole building was presently burned to the ground. In the midst of this misfortune, I happily saved all my books and manuscripts, and the greatest part of the punches and matrices; but the types themselves having been thrown out and scattered on the lawn, were either lost or rendered useless.” About ten years afterwards the Directors of the East India Company encouraged Dr. Wilkins, then Librarian to the Company, to resume his labours and cast new types, as the study of the Sanskrita had become an important object in their new College at Hertford. Dr. Wilkins complied, and the Grammar of the Sanskrita Language, London, 1808, 4to, duly appeared from Bulmer’s Press, and was allowed to be a monument at once of beautiful typography and erudite industry. Dr., subsequently Sir Charles, Wilkins died May 13th, 1836, at the advanced age of 85. Specimens of his Bengali and Sanskrit may be seen in Johnson’s Typographia, ii, 389–94.
[651] A Vocabulary, Persian, Arabic, and English, containing such words as have been adopted from the two former of these languages, and incorporated into the Hindvi; together with some hundreds of compound verbs formed from Persian or Arabic nouns and in universal use. Being the seventh part of the new Hindvi Grammar and Dictionary. London, 1785. 4to.
[652] The Domesday letter of Cottrell and Jackson may be seen in juxtaposition in Fry’s Pantographia, 1799, pp. 50 and 314; also in Stower’s Printer’s Grammar, 1808, p. 253. Jackson’s also appears in Johnson’s Typographia (ii, p. 248), from which work our account is chiefly taken.
[653] Domesday Book seu Liber Censualis Willelmi primi Regis Angliæ inter Archivos Regni in Domo capitulari Westmonasterii asservatus. Jubente Rege Augustissimo Georgio Tertio prelo mandatus. Londini. Typis J. Nichols. 2 vols. Folio. 1783.