[Μ] 16. From the Golden Legend. Westminster, 1482. Caxton Type 4*.

Such is a brief summary of the types of our first printer. It would be interesting, were it possible, to continue in an equally detailed manner an examination of the types of all the early English printers. But the rapid increase of printing which followed Caxton’s death would render such a task one of great labour and difficulty. We shall content ourselves with collecting such references to typefounding as may throw general light on the progress of the art during the first century of its existence.

We have elsewhere stated our reasons for supposing that the first Oxford press was commenced with types brought from abroad. Of the St. Alban’s printer and his contemporaries, Lettou and Machlinia, in the city of London, we know very little. The types of both presses were extremely rude, and might therefore suggest that an attempt was made to produce them by untrained English artists, or, as is equally probable, that the old and worn-out soft lead types of an earlier printer were made use of.

WYNKYN DE WORDE

17. Black Letter, supposed to be from De Worde’s matrices. (From Palmer’s General History of Printing.)

This piece of evidence is not very convincing. It is more to the point that some of his early types are not to be observed in books from the press by any foreign printer at that time; which could scarcely have been had he, along with other English printers, purchased founts from some of the foreign founders at that time carrying on a brisk trade with this country. It is, however, to be borne in mind that every printer cut or provided himself with Black as regularly as with Roman and Italic; and the Black-letter, especially in the large sizes, being easy to imitate, the general resemblance among the founts of that period may mean nothing more than that De Worde’s models were faithfully copied by his imitators.