We annex a specimen of the curious semi-Gothic fount used by this last-named printer in 1531 for printing Sir Thomas Elyot’s Boke named the Governour. The face is of rare occurrence in English typography, and was probably procured {95} from abroad. The small Secretary type mixed with it is doubtless English, and was one of the latest founts of its kind used in the country.
There appears to be no special reason, as we have stated, why the names and types of any particular printers at this period should be selected to the exclusion of others who equally with them produced types for their own use. We may, however, mention REYNOLD WOLFE, who in 1543 held the first patent as printer to the king in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and printed the first entire Greek and Latin book in England, being Sir John Cheke’s edition of Chrysostom’s two Homilies.[165] He appears, however, to have printed nothing in Hebrew.
JOHN DAY
He was born in 1522, and began business about 1546, in St. Sepulchre’s parish. In 1549 he removed to Aldersgate, where he continued until 1572. The persecutions of Queen Mary’s reign caused him to seek refuge abroad, but he returned in 1556, in which year he was the first person admitted to the livery of the Stationers’ Company, newly incorporated by the charter of Philip and Mary. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth he became an important printer, and was chosen Warden of the Company in 1564 and three subsequent years, and Master in 1580.
Early in the Queen’s reign he found a generous patron in Archbishop Parker, under whose auspices he cut some of his most famous founts. One of the earliest of these was the fount of Saxon, which appeared first in Ælfric’s Saxon Homily, edited by the Archbishop under the title of A Testimonie of Antiquitie, and printed in 1567. It was used again in Lambard’s Archaionomia in the following year, in the Saxon Gospels, printed in 1571, and subsequently in the Archbishop’s famous edition of Asser Menevensis’ Ælfredi Res Gestæ in 1574.[166]
This last-named work, which may be regarded as one of the first historical monuments of English letter-founding, contained a preface by Parker, in which {96} Day’s performance in cutting the punches is thus particularly alluded to:—“Jam vero cum Dayus typographus primus (et omnium certè quod sciam solus) has formas æri inciderit; facilè quæ Saxonicis literis perscripta sunt, iisdem typis divulgabuntur.”[167]
The Saxon fount, as will be seen by the facsimile, is an English in body, very clear and bold. Of the capitals, eight only, including two diphthongs, are distinctively Saxon, the remaining eighteen letters being ordinary Roman; while in the lower-case there are twelve Saxon letters as against fifteen of the Roman. The accuracy and regularity with which this fount was cut and cast is highly creditable to Day’s excellence as a founder.[168] He subsequently cut a smaller size of Saxon on Pica body.
The typography of the Ælfredi is superior to that of almost any other work of the period. Dibdin considered it one of the rarest and most important volumes which issued from Day’s press. The Archbishop’s preface is printed in a bold, flowing Double Pica Italic, and the Latin preface of St. Gregory at the end in a Roman of the same body, worthy of Plantin himself. It is at least a curious circumstance, pointing to a community of founts among printers even at that day, that in Binneman’s[169] edition of Walsingham’s Historia, bound up with Day’s Asser and the Ypodigma Neustriæ, this same large Roman and Italic is made use of.
Respecting an Italic fount cut by Day in 1572, several interesting particulars are preserved, which tend to throw further light on our printer’s operations as a punch-cutter and letter-founder.