Very little is known of the actual manual labour employed in the production, beyond the fact that two presses only were said to have been kept at work, and that the types were supplied by more than one of the four authorised founders.

Chevillier[315] speaks somewhat contemptuously of the typographical execution (fabrique de l’Imprimerie) of the London as compared with that of the Paris Polyglot. And if, as Le Long points out, “he means by that term the beauty of the paper and the magnificence of the types, it must be admitted that the Paris edition is superior; but if he means the arrangement of the texts and versions, and the general disposition of the entire work, then it is much inferior; for Walton has mapped out his work so precisely that at a single opening of the book you see the texts and versions all at a glance; thus giving a great facility for comparison, wherein the chief usefulness of compilations of this sort consist.”[316]

Not the least noticeable feature about the work is the fact that from the time of its first going to press to its completion, the printing barely occupied four years. The first volume was completed at the beginning of September 1654. A month later, from the same press was published Dr. Walton’s Introductio ad Lectionem Linguarum Orientalium for the use of subscribers.[317] In 1655 the second volume of the Bible was finished; in 1656 the third, and about {173} the close of 1657 the remaining three.[318] “And thus,” says a contemporary,[319] “in about four years was finished the English Polyglot Bible,[320] the glory of that age, and of the English Church and Nation; a work vastly exceeding all former attempts of the kind, and that came so near perfection as to discourage all future ones.”

Apart altogether from the literary and scholastic value of the Bible, the amount of labour and industry represented in its mere typographical execution is astonishing. Each double page presents, when open, some ten or more versions of the same passage divided into parallel columns of varying width, but so set that each comprehends exactly the same amount of text as the other. The regularity displayed in the general arrangement, in the references and interpolations, in the interlineations, and all the details of the composition and impression, are worthy of the undertaking and a lasting glory to the typography of the seventeenth century.[321]

With regard to the types, which concern us most, the following is the list of the characters employed, as extracted by Rowe Mores:—

* Of the founts marked thus (*) in the present and following summarised lists of the contents of the English foundries, the matrices or punches, and in some cases both matrices and punches, still exist.

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