In addition to the above fundamental characters used, the Prolegomena show the following Alphabets cut in wood, viz.:—Rabbinical Hebrew, Syriac duplices, Nestorian and Estrangelan, Armenian, Coptic, Illyrian, both Cyrillian and Hieronymian, Iberian, Gothic, Chinese, and the character of the Codex Alexandrinus. These are, for the most part, rudely cut, and valuable only as curiosities.
From our point of view, the chief glory of the English Polyglot is that it is wholly the impression of English type. It marks an epoch in the history of our national letter-founding, as, before it appeared, no work of importance had been printed in any of the learned characters except Latin and Greek. The Hebrew, Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic were probably cut expressly for the work, under the supervision of its learned editors, and became thus the models or prototypes of the numerous Oriental founts which during the eighteenth century figured so largely in the works of English scholarship.
The original preface to the Polyglot contained an honourable reference to Cromwell, who had, from the first, encouraged the undertaking and materially assisted it by remitting the tax on the paper imported from abroad for the use of the work. But the Protector’s death took place in the year after the publication; and the Restoration, which followed two years later, was made the occasion for a somewhat ignoble act of time-service on the part of Walton, who cancelled {176} the last three leaves of the preface, and added a Dedication to Charles II, in which, among other attacks on the memory of his former patron, he referred to Cromwell as “Draco ille magnus.”[326] The particular typographical interest of this Royal Dedication is that it is printed in the handsome Double Pica Roman and Italic used by Day in the Ælfredi of 1574, and subsequently by Barker and Lucas in Young’s Catena on Job, in 1637, and in other works. The somewhat worn condition of the types leads Dibdin to condemn the founts as inferior[327]; but in point of elegance and grandeur this venerable letter remained still one of the best of which our national typography could boast.
In recognition of his services, Charles made Walton his chaplain-in-ordinary, and created him subsequently Bishop of Chester. Nor was he the only worker to whom the completion of this great enterprise brought honour. Roycroft, after what may be considered a feat of rapid and skilful typography, was permitted to take the title Orientalium Typographus Regius.[328]
The value of the English Polyglot was vastly enhanced by the addition to it of Dr. Edmund Castell’s Heptaglot Lexicon,[329] which, after seventeen years of incessant labour, commencing with the first announcement of the Polyglot, was printed, at Roycroft’s press, in 1669, in two volumes, uniform in size and style with the Bible, of which henceforth it formed a necessary complement.
Respecting this famous work, there is little to add from a typographical point of view to what has already been noted with regard to the Polyglot. The {177} same types are, with few exceptions, used in both. Mores considers, but wrongly, that the Amharic shown in Castell’s work is metal, and the same as that used in the Oratio Dominica of 1713. This letter (which also appeared in the first edition of the Oratio Dominica in 1700) belonged to Oxford University, who procured it in 1692, being the Ethiopic character with additions. But the few letters shown in the Heptaglot are evidently engraved by hand, and not cast.
It is to be regretted that Castell’s work, which has been pronounced one of the greatest and most perfect works of the kind ever performed by human industry and learning, and which represented an amount of heroic perseverance in the midst of adverse circumstances scarcely credible, was almost the ruin of its author, both in constitution and fortune. It sold slowly, and at the time of his death upwards of 500 copies were left on hand. The encouragement he received both from royal and episcopal patronage was inadequate to cover the losses which the undertaking had involved, and he died in comparative obscurity in 1685.
Roycroft’s office appears to have suffered severely by the Fire of London in 1666, and a large number of copies of Castell’s Lexicon, then in course of printing, were destroyed. To the same disastrous event may also be attributed the disappearance of some of the founts of the Polyglot founders, after the completion of the Lexicon. Mores, however, succeeds in tracing the most interesting of these; and the fact that all the matrices did not go down to posterity as a single property, is additional proof that they were not all the production of one artist. The Arabic, larger Syriac, and Samaritan passed into the foundry of the Grovers, and the Ethiopic into that of Robert Andrews, who, it seems probable, also inherited the Hebrew and Black. The smaller Syriac came into Mr. Caslon’s hands.
NICHOLAS NICHOLLS.—This founder was son of Arthur Nicholls, the Star Chamber founder, and, as appears by the mention of him in his father’s petition to Archbishop Laud, already quoted, was brought up to the Art, in which, as early as 1637, he was “so expert and able as to be able to perform anything touching the same.” During the Civil Wars he appears to have suffered in the royal cause, and, like many others, at the Restoration to have looked for substantial reward at the hands of the son of the Royal Martyr.