Passing from letter-cutting, Moxon next describes with much minuteness {186} the various parts of the mould and the method of putting them together. Here the practical instrument maker is on familiar ground, and the directions he gives remained the best authority on the subject, until the venerable hand-mould which he describes began to give place, a century and a quarter after his time, to the lever-mould from America.
Next to mould-making, the Exercises deal with the important processes of striking and justifying the matrices, operations which, like that of punch-cutting, have undergone but little change since his day. Then follow descriptions of the furnace, the alloy of the metal, and the methods of casting and dressing the type, with the implements necessary for these branches of the work; and this portion of the work closes with a few highly interesting plates, amongst which that of the caster at work[343] is the most curious and valuable.
The remainder of the book is devoted to various departments of the letter-press printer’s trade, those of the compositor, the corrector, the pressman, and the warehouse keeper. To this is added an Appendix, describing the ancient customs of the “Chapel,” and a Dictionary of typographical terms.
Such is a brief and meagre outline of the contents of this first English book on printing and letter-founding. It is a work which no one interested in English typography can omit to consult. For almost a century it remained the only authority on the subject; subsequently it formed the basis of numerous other treatises, both at home and abroad, and to this day it is quoted and referred to, not only by the antiquary who desires to learn what the art once was, but by the practical printer, who may still on many subjects gather from it much advice and information as to what it should still be.
Reverting now to Mores’ description of the contents of Moxon’s foundry, we meet with one fount which calls for particular mention here.
The Pica Irish was cut expressly for the purpose of printing the Irish New Testament, published in 1681 at the cost of Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork, and is described by Mores as the only fount of purely Irish type he had ever seen in the country. We may, perhaps, be excused a slight digression in this place for the purpose of giving a sketch of the efforts which before Moxon’s day had been made to propagate the Irish language by means of typography.
The first fount of Irish type known was presented in 1571 by Queen Elizabeth to John O’Kearney, treasurer of St. Patrick’s, with a view to encourage the diffusion of the Scriptures in the Irish character.
By whom this character was prepared we are not informed. It is not the {187} genuine Irish, but a hybrid fount, consisting chiefly of Roman and Italic letters, to which the “discrepants,” or seven distinctively Irish sorts, are added.[344] It is accompanied by a small and equally neat letter for notes, which, however, appears to be Saxon.
The earliest specimen of this fount appears in a broadside Poem on the Last Judgment,[345] printed in 1571, and sent over to the Archbishop of Canterbury, apparently as a specimen of the type. This was followed almost immediately by the Church Catechism and Articles, translated by O’Kearney and Nicholas Walsh, afterwards Bishop of Ossery, and printed in 1571 at the cost of John Ussher.[346]