Mores describes him cordially as an admirable mechanic and an excellent artist, and states that he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, 30th November 1678. He was succeeded in his office of Hydrographer to the King by Mr. George Adams, whom Mores describes as “our ingenious friend . . . and a successor to Mr. Moxon as well in skilfulness and curiosity as well as office.”[366] Our portrait of Moxon is taken from the frontispiece to the fourth edition of his Tutor of Astronomy and Geography, 1686, printed by Samuel Roycroft for the author.
It is doubtful whether his investigations and theories had any sensible effect on the practice of English letter-founding. They may have tended to encourage the favour with which Dutch letter was regarded at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but it is not clear that his attempt to confine to rule and compass the art of letter-cutting either secured general adoption or was productive of any appreciable reform in our national typography.
The following is the title of the only specimen known to have been issued by Moxon:—
- 1669. Prooves of the Several Sorts of Letters cast by Joseph Moxon. Westminster, printed by Joseph Moxon in Russell Street, at the sign of the Atlas, 1669. Fo. (B. M., Harl. MS. 5915, fo. 160.)
