Over and above the foundries described by Mores as having been absorbed by that of Thomas and John James, there remained in his possession a certain number of matrices—some of them of some importance—of whose former owners he was unable to give us an account. “These may be considered as a distinct foundery,” he says, “and distinguished by the title of ‘anonymous,’ for we know not whence they came. Our account of Mr James’s purchases is accurate, and these are not included amongst them, but at the end of our scrutiny remained unclaimed. Let them be called ‘The Anonymous Foundry’.” {207} We do not presume to step in where Rowe Mores fears to tread, and therefore leave the matrices, of which the following is his list, still unappropriated:—

OXFORD FOUNDERS.

PETER WALPERGEN, or Walberger, as we have stated in our account of the Oxford Foundry, was doubtless the individual alluded to by Bagford when, in recounting Fell’s services to Oxford, he says: “The good Bishop provided from Holland . . . a Letter Founder, a Dutchman by birth, who had served the States in the same quality at Batavia in the East Indies.”[393] Bagford, it is true, does not name this founder, but as there exists in the Bodleian Library a copy of a Portuguese version of Æsop’s Fables, edited by Jo. Ferreira d’Almeida, and printed at Batavia by Pedro Walberger in 1672,[394] we have no hesitation in identifying our founder with this Dutch typographer, and in fixing his settlement at Oxford somewhere about the above date, which, it will be remembered, was the year in which Fell and others took upon them the charge of the University Press, and furnished from abroad all the necessaries for its use and advancement.

That he was well known at Oxford in 1683 is also apparent from a casual reference to “Mr. Walberger of Oxford” in Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises,[395] where the writer dwells with some minuteness on a peculiar and elaborate tool, called the “Joynt-Flat-Gauge,” contrived by this founder for polishing the faces of his punches after hardening them, and before striking them into the copper. {208}

It was doubtless from this casual notice that Rowe Mores derived his scant reference to Walpergen, of whom he knows nothing, save that he founded at Oxford in 1683, was sometimes called Walperger, and by name appears to have been a foreigner, therefore probably a “transient,” by means of his countryman Michael Burghers, the University engraver.

Of Walpergen’s work little is known beyond the fact that he appears to have devoted his attention chiefly to the production of Music type, impressions of which appear in the University Specimen of 1695. The punches and matrices of this interesting fount are still preserved at Oxford, and are singular relics of the old letter-founders’ art.[396]

54. Music, cut by Walpergen, Oxford, circ. 1695. (From the original matrices.)