The subject is too diffuse for a mere note: and during the life-time of so many able printers as now exercise their calling in the metropolis, it would be invidious to particularize eminence in our profession (whereas among our immediate predecessors it is, perhaps just to say that there were only two printers of great celebrity, the late Mr. Bulmer and my late father). I shall therefore merely mention some events which have had such influence on our art as that the case is now very different to what it was thirty years ago, when the good execution of printing at once testified to the skill and industry of the printer—as he could command neither good presses, types, nor ink, &c.—paper being then almost the only matter to be had in perfection.
We have now excellent and powerful iron presses—Stanhopes, Columbians, Imperials, &c. Then the celebrated specimens of typography were produced by miserable wooden presses. We have now ink of splendid lustre, at a fourth of the cost of fabrication then—for both Mr. Bulmer and my father were perpetually trying expensive experiments—and not always succeeding: our ink is now to be depended on for standing, it works freely, and can be had at reasonable prices at the extensive factory of Messrs. Shackell and Lyons, Clerkenwell, who made the ink used for this work.
There are several eminent engineers who make the best of presses. Our letter may safely be pronounced, if not perfect, as near perfection as it will ever reach—and while the celebrated type-foundries of Messrs. Caslon, Chiswell Street, and Messrs. Figgins, West Street, are within the reach of the metropolitan printers, there can be no excuse for failing to execute good printing on the score of inferior type.
The substitution of the inking roller, instead of the cumbrous and inconvenient old balls, has much eased the labours of the pressman and facilitated the regularity of colour. The inking roller at the hand press was adopted, and offered to the printers generally, by my friend, Mr. Applegath, shortly after steam-printing was introduced by my father—about which so much has been said in periodical publications, &c., that it is needless here to enlarge on the subject—more especially as it is principally applicable to work of inferior character, newspapers, reviews, magazines, &c.; and, further, it is not a very tempting subject to the son of him who was led to devote the energies of the latter years of his active life, and the well-earned fortune which his great typographical celebrity had secured, to the adoption of a mode of printing which, how much soever it may benefit newspaper proprietors and others—certainly has done any thing but benefit his family; and has thus added another instance to the many on record of the ill success attending the patronage of inventors.
B. Bensley.
Woking, Surrey, June 18, 1842.
FINIS.