THEODORE LOW DE VINNE
The Old and the New
A FRIENDLY DISPUTE BETWEEN JUVENIS AND SENEX
with a note by FREDERIC W. GOUDY
Published by The Village Press, Marlboro, New York, 1933.
Juvenis: What is it that you admire in the types of old books? Don't you love them more for their quaintness than for their beauty? I have seen originals or accredited facsimiles of the best books of Gutenberg, Jenson, Aldus, Kerver, Caxton, and other notable printers, but I prefer modern types.
Senex: Then you have seen the pointed black-letter, the round gothic, the aldine Italic, the flemish black, and the early Roman. Did not any of these styles please you?
Juvenis: Not one. To try to read the pointed black of Gutenberg and Kerver is as repelling as a walk through the crypts of an old church; the round gothics are as scraggy as a heap of oyster shells; the Aldine italics are squeezed as to width, elongated as to height, and incongruously mated with absurdly small capitals; the flemish black-letter is the 'tour de force' of a literary acrobat. In all these characters I see bad drawing and disregard of proportion. The founding is as bad as the design; some characters are fitted too near, others too wide, and many letters are out of line.
Senex: You surely cannot censure Jenson's Roman for bad fitting?