“But let him (the person at all conversant with printing) turn from the page which he has been examining, to one of those printed from a wooden block; AND HE WILL SOON BE CONVINCED, by the comparison, that the uniformity of appearance which he witnessed in the characters of the former, could not have been produced by means similar to those used in the execution of the latter; for in the page printed from the engraved block he will discover, throughout, a sensible difference of form, as well as dimensions, between the various repetitions of the same letter: and in the capital letters especially, he will find this difference so material, as to render it easy for him to trace with a point the precise variations of form by which, for example, each of a dozen letters, S, is to be distinguished from all the others. It will then occur to him, that it must have been a task of less difficulty to preserve uniformity in the shapes and dimensions of the letters, in a page of text engraved upon a plain block of wood, which would have afforded the artist not only the means of a constant comparison, but also a convenient and steady rest for his hand during the operation of engraving, than it could have been to cut the numerous characters required, with so strict a resemblance to each other, on small separate pieces of wood or metal; and he will perceive his second opinion to be untenable.”—(pp. 257–259.)
The means of such a comparison are afforded in the absolute fac-similes in Mr. Humphreys’ book, and the differences of form and dimensions in the various repetitions of the same letter are not by any means so material as Mr. Ottley intimates. He moreover assumes, that if the separate letters were cut by hand, they must have been cut on “separate pieces of wood or metal,” and therefore, he argues, there could not have been preserved the same uniformity “in the shapes and dimensions of the letters,” as in a page of text engraved upon a plain block of wood, because there would be lacking “the means of a constant comparison,” as well as “the convenient and steady rest for the hand during the operation of engraving.” But this assumption is utterly uncalled for. What was to hinder the engraver, after calculating the probable number of each kind of letter he required, to trace the whole in alphabetical order on his blocks of wood, and to engrave them all, before he cut them into separate pieces? He would thus have the best possible means for constantly comparing every specimen of the same letter, as he proceeded with his task, and be able to preserve a steady and convenient rest for his hand until all were sculptured out, leaving the minor operation of separating the letters for use in combination to the very last moment. But Mr. Ottley forgets himself; for in the next chapter, after pointing out sundry differences in the orthography of the pages printed with moveable types in the two Latin editions, he writes (p. 294):—
“If the pages printed from engraved blocks, in the Second Latin Edition, be compared with same pages in the First Edition, we shall not find these changes.
“Although, when I wrote upon this subject twenty years ago, I was fully satisfied, as I then said, that the twenty pages of block printing in the Second Latin Edition, were of later date than the rest of the work, and that they had been engraved for the express purpose of completing the copies of this edition; still I was not then aware that such undeniable evidence existed of the fact, as I afterwards discovered. Suffice it to say, that, upon an opportunity being afforded me of comparing this edition with the First Latin, I immediately perceived (and I was rather gratified than surprised at the discovery) that those twenty pages in the Second Latin are no other than fac-simile imitations of the same pages, as printed with type in the first edition.
“The printer, or his successor, as has been said, having been deprived of the type hitherto used in the work, printed the two pages wanting to complete his Dutch edition with the remains of some old type, a little different, which had previously been thrown aside, as no longer fit for use. But in doing it, he experienced, perhaps, more trouble than he anticipated; and as twenty pages, instead of two, were wanting to complete the second Latin edition, he now bethought himself of another mode of procedure. Having taken from a copy of the first Latin edition the ten sheets containing the twenty pages wanting to complete the second edition, and having corrected with a pen a letter here and there misprinted, he delivered those sheets to a wood engraver, with directions to copy them exactly; and the engraver executed the commission, by first glueing these ten sheets with their face downwards upon ten prepared blocks of wood (according to the method then used), then, rendering the paper transparent by oil or otherwise, and lastly, by cutting away the wood around the letters.”
The whole of the last of these paragraphs, it is to be remembered, is purely conjectural; there is not the slightest foundation for it, beyond the necessity for thus accounting for a certain fact, and making that fact dove-tail in with the writer’s theory that the edition with twenty-pages of xylographic text was the second, and not the first; a theory which equally able writers, writers too on the Costerian side of the controversy, deny; maintaining, with a better show of reason on their side, that the xylographic edition was the first. But apart from this consideration, if the twenty pages engraved on blocks, are fac-simile imitations of the twenty corresponding pages in the other Latin edition, what are we to think of Mr. Ottley’s previous assertion, that in these identical pages, there is “throughout, a sensible difference of form as well as dimensions between the various repetitions of the same letter; and in the capital letters especially, this difference is material.”? Both statements cannot be correct; and how they are to be reconciled I know not.
After confessing that the changes of opinion he had previously described were those which had taken place in his own mind, Mr. Ottley proceeds:—
“At length the following mode occurred to me of accounting satisfactorily, as I still think it does, for the dissimilarities above noticed in the type of that work. The type of the Speculum was, I conceive, made by pouring melted lead, pewter, or other metal, into moulds of earth or plaster, formed, whilst the earth or plaster was in a moist state, upon letters cut by the hand in wood or metal; in the ordinary manner used, from time immemorial, in casting statues of bronze and other articles of metal, whether for use or ornament. The mould thus formed could not be of long duration like a matrix, cut or stamped in metal, since it was obviously subject to fracture; nor could it be equally true and perfect in other respects, as it was liable to warp in drying. From moulds thus constructed, but a small number of specimens of each letter could be taken, before they would require to be renewed. This it is reasonable to suppose, was effected by forming new moulds upon the various pieces which had been cast out of the old ones. Those characters however, before they could have been fit for use, it had been necessary to clear, by means of the graver, from certain small particles of extraneous metal left upon them by the process of casting; so that the small accidental dissimilarities in different specimens of the same letter, originally occasioned by this imperfect mode of casting them, were necessarily augmented by the after process of finishing or clearing them with a sharp instrument, (the marks of which are very clearly to be perceived in the type of the Speculum); and thus the renewed moulds, formed upon the letters thus prepared, would necessarily differ, and in some cases very materially, from the former moulds, and also (for these moulds could be multiplied at pleasure) from each other. That a book, printed with type thus manufactured, should present a never ending variety in the forms of the different specimens of the same letter, is therefore not surprising; it is rather a subject for our admiration that the dissimilarity in the characters in the work before us is not greater and more immediately apparent.”
The above mode of accounting for the discrepancies in the appearances of the different specimens of the same letter, is opposed to that put forward by Koning, who takes it for granted that the types were cast by the printer of the Speculum in the same way, and with the same kind of apparatus, as that now used by type-founders, only that the punches were made of hard wood, and the matrices of lead or pewter; and he accounts for certain peculiar fractures he had perceived in several instances on the top of the capital
as well as in a number of the capital
