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Printing, in the only sense with which we are at present concerned, differs from most if not from all the arts and crafts represented in the Exhibition | |
in being comparatively modern. | |
For although the Chinese took impressions from wood blocks engraved in relief for centuries before the woodcutters of the Netherlands, by a similar process | |
produced the block books, which were the immediate predecessors of the true printed book, | |
the invention of movable metal letters in the middle of the fifteenth century may justly be considered as the invention of the art of printing. | |
And it is worth mention in passing that, as an example of fine typography, | |
the earliest book printed with movable types, the Gutenberg, or "forty-two line Bible" of about 1455, | |
has never been surpassed. | |
Printing, then, for our purpose, may be considered as the art of making books by means of movable types. | |
Now, as all books not primarily intended as picture-books consist principally of types composed to form letterpress, | |
it is of the first importance that the letter used should be fine in form; | |
especially as no more time is occupied, or cost incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters | |
than in the same operations with ugly ones. | |
And it was a matter of course that in the Middle Ages, when the craftsmen took care that beautiful form should always be a part of their productions whatever they were, | |
the forms of printed letters should be beautiful, and that their arrangement on the page should be reasonable and a help to the shapeliness of the letters themselves. | |
The Middle Ages brought calligraphy to perfection, and it was natural therefore | |
that the forms of printed letters should follow more or less closely those of the written character, and they followed them very closely. | |
The first books were printed in black letter, i.e. the letter which was a Gothic development of the ancient Roman character, | |
and which developed more completely and satisfactorily on the side of the "lower-case" than the capital letters; | |
the "lower-case" being in fact invented in the early Middle Ages. | |
The earliest book printed with movable type, the aforesaid Gutenberg Bible, is printed in letters which are an exact imitation | |
of the more formal ecclesiastical writing which obtained at that time; this has since been called "missal type," | |
and was in fact the kind of letter used in the many splendid missals, psalters, etc., produced by printing in the fifteenth century. | |
But the first Bible actually dated (which also was printed at Maintz by Peter Schoeffer in the year 1462) | |
imitates a much freer hand, simpler, rounder, and less spiky, and therefore far pleasanter and easier to read. | |
On the whole the type of this book may be considered the ne-plus-ultra of Gothic type, | |
especially as regards the lower-case letters; and type very similar was used during the next fifteen or twenty years not only by Schoeffer, | |
but by printers in Strasburg, Basle, Paris, Lubeck, and other cities. | |
But though on the whole, except in Italy, Gothic letter was most often used | |
a very few years saw the birth of Roman character not only in Italy, but in Germany and France. | |
In 1465 Sweynheim and Pannartz began printing in the monastery of Subiaco near Rome, | |
and used an exceedingly beautiful type, which is indeed to look at a transition between Gothic and Roman, | |
but which must certainly have come from the study of the twelfth or even the eleventh century MSS. | |
They printed very few books in this type, three only; but in their very first books in Rome, beginning with the year 1468, | |
they discarded this for a more completely Roman and far less beautiful letter. | |
But about the same year Mentelin at Strasburg began to print in a type which is distinctly Roman; | |
and the next year Gunther Zeiner at Augsburg followed suit; | |
while in 1470 at Paris Udalric Gering and his associates turned out the first books printed in France, also in Roman character. | |
The Roman type of all these printers is similar in character, | |
and is very simple and legible, and unaffectedly designed for use; but it is by no means without beauty. | |
It must be said that it is in no way like the transition type of Subiaco, | |
and though more Roman than that, yet scarcely more like the complete Roman type of the earliest printers of Rome. | |
A further development of the Roman letter took place at Venice. | |
John of Spires and his brother Vindelin, followed by Nicholas Jenson, began to print in that city, | |
1469, 1470; | |
their type is on the lines of the German and French rather than of the Roman printers. | |
Of Jenson it must be said that he carried the development of Roman type as far as it can go: | |
his letter is admirably clear and regular, but at least as beautiful as any other Roman type. | |
After his death in the "fourteen eighties," or at least by 1490, printing in Venice had declined very much; | |
and though the famous family of Aldus restored its technical excellence, rejecting battered letters, | |
and paying great attention to the "press work" or actual process of printing, | |
yet their type is artistically on a much lower level than Jenson's, and in fact | |
they must be considered to have ended the age of fine printing in Italy. | |
Jenson, however, had many contemporaries who used beautiful type, | |
some of which -- as, e.g., that of Jacobus Rubeus or Jacques le Rouge -- is scarcely distinguishable from his. | |
It was these great Venetian printers, together with their brethren of Rome, Milan, | |
Parma, and one or two other cities, who produced the splendid editions of the Classics, which are one of the great glories of the printer's art, | |
and are worthy representatives of the eager enthusiasm for the revived learning of that epoch. By far, | |
the greater part of these Italian printers, it should be mentioned, were Germans or Frenchmen, working under the influence of Italian opinion and aims. | |
It must be understood that through the whole of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries | |
the Roman letter was used side by side with the Gothic. | |
Even in Italy most of the theological and law books were printed in Gothic letter, | |
which was generally more formally Gothic than the printing of the German workmen, | |
many of whose types, indeed, like that of the Subiaco works, are of a transitional character. | |
This was notably the case with the early works printed at Ulm, and in a somewhat lesser degree at Augsburg. | |
In fact Gunther Zeiner's first type (afterwards used by Schussler) is remarkably like the type of the before-mentioned Subiaco books. | |
In the Low Countries and Cologne, which were very fertile of printed books, Gothic was the favorite. | |
The characteristic Dutch type, as represented by the excellent printer Gerard Leew, is very pronounced and uncompromising Gothic. | |
This type was introduced into England by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's successor, | |
and was used there with very little variation all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and indeed into the eighteenth. | |
Most of Caxton's own types are of an earlier character, though they also much resemble Flemish or Cologne letter. | |
After the end of the fifteenth century the degradation of printing, especially in Germany and Italy, | |
went on apace; and by the end of the sixteenth century there was no really beautiful printing done: | |
the best, mostly French or Low-Country, was neat and clear, but without any distinction; | |
the worst, which perhaps was the English, was a terrible falling-off from the work of the earlier presses; | |
and things got worse and worse through the whole of the seventeenth century, so that in the eighteenth printing was very miserably performed. | |
In England about this time, an attempt was made (notably by Caslon, who started business in London as a type-founder in 1720) | |
to improve the letter in form. | |
Caslon's type is clear and neat, and fairly well designed; | |
he seems to have taken the letter of the Elzevirs of the seventeenth century for his model: | |
type cast from his matrices is still in everyday use. | |
In spite, however, of his praiseworthy efforts, printing had still one last degradation to undergo. | |
The seventeenth century founts were bad rather negatively than positively. | |
But for the beauty of the earlier work they might have seemed tolerable. | |
It was reserved for the founders of the later eighteenth century to produce letters which are positively ugly, and which, it may be added, | |
are dazzling and unpleasant to the eye owing to the clumsy thickening and vulgar thinning of the lines: | |
for the seventeenth-century letters are at least pure and simple in line. The Italian, Bodoni, and the Frenchman, Didot, | |
were the leaders in this luckless change, though our own Baskerville, who was at work some years before them, went much on the same lines; | |
but his letters, though uninteresting and poor, are not nearly so gross and vulgar as those of either the Italian or the Frenchman. | |
With this change the art of printing touched bottom, | |
so far as fine printing is concerned, though paper did not get to its worst till about 1840. | |
The Chiswick press in 1844 revived Caslon's founts, printing for Messrs. Longman the Diary of Lady Willoughby. | |
This experiment was so far successful that about 1850 Messrs. Miller and Richard of Edinburgh | |
were induced to cut punches for a series of "old style" letters. | |
These and similar founts, cast by the above firm and others, | |
have now come into general use and are obviously a great improvement on the ordinary "modern style" in use in England, which is in fact the Bodoni type | |
a little reduced in ugliness. The design of the letters of this modern "old style" leaves a good deal to be desired, | |
and the whole effect is a little too gray, owing to the thinness of the letters. | |
It must be remembered, however, that most modern printing is done by machinery on soft paper, and not by the hand press, | |
and these somewhat wiry letters are suitable for the machine process, which would not do justice to letters of more generous design. |
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