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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	LJ001-0001.wav
	in being comparatively modern.	LJ001-0002.wav
	For although the Chinese took impressions from wood blocks engraved in relief for centuries before the woodcutters of the Netherlands, by a similar process	LJ001-0003.wav
	produced the block books, which were the immediate predecessors of the true printed book,	LJ001-0004.wav
	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.	LJ001-0005.wav
	And it is worth mention in passing that, as an example of fine typography,	LJ001-0006.wav
	the earliest book printed with movable types, the Gutenberg, or "forty-two line Bible" of about 1455,	LJ001-0007.wav
	has never been surpassed.	LJ001-0008.wav
	Printing, then, for our purpose, may be considered as the art of making books by means of movable types.	LJ001-0009.wav
	Now, as all books not primarily intended as picture-books consist principally of types composed to form letterpress,	LJ001-0010.wav
	it is of the first importance that the letter used should be fine in form;	LJ001-0011.wav
	especially as no more time is occupied, or cost incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters	LJ001-0012.wav
	than in the same operations with ugly ones.	LJ001-0013.wav
	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,	LJ001-0014.wav
	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.	LJ001-0015.wav
	The Middle Ages brought calligraphy to perfection, and it was natural therefore	LJ001-0016.wav
	that the forms of printed letters should follow more or less closely those of the written character, and they followed them very closely.	LJ001-0017.wav
	The first books were printed in black letter, i.e. the letter which was a Gothic development of the ancient Roman character,	LJ001-0018.wav
	and which developed more completely and satisfactorily on the side of the "lower-case" than the capital letters;	LJ001-0019.wav
	the "lower-case" being in fact invented in the early Middle Ages.	LJ001-0020.wav
	The earliest book printed with movable type, the aforesaid Gutenberg Bible, is printed in letters which are an exact imitation	LJ001-0021.wav
	of the more formal ecclesiastical writing which obtained at that time; this has since been called "missal type,"	LJ001-0022.wav
	and was in fact the kind of letter used in the many splendid missals, psalters, etc., produced by printing in the fifteenth century.	LJ001-0023.wav
	But the first Bible actually dated (which also was printed at Maintz by Peter Schoeffer in the year 1462)	LJ001-0024.wav
	imitates a much freer hand, simpler, rounder, and less spiky, and therefore far pleasanter and easier to read.	LJ001-0025.wav
	On the whole the type of this book may be considered the ne-plus-ultra of Gothic type,	LJ001-0026.wav
	especially as regards the lower-case letters; and type very similar was used during the next fifteen or twenty years not only by Schoeffer,	LJ001-0027.wav
	but by printers in Strasburg, Basle, Paris, Lubeck, and other cities.	LJ001-0028.wav
	But though on the whole, except in Italy, Gothic letter was most often used	LJ001-0029.wav
	a very few years saw the birth of Roman character not only in Italy, but in Germany and France.	LJ001-0030.wav
	In 1465 Sweynheim and Pannartz began printing in the monastery of Subiaco near Rome,	LJ001-0031.wav
	and used an exceedingly beautiful type, which is indeed to look at a transition between Gothic and Roman,	LJ001-0032.wav
	but which must certainly have come from the study of the twelfth or even the eleventh century MSS.	LJ001-0033.wav
	They printed very few books in this type, three only; but in their very first books in Rome, beginning with the year 1468,	LJ001-0034.wav
	they discarded this for a more completely Roman and far less beautiful letter.	LJ001-0035.wav
	But about the same year Mentelin at Strasburg began to print in a type which is distinctly Roman;	LJ001-0036.wav
	and the next year Gunther Zeiner at Augsburg followed suit;	LJ001-0037.wav
	while in 1470 at Paris Udalric Gering and his associates turned out the first books printed in France, also in Roman character.	LJ001-0038.wav
	The Roman type of all these printers is similar in character,	LJ001-0039.wav
	and is very simple and legible, and unaffectedly designed for use; but it is by no means without beauty.	LJ001-0040.wav
	It must be said that it is in no way like the transition type of Subiaco,	LJ001-0041.wav
	and though more Roman than that, yet scarcely more like the complete Roman type of the earliest printers of Rome.	LJ001-0042.wav
	A further development of the Roman letter took place at Venice.	LJ001-0043.wav
	John of Spires and his brother Vindelin, followed by Nicholas Jenson, began to print in that city,	LJ001-0044.wav
	1469, 1470;	LJ001-0045.wav
	their type is on the lines of the German and French rather than of the Roman printers.	LJ001-0046.wav
	Of Jenson it must be said that he carried the development of Roman type as far as it can go:	LJ001-0047.wav
	his letter is admirably clear and regular, but at least as beautiful as any other Roman type.	LJ001-0048.wav
	After his death in the "fourteen eighties," or at least by 1490, printing in Venice had declined very much;	LJ001-0049.wav
	and though the famous family of Aldus restored its technical excellence, rejecting battered letters,	LJ001-0050.wav
	and paying great attention to the "press work" or actual process of printing,	LJ001-0051.wav
	yet their type is artistically on a much lower level than Jenson's, and in fact	LJ001-0052.wav
	they must be considered to have ended the age of fine printing in Italy.	LJ001-0053.wav
	Jenson, however, had many contemporaries who used beautiful type,	LJ001-0054.wav
	some of which -- as, e.g., that of Jacobus Rubeus or Jacques le Rouge -- is scarcely distinguishable from his.	LJ001-0055.wav
	It was these great Venetian printers, together with their brethren of Rome, Milan,	LJ001-0056.wav
	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,	LJ001-0057.wav
	and are worthy representatives of the eager enthusiasm for the revived learning of that epoch. By far,	LJ001-0058.wav
	the greater part of these Italian printers, it should be mentioned, were Germans or Frenchmen, working under the influence of Italian opinion and aims.	LJ001-0059.wav
	It must be understood that through the whole of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries	LJ001-0060.wav
	the Roman letter was used side by side with the Gothic.	LJ001-0061.wav
	Even in Italy most of the theological and law books were printed in Gothic letter,	LJ001-0062.wav
	which was generally more formally Gothic than the printing of the German workmen,	LJ001-0063.wav
	many of whose types, indeed, like that of the Subiaco works, are of a transitional character.	LJ001-0064.wav
	This was notably the case with the early works printed at Ulm, and in a somewhat lesser degree at Augsburg.	LJ001-0065.wav
	In fact Gunther Zeiner's first type (afterwards used by Schussler) is remarkably like the type of the before-mentioned Subiaco books.	LJ001-0066.wav
	In the Low Countries and Cologne, which were very fertile of printed books, Gothic was the favorite.	LJ001-0067.wav
	The characteristic Dutch type, as represented by the excellent printer Gerard Leew, is very pronounced and uncompromising Gothic.	LJ001-0068.wav
	This type was introduced into England by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's successor,	LJ001-0069.wav
	and was used there with very little variation all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and indeed into the eighteenth.	LJ001-0070.wav
	Most of Caxton's own types are of an earlier character, though they also much resemble Flemish or Cologne letter.	LJ001-0071.wav
	After the end of the fifteenth century the degradation of printing, especially in Germany and Italy,	LJ001-0072.wav
	went on apace; and by the end of the sixteenth century there was no really beautiful printing done:	LJ001-0073.wav
	the best, mostly French or Low-Country, was neat and clear, but without any distinction;	LJ001-0074.wav
	the worst, which perhaps was the English, was a terrible falling-off from the work of the earlier presses;	LJ001-0075.wav
	and things got worse and worse through the whole of the seventeenth century, so that in the eighteenth printing was very miserably performed.	LJ001-0076.wav
	In England about this time, an attempt was made (notably by Caslon, who started business in London as a type-founder in 1720)	LJ001-0077.wav
	to improve the letter in form.	LJ001-0078.wav
	Caslon's type is clear and neat, and fairly well designed;	LJ001-0079.wav
	he seems to have taken the letter of the Elzevirs of the seventeenth century for his model:	LJ001-0080.wav
	type cast from his matrices is still in everyday use.	LJ001-0081.wav
	In spite, however, of his praiseworthy efforts, printing had still one last degradation to undergo.	LJ001-0082.wav
	The seventeenth century founts were bad rather negatively than positively.	LJ001-0083.wav
	But for the beauty of the earlier work they might have seemed tolerable.	LJ001-0084.wav
	It was reserved for the founders of the later eighteenth century to produce letters which are positively ugly, and which, it may be added,	LJ001-0085.wav
	are dazzling and unpleasant to the eye owing to the clumsy thickening and vulgar thinning of the lines:	LJ001-0086.wav
	for the seventeenth-century letters are at least pure and simple in line. The Italian, Bodoni, and the Frenchman, Didot,	LJ001-0087.wav
	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;	LJ001-0088.wav
	but his letters, though uninteresting and poor, are not nearly so gross and vulgar as those of either the Italian or the Frenchman.	LJ001-0089.wav
	With this change the art of printing touched bottom,	LJ001-0090.wav
	so far as fine printing is concerned, though paper did not get to its worst till about 1840.	LJ001-0091.wav
	The Chiswick press in 1844 revived Caslon's founts, printing for Messrs. Longman the Diary of Lady Willoughby.	LJ001-0092.wav
	This experiment was so far successful that about 1850 Messrs. Miller and Richard of Edinburgh	LJ001-0093.wav
	were induced to cut punches for a series of "old style" letters.	LJ001-0094.wav
	These and similar founts, cast by the above firm and others,	LJ001-0095.wav
	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	LJ001-0096.wav
	a little reduced in ugliness. The design of the letters of this modern "old style" leaves a good deal to be desired,	LJ001-0097.wav
	and the whole effect is a little too gray, owing to the thinness of the letters.	LJ001-0098.wav
	It must be remembered, however, that most modern printing is done by machinery on soft paper, and not by the hand press,	LJ001-0099.wav
	and these somewhat wiry letters are suitable for the machine process, which would not do justice to letters of more generous design.	LJ001-0100.wav