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