MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
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.
It is discouraging to note that the improvement of the last fifty years is almost wholly confined to Great Britain.
Here and there a book is printed in France or Germany with some pretension to good taste,
but the general revival of the old forms has made no way in those countries.
Italy is contentedly stagnant.
America has produced a good many showy books, the typography, paper, and illustrations of which are, however, all wrong,
oddity rather than rational beauty and meaning being apparently the thing sought for both in the letters and the illustrations.
To say a few words on the principles of design in typography:
it is obvious that legibility is the first thing to be aimed at in the forms of the letters;
this is best furthered by the avoidance of irrational swellings and spiky projections, and by the using of careful purity of line.
Even the Caslon type when enlarged shows great shortcomings in this respect:
the ends of many of the letters such as the t and e are hooked up in a vulgar and meaningless way,
instead of ending in the sharp and clear stroke of Jenson's letters;
there is a grossness in the upper finishings of letters like the c, the a, and so on,
an ugly pear-shaped swelling defacing the form of the letter:
in short, it happens to this craft, as to others, that the utilitarian practice, though it professes to avoid ornament,
still clings to a foolish, because misunderstood conventionality, deduced from what was once ornament, and is by no means useful;
which title can only be claimed by artistic practice, whether the art in it be conscious or unconscious.
In no characters is the contrast between the ugly and vulgar illegibility of the modern type
and the elegance and legibility of the ancient more striking than in the Arabic numerals.
In the old print each figure has its definite individuality, and one cannot be mistaken for the other;
in reading the modern figures the eyes must be strained before the reader can have any reasonable assurance
that he has a 5, an 8, or a 3 before him, unless the press work is of the best:
this is awkward if you have to read Bradshaw's Guide in a hurry.
One of the differences between the fine type and the utilitarian must probably be put down to a misapprehension of a commercial necessity:
this is the narrowing of the modern letters.
Most of Jenson's letters are designed within a square,
the modern letters are narrowed by a third or thereabout; but while this gain of space very much hampers the possibility of beauty of design,
it is not a real gain, for the modern printer throws the gain away by putting inordinately wide spaces between his lines, which, probably,
the lateral compression of his letters renders necessary.
Commercialism again compels the use of type too small in size to be comfortable reading:
the size known as "Long primer" ought to be the smallest size used in a book meant to be read.
Here, again, if the practice of "leading" were retrenched larger type could be used without enhancing the price of a book.
One very important matter in "setting up" for fine printing is the "spacing," that is, the lateral distance of words from one another.
In good printing the spaces between the words should be as near as possible equal
it is impossible that they should be quite equal except in lines of poetry
modern printers understand this, but it is only practiced in the very best establishments.
But another point which they should attend to they almost always disregard;
this is the tendency to the formation of ugly meandering white lines or "rivers" in the page
a blemish which can be nearly, though not wholly, avoided by care and forethought
the desirable thing being "the breaking of the line" as in bonding masonry or brickwork
The general solidity of a page is much to be sought for
modern printers generally overdo the "whites" in the spacing, a defect probably forced on them by the characterless quality of the letters.
For where these are boldly and carefully designed, and each letter is thoroughly individual in form,
the words may be set much closer together, without loss of clearness.
No definite rules, however, except the avoidance of "rivers" and excess of white, can be given for the spacing,
which requires the constant exercise of judgment and taste on the part of the printer.
The position of the page on the paper should be considered if the book is to have a satisfactory look.
Here once more the almost invariable modern practice is in opposition to a natural sense of proportion.
From the time when books first took their present shape till the end of the sixteenth century, or indeed later,
the page so lay on the paper that there was more space allowed to the bottom and fore margin than to the top and back of the paper,
the unit of the book being looked on as the two pages forming an opening.
The modern printer, in the teeth of the evidence given by his own eyes, considers the single page as the unit, and prints the page in the middle of his paper
only nominally so, however, in many cases, since when he uses a headline he counts that in,
the result as measured by the eye being that the lower margin is less than the top one, and that the whole opening has an upside-down look vertically
and that laterally the page looks as if it were being driven off the paper.
The paper on which the printing is to be done is a necessary part of our subject:
of this it may be said that though there is some good paper made now,
it is never used except for very expensive books, although it would not materially increase the cost in all but the very cheapest.
The paper that is used for ordinary books is exceedingly bad even in this country, but is beaten in the race for vileness
by that made in America, which is the worst conceivable.
There seems to be no reason why ordinary paper should not be better made,
even allowing the necessity for a very low price; but any improvement must be based on showing openly that the cheap article is cheap,
e.g. the cheap paper should not sacrifice toughness and durability to a smooth and white surface,
which should be indications of a delicacy of material and manufacture which would of necessity increase its cost.
One fruitful source of badness in paper
is the habit that publishers have of eking out a thin volume by printing it on thick paper almost of the substance of cardboard,
a device which deceives nobody, and makes a book very unpleasant to read.
On the whole, a small book should be printed on paper which is as thin as may be without being transparent.
The paper used for printing the small highly ornamented French service-books about the beginning of the sixteenth century is a model in this respect,
being thin, tough, and opaque.
However, the fact must not be blinked that machine-made paper cannot in the nature of things be made of so good a texture as that made by hand.
The ornamentation of printed books is too wide a subject to be dealt with fully here; but one thing must be said on it.
The essential point to be remembered is that the ornament, whatever it is, whether picture or pattern-work, should form part of the page,
should be a part of the whole scheme of the book.
Simple as this proposition is, it is necessary to be stated,
because the modern practice is to disregard the relation between the printing and the ornament altogether,
so that if the two are helpful to one another it is a mere matter of accident.
The due relation of letter to pictures and other ornament was thoroughly understood by the old printers; so that
even when the woodcuts are very rude indeed,
the proportions of the page still give pleasure by the sense of richness that the cuts and letter together convey.
When, as is most often the case, there is actual beauty in the cuts,
the books so ornamented are amongst the most delightful works of art that have ever been produced.
Therefore, granted well-designed type, due spacing of the lines and words, and proper position of the page on the paper,
all books might be at least comely and well-looking: and if to these good qualities were added really beautiful ornament and pictures,
printed books might once again illustrate to the full
the position of our Society that a work of utility might be also a work of art, if we cared to make it so.
The Chronicles of Newgate, Volume 2. By Arthur Griffiths. Section 4: Newgate down to 1818.
Under the conditions referred to in the previous chapter,
with criminals and misdemeanants of all shades crowding perpetually into its narrow limits, the latter state of Newgate was worse than the first.
The new jail fell as far short of the demands made on it as did the old.
but it was almost always in excess of the accommodation available, and there were times when the place was full to overflowing.
Neild gives some figures which well illustrate this.
On the 14th June, 1800, there were 199 debtors and 289 felons in the prison.
On the 27th April, in the following year,
these numbers had risen to 275 and 375 respectively, or 650 in all.
For two more years these high figures were steadily maintained, and in 1803 the total rose to 710.
After that they fell as steadily,
till, 1808, the lowest point was touched of 197 debtors and 182 felons, or 379 in all.
The numbers soon increased, however, and by 1811 had again risen to 629; and Mr. Neild was told that there had been at one time
300 debtors and 900 criminals in Newgate, or twelve hundred prisoners in all.
Previous to that date there had been 700 or 800 frequently, and once, in Mr. Akerman's time, one thousand.
Trustworthy evidence is forthcoming to the effect that these high figures were constantly maintained for many months at a time.
The inadequacy of the jail was noticed and reported upon again and again by the grand juries of the city of London,
who seldom let a session go by without visiting Newgate.
In 1813
the grand jury made a special presentment to the Court of Common Council, pointing out that on the debtors' side, which was intended for only 100,
no less than 340 were crowded, to the great inconvenience and danger of the inmates.
On the female side matters were much worse;
Quote. the apartments set apart for them, being built to accommodate 60 persons, now contain about 120. End quote.
Returns laid before the House of Commons showed that 6439 persons had been committed to Newgate
in the three years between 1813 and 1816,
and this number did not include the debtors, a numerous class, who were still committed to Newgate pending the completion of the White Cross Street prison.
In order to realize the evils entailed by incarceration in Newgate in these days, it is necessary to give some account of its interior
as it was occupied and appropriated in 1810.
Full details of the arrangements are to be found in Mr. Neild's "State of Prisons in England, Scotland, and Wales," published in 1812.
The jail at that date was divided into eight separate and more or less distinct departments, each of which had its own wards and yard.
These were: 1. The male debtors' side.
2. The female debtors' side. 3. The chapel yard. 4. The middle yard.
5. The master felons' side. 6. The female felons' side. 7. The state side.
8. The press yard.
1. The male debtors' side consisted of a yard forty-nine feet by thirty-one,
leading to thirteen wards on various floors, and a day room.
Of these wards, three were appropriated to the "cabin side," so called because
they each contained four small rooms or "cabins" seven feet square,
intended to accommodate a couple of prisoners apiece, but often much more crowded.
Two other wards were appropriated to the master's side debtors; they were each twenty-three feet by fourteen and a half,
and supposed to accommodate twenty persons. The eight remaining wards were for the common side debtors,
long narrow rooms -- one thirty-six feet, six twenty-three feet, and the eighth eighteen,
the whole about fifteen feet wide.
The various wards were all about eleven feet in height,
and were occupied as a rule by ten to fifteen people when the prison was not crowded, but double the number was occasionally placed in them.
The day room was fitted with benches and settles after the manner of the tap in a public-house.
2. The female debtors' side consisted of a court-yard forty-nine by sixteen feet,
leading to two wards, one of which was thirty-six feet by fifteen,
and the other eighteen by fifteen; and they nominally held twenty-two persons.
A high wall fifteen feet in height divided the females' court-yard from the men's.
3. The chapel yard was about forty-three feet by twenty-five.
It had been for some time devoted principally to felons of the worst types,
those who were the oldest offenders, sentenced to transportation, and who had narrowly escaped the penalty of death.
This arrangement was, however, modified after 1811, and the chapel yard was allotted to misdemeanants and prisoners awaiting trial.
The wards in this part were five in number, all in dimensions twenty feet by fifteen, with a sixth ward fifteen feet square.
These wards were all fitted with barrack-beds, but no bedding was supplied.
The chapel yard led to the chapel, and on the staircase were two rooms frequently set apart for the king's witnesses,
those who had turned king's evidence, whose safety might have been imperiled had they been lodged with the men against whom they had informed.
But these king's witnesses were also put at times into the press yard among the capital convicts, seemingly a very dangerous proceeding,
or they lodged with the gatesmen, the prisoner officers who had charge of the inner gates.
The middle yard was at first given up to the least heinous offenders. After 1812 it changed functions with the chapel yard.
It was fifty feet by twenty-five, and had five wards each thirty-eight by fifteen. At one end of the yard was an arcade,
directly under the chapel, in which there were three cells, used either for the confinement of disorderly and refractory prisoners,
or female convicts ordered for execution.
The master felons' side consisted of a yard the same size as the preceding, appropriated nominally to the most decent and better-behaved prisoners,
but really kept for the few who had funds sufficient to gain them admission to these more comfortable quarters.
Here were also lodged the gatesmen, the prisoners who had charge of the inner gates, and who were entrusted with the duty of escorting visitors from the gates
to the various wards their friends occupied.
The state side was the part stolen from the female felons' side.