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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

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in being comparatively modern.

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For although the Chinese took impressions from wood blocks engraved in relief for centuries before the woodcutters of the Netherlands, by a similar process

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produced the block books, which were the immediate predecessors of the true printed book,

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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.

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And it is worth mention in passing that, as an example of fine typography,

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the earliest book printed with movable types, the Gutenberg, or "forty-two line Bible" of about 1455,

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has never been surpassed.

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Printing, then, for our purpose, may be considered as the art of making books by means of movable types.

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Now, as all books not primarily intended as picture-books consist principally of types composed to form letterpress,

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it is of the first importance that the letter used should be fine in form;

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especially as no more time is occupied, or cost incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters

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than in the same operations with ugly ones.

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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,

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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.

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The Middle Ages brought calligraphy to perfection, and it was natural therefore

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that the forms of printed letters should follow more or less closely those of the written character, and they followed them very closely.

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The first books were printed in black letter, i.e. the letter which was a Gothic development of the ancient Roman character,

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and which developed more completely and satisfactorily on the side of the "lower-case" than the capital letters;

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the "lower-case" being in fact invented in the early Middle Ages.

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The earliest book printed with movable type, the aforesaid Gutenberg Bible, is printed in letters which are an exact imitation

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of the more formal ecclesiastical writing which obtained at that time; this has since been called "missal type,"

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and was in fact the kind of letter used in the many splendid missals, psalters, etc., produced by printing in the fifteenth century.

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But the first Bible actually dated (which also was printed at Maintz by Peter Schoeffer in the year 1462)

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imitates a much freer hand, simpler, rounder, and less spiky, and therefore far pleasanter and easier to read.

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On the whole the type of this book may be considered the ne-plus-ultra of Gothic type,

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especially as regards the lower-case letters; and type very similar was used during the next fifteen or twenty years not only by Schoeffer,

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but by printers in Strasburg, Basle, Paris, Lubeck, and other cities.

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But though on the whole, except in Italy, Gothic letter was most often used

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a very few years saw the birth of Roman character not only in Italy, but in Germany and France.

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In 1465 Sweynheim and Pannartz began printing in the monastery of Subiaco near Rome,

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and used an exceedingly beautiful type, which is indeed to look at a transition between Gothic and Roman,

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but which must certainly have come from the study of the twelfth or even the eleventh century MSS.

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They printed very few books in this type, three only; but in their very first books in Rome, beginning with the year 1468,

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they discarded this for a more completely Roman and far less beautiful letter.

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But about the same year Mentelin at Strasburg began to print in a type which is distinctly Roman;

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and the next year Gunther Zeiner at Augsburg followed suit;

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while in 1470 at Paris Udalric Gering and his associates turned out the first books printed in France, also in Roman character.

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The Roman type of all these printers is similar in character,

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and is very simple and legible, and unaffectedly designed for use; but it is by no means without beauty.

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It must be said that it is in no way like the transition type of Subiaco,

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and though more Roman than that, yet scarcely more like the complete Roman type of the earliest printers of Rome.

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A further development of the Roman letter took place at Venice.

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John of Spires and his brother Vindelin, followed by Nicholas Jenson, began to print in that city,

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1469, 1470;

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their type is on the lines of the German and French rather than of the Roman printers.

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Of Jenson it must be said that he carried the development of Roman type as far as it can go:

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his letter is admirably clear and regular, but at least as beautiful as any other Roman type.

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After his death in the "fourteen eighties," or at least by 1490, printing in Venice had declined very much;

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and though the famous family of Aldus restored its technical excellence, rejecting battered letters,

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and paying great attention to the "press work" or actual process of printing,

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yet their type is artistically on a much lower level than Jenson's, and in fact

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they must be considered to have ended the age of fine printing in Italy.

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Jenson, however, had many contemporaries who used beautiful type,

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some of which -- as, e.g., that of Jacobus Rubeus or Jacques le Rouge -- is scarcely distinguishable from his.

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It was these great Venetian printers, together with their brethren of Rome, Milan,

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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,

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and are worthy representatives of the eager enthusiasm for the revived learning of that epoch. By far,

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the greater part of these Italian printers, it should be mentioned, were Germans or Frenchmen, working under the influence of Italian opinion and aims.

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It must be understood that through the whole of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth centuries

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the Roman letter was used side by side with the Gothic.

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Even in Italy most of the theological and law books were printed in Gothic letter,

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which was generally more formally Gothic than the printing of the German workmen,

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many of whose types, indeed, like that of the Subiaco works, are of a transitional character.

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This was notably the case with the early works printed at Ulm, and in a somewhat lesser degree at Augsburg.

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In fact Gunther Zeiner's first type (afterwards used by Schussler) is remarkably like the type of the before-mentioned Subiaco books.

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In the Low Countries and Cologne, which were very fertile of printed books, Gothic was the favorite.

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The characteristic Dutch type, as represented by the excellent printer Gerard Leew, is very pronounced and uncompromising Gothic.

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This type was introduced into England by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's successor,

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and was used there with very little variation all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and indeed into the eighteenth.

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Most of Caxton's own types are of an earlier character, though they also much resemble Flemish or Cologne letter.

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After the end of the fifteenth century the degradation of printing, especially in Germany and Italy,

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went on apace; and by the end of the sixteenth century there was no really beautiful printing done:

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the best, mostly French or Low-Country, was neat and clear, but without any distinction;

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the worst, which perhaps was the English, was a terrible falling-off from the work of the earlier presses;

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and things got worse and worse through the whole of the seventeenth century, so that in the eighteenth printing was very miserably performed.

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In England about this time, an attempt was made (notably by Caslon, who started business in London as a type-founder in 1720)

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to improve the letter in form.

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Caslon's type is clear and neat, and fairly well designed;

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he seems to have taken the letter of the Elzevirs of the seventeenth century for his model:

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type cast from his matrices is still in everyday use.

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In spite, however, of his praiseworthy efforts, printing had still one last degradation to undergo.

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The seventeenth century founts were bad rather negatively than positively.

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But for the beauty of the earlier work they might have seemed tolerable.

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It was reserved for the founders of the later eighteenth century to produce letters which are positively ugly, and which, it may be added,

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are dazzling and unpleasant to the eye owing to the clumsy thickening and vulgar thinning of the lines:

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for the seventeenth-century letters are at least pure and simple in line. The Italian, Bodoni, and the Frenchman, Didot,

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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;

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but his letters, though uninteresting and poor, are not nearly so gross and vulgar as those of either the Italian or the Frenchman.

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With this change the art of printing touched bottom,

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so far as fine printing is concerned, though paper did not get to its worst till about 1840.

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The Chiswick press in 1844 revived Caslon's founts, printing for Messrs. Longman the Diary of Lady Willoughby.

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This experiment was so far successful that about 1850 Messrs. Miller and Richard of Edinburgh

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were induced to cut punches for a series of "old style" letters.

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These and similar founts, cast by the above firm and others,

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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

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a little reduced in ugliness. The design of the letters of this modern "old style" leaves a good deal to be desired,

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and the whole effect is a little too gray, owing to the thinness of the letters.

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It must be remembered, however, that most modern printing is done by machinery on soft paper, and not by the hand press,

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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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