The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-06 00:00:00

MARE AND CO.'s. TYPEFOUNDRY,

EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

As Described by Henry Mayhew.
In the Eighth Part of the very curious and
valuable publication entitled, " The Shops and
Companies of London and the Trades and Manu-
tures of Great Britain," a periodical edited by the
ingenious author of "London Labour and the Lon-
don Poor," there appears a description of the Type-
foundry of the Messrs. Marr and Co., of Edinburgh
and London, so remarkable of its kind, as
affording the reader a vivid idea of the mysteries
of a truly wonderful craft, that we cannot but direct
attention to it thus pointedly—speaking of it, as it
deserves to be spoken of, as a really masterly epi-
tome of the history of the whole rise, development,
and progress of the marvellous art of the typo-
grapher. It elaborately traces step by step the ad-
vancement of that greet art from its first rude
beginnings up to its earlier approaches to
something like perfection as an art, re-
lating its advancement towards that rapidly
approached goal of perfection, through the in-
genuity of John Gutenberg, the practical skill
of John Faust, and the consummate taste of Peter
Schafer, to whom the world is indebted for the ori-
ginal conception and first execution of type-casting.
It particularises, incident by incident, the rise and
development of the Printer's Art, telling us how
it was in August 1457 that there was printed the
famous Psalter—only some half-dozen copies of
which are now known to be in existence—a work
the capital letters of which were printed in
black and red and blue, the whole being upon
vellum. It goes on to relate how it was but
a little more than two years afterwards, namely, in
October, 1459, that there was produced the Durandi
Rationale Divinorum Officiorum—and in 1465 that
first tribute of the new art to polite literature, the
Cicero de Officiis, in which occurred the first Greek
type employed by the printer. It recalls to mind
the fact that quartos and folios were the earliest
sizes in vogue : in these the Gothic Letter being
mainly employed—the old Gothic Letter being
afterwards changed into semi-Gothic in 1465 in the
Subiaco Lactantius. After which it is intimated
that the Roman type was in 1470 brought to per-
fection at Mainz by Nicholas Jenson—that the first
specimens of Greek types worthy of the name were
employed in 1471 by Schweynheym and Pannartz—
that it was at the commencement of the sixteenth
century that the Italic character was invented and
introduced by Aldus Manutius, the Venetian--
and that it was in 1482 at Milan that Soncino
first executed printing in the Hebrew character.
Punctuation, we learn next, has been a compara-
tively recent contrivance—Aldus hitting first upon
the semicolon ;—the full stop . however, having the
order of precedence as the earliest point invented
—the colon : having been introduced somewhere
about the year 1485—the comma , first appearing
as long afterwards as 1521—while only as recently
as 1587 are the first indications of the note of inter-
rogation ? of the asterisk * or of the brackets [ ],
the last invented of all the stops being (appropri-
ately, as a climax) the note of admiration I Besides
these there are numerous other signs or marks
either of reference or of punctuation, such as the
hyphen - —the parenthesis- ()—the dagger f —the
double dagger t —the section § the parallel
—the paragraph ¶—the pound mark £—the dollar
mark s—the etcetera, &c., or ampisand &—the
pound weight mark lb—the index ire—the per
I'—the to ©. Then as to the salient varieties of
type, we learn all about the Gothic, about the
Roman, about the Italic, about the condensed or
elongated variety of black letter, about the Elzevir,
about the Baskerville, about the Old English, about
the Eyyptian, about the Sans-serif, about the Doric,
the lonic, the Antique, and the Clarendon. We
have specimens next of those variations;of the Italic
characters, known as the Script, as the Bowles, and
the Running Hand. Among other more curious
examples of typography, again, are the Rustic as
contrasted with the Nonpareil Skeleton, or again
as the Antique when compared with the Ancient-faced.
As an illustration of the veritable italic type of the
last century we have the mention of James Marr
and Company's Type Foundry, established in 1742,
the ancient numerals, I, a, 3,4, 5,6, 7,8, 9,0,
being placed in juxtaposition with the modern nume-
erals 1,2, 3,4, 5,6, 7,8, 9, 0. Finally—skipping
the Pica and Primer of various sizes—we have, as
if in typographical illustration of what can—
That air and harmony of grace express,
Small by degrees and beautifully less
a descending scale of those more customary book
types—the bourgeois, the brevier, the minion, the
nonpareil, the ruby, the pearls and the As
explanatory of the source of their nomenclature the
following particulars will be found interesting :
The origin of the names of the different sizes of types is
somewhat curious. Originally there were but seven such
sizes; the first was called Prima (whence the name Primer,
but now this sort of typo is termed " two-line English ") ;
the second Secunda (now our Double-Pica and the Great-
Paragon of the French printers; the third Tertia (which is
at present our Great-Primer and the French Great-Roman;
then there was the Middle size (still called in Germany
Mittle—but that is now our " English," and the French St.
Augustin typo) ; after which came the three sizes of letters
on the opposite side of the scale—Pica, Long-Primer, and
Brevier. In Germany the names Secunda, Tertia, and Mittel
are still retained. Pica in Prance and Germany is called
the "Cicero" type,because the Epistles of that writer were ori-
ginally printed in such a letter. Pica, with us, was so styled
from its having been the typo in which the Ordinal, or Ser-
vice Book of the Roman Catholic Church, was originally set-
This Ordinal was called the "Pica," or familiarly the "Pie."
Steevens tolls us "the pie was a table or rule in the old
Romish observance, showing, in a technical way, how to
find out the service to be read upon each day." Bourgeois
was so styled on account of its having been introduced into
this country from France, where it was originally dedicated
to the citizen printers of that capital. Brevier, on the other
hand, obtained its mine from its having been first used for
printing the Breviary, or Roman Catholic Church-book.
Minion, also, is of French origin, and was so termed owing
to this letter having rapidly become a special favourite on
its appearance in that country—where it is designated
to this day "la miynione" (the darling). Nonpareil is
French likewise—this title having been given on account
of its extreme smallness in proportion to the largo size of
the letters formerly in use ; so that, being without equal in

this respect, it came to be thus denominated. Pearl, on
the contrary, is purely English (the French, however,
have the same size at present, and call it "la Parisienne"),
and was introduced after the success of the nonpareil
letters ; founders having been thereupon induced to
attempt cutting another letter on a smaller body ; and, as
this was a greater advance to perfection, it came ultimately
to be spoken of as the pearl of all type—even as Paragon
obtained its name from being considered to be the perfect
pattern of a letter, when it first came out. Diamond ac-
quired its title in the same manner—the name being signi-
ficant of the extraordinary neatness and consequent value
of the character, in which type-founding is said to have
reached the " summit of minute perfection."
Full particulars are then given as to the mysteries
of a FOUNT—meaning thereby, a given weight, say
800 lbs. of type of the same body and face, includ-
ing all the letters, stops, figures, fractions, points,
signs, references, rules, spaces, or quadrats—the
number of letters apportioned to each lower case in
a fount, say of pica, of 800 lbs. weight, being in the
following relative proportions :-
8

19,200 ... c and in (each) 4,800 ... fi 800
13,600 f 4,000 .. ff 640
o, n, and a (eaeh) 12,800 ... w and y (each) 2,720 fl 32D
t 12,400 ... b 2,560 ... ffi 240
10,220 ... v 1,920 re 160
r 9,920 k 1,280 ce 90
d 7,040 q 800
6,400 j and x (each) 640
5,150 z and & (each) 320

Total 168,450
The upper case being the capitals, the lower case
the small letters ; quadrats, leads, brass-rules, and
o forth being the materials employed in what is
technically called the justification of the lines; para-
graphs, pages, or columns of typo sei up by the
skilled hands of the compositor.

The Caledonian Mercury states that Miss Long-
worth will give a reading in the Music Hall, Edinburgh, on
the evening of the 16th. "Mrs. Yolverton, we have reason
to know," says our contemporary, " has contemplated for
a length of time this method of advancing her pecuniary
interests; and we are disposed to believe she will make an
appearance in her readings which will prove that she has
not overrated her power to please.

A fire completely destroyed one of the cotton
mills belonging to Messrs. Ogden at Dukinfield on Satur-
day morning. The fire broke out as the workpeople were
about going to work, but notwithstanding the assist-
ance immediately rendered, nothing of the mill could bo
saved,