Page:Fors Clavigera, Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain.djvu/22

14 Psalter, which is of admirable and characteristic, but not (by any honest copyist,) inimitable execution.

Here then, first, is modern writing; in facsimile of which I have thought it worth while to employ Mr. Burgess's utmost skill; for it seems to me a fact of profound significance that all the expedients we have invented for saving time, by steam and machinery, (not to speak of the art of printing,) leave us yet so hurried,

and flurried, that we cannot produce any lovelier caligraphy than this, even to certify the gratifying existence of a balance of eleven hundred and forty-two pounds, thirteen shillings, and twopence, while the old writer, though required, eventually, to produce the utmost possible number of entire psalters with his own hand, yet has time for the execution of every initial letter of them in the manner here exhibited.

Respecting which, you are to observe that this is pure writing; not painting or drawing, but the expression of form by lines such as a pen can easily produce, (or a brush used with the point, in the manner of a pen;) and with a certain habitual currency and fluent