Page:Historic printing types, a lecture read before the Grolier club of New York, January 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations; by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914; Grolier Club.djvu/109

 TYPES OF AMERICAN FOUNDERS. 105 seldom pleasing, but authors and publishers who try to Largely made so by artificial amend the work of the printer are rarely successful. Not arrangements, one title in ten is good. Nor can it ever be made good by any manner of composition which puts the cart before the horse; which makes offensively prominent the art of the printer or type-founder, and diverts the reader's attention from the words and the meaning of the author to the contemplation of an elaborately artificial arrange- ment. 1 These frequent failures are also largely the result of Titles e P oiled by the inix- the " heterogeneous mixture " of styles which Hansard turee of face s. denounced. This mixture seems unavoidable. The most pleasing and most used styles of book texts are made of few sizes. Large and very large sizes of the same style as the text are seldom made, and are rarely kept in the stock of any book-printer. In the composition of a title the printer has to contrast on the same page bold and light and con- densed styles in a manner which makes a bad effect, however careful the arrangement. He has no choice, for the standard form of modern Roman letter is deplorably deficient in variety of large sizes. There are very few series of standard letter which show graduation of size and uniformity of face as fully as the series shown on the next page. 1 After many failures with his titles, plain round capitals (rejecting all con- Pickering discarded nearly all of the densed styles), he arranged his title prevailing typographical rules about lines with little or no display, with the the balancing and the artificial display simple directness of the rude but good of lines. Selecting a few sizes of titles of the books of the early printers. 14