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/110

 106 HISTOKIC FEINTING TYPES. Revival of early forms of capitals. Preferences for careless forms. ID K 1 1V1 The present popularity of the old style has encouraged PM French type-founders to revive other early printed forms, PM but they seem to regard the imitation of early manu- PM script forms as a reversion to barbarism and ugliness. PM But this imitation has been cleverly done by artists P M who have undertaken to make designs for book titles P M an( i book covers. Some have gone far beyond early P M typographic models, selecting the early Roman let- the plain capital without serif or hair line, an almost absolute uniformity of thick line. t^ IWI Others have copied and exaggerated the manner- isms of mediaeval copyists and engravers, with all their faults, bundling words together without proper relief between lines, dividing them by periods and not by spaces, until they are almost unreadable. The closely huddled and carelessly formed letters of Botticelli and other early Italian engravers are even preferred by many artists to the simple, severe, and easily read letters of chiseled inscriptions on the stones of ancient Rome. There has been an eccentric de- ^V |k f parture in another direction. Some 1 ^M j% / designer has asked these questions: / Why copy letter forms of any origin ? J^ A. y A Why should letters always be as stiff xviith century capitals. M M PM PM