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/114

110 spicuity, there is no fair room for argument about the superior mechanical construction of modern type. Types were never made as well as they are made now. Drawing was never so correct. Cutting was never so deep and clean, nor even lining so true. The bodies of types were never before made so solid, so uniform, so exact. The mechanical workman- ship of a second-rate modern founder is far better than that of Jenson or Van Dijck. It should be better. The old founders were self-taught; they did not work with proper scientific system ; their tools, compared with those now in general use, were rude and inexact. The greatest fault of modern type-founding the disagreement in the sizes of different foundries, an evil which seems now impossible of correction is an inherited fault. It comes from the in- ability of the old founders to see the advantages of system. The Roman That the Eoman letter is not free from fault, every one letter practi- cally unalter- will admit. There are letters that might be altered with able. advantage ; there are sounds that need new characters ; but every attempt at the radical reformation of our letters has failed and there have been many between the " real char- 1668. acter" of Bishop Wilkins and the phonotypes of Isaac Pit- 1837. man. The art of printing seems to have fixed the forms beyond the possibility of reconstruction.