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/32

 28 HISTORIC PRINTING TYPES. First book In Italic. Peculiarities of first form. See fao-simile of an Italian MS. (plate 27) in Hum- phreys' Hist, of Printing. by his cut of Roman types: why should not Aldus be as fortunate 1 Selecting for his model a very neat manu- script of Petrarch, he had punches cut for it by a distin- guished goldsmith, Francesco Raibolini. The types so made were first shown in an edition of Virgil, 1501, and the new face was much admired. The senate of Venice and three popes of Rome gave him a patent for its exclusive use. This illustration of Aldus's Italic is a f ac-simile from his edition of Statius, printed by him in 1502 while the types were still unworn. As every copy must be, this is inferior to the original. There is a lack of sharpness about the lines, but the thickening of line is not greater than that of over-inked pages in the original. It differs from our forms of Italic in many points. The ascending and descending letters are unusually long; the inclination of the letter is very slight ; double or conjoined letters and different forms of the same letter are common. But the most noticeable peculiarity is the small upright form of capital letters, spaced off, and standing apart from the text. The incongruity of upright with inclined letters did not trouble Aldus. Like Caxton, he did "but follow his copy," for this method of separating capitals was then an established mannerism with Italian copyists. Aldus had great reverence for classic forms, and probably thought that it would have been as great an offense to alter the forms of Roman capitals, by giving them inclination, as it would be to alter or change the words of the text.