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/64

 60 HISTOEIC FEINTING TYPES. A founder from 1710 to 1738. Born 1692. Died 1766. Precision of Caelon's style. for foreign-made types, punches, and matrices. Even as late as 1710, the type-founder Thomas James had to go to Hol- land to buy matrices and molds not to be had in London. 1 Hansard says that "the glorious works of English litera- ture which immortalized the reign of Queen Anne were originally presented to the public through the medium of Dutch types." William Caslon was the first English founder who shook the faith of his countrymen in the superiority of Dutch founders. 2 The merit of the Caslon types was not in their novelty of design, but in their careful cutting and good founding. The beauty of uniformity, about which Tory, Jaugeon, and Moxon had written, and which they thought could be had only by strict conformity to mathematical rules, was most signally shown by Caslon, who made rules bend to suit necessities. No founder before him ever suc- ceeded in repeating the same form on many sizes with such precision of style. His largest and his smallest types show unmistakable features of relationship. 1 Eowe Mores, in his "Dissertation on English Type Founders and Foun- deries," prints three letters written by James, in which he reports the difficul- ties he met. The Dutch founders were " sly and jealous," ready to sell types, but matrices and molds were not to be had at any price. Athias would not allow James in his house. Voskens " watched me as if I had been a thief." He had to deal with inferior punch- cutters, and pay high prices. 2 Caslon had served his time as an apprentice to an engraver on metal, whose chief work was the decoration of gun-barrels, when his neat lettering attracted the attention of the printer William Bowyer, who persuaded him to devote all his time to the making of types.