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/90

 86 HISTOKIC PRINTING TYPES. Pickering's preference for strong types. Born 1767. Died 1840. Restoration of Caslon's matrices. Provoked criticism. strength and legibility. The reform, or rather the return to simpler methods, was begun by William Pickering of Lon- don, the publisher so deservedly honored for his good taste in making books. About the year 1850, he planned the reprint of a book of the xvnith century for which he needed a characteristic and appropriate type. Neither Whittingham nor any other printer of London had the type he wanted. Of bold, black and uncouth types, of mechanically neat but characterless types, of round, gracef ul and femininely delicate types, there was abundant supply ; of what might be called masculine types, that should show at a glance that they had been made with the direct purpose of helping the reader, and not at all to show the skill of the punch-cutter, not one style could be found in the stock of any printing-house. Disappointed but not defeated, he went to the type-founders. There he found not types but matrices. He persuaded the Caslon house to take out of their punch-closet a series of matrices made by the first Caslon, which had been put aside as " too old- fashioned," and to cast therefrom a font of types which was at once put to service. The book made from these types was beautifully printed, but the strange letter provoked criticism. Some said that this revival of an obsolete style was an affectation, an exhi- bition of typographical pedantry. Young readers did not like it at all ; old readers liked it much. Even the careless reader, prejudiced against it on first sight, who knew noth-