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/94

 90 HISTOEIC FEINTING TYPES. Firm-faced types needed for black printing. Old forms still in f ftvor. Old style not a descriptive; name. firmness of color. The types are graceful, but the printed page is monotonously gray. Complaints are sometimes made that modern printing is deficient in blackness ; that the ink of a good modern book cannot be compared with that of an old book in the feature of depth and vigor of color. In many instances the fault complained of is rather in the type than in the ink. The first condition for securing the vivid blackness desired is a type that will show color a type that has sufficient breadth of body-mark and firmness of hair line to take off the inking roller a reasonable amount of black ink. All early types had and most modern types have not this fair flat surface. There are few modern pub- lishers who will allow printers to select types of firm face for any work. The taste of the time is for lightness and delicacy, and the features of strength and boldness have to be sacrificed in favor of this feminine inclination. These modernized old-style types are good illustrations of the prevailing fashion. There are men of letters who will accept none of the modern imitations. They concede that the modern forms are more carefully drawn, and have the highest mechanical finish, but they maintain that in strength, attractiveness, and perspicuity the old-style letter, as cut by Caslon and Fournier, has not been improved by any copyist. Yet many of the new forms have merits of their own. Although one founder has taken for model the style of Cas- lon, another that of Baskerville, another that of the Dutch