Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/135

Rh Writing having disappeared one may say almost completely from every department of Caligraphy.

The sloping innovation was considered so favourable to the development of a new art (the art of flourishing) by which Writing Masters could exhibit their wonderful caligraphic gymnastics that it quickly became general and in a comparatively short time universal.

Mysterious and incapable of explanation are the phenomenon and the fact that no recorded serious attempt has ever been made to revive the discarded and forgotten Vertical Style until about seven years ago, when the first Series of Headline Copy Books in Upright Penmanship appeared, as the pioneer of a movement that has grown to most gratifying proportions. Literature on Vertical Writing followed, as did also a still more complete and comprehensive series of Vertical Writing Copy Books, and these may fairly be looked upon as the precursors of a revival that shall replace Upright Penmanship on a foundation, which is as scientific and permanent as it is ancient and unrivalled.

Several remarkable coincidences have attended the revival of Upright Penmanship in England and on the Continent. In the former both Educational and medical strivings and aspirations towards the Vertical were made independently and simultaneously. Indeed it was not until some time subsequent to the publication of the first series of Vertical Writing Copy Books, that the author discovered, quite accidentally, that medical talent had been engaged on a similar quest, had prosecuted a similar investigation, had arrived at the same conclusion, and had given utterance to the same decisions in various books and pamphlets.

The Educational movement was originated and promulgated by a Teacher who had been a Vertical Writer from his youth, and it was therefore the natural outgrowth of a life study, the inevitable development and expression of a long and varied experience, in which the superior claims and advantages of the System of Vertical Writing had been demonstrated repeatedly; and demonstrated, be it added, under circumstances the most unfavourable and crucial. The Medical Investigation which was carried on simultaneously