the works of the great Venetian printers of the fifteenth century, of whom Nicholas Jenson produced the completest and most Roman characters from 1470 to 1476. This type I studied with much care, getting it photographed to a big scale, and drawing it over many times before I began designing my own letter; so that, though I think I mastered the essence of it, I did not copy it servilely; in fact, my Roman type, especially in the lower case, tends rather more to the Gothic than does Jenson's. After a while I felt I must have a Gothic as well as a Roman fount; and herein the task I set myself was to redeem the Gothic character from the charge of unreadableness which is commonly brought against it. And I felt that this charge could not be reasonably brought against the types of the first two decades of printing: that Schoeffer at Mainz, Mentelin at Strassburg, and Günther Zainer at Augsburg, avoided the spiky ends and undue compression which lay some of the later types open to the above charge.... Keeping my end steadily in view, I designed a black-letter type which I think I may claim to be as readable as a Roman one, and to say the truth I prefer it to the Roman. This type is of the size called Great Primer (the Roman type is of 'English' size); but later on I was driven by the necessities of the Chaucer (a double-columned book) to get a similar Gothic fount of Pica size.”

Pages printed in each of Morris's three founts of type are reproduced here on pages 14, 15, 17 and 19. It is interesting to compare Morris's “Golden” type—so he called his Roman fount after the “Golden Legend,” which he printed from it—with the Roman letter of the Italian printers, which he studied with so much care before he began to design his type. The “Golden” type is much heavier in face than, say, that of Jenson; and it certainly lacks the suppleness and grace of the Italian types generally. As a point of detail we may notice especially the brick-bat serifs used on Morris's capital “M” and “N,” giving a certain clumsiness to these letters. The two Gothic letter founts which Morris designed, on the other hand, must be regarded as amongst the most beautiful ever cast. William Morris's types should be judged on the setting of richly decorated borders which he designed for his pages. Adding to these the designs of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, engraved on wood by W. H. Hooper, we have in the Kelmscott “Chaucer” the most splendid book which has ever been printed.

The “Golden” type of the Kelmscott Press was copied freely in America and sent back to the country of its birth under several different names. In somewhat debased forms it had a vogue for a time as a “jobbing” fount amongst printers who knew little or nothing of the Kelmscott Press; but the heaviness of its line and also its departure from accepted forms kept it from coming into general use for printing books. The interest awakened by the books printed by William Morris at Hammersmith tempted many more to set up private presses or to design private founts of type when the work of the Kelmscott Press came to an end after Morris's death, which took place in 1896. Most of such founts and the best of them followed more or less closely the letter of the early Italian printers, which, as we have seen, are the prototypes of our book letter of to-day. Even before the founding of the Kelmscott Press Mr. Charles Ricketts had designed books, using some of the “old style” faces which were in general use. When the Kelmscott Press books appeared, he too was won over by what he called the “golden sunny pages” of the early Italian printers, and designed for himself the “Vale” type. In weight and general appearance it bears considerable likeness to Morris's “Golden” type, and in some ways is an improvement on it. Mr. Ricketts afterwards had the same letter cast in a smaller size for his edition of Shakespeare, whence its name of the “Avon” type. He also designed another letter, the interest of which lies in certain experiments towards the reform of the alphabet which it embodies. In the “King's” type, as Mr. Ricketts called it, many of the minuscule letters, such as e, g, t, are replaced by small majuscules. Such a departure from traditional use is too violent to give pleasure, and only two or three books were printed in this letter. The three Vale Press founts and also the punches and matrices were destroyed when the Press ceased publishing.

Mr. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Mr. Emery Walker set up the Doves Press at Hammersmith in 1900, and designed and got cast for themselves a fount of type which follows Jenson's Roman type very closely. It differs from it chiefly in the greater regularity of its lines, and also in the squareness and brick-bat shape of some of the serifs, which are, however, less conspicuous than in Morris's “Golden” type. The Doves Press books, unlike those of the Kelmscott Press, are entirely free from ornament or decoration, and owe their remarkable beauty to what Morris styled the architectural goodness of the pages and also to the fine versal and initial letters done by Mr. Edward Johnston and Mr. Graily Hewitt. Later on we shall have something more to say about the work of these men and their school.

The type of the Ashendene Press (p. 23) is modelled from that in which Sweynheim and Pannartz printed books at Subiaco, and which, as we have seen, they replaced by a purer Roman letter more in accord with the humanistic taste of their day. Morris himself designed, but never carried out, a fount of letter after the same fine model. It is a Roman type, with many Gothic features. The folio “Dante,” the “Morte Darthur,” the Virgil and the other books which Mr. St. John Hornby has printed from it in black and red, with occasional blue and gold, are superb examples of typography.

Mr. Lucien Pissarro's little octavos have a certain personal charm of their own distinct from anything that is found in the more weighty volumes which have issued from the other private presses. The first books which he produced at his Eragny Press were printed from the Vale type belonging to his friend Mr. Ricketts. In 1903 he began printing from the “Brook” type (pp. 25 to 29), which he had designed. Although in this article we are concerned chiefly with his types, it is impossible to withhold a tribute of praise for the graceful beauty of these little books, which they owe even more to the admirable way in which their different elements have been combined—type, wood-engraving, colour, printing and binding, all of them the work of Mr. and Mrs. Pissarro themselves—than to the individual excellence of any one of them.

Mr. C. R. Ashbee's “Endeavour” type was designed by him for use at the Essex House Press, which he first established at Upton in the eastern suburbs of London and afterwards removed to Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire. It owes nothing to the types of the early printers, and taken by itself is not pleasing; but it makes a very handsome page when printed in red and black, as in the Campden Song Book. The type was also cut in large size for King Edward's Prayer Book, one of the most ambitious ventures of any private press.

Mr. Herbert P. Horne has designed three founts, all of them inspired by the Roman letter of the early Italian printers. The “Montallegro” type (p. 265), the first in order of date, was designed for Messrs. Updike and Co., of the Merrymount Press, Boston, and hardly falls within the scope of this article. In 1907 he designed for Messrs. Chatto and Windus a fount called the “Florence” type (p. 31), from which editions of “The Romaunt of the Rose,” “The Little Flowers of St. Francis,” A. C. Swinburne's “Songs before Sunrise,” R. L. Stevenson's “Virginibus Puerisque” and also his Poems have been printed at the Arden Press on behalf of the publishers. It is a letter of a clean, light face, and