in many ways might serve as a model for a book type for general use. The capital letters used in continuous lines, as Aldus and other great Venetians delighted to use them, are especially charming. Mr. Horne's Riccardi Press type (pp. 33 and 35) was designed for the Medici Society, and many fine editions, amongst them a Horace, Malory's “Morte Darthur,” and “The Canterbury Tales,” have been printed from it. It is a little heavier in face than its predecessor, the “Florence,” and is a little further removed from the humanistic character. The type has also been cast successfully in a smaller size.

To the number of privately owned founts of type we must add the “Ewell” (p. 37), designed by Mr. Douglas Cockerell for Messrs. Methuen and Co., who will shortly publish the first book to be printed from it, an edition of the “Imitatio Christi.” It is a heavy but very graceful letter, based on one used by the Roman printer Da Lignamine.

One of the most interesting of the privately owned founts is the “Otter” Greek type designed by the late Mr. Robert Proctor, and shown in the page from the Odyssey printed on page 43. The Greek letter from which most of our school classics are printed is a descendant of the cursive type introduced by Aldus at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and has the merit neither of beauty nor of clearness. The majuscules are especially ugly, being nearly always of the “modern” type which we owe to Bodoni. Proctor took as his model the finest of the old Greek founts, which was that used in the Complutensian Polyglot printed in 1514.

Amongst the types sold by the founders for general use none have enjoyed such successive favour as Caslon's “Old-Face” in its various sizes; and it is a splendid tribute to the excellence of this letter that at this day, nearly two centuries since it was first cut, it is being used more than any other face of type for printing fine books. This Special Number of The Studio is printed from Caslon's “Old-Face” type, as well as the pages, set up at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, which are shown on pages 45 and 47. The fame of Caslon's letter brought other rivals into the field besides Baskerville. One of these was Joseph Fry, a Bristol physician, who took to letter-founding in the year 1764, and cut a series of type somewhat like Baskerville's. A few years later, however, the Caslon character seems again to have recovered its old ascendancy, and Fry put on the market a new series in acknowledged imitation of Caslon's. Both these series of Fry's have been reissued within the last few years by Messrs. Stephenson and Blake, of Sheffield, who, in 1906, bought the type-founding business of Sir Charles Reed and Son, to whom Fry's business had eventually come. Like the revived Caslon “Old-Face” in 1843, these founts were cast from the old matrices, or from matrices struck from the old punches, so far as these had survived.

Since the “old-style” founts were designed about the middle of last century, what new book types have been cast by the founders for use by the printing trade generally have as a rule been mere variations of letter already in vogue. The founders have drawn but little on the wealth of beautiful book types which in the early printed books of Italy are offered to anyone who has the good taste and the skill to adapt them to modern needs. Messrs. Shanks and Sons, the type-founders of Red Lion Square, have, however, gone to this source for their “Dolphin” series (p. 41), which has many features of beauty to commend it. It is based on Jenson's Roman letter, somewhat thickened in the line. The punches were cut by Mr. E. P. Prince, who also cut the Kelmscott type and many others of the private founts.

Intelligent study of Italian models also gives us the “Kennerley” type (p. 39), designed by the American Mr. Goudy, which Messrs. Caslon will shortly put on the English market. This type is not in any sense a copy of early letter—it is original; but Mr. Goudy has studied type design to such good purpose that he has been able to restore to the Roman alphabet much of that lost humanistic character which the first Italian printers inherited from their predecessors, the scribes of the early Renaissance. Besides being beautiful in detail his type is beautiful in the mass; and the letters when set into words seem to lock into one another with a closeness which is common in the letter of early printers, but is rare in modern type. The “Kennerley” type is quite clear to read and has few features which by their strangeness are likely to waken the prejudice of the modern reader. Since the first Caslon began casting type about the year 1724, no such excellent letter has been put within reach of English printers.

So large is the proportion of books which are now set in type by machinery that, however much our sympathies may make us prefer the hand-set book, we cannot but be concerned for the characters used in machine composition. Type set by machinery generally seems to be inferior in design to that set by hand; but the inferiority is in the main accidental, and is probably due to a lesser degree of technical skill shown either in the designing or in the process of punch-cutting, which is itself done by machinery. One or two admirable faces of type have, however, been produced by the Lanston Monotype Company for setting by the monotype machine. One of these is the “Imprint” type, adapted from one of the founts used by Christopher Plantin, the famous printer of Antwerp, in the late sixteenth century. The letters are bold and clear, and pages set in them are both pleasant to look at and easy to read. At the same time the type is sufficiently modern in character not to offend by any features unfamiliar to the ordinary reader.

No art can live by merely reviving and reproducing past forms, and in reviewing the share taken by the type-founders of the past and of the present in the art of the book one cannot help considering by what means and from what quarter good types are to be designed and cut in the future. We have seen that the early printers took their inspiration from the best of the contemporary book-hands. The invention of printing, however, killed the art of the scribe, and with it perished the source whence during the ages past life and beauty had been given to the letters of the alphabet and to the pages in which they were gathered. Henceforth the letters were cast in lead, and there was no influence save the force of tradition to make or keep them beautiful. Whatever change they underwent was for the worse, unless indeed it was a mere reversion to forms or features which for a while had been abandoned.

Conscious of this downward tendency, which he seems to look upon as inevitable and irresistible, Mr. Guthrie, of the Pear-tree Press at Bognor, has renounced type altogether, and now prints books, like William Blake, from etched plates inscribed with his own fine book-hand. Such a method is, of course, not practicable for the vast majority of books, even if we were willing to forgo the many fine qualities which are presented in a well-printed book. Neither is any such counsel of despair warranted, for of late years the art of the scribe itself has been renewed; and most readers of The Studio know something of the fine work done by the school of calligraphy established some ten years since by Mr. Edward Johnston, and still carried on by his pupil Mr. Graily Hewitt at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Southampton Row, London. May not the printer look to that school as the source whence the type-designer and type-founder shall learn to design and cut beautiful letter for his books? Not indeed that type-letter should be a mere reproduction of any written hand; rather must it bear nakedly and shamelessly all the qualities which the steel of the punch-cutter and the metal from which it is cast impose upon