400
HISTORICAL NOTICE OF TIIF ART OF PRINTING IN ENGLAND. [Class XVJ I.
mate skill, who was at the same time the engraver andfounder of the types which he so carefully printed, pub-lished his beautiful editions—true masterpieces—whichhave earned for him the highest renown, but in which heperhaps sacrificed too much to typographic luxury.
Italy has sent but few typographic productions to thisExhibition; nevertheless the Jury have remarked withiuterest the large folio volume of “ The History of theAbbey of Altacomba,” skilfully printed at Turin , byMM. Ciiirio and Mina (59, p. 1305). The type is very-beautiful, and each page is surrounded by a border imi-tated from one of the exquisite manuscripts of the 15thcentury. The wood engravings have been multiplied bythe galvanoplastic process.
Printing—Switzerland.
Notwithstanding its flourishing trade in books, andthe great number of printers established in the Cantons,Switzerland has not given the Jury an opportunity forjudging of its progress in typography'.
Printing—England.
The first book printed by Caxton, after a long resi-dence in the Low Countries, appeared in London in1474 : and it is worthy of note, that the first book in theEnglish language was printed by him, not in England,but on the Continent, in 1471. Almost all those whichhe printed, and which he translated himself, to please thePrincess Margaret, sister of King Edward the Fourth,and at the solicitation of the great lords and ladies ofthat time, were devoted to chivalry. His types, andthose of his successors, Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson ,are a not very elegant imitation of the writing then used inEngland. Up to the time of Buckley, in 1733, the art ofprinting made little progress in this country. It wasBaskerville who, in 1750, turning his thoughts fromjapanning to type-founding and printing, first gave tothe art a real impulse. lie spent several years and muchof his fortune before he was able to produce types to hisown satisfaction. In 1757 he issued his first book—aVirgil, in quarto. Between this date and 1703, he printedthose charming editions of Milton, Addison, The Com-mon Prayer, The Bible, Juvenal and Persius , Horace,&c., which are still celebrated for their typographicalbeauty, and cause the name of Baskerville to be rankedamong the most eminent men who have contributed tothe improvement of the Art of Printing. The paperwhich he caused to be made was superior, and all hisapparatus for printing, including his ink, presses, chases,punches, matrices, moulds, and types, were produced byhimself, and were all great improvements. Ilis processof drying and glazing his paper and ink, as soon asprinted, by means of hot plates of copper, was expensive,and had some other faults: but the taste of the periodwas not then ripe for luxury in printing, and notwith-standing that he offered to print for the London book-sellers within five per cent, as low as the printers theyemployed, he complained that he was unable to get workfrom them. Accordingly, in 17G7, wc find him writingto his old friend Franklin:—“ After having obtained thereputation of excelling in the most useful art known tomankind, of which I have your testimony, is it not tothe last degree provoking that I cannot get even breadby it?” Then, as now, many persons would encouragehad printing, because it was cheaper. His types, thoughrather lean for large books, were held in much estima-tion, and in 1779, four years after his death, were sold toa literary society in Paris for 3,700/., and were, in 1784,first employed in printing Beaumarchais ’ celebrated edi-tion of Voltaire , in seventy volumes, a work at that dayunsurpassed in typographic luxury. Thus ended thefirst real attempt at improvement in England.
At the end of the last century, Mr. 'William Bulmer and Mr. Thomas Bensley made a fresh progress in theart of printing. Their beautiful publications rivalled themost remarkable productions of France, Spain , andItaly ; and the magnificent edition of the works of Shak-speare, in nine folio volumes, embellished with engravingsafter the most able artists of England, and printed byBulmer with great skill, excited the zeal of MM. Didot,
who wished to raise in France a like monument to Racine,and printed a folio edition, unequalled for its typographi-cal perfection.
At the commencement of the present century, the lateMr. Charles Whittingham brought out the elegant editionswhich have rendered the Chiswick Press so cc-lebrated.Until that time no one had printed wood engravings soperfectly, by the application of overlays* necessary forobtaining gradations in the tints. This success encou-raged the engravers to give to woodcuts a fineness un-known in the times of Albert Durer , Wolgemuth, andother engravers, who were obliged to employ broad lines,the unevenness of the paper and the imperfections of thepresses rendering the priuting of fine lines impossible.f
At the present day, when speed is imperatively de-manded by the public, the means of satisfying this de-mand are everywhere numerous and powerful. This factmay be judged of in London by tiie printing-office ofMessrs. Clowes (printers of the Official Catalogues, and ofthe Reports by the Juries), in which two steam-enginesput in motion twenty-six printing-machines; by that ofMr. Spottiswoode, the printer to the Queen, &c.; and bythe printing-offices of “ The Times,” and other largeLondon newspapers, which publish in the morning thelong debates in Parliament , so often continued until latein the night. This rapidity of execution would have ap-peared fabulous in the last century; and it ought to beremarked that the speed does not, in England, in any■way prevent the correctness of the work, whicn is in gene-ral remarkable, even in the immense daily newspapers.This advantage must be attributed, in a great measure, tothe maintenance of the ancient custom of the printers inEngland. Here it is required that there should be sevenentire years’ apprenticeship of every working printer,whether he is destined to be a compositor or a pressman.This beneficial custom, by means of which the workmanbecomes more skilful and more attached to his profes-sion, is gradually re-establishing itself in all the countriesin which, by reason of political commotions, it had falleninto disuse, to the great detriment of the art.
While in most other countries of Europe the patronageof the Government appears indispensable to the creationor the development of a great number of branches ofindustry more or less intimately connected with the finearts and science, England affords a striking instance ofhow they are capable of being nurtured and developedwithout this support. The strength of its institutions,its spirit of association, the immensity of its capital, andits indomitable perseverance, enable the typographic artto develop itself solely by its own resources. The Tractand Bible Societies, which have printed the Holy Scrip-tures in all languages, are a remarkable proof of t>epower of association animated by a religious spirit.J
The numerous and voluminous encyclopaedias, of whichthe Encyclopaedia Britannica alone, in 26 large quartovolumes, has readied its seventh edition, and the largenumber of important popular publications, also prove theimmense resources of this country.
Although neither of the great Universities of Oxfordand Cambridge has taken any part in this Exhibition,
* It is also possible that the system of lowering woodcutswas one of the means adopted by the engravers who wereemployed for the Chiswick Press , in order to facilitate goodwork. In 1844, the Trustees of the British Museum per-mitted casts to be taken of the original wood blocksengraved by Albert Durer , in 1510. of his Passio Christi,and an edition was printed in English , edited by HenryCole, Esq. These cuts are very much lowered.
t The term engraving is misapplied as to the works ofAlbert Durer and his cotemporaries, for it was not thegraver but the knife that was used to produce the blocksfrom which impressions were then taken, after the mannerof block cutting for calico printers of the present day.
J The statement published in May 1851, by one singleinstitution, the British anil Foreign Bible Society, foundedin 1S04, shows the production of 24.247,667 copies of theOld and New Testament, in one hundred and forty differentlanguages, which have been distributed over the wholesurface of the globe by the exertions of the Protestant missionaries. The expenditure, exclusive of the annualengagements, has amounted to £3,751,555.