Volume 182402

Typographia: or the printers' instructor, including an account of the origin of printing. With biographical notices of the printers of England, from Caxton to the close of the sixteenth century: a series of ancient and modern alphabets, and Domesday characters: together with an elucidation of every subject connected with the art / By J. Johnson, printer.

  • John Johnson
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Typographia: or the printers' instructor, including an account of the origin of printing. With biographical notices of the printers of England, from Caxton to the close of the sixteenth century: a series of ancient and modern alphabets, and Domesday characters: together with an elucidation of every subject connected with the art / By J. Johnson, printer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/692 (page 15)
    Cppograypbia.. anche neglected, in their zeal to produce beautiful speci- mens, that exactness as to the depth of their types, | which is so essentially necessary. We lately wit- / nessed, in a fount of new letter, where a particular | sort was run down the side of the same number of lines in the body, a variation of at least one-third of its own depth. ‘This is fatal to table-work, as it entirely destroys that nicety so requisite in justifica- tion. That the size for each body of letter was fixed, and unalterably observed, by our ancient letter- founiers, seems to be out of doubt; or the ingenious author of Mechanic Exercises would not have given | us a table of the sizes of letter, in his time, without | reservation. In order, therefore, to see the differ- ence between the depth of letter in Mr. Moxon’s time and that which is cast at present, we shall in- | sert this author’s own table of sizes, in which he has carried the number of m’s, or (which is equally the same) lines of matter of each body of letter to the length of 12 inches, or one foot; which we shall ob- serve in our counter-table, similar to Mr. Moxon’s. Pear] ol ell by bie ov 8 @ 5 or USES NOP AEM Gy sie) seserwsohial 150 BBREVIC Wt enieeteies eles .slusy se Ce Eos emveneoms Geomo go EE PICA ser ey ese Ned wuteuley oorel Cha JNAVIING Gyo on Oo co He, Great Primer... ... Ole Ae aD 1 OM OOM ENCAa So 6. Gan wide Hert} Two Lines English ..... 33 French Canon. ... 174 These are all the bodies of letter noticed by the above author, from which it appears, that in his time printers were not incumbered with so many different founts as they are at present ; for now there are seven sorts of letter more than are exhibited in the preced- ing table, viz. Minion, Burgeois, Small Pica, Para-