A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 Part 18

But Baskerville soon became disgusted with the ill-natured criticism to which he was subjected, coupled with the failure of booksellers to support him, and was anxious to have done with the business. The year before the publication of the Bible, he wrote to Horace Walpole a letter given by Reed (p. 278) in which he says that he is sending specimens of his foundry to foreign courts in the hope of finding among them a purchaser for the whole concern, and during the next few years he was in correspondence with Franklin with the same object. Fortunately for his country, these attempts were unsuccessful during his life-time, and between the years 1760-1773 he produced not only several editions of the Bible and Common Prayer, but the works of Addison, 4 vols. 1761, 4to; the works of Congreve, 3 vols. 1761, 8vo; _aesop's Fables_; and in 1772 a series of the cla.s.sics in quarto, which, Reed says, 'suffice, had he printed nothing else, to distinguish him as the first typographer of his time' (p. 281).

Baskerville died on January 8th, 1775, and for a few years his widow carried on the foundry; but at the same time endeavoured to dispose of it. Both our Universities refused it, and no London foundry would touch it, because the booksellers would have nothing but the types of Caslon and Jackson. The type was eventually sold in 1779 to the Societe Litteraire-typographique of France for 3700, and was used in a sumptuous edition of the works of Voltaire.

Yet one firm was found bold enough to model its letter on that of Baskerville. In 1764 Joseph Fry, a native of Bristol, began letter-founding in that city. He took as a partner William Pine, proprietor of the _Bristol Gazette_, but the business was not carried on in their name but in that of Isaac Moore, their manager. In 1768 they removed the foundry to London, and issued a prospectus. But so strong was the prejudice against Baskerville's letter--or, perhaps, it would be better to say, so strong was the hold which Caslon's foundry had obtained--that they were compelled to recast the whole of their stock.

This took them several years; meanwhile, they issued one or two editions of the Bible in their first fount. In 1776 Isaac Moore severed his connection with the firm. In 1782 Mr. Pine also withdrew, and Joseph Fry admitted his two sons, Edmund and Henry, into partnership. At length in 1785 appeared the first specimen-book of Fry's foundry, and it was frankly admitted in the preface that the founts of Roman and italic were modelled on those of Caslon.

Joseph Fry retired from the business in 1787. Amongst the books printed with his later type may be mentioned the quarto edition of the cla.s.sics edited by Dr. Homer.

Caslon the First died at Bethnal Green on January 23rd, 1766. His son, Caslon the Second, died intestate on the 17th August 1778, when the business came to his son, William Caslon the Third. In the same year that Joseph Fry published his Specimen of Types, Caslon the Third also published a specimen-book of sixty-two sheets, in every way worthy of the reputation the firm had established. It included, besides Romans and italics of great beauty and regularity, every variety of oriental and learned founts, and several sheets of ornaments and flowers, arranged in various designs. This book was dedicated to the king, and contained an address to the reader in which, after reviewing the establishment of the foundry, Caslon referred bitterly to the eager rivalry of other printers and their open avowal of imitation. In 1793 Caslon the Third disposed of his share in the Chiswell Street business to his mother and his brother Henry's widow.

Mrs. William Caslon, senior, died in October 1795, when the business was sold by auction and bought by Mrs. Henry Caslon for 520.

Joseph Jackson, who shared with the Caslons the favour of the London booksellers, was one of two apprentices formerly in the employ of William Caslon II. Some dispute arose in the foundry about the price of certain work, and Joseph Jackson and Thomas Cottrell, having acted as ringleaders in the movement, were dismissed, and being thrown on their own resources, set up a foundry of their own in Nevil's Court, Fetter Lane. Of the two Jackson proved far the more skilful, but seems to have been of a roving disposition. After working for a year or two with Cottrell he went to sea, leaving Cottrell to carry on the business alone. This he did with a fair measure of success, though his foundry was never at any time a large one. After a few years' absence Jackson returned to England in 1763, and again turned his attention to letter-cutting, serving for a time under his old partner Cottrell; but having obtained the services and, what was of more value, the pecuniary help of two of Cottrell's workmen, he set up for himself, and quickly took a foremost place in the trade. Among his most successful work was a fount of English 'Domesday,' for the Domesday Book published by order of Parliament in 1783, which was preferred to that cut by Cottrell for the same purpose. Jackson also cut a fount for Dr. Woide's facsimile of the Alexandrian Codex with great success. But perhaps his most successful effort was the two-line English which he cut for Macklin's edition of the Bible, begun in 1789. At the time of his death in 1792 he was at work upon a fount of double pica for Bowyer's edition of Hume's _History of England_. After his death his foundry was purchased by William Caslon III.

Both Macklin's Bible and Hume's _History_ were printed at the press of Thomas Bensley in Bolt Court, Fleet Street. As a printer of sumptuous books Bensley had only one rival, William Bulmer, who is generally accorded the first place. But Bensley was certainly earlier in the field. His work was quite equal to that of Bulmer, and, apart from this, the world owes more to his enterprise than it has ever yet acknowledged.

Thomas Bensley was the son of a printer in the Strand, and in 1783 he succeeded to the business of Edward Allen in Bolt Court, a house adjoining that in which Johnson had lived. He at once turned his attention to printing as a fine art. Dibdin, in his _Bibliographical Decameron_ (vol. ii. p. 397, etc.), gives a list of the works printed by Bensley, and says that he began with a quarto edition of Lavater's _Physiognomy_ in 1789, following this up with an octavo edition of Allan Ramsay's _Gentle Shepherd_ in 1790. In this list, however, Dibdin has omitted the folio edition of Burger's poem _Leonora_, printed by Bensley in 1796, with designs by Lady Diana Beauclerc. In 1797 he printed a very beautiful edition of Thomson's _Seasons_, in royal folio, with engravings by Bartolozzi and P. W. Tomkins from pictures by W. Hamilton.

But the chief glories of his press are the Bible and Hume's _History_.

The first was begun in 1789; but Jackson's death caused some delay when the Book of Numbers had been reached, owing to more type being required.

For some reason, not clearly shown, Bensley would not employ Caslon, but applied to Vincent Figgins, who for ten years had been in the service of Jackson, to complete the type. Figgins' foundry was in Swan Yard, Holborn, where he had established himself after Jackson's death in 1792.

He succeeded with the task set him, and his type, which was an exact facsimile of Jackson's, was brought into use in the Book of Deuteronomy.

The whole work was completed in seven volumes, in the year 1800, and this date appears on the t.i.tle-page; but the dedication to the king was dated 1791, and the plates, which were the work of Loutherbourg, West, Hamilton, and others, were variously dated between those years. The text was printed in double columns, in a handsome two-line English, with the headings to chapters in Roman capitals, no italic type being used, and no marginalia.

Robert Bowyer's edition of _Hume_ was in the press at the time of Jackson's death, but was not completed until 1806. The type used in this is a double pica, and the founder, it is said, declared that it should 'be the most exquisite performance of the kind in this or any other country.' He died before its completion, and the work was completed by Figgins; but the book is a lasting memorial to the skill both of the founder and the printer.

In January 1791 appeared the first number of Boydell's Shakespeare. The history of this notorious undertaking was briefly this. Boydell was an art publisher in Pall Mall, where he had established a gallery and filled it with the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Opie, and Northcote, chiefly in Shakesperian subjects. George Nicol the bookseller proposed to the Boydells that William Martin, brother of Robert Martin of Birmingham, should be employed to cut a set of types with which to print an edition of Shakespeare's works, to be ill.u.s.trated with the drawings then in Boydell's gallery. This William Martin had learnt his art in the foundry of Baskerville; and such is the irony of fate, that less than twenty years after the death of that eminent founder, his work, scorned by the booksellers of London in his own day, was imitated in what was certainly one of the most pretentious books that had ever come from the English press. The printer selected for the work was William Bulmer, a native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomson, the printer, of Burnt House Entry, St.

Nicholas Churchyard. At that time he formed a friendship with Thomas Bewick, the engraver, who in his _Memoir_ tells us that Bulmer used to 'prove' his cuts for him.

After serving his time, Bulmer came to London and entered the printing-office of John Bell, who was then issuing a miniature edition of the poets. A fortunate accident won him his acquaintance with Boydell and Nicol, and so led to his subsequent employment at the Shakespeare press.

The Shakespeare was followed by the works of Milton in three volumes folio in 1794-5-7, and again in 1795 by the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell in quarto. In the advertis.e.m.e.nt to this work, Bulmer pointed out how much had been done by English printers within the last few years to raise the art of printing from the low depth to which it had fallen--a work in which the Shakespeare press had borne no little part. He went on to say that much pains had been taken with this edition of Goldsmith to make it a complete specimen of the arts of type and block printing. The types were Martin's, the woodcuts Bewick's, and the paper Whatman's. One copy of this book was printed on white satin, and three on English vellum.

Among the books that appeared within the last five years of the century was an edition of _Lucretius_ in three volumes large quarto, which certainly ranks for beauty of type and regularity of printing with any book of that period. Like most of the works of Baskerville, this book was quite free from ornament, and claims admiration only from the excellence of the press-work. The notes were printed in double columns in small pica, the text itself in double pica. In the whole three volumes not a dozen printer's errors have been found. This work came from the press of Archibald Hamilton.

Time has not dealt kindly with some of these specimens of what was called 'fine' printing. After the lapse of a century, we begin to see that though the type and press-work were all that could be desired, and placed the English printers on a level with the best of those on the Continent, there was something radically wrong with the production of ill.u.s.trated books. Whether it was due to the ink, or to the paper, or, as some suppose, to insufficient drying, in all these sumptuous volumes the oil has worked out of the ill.u.s.trations, leaving an ugly brown stain on the opposite pages, and totally destroying the appearance of the books. This applies not only to large and small ill.u.s.trations, but in many cases to the ornamental wood blocks used for head and tail pieces. In Macklin's Bible, and in the 'Milton' printed at the Shakespeare press, this discoloration has completely ruined what were undoubtedly, when they came from the press, extremely beautiful works.

Before leaving the work of the eighteenth century, a word or two must be said about the private presses that were at work during that time. The first place must, of course, be given to that at Strawberry Hill. None of the curious hobbies ridden by Horace Walpole became him better, or was more useful, than his fancy for running a printing-press. He was not devoid of taste, and though no doubt he might have done it better, he carried this idea out very well. The productions of his press are very good examples of printing, and are far above any of the other private press work of the eighteenth century. His type was a neat and clear one, though somewhat small, and the ornaments and initial letters introduced into his books were simple and in keeping with the general character of the types, without being in any sense works of art. The following brief account of the Strawberry Hill press is compiled from Mr. H. B.

Wheatley's article in _Bibliographica_, and from Austin Dobson's delightful _Horace Walpole, a Memoir_, 1893.

The press was started in August 1757 with the publication, for R.

Dodsley, of two 'Odes' by Gray. 'I am turned printer, and have converted a little cottage into a printing office,' he tells one friend; and to another he writes, 'Elzevir, Aldus, and Stephens are the freshest persons in my memory'; and referring to the 'Odes,' he writes to John Chute in July 1757, 'I found him [Gray] in town last week; he had brought his two Odes to be printed. I s.n.a.t.c.hed them out of Dodsley's hands.'

Walpole's first printer was William Robinson, an Irishman, who remained with him for two years. The Odes were followed by Paul Hentzner's _A Journey into England_, of which only 220 copies were printed. In April 1758 came the two volumes of Walpole's _Catalogue of Royal and n.o.ble Authors_, of which 300 copies were printed and sold so rapidly, that a second edition--_not_ printed at Strawberry Hill--was called for before the end of the year.

In 1760 Walpole wrote to Zouch, in reference to an edition of Lucan, 'Lucan is in poor forwardness. I have been plagued with a succession of bad printers, and am not got beyond the fourth book.' It was published in January 1761, and in the following year appeared the first and second volumes of _Anecdotes of Painting in England_, with plates and portraits, and having the imprint, 'Printed by Thomas Farmer at Strawberry Hill, MD.CCLXII.' Then another difficulty appears to have arisen with the printers, and the third volume, published in 1763, had no printer's name in the imprint. The fourth volume, not issued till 1780, bears the name of Thomas Kirgate, who seems to have been taken on in 1772, and held his post until Walpole's death. Between 1764 and 1768 the Strawberry Hill press was idle, but in the latter year Walpole printed in octavo 200 copies of a French play ent.i.tled _Cornelie Vestale, Tragedie_, and from that time down to 1789 it continued at work at intervals, its chief productions being _Memoires du Comte de Grammont_, 1772, 4to, of which only 100 copies were printed, twenty-five of which went to Paris; _The Sleep Walker_, a comedy in two acts, 1778, 8vo; _A description of the villa of Mr. Horace Walpole_, 1784, 4to, of which 200 copies were printed; and _Hieroglyphic Tales_, 1785, 8vo.

Next to the press of Horace Walpole, that of George Allan, M. P. for Durham, at the Grange, Darlington, must be noticed. The owner was an enthusiastic antiquary, and he used his press chiefly for printing fugitive pieces relating to the history of the county of Durham. The first piece with a date was _Collections relating to St. Edmunds Hospital_, printed in 1769, and the last a tract which he printed for his friend Thomas Pennant in 1788, ent.i.tled _Of the Patagonians_, of which only 40 copies were worked off.

The productions of his press were very numerous, but of no great merit.

Allan was his own compositor, and gave much time to his hobby; but his printer appears to have been a dissolute and dirty workman, who caused him much annoyance and trouble. Altogether it may safely be said that Allan's press cost him a great deal more than it was worth.

Another of those who tried their hand at amateur printing was Francis Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, who started a press at his rectory at Fersfield. Here he printed the first volume of his _History_ in 1736, and also the _History of Thetford_, a thin quarto volume, in 1739. But the result was an utter failure. The type was bad to begin with, and the attempt to use red ink on the t.i.tle-pages only made matters worse. The press-work was carelessly done; and it is not surprising to find that the second volume of the _History_, published in 1745, was entrusted to a Norwich printer.

The celebrated John Wilkes also carried on a private printing-office at his house in Great George Street, Westminster. Three specimens of its work have been identified: _An Essay on Woman_, 1763, 8vo, of which only twelve copies are said to have been printed[19]; a few copies of the third volume of the _North Briton_; and _Recherches sur l'Origine du Despotisme Orientale_, Ouvrage posthume de M. Boulanger, 1763, 12mo. A note in a copy of this volume states that it was printed by Thomas Farmer, who had also a.s.sisted Horace Walpole at the Strawberry Hill press.

During the last four years of the century the Rev. John Fawcett, a Baptist minister of some repute, established a press in his house at Brearley Hall, near Halifax, which he afterwards removed to Ewood Hall.

He used it chiefly for printing his own sermons and writings, among the most important issue's being _The Life of Oliver Heywood_, 1796, pp.

216; _Miscellanea Sacra_, 1797; _A Summary of the Evidences of Christianity_, 1797, pp. 100; _Const.i.tution and Order of a Gospel Church_, 1797, pp. 58; _The History of John Wise_, 1798; Gouge's _Sure Way of Thriving_; Watson's _Treatise on Christian Contentment_; and Dr.

Williams's _Christian Preacher_. Most of these were in duodecimo.

The type used in this press was a very good one, and the press-work was done with care. Owing to his growing infirmities Fawcett was obliged to dispose of the press in 1800. There is reason to believe that the above list might be considerably increased.

At Bishopstone, in Suss.e.x, the Rev. James Hurdis printed several works at his own press, the most important being a series of lectures on poetry, printed in 1797, a quarto of three hundred and thirty pages, and a poem called _The Favorite Village_, in 1800, a quarto of two hundred and ten pages.

To these must be added a press at l.u.s.tleigh, in Devon, made and worked by the Rev. William Davy, and at which was printed some thirty copies of his _System of Divinity_, 26 vols. 1795, 8vo, a copy of which remarkable work is now in the British Museum, and is considered one of its curiosities; a press at Glynde, in Suss.e.x, the seat of Lord Hampden, from which at least one work can be traced; and a press at Madeley, in Shropshire, from which several religious tracts were printed in 1774 by the Rev. John Fletcher, and in 1792 a work ent.i.tled _Alexander's Feast_, by Dr. Beddoes.

[Footnote 19: Chalmers' _Life of Wilkes_.]

CHAPTER XI

THE PRESENT CENTURY

It has been said that printing sprang into the world fully armed. At least this is certain, that for nearly four centuries after its birth the printing-press in use in all printing-houses remained the same in form as that which Caxton's workmen had used in the Red Pale at Westminster. There had been some unimportant alterations made in it by an Amsterdam printer in the seventeenth century; but until the year 1800 no important change in the form or mechanism of the printing-press had ever been introduced. Some such change was sorely needed. The productive powers of the old press were quite unable to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for books and newspapers that a quickened intelligence and national anxiety had awakened. Up to 1815 England was constantly at war, and men and women alike were eager for news from abroad. In 1800 Charles Mahon, third Earl Stanhope, invented a new printing-press.

The Stanhope press subst.i.tuted an iron framework for the wooden body of the old press, thus giving greater solidity. The platen was double the size of that previously in use, thus allowing a larger sheet to be printed, and a system of levers was adopted in place of the c.u.mbersome handlebar and screw used in the wooden press. The chief merits of the new invention were increased speed, ease to the workman, evenness of impression, and durability. Further improvements in the mechanism of hand machines were secured in the Columbian press, an American invention, brought to this country in 1818, and later in the Albion press, invented by R. W. Cope of London, and since that time by many others. Yet even with the best of these improved presses no more than 250 or 300 impressions per hour could be worked off, and the daily output of the most important paper only averaged three or four thousand copies. But a great and wonderful change was at hand.

In 1806 Frederick Knig, the son of a small farmer at Eisleben in Saxon Prussia, came to England with a project for a steam printing press. The idea was not a new one, for sixteen years before an Englishman, named William Nicholson, took out a patent for a machine for printing, which foreshadowed nearly every fundamental improvement even in the most advanced machines of the present day. But from want of means, or some other cause, Nicholson never actually made a machine.

Nor did Knig's project meet with much encouragement until he walked into the printing-house of Thomas Bensley of Bolt Court, who encouraged the inventor to proceed, and supplied him with the necessary funds.

There is reason to believe that Knig made himself acquainted with the details of Nicholson's patent during the time that his machine was building. He also obtained the a.s.sistance of Andrew F. Bauer, an ingenious German mechanic. His first patent was taken out on the 29th March 1810, a second in 1812, a third in 1814, and a fourth in 1816. The first machine is said to have taken three years to build, and upon its completion was erected in Bensley's office in Bolt Court. There seems to be considerable uncertainty as to what was the first publication printed on it. Some say it was set to work on the _Annual Register_, one writer[20] a.s.serting that in April 1811, 3000 sheets of that publication were printed on it; but Mr. Southward, in his monograph _Modern Printing_, confines himself to the statement that two sheets of a book were printed on the machine in 1812. Curiously enough neither Bensley's publication, the _Annual Register_, nor the _Gentleman's Magazine_ takes any notice of the new invention, although in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1811 there is a notice of a printing machine invented at Philadelphia, which apparently embodied all the same principles as Knig's (_Gent. Mag._, vol. lx.x.xi. p. 576).

In 1814 John Walter, the second proprietor of the _Times_, saw Knig's machine, and ordered one to be supplied to the _Times_ office, the first number printed by steam being that of the 28th November 1814. This machine was a double cylinder, which printed simultaneously two copies of a forme of the newspaper on one side only. But it was a c.u.mbersome and complicated affair, and its greatest output 1800 impressions per hour.

In 1818 Edward Cowper, a printer of Nelson Square, patented certain improvements in printing, these improvements consisting of a better distribution of the ink and a better plan for conveying the sheets from the cylinders. Having joined his brother-in-law, Augustus Applegarth, they proceeded to make certain alterations in Knig's machine in Bensley's office which at one stroke removed forty wheels, and greatly simplified the inking arrangements. In 1827 they jointly invented a four-cylinder machine, which Applegarth erected for the _Times_. The distinctive features of this machine were its ability to print both sides of a sheet at once, its admirable inking apparatus, and great acceleration of speed, the new machine being capable of printing five thousand copies per hour.

These machines at once superseded the Knig, and were to be found in use in all parts of the country for printing newspapers until quite lately. In 1848 the same firm constructed an eight-cylinder vertical machine, which was one of the sights of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Shortly afterwards Messrs. Hoe, of New York, made further improvements in the mechanism, raising the output to 20,000 per hour. All these machines had to be fed with paper by hand, but in 1869 it occurred to Mr. J. C. Macdonald, the manager of the _Times_, and Mr. J. C.

Calverley, the chief engineer of the same office, that much saving of labour would result if paper could be manufactured in continuous rolls; and the result of their experiments was the rotary press, which was named after Mr. John Walter, the fourth of that name, then at the head of the _Times_ proprietorship. Since then the improvement in printing machines has steadily continued, and may be said to have culminated in the Hoe 'double supplement' press in use at the present day in many newspaper offices, which is capable of printing, cutting, and folding 24,000 copies per hour of a full-sized newspaper.

These great changes in presses and press-work have occasioned similar changes in type-founding.

At the beginning of the century, the firm of Caslon had been given a new lease of life by the energy of Mrs. Henry Caslon, who in 1799 had purchased the foundry, a third share in which a few years earlier had been worth 3000, for the paltry sum of 520. She at once set to work to have new founts of type cut, and was ably helped by Mr. John Isaac Drury. The pica then produced was an improvement in the style of Bodoni, and quickly raised the foundry to its old position. Mrs. Caslon took into partnership Nathaniel Catherwood, but both died in the course of the year 1809. The business then came into the hands of Henry Caslon II., who was joined by John James Catherwood. Other notable firms were those already noticed in the last chapter--Mrs. Fry, Figgins, Martin, and Jackson. One and all of these suffered severely from the change in the fashion of types at the beginning of the century, the ugly form of type, known as fat-faced letters, then introduced, remaining in vogue until the revival of Caslon's old-faced type by the younger Whittingham.

Upon the advent of machinery and cylinder printing, the use of movable type for printing from was supplemented by quicker and more durable methods, and William Ged's long-despised discovery of stereotyping is now an absolutely necessary adjunct of modern press-work. This, again, was in some measure due to Earl Stanhope, who in 1800 went to Andrew Tilloch, and Foulis, the Glasgow printer, both of whom had taken out a patent for the invention, and learnt from them the process. He afterwards a.s.sociated himself with Andrew Wilson, a London printer, and in 1802 the plaster process, as it was called, was perfected. This remained in use until 1846, when a system of forming moulds in _papier mache_ was introduced, and this was succeeded by the adaptation of the stereo-plates to the rotary machines.