s
associates turned out the first books printed in France, also in Roman
character. The Roman type of all these printers is similar in character,
and is very simple and legible, and unaffectedly designed for use; but
it is by no means without beauty. It must be said that it is in no way
like the transition type of Subiaco, and though more Roman than that,
yet scarcely more like the complete Roman type of the earliest printers
of Rome.

A further development of the Roman letter took place at Venice. John of
Spires and his brother Vindelin, followed by Nicholas Jenson, began to
print in that city, 1469, 1470; their type is on the lines of the German
and French rather than of the Roman printers. Of Jenson it must be said
that he carried the development of Roman type as far as it can go: his
letter is admirably clear and regular, but at least as beautiful as any
other Roman type. After his death in the "fourteen eighties," or at
least by 1490, printing in Venice had declined very much; and though the
famous family of Aldus restored its technical excellence, rejecting
battered letters, and paying great attention to the "press work" or
actual process of printing, yet their type is artistically on a much
lower level than Jenson's, and in fact they must be considered to have
ended the age of fine printing in Italy. Jenson, however, had many
contemporaries who used beautiful type, some of which--as, e. g., that
of Jacobus Rubeus or Jacques le Rouge--is scarcely distinguishable from
his. It was these great Venetian printers, together with their brethren
of Rome, Milan, Parma, and one or two other cities, who produced the
splendid editions of the Classics, which are one of the great glories of
the printer's art, and are worthy representatives of the eager
enthusiasm for the revived learning of that epoch. By far the greater
part of these Italian printers, it should be mentioned, were Germans or
Frenchmen, working under the influence of Italian opinion and aims. It
must be understood that through the whole of the fifteenth and the first
quarter of the sixteenth centuries the Roman letter was used side by
side with the Gothic. Even in Italy most of the theological and law books
were printed in Gothic letter, which was generally more formally Gothic
than the printing of the German workmen, many of whose types, indeed,
like that of the Subiaco works, are of a transitional character. This
was notably the case with the early works print