ed at Ulm, and in a
somewhat lesser degree at Augsburg. In fact Gunther Zeiner's first type
(afterwards used by Schussler) is remarkably like the type of the
before-mentioned Subiaco books.

In the Low Countries and Cologne, which were very fertile of printed
books, Gothic was the favourite. The characteristic Dutch type, as
represented by the excellent printer Gerard Leew, is very pronounced and
uncompromising Gothic. This type was introduced into England by Wynkyn
de Worde, Caxton's successor, and was used there with very little
variation all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
indeed into the eighteenth. Most of Caxton's own types are of an earlier
character, though they also much resemble Flemish or Cologne letter.
After the end of the fifteenth century the degradation of printing,
especially in Germany and Italy, went on apace; and by the end of the
sixteenth century there was no really beautiful printing done: the best,
mostly French or Low-Country, was neat and clear, but without any
distinction; the worst, which perhaps was the English, was a terrible
falling-off from the work of the earlier presses; and things got worse
and worse through the whole of the seventeenth century, so that in the
eighteenth printing was very miserably performed. In England about this
time, an attempt was made (notably by Caslon, who started business in
London as a type-founder in 1720) to improve the letter in form.
Caslon's type is clear and neat, and fairly well designed; he seems to
have taken the letter of the Elzevirs of the seventeenth century for his
model: type cast from his matrices is still in everyday use.

In spite, however, of his praiseworthy efforts, printing had still one
last degradation to undergo. The seventeenth century founts were bad
rather negatively than positively. But for the beauty of the earlier
work they might have seemed tolerable. It was reserved for the founders
of the later eighteenth century to produce letters which are positively
ugly, and which, it may be added, are dazzling and unpleasant to the eye
owing to the clumsy thickening and vulgar thinning of the lines: for the
seventeenth-century letters are at least pure and simple in line. The
Italian, Bodoni, and the Frenchman, Didot, were the leaders in this
luckless change, though our own Baskerville, who was at work some years
before them, went much on the same lines; but his letters, though
uninteresting and poor, are not nearly