so gross and vulgar as those of
either the Italian or the Frenchman.

With this change the art of printing touched bottom, so far as fine
printing is concerned, though paper did not get to its worst till about
1840. The Chiswick press in 1844 revived Caslon's founts, printing for
Messrs. Longman the Diary of Lady Willoughby. This experiment was so far
successful that about 1850 Messrs. Miller and Richard of Edinburgh were
induced to cut punches for a series of "old style" letters. These and
similar founts, cast by the above firm and others, have now come into
general use and are obviously a great improvement on the ordinary
"modern style" in use in England, which is in fact the Bodoni type a
little reduced in ugliness. The design of the letters of this modern
"old style" leaves a good deal to be desired, and the whole effect is a
little too gray, owing to the thinness of the letters. It must be
remembered, however, that most modern printing is done by machinery on
soft paper, and not by the hand press, and these somewhat wiry letters
are suitable for the machine process, which would not do justice to
letters of more generous design.

It is discouraging to note that the improvement of the last fifty years
is almost wholly confined to Great Britain. Here and there a book is
printed in France or Germany with some pretension to good taste, but the
general revival of the old forms has made no way in those countries.
Italy is contentedly stagnant. America has produced a good many showy
books, the typography, paper, and illustrations of which are, however,
all wrong, oddity rather than rational beauty and meaning being
apparently the thing sought for both in the letters and the
illustrations.

To say a few words on the principles of design in typography: it is
obvious that legibility is the first thing to be aimed at in the forms
of the letters; this is best furthered by the avoidance of irrational
swellings and spiky projections, and by the using of careful purity of
line. Even the Caslon type when enlarged shows great shortcomings in
this respect: the ends of many of the letters such as the t and e are
hooked up in a vulgar and meaningless way, instead of ending in the
sharp and clear stroke of Jenson's letters; there is a grossness in the
upper finishings of letters like the c, the a, and so on, an ugly
pear-shaped swelling defacing the form of the letter: in short, it
happens to this craft, as to others, that the utilit