ys the letter which was introduced from Holland about that time
(I except again, of course, the modern imitations of Caxton). Now this,
though a handsome and stately letter, is not very easy reading; it is
too much compressed, too spiky, and so to say, too prepensely gothic.
But there are many types which are of a transitional character and of
all degrees of transition, from those which do little more than take in
just a little of the crisp floweriness of the gothic, like some of the
Mentelin or quasi-Mentelin ones (which, indeed, are models of beautiful
simplicity), or say like the letter of the Ulm Ptolemy, of which it is
difficult to say whether it is gothic or roman, to the splendid Mainz
type, of which, I suppose, the finest specimen is the Schoeffer Bible
of 1462, which is almost wholly gothic. This gives us a wide field for
variety, I think, so I make the suggestion to you, and leave this part
of the subject with two remarks: first, that a good deal of the
difficulty of reading gothic books is caused by the numerous
contractions in them, which were a survival of the practice of the
scribes; and in a lesser degree by the over-abundance of tied letters,
both of which drawbacks, I take it for granted, would be absent in
modern types founded on these semi-gothic letters. And, secondly, that
in my opinion the capitals are the strong side of roman and the
lower-case of gothic letter, which is but natural, since the roman was
originally an alphabet of capitals, and the lower case a gradual
deduction from them.

We now come to the position of the page of print on the paper, which is
a most important point, and one that till quite lately has been wholly
misunderstood by modern, and seldom done wrong by ancient printers, or
indeed by producers of books of any kind. On this head I must begin by
reminding you that we only occasionally see one page of a book at a
time; the two pages making an opening are really the unit of the book,
and this was thoroughly understood by the old book producers. I think
you will seldom find a book produced before the eighteenth century, and
which has not been cut down by that enemy of books (and of the human
race), the binder, in which this rule is not adhered to: that the binder
edge (that which is bound in) must be the smallest member of the
margins, the head margin must be larger than this, the fore larger
still, and the tail largest of all. I assert that, to the eye of any man
who knows wha