ly Venetian printing forms one of the most distinguished chapters in
the whole history of the subject. The most famous of the first
generation was Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman who had learned the art in
Germany. Between 1470 and his death in 1480 he printed many fine books,
and in most of them he employed what is now called roman type. He was
not absolutely the first to use the roman alphabet, but his roman fonts
were designed and cast with such artistic taste, such a fine sense of
proportion and symmetry of form, that the Jenson roman became the model
of later printers for many years after his death. Roman type, unlike the
black-letter, had two distinct origins. The capitals were derived from
the letters used by the ancient Roman architects for inscriptions on
public buildings. The small letters were adapted from the rounded
vertical style of writing used in many Italian texts, altogether
different in form from the angular gothic alphabet used in
ecclesiastical manuscripts. Jenson's roman letters were clear, sharp and
easy to read, and constituted the greatest single addition to the art of
printing since its beginning. Germany clung obstinately to the
black-letter in its Latin books, as it has adhered down to very recent
times to a similar heavy type for the printing of German text; but the
rest of Europe within a few years came over to the clearer and more
beautiful roman.

There were many early printers at Venice between Jenson and his greater
successor Aldus Manutius, who began business in 1494, but we shall pass
over them all in order to devote more careful attention to the noble
history of the Aldine press. I propose in the remainder of this paper to
select five great printers of the Renaissance, and to examine their work
both as a whole and as illustrated in typical examples. These five are:

ALDUS MANUTIUS, of Venice.

ROBERT ESTIENNE, of Paris, commonly known by the name of
=Stephanus=.

JOHANN FROBEN, of Basel.

ANTON KOBERGER, of Nuremberg.

WILLIAM CAXTON, of London.

Each stands for a different aspect of the art of printing, both in the
mechanical features of book-making and also in the selection of works to
be published and the editorial methods employed in making them ready for
the press. Taken together, the books issued from their presses at the
end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century form a
sort of composite