ed. That miracle of
encyclopedic information, the World Almanac, while it might be printed
better and on a higher quality of paper, could not be the handy
reference book that it is without the use of a type that would be
intolerably small in a novel or a history. With the increase of the
length of continuous use for which the book is intended, the size of the
type should increase up to a certain point. Above eleven-point, or small
pica, however, increase in the size of type becomes a matter not of
hygiene, but simply of esthetics. But below the normal the printer's
motto should be: In case of doubt choose the larger type.

A development of public taste that is in line with this argument is the
passing of the large-paper edition. It was always an anomaly; but our
fathers did not stop to reason that, if a page has the right proportions
at the start, mere increase of margin cannot enhance its beauty or
dignity. At most it can only lend it a somewhat deceptive appearance of
costliness, with which was usually coupled whatever attraction there
might be in the restriction of this special edition to a very few
copies. So they paid many dollars a pound for mere blank paper and
fancied that they were getting their money's worth. The most
inappropriate books were put out in large paper, Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary, for instance. At the other extreme of size may be cited the
Pickering diamond classics, also in a large-paper edition, pretty,
dainty little books, with their Lilliputian character only emphasized by
their excess of white paper. But their print is too fine to read, and
their margins are out of proportion to the printed page. Though their
type is small, they by no means exhibit the miracle of the books printed
in Didot's "microscopic" type, and they represent effort in a direction
that has no meaning for bookmaking, but remains a mere _tour de force_.
Quite different is the case with the Oxford miniature editions, of the
same size outwardly as the large-paper editions of the Pickering
diamond classics; these are modern miracles, for with all their
"infinite riches in a little room," they are distinctly legible.

As regards the design of type, the recent decades have given us our
choice among type-faces at once so beautiful and so clear as the Century
Oldstyle, Century Expanded, and Cheltenham Wide. To those should be
added Mr. Goudy's virile Kennerley. Still later have appeared, in direct
descent from one of Jenson'