uch
forms of letters may be for the uses of the printer, the limitations of
type have necessarily curtailed the freedom and variety of their serif and
swash lines, and that therefore, though accepting their basic forms, he
need not be cramped by their restrictions, nor imitate the unalterable and
sometimes awkwardly inartistic relations of letter to letter for which he
finds precedents in the printed page. Indeed, the same general rules for
spacing and the same freedom in the treatment of the serifs, kerns and
swash lines are quite as applicable to pen-drawn small letters as to the
capital forms. The only true path of progress lies in this freedom of
treatment; and if the same fertile artists of the Renaissance who have
bequeathed to us such beautiful examples of their unfettered use of the
capital had used the minuscule also, we should undoubtedly possess small
letters of far more graceful and adaptable forms than those which we now
have.

[Illustration: 50. SCHEME FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF ROMAN SMALL LETTERS.
F. C. B.]

[Illustration: 51. SCHEME FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF ROMAN SMALL LETTERS.
F. C. B.]

In 50 and 51 may be found an attempt to formulate a scheme to assist in the
reconstruction of an alphabet of Roman small letters, after somewhat the
same fashion as [56] that devised for the Roman capitals by Mr. Ross, in 1
and 2. A small-letter diagram must, for obvious reasons, be less exact and
detailed than one for the more defined capital form; but the diagram given
will serve to determine sufficiently the main outlines and proportions. In
their shapes the letters shown in 50 and 51 adhere fairly closely to the
best type forms of the small letter; and the drawing will serve, further,
to show the space generally allowed by modern founders between one
lower-case letter and another when set into type words. This spacing is
based on the m of the fount employed. The open space between all but k, w
and y (in which the outlines of the letters themselves hold them further
away from their neighbors) and the round letters being the space between
the upright strokes of the m; an interval represented in the diagram by a
square and a half. The round letters, as has already been said in speaking
of the capital forms, should be spaced nearer together; and it will be
observed that they are only separated by one square in the diagram.
Although suggestive, the rules which govern the spacing of types are not to
be blindly followed by