CHAPTER VIII.
JOSEPH MOXON, 1659.
Joseph Moxon, whose distinction it is to have been the first practical English writer on the mechanics of typography, was born at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, on August 8, 1627, and appears to have been brought up as a mathematical instrument maker, in which profession he showed himself highly proficient. In the year 1659, being either already settled in the metropolis, or having come thither for the purpose, he added to his stated business that of a typefounder, in which, according to Mores, he continued till 1683.
It is difficult to fix the precise condition of the laws relating to typefounders in the last year of the Commonwealth. The Ordinances of 1647 and 1649, which reimposed the main provisions of the Star Chamber Decree of 1637, remained nominally in force till the Restoration, so that we are to suppose that Moxon, unless he practised his art surreptitiously or _sub rosâ_, was formally installed into a vacancy in the body of authorised founders on execution of the usual bond to the Company of Stationers.
If, as seems probable, he commenced operations with little or no previous experience, and with no plant ready to his hand, the progress of the new foundry must at first have been very slow, particularly as he appears to have devoted much of his time to his other scientific pursuits, to which in 1665 he added that of hydrographer to the king. To this office a considerable salary was attached. In the same year, Mores informs us, he lived at the sign of the “Atlas” on Ludgate Hill, near Fleet Bridge, but the Fire of London in 1666 caused him to {181} quit that abode for another of the same sign in Warwick Lane. From Warwick Lane, where he was living in 1668, he appears to have removed to Westminster, to the sign of the “Atlas” in Russell Street, whence in 1669 was issued his famous specimen of types, the first complete typefounders’ specimen known in England.[335]
In a passage in the _Mechanick Exercises_, published several years later, Moxon speaks of the art of letter-cutting as a mystery, “kept so conceal’d among the Artificers of it, that I cannot learn anyone hath taught it any other, but every one that has used it, Learnt it of his own Genuine Inclination.” If this be the writer’s own experience—though his subsequent intimate acquaintance with the minutest details of the art almost disproves it—his specimen must be taken as the production of a self-taught typographer after ten years’ intermittent practice. Viewed in this light, the exceedingly poor performance which the sheet presents can to some extent be accounted for. It must also be borne in mind that Moxon’s theoretical and mathematical studies of the proportions and form of letters had not yet been begun, or, at least, elaborated; so that in no sense is his Specimen to be assumed to be a reduction into practice of those theories.
This specimen, which is entitled _Prooves of the Several Sorts of Letters cast by Joseph Moxon_, is a folio sheet, showing in double column:
Great Canon Romain. Double Pica Romain. Pica Romain. Pica Italica.
Great Primmer Romain. Long Primer Romain. Long Primer Italica.
English Romain. Brevier Romain. English Italica. Brevier Italica.
The imprint is, “_Westminster, printed by Joseph Moxon in Russell Street, at the sign of the Atlas, 1669_.”
In all respects it is a sorry performance. Only one fount, the Pica, has any pretensions to elegance or regularity. The others are so clumsily cut, so badly cast, and so wretchedly printed, as here and there to be almost undecipherable. Moxon’s proficiency in the processes of the art does not appear as yet to have attained the pitch of justifying his matrices to any regularity of line, or of casting his types square in body. Some lines of the specimen curve and wave so as to make it a marvel how others kept their places in the forme, and the press-work {182} and ink are so bad that at a first glance the beholder is tempted to mistake the larger letters with their sunken faces for open instead of solid-faced Romans. The sheet was apparently put forward not solely as a specimen of types. The matter of each paragraph is an advertisement of Moxon’s business as a mathematical instrument maker. In Great Canon Romain he calls attention to the “Globes Celestial and Terrestrial of all sizes made by Joseph Moxon, Hydrographer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1669.” In Double Pica Romain he announces his Spheres; in Great Primer “a Large Map of the World”; in Pica Italica, “a book called a Tutor to Astronomie and Geographie,” and so on. To one or two of the founts, such as the Great Canon, the Pica and the Brevier, he adds a line of accents or signs.
It would appear, from the imprint already quoted, that Moxon combined printing with typefounding at Westminster. If so, he probably confined his press to the printing of specimens and advertisements of his own goods, as we cannot ascertain that any of his other works were printed by himself, or that he printed anything for the public.
About 1670 he removed back to the sign of the Atlas, in Ludgate Hill. Rowe Mores considers it probable that for some time he resided in Holland, during which time he acquired a certain proficiency in the Dutch language.[336] During the same period it is probable that he may have come across, and been struck by specimens of the beautifully proportioned Elzevir letters of Christoffel Van Dijk, which he admitted were the inspiration of his _Regulæ Trium Ordinum_.
Of this curious work,[337] which was published in 1676, it will suffice to say here, it is a work intended not so much for the letter-cutter as for the sign-board and inscription painter. Taking the Van Dijk letters as his models, the writer attempts to demonstrate that each letter is a combination of geometrical figures, bearing regular proportions one to another; and by sub-division of the square of each letter into forty-two equal parts, he professes to be able to erect in any other square, similarly sub-divided, the same letter in precise proportion and harmony. This theory he illustrates by copper-plate figures of the various letters {183} of the Roman, Italic and Black Alphabets, and their sub-divisions. The result is not pleasing. The letters are stiff, and in some cases distorted; although this we believe to be the fault not so much of the theory itself as of the rules of proportion for the different parts of each letter predicated in the first instance. The book, as we have observed, is clearly not intended as a guide to punch-cutting. We regard it rather as an interesting attempt to reduce to precise mathematical rules a set of characters which never have and never will yield themselves entirely to such treatment.[338]
At the conclusion of the section devoted to “the ordering of Inscriptions”, Moxon says (p. 11), “But of this and several other Observations of this Nature, I have written more at large in a book I intend to publish on the whole Art of Printing.” From this it is evident that, as early as 1676, his treatises on Typography, which formed the second volume of the _Mechanick Exercises_ and were published in 1683, were already written.
To this highly interesting work[339]—the first work on the mechanics and practice of printing and letter-founding—we have already alluded in a previous chapter. It is impossible here to give more than a brief summary of its contents. Its publication commenced in 1677, with a series of monthly “Exercises” devoted to the Smith’s, Joiner’s, Carpenter’s and Turner’s trades. These formed the first volume. Moxon himself informs us that their publication was interrupted by the excitement of Oates’ plot, “which took off the minds of his few {184} customers from buying them, as formerly.” It was not till 1683 that the work was resumed. The second volume (which appeared in twenty-four monthly parts), treating wholly of the Art of Printing, commences with a brief account of the Invention of the Art (in which the reader is left to decide between the titles of Haarlem and Mentz), and with a claim on behalf of Typography equally with Architecture to be regarded as a Mathematical Science.[340] “A scientifick man,” says Moxon, “was doubtless he who was the first Inventor of Typographie; but I think few have succeeded him in Science, though the number of Founders and Printers be grown very many: Insomuch that for the more easie managing of Typographie, the Operators have found it necessary to devide it into several Trades. . . . The several devisions that are made are—1. The Master Printer. 2. The Letter Cutter. 3. The Letter Caster. 4. The Letter Dresser. 5. The Compositer. 6. The Correcter. 7. The Press Man. 8. The Inck-Maker. Besides several other Trades they take in to their Assistance, as the Smith, the Joyner, etc.”
These divisions he proceeds to treat of seriatim and in detail. We have elsewhere quoted freely from this work, with a view to illustrate the condition of letter-founding as a mechanical trade in his time.[341] But we notice here, that in the advice which he gives to the Master Printer on the choice of letter for his office, he takes the opportunity to reiterate his admiration of the Dutch form of letter, particularly that adopted by Christoffel Van Dijk, and his conviction that as the Roman letters were originally made to consist of circles, arcs of circles and straight lines, the cutting of those letters should invariably be according to strict mathematical rule of form and proportion. His advice on the choice of letter is fourfold.
1. “That the Letter have a true shape.” 2. “That they be deep cut” (_i.e._, in the punch). 3. “That they be deep sunck in the Matrices” (with a good “beard”). 4. “That his Letter be cast upon good Mettal.”
He then proceeds to indicate the quantities of each body of letter with which the printer should provide himself; and from that proceeds to notice in turn every possible requisite for a well-ordered printing office, from the “ball-nails” to the press.
His “Exercises on Letter Founding” may be best introduced in his own language: “Having shown you the Master Printers Office,” he says, “I account {185} it suitable to proper Method to let you know how the Letter Founder Cuts the Punches, how the Molds are made, the Matrices sunck, and the Letter Cast and Drest. . . . Wherefore the next Exercises shall be (God willing) upon Cutting of Steel Punches.”
The minuteness with which he enters into every detail connected with this mysterious art, and his familiarity with the terminology of the craft, prove that Moxon, although he professed to have learned it not from any master, but “of his own genuine inclination,” was an experienced and even enthusiastic punch-cutter. He devotes considerable attention to the tools and gauges necessary for the work, and returns once more to the charge on behalf of geometry as the foundation of typography.
Anyone acquainted with the modern practice of punch-cutting, cannot but be struck, on reading the directions laid down in the _Mechanick Exercises_, with the slightness of the change which the manual processes of that art have undergone during the last two centuries. Indeed, allowing for improvements in tools, and the greater variety of gauges, we might almost assert that the punch-cutter of Moxon’s day knew scarcely less than the punch-cutter of our day, with the accumulated experience of two hundred years, could teach him.
Moxon’s observations, as in the _Regulæ Trium Ordinum_, apply only to the Roman, Italic and Black-letter, and these he illustrates by a series of plates devised on the same method as in his former work, showing each letter in a magnified form on a square subdivided into forty-two parts, with the proportions for the various parts of each letter minutely laid down. He imagines an objection that it may be deemed impossible in the case of a small letter to divide the square of the body into forty-two equal parts. “But yet,” he says, “it is possible with curious working,” and proceeds, evidently to his own satisfaction, to demonstrate the fact in a very curious way, by suggesting a series of graduations in the rubbing of spaces and points, whereby a thin[342] space may be enlarged by sixths until a series of 42nd parts of each body is arrived at.
Impracticable as such a system appears, it is consistently carried out in the enlarged letters which illustrate the _Exercises_. The result is not more successful than that produced in the _Regulæ Trium Ordinum_; and we venture to think that if any proof were needed that geometry is not, and cannot be, the Alpha and Omega of typographical beauty, these reductions into practice of Moxon’s ingenious theories will supply it.
Passing from letter-cutting, Moxon next describes with much minuteness {186} the various parts of the mould and the method of putting them together. Here the practical instrument maker is on familiar ground, and the directions he gives remained the best authority on the subject, until the venerable hand-mould which he describes began to give place, a century and a quarter after his time, to the lever-mould from America.
Next to mould-making, the _Exercises_ deal with the important processes of striking and justifying the matrices, operations which, like that of punch-cutting, have undergone but little change since his day. Then follow descriptions of the furnace, the alloy of the metal, and the methods of casting and dressing the type, with the implements necessary for these branches of the work; and this portion of the work closes with a few highly interesting plates, amongst which that of the caster at work[343] is the most curious and valuable.
The remainder of the book is devoted to various departments of the letter-press printer’s trade, those of the compositor, the corrector, the pressman, and the warehouse keeper. To this is added an Appendix, describing the ancient customs of the “Chapel,” and a Dictionary of typographical terms.
Such is a brief and meagre outline of the contents of this first English book on printing and letter-founding. It is a work which no one interested in English typography can omit to consult. For almost a century it remained the only authority on the subject; subsequently it formed the basis of numerous other treatises, both at home and abroad, and to this day it is quoted and referred to, not only by the antiquary who desires to learn what the art once was, but by the practical printer, who may still on many subjects gather from it much advice and information as to what it should still be.
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Reverting now to Mores’ description of the contents of Moxon’s foundry, we meet with one fount which calls for particular mention here.
The Pica Irish was cut expressly for the purpose of printing the _Irish New Testament_, published in 1681 at the cost of Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork, and is described by Mores as the only fount of purely Irish type he had ever seen in the country. We may, perhaps, be excused a slight digression in this place for the purpose of giving a sketch of the efforts which before Moxon’s day had been made to propagate the Irish language by means of typography.
The first fount of Irish type known was presented in 1571 by Queen Elizabeth to John O’Kearney, treasurer of St. Patrick’s, with a view to encourage the diffusion of the Scriptures in the Irish character.
By whom this character was prepared we are not informed. It is not the {187} genuine Irish, but a hybrid fount, consisting chiefly of Roman and Italic letters, to which the “discrepants,” or seven distinctively Irish sorts, are added.[344] It is accompanied by a small and equally neat letter for notes, which, however, appears to be Saxon.
The earliest specimen of this fount appears in a broadside _Poem on the Last Judgment_,[345] printed in 1571, and sent over to the Archbishop of Canterbury, apparently as a specimen of the type. This was followed almost immediately by the _Church Catechism and Articles_, translated by O’Kearney and Nicholas Walsh, afterwards Bishop of Ossery, and printed in 1571 at the cost of John Ussher.[346]
The object of the royal donor was further realised in 1602, when there appeared from the press of John Francke, William O’Donnell’s (or Daniel’s) Irish _New Testament_,[347] the first version of that or any portion of the Holy Scriptures in the native character. In dedicating the translation to James I, Daniel thus refers to the royal origin of the types:—“And notwithstanding that our late dreade Soveraigne Elzabeth . . . provided the Irish characters and other instrumentes for the presse in the hope that God in mercy would raise up some to translate the Newe Testament into their native tongue, yet hath Sathan hitherto prevailed, and still they remain _Lo-ruchama Lo-ammi_, etc.”
The type did further service in 1608, when Daniel’s _Common Prayer_[348] was printed by Francke, a well-executed work, with engraved title and beautiful {188} ornamented initials, each page being enclosed in a rule border. After the appearance of this book nearly a quarter of a century elapsed before the type reappeared in Bishop Bedell’s _A B C_, or English and Irish _Catechism_, printed by the Stationers’ Company at Dublin in 1631.[349] This _Catechism_, with additional matter, was republished by Godfrey Daniel in 1652, also in Dublin,[350] after which the Irish type of Queen Elizabeth disappeared in Ireland, and reappeared only in occasional words occurring in Sir James Ware’s books, printed in London by Tyler, in 1656 and 1658.
There seems no reason for believing, as some state, that it was secured by the Jesuits and taken abroad.[351] Not only is it not to be found in any Irish work printed abroad, but the Irish Seminary at Louvain possessed a fount of its own, which, between 1616 and 1663, was in constant use.
After 1602 no serious attempt had been made to complete the translation of the Scriptures into Irish until Dr. Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore, undertook the task about 1630. For this purpose, being then at the age of 57, he devoted himself to the study of the language, and having secured the assistance of Mr. King and the Rev. Denis Sheridan, both eminent Irish scholars, the translation of the _Old Testament_ was completed in 1640. Bedell, we are informed “determined to publish the version immediately at his own expense and in his own house, and made an agreement with a person who undertook to print it: the types were even sent for to Holland.”[352] But the troubles and persecutions of the ensuing year, followed closely by the death of the Bishop, hindered the design, and the manuscript lay neglected for forty years.[353] {189}
In the year 1680, the _New Testament_ of 1602 being then entirely out of print,[354] and no Irish types being available, the illustrious Robert Boyle determined on republishing it at his own expense. To this end he caused a fount of Irish type to be cut and cast in London, and had an able printer instructed in the language for the purpose of printing it.
Moxon was the founder selected to produce the types, and the result was the curious Irish fount of which the matrices formed part of his foundry. With this type Boyle is said to have had the _Church Catechism_, with the _Elements of the Irish Language_, printed in 1680,[355] and in the following year was issued in London, with a preface in Irish and English, the new edition of Daniel’s Irish _New Testament_.[356]
“God hath raised up,” says this preface, “the generous Spirit of Robert Boyle, Esq., son to the Right Honourable Richard, Earl of Cork, Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, renowned for his Piety and Learning, who hath caused the same Book of the New Testament to be Reprinted at his proper Cost; And as well for that purpose, as for Printing the _Old Testament_, and what other Pious Books shall be thought convenient to be published in the Irish Tongue, has caused a New Set of fair Irish Characters to be Cast in London, and an able Printer to be instructed in the way of Printing this Language.”
The printer was Robert Everingham,[357] at the Seven Stars, in Ave Maria Lane, who in 1685 was further employed by Boyle to print, in the same Irish {190} types,[358] Bishop Bedell’s translation of the _Old Testament_,[359] the manuscript of which had fortunately been preserved. The whole _Bible_ being thus complete, it was issued in two 4to volumes, and in 1690 was reprinted in Roman characters at Everingham’s press for the use of the Highlanders.[360]
Our space forbids us to give here anything like a list of the different works in which Moxon’s Irish type appeared after 1690. An interesting note as to the early use of the fount in Ireland occurs in a petition presented in 1709 to the Lord Lieutenant by several of the clergy and gentry of Ireland for the printing of a new edition of the _New Testament_ “in the Irish character and tongue, in order to which the only set of characters now in Britain is bought already.”[361]
This petition does not appear to have been successful; but in 1712 a _Book of Common Prayer_,[362] translated by Dr. John Richardson, Rector of Annah (Chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant), with the assistance of the Christian Knowledge Society, was printed by Elinor Everingham, at the Seven Stars in Ave Maria Lane. Dr. Richardson also published some _Irish Sermons_[363] at the same press, and a _History of the Attempts . . . to Convert the Popish Natives of Ireland_.
In 1700, in the London _Oratio Dominica_, Moxon’s Irish type was used, as also in the reprint in 1713, after which the fount frequently reappeared until 1820, when it was used in the _Transactions of the Iberno Celtic Society_, for printing the titles of E. O’Reilly’s “Chronological Account of Irish Writers” there given.
The “punches and matrices”, said Mores, writing in 1778, “have ever since continued in England. The Irish themselves have no letter of this face, but are supplied with it by us from England; though it has been said, but falsely, that {191} the University of Louvain have lately procured a fount to be cut for the use of the Irish Seminary there.”[364]
We are glad to add to this statement that the punches of this interesting fount are still in existence, and, indeed, that these most curious relics of the handiwork of the author of the _Mechanick Exercises_ lie before us as we write these words.
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Among the other peculiar characters cut by Moxon may be mentioned the symbols used in Mr. George Adams’ scientific works, and the Philosophic or “Real Character” designed by Bishop John Wilkins for his learned _Essay towards a Universal Language_, printed in 1668.[365] The correcting marks used in the _Mechanick Exercises_, as well as other mathematical and astronomical symbols, were also the work of this versatile artist, whose scientific genius appears to have had a special bent towards the more curious by-paths of typography.
Moxon’s foundry descended to Robert Andrews, with whom it is possible he was, during the close of his career, associated, either as a master or a partner. Rowe Mores is unable to distinguish, beyond the peculiar founts above noted, and the Canon Roman and Italic (which subsequently came into Mr. Caslon’s hands), what were the precise contents of his foundry. He therefore omits his usual list, and includes the whole in Andrews’.
The date of Moxon’s death is uncertain. A third edition of the _Mechanick Exercises_, not including the typographical portion, was issued in 1703. Unless this was a posthumous publication, Moxon must have been seventy-six years old at the time.
Mores states that he founded in London from 1659 to 1683, from which it would seem that he retired from the type business a considerable time before his death. He was a voluminous writer on scientific and mathematical subjects, and many of his works ran through several editions. {192}
Mores describes him cordially as an admirable mechanic and an excellent artist, and states that he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, 30th November 1678. He was succeeded in his office of Hydrographer to the King by Mr. George Adams, whom Mores describes as “our ingenious friend . . . and a successor to Mr. Moxon as well in skilfulness and curiosity as well as office.”[366] Our portrait of Moxon is taken from the frontispiece to the fourth edition of his _Tutor of Astronomy and Geography_, 1686, printed by Samuel Roycroft for the author.
It is doubtful whether his investigations and theories had any sensible effect on the practice of English letter-founding. They may have tended to encourage the favour with which Dutch letter was regarded at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but it is not clear that his attempt to confine to rule and compass the art of letter-cutting either secured general adoption or was productive of any appreciable reform in our national typography.
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The following is the title of the only specimen known to have been issued by Moxon:―
1669. Prooves of the Several Sorts of Letters cast by Joseph Moxon. Westminster, printed by Joseph Moxon in Russell Street, at the sign of the Atlas, 1669. Fo. . . . . (B. M., _Harl. MS._ 5915, fo. 160.)
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