Mr. Nichols gives a long and interesting account of him in different parts of his Work. I can only select the following:

Mr. William Caslon, born in that part of the town of Hales Owen which is situated in Shropshire, in 1692, and who is justly styled by Mr. Rowe Mores the "Coryphæus of Letter-founders," was not trained to that business; "which is a handy work, so concealed among the artificer of it," that Mr. Moxon, in his indefatigable researches on that subject,' "could not discover that any one had taught it any other; but every one that had used it, learnt it of his own genuine inclination."

Mr. Caslon's first residence was in Vine-street in the Minories, where one considerable branch of his employment was to make tools for the book-binders and for the chasing of silver plate. Whilst he was engaged in this employment, the elder Mr. Bowyer accidentally saw in the shop of Mr. Daniel Browne, bookseller, near Temple Bar, the lettering of a book uncommonly neat; and enquiring who the Artist was by whom the letters were made, Mr Caslon was introduced to his acquaintance, and was taken by him to Mr. James's Foundry in Bartholomew close. Caslon had never before that time seen any part of the business; and being asked by his friend if he thought he could undertake to cut types, he requested a single day to consider of the matter, and then replied he had no doubt but he could. From this answer Mr. Bowyer lent him 2004. Mr. Bettenham lent him the same sum, and Watts 100l.; and by that assistance our ingenious Artist applied himself assiduously to his new pursuit, and was eminently successful -The three printers above mentioned were of course his constant customers.

In the Universal Magazine for June 1750, is a good view of Mr. Caslon's workshop in Chiswell -street, with portraits of six of his workmen. Mr. Caslon was three times married. The name of his second wife was Longman; of the third Waters, and with each of these ladies he had a good fortune. The abilities of his son William appeared to great advantage in a specimen of types of the learned languages in 1748-His younger son, Mr. Thomas Caslon, was Master of the Stationers' Company in 1782; and died March 29, 1783.

Mr. William Caslon died in 1778, leaving a Widow who conducted the business with extraordinary ability, until her death, on the 23rd of October, 1795-Aged about 70. After the death of the mother, there were still two very large foundries carried on; one of them by a third William Caslon, who having quitted Moorfields, had become the purchaser of the Jackson foundry in Dorset-street; since given up to his son, a fourth William Caslon, a young man of considerable abilities, to whom I cannot recommend a better model than his great grand-father, who was universally esteemed as a first-rate artist, a tender master, and an honest, friendly, and benevolent man-The original foundry in Chiswell-street was purchased by Mr. Charles Cather wood, a distant relation, who died June 7, 1809, æt. 45; and is now carried on by Mr. Henry Caslon (another great-grandson of the first William) under the firm of Caslon and Livermore.

Jackson and Cottrell, were eminent in their day. Mr. Jackson had acquired some considerable property, the bulk of which, having left

no child, he directed to be equally divided between fourteen nephews and nieces. On his only apprentice, Mr. Vincent Figgins, the mantle of his predecessor has fallen. With an ample portion of his kind instructor's reputation he inherits a considerable share of his talents and his industry; and has distinguished himself by the many beautiful specimens he has produced, and particularly of Oriental types.

Figgins and Thorowgood, have always stood high in the estimation of first rate judges; they are succeeding in all the beauties, chasteness, and improvements of the Art.

The Frys have also been eminent in this beautiful art, particularly Edmund, whom Watt in his Bibliotheca Brit. thus designates.

"Edmund Fry, M.D., produced specimens of Printing Types, 1785-98. also Pantographia; containing copies of all the known Alphabets in the world, and specimens of all well authenticated languages, in a large octavo volume, price 2 guineas; this interesting and laborious Work, is executed with great neatness."

Mr. JOHN BASKERVILLE.

I cannot slightly pass by this extraordinary Letter Founder, Printer, Paper maker, Ink maker, &c.-In my "History and Topography of Warwickshire," I devoted, with the aid of his Biographers, about a dozen pages to him, of which I here present a small portion. Mr. Hutton says, "he was in succession-a stone cutter, a schoolmaster, a japanner, and lastly an eminent type founder and printer; he gave his name to the first, and his establishment and fame to that of the other. The pen of the historian rejoices in the actions of the great; the fame of the deserving, like an oak tree, is of sluggish growth, the present generation becomes debtor to him who excels, but the future will repay that debt with more than simple interest. The still voice of fame may warble in his ears towards the close of life, but her trumpet seldom sounds in full clarion, till those ears are stopped by the finger of death."

Of Mr. John Baskerville, Mr. Nichols, who appears like myself to have been indebted to Mr. Hutton, states that "this celebrated printer was born at Wolverly, in the county of Worcester, in 1706, heir to the paternal estate of £60 per annum, which in fifty years after, while in his own possession, had increased to £90, and this estate, with an exemplary filial piety and generosity, he allowed to his parents until their deaths, which happened at an advanced age.' Mr. Nichols says that he was brought up to no occupation, but Mr. Hutton asserts that he was trained to that of a stone cutter, but they agree as to his becoming a schoolmaster in 1726, and that in about ten years after he taught school in Birmingham, and wrote an excellent hand. Both circumstances account for his subsequent skill and talent in the formation of letters. It appears that he was not even confined to his early predilections, for previously to his attempt at printing, he found that painting accorded with his taste, and in despite of the odium cast upon, what is termed "tea board painting," he entered into that lucrative branch at his then residence, No. 22, in Moor-street. His biographer, Hutton, observes that, in 1745,"he took a building lease of about eight acres north west of the town, to

which he gave the name of Easy hill, converted it into a little Eden, and built a house in the centre; but the town, as if conscious of his merit, followed his retreat, and surrounded it with buildings. Here he continued the business of a japanner for life; his carriage, (each pannel of which was a distinct picture, and might be considered as the pattern card of his trade,) was drawn by a beautiful pair of cream coloured horses. His inclination for letters induced him in 1750, to turn his thoughts to the press. He spent many years in the uncertain pursuit, sank £600 before he could produce one letter to please himself, and some thousands before the shallow stream of profit began to flow. His first attempt, in 1756, was a quarto edition of Virgil,-price one guinea, now worth several." This according to Nichols, he reprinted in 1758, and was employed by the University of Oxford upon an entirely new-faced Greek type.

I

The talents of Mr. Baskerville were now very generally appreciated; the celebrated Mr. Derrick, in a letter to the Earl of Cork, July 15, 1760, containing a description of Birmingham, says, "I need not remind your Lordship, that Baskerville, one of the best printers in the world, resides near this town. His house stands at about half-amile's distance, on an eminence that commands a fine prospect. paid him a visit and was received with great politeness, though an entire stranger. His apartments are elegant; his staircase is particularly curious; and the room in which he dines, and calls a smoaking room, is very handsome. The grate and furniture belonging to it are, I think, of bright wrought iron, and cost him a good round sum. He has just completed an elegant octavo common prayer book; has a scheme for publishing a folio edition of the Bible; and will soon finish a beautiful collection of fables, by the ingenious Mr. Dodsley. He manufactures his own paper, types and ink; and they are remarkably good. This ingenious artist carries on a great trade in the japan way, in which he shewed several useful articles such as candlesticks, stands, salvers, waiters, bread baskets, tea boards, &c., elegantly designed and highly finished. Baskerville is a great cherisher of genius, which he loses no opportunity of cultivating."

In 1764, Mr. Baskerville received the following curious letter from the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

"Dear Sir,

"Craven-street, London, 1764."

Let me give you a pleasant instance of the prejudice some have entertained against your work. Soon after I returned, discoursing with a gentleman respecting the artists of Birmingham, he said, "you would be the means of blinding all the people in the nation, for the strokes of your letters, being too thin and narrow, hurt the eye, and he never could read a line of them without pain." "I thought (said I) you were going to complain of the gloss on the paper some object to." "No, no, (says he) I have heard that mentioned, but it is not that, it is in the natural and easy proportion between the height and thickness of the stroke, which makes the common printing so much more comfortable to the eye." You see this gentleman was a connoisseur, In vain I endeavoured to support your character against the charge; he knew what he felt, and could see the reason

of it, and several other gentlemen among his friends had made the same observations, &c. Yesterday he called to visit me, when mischievously bent to try his judgment, I stept into my closet, tore off the top of Mr. Caslon's specimen, and produced it to him as yours, brought with me from Birmingham, saying, "I had been examining it since he spoke to me, and could not for my life perceive the disproportion he mentioned, desiring him to point it out to me." He readily undertook it, and went over the several founts, shewing me everywhere what he thought instances of that disproportion, and declared, "that he could not then read the specimen without feeling very strongly the pain he had mentioned to me." I spared him that. time the confusion of being told, that these were the types he had been · reading all his life, with so much ease to his eyes; the types his adored Newton is printed with, on which he has pored not a little; nay, the very types his own book is printed with, for he is himself an author, and yet never discovered this painful disproportion in them, till he thought they were yours."

"I am, &c."

"B. FRANKLIN."

In 1765, he applied to Dr. Franklin, then at Paris, and afterwards ainbassador from America, to sound the Literati, respecting the purchase of his types; but received for answer, "That the French reduced by the war in 1756, were so far from pursuing schemes of taste, that they were unable to repair the public buildings, but suffered the scaffolding to rot before them." After this we hear nothing of Mr. Baskerville as a printer. He died without issue, in Jan. 8, 1775: but it is painful to observe, that in the last solemn act of his life, he seriously avowed his total disbelief of christianity.

I have a copy of his Will, but some parts of it are objectionable, which the following inscription on his tomb would imply :

"Stranger,

"Beneath this stone, in unconsecrated ground, a friend to the liberties of mankind directed his body to be inurned."

"May his example contribute to emancipate thy mind-from the idle fears of Superstition and the wicked arts of Priesthood."

The principal part of his fortune, amounting to about £12,000, he left to his widow; who sold the stock, and retired to the house which her husband had built.

Many efforts were used after his death to dispose of the types; but no purchaser could be found in the whole commonwealth of letters. The universities rejected the offer. (Hutton says coldly) "The London booksellers (Mr. Nichols says) preferred the sterling types of Caslon and his apprentice, Jackson.' Hutton says, "they understand no science like that of profit. The valuable property, therefore, lay a dead weight, till purchased by a literary society at Paris, in 1779, for £3700. Invention seldom pays the inventor. If you ask what fortune Baskerville ought to have been rewarded with? The most that can be comprised in five figures. If you further ask what he possessed?-the least; but none of it squeezed from the press. What will the shade of this great man think, if capable of

thinking, that he has spent a fortune of opulence, and a life of genius, in carrying to perfection the greatest of all human inventions, and that his productions, slighted by his country, were hawked over Europe in quest of a bidder." Mrs. Baskerville died in March, 1788. "We must admire, if we do not imitate, the taste and economy of the French nation, who, brought by the British arms, 1762, to the verge of ruin, rising above distress, were able in seventeen years to purchase Baskerville's elegant types, refused by his own country, and to expend an hundred thousand pounds in poisoning the principles of mankind, by printing with them the works of Voltaire."

was placed to the memory of Mr. Near his residence a conic urn Baskerville, but was lost in the ruins, or destroyed by the riots of 1791, a remarkable circumstance has, however, recently occurred in determining the spot where he was entombed; In levelling the ground for the formation of wharfs, his coffin, standing in an upright position, and in an entire state, was dug up; upon opening it, the body was not decomposed, and the teeth had the appearance of being perfectly sound, although he died at the age of 60, and had been interred for nearly half a century. I have by me a small piece of the Shroud with which he was surrounded! It has been asserted, that, again appear a little before his death, he jocularly said he should “ upon a white horse." which saying, connected with his extraordinary exhumation, has met with believers in the credulity of some connected with the manufactory established on this spot.

Baskerville's ambition to excel caused him to spare no expence ; he even went to that of casting some founts of type in Silver, instead of the usual metals, and their agents; and certainly the face and form of his letter was extremely beautiful and chaste. Dr, Franklin speaks of its lean and sharp strokes being too fine, but it is the plan of the French to this day, who have by far exceeded Baskerville in the length and sharpness of their letters, and although they appear (as most of our modern types do, in one way or other,) a sort of caricature, still they are very beautiful.

BLOCK PRINTING.

William Ged.-In 1781, Mr. Nichols printed and published Biographical Memoirs of William Ged, including a particular account of his progress in the art of Block Printing, on which the Mouthly Review, spoke favorably.

It appears that GED gave a narrative of his scheme for Blockprinting, in 1730, and stated that "he had eclipsed his competitors in the art of Letter-founding, but found more difficulty than he apprehended in an attempt to make plates for Block-printing." Mr. Ngives the following interesting narrative of him:

"WILLIAM GED, an ingenious artist, was a goldsmith in Edinburgh and made his improvement in the art of printing in 1725. The invention was simply this. From any types of Greek, Roman, or any other character, he formed a plate for every page or sheet of a book, from which he printed, instead of using a type for every letter, as is done in the common way. This was the first practised, but on blocks of wood, by the Chinese and Japanese, and pursued in the first essays of Coster, Guttenberg, and Faust, the European invent