he improvement in printing which Caslon had begun quickly spread to other parts of the kingdom, even as far north as Scotland, where, before the middle of the century, there was established at Glasgow a press that became notable for the beauty of its productions.

Robert and Andrew Foulis, the founders of this press, were the sons of Andrew Faulls and Marion Paterson, Robert being born at Glasgow on April 20th, 1707, and his brother on November 23rd, 1712.

Robert Foulis was apprenticed to a barber, but his love for literature led him to study at the University, where he attended the moral philosophy lectures of Francis Hutcheson, who advised him to become a bookseller and printer. His brother, Andrew, entered the University at a later date, destined for the ministry, and during their vacations they travelled throughout England and on the Continent. In the course of these travels they sought for and brought back with them many rare and beautiful books, and gained a wide knowledge of the book trade.

At length, in 1741, Robert Foulis set up as a bookseller in Glasgow. In some of his earlier publications will be found lists of books printed and sold by him, which are very interesting. One of these, which enumerates fifteen books, includes a Greek Testament, Buchanan's edition of the Psalms, Burnet's Life of the Earl of Rochester, seven or eight classics, among which were a Cicero, Juvenal, Cornelius Nepos, PhÆdrus, and Terence, and two of Tasso's works. The Terence was printed for him by Robert Urie, and shows some excellent founts of small italic and Roman. Robert Foulis seems to have begun printing on his own account in 1742, and among his earliest patrons was Professor Hutcheson, for whom he printed a treatise entitled MetaphysicÆ Synopsis, a duodecimo of ninety pages, and a work on Moral Philosophy of three hundred and thirty pages. He also printed in the same year the second and third editions of a sermon preached by William Leechman before the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and editions of Cicero and PhÆdrus. All these were in duodecimo or small octavo, printed in a clear readable type, that probably came from Urie's foundry. On the 31st March 1743, Robert Foulis was appointed printer to the University of Glasgow, and published Demetrius Phalerus de Elocutione in two sizes, quarto and octavo. This was the first book printed at Glasgow in Greek type, the Greek and Latin renderings being printed on opposite pages—the Latin in a fount of English Roman that cannot be distinguished from Caslon's letter, while the italic also has a strong resemblance to that of the English founder. Among other productions of the year 1743 was a specimen of another Glasgow man's work, Bishop Burnet's translation of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, to which was prefixed Holbein's portrait of the great Chancellor.

In 1744 Dr. Andrew Wilson, who for some years had been furnishing Scotch and Irish printers with types from his foundry, moved to Camlachie, a spot within a mile of Glasgow, and at once began to furnish letter for Robert Foulis. In the same year Robert took his brother Andrew into partnership, and the firm quickly became famous for the beauty and correctness of their classics, beginning with the edition of Horace, which, from the fact of its having only six errors in the text, was christened the immaculate. Other attractive books were the Sophocles of 1745, quarto; Cicero in twenty volumes, small octavo; the small folio edition of Callimachus, which took the silver medal offered in Edinburgh for the finest book of not fewer than ten sheets; the magnificent Homer, which Reed in his Old English Letter Foundries describes as 'for accuracy and splendour the finest monument of the Foulis press.' But the Foulis press did not confine itself to classics only. It published several fine editions of English authors, among them a folio edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, and editions of the poems of Gray and Pope. In 1775 Andrew Foulis died suddenly. The blow was very severely felt by his brother, and coming as it did upon the failure of his Academy of Arts, completely crushed him. He removed his art collection to London for sale; but here another disappointment awaited him—the sum realised after paying expenses being fifteen shillings. He returned to Edinburgh, and was on the point of starting for Glasgow when he died on the 2nd June 1776. The Foulis press was carried on by the younger Andrew Foulis until the end of the century.

In England, the chief event of this period was the appearance of John Baskerville at Birmingham.

No satisfactory biography of Baskerville has yet been written, but the best sketches of his life are those by the late T. B. Reed in his History of the Old English Letter Foundries (chap, xiii.), which contains some highly interesting and valuable correspondence between Baskerville and his publisher, R. Dodsley, and the more recent article in the Dictionary of National Biography, from the pen of Mr. Tedder.

John Baskerville was born in 1706 at Wolverley, a village in Worcestershire. No one has discovered where he was educated: yet this is one of the points upon which we should like to know something, because it is generally admitted that he was a very beautiful writer; indeed, it was to his love of calligraphy that we owe the regular and well-proportioned letters associated with his name. For some time he earned his living as a writing-master; after which he appears to have gone into the japanning trade, and in 1750 embarked some capital in a letter foundry. Another point upon which his biographers are silent is the place where he learnt the art of printing. For we know that the punches of his foundry were not cut by himself, and that he was not in any sense a practical printer; yet he must have obtained some knowledge of the rudiments of the art before taking over the responsibilities of a foundry of his own. Baskerville appears to have employed the most skilled artists he could obtain, and it is said that he spent upwards of £600—some say £800—before he obtained a fount to suit him. His letters to Dodsley show how anxious he was to attain perfection. The result of all this care and labour was shown in the quarto edition of Virgil which appeared in 1757, and was followed by quarto editions of Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

The appearance of Baskerville's publications gave rise to no little controversy. By some they were hailed with unstinted praise; while others, such as Mores and Dr. Bedford, looked upon them with something little short of contempt. Yet it is difficult to understand the grounds of these adverse criticisms. As regards type, there is very little to choose between Caslon's Roman and that of Baskerville, while the italic of Baskerville was unquestionably the most beautiful type that had ever been seen in England; and the ridiculous criticism passed on it that its very fineness was injurious to the eyesight, was shown to be utterly worthless by Franklin's letter to the printer, which is printed in Reed's Old English Letter Foundries. But there are also other features of excellence about these books of Baskerville's. They are simplicity itself. There is not a single ornament or tail-piece introduced into them to divide the attention. The books were printed with deep and wide margins, and the lines were spaced out with the very best effect.

The first public body to recognise Baskerville's ability was the University of Oxford, which in July 1758 empowered him to cut a fount of Greek types for 200 guineas. This order proved to be beyond his power. It is generally admitted that his Greek type was a failure, and he wisely made no further attempts at cutting learned characters. Some of the punches of Baskerville's Greek types are still preserved at Oxford, and are the only specimens of his foundry that we have.

In his Preface to Paradise Lost, Baskerville stated that the extent of his ambition was to print an octavo Prayer Book and a folio Bible. In connection with this ambition, he applied to the University of Cambridge for appointment as their printer, a privilege which was granted to him, but at the cost of such a heavy premium that he obtained no pecuniary profit from it. The Prayer Book printed in two forms appeared in 1760, and the same year saw the prospectus and specimen of the Bible issued, the Bible itself appearing in 1763 in imperial folio. Both are beautiful specimens of the printer's art.

But Baskerville soon became disgusted with the ill-natured criticism to which he was subjected, coupled with the failure of booksellers to support him, and was anxious to have done with the business. The year before the publication of the Bible, he wrote to Horace Walpole a letter given by Reed (p. 278) in which he says that he is sending specimens of his foundry to foreign courts in the hope of finding among them a purchaser for the whole concern, and during the next few years he was in correspondence with Franklin with the same object. Fortunately for his country, these attempts were unsuccessful during his life-time, and between the years 1760-1773 he produced not only several editions of the Bible and Common Prayer, but the works of Addison, 4 vols. 1761, 4to; the works of Congreve, 3 vols. 1761, 8vo; Æsop's Fables; and in 1772 a series of the classics in quarto, which, Reed says, 'suffice, had he printed nothing else, to distinguish him as the first typographer of his time' (p. 281).

Baskerville died on January 8th, 1775, and for a few years his widow carried on the foundry; but at the same time endeavoured to dispose of it. Both our Universities refused it, and no London foundry would touch it, because the booksellers would have nothing but the types of Caslon and Jackson. The type was eventually sold in 1779 to the SociÉtÉ LittÉraire-typographique of France for £3700, and was used in a sumptuous edition of the works of Voltaire.

Yet one firm was found bold enough to model its letter on that of Baskerville. In 1764 Joseph Fry, a native of Bristol, began letter-founding in that city. He took as a partner William Pine, proprietor of the Bristol Gazette, but the business was not carried on in their name but in that of Isaac Moore, their manager. In 1768 they removed the foundry to London, and issued a prospectus. But so strong was the prejudice against Baskerville's letter—or, perhaps, it would be better to say, so strong was the hold which Caslon's foundry had obtained—that they were compelled to recast the whole of their stock. This took them several years; meanwhile, they issued one or two editions of the Bible in their first fount. In 1776 Isaac Moore severed his connection with the firm. In 1782 Mr. Pine also withdrew, and Joseph Fry admitted his two sons, Edmund and Henry, into partnership. At length in 1785 appeared the first specimen-book of Fry's foundry, and it was frankly admitted in the preface that the founts of Roman and italic were modelled on those of Caslon.

Joseph Fry retired from the business in 1787. Amongst the books printed with his later type may be mentioned the quarto edition of the classics edited by Dr. Homer.

Caslon the First died at Bethnal Green on January 23rd, 1766. His son, Caslon the Second, died intestate on the 17th August 1778, when the business came to his son, William Caslon the Third. In the same year that Joseph Fry published his Specimen of Types, Caslon the Third also published a specimen-book of sixty-two sheets, in every way worthy of the reputation the firm had established. It included, besides Romans and italics of great beauty and regularity, every variety of oriental and learned founts, and several sheets of ornaments and flowers, arranged in various designs. This book was dedicated to the king, and contained an address to the reader in which, after reviewing the establishment of the foundry, Caslon referred bitterly to the eager rivalry of other printers and their open avowal of imitation. In 1793 Caslon the Third disposed of his share in the Chiswell Street business to his mother and his brother Henry's widow.

Mrs. William Caslon, senior, died in October 1795, when the business was sold by auction and bought by Mrs. Henry Caslon for £520.

Joseph Jackson, who shared with the Caslons the favour of the London booksellers, was one of two apprentices formerly in the employ of William Caslon II. Some dispute arose in the foundry about the price of certain work, and Joseph Jackson and Thomas Cottrell, having acted as ringleaders in the movement, were dismissed, and being thrown on their own resources, set up a foundry of their own in Nevil's Court, Fetter Lane. Of the two Jackson proved far the more skilful, but seems to have been of a roving disposition. After working for a year or two with Cottrell he went to sea, leaving Cottrell to carry on the business alone. This he did with a fair measure of success, though his foundry was never at any time a large one. After a few years' absence Jackson returned to England in 1763, and again turned his attention to letter-cutting, serving for a time under his old partner Cottrell; but having obtained the services and, what was of more value, the pecuniary help of two of Cottrell's workmen, he set up for himself, and quickly took a foremost place in the trade. Among his most successful work was a fount of English 'Domesday,' for the Domesday Book published by order of Parliament in 1783, which was preferred to that cut by Cottrell for the same purpose. Jackson also cut a fount for Dr. Woide's facsimile of the Alexandrian Codex with great success. But perhaps his most successful effort was the two-line English which he cut for Macklin's edition of the Bible, begun in 1789. At the time of his death in 1792 he was at work upon a fount of double pica for Bowyer's edition of Hume's History of England. After his death his foundry was purchased by William Caslon III.

Both Macklin's Bible and Hume's History were printed at the press of Thomas Bensley in Bolt Court, Fleet Street. As a printer of sumptuous books Bensley had only one rival, William Bulmer, who is generally accorded the first place. But Bensley was certainly earlier in the field. His work was quite equal to that of Bulmer, and, apart from this, the world owes more to his enterprise than it has ever yet acknowledged.

Thomas Bensley was the son of a printer in the Strand, and in 1783 he succeeded to the business of Edward Allen in Bolt Court, a house adjoining that in which Johnson had lived. He at once turned his attention to printing as a fine art. Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Decameron (vol. ii. p. 397, etc.), gives a list of the works printed by Bensley, and says that he began with a quarto edition of Lavater's Physiognomy in 1789, following this up with an octavo edition of Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd in 1790. In this list, however, Dibdin has omitted the folio edition of BÜrger's poem Leonora, printed by Bensley in 1796, with designs by Lady Diana Beauclerc. In 1797 he printed a very beautiful edition of Thomson's Seasons, in royal folio, with engravings by Bartolozzi and P. W. Tomkins from pictures by W. Hamilton.

But the chief glories of his press are the Bible and Hume's History. The first was begun in 1789; but Jackson's death caused some delay when the Book of Numbers had been reached, owing to more type being required. For some reason, not clearly shown, Bensley would not employ Caslon, but applied to Vincent Figgins, who for ten years had been in the service of Jackson, to complete the type. Figgins' foundry was in Swan Yard, Holborn, where he had established himself after Jackson's death in 1792. He succeeded with the task set him, and his type, which was an exact facsimile of Jackson's, was brought into use in the Book of Deuteronomy. The whole work was completed in seven volumes, in the year 1800, and this date appears on the title-page; but the dedication to the king was dated 1791, and the plates, which were the work of Loutherbourg, West, Hamilton, and others, were variously dated between those years. The text was printed in double columns, in a handsome two-line English, with the headings to chapters in Roman capitals, no italic type being used, and no marginalia.

Robert Bowyer's edition of Hume was in the press at the time of Jackson's death, but was not completed until 1806. The type used in this is a double pica, and the founder, it is said, declared that it should 'be the most exquisite performance of the kind in this or any other country.' He died before its completion, and the work was completed by Figgins; but the book is a lasting memorial to the skill both of the founder and the printer.

In January 1791 appeared the first number of Boydell's Shakespeare. The history of this notorious undertaking was briefly this. Boydell was an art publisher in Pall Mall, where he had established a gallery and filled it with the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Opie, and Northcote, chiefly in Shakesperian subjects. George Nicol the bookseller proposed to the Boydells that William Martin, brother of Robert Martin of Birmingham, should be employed to cut a set of types with which to print an edition of Shakespeare's works, to be illustrated with the drawings then in Boydell's gallery. This William Martin had learnt his art in the foundry of Baskerville; and such is the irony of fate, that less than twenty years after the death of that eminent founder, his work, scorned by the booksellers of London in his own day, was imitated in what was certainly one of the most pretentious books that had ever come from the English press. The printer selected for the work was William Bulmer, a native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomson, the printer, of Burnt House Entry, St. Nicholas Churchyard. At that time he formed a friendship with Thomas Bewick, the engraver, who in his Memoir tells us that Bulmer used to 'prove' his cuts for him.

After serving his time, Bulmer came to London and entered the printing-office of John Bell, who was then issuing a miniature edition of the poets. A fortunate accident won him his acquaintance with Boydell and Nicol, and so led to his subsequent employment at the Shakespeare press.

The Shakespeare was followed by the works of Milton in three volumes folio in 1794-5-7, and again in 1795 by the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell in quarto. In the advertisement to this work, Bulmer pointed out how much had been done by English printers within the last few years to raise the art of printing from the low depth to which it had fallen—a work in which the Shakespeare press had borne no little part. He went on to say that much pains had been taken with this edition of Goldsmith to make it a complete specimen of the arts of type and block printing. The types were Martin's, the woodcuts Bewick's, and the paper Whatman's. One copy of this book was printed on white satin, and three on English vellum.

Among the books that appeared within the last five years of the century was an edition of Lucretius in three volumes large quarto, which certainly ranks for beauty of type and regularity of printing with any book of that period. Like most of the works of Baskerville, this book was quite free from ornament, and claims admiration only from the excellence of the press-work. The notes were printed in double columns in small pica, the text itself in double pica. In the whole three volumes not a dozen printer's errors have been found. This work came from the press of Archibald Hamilton.

Time has not dealt kindly with some of these specimens of what was called 'fine' printing. After the lapse of a century, we begin to see that though the type and press-work were all that could be desired, and placed the English printers on a level with the best of those on the Continent, there was something radically wrong with the production of illustrated books. Whether it was due to the ink, or to the paper, or, as some suppose, to insufficient drying, in all these sumptuous volumes the oil has worked out of the illustrations, leaving an ugly brown stain on the opposite pages, and totally destroying the appearance of the books. This applies not only to large and small illustrations, but in many cases to the ornamental wood blocks used for head and tail pieces. In Macklin's Bible, and in the 'Milton' printed at the Shakespeare press, this discoloration has completely ruined what were undoubtedly, when they came from the press, extremely beautiful works.

Before leaving the work of the eighteenth century, a word or two must be said about the private presses that were at work during that time. The first place must, of course, be given to that at Strawberry Hill. None of the curious hobbies ridden by Horace Walpole became him better, or was more useful, than his fancy for running a printing-press. He was not devoid of taste, and though no doubt he might have done it better, he carried this idea out very well. The productions of his press are very good examples of printing, and are far above any of the other private press work of the eighteenth century. His type was a neat and clear one, though somewhat small, and the ornaments and initial letters introduced into his books were simple and in keeping with the general character of the types, without being in any sense works of art. The following brief account of the Strawberry Hill press is compiled from Mr. H. B. Wheatley's article in Bibliographica, and from Austin Dobson's delightful Horace Walpole, a Memoir, 1893.

The press was started in August 1757 with the publication, for R. Dodsley, of two 'Odes' by Gray. 'I am turned printer, and have converted a little cottage into a printing office,' he tells one friend; and to another he writes, 'Elzevir, Aldus, and Stephens are the freshest persons in my memory'; and referring to the 'Odes,' he writes to John Chute in July 1757, 'I found him [Gray] in town last week; he had brought his two Odes to be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands.'

Walpole's first printer was William Robinson, an Irishman, who remained with him for two years. The Odes were followed by Paul Hentzner's A Journey into England, of which only 220 copies were printed. In April 1758 came the two volumes of Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, of which 300 copies were printed and sold so rapidly, that a second edition—not printed at Strawberry Hill—was called for before the end of the year.

In 1760 Walpole wrote to Zouch, in reference to an edition of Lucan, 'Lucan is in poor forwardness. I have been plagued with a succession of bad printers, and am not got beyond the fourth book.' It was published in January 1761, and in the following year appeared the first and second volumes of Anecdotes of Painting in England, with plates and portraits, and having the imprint, 'Printed by Thomas Farmer at Strawberry Hill, MD.CCLXII.' Then another difficulty appears to have arisen with the printers, and the third volume, published in 1763, had no printer's name in the imprint. The fourth volume, not issued till 1780, bears the name of Thomas Kirgate, who seems to have been taken on in 1772, and held his post until Walpole's death. Between 1764 and 1768 the Strawberry Hill press was idle, but in the latter year Walpole printed in octavo 200 copies of a French play entitled CornÉlie Vestale, TragÉdie, and from that time down to 1789 it continued at work at intervals, its chief productions being MÉmoires du Comte de Grammont, 1772, 4to, of which only 100 copies were printed, twenty-five of which went to Paris; The Sleep Walker, a comedy in two acts, 1778, 8vo; A description of the villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, 1784, 4to, of which 200 copies were printed; and Hieroglyphic Tales, 1785, 8vo.

Next to the press of Horace Walpole, that of George Allan, M. P. for Durham, at the Grange, Darlington, must be noticed. The owner was an enthusiastic antiquary, and he used his press chiefly for printing fugitive pieces relating to the history of the county of Durham. The first piece with a date was Collections relating to St. Edmunds Hospital, printed in 1769, and the last a tract which he printed for his friend Thomas Pennant in 1788, entitled Of the Patagonians, of which only 40 copies were worked off.

The productions of his press were very numerous, but of no great merit. Allan was his own compositor, and gave much time to his hobby; but his printer appears to have been a dissolute and dirty workman, who caused him much annoyance and trouble. Altogether it may safely be said that Allan's press cost him a great deal more than it was worth.

Another of those who tried their hand at amateur printing was Francis Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, who started a press at his rectory at Fersfield. Here he printed the first volume of his History in 1736, and also the History of Thetford, a thin quarto volume, in 1739. But the result was an utter failure. The type was bad to begin with, and the attempt to use red ink on the title-pages only made matters worse. The press-work was carelessly done; and it is not surprising to find that the second volume of the History, published in 1745, was entrusted to a Norwich printer.

The celebrated John Wilkes also carried on a private printing-office at his house in Great George Street, Westminster. Three specimens of its work have been identified: An Essay on Woman, 1763, 8vo, of which only twelve copies are said to have been printed[19]; a few copies of the third volume of the North Briton; and Recherches sur l'Origine du Despotisme Orientale, Ouvrage posthume de M. Boulanger, 1763, 12mo. A note in a copy of this volume states that it was printed by Thomas Farmer, who had also assisted Horace Walpole at the Strawberry Hill press.

During the last four years of the century the Rev. John Fawcett, a Baptist minister of some repute, established a press in his house at Brearley Hall, near Halifax, which he afterwards removed to Ewood Hall. He used it chiefly for printing his own sermons and writings, among the most important issue's being The Life of Oliver Heywood, 1796, pp. 216; Miscellanea Sacra, 1797; A Summary of the Evidences of Christianity, 1797, pp. 100; Constitution and Order of a Gospel Church, 1797, pp. 58; The History of John Wise, 1798; Gouge's Sure Way of Thriving; Watson's Treatise on Christian Contentment; and Dr. Williams's Christian Preacher. Most of these were in duodecimo.

The type used in this press was a very good one, and the press-work was done with care. Owing to his growing infirmities Fawcett was obliged to dispose of the press in 1800. There is reason to believe that the above list might be considerably increased.

At Bishopstone, in Sussex, the Rev. James Hurdis printed several works at his own press, the most important being a series of lectures on poetry, printed in 1797, a quarto of three hundred and thirty pages, and a poem called The Favorite Village, in 1800, a quarto of two hundred and ten pages.

To these must be added a press at Lustleigh, in Devon, made and worked by the Rev. William Davy, and at which was printed some thirty copies of his System of Divinity, 26 vols. 1795, 8vo, a copy of which remarkable work is now in the British Museum, and is considered one of its curiosities; a press at Glynde, in Sussex, the seat of Lord Hampden, from which at least one work can be traced; and a press at Madeley, in Shropshire, from which several religious tracts were printed in 1774 by the Rev. John Fletcher, and in 1792 a work entitled Alexander's Feast, by Dr. Beddoes.