Page:Historic printing types, a lecture read before the Grolier club of New York, January 25, 1885, with additions and new illustrations; by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914; Grolier Club.djvu/113

TYPES OF AMERICAN FOUNDERS. 109 may regard as equally narrow. The calligrapher of the middle ages, who delighted to show his skill in new forms of letters, would despise the plainness of our printed books. There are modern readers, also, who admire the freedom of the letters made by engravers ; others, again, who like the quaintness of the letters of mediaeval books, compared with which Eoman and Italic letters seem stiff, ungraceful, and Incapable of pleasing combinations. To please these tastes, and others not so severe, modern type-founders make many forms of ornamental types ; engravers and lithographers are daily devising other forms of more or less ingenuity and merit. All of them have admirers; but, though all may be useful, at least in the broad field of job printing, they ornamental are not permitted in the standard book. The world of admitted in letters is full of alphabets, and there are many of them that can be easily read, but printers and publishers and readers are fully agreed that all standard works shall be in Eoman. No publisher dares print magazines or important volumes in types that deviate from the Roman model. Whatever the subject-matter, whether for the child in his nursery or for the wise man in his study, the book must be in Roman ; for it is with types as with dress at proper times man may wear any style of dress that pleases his fancy, but when he appears in evening society it must be in the conventional suit. There is no appeal. Whatever differences of opinion may exist concerning the relative merits of old and modern types in the matter of per- modern types;