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/28

24 HISTORIC FEINTING TYPES. The types of Venice pre- ferred. Roman type disliked by uneducated readers. it enjoyed for many years after his death. Printers in Lyons, Paris, and in Flanders knew that they would best commend their books to literary men by their announce- ments, frequently made, that the types they used were "the true Venetian characters." It cannot be said that Jenson invented the Roman char- acter, but his models were adopted everywhere, to the suppression of all rival forms. We shall see that Jenson's forms were afterward changed and too often perverted, but the improved taste of our day shows an inclination to revert to many of his peculiarities. The superior merit of the Roman character was not, at first, conceded by printers and readers. Accepted by edu- cated men everywhere, it was disliked and rejected by common people who were just beginning to buy books. Printers who were well supplied with fonts of Black Letter intensified the prejudices of the readers by their absurd commendations of the Black Letter. It was a " sublime letter," the "most beautiful form," "unquestionably supe- rior to all other styles." Black Letter books found buyers in Italy, long after the introduction of Roman types. Even Jenson found it necessary to print popular books in Grothic letters. The most beautiful books printed in Paris, the Books of Hours, from the presses of Pigouchet and Kerver, are all in the most pointed form of G-othic character. ' The first books of the Netherlands, and of England, were in pointed letters.