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/54

50 HISTOBIC FEINTING TYPES. Types of Plantln. The types of the Plantin foundry were not exclusively Flemish. His Eoman types by Flemish designers have no local or national features. As a Frenchman, his tastes inclined to the French designers Granjon and Le Be. He also had some fonts cut in Germany. VII English Black Letter. Types of Caxton. Bee page 51. I NGLISH printing, unlike that of France, Italy, or Grermany, began with a book in its own ver- nacular; but its first book, the "Recuyell of the Histories of Troy," was printed not in Eng- land, but in the Netherlands, by William Caxton, about 1474. The types of this book, as well as of the second, " The GTame and Playe of the Chesse," also by Caxton, are unlike the usual English form of Black Letter. They closely resemble the types used by John Brito, of Bruges, in 1481, of which a fac-simile is appended. Resemblance may also be traced in comparing these types with those attributed to Colard Mansion, another printer of Bruges. "Whether Caxton made the types he afterward used in Eng- land, or had them made in the Netherlands, is not positively known, but he always preferred the Flemish form of letters.