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/77

STYLES OF OTHER BRITISH TYPE-FOUNDERS. 73 taste of the time was for sharp hair lines and light open faces, and they were obliged to conform to it. They conformed with much intelligence. The hair-line The new Scotch face. serif was connected to the body-mark by means of a bracket-like curve, supported by a sloping shoulder, which gave it strength, while it did not rob it of its old lightness and delicacy ; the round form of the Baskerville letter was preserved, and made more graceful by smoother curves; but the curves were more elliptical than round ; the letters were more closely fitted and made more compact. Here was a type which gave promise of adaptability to the best Its excellent or the cheapest books, a type probably as durable as it workmanship, was comely. The graceful appearance of the new style, as well as its superior . mechanical execution, made it popular everywhere. In France it was called ^cossais ; and the name of Scotch-face was then given by printers, too often inexactly, to every face in which bracketed serifs were joined to sharp hair lines or graceful curves. This fashion had its day. After a long trial, discreet publishers decided that although it was admirable in books of poetry and the fine arts, it was too ornate, too graceful, too feminine for books of history, science, or theology. It Not entirely was dazzling to the eye; it lacked firmness and boldness, satisfactory. Old-fashioned readers disapproved of it from the beginning of the fashion, as decidedly inferior to the style of the first Caslon. They had reason. The hair line of this Scotch face, as well as of many imitations, is almost the ideal 10