learned his art in Normandy, and that the types with which his earliest work was printed were those of the Rouen printer, Hostingue. It is reasonable to suppose that English printers would endeavour, if possible, to provide themselves, not with types merely, but with matrices of the founts of their selections; and, indeed, we imagine some explanation of the marked superiority of our national typography at the close of the fifteenth century over that of half a century later, is to be found in the fact that, whereas many of the first printers used types wholly cut and cast for them by expert foreign artists, their successors began first to cast for themselves from hired or purchased matrices, and finally to cut their own punches and justify their own matrices. Printing entered on a gloomy stage of its career in England after Day’s time, {104} and as State restrictions gradually hemmed it in, crushing by its monopolies healthy competition, and by its jealousy foreign succour, every printer became his own letter-founder, not because he would, but because he must, and the art suffered in consequence. [Illustration: 23. From Jost Amman’s _Stände und Handwerker_. Frankfurt, 1568.] [Illustration: 24. Letter-founding and Printing, _circa_ 1548. (From the cut in the Harleian MSS.)] Of the operations of a sixteenth century letter-foundry, we are fortunately able to form some idea from the quaint engraving preserved to us by Jost {105} Amman in his _Book of Trades_[178] in 1568, and reproduced here. The picture represents the Frankfort founder seated at his small brick furnace, casting type in a mould. This mould differs from the modern hand-moulds in being pyramidical in shape, and holding the matrix as a fixture in its interior. One of the moulds on the shelf shows a hole in the side, into which the matrix was probably inserted. From the manner in which the caster is grasping the mould, it would seem that it was bipartite, and needed the two halves holding together during casting. The cast types lying in the bowl have “breaks” attached to them, which at that date were in all probability cast so as to be easily detached. Behind the caster are some drawers, probably intended to contain matrices, of which one or two lie on the top waiting their turn for use. On the lower of the two shelves above the furnace are some crucibles, in which the metals would be mixed before filling up the casting-pan. On the upper shelf, besides three more moulds, are some sieves, suggestive of the use of sand, either for moulding large letters, or, as Mr. Blades suggests, for running the small ingots of metal into for use in the melting-pot. The small room in which this caster is operating in all probability formed part of a printing-office; and another interesting engraving of perhaps a still earlier date, which we here reproduce from the original in the British Museum,[179] shows the two departments of the typographer’s art going on in {106} adjoining apartments.