Turning now to Moxon’s account of English letter-founding as it was in his day, we find no lack of detail as to every branch of the art and every appliance in use by the artist. It is not our purpose here to follow these descriptions further than as they give a general idea of the practice and method of letter-founding two centuries ago,—a practice and method which, as we have said, existed long before his day, and were destined to be in common use for nearly a century and a half after. We shall best indicate the processes and appliances he describes by giving a brief analysis of that portion of his book which is {108} devoted to the mechanics of letter-founding,[183] reserving for a later chapter a general summary of the complete work. Naturally beginning with punch-cutting, he first describes in detail the various tools made use of by the engraver, viz., the forge, the using file, the flat gauge, the sliding gauges, the face gauges, the Italic and other standing gauges, the liner, the flat table, the tach, and other furniture of the bench. Every one of these tools is to be found in the punch-cutter’s room of the present day, scarcely changed in form or use from the woodcuts which illustrate Moxon’s description. Turning from the tools to the workman, Moxon next proceeds to describe his choice of steel for the punches; the making and striking of the counter-punches on the polished face of the punch; the “graving and sculping” of the insides of the letters; together with certain rules in the use of the gravers, small files, etc., employed in this delicate operation. With regard to the process described as counter-punching, it is necessary to admit that this constituted a refinement of the art of punch-cutting apparently unknown to the first printers. The freedom of their letters, consequent on the imitation of handwriting, which served as their earliest models, makes it evident that they cut by eye, rather than by mathematical rule. But as typography gradually made models for itself, the best artists, particularly those who aimed at producing regular Roman and Italic letters, discovered the utility and expediency of arriving at uniformity in design and contour, by the use of these counter-punches, which stamped on to the steel the impress of the hollow portions of the letters they were about to cut, leaving it to the hand of the engraver to cut round these hollows the form of the required character. The punches being cut, finished and hardened, Moxon next deals with the various parts of the type-mould, describing in turn the “Making” of the mould: The Carriage,[184] (a); the Body, (b); the Male Gauge, (c); the Mouthpiece, (d e); the Register, (f i); the Female Gauge, (g); the Hag, (h); the Bottom Plate, (_a_); the Wood, (_b_); the Mouth, (_c_); the Throat, (_d_); the Pallat, (_e_ _d_); the Nick, (_f_); the Stool, (_g_); the Spring, (_h_). [Illustration: 25. Letter-founding in 1683. (From Moxon’s _Mechanick Exercises_.)