Thiboust’s quaint Latin poem on the excellence of printing,[189] though throwing little new light on the practice of the art, is worth recording here, not only for the description it gives of letter-founding in France at the time, but for the sake of the curious woodcut which accompanies it. The latter represents a round furnace in the centre of a room, surmounted by a metal pot, at which two casters are standing, with ladle and mould in hand. The moulds, of which a number are to be seen in a rack against the wall, are almost cubic in shape, and apparently without the hooks shown in Moxon’s illustration. One of the casters is holding his mould low, as in the act of casting. A workman sitting on a stool is setting up in a stick the newly-cast type from a box on the {115} floor—possibly breaking them off at the same time. Beyond is a dresser grooving out the break in a stick of types. [Illustration: 26. Letter-founding in France in 1718. (From Thiboust’s _Typographiæ Excellentia_.)] Of the portion of the poem devoted to letter-founding,[190] we venture to give the following rough translation:― {116} “The founder see, whose molten metal glows Above the blazing furnace. From the pot His ladle nimbly feeds the curious mould, Whence straight the type in perfect fashion falls. The willing servant, he, of all the Schools, Whether in Latin they would write, or Greek, Or in the Hebrew tongue their minds disclose, Or in the German. He, for all prepared, Skilful, for each his character provides. See with what art the several types are cast, Each from its parent matrix; see how bright, Trimmed by the dresser’s cunning knife, they lie. He the redundant metal first breaks off, Then on the stick in order sets the type, And with his plane their equal height assures. Such is the founder’s craft, whose arduous round Of toil ’midst ardent heats is daily found.” A still more satisfactory view of an eighteenth century foundry is to be found in the _Universal Magazine_ of 1750. This engraving, of which our frontispiece is a facsimile, represents the interior of Caslon’s foundry, with the processes of casting, breaking-off, rubbing, setting-up, and dressing, all in operation. The casting is specially interesting, in the light of Moxon’s graphic account of the attitudes and contortions of the caster. Unlike their French brethren, each of Caslon’s casters stands partitioned off from his neighbour, with a furnace and pan to himself. One of them is dipping his ladle in the pot for a new cast; the next holds his mould lowered, at the commencement of a “pour”; the third has evidently completed the upward jerk necessary to force the metal into the matrix; and the fourth, with his mould again lowered, is apparently throwing out the type and preparing for the next casting.