The execution, particularly of the Roman fount, is very poor, and one wonders, in examining it and comparing it with the recently completed _Polyglot_, at the artist’s claim “to considerable skill in cutting and casting of faire characters.” It is possible, however, that the unusual minuteness of the type may have been held to be a merit compensating for defects in execution. And as none of the founts are known to have been used in any other work of the time, it may be presumed the letters were cut specially for this specimen. The Roman and Greek founts are Pearl in body, and the Orientals Nonpareil, and display the text “Vivas o rex in perpetuum” in Latin, Greek, Hebrew (with points), Syriac, Samaritan, Ethiopic and Arabic. This loyal aspiration, effusively dedicated as “the prayer of the devoted heart, and the specimen of the Art of the least of the subjects of the greatest of the Kings,” is surrounded by a neat flower-border (also Nonpareil in body), and printed somewhat roughly on coarse paper. Despite its defects, it appears to have found favour with the august personage to whom it was offered, as we find, on January 29th, 1667, a minute of a “Warrant for swearing Nicholas Nicholls, Letter Founder to His Majesty.”[331] [Illustration: 43. Specimen of Nicholas Nicholls, 1665. (From the original in the Record Office.)] Of the subsequent operations of Nicholls we know very little.[332] He probably inherited his father’s foundry, and cast from his matrices. The NICHOLS whom {179} Mores mentions as having founded in 1690,[333] could hardly (if the date be correctly given) be the same man who was a practised letter-founder in 1637. To this last-named founder no doubt belongs the fount of Great Primer Roman and Italic acquired by the Oxford University Press, which had the unenviable distinction of being designated in their Specimen of 1695, as “cut by Mr. Nichols—not good.”[334] * * * * * The following is the only specimen we have to note in this place:― (1665). Specimen sheet of minute printing in several languages, addressed to the King by Nicholas Nicholls, Letter Founder. . . . . (_State Papers, Domestic_, 1665, vol. 142, No. 174.) [Illustration] {180} [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. JOSEPH MOXON, 1659. Joseph Moxon, whose distinction it is to have been the first practical English writer on the mechanics of typography, was born at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, on August 8, 1627, and appears to have been brought up as a mathematical instrument maker, in which profession he showed himself highly proficient. In the year 1659, being either already settled in the metropolis, or having come thither for the purpose, he added to his stated business that of a typefounder, in which, according to Mores, he continued till 1683.