Experiments have proved conclusively that the face of a wood-cut type may be without injury impressed into lead in a state of semi-fusion, and thus produce _in creux_ an inverted image of itself in the matrix. It has also been shown that a lead matrix so formed is capable, after being squared and justified, {15} of being adapted to a mould, and producing a certain number of types in soft lead or pewter before yielding to the heat of the operation.[30] It has also been demonstrated that similar matrices formed in clay or plaster, by the application of the wood or metal models[31] while the substance is moist, are capable of similar use. Dr. Franklin, in a well-known passage of his Autobiography, gives the following account of his experiences as a casual letter-founder in 1727. “Our press,” he says, “was frequently in want of the necessary quantity of letter; and there was no such trade as that of letter-founder in America. I had seen the practice of this art at the house of James, in London; but had at the time paid it very little attention. I, however, contrived to fabricate a mould. I made use of such letters as we had for punches, founded new letters of lead in matrices of clay, and thus supplied in a tolerable manner the wants that were most pressing.”[32] M. Bernard states that in his day the Chinese characters in the Imperial printing-office in Paris were cast by a somewhat similar process. The original wooden letters were moulded in plaster. Into the plaster mould types of a hard metal were cast, and these hard-metal types served as punches to strike matrices with in a softer metal.[33] In the Enschedé foundry at Haarlem there exists to this day a set of matrices said to be nearly four hundred years old, which are described as leaden matrices from punches of copper, “suivant l’habitude des anciens fondeurs dans les premiers temps après l’invention de l’imprimerie.”[34] By {16} the kindness of Messrs. Enschedé, we are able to show a few letters from types cast in these venerable matrices. [Illustration: 1. Types cast from leaden matrices (_circ._ 1500?) now in the Enschedé foundry, Haarlem.] Lead matrices are frequently mentioned as having been in regular use in some of the early foundries of this country. A set of them in four-line pica was sold at the breaking up of James’s foundry in 1782, and in the oldest of the existing foundries to this day may be found relics of the same practice. At Lubeck, Smith informs us in 1755,[35] a printer cast for his own use, “not only large-sized letters for titles, but also a sufficient quantity of two-lined English, after a peculiar manner, by cutting his punches on wood, and sinking them afterwards into leaden matrices; yet were the letters cast in them deeper than the French generally are.”