1834. A Selection from the Specimen Book of Alex. Wilson and Sons, Glasgow Letter Foundry, Great New Street, Gough Square, London, 1834. 4to. . . . . (Caslon.) [Illustration] {268} [Illustration] CHAPTER XIII. JOHN BASKERVILLE, 1752. JOHN BASKERVILLE was Born at Wolverley, in The county of Worcestershire, in the year 1706. He began life as a footman to a clergyman, and at the age of twenty became a writing-master in Birmingham. This occupation he appears to have supplemented by, or exchanged for, that of engraving inscriptions on tombstones and memorials; a profession in which he is said to have shown much talent.[543] In 1737 he was still engaged in teaching writing at a school in the Bull-Ring, Birmingham, and is said to have written an excellent hand. His artistic tastes led him afterwards to enter into the japanning business, in which he prospered and became possessed of considerable property. He purchased an estate on the outskirts of the town, to which he gave the name of Easy Hill; and here built a handsome house, in which he carried on his business, and lived in considerable style.[544] [Illustration: 70. From _Hansard_.] About the year 1750 his inclination for letters induced him to turn his {269} attention to typography, and to add to his business of a japanner that of a printer.[545] The condition of printing in England at this period was still anything but satisfactory. Fine printing was an art unknown; and although under the influence of Caslon’s genius the press was recovering from the reproach under which it lay at the beginning of the century, England was still very far behind her neighbours both in typographical enterprise and achievement. Once more it was left to an outsider to initiate the new departure; and as in 1720 the art of letter-founding had been roused from its lethargy by the genius of a gunsmith’s apprentice, so in 1750 the art of printing was destined to find its deliverer in the person of an eccentric Birmingham japanner. Whatever may be the judgment of posterity as to the merits of Baskerville’s performances, to him is undoubtedly due the honour of the first real stride towards a higher level of national typography; an example which became the incentive to that outburst of enthusiasm—that “matrix and puncheon mania,” as Dibdin terms it—which brought forth the series of splendid typographical productions with which the eighteenth century closed and the nineteenth opened. Baskerville’s first essay in his new enterprise was deliberate, and gave ample proof of the enthusiasm of the man. Six years elapsed before any work issued from his press. During that period he is said to have sunk upwards of £600[546] in the effort to produce a type sufficiently perfect to satisfy his fastidious taste. He engaged the best punch-cutters that could be had,[547] in addition to which he made his own moulds, chases, ink, presses, and, indeed, almost the entire apparatus of the art.