“I am very sorry I advertised your _Virgil_ to be published last month as you have not enabled me to keep my word with the public; but I hope it will not be delayed any longer, as every day you lose now the season is so far advanced, is certainly a great loss to you. I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you and it together. However, if the delay is occasioned by your making corrections, I think that a point of so much consequence, that no consideration should induce you to publish till it is quite correct. As to the ornamented paper, I will lower the price since you think it proper, but am still of opinion that it will not sell at our end of the town, tho’ for what reason I cannot imagine. . . . I like exceedingly your specimen of a _Common Prayer_, and hope you are endeavouring to get leave to print one. There is an error in the Exhortation, _shall_ for _should_. Your small letter is extremely beautiful; I wish I could advise you what to print with it. What think you of some popular French book—_Gil Blas_, _Molière_, or _Telemaque_ ? In the specimen from _Melmoth_ I think you have used too many Capitals, which is generally thought to spoil the beauty of printing; but they should never be used to adjectives, verbs, or adverbs. My best compliments attend your whole family.” At length, after repeated delays, caused mainly by the nervous fastidiousness of the printer, who even corrected his work _currenti prelo_ up to the last moment, the famous _Virgil_ appeared in 1757,[550] and with its publication Baskerville’s reputation was made. Being the earliest performance of this press, the volume possesses a peculiar interest among the productions of English typography. Opinions may differ as to some of the eulogies pronounced on it by bibliographers and bibliophiles,[551] but as a typographical curiosity,[552] and as a pioneer of fine printing in our midst, it is a work to be treasured and reverenced. {273} From a letter-founder’s point of view its chief interest consists in its being the earliest book printed in the type of the new Birmingham foundry. The fount used is a Great Primer, slender and delicate in form, combining, as Dibdin says, in a singularly happy manner, the elegance of Plantin with the clearness of the Elzevirs. The Italic letter was specially admired for its freedom and symmetry—qualities in which it excelled even the beautiful founts of Aldus and Colinæus. Baskerville’s merit met with prompt recognition in many quarters, amongst others, by the Delegates of the Oxford Press, who, in 1758 (apparently on his own application), entrusted him with the cutting and casting of a new Greek fount for their own use. A record of this important transaction remains in the following Minutes of the Delegates:―