cast twenty Black-letter types from one mould and matrix, and let him take a proof of the types so produced in juxtaposition. The result of such an experiment would lead him to cease once and for all to wonder at irregularities observable in the Gutenberg _Bible_, or the Mentz _Psalter_, or the _Catholicon_. With regard to the metal in which the earliest types were cast, we have more or less information afforded us in the colophons and statements of the printers themselves; although it must be borne in mind that the figurative language in which these artists were wont to describe their own labours is apt occasionally to lead to confusion, as to whether the expressions used refer to the punch, the matrix, or the cast types. We meet almost promiscuously with the terms,—“ære notas,” “æneis formulis,” “chalcographos,” “stanneis typis,” “stanneis formulis,” “ahenis formis,” “tabulis ahenis,” “ære legere,” “notas de duro orichalco,” etc. We look in vain for “plumbum,” the metal one would most naturally expect to find mentioned. The word _æs_, though strictly meaning bronze, is undoubtedly to be taken in its wider sense, already familiar in the fifteenth century, of metal in the abstract, and to include, at least, the lead, tin, or pewter in which the types were almost certainly cast. The reference to copper and bronze might either apply to the early punches or the later matrices; but in no case is it probable that types were cast in either metal. Padre Fineschi gives an interesting extract from the cost-book of the Ripoli press, about 1480,[40] by which it appears that steel, brass, copper, tin, lead, and iron wire were all used in the manufacture of types at that period; the first two probably for the mould, the steel also for the punches, the copper for the matrices, the lead and tin for the types, and the iron wire for the mould, and possibly for stringing together the perforated type-models. It is probable that an alloy was early introduced; first by the addition to the lead of tin and iron, and then gradually improved upon, till the discovery of {20} antimony at the end of the fifteenth century[41] supplied the ingredient requisite to render the types at once tough and sharp enough for the ordeal of the press. There is little doubt that at some time or other every known metal was tried experimentally in the mixture; but, from the earliest days of letter-casting, lead and tin have always been recognised as the staple ingredients of the alloy; the hard substance being usually either iron, bismuth, or antimony. * * * * *