In 1798 Dr. Fry put forth proposals for publishing the important philological work on which he had for sixteen years been engaged, and which, in the following year, was issued under the title of _Pantographia_, with a dedication to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society. {307} This important work,[632] which displays great learning and research, was favourably received. It exhibits upwards of 200 alphabets, amongst which are 18 varieties of the Chaldee and no less than 39 of the Greek. Many of the letters were cut by the author expressly for the work, under the direction or with the advice of some of the most eminent scholars of the day, and not a few subsequently found a place among the specimens of the foundry. In 1799 Mr. George Knowles was admitted into partnership, and the firm became Fry, Steele and Co. A new revolution in the public taste necessitated at this stage the abandonment of the Caslon Old Style faces, and the adoption of the modern cut Roman letter then coming into vogue; and the specimens between 1800 and 1808 are interesting as marking the gradual accomplishment of this task. The specimen of 1803 showed the first of the new Romans, and in 1808 Stower’s _Printer’s Grammar_ contained the series almost complete.[633] The new style may have been considered an improvement at the time, but a later judgment has endorsed the regret with which Dr. Fry and others witnessed the then entire abandonment of the time-honoured and graceful Elzevir-cut characters of the first Caslon. Naturally conservative in most matters pertaining to his art, Dr. Fry viewed with the utmost displeasure another innovation of the same period, in the introduction of ornamental type; and to the end of his career he strenuously resisted the “pernicious fashion,” as he styled it; yielding only to the extent of one small series of flowered titling-letters, which crept into his later specimens. But, although opposed to ornaments in this form, the Type Street specimens show no lack of flowers, and Stower’s book includes a profuse specimen of these ornaments, arranged in fantastic designs by Mr. Hazard, the printer, of Bath.[634] Both Mr. Steele and Mr. Knowles appear to have retired about the year 1808, when Dr. Fry assumed the sole management of the business. In the specimen of 1816 he styles himself Letter Founder to the King and Prince {308} Regent. Soon afterwards, his own health failing, he admitted his son, Mr. Windover Fry, into partnership, and the firm became Edmund Fry and Son. The subsequent specimens of the foundry are not marked by any special feature of interest, if we except the introduction of M. Firmin Didot’s Great Primer Script in 1821, containing upwards of sixty lower-case sorts, in a system of ligatures and connectors so elaborate as to necessitate the printing of a scheme to facilitate their composition, and the manufacture of special cases to hold them.