Dr. Morton’s plan being abandoned, on account of the difficulty of producing in type letters which, in the manuscript, were constantly differing in their forms, the work was entrusted to Mr. Abraham Farley, F.R.S., a gentleman of great Record learning, and who had had access to the ancient MSS. for upwards of forty years. His knowledge, however, did not induce him to differ from his original in a single instance, even when he found an apparent error; he preserved in his transcript every interlineation and contraction, and his copy was ultimately placed in Mr. Nichols’ hands. Jackson was then employed to cut the types, and successfully accomplished the difficult undertaking.[652] The work occupied ten {321} years in printing, and appeared in 1783, in two folio volumes.[653] The type was destroyed in the fire which consumed the printing-office of Mr. Nichols in 1808, previous to which, however, it was used in Kelham’s Introduction and Glossary to the _Domesday Book_ in 1788.[654] It was Jackson’s success, no doubt, in his facsimile letter for the _Domesday Book_, which led to his selection shortly afterwards by Mr. Nichols to cut the type for Dr. Woide’s[655] facsimile of the New Testament of the _Alexandrian Codex_ in the British Museum. To the history of this priceless relic reference has been made once or twice in the course of this work.[656] Only one attempt had previously been made to reproduce its character in type,—that of Dr. Patrick Young, in 1643, within a few years of the arrival of the manuscript in this country. In this letter was printed a specimen containing the first chapter of Genesis. But the project was abandoned, and the matrices, there is reason to believe, subsequently passed into Grover’s Foundry, and afterwards, through James, into the possession of Dr. Fry in 1782.[657] That Mr. Nichols was acquainted with their existence in 1778 is almost certain, since they are mentioned in Rowe Mores’ _Dissertation_, which he himself edited and annotated. But not being sufficiently exact for the purpose, and, at the same time, it being decided that the facsimile should be produced through the medium of type in preference to other process,[658] Mr. Jackson was fixed on to cut a new set of punches from the transcript made by Dr. Woide’s own hand. To this task he proved fully equal, and the work issued from Mr. Nichols’ press in 1786[659]—a splendid folio edition, worthy alike of {322} its subject and the artists who produced it. The unusual compliment was, in this instance, paid to the letter-founder of mentioning his name on the title-page as the author of the types employed in the work.