Mr. Figgins established himself in Swan Yard, Holborn, and at the outset of his undertaking an opportunity occurred which served as largely as any other to establish his reputation as an excellent artist. This was the completion of Macklin’s _Bible_, for which, as has already been narrated, Mr. Jackson had, in 1789, cut the beautiful 2-line English Roman fount, in which the first part of the work is printed. “When Mr. Bensley had proceeded some way in the work he wished to renew the fount; but not choosing to purchase it of Mr. Caslon, the then possessor of Jackson’s matrices, he applied to Mr. Figgins to cut a fount to correspond with that he had begun upon. Mr. Figgins undertook the task; and the fount, which was a perfect imitation of the other, was put into use to begin _Deuteronomy_ about the year 1793.”[699] Of the excellence of this performance both as a facsimile and as a work of art, a reference to the splendid _Bible_[700] itself and the no less splendid edition of Thomson’s _Seasons_,[701] in which the same type was used in 1797, is the most eloquent testimony. Mr. Figgins received the honour of being named on the title-page of the latter work, which still remains one of the finest achievements of English typography.[702] His services were also employed in a similar manner to complete the Double Pica fount for R. Bowyer’s edition of _Hume_, which, it will be remembered, was in course of execution by Jackson at the time of his death. The splendid types in which these masterpieces of the typographic art were executed, established Mr. Figgins at once in all the reputation he could desire. {337} [Illustration: 77. Two-line English Roman cut by Vincent Figgins, 1792. (From the original matrices.)] In 1792, he put forward a single-leaf specimen of the 2-line English fount on its completion. In the following year, having added a “long-bodied” English and a Pica, he issued his first Specimen Book. This interesting document of five leaves (title, address, and three specimens) was printed by Bensley, and contained the following prefatory note, which will be read with interest as the first public announcement of this Foundry:―