Turning now to the processes adopted by the typographers of the more advanced school, we consider that in the first instance, although grasping the principle of the punch, the matrix and the adaptable mould, they may have made use of inferior appliances—possibly by forming their matrices in lead from wooden or leaden punches or models—advancing thence by degrees to the use of steel punches, copper matrices, and the bipartite iron mould. We hold that the variations observable in the early works of this school are due mainly to uneven casting and wear and tear of the types. As to the metal in which the type was cast, we find mention made of almost every metal, several of which, however, refer to the punches and matrices, leaving tin, lead, and antimony as the staple ingredients of the type-metal. Of the types themselves, we find these in most essential particulars to be the same as those cast at a later date. We see, however, evidence of perforated, mould-cast type, and, in the absence of a nick, a “shamfer” at the foot, from which the jet appears to have been sawn or cut, instead of being broken. We remark a great irregularity in the heights of different founts, the average of which height is beyond any modern English standard. The accidental impression of a type in two early German books, proves that about the year 1476 types were made differing only in the two points of the want of a nick and the want of a jet-break from the types of to-day. The quantity of types required by the earliest printers, we consider, would be small, since they appear in most instances to have printed only one page at a time; but the number of different sorts going to make up a fount would be very considerable, by reason of the numerous contractions, double letters and abbreviations used. Finally, we consider that the art of letter-founding rapidly reached maturity after the general diffusion of printing consequent on the sack of Mentz; and that when the writer of the _Cologne Chronicle_, in the last year of the 15th century, spoke of “the art as now generally used,” he spoke of an art which, at the close of the 19th century, has been able to improve in no essential principle on the processes first made use of by the great inventors of Typography. [Illustration] {31} [Illustration] CHAPTER I. THE ENGLISH TYPE BODIES AND FACES.