DIAMOND was unknown in England until the close of last century, when Dr. Fry cut a fount which he claimed to be the smallest ever used, and to get in “more even than the famous Dutch Diamond.” This Dutch fount was of some antiquity, having been cut by Voskens about 1700. Previous to this, Van Dijk had cut a letter on a body below Pearl, called Robijn, a specimen of which appears on Daniel Elzevir’s sheet in 1681. M. Henri Didot, however, eclipsed all these minute-bodied founts by a Semi-nonpareil in 1827. * * * * * It now remains to trace briefly the origin and development of the leading type-faces used in English Typography. I.—ROMAN. To trace the history of the Roman character would almost require a _résumé_ of the works of all the greatest printers in each country of Europe. It must suffice to point out very briefly the changes it underwent before and after reaching England. ITALY.—The Italian scribes of the fifteenth century were famous for their beautiful manuscripts, written in a hand entirely different from the Gothic of the Germans, or the Secretary of the French and Netherlands calligraphers. It was only natural that the first Italian printers, when they set up their press at Subiaco, should form their letters upon the best model of the national scribes. The _Cicero de Oratore_ of 1465[76] is claimed by some as the first book {41} printed in Roman type, although the character shows that the German artists who printed it had been unable wholly to shake off the traditions of the pointed Gothic school of typography in which they had learned their craft. The type of the _Lactantius_, and the improved type of the works subsequently printed by Sweynheim and Pannartz at Rome, as well as those of Ulric Hahn, were, in fact, Gothic-Romans; and it was not till Nicholas Jenson, a Frenchman, in 1470, printed his _Eusebii Præparatio_ at Venice, that the true Roman appeared in Italy, which was destined to become the ruling character in European Typography. Fournier and others have considered that Jenson derived his Roman letter from a mixture of alphabets of various countries;[77] but it is only necessary to compare the _Eusebius_ with the Italian manuscripts of the period, to see that no such elaborate selection of models was necessary or likely. The claims of Italy in the matter of Roman type have of late years been somewhat seriously challenged by the researches of M. Madden, who in a series of remarkable studies on the typographical labours of the Frères de la Vie Commune at Wiedenbach, near Cologne, contends that the Roman type known as the fount of the “[symb] bizarre,” on account of the peculiar form of that capital letter, was used in that monastery in 1465[78]; and that among the typographical fugitives from Mentz at that time dwelling in Cologne, there is little doubt that Jenson was here initiated into the art which he subsequently made famous. The