SWITZERLAND early distinguished itself by the Roman letter of Amerbach of Basle, and still more so by the beautiful founts used by Froben of the same city, who between 1491 and 1527 printed some of the finest books then known in Europe. His Roman was very bold and regular. Christopher Froschouer of Zurich, about 1545, made use of a peculiar and not unpicturesque form of the Roman letter, in which the round sorts were thickened, after the Gothic fashion, at their opposite corners, instead of at their opposite sides. ENGLAND.—The Roman did not make its appearance in England till 1518, when Richard Pynson printed Pace’s _Oratio in Pace Nuperrimâ_, in a handsome letter, of which we show a facsimile at p. 93. This printer’s Norman birth, and his close relationship with the typographers of Rouen, as well as his supposed intimacy with the famous Basle typographer Froben, make it highly probable that he procured his letter abroad, or modelled it on that of some of the celebrated foreign printers of his day. The fount is about Great Primer in body, and though generally neat and bold in appearance, displays considerable irregularity in the casting, and, like most of the early Roman founts, contains numerous contractions.[84] [Illustration: 8. From Traheron’s _Exposition of St. John_. Wesel (?), 1557. Showing Roman and Black-letter intermixed.] The Roman made its way rapidly in English typography during the first half of the sixteenth century, and in the hands of such artists as Faques, Rastell, Wyer, Berthelet, and Day, maintained an average excellence. But it rapidly degenerated, and while other countries were dazzling Europe by the brilliancy of their impressions, the English Roman letter went from good to bad, and from bad to worse. No type is more beautiful than a beautiful Roman; and with equal truth it may be said, no type is more unsightly than an ill-fashioned and ill-worked Roman. While Claude Garamond[85] in France was carrying out into noble practice the theories of the form and proportion of letters set out by his master, Geofroy Tory; while the Estiennes at Paris, Sebastian Gryphe at Lyons, Froben at Basle, Froschouer at Zurich, and Christopher Plantin at Antwerp, were moulding and refining their alphabets into models which were to become {45} classical, English printers, manacled body and soul by their patents and monopolies and state persecutions, achieved nothing with the Roman type that was not retrograde. For a time a struggle appears to have existed between the Black-letter and the Roman for the mastery of the English press, and at one period the curious spectacle was presented of mixed founts of the two. We present our readers with a specimen of English printing at a foreign press in this transition period, as illustrative not only of the compromise between the two rival characters, but of the average unappetising appearance of the typography {46} of the day. Always impressionable