It will not be out of place to add a word, before leaving the Roman, in reference to letter-founders’ specimens. When printers were their own founders, the productions of their presses were naturally also the published specimens of their type. They might, like Schoeffer, in the colophon to the _Justinian_ in 1468, call attention to their skill in cutting types; or, like Caxton, print a special advertisement in a special type; or, like Aldus, put forward a specimen of the types of a forthcoming work.[94] But none of these are letter-founders’ specimens; nor was it till letter-founding became a distinct trade that such documents became necessary. England was probably behind other nations when, in 1665, the tiny specimen of Nicholas Nicholls was laid under the Royal notice. It is doubtful whether any founder before Moxon issued a full specimen of his types. He used the sheet as a means of advertising not only his types, but his trade as a mathematical instrument maker; and his specimen, taken in connection with his rules for the formation of letters, is a sorry performance, and not comparable to the Oxford University specimen, which that press published in 1693, exhibiting the gifts of Dr. Fell and Junius. Of the other English founders before 1720, no type specimen has come down to us; that shown by Watson in his _History of the Art of Printing_ being merely a specimen of bought Dutch types. Caslon’s sheet, in 1734, marked a new departure. It displayed at a glance the entire contents of the new foundry; and by printing the same passage in each size of Roman, gave the printer an opportunity of judging how one body compared with another for capacity. Caslon was the first to adopt the since familiar “Quousque tandem” for his Roman specimens. The Latin certainly tends to show off the Roman letter to best advantage; but it gives an inadequate idea of its appearance in any other tongue. “The Latin language,” says Dibdin, “presents to the eye a great uniformity or evenness of effect. The _m_ and _n_, like the solid sirloin upon our table, have a substantial appearance; no garnishing with useless {50} herbs . . to disguise its real character. Now, in our own tongue, by the side of the _m_ or _n_, or at no great distance from it, comes a crooked, long-tailed _g_, or a _th_, or some gawkishly ascending or descending letter of meagre form, which are the very flankings, herbs, or dressings of the aforesaid typographical dish, _m_ or _n_. In short, the number of ascending or descending letters in our own language—the _p_’s, _l_’s, _th_’s, and sundry others of perpetual recurrence—render the effect of printing much less uniform and beautiful than in the Latin language. Caslon, therefore, and Messrs. Fry and Co. after him,”—and he might have added all the other founders of the eighteenth century,—“should have presented their specimens of printing-types in the _English_ language; and then, as no disappointment could have