ensued, so no imputation of deception would have attached.”[95] Several founders followed Caslon’s example by issuing their specimens on a broadside sheet, which could be hung up in a printing-office, or inset in a cyclopædia. Baskerville appears to have issued only specimens of this kind; but Caslon, Cottrell, Wilson and Fry, who all began with sheets, found it necessary to adopt the book form. These books were generally executed by a well-known printer, and are examples not only of good types, but of fine printing. Bodoni’s splendid specimens roused the emulation of our founders, and the small octavo volumes of the eighteenth century gave place at the commencement of the nineteenth to quarto, often elaborately, sometimes sumptuously got up. Mr. Figgins was the first to break through the traditional “Quousque tandem,” by adding, side by side with the Latin extract, a passage in the same-sized letter in English. But it has not been till comparatively recent years that the venerable Ciceronian denunciation has finally disappeared from English letter-founders’ specimens. ITALIC. The ITALIC letter, which is now an accessory of the Roman, claims an origin wholly independent of that character. It is said to be an imitation of the handwriting of Petrarch, and was introduced by Aldus Manutius of Venice, for the purpose of printing his projected small editions of the classics, which, either in the Roman or Gothic character, would have required bulky volumes. Chevillier informs us that a further object was to prevent the excessive number of contractions then in use, a feature which rendered the typography of the day often unintelligible, and always unsightly.[96] The execution of the Aldine Italic was entrusted {51} to Francesco da Bologna,[97] who, says Renouard, had already designed and cut the other characters of Aldus’ press. The fount is a “lower-case” only, the capitals being Roman in form. It contains a large number of tied letters, to imitate handwriting, but is quite free from contractions and ligatures. It was first used in the _Virgil_ of 1501, and rapidly became famous throughout Europe. Aldus produced six different sizes between 1501–58. It was counterfeited almost immediately in Lyons and elsewhere. The Junta press at Florence produced editions scarcely distinguishable from those of Venice. Simon de Colines cut an Italic bolder and larger than that of Aldus, and introduced the character into France about 1521, prior to which date Froben of Basel had already made use of it at his famous press. Plantin used a large Italic in his _Polyglot_, but, like many other Italics of the period, it was defaced by a strange irregularity in the slopes of the letters. The character was originally called Venetian or Aldine, but subsequently took the name of Italic in all the countries into which it travelled, except Germany, which, acting with the same independence as had been displayed towards the