Jenson, at Venice, appears to have cut Greek type as early as about 1470. In 1486 two Cretan printers produced respectively a Greek _Psalter_, with accents and breathings, and Homer’s _Batrachomyomachia_. It was, however, reserved to Florence to boast of the first complete edition of _Homer_, which was printed in that city in 1488. This work, one of the most glorious monuments of the typographic art, appears in a beautiful Great Primer type, of remarkable elegance and neatness, with few abbreviations. The printer was Demetrius of Crete. But it was at Venice that Greek printing was destined to reach its greatest excellence in the fifteenth century, at the press of Aldus, who in 1495 produced his famous _Aristotle_, in a beautiful letter which eclipsed all its predecessors. His fount was about a Double Pica in body, and much bolder and more imposing than any which had yet appeared, as well as being better cast and justified. The splendid Greek impressions of the elder Aldus are too well known to need further notice here. Renouard mentions nine separate founts used at this press. The fame of the Italian Greek presses early roused emulation in France. Among the first printers of Paris, however, the Greek quotations and words introduced in their works were scanty and indifferent. Gering used but a very few letters, and Jodocus Badius, in 1505, excused the poverty of his _Annotationes in Nov. Testamentum_, by pleading the paucity of his types. The early works of the first Henri Estienne were similarly defective. In 1507, however, Greek punches were cut and matrices struck by Gilles de Gourmont, and the first wholly Greek work was printed at his press in this year, being a Greek _Alphabet_, with rules for pronunciation and reading. In the same year he also printed the _Batrachomyomachia_. Greek printing, once started in Paris, made rapid progress. Jodocus Badius, Vidouvé, Colinæus, and Christian Wechel, all distinguished themselves. Geofroy Tory contributed largely to the improvement in the form of the character. But it was not till Robert Estienne, with the title of “Regius in Græcis Typographus,”[113] commenced his career, that Greek printing reached its greatest perfection in France. On the establishment of an Imprimerie Royale by Francis I,[114] Claude Garamond, the first typographical artist of his day, {59} was entrusted with the care of engraving punches and preparing matrices for three founts of Greek, about an English, Long Primer, and Double Pica in body, which henceforth became famous throughout Europe as the “Characteres Regii.”[115] These characters, modelled as to their capitals on the alphabet of Lascaris, and as to their “lower-case” and abbreviations from the beautiful Greek calligraphy of Angelus Vergetius of Candia, first appeared in the _Eusebius_, printed, in 1544,[116] by Robert Estienne, to whom the use of the types was, by virtue of his office, conceded, and who