As was the case with the Roman letter, many of our printers at the close of the seventeenth century preferred the Dutch Greeks, which at that time were good, particularly those cut by the Wetsteins. Thomas James, in 1710, brought over the matrices of four founts from Vosken’s foundry at Amsterdam. In 1700, Cambridge University, still badly off for Greek, made an offer for the purchase of a fount of the King’s Greek at Paris; but withdrew on the French Academy insisting as a condition that every work printed should bear the imprint, “Characteribus Græcis e Typographeo Regio Parisiensi.” The large number of ligatures and abbreviations in the Greek of that day made the production of a fount a serious business. The Oxford Augustin Greek comprised no fewer than 354 matrices, and the Great Primer as many as 456, and the Pica 508; Fournier, however, went beyond all these, and showed a fount containing 776 different sorts! The impracticability of such enormous founts brought about a gradual reduction of the Greek typographical ligatures—a reform for which the Dutch founders, under the guidance of Leusden, deserve the chief credit. Fournier, in 1764, stated that for some years previously, in Holland, Greek printing had been carried on with the simple letters of the alphabet. Wilson’s beautiful Double Pica Greek,[121] used in the Glasgow _Homer_ of 1756, was in its day the finest Greek fount our country had ever seen. A new departure, however, was initiated by the production, in 1763, of Baskerville’s Greek fount[122] for the Oxford _New Testament_. The letter is neat, but stiff and cramped, and apparently formed on an arbitrary estimate of conventional taste, and without reference to any accepted model. The fount was praised, and provoked imitation. Baskerville’s apprentice, Martin, produced a letter still less Greek than his master’s, and the general tendency was countenanced by the form of Bodoni’s types, which were so much admired in this country at the close of the century. A reaction, however, had begun before Bodoni’s time. The Glasgow Greek kept its place in Wilson’s specimens; and Jackson, encouraged by the younger Bowyer’s remark, that the Greek types in common use “were no more Greek {62} than they were English,” cut a beautiful Pica about 1785 for his rising foundry. Early in the nineteenth century, a new fashion of Greek, for which Porson was sponsor and furnished the drawings, came into vogue, and has remained the prevailing form to this day. It may be doubted if the Porsonian letter would be recognised by an ancient Greek scribe as the character of his native land; but at any rate it is neat, elegant, and legible, and dispenses with all useless contractions and ligatures. In taking leave of this subject, it would be an omission not to mention the most beautiful little fount in which Pickering printed his _Homer_, in 1831. Probably no finer masterpiece of minute Greek printing exists anywhere. HEBREW.