The first specimen of Hebrew printing in England occurs in Wakefield’s _Oratio de laudibus et utilitate trium linguarum_, printed by De Worde in 1524, where a few words appear, rudely cut on wood. In the same work the author complained that he was compelled to omit a third part, because the printer had no Hebrew types. Hebrew words cut in wood are also used in Humfrey’s _Life of Bishop Jewell_, printed by John Day in 1573; and Todd, in his _Life of Walton_, mentions a work of Dr. Peter Baro on _Jonah_, printed at the same press in 1579, in the preface to which occur several verses of Hebrew. As late as 1603 Dibdin points out that in a poem, published at Oxford, composed by Dr. Thorne, Regius Professor of Hebrew at that University, a phrase in Hebrew is added, with the remark, “Interserenda hoc in loco . . . sed enim Typographo deerant characteres.” Todd, however, mentions a work printed at Oxford in 1597, in which Hebrew type is used, while a translation from _S. Chrysostom_, of John Willoughbie, printed by Barnes in 1602, shows two distinct founts in use. The first English book in which any quantity of Hebrew type was made use of was Dr. Rhys’s _Cambro-brytannicæ Cymræcæve linguæ institutiones_, printed by Thomas Orwin in 1592. Minsheu’s _Ductor in Linguas_, in 1617, printed by John Browne, shows Hebrew which serves not only for its own language, but also for the Syriac. And in 1621 John Bill used a newer and better letter for printing Dr. Davies’s _Antiquæ linguæ Britannicæ . . rudimenta_. The Hebrew fount made use of in Walton’s _Polyglot_ in 1657 was probably the first important fount cut and cast in this country; and, as we shall have occasion to notice, was found fault with by the critics of that great undertaking. Oxford received a great and small Hebrew[126] among the matrices presented to her by Dr. Fell; and both there and in London several Hebrew works were printed at the close of the seventeenth century, although none of striking importance. It is significant of the superior reputation of the Oxford Hebrew, that the Hebrew and Chaldæan versions in the _Oratio Dominica_ of 1700 were among the versions printed for the London publisher of that work in the University types. Thomas James, although he visited Amsterdam in 1710, at that time the centre of the best {65} Hebrew printing in Europe, failed to secure any matrices; and most of those which subsequently were added to his foundry appear to have been cut by English founders. Among them were four founts of Rabbinical Hebrew,[127] for which character there existed no matrices in England in Walton’s time, as he was compelled to cut the alphabet shown in his Prolegomena in wood. Mores counted as many as twenty-three different founts in James’s foundry in his day, eight of which were with points, the remainder without. For those without points it was early the practice to cast points on a minute body, to be worked in a separate line below the letter.