In England it was not till early in the seventeenth century that Arabic printing began to be practised. In Wakefield’s _Oratio de laudibus . . trium linguarum, Arabicæ, Chaldaicæ et Hebraicæ_, printed by De Worde in 1524, a few rude Arabic letters are introduced, cut in wood. In Minsheu’s _Ductor in Linguas_, 1617, the Arabic words are printed in Italic characters. Laud’s gift of Oriental MSS. to Oxford in 1635, and the appointment of an Arabic lecturer, was the first real incentive to the cultivation of the language by English scholars. Previous to this, it is stated that the Raphlengius Arabic press at Leyden had been purchased by the English Orientalist, William Bedwell; but if brought to this country, it does not appear that it was immediately made use of.[129] The Arabic words in Thomas Greave’s oration, _De Linguæ Arabicæ Utilitate_, printed at Oxford in 1639, were written in by hand; and the same author, when publishing his _Elementa Linguæ Persicæ_ at the press of James Flesher at London, in 1649, explained in his preface that his work had been ready for publication nine years before, but having no types with which to print it, it had been delayed. A year earlier, in 1648, Miles Flesher, predecessor to James and one of the Star Chamber printers, had published in the same type, and at the same press, a work entitled _De Siglis Arabum et Persarum Astronomis_. James Flesher was the printer who printed in his own types the original specimen-page of the London _Polyglot_ in 1652. His Arabic, however, is a smaller character than that subsequently made use of by Roycroft for this grand work. Dr. Fell’s gift of matrices to Oxford in 1667 included a fount of Arabic,[130] which appeared in the specimen of the foundry, and was used also in the _Oratio Dominica_ of 1700. Prior to this, however, Pocock’s _Carmen Tograi_ was printed at Oxford by Hall in 1661, “Typis Arabicis Academicis,” in a letter differing both from Flesher’s {67} and Dr. Fell’s. In 1721, William Caslon cut for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge the fount of Arabic for the _Psalter_ of 1725, and the _Testament_ of 1727. This fount,[131] with those of Oxford and the _Polyglot_, shared among them nearly all the Arabic printing in England for about a century later, when new faces began to be cut or imported. The _Polyglot_ Arabics passed through Grover’s foundry into that of Thomas James, at the sale of which, in 1782, they were bought in an imperfect state by Dr. Edmund Fry for the Type Street foundry. Mores mentions three other Arabic founts cut by English founders, but includes them among the lost matrices in his collection. SYRIAC.