After serving his time, Bulmer came to London and entered the printing-office of John Bell, who was then issuing a miniature edition of the poets. A fortunate accident won him his acquaintance with Boydell and Nicol, and so led to his subsequent employment at the Shakespeare press. The Shakespeare was followed by the works of Milton in three volumes folio in 1794-5-7, and again in 1795 by the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell in quarto. In the advertisement to this work, Bulmer pointed out how much had been done by English printers within the last few years to raise the art of printing from the low depth to which it had fallen--a work in which the Shakespeare press had borne no little part. He went on to say that much pains had been taken with this edition of Goldsmith to make it a complete specimen of the arts of type and block printing. The types were Martin's, the woodcuts Bewick's, and the paper Whatman's. One copy of this book was printed on white satin, and three on English vellum. Among the books that appeared within the last five years of the century was an edition of _Lucretius_ in three volumes large quarto, which certainly ranks for beauty of type and regularity of printing with any book of that period. Like most of the works of Baskerville, this book was quite free from ornament, and claims admiration only from the excellence of the press-work. The notes were printed in double columns in small pica, the text itself in double pica. In the whole three volumes not a dozen printer's errors have been found. This work came from the press of Archibald Hamilton. Time has not dealt kindly with some of these specimens of what was called 'fine' printing. After the lapse of a century, we begin to see that though the type and press-work were all that could be desired, and placed the English printers on a level with the best of those on the Continent, there was something radically wrong with the production of illustrated books. Whether it was due to the ink, or to the paper, or, as some suppose, to insufficient drying, in all these sumptuous volumes the oil has worked out of the illustrations, leaving an ugly brown stain on the opposite pages, and totally destroying the appearance of the books. This applies not only to large and small illustrations, but in many cases to the ornamental wood blocks used for head and tail pieces. In Macklin's Bible, and in the 'Milton' printed at the Shakespeare press, this discoloration has completely ruined what were undoubtedly, when they came from the press, extremely beautiful works.