In considering what specimens of printing to collect Englishmen who have been accustomed for more than two centuries to nothing but roman types may well be bewildered, as they look through any volume of facsimiles, by the extraordinary variety of the founts. The main reasons for this variety may be sought (1) in the dependence of the first printers on the styles of writing which they found in vogue at the time, and in the countries and towns where they made their ventures; and (2) in the different styles considered appropriate to different classes of books--Latin and vernacular, liturgical and secular, etc. Even now, when bookhands can hardly be said to exist, the varieties of handwriting are endless, and there are strongly marked differences between those of one country and another. In the fifteenth century, when there was less intercommunication between distant countries, the differences were even greater. As to this, however, it is possible to make some distinctions. The unifying effect of the Church is seen in the smaller range of variations in the books for liturgical use, and the fellowship of scholars exercised at least some influence in the same direction. In Italy, the home of ancient learning, the aristocratic bookhand was the fine round minuscules which had been evolved, by a conscious antiquarian revival, from the bookhand of the twelfth century, itself a revival of the Carlovingian bookhand of the eighth and ninth. Sweynheym and Pannartz, being Germans, failed in the first instance to realize the hopelessness of seeking scholarly favour with any other kind of character, and their Subiaco books are printed in a light and pleasing gothic much admired by William Morris, and used by Mr. St. John Hornby for his splendid Ashendene Dante. When they started afresh at Rome in 1467 they gave up their gothic fount and used instead a fine roman character noticeable for its use of the long _[s]_ at the end of words, a peculiarity often found in Italian manuscripts of this period. The early printers at Venice made no false start, but all used roman characters from the outset, Venetian gothic type making its first appearance in 1472. That gothic type was used at all in Italy was due partly to the difficulty found in cutting very small roman type, so that gothic was used for economy, partly to the advantages of the heavy gothic face when a contrast was needed between text and commentary.