But the art of the founder-engraver was destined to specialise itself. There were artisans in this branch, and among them in France, in the fifteenth century, Simon de Collines, who engraved good Roman characters about 1480. Later was Claude Garamond, of Paris, who died about 1561, a pupil of Geoffroy Tory, the most celebrated of all of them; Tory definitely proscribed the Gothic character, of which Vostre and Verard had made constant use. Garamond worked in this way, producing with microscopical precision new letters, among others those of Robert Estienne, the most marvellous and the most distinct. It was he who was charged by Francis I. to form the celebrated royal Greek types. He assisted in getting up the _Champfleury_ of Geoffroy Tory. On his death William Lebé succeeded him, and inherited his punches. Lebé engraved by preference Hebrew characters, of which he made a specialty. His travels to Rome and Venice had given him a singular value in his art; and when he died about the end of the century, he was incontestably the first cutter of Oriental characters in the whole world. Philip II. of Spain had begged him to engrave the letters of the Bible of which Plantin had undertaken the impression, and Francis I. had charged him to make types for the Estiennes. At the commencement of the seventeenth century we find James Sanlecque, pupil of Lebé, and his son. During this period several women succeeded their husbands as type-founders. In the eighteenth century Philip Grandjean, an artist who was royal printer to Louis XIV., was keeper of the foundry afterwards united, in 1725, to the Royal Printing House; Fournier succeeded the Lebés, then P. S. Fournier the younger, who engraved with great success. In our days we have seen above the Didots themselves working their punches; and one of them, Henri, founded microscopical characters for a La Rochefoucauld about the middle of the nineteenth century. We have referred to English type-founders of the eighteenth century in Chapter V. The type, or character used in printing, is a composition of lead and pure antimony, which, melted, form a resisting and at the same time supple mixture. Lead alone would be crushed, and the first printers often suffered in making their experiments. The proportion of the mixture is four of lead to one of antimony. The matrix is combined in such manner that the _eye_--that is to say, the part of the character intended to produce the impression--and also the shank intended to hold the letter are cast together. The letters, once founded according to their different forms, are afterwards disposed in boxes with compartments, or "cases." These cases serve to classify the character by letters, italics, capitals, lower case, punctuations, accents, etc.