Chapter V (2)

The signature was put unhandily in the center of the line, making it difficult to be seen by gatherer or collator. Modern usage now requires that the signature be more conveniently placed for inspection, near the beginning of the white line. A recent fashion is to put the signature near the edge of the tail, so that it can be cut off by the binder. Another fad is to suppress all signatures. This is recommended because signatures are not now found in early manuscripts, but Blades has shown in his essay on this subject that they were always used by all writers of manuscript books, and that they do not show because they were put at the foot of the page and were afterward trimmed off in binding.

220. EMPHASIS. The remarks in the fifth paragraph place Moxon before us as a man who had his heart in his trade. The duty of a compositor, “to make the meaning of his Author intelligent to the Reader,” and “his Work shew graceful to the Eye, and pleasant in Reading,” is pointedly stated. His methods were well adapted for the time and for prevailing typographic fashions. He confesses that the “mode of ordering Titles varies; as may be seen by comparing the Title Pages of every twenty years: Therefore a Lasting Rule cannot be given for the ordering them: only what has been said in general concerning Emphasis.” To suit the taste of that time, print must have emphasis, and plenty of it. Every page was peppered with italic; important nouns and verbs and some that are not important must begin with a capital. For the title-page and the running title roman capitals were not bold or black enough. Recourse was had to black-letter. That there was some system, or attempt at system, in this conglomerate of styles is probable, but Moxon has not explained his rules. We know only that the style of this book is not uniform. A proof-reader of our time who attempted to make it uniform would score every page.

The fashion of displaying print with italic and capital letters died hard. More than a hundred years passed before readers discovered that too much emphasis in the text defeated its purpose, and made the text really harder to be read. Not even yet are all publishers and printers able to see that there should be a difference in the treatment of a poster to be read across the street and of a title-page to be held in the hand; and that there is but little more reason for classifying some words of a title in bold display-lines, and others in petty catch-lines of obscure small capitals, than there would be in treating the words of a sentence in the text in a similar manner.

The uncouthness of many of the titles of the seventeenth century is wrongly supposed by some critics to show the vanity of the printer, who wished to display, as well as he could, the extent of his collection. This supposition has no good foundation. The printer of that time did not have types enough for the needs of title-pages. Between pica and canon were only six distinct bodies and faces of roman letter, and they were rarely of uniform face. There should have been at least a dozen. These types were inelastic, and could not be neatly compressed or expanded to fit the words of every line. The prominent word or words selected by the author for a leading line might be too few or too many to fill that line. All the printer could do was to space out the letters of a short line, or divide words in the over-long line and put them in two lines. The words had to be accommodated to the type. It was for this reason that large roman lower-case, black-letter, and italic were so freely used. Moxon showed good sense in his preference for capital letters, for “Capitals express Dignity where-ever they are Set, and Space and Distance also implies stateliness.” Capitals were then made to one square standard form, and were really unfit for more than half the title-pages for which they had to be used. The variety of large roman capitals provided by modern type-founders is better now than it was two centuries ago, yet it is still imperfect. We have a greater variety of roman faces and more sizes, but not one of them is properly graduated in the larger bodies, as they should be, by a difference of three points only.

The mechanical directions concerning petty details of composition seem needlessly minute, but most of them are good, and are obeyed to this day.

232. OF IMPOSING. As the sheet to be printed in 1683 was always of small size, imposing was a comparatively simple process. But four foldings were made,--folio, quarto, octavo, and twelves,--all of them clearly illustrated by the plates. Some of the simple rules that our author lays down have been unwisely omitted in some modern printers’ grammars, viz: An even and an odd page always stand together; the folios of the two pages that stand together make, in their addition, one more than the number of pages in that form.

238. PLANING DOWN. The instruction about this duty is needed more now than it was then. Our author recommends that projecting type be planed down with knocks on the planer from the closed fist, or with the head of the shooting-stick. Our larger forms require more force, but too much force is often given. The pounding of a form after it has been locked-up with furious blows from a heavy mallet is not warranted.

239. LOCKING-UP. His process of locking-up is not so good. He advises the tightening of each page by the side-stick before that page is tightened at the foot. This indicates the commonness of slack spacing and line justification, for which he suggests the remedy of chewed paper forced into the slack line at the point of a bodkin! He confesses, however, that this is a botchy expedient. The frequent hanging or inward bowing of a page at its foot is usually produced by over-tight locking-up of the page at the side before locking-up the foot.

242. CORRECTING. As proofs could not be taken on galleys, all correction had to be done on the stone, and this was done as it is now, with the destructive bodkin. Unusual tolerance seems to have been given to the practice of overrunning matter in the form--a practice sure to make bad justification.

260. OF THE CORRECTOR AND HIS OFFICE. Moxon requires the corrector to be well skilled in “Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriack, Caldæ, French, Spanish, Italian, High Dutch, Saxon, Low Dutch, Welch, &c.” Nor is this all. “He ought to be very knowing in Derivations and Etymologies of Words, very sagacious in Pointing, skilful in the Compositers whole Task and Obligation, and endowed with a quick Eye to espy the smallest Fault.” One may rightfully doubt that any reader permanently employed by any master-printer of the old time had one half of these accomplishments. Moxon’s ideal of a corrector seems to have been based on the tradition that learned men had been employed by Christopher Plantin of Antwerp, and the Stephens of Paris. His error was that he mistook their principal duty, which was not so much to correct errors in proof as to prepare copy after its diligent collation with earlier editions or little-known manuscripts of merit. Scholarly work was cheap. Plantin paid his principal correctors lower wages than his compositors. That these correctors did a deal of scholarly work is not to be questioned, yet they overlooked many typographical errors. The scholarly preparer of copy and the editorial and critical proof-reader of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are now extinct. No living master-printer can afford to pay for the services of even a presuming successor to any one of these worthies. He has to be content with the proof-reader who is “very knowing in Derivations and Etymologies, and sagacious in Pointing.”

The signs or marks then used for the correction of proof are fewer in number, but are substantially the same as those in use now.

266. ALTERATIONS. The admonition to the author to deliver his copy perfect, and not to hope that he can mend it in proof without additional expense, is an intimation that badly prepared copy is quite as old as printing.

270. THE FITTING OF THE OLD HAND-PRESS. This section gives us a curious insight into the defects of the early hand-press. The smearing of tenons with soap or grease; the bracing up of the cheeks, head, and cap, with beams; “the crazy make of the Winter,” or the resist to downward impression; “the Under-laying of the Feet”--all these make one doubt whether this press was really “invented upon mature consideration of Mechanick Powers, deducted from Geometrick Principles.”

275. THE BEDDING OF THE STONE as here described was in bran, but plaster of Paris was sometimes used.

The pouring of water from a sponge on the face of the stone, to see whether it had a “propensitude” for one side more than the other, was the substitute for a spirit-level.

278. OF HANGING THE PLATEN. The platen was suspended by whip-cords from hooks. The spindle was steadied in its action by the guide-rods attached to the hose. The adjustment of the whip-cords to the hose, so that they would not be unevenly strained when the spindle descended, was a nice operation that was not always done with accuracy. When unevenly hung the platen gave untrue impression.

281. JUSTIFYING THE HEAD, as here described, was the repacking of the mortises with felt, pasteboard, and scabbard, so that the resist to the impression should be uniform. The mechanic who carefully reads these descriptions of the construction and operation of the press must wonder at the ingenuity of these cross-purposes. The press was made to give impression upon the paper overlying the types, and it must have been intended that the pressure exerted should be confined almost exclusively to the form of types. It should have been rigid and inflexible in every part where pressure might be lost. But we here see that provision was made in the beginning for the escape of the force exerted. Not one tenth of it was felt upon the type. Nine tenths of that force leaked out in the fittings, and really contributed to the needless wearing of elastic or shackly-fitted parts of the press. In important joints one finds elasticity where there should have been rigidity, as well as compressibility in the bed of bran under the stone, in the loosely tenoned head and winter, and in the swinging platen.

287. Additional elasticity was given by the use of a blanket in two folds, or a doubled blanket.

288. MAKING REGISTER. The rude manner in which forms were sent to press is here shown by the directions to the pressman to correct them when out of register from half a nonpareil to a long-primer! He is ordered first to unlock the form and try to get the pages in register by changing the quoins, or by varying the pressure on them, which frequently produced a twisting of the cross-bars. If this expedient did not serve, then the pressman must put in or take out furniture until the pages were in parallel. This was bad practice. The proper usage now is for the pressman to return a crooked form to the compositor, and require him to make the change. Alterations of margins in crooked type-forms should be made on the imposing-stone, and not on the bed of the press.

291. THE UNDERLAYING of wood letters or engravings of any kind that are too low to receive impression is here made another duty of the compositor; but the underlaying or overlaying of types in masses or in patches to correct inequalities of impression is nowhere advised. The spongy blankets were the first and last resort for the correction of this fault.

319. WORKING AT PRESS. Two pressmen were needed for its efficient service: one to ink the type, one to put on the sheet, print it, and take it from the tympan. It was intended that they should be of equal ability, so that they could do either kind of work. The proper product of the press so manned was put at the high standard of a token an hour, or two hundred and forty sheets printed on one side. The work-day was never less than twelve hours, sometimes more. The press was of small size, yet it required much activity to pull a token in one hour, for two pulls of the bar had to be made on each side of the sheet. In the middle of every ream the paper-maker put a cross slip of white paper as a mark or token that at this point one half-ream ended and the other half-ream began. Printers of our time continue the use of the word token as a measure of their work. The full ream printed on both sides is rated as four tokens.

COMPOSITION INKING-ROLLERS came in with cylinder printing-machines. The success of the new machines depended on the rollers. According to Hansard, they were first made by Forster of Weybridge, England, who derived his knowledge of the value of a mixture of glue and molasses as a receiver and transferrer of ink from the Staffordshire potteries, where it was used as an aid in the decoration of crockery.

The first printer in the United States to use composition rollers was Jonas Booth of New York, who made them in 1827.

328. PRINTING IN RED. This paragraph 16 requires careful reading for a clear understanding of the crudity of the old method of printing in red and black. The pressman unlocked the form and picked out all words to be printed in red, filling up the vacant spaces with quadrats. He then printed the black form in the usual way. This done, he again unlocked the form and withdrew the quadrats that had been used to fill the spaces to be occupied by the words in red. At the bottom of each vacated space he put in bits of scabbard as underlays for the types in red. The thickness of the scabbards is not specified, but it must be understood that they projected a nonpareil or more above other types. The form was then locked up, the red words being in their proper places. A new frisket was cut for this red form, and the red ink was beaten only on the types for red ink that projected above their mates. If the inking-balls slipped and inked any other part of the form, the sheet was protected from smear by the new frisket that admitted through it only the types intended for red. This treatment secured exact register (provided the paper had not shrunk in drying), but the rudely cut scabbards were an uncertain and variable support for the types, and usually made uneven printing. The caution to pull lightly and not print too hard was needed, for the difficulty of fairly inking and smoothly printing types so treated cannot be overrated.

331. PRINTING IN GOLD. Equally unworkmanlike, to our notion, are the directions about printing names in gold and silver. For this neither chase nor press was provided. The type as set in the stick was coated with hard varnish, and then pressed with the hands on wet paper against a blanket on the correcting-stone. This done, the gold or silver leaf was gently pressed on the print!

356. THE CHAPEL. The common belief that the word “chapel” as the trade name of an association of printers in a printing-house is as old as Caxton, and that it was so given from a chapel attached to “the almonesrye at the reed pale” in Westminster Abbey, in or near which Caxton did his work, finds no warrant from Moxon. His explanation is more reasonable: “... some great Churchman, or men, ... for the Books of Divinity that proceeded from a Printing-house, gave it the Reverend Title of Chappel.” I find no mention in any book of earlier date of the word chapel as a synonym for a fraternity of printers. Although England is regarded as the birthplace of guilds and fraternities, there is no old record of any association of printers as printers only. The Company of Stationers was an association dominated by booksellers who were more intent on getting and holding patents and privileges for the sale of books than on improving or developing typography. Roger L’Estrange, the “surveyor of the Imprimerys,” writing in 1663, said: “The stationers have subjected the Printers to be absolutely their slaves by so increasing their number that one half must either play the knave or starve.” The customs of the chapel among journeymen probably came from Germany. Blades, in his “Depositio Cornuti Typographici” (London, 1885), shows that some of the customs of English printers closely resemble the older German customs that are fully described in this curious book.

Thomas Gent, printer, in his “Autobiography” (page 16, edition of 1832), thus describes his initiation in a London printing-house about the year 1714: “On my entrance amongst a number of men, besides paying what is called Ben-money [benvenue], I found, soon after, I was, as it were, to be dubbed as great a cuz as the famous Don Quixote ... though the insipid folly thereof, agreeably to their strange harangues in praise of the protecting charms of cuzship ... was not very agreeable to my hearing; yet, when the master himself insisted it must be done, I was obliged to submit to that immemorial custom, the origin of which they could not then explain to me. It commenced by walking round the chapel, (Printing rooms being called such, because first begun to be practised in one at Westminster Abbey;) singing an alphabetical anthem, tuned literally to the vowels; striking me, kneeling, with a broadsword; and pouring ale upon my head; my titles were exhibited much to this effect, ‘Thomas Gent, baron of College Green, earl of Fingall, with power to the limits of Dublin bar, captain general of the Teagues near the Lake of Allen, and lord high admiral over all the bogs in Ireland.’ To confirm which, and that I might not pay over again for the same ceremony, through forgetfulness, they allowed me godfathers, the first I ever had before, because the Presbyterian minister, at my christening, allowed none at his office; and these, my new pious fathers, ... were the unreverend Mr. Holt and Mr. Palmer. Nay, there were witnesses also, such as Mr. Fleming, Mr. Gibbins, and Mr. Cocket, stanch journeymen printers.”

In some printing-houses the jocularity and horse-play of the chapel meetings led to drunken revelries and a neglect of business that became intolerable. The chapel undertook to decide who was a fair workman and who was not. The fairness or unfairness of the workman was determined by his compliance or non-compliance with the rule of an irresponsible chapel. In 1820 the master-printers of London were almost unanimous in opposing the chapel. Hansard says (“Typographia,” pages 309, 310) that in most houses it was abolished.

Few of the old customs survive in America. The benvenue and the solaces are unknown even by name to the majority of journeymen compositors. The word chapel is still used: it defines an assembly of workmen in a composing-room who are members of a Typographical Union.

361. WAY-GOOSE. Hansard (“Typographia,” foot-note, page 305) quotes Bailey’s dictionary for the definition of the word: “Wayz-Goose, a stubble-goose, an entertainment given to journeymen at the beginning of winter.” Wayz is the old English word for stubble. A wayz-goose was a known dainty, and the head dish at the annual feasts of the forefathers of our fraternity.

363. THE COMPANY OF STATIONERS is an old fraternity. Long before printing had been invented, the copyists, text-writers, and makers of devotional books of low price, like the Creed, Pater Noster, Ave Maria, etc., were associated, and sold their books in or near those streets of London that still retain the names of Pater Noster Lane, Ave Maria Lane, and Amen Corner. In the year 1403 they were formed into a guild and governed by a master and two wardens. In 1553 they owned and occupied a large hall near St. Paul’s Church, which was burned in the great fire of 1666. A new hall was built, and finished in 1670. Hansard shows in his “Typographia” (facing page 237) a print of the building as it then appeared, in which the festivities described by Moxon were celebrated.

Transcriber’s Notes.

Italic text is indicated with _underscores_, bold text with =equals=, underlined text with ~tildes~.

Small/mixed capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS.

Cover art created for this eBook is granted to the public domain.