clines us to think some small part of her father's mantle may form part of her attire. Mrs. Austin has executed her task with the judgment and skill that was to be expected from her, and with one exception has avoided all matter which could cause painful feelings. The exception we refer to is a passage concerning a learned lawyer, whose public virtue Sidney Smith judged to be failing, because he be lieves he was about to be made Chancellor he never became Chancellor, and surely therefore this charge should not have been inserted.

In these letters there are various quaint devices to amuse us; one is by throwing his ideas into Latin; thus, speaking of the alarming state of the country, he expresses his opinion that we are all going

Ad veteris Nicholai tristia regna, Pitt ubi combustum Dundasque videbimus omnes." In short, there is much in these letters which may be called nonsense, but it is the perfection of nonsense.

In conclusion, we may observe that there are in these volumes many short compositions of first-rate excellence which have not before appeared. Sidney Smith's advice to his parishioners is we think a perfect model for this kind of exhortation. The touching story of the drunkard's reformation may stand by George Cruikshank's Bottle; and we think "dear little Nanny," whom he so affectionately addresses, must have been a very bad girl indeed if she did not give her rural swain the answer he advises, "When I am axed in the church, and the parson has read the service, and all about it is written down in the book, then I will listen to your nonsense, and not before." Again, his recipe for making every day happy is an admirable one, which dwells in the mind, and makes one better.

On the whole we have seldom perused a work which has given us more

pleasure than the present. It will render Sidney Smith as powerful an enemy to narrow views and unjust prejudices in his grave as he was in his active and useful life. It will teach the world that a man may be an excellent clergyman, yet a lighthearted witty man; that there is no connection between dullness and orthodoxy; that it is not necessary that the wit of the evening should be the prostrate wretch trying to get up his spirits with the aid of stimulants in the morning. It shows that a man of genius may be also a man of business. Above all, it proves that wit may be exercised without malice or breach of charity. Sidney Smith destroyed with his own hand a pamphlet which he had written, on a doubt whether it was not too severe, and in his letters he is constantly found mitigating or protesting against the fury of his fellow-reviewers.

Equally amiable in his family, active in his parish, and conscientious in the employment of his powerful penworking both by example and precept, we think that few men have done more good than Sidney Smith. Averse both to the "primitive and perpendicular prig of Puseyism," and the gloom of the Methodist, he applied his great powers to the practical improvement of mankind. What power he had, and how nobly he used it! How we want him now! How would a few lines from his pen arouse a slumbering war-minister-cleanse the Thames -raise a blush in the concoctor of an exposed job, or work any other miracle! He was a man of a peculiar and admirable stamp; a striking exception to the remark of Horace Walpole, that the world is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think. He felt deeply, yet was the best modern specimen of the laughing philosopher.

Greenwich, Aug. 7, 1855.

May it please yr Honors, The Frigott Norwich happening to bee in harbour at the arrivall of Knapman and Lockwood, the provisions y Hon's sent for her supply were received by Captain Haywood, her commander, who I doubt not has acquainted yr hons with the receipt thereof. Wee have taken the Sloop of one Jacob Evertson, a most notorious Pyrate, and make use of her to accompany the Norwich in crewsing after the many villanous Pyrates that now infest these coastes. She saves the great charge wee were att before for a Pylote, sounds places that are dangerous, and is able to pursue Pyrates where the Frigott, by reason of the Shoalness of the water, cannot goe; besides, shee is usefull to give us constant information of such accidents as happen. I have lately had some Pyrates brought in, whereof one was according to his demerits executed, and one Thoms, a most infamous villain, who lately took a Vessell of this Island of a considerable value, is taken and now under Tryall. I have sent the Frigott to crewse and endeavor to reduce such as are abroad, and have given Captain Haywood particular charge to look out for one Lawrence, a great and mischievous Pyrate, who commands a Ship of Twenty-Eight Gunns, and has Two hundred men on board; and, that the Fregott might bee the better able to deale with him, and freer from danger of being worsted or taken, I have putt fourty good men with...... of her twenty out of the Earle of Carli..., and twenty out of

mine own, and have [required] Captain Haywood to enter them upon his book, [doubting] not but you will allow of the charge [in a] thing soe necessary for his maties ser... ..... preseruation of the Fregott she has.. careened. I will by the next Ships send the account of the charge. There are.... swaines stores here which were formed in David Lockwood for the use of the.... I would entreat y honrs to informe me.... dessigne they shall bee imployed. ...whatsoever else may offer here in per his Maties Service or yr hon's comm... ever with all speed and willingness also with much respect

July ye 2d.

...

Since my last, whereof this is a Coppy, is returned to Port Royall, having been on the Coaste of Carthagene, and safely.... Crocker with his ship and negroes, and the Spanish Fleet now lyes at Carthagena.

Pyrates have been taken of late. was upon his tryall, is found guilty of innormities, and executed. I dessigne

shall goe out, within few days of Pyrates that molest

us. I have here inclosed sent the charge wee have been att for the Fregotts Careening and other necessary expences, and will from time to time acquaint your hon's with occurrances here; being with much reality and respect

Your very Afectionatt
& very faithfull Serv1,
HEN. MORGAN.

St Jago-de-La-Vega,
y 14th July, 1681.

AMONG all the mechanical arts there is none of more general concern than that of Printing, which is the ordinary channel of our mental food, and supplies as it were the very breath of our intellectual life. And whatever were the mysteries which we are told enveloped its early operations, it is an art whose main features are familiar to most people. All are acquainted, by name at least, with the types and the press, which are known to be as necessary for the production of a newspaper or a book, as pens and ink are for writing a letter: and almost every reader of the broad sheet of The Times is well aware that it is formed of a multitudinous assemblage of types, every letter, figure, or character of which (a few double letters only excepted) is impressed from a distinct piece of metal, compacted together by the united labour of many hands, like the honey of a hive of bees. In the composition of the types, as in many other matters, the greatest effectiveness has been found to result

from the combination of parts in their simplest forms-letter by letter, and figure by figure; but the ingenious fathers of the art were not convinced of this truth until they had successively adopted several other more complex modes of operation.

The first printing in Europe was executed from large wooden blocks, upon which a whole page was cut at once the method still in use with the Chinese.

In the next stage, moveable types were cut upon pieces of wood or metal. These, when shifted, could be employed for several pages of a book or books, until worn down or injured by use or accident. Such is believed to have been the original contrivance of Guttenberg and Fust, of Mentz; and such, in the book before us, Mr. Vincent Figgins supposes to have been Caxton's plan, when he first set up printing in this country-but we must declare that we are of a contrary opinion, and think that all Caxton's types were cast, not cut.

This invention of casting is attributed to Schaeffer, the son-in-law of Fust; and in his workshops the secret is said to have been kept, until the year 1462; when, on the sacking of Mentz by the archbishop Adolphus, the workmen were dispersed, and the art was carried to various other places.

In this third stage, which is that still in practice, the types are cast from dies, producing an indefinite number of precisely the same pattern. The only advance upon this is the art of stereotyping, or that of taking duplicate casts of pages when completed for printing, a contrivance employed either to multiply the impressions or to make provision for future editions.

The early printers, however, were not content with the labour of cutting, and casting, the simple letters of the alphabet. In the black-letter especially, they multiplied their varieties of type, and complicated the difficulties of composition, by making many ligatured or double characters. This was done from a desire to supply books perfectly resembling those which had previously been produced by the penmen, with whom it was then customary to write two letters close upon one another, the same down-stroke often serving for both characters. These ligatured letters prevail to a great extent in the type used by Caxton, the first of our English printers: and to a slight degree they are continued to the present day. We still use them in combinations of the letter f, as fi, fl, ffi, ffl; though some modern founts have been cast even without these, the f being then made of so upright a figure as not to ride over the dot of the i or the upper part of the l. In the last century there was another series connected with the long s, and also ct and some others. In the early volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine a logotype for the word ye will be found: and at various periods such contrivances have been revived more or less, with a view to greater rapidity of composition: but they have been as often relinquished, from

not answering their professed object. And yet, during the recent session of parliament, a Polish refugee (Major Beniowski) has persuaded a Select Committee of the House of Commons to listen seriously to the reproduction of logotypes as an important part of his "inventions."

We cannot boast of the art of Printing having found an early home in this country. When William Caxton set up his first press at Westminster, twelve years had elapsed from the sacking of Mentz, and there were already printers in more than fifty places upon the continent.

Caxton himself had learned, and to some extent practised, the art at Cologne: where (according to Santander *) it had been introduced by Ulric Zell, of Hanau, in the year 1467. The date at which Caxton made acquaintance with its mysteries is not ascertained; but there is no doubt of the period having been antedated when referred back to 1467, and even to 1464. The last is the year when Raoul le Fevre "composed" his "Receuil des histoires de Troye;" when the book was printed is not known. Mr. Hallam, in his Literature of Europe, spoke of "unquestionable proofs "of Caxton having printed the "Recueil" before the death of Philip duke of Burgundy in 1467, and also a Latin speech of bishop Russell in the year 1469; relying, apparently, on Dr. Dibdin's dictum, that some remarks of Mr. Bryant had "elearly proved" the Recueil to have been the production of Caxton.

In truth, the Recueil bears no token of either place, printer, or date; neither does the Oration. That they were both printed at Cologne, is highly probable; but that Caxton had to do with either of them is not probable. With the Oration his name has been con

nected because its author was an Englishman, and ambassador to the court of Burgundy; with the Recueil because he undertook to translate that work from French into English,† and because his translation was afterwards printed with the same types.

The history of the "Recueil" is briefly this. It was "composed and drawen out of diverse bookes of Latyn in to Frensshe," by Raoul le Fevre, priest, and chaplain to Philip duke of Burgundy, in the year 1464; and this French book was printed, as already stated; and it was "drawen out of Frensshe in to Englisshe by William Caxton mercer of the cyte of London, at the commaundement of the righte mighty and vertuouse Pryncesse his redoubted lady Margaret duchesse of Burgoyne, &c. which said translacion and werke was begonne in Brugis in the countre of Flaunders," the first day of March 1468, and "ended and fynysshid in the holy cyte of Colen" the 19th Sept. 1471. Such is Caxton's own account in his preface; which, as we understand it, refers only to the work of translation, and not at all to the printing: but at the end of the third book of the histories is a very curious passage, in which the printing is specially described:

I have practised and learned (he says), at my great charge and dispense, to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and form as you may here see; and it is not written with pen and ink as other books are, to the end that every man may have them at once; for all the books of this story named the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, thus imprinted as ye here see, were begun in one day, and also finished in one day.

the meaning of which evidently is, that every "book," or copy, was, as regarded each page or sheet, printed in one day, though the whole book, of

No printer appears to have been established at Bruges at so early a date as this,* and therefore it is pretty certain that all the printing of this book was done at Cologne.

At Cologne also Caxton is said to have printed the work of his countryman Bartholomew de Glanville De Proprietatibus Rerum:† and there also he produced the first edition of The Game of Chesse. This work and the French and English editions of the Recueil are in the same type: and which may therefore be called Caxton's Cologne type, or perhaps the type in which others printed for him at Cologne.‡

As with the Recueil, so with The Game of Chesse, it was to find employment in translation that Caxton had taken up the book. His ac

count of the circumstances is as follows:

There was an excellent doctour of dyvynyte in the royame of Fraunce of the ordre of thospytal of Saynt Johns of Jherusa. lem, whiche . . . hath made a book of the chesse moralysed: whiche at such tyme as I was resident in Brudgys in the counte of Flaundres came in to my handes. Whiche whan I had redde and overseen, me semed ful necessarye for to be had in englisshe. And, in eschwyng of ydlenes, and to thende that somme which have not seen it, ne understonde frensshe ne latyn [might be enabled to peruse it,] I delybered in my self to translate it in to our maternal tonge; and whan I so had achyeved the sayde translacion, I dyd doo sette in enprynte

a certeyn nombre of theym, which anone were depesshed and solde.

Caxton does not here state that he

printed "The Booke of the Chesse" himself, but that he "dyd doo sette it in enprynte," that is, as we should now say, he had it printed for him.§ We do not imagine that he as yet considered himself a printer, though he was employing those who had acquired the art; and there can be little doubt that the printing was done, not at Bruges, but at Cologne, like that of his

translation of the Recueil. Mr. Ames, on comparing these two books, found "a perfect resemblance between them in the manner of printing; not only the page itself, but the number of lines in a page, the length, breadth, and the intervals between the lines are alike." As Caxton further tells us, the first edition of The Game of the Chesse was quickly finished and sold, and he was consequently encouraged to produce a second edition, which differs from the former in being ornamented with woodblocks. This se

cond edition has always been supposed to have been printed by Caxton in England, and so it probably was; for the type, whilst it is very different to that of the first edition, resembles that which he subsequently used in this country. The book has, indeed, neither title-page nor colophon, to testify to its date or place of production; but that circumstance may perhaps be regarded as confirming the idea of its early date, before the printer's ways in business were regularly established. Regarding it in this light, as the first book printed in England, Mr. Vincent Figgins has se

GENT. MAG. VOL. XLIV.

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