OF PRINTING. 407 



Cambridge in the beginning of the sixteenth century, no books 

 were printed here in Hebrew characters before the year 1592, 

 when Dr. Khese published his Institutiones Linguae Cambro-Bri- 

 tannirae. 



In the year 1657 the English Polyglott in six volumes folio was 

 printed at London, under the auspices of archbishop Usher and 

 bishop Walton. This magnificent work was begun in 1653, and 

 contains the sacred text in the Hebrew, Samaritan, Syriac, Chal- 

 dean, Arabic, Persic, .-Eihiopic, Greek, and Latin languages, 

 all printed in their proper characters. Besides the characters 

 exhibited in the body of this great work, the Prolegomena lur- 

 nish us with more ; namely, the Rabbinical, the Hebrew, the Sy. 

 riac duplices, Nestorian, and Estrangelan, the Armenian, the 

 Egyptian, the Illyrian, both Cyrillian and Hieronymiau, the Ibe- 

 rian, and the ancient Gothic. Most of the rare books above 

 specified are to be found in his Majesty's library at the Queen's 

 house, in the British Museum, or in that of earl Spencer. 



The greatest difficulty, which the first letter. founders had to 

 encounter, was the discovery of the necessary cumber of each, 

 letter for a font of types in any particular language ; and in order 

 to know this they would endeavour to find out how much oftener 

 one letter occurred than another in such a language. Perhaps this 

 discovery was made by casting off the copy, as the printers call it; 

 which is by calculating the number of letters necessary for compo. 

 sing any given number of pages, and by counting the number of 

 each letter which occurs in those pages ; this would in some degree 

 have pointed out the proportional number of one letter to another, 

 but whether it was done by this, or by what other method, is not 

 easy to discover : however it is generally supposed, the letter- 

 founder's bill was made in the fifteenth century, but on what prin. 

 ciple all writers are silent : the various ligatures and abbreviations 

 used by the early printers made more types necessary than at present. 



Printers divide a font of letters into two classes, namely, the up. 

 per-case and the lower-case. The upper-case contains large capi. 

 tals, small capitals, accented letters, figures, and marks of refer, 

 ences. The lower-case contains small letters, ligatures, points, 

 spaces, and quadrates. 



(Attlt. 



