the uneducated taste for books and republished a few with all their features of quaintness. It is from his "Olde Tayles Newly Relayted" that Jemmy&nancy OF Searches after novelties in bookmaking have brought to notice the peculiarities of the old English chapbooks, whose illiterate readers had little fault to find with worn types and dingy paper, with muddy presswork and the crudest forms of engraving. Shabby as they were from literary and mechanical points of view, chapbooks found eager buyers for more than three centuries, YARMOUTH. even if the critical did refuse them admission to catalogues and libraries and put them outside the pale of literature. The late Andrew Tuer of London considered them as valuable exhibits of these examples have been copied. Words need not be wasted on the great silliness of the matter and the manner of the early chap-book, but it is not at all out of place here to say that its crude typography, as illustrated by Tuer, justly may be considered as the real beginning of the revival of bold and black printing, which was afterward developed on other lines by William Morris and his disciples. Copyright, 1902, by THE LITERARY COLLECTOR CO. All rights reserved. To give the correct old-style flavor to these reprints, Tuer had to reproduce the old wood cuts, and to engrave and sometimes to cast the types most needed. A bold-faced italic of large size, graced with Flemish mannerisms of long swash-letters, was his favorite type for display, but he used other forms. His unknown engraver of the wood cuts went to his task sympathetically, and made illustrations to match the types, which were truthfully presented to the amused reader on coarse and spongy paper with black presswork, and in bindings appropriately rude. There are three typographic imitations of the crudely formed letters of the old chap-book, made uncouth. To use his own phrase, they are "catchy," and they make the reader stare. To the commercial printer the chap-book faces present another advantage; ungainly practices in composition, that would not be tolerated with types of the usual form, lend an additional attraction to coarse styles of type that can be by rival type founders. They are known as Post, Blanchard and Plymouth, and all of them find great favor with the advertiser. The uncritical reader rashly assumes that these chap-book faces must be of the genuine and correct old-style pattern because they are so preposterously boorish and quickly and cheaply composed by any inexpert. Careless types are helped by careless composition. The Puritan title page seems to be the outgrowth of the chap-book. The restrictions put on printing by Star-Chamber decrees of the early seventeenth century provoked the establishment in garrets and cellars of numerous secret printing houses that were then known as "holes," and many of the printers in these holes had their preliminary training in the chap-book school and in no other. They were not restrained by typographic rules or traditions, and necessity compelled them to indulge in whimsical freaks. Types sorely needed were hard to buy, for the type founders also were restricted. Printers were often in straits for want of large quadrats, especially of those needed for the large types of display, but they evaded this difficulty by a simple method. It was easier to space single types than to justify in substitutes for large quadrats at the ends of short lines. Over-wide spacing is now esteemed by amateurs as an additional grace. Not content American artists, who have been attracted by the rude simplicity of early English printing, the good features of the chap-book have received additional development. Under their hands the clownishness of the chap-book makers disappears completely. They give us the firm, strong lines and the directness of the block book LITERATURE printers of the fifteenth centu ry, but their ornamentation is invariably of a with spacing WEEKLY later date; out large types 10 CENTS A COPY their favorites lower case italic between or before words in capitals of full size. Why small capitals, that are better mates for the full capitals, are not selected cannot be explained. Sometimes these particles in italic lower case are spaced, even in positions where there does not appear to be any need for their spacing. The object sought The object sought seems to be the production of harsh. contrasts of size, form and color. The lettering approved by Pyle is that of the improperly named Fifteenth century face, which was revived under his direction. The engraved lettering of Bradley, noticeable not so much for its form as for its arrangement of lines, shows a great disdain of the rules now accepted for the display of words, the division of the words in syllables, and the position of the words in blank space. His engraved words may be huddled in a corner as on an old Greek coin; his letters in type may be spread apart until their connection with one another is not apparent at first glance. The line of ten large letters, compactly set and filling the measure, may be followed by a line of but six small letters unduly spaced to fill the same measure. Words in every line of display must always make a long line. When the line of a general heading has too few characters, that line must be inclosed in a black rule border to the full width. Very thick and black dashes of double rule, or lines of oldfashioned flowers may be freely used between lines of type. This style of composition is known in the trade as the Bradley style, but it is not certain that every feature of it has his entire approval. It attracts attention now by reason of its novelty, and it finds its greatest admirers among advertisers. It is occasionally found in newspapers, but rarely in the standard book. Whether it will be tolerated as of good form by the readers of the next generation is a question. THE RAGGED TITLE. For this form of title a new name is required, aud no word but ragged so plainly defines the title with an uneven edge at the right ends of lines. It is an imitation of the odd lettering sometimes found on old coins, titles, and tablets, in which a large and irregular design allowed scant space for letters. In some of them the letters seem to have been a late afterthought. They were placed anywhere to get rid of an unwelcome addition when the main feature of the design had been completed. In some of the legends the letters are disjointed without regard to syllables, and arranged vertically, singly or in rows of twos or threes, wherever there was any vacant space. When a large illustration nearly fills the outside cover of a book, and leaves no space for lettering above or below, a similar liberty has to be taken, and the words have to be wedged in every chance vacancy that may be found on either side. The great audacity of this treatment has provoked typographic imitation, which began by placing one or more letters of a word by the side of an over-large cut or |