It will be convenient, now that we have reached a point at which letter-founding enters upon a new stage as a distinct trade, to take a brief survey of its progress as a mechanical industry; availing ourselves of such records and illustrations as may be met with, to trace its development and improved appliances during the period covered by this narrative.

As has already been stated, the reticence of our first printers leaves us almost entirely in the dark as to the particular processes by which they produced their earliest types. Mr. Blades leans to the opinion that Caxton, in his first attempts at typefounding, adopted the methods of the rude Flemish or Dutch School, of whose conjectured appliances we have spoken in the introductory chapter. “The English printers,” he says, “whose practice seems to have been derived from the Flemish School, were far behind their contemporaries in the art. Their types show that a very rude process of founding was practised; and the use … of old types as patterns for new, evinces more of commercial expediency than of artistic ambition.”

At the same time, there seems reasonable ground for inferring, from the peculiarities attending the re-casting of Caxton's Type 4 as 4*, to which allusion has already been made, that at least as early as 1480 Caxton was possessed of the secret of the punch, and matrix and adjustable mould;