_Juvenis_: Not one. To try to read the pointed black of Gutenberg and Kerver is as repelling as a walk through the crypts of an old church; the round gothics are as scraggy as a heap of oyster shells; the Aldine italics are squeezed as to width, elongated as to height, and incongruously mated with absurdly small capitals; the flemish black-letter is the 'tour de force' of a literary acrobat. In all these characters I see bad drawing and disregard of proportion. The founding is as bad as the design; some characters are fitted too near, others too wide, and many letters are out of line.
_Senex_: You surely cannot censure Jenson's Roman for bad fitting?
_Juvenis_: I do except that, for Jenson was a good mechanic, and so was Kerver. Their types are well fitted and neatly lined. But I have small praise to give Jenson for his much admired Roman letter. Better, no doubt, than any other Roman of the period, but was it perfection? Bibliophiles forget that this Jenson Roman was out of fashion fifty years after his death, and that his models have been altered by every succeeding punch-cutter.
_Senex_: How, then, can you explain the favor shown to the recent types of William Morris? His 'Golden' type is based on the Jenson model; his 'Troy' and 'Chaucer' types are modeled after the round gothic of the fifteenth century.
_Juvenis_: I do not pretend to explain freaks of fashion in typography any more than in religion or art or music. The Athenians who worshiped an unknown or forgotten god have successors in every generation. There are Englishmen, nursed in the Catechism, who try to be devout Buddhists; there are Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, and Wagnerians.
The lover of singularity who can invent nothing that is new must hunt up something that is old, or at least odd, to keep up his reputation for discernment. It is enough for me to know that the literary world, outside of Germany, moved by common impulse, discarded all the early types. The sacred black-letter of Gutenberg, and other forms, went to oblivion for good reason. All were of bad form and hard to read--obscured by abbreviations, misuse of capital letters, absurd divisions, and inconsistent orthography. Much as a student of our time may profess admiration for early typography, he will not consult the 'Bible of Forty-two Lines' for a disputed text, when a more readable edition is accessible.