{ 183} [Illustration: Page from a Minnesingers’ song-book in the University library at Heidelberg. Example of Gothic letter. The initial letters were in black and terra cotta. The letter W was half black and half terra cotta; the U, H, and I were terracotta; the ornamentation was black. In all probability the letters were half an inch or an inch high. If you examine them under a magnifying glass you can understand their construction better than as they now appear. The first verse reads as follows:
“Winter, dine trüben stunde und din kelte magnivalt, ob ich das erwenden kunde, daz siu wurden has gestalt, das liesse ich dur die lange naht, und durh die vil minneklichen diu mir froeiden vil hat braht.”
■{ 184} square and compass, could cut in marble an immense dedication of a building or archway, though the letters might be two or three feet high. A little study of this alphabet will give you the ability to understand anything written upon the subject of roman letters, so that the following quotation from an article by Gleason White, taken from the _Magazine of Art_, will immediately become intelligible to you. Mr. White was writing of Charles Ricketts and the productions of the Vale Press. He said the Vale Press had its own type, its own paper with its own watermark, but the printing was done by Messrs. Ballantyne. The type designed by Mr. Ricketts was “based on the precedents of the best Italian alphabets.”
Mr. Ricketts believes that the plan on which all letters should be based is that of the perfect circle or the perfect square; it matters not which geometrical form you choose, since a certain number of letters—M, L, H, and the like—demand a parallelogram, and others—C, G, Q, O—an ovate or circular plan. If to draw this distinction between types based on the oval or the circle appear a mere quibble, we must remember that the difference between the Byzantine and the Pointed styles, which divide architecture into two great sections, is one of similar limit. There is all the difference in the world, to a specialist in types, between a small “b,” “g” or “o” that follows the circle (○), and one that is planned upon an oval (⬯)—I wish to emphasize this point, because I know that the designer regards it as vital; and I, for one, agree entirely with his estimate of its importance. The question of “ceriphs” and the angles of certain strokes; whether a W consists of interlaced V’s, or of two connected only by the ceriph; whether the ceriphs of a capital T are vertical, or slant divers■