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steel bodkin in his right hand. Placing the point of the bodkin at one end of the line, and the fore-finger of his left hand against the other, he raises the whole line sufficiently high to afford him a clear view of the spacing. He then changes the faulty letters or words, and alters his spaces before he drops the line.

13. The first proof being corrected, another is pulled, to be again put into the hands of the reader, or sent to the author for examination. This proof being read and corrected as before, a revise is pulled, to see whether all the errors marked in the last proof are properly corrected. When the sheet is supposed to be correct, the forms are given to the pressman, whose business it is to work them off when they are so prepared and corrected; in doing which four things are required; paper, ink, balls, and a press. The paper is prepared for use by being dipped, a few sheets at a time, in water, and afterwards laid in a heap over each other, to make the water penetrate equally into every sheet, and a thick deal board is laid upon the heap, on which are placed heavy weights, according to the size of the heap. The reason why the paper is to be wetted before it is in a state fitted to be printed upon, is, that it may be made sufficiently soft to adhere closely to the surface of the letter, and take up a proper quantity of ink, that it may receive a fair and clear impression. It is also necessary to wet the paper, lest its stiff and harsh nature, when dry, should injure the face of the letters.

14. The manufacture of good common ink seems to be as yet but very imperfectly understood. That used in fine printing has been more attended to, and many of our best printers are now able to produce impressions, in a great degree free from that offensive brown cast, which is observed in many books printed with what is called common ink.

15. The balls used in laying the ink on the forms, are a kind of wooden funnels, with handles, the cavities of which are stuffed with wool or hair, and covered over with a pelt prepared for the purpose. One skin generally makes two proper sized balls. When the skin has been sufficiently soaked in urine, which will take about fourteen or fifteen hours, it is taken out and curried, by putting it round an iron called a currying iron, or round some upright post:

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the pressman taking hold of each end of it, and drawing it with as much force as possible backwards and forwards, till it is rendered soft and pliable. He then cuts the skin exactly in two, puts the pieces under his feet, and continues to tread them till they are so dry as to stick to the foot. The skin is then laid on a board or flat stone, and stretched as much as possible by rubbing the ball stock upon it. It is then nailed upon the ball stock in plaits about an inch wide, thrusting in as much wool as the cavity of the stock and the skin will conveniently hold. If, however, too much wool were to be put in, it would render the balls hard and difficult to work with. If too little wool is in the balls, they soon flap and wrap over into wrinkles, so as to prevent an equal distibution of the ink on the surface. When the balls are thus knocked up, as it is termed, they are dipped in urine, and scraped with a blunt knife until they are perfectly clean; they are then dried with a clean sheet of stout paper, and patted with the hand until no moisture remains on the surface. The balls, when they are completed, have the shape and appearance of a very large mallet, used by stone masons, except that their surface is much broader and rounder.

16. The press is a curious and complex machine: it consists of two upright beams, called cheeks; they are generally about six feet one inch long, eight inches and a half broad, and five inches thick, with a tenon at each end. The tenon at the upper end of the cheek is cut across the breadth, and enters the cap within half an inch of the top. The cap is a piece of solid timber, three feet long, eleven inches wide, and four inches thick. The lower tenon of the cheek enters the feet, which is a square wooden frame made very thick and strong. The head, which is moveable, is sustained by two iron bolts that pass through the cap. The spindle is an upright piece of iron, pointed with steel, having a male screw which goes into the female one in the head, about four inches. This spindle is so contrived, that when the pressman pulls a lever, which is attached to it, the pointed end of it works in a steel pan or eup supplied with oil, which is fixed to an iron plate let into the top of a broad thick piece of mahogany, with a perfectly plane surface, called the platten. This platten is made to rise and fall as the pressman pulls or lets go the

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lever or bar. When the platten falls, it presses upon a blanket, by which the paper is covered when it lies upon the form, from which the impression is intended to be taken. The form is laid upon a broad flat stone, or thick marble slab, which is let into a wooden frame, called the coffin, and which is made to move backwards or forwards, by the turning of a wince or rounce. At the end of the coffin are three frames; two of which are called tympans, and the remaining one a frisket. The tympans are square, and are made of three slips of very thin wood, and at the top a piece of iron, still thinner; that called the outer tympan is fastened with hinges to the coffin; they are both covered with parchment, and between the two are placed blankets, which are necessary to take off the impression of the letters upon the paper. The frisket is a square frame of thin iron, fastened to the hinges of the tympan; it is covered with paper cut in the necessary places, that the sheet, which is put between the frisket and the outer tympan, may receive the ink, and that nothing may hurt the margins. To regulate the margins, a sheet of paper is fastened upon this tympan, which is called the tympan sheet, and which ought to be changed whenever it becomes wet with the paper to be printed upon. On each side is fixed an iron point, which makes two holes in the sheet, which is to be placed on the same points when the impression is to be made on the other side. In preparing the press for working, or as it is called by pressmen, making ready a form, great care and attention are requisite that the printed sheets may be in proper register, i. e. that the lines on one side may exactly fall upon the backs of the other. That the impression may be equable, the parchment which covers the outer tympan is wetted till it is very soft the blankets are then put in and secured from slipping by the outer tympan.

17. When the form is made ready, and every thing is prepared for working, one man beats the letters with the inked balls, another places a sheet of paper on the tympan sheet, and turns down the frisket upon it to keep the paper clean and prevent its slipping. He then brings the tympan upon the form, and turning the rounce, by which the carriage, holding the coffin, stone, and form, is moved, he brings the form with the stone, &c. under the platten;—

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pulls with the bar, by which the platten presses the blankets and paper close upon the letter, whereby half the form is printed-then easing the bar, he draws the form still forward, gives a second pull, and letting go the bar, turns back the carriage, &c. He next raises the tympans and frisket, takes out the printed sheet and lays on a fresh one; and this is repeated till he has taken off the impression upon the full number of sheets of which the edition is to consist. One side of every sheet being thus printed, the form for the other side is laid on the press, and worked off in the same

manner.

18. Mr. Stower very justly remarks, "that this, the common press, is constructed on the true principles of mechanism." It does not, however, he allows, produce an adequate impression from heavy works in small letter, without great labour and attention. It was, therefore, a great acquisition to gain an accession of power, with, at the same time, a diminution of labour. This valuable acquisition in the art of printing owes its invention to that enlightened and patriotic statesman, the present Earl Stanhope. The iron press, invented by this nobleman, is capable of ten times the force of the common press, with perhaps a tenth of the labour. In working upon this press, nothing is left to the judgment of the pressman, but the beating.

19. To describe the construction of the Stanhope press would not only much exceed our limits, but would require a considerable number of plates, as its internal construction cannot be sufficiently delineated by any general view of it. It is, however, a most compact and curious machine, and is an invention altogether worthy of the genius of the nobleman who first constructed it. A very minute account of the nature and construction of every part of this press is given in Mr. Stower's Grammar. The Stanhopian principle has been applied in the construction of the com1 mon press, but we understand, not with that success which was at first expected. The presses, however, so formed, and first made by Mr. Baker, are superior to the common press, and produce a more clear and strong impression, especially from light forms; though the sharpness, as well as smoothness of impression, produced by the Stanhope press, from forms of pearl and nonpareil letter, is not to be ex

pected from the common presses constructed on the Stanhopian principle.*

SECT. III.-LOGOGRAPHIC PRINTING.

In the year 1784, a patent was granted to Mr. Henry Johnson, for a new mode of printing, termed logography, which consisted in employing types expressive of whole words, instead of those corresponding to single letters. In consequence of this alteration, it is contended, that the compositor is less liable to error; the type of each word being taken up with as much facility as single letters; and, when a sheet is printed off, such types may be more easily distributed. It is also asserted, that the expense or number of types in logography, does not exceed that required by the common mode of printing. The expediency of this contrivance, however, has been much doubted, and the inconveniencies attending it have prevented the adoption of this method of printing. Much greater advantages might be derived from casting syllables instead of whole words; because the former occur more frequently, and may be so arranged as to follow in alphabetical order, in proportion to their more or less frequent recurrence.

SECT. IV.-FAC-SIMILE PRINTING.

1. Fac-simile printing is the art of forming types in such a manner, as precisely to resemble the manuscript intended to be copied. The first approach to this method of printing, was the Medicean Virgil, printed at Florence in 1741. This, however, though an approximation to the plan, was by no means, strictly speaking, what is now meant by fac-simile printing, as the resemblance of the manuscript was not complete.

2. The first great work of this kind, was the New Testament of the Alexandrian MS. in the British Museum, published by DR. WOIDE in 1786, which exbibits its prototype to a degree of similarity, scarcely credible. Since that time, a few other works of considerable extent have been published on the same plan, particularly DR. KIP LING's edition of the four Gospels and the Acts of the

For a part of this article we are indebted to Mr. Nicholson's valuable Encyclopedia.

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