III.
As the innovator of the type known as "Scotch" John Baine's significance is
consequently far greater than has been hitherto acknowledged in the history of
typography, both in America and in Great Britain. As a result, the importance ascribed
to Richard Austin and to Robert Thorne by A. F. Johnson, discussing the evolution of
modern-face roman in his Type Designs (1934) should be
reevaluated and reconsidered. Obscure as he may have been, to Baine should apparently
be attributed the bold-face roman type which, unfortunately, makes so much early
nineteenth-century printing hideous to our eyes.
