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Bibliographical Evidence from the Printer's Measure
[*]
by
Fredson Bowers
TYPOGRAPHICAL MEASUREMENTS HAVE always been of important service in bibliography, as instance the basic uses for identification to which incunabulists put the measurement of twenty lines of type. The present study is not concerned, however, with measurements of type for the purposes of identifying fonts held by printers, but instead with certain inferences which the investigator of the presswork of sixteenth and seventeenth-century books may draw on occasion from identifying the length of the printer's stick, or measure—sometimes, but not always, in conjunction with alterations in the overall type-page opening in the skeleton-formes of a particular book. This study is confined almost exclusively to Restoration play quartos, but only because I have been working closely with these for several years and have been able to keep records of measurements in some hundreds of books. Except for the final section devoted to the identification of compositors setting in relay, there is perhaps nothing very new in the evidence advanced; but since no formal study has, I think, been made of this kind of evidence, it is perhaps useful to bring together in one place a maximum of
In his stick, or measure, the compositor set the type from his cases, and from this stick he transferred as convenient a series of composed lines to his page-galley. In setting a mixture of verse and prose, he often used two measures, one short and one long, the longer being the full width of his type-page. Which measure was used to set any given line may have considerable textual significance, as Mr. George Williams has shown in this present volume in his "A Note on King Lear, III.ii.1-3."[1]
In early times this compositor's stick was made in various fixed lengths, but at some indeterminate period before Moxon's treatise the adjustable stick came into use. It is generally believed that with the adjustable stick, at any rate, and probably with standard widths of the fixed stick, the compositor owned his own measure. Whether this is an absolute fact is not essential for the present argument, but it may be remarked that close examination of a number of Restoration play quartos does not disclose the interchange of measures between compositors during the course of setting books where variant measures may be identified. Whether fixed or adjustable, sticks were likely to vary among themselves by as much as two millimeters even when intended to be used in setting the same width of type-page. This is understandable when the difficulties are taken into account either of two compositors adjusting their sticks identically or of the artisan carving two wooden fixed sticks to give an absolutely precise opening for each.
This small variation in the long measure was of little consequence in the printing. It was too small to be seen by the eye,
Measuring to detect these variant sticks is not always easy. The bibliographer must take account of the fact that different letters were cast on different parts of the body of the type and that he must choose roughly similar letters at the beginning and end of successively measured lines if he is not to be thrown off by non-significant variation of as much as a millimeter. This is important, for often he must work with variance between two compositor's sticks of as little as a single millimeter. Moreover, the measurement of no one line on a page can be trusted to identify accurately the stick used for that page owing to the fact that compositors seem frequently to have justified a line by a final thin space. Catchwords alone are the least trustworthy of all, and should not be employed except in cases of necessity: my observation has been that justifying by means of a thin space after the catchword was a fairly common operation. Finally, owing to the variable tightness with which the quarters of the forme could be locked up by the wedges, some normal differential, usually of about a millimeter, is often encountered between type-pages set in the same stick. These are severe difficulties, and for some pages are often serious enough to make measurement untrustworthy when variation between sticks is slight and the compositors did not set according to a reasonably fixed pattern.
The most elementary and easily discerned cases which can
A typical example is John Crowne's Calisto (1675), in which simultaneous two-section printing is demonstrated by the faulty casting-off of copy which resulted in the second press beginning with sheet H although subsequently the first press concluded its section with sheet F. This simultaneous setting and printing is also indicated by the running-titles, which are in lower-case in sheets B-F but in full capitals in sheets H-L. Although the font remains the same, the measurement of the type-page in the first section is 36 lines, 169(182) x 113, 94R, and of the second section 38 lines, 179(190) x 109 mm.
Running-titles are not always present, however, to indicate such a division, and in these cases the type-page measurement may be the only available evidence. Thus in Abraham Bailey's The Spightful Sister (1667), which is without running-titles, one observes that the text in sheets B-E is set with a printer's measure of 113 mm., but from sig. F1 to the end of the book on sig. 14v the measure jumps to 130 mm.
A question often arises whether a book has been simultaneously set in two sections, or whether the break between
However, there is a kind of evidence which can be used decisively in two-section books without running-titles or in books where a change in running-titles and thus in skeleton-formes indicates the possibility either of simultaneous two-section printing or else of a marked interruption in the printing. In a first edition, especially, the normal inference is usually that separate preliminaries were printed as the final operation. For certain first editions reasonable demonstration of this fact can be made, as when an errata list is present in the preliminaries, or when the text begins on A1 or else on B1 but with preliminaries occupying more than one gathering. In some two-section books the evidence is singularly neat. Thus in Calisto, mentioned above, the three-sheet preliminaries signed A4 a-b4 were set in the 109 mm. measure used to print sheets H-L but not B-F, and thus one can safely infer what the signing would lead one to expect, that these sheets were machined after the last
There is still an ambiguity in such books, however, for this pattern could also result when there had been an interruption, or when without interruption a second workman or press had been substituted.[2] When, on the other hand, in a two-section book one finds that the compositor setting the first section also set the preliminaries, somewhat less question can arise, for unless the preliminaries were set and printed first, this allocation of composition could result only when a book was simultaneously printed. In Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko (1696), for instance, the text begins on B and the preliminaries are confined to sheet A. On sig. E1 we find the measure changing from the 111 mm. of sheets B-D to the 113 mm. measure of sheets E-M. Here the case at first sight is not certain, since the markedly unequal division of the book seems to militate against simultaneous setting in two sections; and lacking other evidence one might be led to suspect that the appearance of the 111 mm. measure in sheet A should be accounted for by the view that the preliminaries were printed first, even though the book is a first edition. Yet other evidence suggests simultaneous printing.[3]
On the other hand, when a book seems to have been broken rather neatly in half between two compositors, and the compositor of the first section set the separate preliminaries, the evidence is all in favor of simultaneous printing. This is the case with The Spightful Sister, where the text division is B-E and F-I, or four sheets to each compositor, with half-sheet A
Some rather odd books offer the most positive evidence. Occasionally in two-section simultaneous printing one press would assist the other in cleaning up the job. A first-rate example is John Crowne's The Married Beau (1694) in which the text division is B-F, the type-page measuring 46 lines, 187(198) x 108 mm.; and G-K, the type-page being 47 lines, 190(201) x 115 mm. Gathering F consists of three leaves, the fourth having been excised. The preliminaries require the four-leaf sheet signed A plus an unsigned disjunct fifth leaf. When we find sheet A set with the 115 mm. measure used for G-K, but the disjunct preliminary leaf set with the 108 mm. measure used in B-F, and when we also find that the pagination of the book skips from 38 on F3v to 41 on G1, the case is clear. The book was simultaneously printed in two parts, with the second press printing sheet A but the first press machining the odd preliminary leaf as F4, its text copy not being sufficiently extensive to fill the four leaves of final sheet F.
Another and more complicated example is found in Thomas Southerne's The Disappointment (1684) in which the original assignment to two presses had been text sheets B-E and F-I. Gathering E is composed of three leaves, the first two conjugate and set in the measure used for sheets F-I; but sig. E3, disjunct, is set in the different measure used for B-D and also for preliminary sheet A, this last having its fourth leaf excised. The highly irregular gathering E has been mistaken for a cancellans, but a rather complex chain of bibliographical evidence can be constructed to show that the first press was delayed in its printing between sheets C and D, and though gathering E had originally been assigned to it (the second section clearly having started printing with F), to finish the book expeditiously the second press swung over after printing sheet I and the two presses joined to print E. The second press machined
Evidence as to the measure becomes more difficult when the preliminaries consist only of a disjunct title-leaf or a half-sheet with preliminary text set in a short measure. However, records I have kept of several hundred books show that in most cases the title-page was set in the same stick used for the text (or for the rest of the preliminaries), and thus that its measure will ordinarily be the same. When, in order to give room for large display type, the title seems to have been set directly in page galley and with an abnormally wide measure, often one will find, as in Dryden's The Indian Emperour (1681), that the imprint has been composed in the printer's text stick and therefore can be compared with the measure in other parts of the book. In other cases when the whole title and imprint seem to have been set in a longer stick than that used elsewhere in the book, preliminaries like dedications, forewords, dramatis personæ, and so on will usually conform in measure to one or other section of the text. If, on the contrary, as in John Bancroft's Henry the Second (1693), the separate preliminaries and title are set in a different measure from the text, we may suppose—according to their nature—either that they were set last after some delay or, as with the second edition of Dryden's The Spanish Fryar (1686), that setting of the book began with the preliminaries but a larger measure was employed to squeeze rather extensive material into one sheet. In reverse, we find Dryden's The Rival Ladies (1693), the title, preliminaries, and first two pages of text (B2-2v) set in a 117 mm. measure, but on B3 the measure shifting to the 126 mm. used thereafter.
Sometimes rather interesting facts about the printing may be deduced from the study of the printer's stick. The first edition of Thomas Shadwell's The Squire of Alsatia (1688) shows a printer beginning with the typographical plan of a page measuring
The anonymous play The Triumphs of Virtue (1697) is unfortunately without the running-titles which might assist in solving its printing, but the facts of its typography may supply some bases for conjecture. The book is a quarto signed A-H4 and paged 1-4 57 68-40 33-55 56 [=64]. The pagination numerals in the headlines are in smaller type in sheets E-H than in A-D. The type-page in A-D measures 44 lines, 182(193) x 108, 82.6R; that in sheet E, 44 lines, 178(188) x 113, 80.8R; that in F-H, 47 lines, 192(202) x 118, 80.1R. The pagination suggests that the book was originally planned to be split between two presses in sections A-E and F-H, and that the second press beginning with sig. F1 paged it 33 on the assumption that pagination would start with page 1 on sig. B1, whereas in fact it begins on sig. A3 with page 5. Although one might be tempted to conjecture that the smaller font was adopted by the first compositor in order to compress into the single sheet E rather more copy than had been allowed for in the casting-off, the change in the measure and also in the whole type-page opening (thus presumably in the skeleton-formes) militates against this view. Since the size of the pagination figures in the headlines associates sheet E, instead, with imposition by the compositor of the second section, one might apply the same theory to him, but again the measurements do not encourage this attempt. One fact is clear, at any rate: although sheet E had originally been assigned to the first press, actually the second compositor imposed it, the machining taking place
Important as it is for a study of the presswork to identify the compositors of two or more contiguous sections of a book, one of the more striking examples of the usefulness of the printer's measure occurs when this evidence assists in identifying the compositor and also the place of printing for cancels and other separate material originally imposed elsewhere in one forme. Under most circumstances the evidence of the measure alone is not decisive, but certainly a study of cancels shows that the odds are against any material added to a book at a later date than the original printing being set in an identical type-page opening, but more especially in precisely the same measure.[6] Thus the fact that the measure of cancellans leaf G1 in Dryden's The Indian Emperour (1667) is that for the rest of the book assists in the belief that it was printed as leaf K4, missing in the seven recorded American copies. Just so, the measure makes it a certainty (evidence of running-titles here assisting) that disjunct sig. E3 of Southerne's The Disappointment was printed by the first press as leaf A4 and excised from the preliminaries to be
We come, finally, to an unexplored and difficult use of the measure as bibliographical evidence. As Dr. Charlton Hinman first demonstrated,[7] his results later being confirmed by Dr. Philip Williams,[8] spelling tests can be applied with some certainty to distinguish the work of different compositors setting a book seriatim in relay. In this connection, the printer's measure can usefully be employed on some fortunate occasions as powerful corroborative evidence, and it may even become primary evidence when on disputed pages the spelling tests are ambiguous or when, as in the later seventeenth century, the growing uniformity of spelling may make spelling tests of doubtful value. The prime difficulty of the evidence of the measure lies in the fact that when the two sticks were not in perfect adjustment, the variation between them is sometimes no more than one millimeter, although less difficulty is encountered when the variation is two millimeters or the seeming maximum three millimeters.[9] Moreover, uneven shrinkage in
As a test of the validity of this evidence, I chose of the three quartos analyzed by Dr. Williams those two which are available in photographic reproduction, Shakespeare's 'Pied Bull' Lear (1608),[10] and Robert Armin's The History of the Two Maids of More-clack (1609),[11] both printed by Nicholas Okes. Within a slight non-significant variation without pattern and apparently dependent on the tightness of the wedges, the short and long measures in Lear of 80 and 93 mm. are constantly maintained, and this corresponds with Dr. Williams's spelling evidence demonstrating beyond all question that only one of Okes's two compositors set this play.
In The Two Maids of More-clack Dr. Williams found that the usual pattern was for compositor B to set $1-2v of each sheet, and compositor A $3-4v. Measurements disclose that compositor B used a measure of 88-89 mm. whereas compositor A used a measure of 90-91 mm. From sheet C on, these measures coincide precisely with the identification of the two compositors by spelling tests save in the two instances, sigs. H3 and H4v, where Dr. Williams felt the trend of the spelling evidence enforced breaking the pattern and assigning H3 and H4v to compositor B, although they would normally have constituted part of A's assignment. Since in both these pages the 90-91 mm. measure indicates that A actually set these pages and that the regular pattern was maintained in this sheet, the evidence of the printer's stick proves a useful counterweight as a check on spelling tests in cases of doubt. Although the check of measure against spelling as an identification is invariable in sheets C-I except for these two pages, there is some difficulty in sheets A and B;[12] nevertheless, the consistency with which the evidence
Some results accrue when the evidence of the measure is applied to Restoration play quartos where spelling tests would be doubtful. Crowne's The Country Wit (1693) is a difficult book because it is hard to decide whether certain variations of a millimeter in one compositor's measure are non-significant, or whether they represent the stick of a third compositor. If we take the more difficult but probable view that three compositors were associated with this book, we find that compositor I with a measure of 120-121 mm. set both formes of sheet A (which contains text as well as prelims) and then dropped out for two sheets. Compositor II, with a measure of 122 mm., then took over and set both formes of sheet B. The third compositor III, with a measure of 123 mm. seems to have set C1-2, and thereupon II and III alternate, II apparently setting C2v-3v, III C4, and II C4v. Compositor I returns to set both formes of sheet D, followed by II setting both formes of sheet E. Compositor III, enters with F1-2 and F4-4v, II interposing with F2v-3. Compositor I set G1-3v and perhaps the rest of G although II seems to have composed G4 and just possibly G4v. Gathering H, very curiously (since this is a second edition), is only a single leaf and is set by III. Perhaps there was confusion in imposition even though the pagination is continuous: it may be significant that with the re-entrance of compositor I on G1 the two skeletons
From several other plays Thomas D'Urfey's A Fond Husband (1677) may be selected. Here a fairly regular pattern is established of about four to five type-pages apiece between two compositors in relay using measures of 112 mm. and 113 mm. respectively. This play is especially interesting because, although it is a first edition and thus set from manuscript, the evidence of the measure seems to indicate that for the first two text sheets (possibly to get formes as quickly as possible at the start to the waiting press or presses) the compositors cast off copy and set by formes. Thus the 112 mm. measure set the outer formes of sheets B and C, and the 113 mm. measure the inner formes. Thereupon they begin to alternate, the 113 mm. measure beginning by composing most of sheet D, both formes.
The evidential value of the measure is not invariable for there are numerous books almost certainly set by two compositors whose sticks were so nearly equalized that measurement cannot distinguish them. Negatively, therefore, the evidence must always be equated with that of the presswork as shown by running-titles, or as Allan Stevenson has demonstrated,[13] by watermarks, before an invariant measure may be
Notes
The investigation of the material in this article was made under grants from the Research Council of the Richmond Area University Center and the Research Committee of the University of Virginia for the writing of a descriptive bibliography of the Restoration Drama.
In these same lines further bibliographical evidence, which did not concern his argument, may be adduced from the measure. Much of the discussion as to the nature of the copy behind this passage in the quarto, found in G. I. Duthie, Shakespeare's King Lear: A Critical Edition (1949), pp. 96-99 quoting Hubler and Greg, is vitiated by the fact that the compositor could not have begun to set the opening lines as prose and decided to line it as verse only in the fourth line: since the first three lines are clearly justified in the short, or verse measure, never used in this play for prose, the natural inference is that he began to set them as verse and the mislineation must be accounted for by other means.
For example, in Bellon's Mock-Duellist, mentioned above, the preliminaries were set by the second workman, who was conjectured to have substituted for the first towards the end of the book but without interrupting printing.
Watermark evidence may be useful in two-section printing. In Oroonoko a different watermark appears in sheets A-D from that in E-M. This watermark division might also develop if there had been an interruption between D and E, but when, as here, no indication of such a work stoppage is found, the evidence rather supports the hypothesis that two presses simultaneously printing different parts of the book had different lots of paper laid out for them.
This interesting book is analyzed in detail in my "The Supposed Cancel in Southerne's The Disappointment Reconsidered," forthcoming in The Library.
This alteration in the type-page opening would require adjustment of the furniture in three of the quarters in both the formes. Just possibly another compositor cut in here.
However, these odds occasionally come up. For example, the reset cancellans title for the Bentley-Chapman reissue of the Knight-Saunders 1687 edition of Davenant's adaptation of Macbeth is set in the same measure as the original title although it could not have been printed as a part of the original sheets. This is most uncharacteristic for a separately machined reset cancellans leaf.
"Principles Governing the Use of Variant Spellings as Evidence of Alternate Setting by Two Compositors," The Library, 4th ser., XXI (1940), 78-94.
"The Compositor of the 'Pied Bull' Lear," Papers of the Bibliographical Society, University of Virginia, I (1948-49), 61-68.
As indicated above, these tolerances were sufficient to go undetected, and type-pages set in such slightly varying measures could readily be imposed in the same skeleton-formes, the wedges taking up the slack and making no adjustment of the furniture necessary.
Dr. Williams divides sheet A irregularly, assigning A1v-2 and A3v-4v to compositor A, and the remaining A1 and A2v-3 to compositor B. This might look suspiciously like castingoff copy and setting by formes (if A4v could be transferred to B, but the 90-91 mm. measure found in all eight type-pages would indicate that compositor A set this sheet entire; and on close examination Dr. Williams's spelling criteria are seen to be somewhat indefinite for the pages assigned to B. Real trouble occurs in sheet B, however, which Dr. Williams divides between the two compositors in the regular manner found in subsequent sheets. Yet with the exception of sig. B3 where the measure is perhaps doubtful and could be that of compositor A, the measure of B3-4v is certainly 88-89 mm. and therefore associated with compositor B, who had definitely set B1-2v in this same measure, the spelling tests agreeing for these earlier pages. I do not pretend to be able to explain this aberration, since in the disputed pages the spelling very strongly suggests compositor A. I hesitate to conjecture that in this one instance (as possibly in the preceding sheet if the spelling tests there are really precise) the stick passed from hand to hand, but perhaps it did.
"New Uses of Watermarks as Bibliographical Evidence," Papers of the Bibliographical Society, University of Virginia, I (1948-49), 151-182. Printing by two presses must necessarily require the services of two compositors.
The determination of the precise spelling criteria which may be used as distinguishing features of the work of two compositors and then the application of these tests to any given book is an extremely onerous task which may on occasion be lightened by at least a tentative assignment of pages between compositors on the evidence of their measures.
Since a study of the characteristics of the compositors of a book is necessary before a textual critic can emend with any certainty, the working bibliographer owes it to the critic to analyze a book with the maximum precision in preparing it for criticism. Every available technique should be exploited, therefore, and among these it is possible that in certain cases the extension of the ways in which this evidence of the printer's measure may be employed and the results interpreted will prove of considerable value.
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