THE ENGLISH WRITING-MASTERS AND THEIR COPY-BOOKS, 1570-1800 By Ambrose Heal
Here is a biographical dictionary and a bibliography (The, English Writing-Masters and their Copy-Books, 1570-1800, by Ambrose Heal. Cambridge University Press. 1:5 5s. net) to which Mr. Stanley Morison has added "an historical intro-. &teflon on the development of English handwriting." The book is illustrated with portraits of the great masters and with many beautiful specimens of their " maistery." The appen- dices are valuable and instructive, and a careful index rounds off a thoroughly satisfying bobk. The edition is severely limited, the production at every point admirable. "The first account in modern times of our native pen-men and their work. The development of the English hand is recorded, from the break-away from the monastic scriptoria to the domination of the commercial hand of the nineteenth century.- The collector's interest will centre on the bibliographies by Mr. Heal, whose Preface is very well done ; the curiosity of students and literary critics is apt to pick on his biographies and on the conscientious and illuminating Introduction by Mr. Stanley Morison, as typographically famous in Tokyo es in London in Paris as in New York. After Mr. Heal has: rendered full justice to his very few and (excepting in the Seventeenth-century John Bagford and Pepys, and in the eighteenth-century William Massey and George Bickham) mostly defective predecessors in relating the history of English handwriting, Mr. Morison then proceeds to display his lucid and generous erudition. Both Mr. Heal and Mr. Morison gracefully acknowledge the, excellent work done in our own century by Mr. Edward Johnston, Mr. Graily Hewitt, Miss Marion Richardson, and Mr. Eric-Gill. They themselves can 'hardly be praised more highly than by being said to deserve. each.:the -other; • .
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