Note 567 — Chapter XIII · JOHN BASKERVILLE, 1752.

He appears always to have kept a large number of hot plates of copper always ready, between which, as soon as printed, just as they were discharged from the tympan, the sheets were inserted. The moisture was thus expelled, the ink set, and the smooth, glossy surface put on all simultaneously. However well the method may have answered at the time, the discoloration of his books still preserved in the British Museum and elsewhere, shows that the brilliance thus imparted was most tawdry and ephemeral.