Note 638 — Chapter XV · JOSEPH AND EDMUND FRY, 1764.

Of the supposed antiquity of this interesting fount an account has already been given at pages 200–5, ante. By a curious confusion of names and dates, Dr. Fry, in his specimens stated that “this character was cut by Wynkyn de Worde, in exact imitation of the Codex Alexandrinus in the British Museum” ! This absurd anachronism—the more extraordinary as emanating from an antiquary of Dr. Fry’s standing—appears to have arisen from the fact that at the sale of James’ Foundry the matrices lay in a drawer which bore the name, “De Worde.” This circumstance misled Paterson, the auctioneer, into advertising the fount as the genuine handiwork of De Worde, a printer who lived a century before the Codex was brought into this country. The further coincidence that Dr. Woide of the British Museum was, at the time of the sale, engaged in producing an edition of the Codex, with facsimile types prepared by Jackson the founder, doubtless added—by the similarity of the names De Worde and Dr. Woide—to the confusion. After its purchase, the fount first appeared in Joseph Fry and Sons’ Specimen of 1786, without note. But, in the subsequent specimens of the Foundry, bearing his own name, Dr. Fry introduced the fiction, which remained unchallenged for a quarter of a century.