Note 641 — Chapter XV · JOSEPH AND EDMUND FRY, 1764.

An error still less explicable than that of the Alexandrian Greek, but which not only Dr. Fry’s successors, but Hansard himself has copied. The following seems to be the “good authority” on which the assertion is based. In 1819, Mr. Bulmer, the eminent printer, printed for the Roxburghe Club, Mr. Hibbert’s transcript of the MS. fragment of the translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, made by Caxton about 1480, and preserved in the library of Pepys at Magdalen College, Cambridge. The body of the work was set in the English Black bought by Dr. Fry at James’ Sale—but in two places a smaller size of type was required to print passages omitted in Caxton’s translation, but supplied by the Editor in the original French of Colard Mansion’s edition. For these passages the Pica Black was selected, and as the French text contained several accents and contractions, these had to be specially cut. This task Dr. Fry performed, and understanding that the letter was to be used for printing a work of Caxton’s, he appears, without further enquiry, to have assumed that the work in question was a fac-simile reprint, and that his old matrices had been discovered to bear the impress of the veritable character used by that famous man. Had he seen the book in question he would have discovered that not only was it a transcript from a MS. of which no printed copy had ever been known to exist, but that the very passages in which the boasted type was used, were passages which did not even appear in a work of Caxton at all. The matrices are very old. They were in Andrews’ foundry about 1700, and in all probability came there from Holland, as they closely resemble the other old Dutch Blacks in James’ Foundry.