Caslon (series 128) — Quarter strength jobbing

Why are William Caslon's types so excellent and so famous? To explain this & make it really clear is very difficult. While he modelled his letters on Dutch types, they were much better; for he introduced into his founts a quality of interest, a variety of design and a delicacy of modelling which few Dutch types possessed. Dutch founts were monotonous, but Caslon's founts were not so. His letters analysed are not perfect individually; but in mass their effect is agreeable. That is, I think, their secret - a perfection of the whole, derived from harmonious but not necessarily perfect individual letter-forms. To say precisely how Caslon arrived at his effects is not simple; but he did so because he was an artist. He knew how to make types, if ever a man did, that were 'friendly to the eye', or 'COMFORTABLE' - to use Dibdin's happy term. Furthermore, his types are thoroughly English. There are other letters more elegant; for the Caslon characters do not compare in that respect with the letters of Garamond or of Grandjean. But in their defects and qualities they are also the result of a taste typically Anglo-Saxon, and so represent to us the flowering of a sturdy ENGLISH tradition in typography. CASLON types are, too, so beautiful in mass, and above all so legible and 'common-sense' that they can never be disregarded, & I doubt if they will ever be displaced.