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Read Ebook: The Art and Craft of Printing by Morris William
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Ebook has 84 lines and 16760 words, and 2 pages
pains they adorned it, this unromantic, uneventful-looking land of England, surely by this too our hearts may be touched and our hope quickened.
For as was the land, such was the art of it while folk yet troubled themselves about such things; it strove little to impress people either by pomp or ingenuity: not unseldom it fell into commonplace, rarely it rose into majesty; yet was it never oppressive, never a slave's nightmare or an insolent boast: & at its best it had an inventiveness, an individuality, that grander styles have never overpassed: its best too, and that was in its very heart, was given as freely to the yeoman's house, and the humble village church, as to the lord's palace or the mighty cathedral: never coarse, though often rude enough, sweet, natural & unaffected, an art of peasants rather than of merchant princes or courtiers, it must be a hard heart, I think, that does not love it: whether a man has been born among it like ourselves, or has come wonderingly on its simplicity from all the grandeur over-seas.
And Science, we have loved her well, and followed her diligently, what will she do? I fear she is so much in the pay of the counting-house, the counting-house and the drill-sergeant, that she is too busy, and will for the present do nothing.
Yet there are matters which I should have thought easy for her, say for example teaching Manchester how to consume its own smoke, or Leeds how to get rid of its superfluous black dye without turning it into the river, which would be as much worth her attention as the production of the heaviest of heavy black silks, or the biggest of useless guns. Anyhow, however it be done, unless people care about carrying on their business without making the world hideous, how can they care about art? I know it will cost much both of time and money to better these things even a little; but I do not see how these can be better spent than in making life cheerful & honourable for others and for ourselves; and the gain of good life to the country at large that would result from men seriously setting about the bettering of the decency of our big towns would be priceless, even if nothing specially good befell the arts in consequence: I do not know that it would; but I should begin to think matters hopeful if men turned their attention to such things, and I repeat that, unless they do so, we can scarcely even begin with any hope our endeavours for the bettering of the Arts.
The "Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press," the last book printed at the Kelmscott Press, contains a few errors in the "Bibliography." These errors have been allowed to stand in reprinting the "Note" here, in order that the reprint shall be a literal one.
Mr. S. C. Cockerell, the former Secretary of the Kelmscott Press, has kindly sent a list of these corrections, which appear below:
Page 19, line 21--"Golden type" should be inserted after "8vo."
Page 30, line 16--"June 26, 1893," should be "June 26, 1896."
Page 39, line 17--after "guineas" insert "ten on vellum at ten guineas."
Page 40, line 31--for "eight leaflets" read, "nine or ten leaflets."
Page 44, line 12--omit "Lady."
Transcriber's Notes:
For "A Note on Founding the Kelmscott Press"
Page 4: "trangress" changed to "transgress": "Modern printers systematically transgress against it"
Page 5: "artitcle" changed to "article": "the foregoing article was written"
Page 5: "Pysche" changed to "Psyche": "Cupid and Psyche"
Page 7: "rubicated" changed to "rubricated": "left blank to be rubricated by hand"
Page 12: "handmade" changed to "hand-made": "English hand-made paper"
Page 12: "Calendar" changed to "Calender": "Spenser's Shepheardes Calender"
Page 26: "H. W. Hooper" changed to "W. H. Hooper" in item 31.
Page 32: "water-mark" changed to "watermark": "with the apple watermark"
Page 40: The reference in item 52 to page 8 for "Love is Enough" was corrected to page 5.
Page 40: The reference in item 53 to page 7 for "The Earthly Paradise" was corrected to page 5. The reference to the ornaments on page 9 was corrected to page 7. The reference to page 17 was corrected to page 12.
Page 40: The reference in "Various Lists" to page 10 was corrected to page 6.
Page 43: "Milliam" changed to "William" in item 53
Page 44: The reference in "Various Lists" to page 57 was corrected to page 38.
For "The Ideal Book"
Page 1: "determation" changed to "determination": "a determination to put our eyes"
For "An Essay on Printing"
Page 12: "Maintz" changed to "Mainz": "printed at Mainz by"
Page 15: "Calson" changed to "Caslon": "Even the Caslon type when"
Page 16: "witout" changed to "without": "without enhancing the price"
Page 23: Period added after "over-seas": "all the grandeur over-seas."
General notes:
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