um _Horae_. The smaller
fount came into use a few years later. It was somewhat larger, less
angular, and much more English in character, than that which the
printer had brought with him from Westminster. The bulk of Wynkyn de
Worde's books to the day of his death were printed with these types.
They were, doubtless, recast from time to time, but a close examination
fails to detect any difference in size or form during the whole period.

De Worde first began to use Roman type in 1520 for his scholastic books,
but he does not seem ever to have made any general use of it, remaining
faithful to English black letter to the end of his days. The only
exceptions are the educational books, which he invariably printed, as in
fact did all the other printers of the period, in a miniature fount of
gothic of a kind very popular on the Continent in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, being used by the French and Italian printers as
well as those of the Low Countries. De Worde's, however, was an
exceptionally small fount. Those most generally in use averaged eight
full lines of a quarto page, set close, to the inch, whereas De Worde's
averaged nine lines to the inch. But in 1513 he procured another fount
of this type, in which he printed the _Flowers of Ovid_, quarto, and in
this the letters are of English character, as may be seen particularly
in the lowercase 'h.' This fount, which was slightly larger, averaging
only eight lines to the inch, he does not seem to have used very
frequently. As Julian Notary printed the _Sermones Discipuli_ in 1510,
in the same type, it may have been lent by one printer to the other. In
or about 1533 De Worde introduced the italic letter into some of his
scholastic books, and in Colet's _Grammar_, which was amongst the last
books he printed, we find it in combination with English black letter,
the small 'grammar type,' and Roman.

In these various types, between the beginning of the century and his
death in 1534, Wynkyn de Worde printed upwards of five hundred books
which have come down to us, complete or in fragments. Thanks to the
indefatigable energy of Mr. Gordon Duff, we possess now a very full
record of his books, enabling us not only to estimate his merit as a
printer, but to see at a glance how consistently as a publisher he
maintained the entirely popular character which Caxton had given to his
press.

As regards books which required a considerable outlay, he was far less
adventurous than C