Specimen des nouveaux caractères de la fonderie et de l’imprimerie de P. Didot l’aîné, 1819

Pierre Didot transforms a type specimen into a poetic masterpiece in his 1819 “Specimen des nouveaux caractères,” where typography meets original verse.

Specimen des nouveaux caractères de la fonderie et de l’imprimerie de P. Didot l’aîné, dedicated to Jules Didot fils. Paris, chez P. Didot l’aîné et Jules Didot fils, 1819. Large in-8° pap. vell.; forty leaves, printed only on the recto: the first contains the frontispiece; the second, a notice; the thirty-eight others, proofs of different printing typefaces, from the one Mr. Didot calls the quatre et demi (four sixths and a half of a line) to the vingt et un (three lines three sixths). These are verse pieces, composed by Mr. P. Didot, which fill these thirty-eight pages. “I could have,” he tells the reader,

I could well have, according to custom,
Repeating the same passage,
Or truncating it at any point,
With the help of fifteen or twenty words,
Composed a vast page,
To your eyes offering by floor,
Of my new characters,
Small, medium, larger or smaller,
The simple and complete assembly.

J'aurais bien pu, suivant l'usage,
Répétant le même passage,
Ou le tronquant à tout propos,
A l'aide de quinze ou vingt mots,
Composer une vaste page,
A tes yeux offrant par étage,
De mes caractères nouveaux,
Petits, moyens, plus ou moins gros,
Le simple et complet assemblage

Mr. Didot wanted the specimen of his typefaces to be at the same time a collection of some of his poems: we believe that readers will be grateful to him for this; it’s the first picture of this kind that will be worth reading and not just looking at. It would have been enough to attract the attention of lovers of the typographic art: it will interest literati, and will have two titles to the suffrages of the public.