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III.2. Meditation on the Composing Stick The composing stick is an essential piece of equipment in traditional printing . It is the basis for most of what Moxon says about the “Compositor,” who in turn is the basis for much of modern bibliographical discussion, both in analytical bibliography and in the textual criticism related to it. Though every Compositer by Custom is to provide himself a Composing-stick, yet our Master-Printer ought to furnish his House with these Tools also, and such a number of them as is suitable to the size of his House; Because we will suppose our Master-Printer intends to keep some Apprentices, and they, unless by contract or courtesie, are not used to provide themselves Composing-sticks; And besides, when several Compositers work upon the same Book, their Measures are all set alike, and their Titles by reason of Notes or Quotations broader than their common Measure, So that a Composingstick is kept on purpose for the Titles, which must therefore be common to all the Compositers that work upon that Work; And no one of them is obliged to provide a Composing-stick in common for them all. (Mechanick Exercises, sec. 9, par. 4) Moxon is here interested in human beings and their organization in a printing house, and he is straining to describe this in terms of physical equipment and book appearance. If I understand this passage correctly (the things I am concerned with here are secondary in Moxon’s mind), by “Titles” Moxon means running heads, which would be wider than the text block (the “common measure”) due to marginal notes and quotations. This feature of layout then has its analogue both in the social relation of workers (master printer 140 iii.2 and compositor) and in the material tools of the press: the composing stick set for the running heads is “common to all compositors” and is supplied by the master printer. And each compositor has an individual composing stick set to the “common measure” (a different sense of “common”) of text. You can clarify Moxon’s meaning either by looking at the illustration or (for the modern printer) by referring to a twentieth-century version of this, and rearranging or rewriting Moxon’s words to conform to it. The “sliding measures” correspond to text and marginal notes; also implied in Moxon’s Plate 24 are the units of composition—three to five lines of text (Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, Pls. 2 and 24, and sec. 3, par. 4). Associated with the composing stick, perhaps its raison d’être, is the galley (both are shown in Plate 2). The galley is mentioned by Moxon in sec. 5: Our Master Printer is also to provide Galleys of different sizes. That the Compositer may be suited with small ones when he Composes small Pages, and with great ones for great Pages. These are not described in detail; I assume this is because they are simple enough that the illustration alone is sufficient, or because Moxon is so familiar with them he has difficulty imagining anyone who is not. The galley and the composing stick are part of the same operation: the compositor sets type in the composing stick, places it in the galley, and from there composes pages on the stone, arranged then into formes (see series of illustrations through Plate 28). Note that galley composition seems to be page by page (Plate 25, and sec. 22, par. 6) In nineteenth-century manuals of printing, these descriptions are unchanged . Or at least, the descriptions of nineteenth-century descriptions suggest they are unchanged. Hansard uses for his first illustration the illustration in Moxon. His description obviously owes much to Moxon: [A composing-stick] is the only instrument or tool with which a compositor has to provide himself at the outset; and which, with due care, will last him the whole of his life. To make this little instrument quite perfect requires a great deal of mathematical nicety. The relations between these two texts could be due to traditions in the print shop, or they could be due to traditions in descriptions of them (see above, Chapter 2). The instruments shown in Rummonds’s illustration on the same Figure 6. Composing stick and galley, from Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, Pl.2. Photo courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles. 142 iii.2 page are from MacKellar, 11th ed. 1878, p. 305; they are all variations of...

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