BLACK LETTER (Blatt /Utter), the name commonly given in this country to the types which on the continent arc most generally- known as Gothic. The first printed books imitated every peculiarity of the contemporary manuscripts; and as printing was first practiced in Germany and the Netherlands, the first types were copies of the letters in use in those countries in the middle of the 15th century. Two sorts of letters have been employed in the writings of western Christendom. What have been called Boman letters prevailed from the 5th to about the close of the 12th when they gradually began to pass into what have been called Gothic letters, which continued till the 16th c., when, in most European countries, they were superseded by Roman letters. The first types, as has been said, were Gothic, and they spread with the art of printing into•arious European states. In France and Italy, they were slightly modified by cutting off some of their rougher points; and when thus trimmed, they came to be known in the former country as lettres de somme, being so called, it is said, from tbcir use in an edition of the Somma. of St. Thomas Aquinas. The classic taste of Italy could not long tolerate the Gothic character even of the lettres de eonone ; and they were still further modified, until they assumed the shape to which the name of Roman letters has since been given. The
first works printed with these new types were two beautiful editions of Pliny's ..lsatnrset history: the ono by John of Spirit at Venice in 1460, and tho other by his disciple, •Nieholas Jenson, also at Venice, in 1472. Another Venetian printer—the first Aldus 3Ianutius—attempted in 1501 to supersede the Roman letters by what have been called Aldine (q.v.) or Venetian, but arc best known a.' Italic characters. These can scarcely be said to have come into much more than temporary or exceptional use; but the Roman letters in no long time spread from Venice all over the west of Europe. Although thus supplanted in general use. the Gothic or B. L. was long retained for special purposes, such as, in this country, the printing of bibles, prayer-books, proclamations, and acts of parliament. Books in B. L. being the earliest, are highly prized by antiquaries and bibliomaniacs, who are hence sometimes spoken of as "black-letter" devotees. Thus, Matthias, in his Pursuits of Literature (published in 1790), alluding to the commentators on Shakespeare, writes: On Avon's banks I heard Actmon mourn, 13y fell black-leUer cloys In pieces torn; Dogs that from Gothic kennels eager start, etc.
A form of the 13. L. still continues in general use in Germany, but of late has begun to give way in some quarters to the Roman.