Jonas Green, his Family and his Associates

imprints from his press should be the Upper House "Address," the Votes
and Proceedings and the Collection of the Governor's Several Speeches of the
year 1739.

JONAS GREEN AS CRAFTSMAN AND PUBLISHER

Among the early specimens of Green's handiwork in the Province there
are not many of such a character as to distinguish him from other colonial
printers of his day. His Votes and Proceedings, as was the case usually with
the House journals, were printed unimpressively in a crabbed letter on poor
paper. On the other hand, his Collection of the Governor s Several Speeches
showed a tendency toward that distinction of typographical manner which
one learns to look for in examining his later work. How far he had been in-
fluenced by Franklin in his style is an interesting question which presents
itself at the first view of the Collection, a work which he printed when the
lessons of his service with or near the great Philadelphia printer were fresh
in his memory. Early in his career he was able to procure better equipment
than that in general use in America at this time, but if he had not used his
new fonts and appliances with a serious and thoughtful craftsmanship, the
mechanical aids alone would not have made for him the reputation, which
ultimately he obtained, of being a printer as accomplished as any in the
colonies. One remarks in his work a tendency toward studied simplicity,
almost it might be said, toward austerity. He shortened and simplified the
matter of his tide-pages, and discontinued the use of ruled borders in their
composition. He set his pages in broad measure without fussiness or man-
nerism, and imposed them with care for correct register. In the year 1764,
having imported some months previously a rich assortment of Caslon for
use in setting his edition of Bacon's Laws of Maryland, he advertised¹ that
thereafter the session laws would be printed in this letter and in the same
style as the Bacon. The first use which he made of the new fonts may have
been the printing of his petition to the Assembly of 1762, mentioned earlier
in this chapter. This broadside was a very handsome specimen of typogra-
phy, and from the time of its publication until the fonts of Caslon had been
worn out by continued use, Maryland public printing remained on a plane
of dignified excellence to which, in spite of the great facility of modern
methods, it has never attained since Jonas Green's day. Isaiah Thomas
said of Green, whom he admired for other qualities also, that "His printing
was correct, and few, if any, in the colonies exceeded him in the neatness
of his work."²

¹ Advertisement appended to Acts of 1763.
²Isaiah Thomas, 1st ed, 2:129.

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