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of lake and sea. In a gale of wind on Lough Allen--known as the
"wicked Lough"--the canoes were both upset, and the two young men
were drowned.
The shock in the family circle can be imagined. It was the beginning of
many sorrows. Two years later, in 1881, Sir Charles Reed died; and in
1883 the family was again plunged into grief by the sad death of
Talbot's eldest brother ("my 'father confessor' in all times of trouble,"
Talbot used to say of him), the Reverend Charles Edward Reed, who
was accidentally killed by a fall over a precipice while he was on a
walking expedition in Switzerland. Lady Reed, it may be here said,
died in June 1891.
While most people will think that Talbot Reed's boys' books are his
best bequest to literature, he considered them of less importance in the
work of his life than his book entitled "A History of the Old English
Letter Foundries; with Notes Historical and Bibliographical on the Rise
and Progress of English Typography" (Elliot Stock, 1887), the
preparation of which cost him ten years of research and labour. His
boys' books were the spontaneous utterance of his joyous nature, and
their production he regarded in the light of a recreation amid the more
serious affairs of life. He had an ambition, which the results of his
labour fully justified, to be regarded as an authority on Typography. I
can remember his amusement, and perhaps annoyance, when he had
gone down to a Yorkshire town to deliver a lecture on some
typographical subject, to find that the walls and hoardings of the town
were decorated with posters, announcing the lecture as by "Talbot B.
Reed, author of 'A Dog with a Bad Name!'"

But all scholars and book-lovers will regard this work of his on "The
History of the Old English Letter Foundries" as being of supreme value.
In it, as he himself says, he tells the story of the fifteenth century heroes
of the punch and matrix and mould, who made English printing an art
ere yet the tyranny of an age of machinery was established. Whatever
Talbot Reed's pen touched it adorned, and in the light of his mind what
seemed dry and dusty corners of literary history became alive with
living human interest.
Besides this great work, he edited the book left unfinished by his friend
Mr Blades, entitled "The Pentateuch of Printing," to which he added a
biographical memoir of Mr Blades.
All that related to the craft of printing was profoundly interesting to
Reed, whether viewed from the practical, or the historic, or the artistic
side. His types were to him no mere articles of commerce, they were
objects of beauty; to him the craft possessed the fascination of having a
great history, and the legitimate pride of having played a great part in
the world.
Reed delivered more than one admirable public lecture on subjects
related to the art of printing. One he delivered at the Society of Arts, on
"Fashions in Printing" (for which he received one of the Society's silver
medals), and another on "Baskerville," the interesting type-founder and
printer of Birmingham in the last century, to whom a chapter of "The
History" is devoted.
Only two years before his death Reed was one of a small band of book-
lovers who founded the Bibliographical Society, a body which aims at
making easier, by the organising of literature, the labours of literary
men, librarians, and students generally. From its start he undertook, in
the midst of many pressing personal duties, the arduous task of
honorary secretaryship of the young society--an office which he
regarded as one of great honour and usefulness, but which entailed
upon him, at a time when his health could ill bear the strain, hard
organising and clerical work, cheerfully undertaken, and continued
until a few weeks before his death. The first two published Parts of the
Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, edited by him, are models

of what such work ought to be.
Reed was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and for many years
was an active member of the Library Association. His own library of
books bearing on Typography, Bibliography, and many a kindred
subject, the harvest of many years' collecting, is unique. It was a
pleasure to see the expression of Reed's face when he came upon a new
book really after his mind, or, still better, an old book, "Anything
fifteenth century or early sixteenth," he used to say; any relic or scrap
from Caxton's or De Worde's Press; any specimen of a "truant type" on
the page of an early book; or a Caslon, or a Baskerville in good
condition; or one of the beauties from Mr Morris's modern Press.
Charles Lamb himself could not