SOURCE: "Eric Gill," in The Printing of Books, Cassell & Company Ltd., 1938, pp. 140-54.

In the following excerpt, Jackson discusses Gill's aesthetic in lettering with reference to his notions of ethics.

Eric Gill is not content with being an artist. He wants to know what he is about, and in his essays he seems to be reasoning as much with himself as with his reader. He is superlatively honest in the process despite a dialectical ingenuity which recalls that of a medieval schoolman, or John Ruskin. A reference to the panels of the Stations of the Cross which he carved for Westminster Cathedral as 'furniture, not decorations', is indicative of his attitude towards the arts. The remark appears in a defence of the architecture of the cathedral, or of as much of it as he can tolerate. Bentley, it seems, dreamed of a brick building encrusted with marble and...