This font's ragged looking nature — is it primarily because of the way the font was printed at the time? I would assume there is some loss of clarity and other

This font's ragged looking nature — is it primarily because of the way the font was printed at the time? I would assume there is some loss of clarity and other artefacts introduced by how metal type printing prints. It seems like these fonts were created only by looking at printed works. Could the original metal blocks (sorts/matrixes/punches) still be around?