In the ex libris which Jost Amman made for “Johann Fischart genannt Mentzer” the initial letters J.F.G.M. are the initial letters, too, of the owner’s motto: “Jove fovente gignitur Minerva.”

Leaving now the Nuremberg school, we come to Lucas Cranach the elder. He is just one of those figures of old time of whom one would like to know much more. His chivalrous attachment to Frederick the Magnanimous, the last of three Electors of Saxony, all of whom he served, points to noble traits of character. He shared all the sufferings of Frederick the Magnanimous in the five years that he was in the hands of Charles V., although himself an old man, went with him to Weimar on his release in 1552, and died there in his eighty—first year, on the 16th October, 1553. His paintings and engravings are without number, the latter mostly woodcuts. One special interest of his work is that he was fond of introducing homely portraits of his friends, and portraits always give great interest to ex libris.

Among the ex libris from the hand of Lucas Cranach the elder are the woodcuts, in four different sizes, engraved for the Library of Wittenberg University, and each bearing the portrait of Frederick the Magnanimous.

At the foot of each is the inscription—

Hans Holbein has been credited with the designs for two woodcuts ex libris.

With the great amount and variety of work done by Holbein it would be most natural that he should have designed some ex libris. We of to-day can only deal with what has survived. For instance, scores of precious works printed three hundred years ago have wholly passed out of knowledge.

What a charming bookplate Hans Holbein would have invented—who knows that he did not?—say, for his noble martyr friend Sir Thomas More—perhaps depicting sweet Margaret Roper reading to her father, adding at foot of the plate some quaint motto from Erasmus! Hans Holbein lived scarcely forty-six years.

Next we will mention Hans Burgkmaier, born, too, at Augsburg in 1473, and a son of Hans Holbein the elder’s father-in-law. Several ex libris have been assigned to his hand; but with no certainty. The Emperor Maximilian I. was his patron, and Albrecht DÜrer his friend.

Now we reach about the time of what, until lately, was accounted the earliest French bookplate with a date. This bears the brief but comprehensive inscription: “Ex bibliotheca Caroli Albosii. E. Eduensis. Ex labore quies.” The earliest known dated English ex libris is also of 1574; but we always, in courtesy, put our friends before ourselves, and remember Napier’s splendid remark on hearing that Lord Mahon had contemptuously spoken of Napier’s History as the best “French” history of the war: “I always thought that to be generous to a noble foe was truly English, until my Lord Mahon informed me it was wholly French.”

Sir Nicholas Bacon’s bookplate bears his arms with helmet surmounted by crest; the crest being, of course, the only crest that could belong to Bacon. The Germans very properly never dreamt that a crest ought to appear anywhere but on a helmet. We have not been so correct. This recalls the blank amazement of a German on beholding a British officer in plain clothes. I remember thirty years ago, in Germany, my friend FitzRoy Gardner happening to show a photograph of Field-Marshal Sir John Burgoyne in plain clothes. The exclamation came at once, “He cannot be an officer, he is not in uniform.” This was, of course, the chivalrous old warrior who, in his yacht, brought the lovely Empress of the French safely to our shores.

This very interesting and early English bookplate has at the foot Sir Nicholas Bacon’s motto: “Mediocria Firma,” and we need not go here in full into the point of its date, which is fairly established. It is with an inscription in books given in 1574 by Sir Nicholas Bacon to Cambridge University. Sir Nicholas, perhaps best known for being the father of Francis, was the close friend of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, and Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, fellow-ministers with him of Queen Elizabeth. Queen Bess often made herself his guest, and after her visit of six days in 1577, her host had the door by which she had passed under his roof nailed up, so that no one, after her, might cross the same threshold. Oh for the picturesque days of old! Lord Beaconsfield alone, in our day, might have thought of such a graceful act.

The second dated engraved English bookplate known at present is that of Sir Thomas Tresham, knighted by Queen Bess in 1575. The plate is armorial, with a huge array of quarterings; helmet surmounted by crest in proper style. Inscription: “Fecit mihi magna qui potens est. 1585. Jun. 29.”, and below the arms: “S Tho: Tresame Knight.”

Sir Thomas married Muriel, daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton, and their son was Francis, “a wylde and unstayed man,” who first engaged in, and then revealed, the Gunpowder Plot. The father’s dying, in 1605, was probably the cause of the son’s not going forward in the plot, as he inherited property which would steady his aspirations. Sir Thomas left interesting memories of himself in fine buildings; and particularly in his own county of Northampton, the market-house at Rothwell, and the triangular lodge at Rushton.

A characteristic German plate of about 1570 is that of Johann Hector zum Jungen, with his name thus engraved in full under his arms, and the Latin motto: “Memorare nouissima tua,” at the top of the plate. In the earliest ex libris we did not find the owners’ names engraved.

So far almost everything has been purely armorial, and now we will turn to something different. This is a 1588 German plate; certainly it bears a small shield of arms, but most of the plate is occupied with the following engraved inscription: “Reverendus et Nobilis Dominus Wolfgangus Andreas Rem À Ketz, Cathedralis Ecclesia August: Sum: PrÆpositus, librum hunc unÀ cum mille et tribus aliis, variisque instrumentis Mathematicis, BibliothecÆ Monasterii S. Crucis AugustÆ, ad perpetuum Conventualium usum. Anno Christi M.D.LXXXVIII. Testamento legauit.”

We have noticed 1574 as the date of the earliest English dated bookplate, the next dated is not until 1585, and in France the gap is still wider; 1574 is the earliest dated French plate, and the next that has been found is dated 1611.

In Sweden, too, many years passed after the 1595 example without a dated successor. In Switzerland, also, where the earliest dated ex libris was in 1607, a long interval followed, in which we do not find dated Swiss ex libris. In Italy we do not find any dated ex libris before 1623.

This 1611 plate is that of Alexandre Bouchart, Viscount de Blosseville. This was found in a folio copy of the works of Ptolemy printed at Amsterdam in 1605, in the BibliothÈque Nationale in Paris. The graver-work and probably the design, too, was done by Leonard Gaultier, who also executed an engraved portrait of Alexandre Bouchart. Leonard Gaultier was born at Mayence in about 1561, and died in Paris in 1641, having engraved above eight hundred plates.

Herr Carlander, the chief authority for Swedish bookplates, finds 1596 the earliest date, and this on the plate of Senator Thure Bielke, of whom we do not know much more than that to his own cost he took the wrong side in politics, was beheaded in 1600, and had therefore no further use for his dated ex libris.

A German ex libris of near this date is interesting, as, like a good many others, it is to be found in three sizes. This is the ex libris of Johann Baptist Zeyll, designed by P. Opel, and cut on wood by C. L. in 1593.

Of course now in the days of photography it is easy to have your bookplate in several sizes; but it was far otherwise in these old times.

Next must be named a plate engraved in 1613 for placing in the books presented by William Willmer, a Northamptonshire gentleman, to his college library in Cambridge. Mr. Griggs reproduced it among his eighty-three armorial examples. It is inscribed “Sydney Sussex Colledge Ex dono Wilhelmi Willmer de Sywell in Com. NorthamtoniÆ, Armigeri, quondam pentionarii in ista Domi. Vizin Anno Domini 1599 seddedit in Anº DÑi 1613.”

In France, as likewise in England, there are hardly any dated bookplates at this period. Mr. Walter Hamilton, in writing of French ex libris before 1650, refers to three in different sizes, all engraved for Jean Bigot, Sieur de Sommesnil; and somewhat later, another set differing from the former, and with the owner’s name engraved as Johannes Bigot. After that we read of three bookplates engraved for the son, L. E. Bigot. In this connection the late Mr. Walter Hamilton is drawn on to give particulars of a family of ardent book collectors, thus incidentally illustrating very happily how the possession of one dirty scrap of paper—an old ex libris—may lead on from one fascinating inquiry to another.

A fine characteristic German ecclesiastical ex libris of 1624 is the plate given—page 330, George Bell and Sons—of Otto Gereon von Gutmann, Doctor of Theology, Electoral Councillor, and Suffragan Bishop of Cologne.

A very fine armorial plate, of which we do not know the designer, the engraver, nor the date, is that of Alexandre Petau. His father, Paul Petau, Conseiller au Parlement de Paris, died in 1613, bequeathing to his son a fine library of manuscripts and printed books.

A bookplate in two sizes, engraved for Claude Sarrau, Councillor to the Parliament of Paris. He died in 1651, and his son Isaac, in 1654, edited his father’s correspondence with the learned of his time. The larger Sarrau plate, and probably the smaller as well, were engraved by Isaac Briot, who was born in 1585, and died in Paris in 1670.

Reaching the seventeenth century, we find German ex libris multiplying greatly, but not improving in design.

Armorial bookplates still predominate, but the shield is often in one way or another surrounded by wreaths of leaves and flowers. It can hardly be insisted on too clearly that there is nothing mysterious, though much that is interesting, about the varying modes and manners of ex libris. They, in fact, represented the art, customs, learning, and taste of successive ages.

Thus turn to Johann Sibmacher’s WappenbÜchlein, published in 1596, and you will find plenty of illustrations of these wreaths, though with no reference to bookplates.