The earliest productions of the French press will not bear comparison with those of either the German or the Italian: they have neither the massive dignity of the one, nor the artistic grace of the other. The worthy professors at the Sorbonne, who called to their aid the Swiss or German printers, Crantz Gering and Friburger, bestowed, as we have seen in our first chapter, considerable trouble on the decoration by hand of special copies for presentation to influential friends or patrons, but in other respects, their books were wholly destitute of ornament. When, after little more than two years, they gave up their press, the three printers started again on their own account with a rather ugly gothic type, nor did Gering, who afterwards worked both by himself and in combination with other printers, produce a really handsome book until about 1480. The semi-gothic types of another firm of German printers in Paris, Peter Caesaris and Stoll, are much more attractive, but the average French work during the seventies is dull.

The first attempt at decoration appears to have been made, not at the capital, but at Lyons, where, in August 1478, an anonymous printer, probably Martin Husz, completed a double-column edition of Le Miroir de la redemption humaine, translated from the Latin by Julien Macho, with cuts previously used in a German edition of the Speculum, printed at Basel in 1476. In 1478, also, BarthÉlemy Buyer printed an edition of the romance of Baudoin, Comte de Flandre, with no cuts, but with rude printed initials. In an edition of Les Quatre Filz Aymon, unsigned and undated, but printed at Lyons about 1480, the first page bears four grotesque woodcuts representing the reception of the youths by Charlemagne, the buffet which the Emperor's son gave one of them over a game of chess, the fatal blow with the golden chess-board by which the buffet was returned, and then the four youths fighting amid a crowd. On the next page a larger picture shows their expulsion from Charlemagne's court. Throughout the book are curious woodcut initials, interwoven with grotesque faces. About 1481 Ortuin and Schenck produced (anonymously) an edition of the Roman de la Rose with eighty-six small woodcuts, which were imitated in later editions both at Lyons and Paris, and were not without a certain rude merit. In 1483 Mathieu Husz and Pierre Hongre issued a LÉgende dorÉe, with large pictures of Christ in Glory on the Last Day, and of the Crucifixion, and numerous very rough cuts at the head of the different chapters. In the same year, Husz published, in conjunction with Jean Schabeler, an illustrated translation of Boccaccio's De Casibus illustrium virorum ('Du dechier des nobles hommes et femmes'). Meanwhile, at Albi, in Languedoc, of all places in the world, Neumeister had reprinted in 1481 an illustrated edition of the Meditationes of Turrecremata, which he had produced two years previously at Mainz. In 1484 we hear of illustrated books in three other towns. At Rennes, Pierre BellescullÉe and Josses printed the Coutumes de Bretagne, with a woodcut of the arms of Brittany, used again the next year in the same printers' Floret en francoys, a book noticeable for having a woodcut title printed in white on a black ground. At Vienne, Pierre Schenck printed another edition, in double-columns, of L'AbuzÉ en court, with small cuts at the chapter headings. At ChambÉry, Antoine Neyret finished, on July 6th, an edition of the Exposition des Évangiles en romant of Maurice de Sully, and in the following November the romance of Baudoin comte de Flandre. The Bishop's sermons have, on the first page, a large initial I and a very rough cut of the disciples loosing the ass and her colt for Christ's use. With their other illustrations I am not acquainted. The romance of Count Baldwin has a full-page cut of the Count riding on a gaily-decked charger, and thirteen smaller illustrations of his adventures, of which, however, several are repeated. The execution of them all is as rude as can well be conceived. Two years later, Neyret printed the first edition of a very famous book, Le Livre du Roi Modus et de la reine Ratio, 'lequel fait mencion commant on doit deviser de toutes maniÈres de chasses.' The cuts in this are numerous, and their representations of the various hunting scenes are more than sufficiently grotesque.

The list of books we have named could certainly be extended, especially as regards those printed at Lyons, but it is sufficiently full to enable us to draw some useful conclusions from it. The illustrations are, almost without exception, poor in design and badly cut, and are mostly accompanied by inferior types and press-work. Some of them are imitated from the books of foreign printers, and they contain little evidence of the growth of any French school of illustrators. On the other hand, they testify to the spread of a demand for illustrated books, at least in the provinces, which local printers were doing their best to satisfy. At Paris the demand, apparently, had not yet arisen. In the first dated book which bears the name of Jean du PrÉ, a Missale ad usum ecclesiae Parisiensis, printed by him in conjunction with Didier Huym in September 1481, there is a large woodcut of God the Father and the Crucifixion, illustrating the Canon. Two months later Du PrÉ printed a Verdun missal with a really fine metal cut of a priest at Mass, and a little figure rising up to represent his soul in prayer. In February 1483-4 appeared his first illustrated secular work, De la ruine des nobles hommes, another translation from Boccaccio's De Casibus, with a woodcut of varying merit at the head of each book. These have a special interest for English students, as some years later they were borrowed by Pynson to illustrate his edition of Lydgate's version of the same work.

In May 1484 Jacques Bonhomme issued Millet's L'Histoire de la destruction de Troye la Grant, with numerous woodcuts of battles, frequently used in later works; and the following year Guyot Marchant produced the first of numerous editions of a Danse Macabre illustrated with a wonderful series of pictures, full of grotesque vigour and skilfully cut, showing Death as a grinning skeleton seizing on his prey in every class of society. Marchant followed this up with a Danse Macabre des femmes (somewhat less good) in 1491, and also with a Compost et Calendrier des Bergers, which was no less successful.

Meanwhile the greatest Paris publisher of the century, Antoine VÉrard, had come on the scene. Although some of the innumerable works which bear his name are said to have been printed 'par Antoine VÉrard,' it is clear that the expression must not be taken too literally, and that he was a 'libraire,' i.e. a bookseller or publisher, rather than a printer. His first dated book is an edition, enriched with a single woodcut, of Laurent du Premier Fait's French version of the Decamerone, and the colophon tells us that it was printed for Antoine VÉrard, 'libraire, demeurant sur le Pont Notre Dame, À l'image de Saint Jean l'EvangÉliste,' on November 22, 1485. The types used in the book have been identified as belonging to Jean du PrÉ, and the association of the two men seems to have led to important results. The next year we find Du PrÉ printing an edition of S. Jerome's Vie des anciens saintz PÈres, with a delightful frontispiece of the saint preaching from a lectern in the open air, numerous smaller cuts, and initial letters with interwoven faces. During 1486 also, he assisted Pierre GÉrard (who earlier in the year had printed by himself an edition of Boutillier's La Somme Rurale with a single cut), in producing at Abbeville the first really magnificent French illustrated book, S. Augustine's CitÉ de Dieu, in which paper and print and woodcuts of artistic value all harmonise.[18] Two years later he joined with another provincial printer, Jean le Bourgeois, in producing a still more splendid book, the romance of Lancelot du Lac, the first volume of which was finished by Le Bourgeois at Rouen on November 24th, and the second by Du PrÉ at Paris on September 16th. In 1488 also, Du PrÉ produced his first 'Book of Hours,' but the French Horae form so important an episode in the history of the decoration of books, that we must reserve their treatment for a separate chapter, in which, besides those of Du PrÉ and VÉrard, we shall have to speak of the long series inaugurated by Philippe Pigouchet and Simon Vostre in 1491.

At starting, VÉrard's resources were probably small, and for a year or two he produced little beyond his Horae. In 1487, however, he published a French Livy, with four small cuts, representing a battle, a siege, a king and his court, and some riders, whose hats have a very ecclesiastical shape, entering a town. The next year produced a work entitled L'art de Chevalerie selon VÉgÈce, really an edition of the Faits d'arme et de chevalerie of Christine de Pisan. This has a single large cut representing a king and his court. The Livre de Politiques d'Aristote, published in 1489, has a large frontispiece of the translator, Nicholas Oresme, presenting his book to Charles VIII, in which the characteristic style of VÉrard's artist is fully developed. In 1490, an edition of Lucain, Suetone et Saluste, which I have not seen, was printed for VÉrard by Pierre Le Rouge. To 1491 probably belongs his French Seneca, and in this year he must have obtained the aid of the king or of some very rich patron, for his activity from 1492 to the end of the century is quite amazing. It is from about 1493, also, that we may date the production of those magnificent special copies on vellum, enriched with elaborate, if not very artistic, miniatures, to which we have already alluded in our first chapter.

The chief book of 1492 was undoubtedly the series of treatises making up the Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir, of which a detailed description will be given later on. These treatises were printed for VÉrard by Cousteau and Menard, the first part being finished on July 18th, the last on December 19th. Next to them in importance is a Josephus de la bataille judaique, one of VÉrard's large folios, with columns of printed text, not reckoning any margin, nearly twelve inches long. The frontispiece is a fine cut of a triumphal entry of a king who should be French, since he wears the lilies. The design, however, must have been made for this book, for a label in the middle of the picture bears the name 'Josephus,' while in the Gestes Romaines and Lancelot, in both of which the cut reappears, the label is left blank. The 'Entry' is also used again, three times in the Josephus itself, at the beginning of the fourth, fifth, and seventh books. An entry of a different kind, that of Joshua and his staff into Jericho, is depicted in the cut (here reproduced) which heads the prologue. This is faced by the first page of text, headed by a cut of an author presenting his book to an ecclesiastic. Both pages are surrounded by fine borders of flowers, women, and shield. The head-cut to the second book shows a monk handing a book to a king; that used for the third and sixth (repeated again in the Lancelot of 1494) shows a king on his throne surrounded by his courtiers, a sword of justice is in his hand, and a suppliant kneels before him. Small cuts, fitting into the columns, head the different chapters in each book, but are of no great merit. Occasionally a border about an inch wide runs up the side of one of the columns of text, usually on the outer margin, but sometimes on the inner. Altogether the book is a very notable one.

In 1493, VÉrard's activity was still on the increase, and we have at least eight illustrated books of his bearing the date of this year. In the romance of Le Jouvencel and Bonnor's Arbre des Batailles, both in 4to, the cuts, all of them small, are nearly identical, and are repeated again and again in each book. Much more important than these are the editions of the Chronicques de France (printed for VÉrard by Jehan Maurand), and a translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, issued under the very taking title of La Bible des Poetes. This is another of VÉrard's great folios, with profuse illustrations, large and small, and in its vellum edition is a very gaudy and magnificent book. In 1494 VÉrard published his Lancelot; and in 1495, a LÉgende DorÉe and S. Jerome's Vie des PÈres en franÇois. This last book was finished on October 15, but its appearance was preceded by that of the first volume of the publisher's most ambitious undertaking, an edition of the Miroir Historial of Vincent de Beauvais. This enormous chronicle is in thirty-two books, which VÉrard divided between five great folio volumes, averaging about three hundred and twenty leaves, printed in long double columns. The whole work thus contains about the same amount of matter as some fifty volumes of the present series, yet it was faultlessly printed on the finest vellum, and with innumerable woodcuts, subsequently coloured, in considerably less than a year. The first volume was finished on September 29, 1495, and the colophon which announces the completion of the last, 'À l'honneur et louenge de nostre seigneur iesucrist et de sa glorieuse et sacrÉe mere et de la court celeste de paradis,' bears date May 7th, 1496. In the face of such activity and enterprise, I feel ashamed of having girded at the good man for having used some of the Ovid cuts as a basis to his illuminations in this gigantic work.

After 1496 to the end of the century, VÉrard's dated books are very few. The only one I have met with myself is a Merlin of 1498. It is possible that he produced less (the Miroir may not have proved a financial success), but it is quite as likely that he merely discontinued his wholesome practice of dating his books, and that the Boethius, the Roman de la Rose, the Gestes Romaines, the romances of Tristram and Gyron, and other undated works, whose colophons show that they were printed while the Pont Notre Dame was still standing, i.e. before October 25th, 1499, belong to these years. After 1500 VÉrard's enterprise certainly seems less. He continued to issue editions of poets and romances, but they are much less sumptuous than of yore, and in place of his great folios we have a series of small octavos, mostly of works of devotion, with no other ornament than the strange twists of the initial L, which adorns their title-pages. The example here given is from an undated and unsigned edition of the Livre du Faulcon, but the letter itself frequently occurs in VÉrard's undoubted books. The first hint for this grotesque form of ornament may have been found in the small initials of Du PrÉ's 1486 edition of S. Jerome's Vie des anciens saintz PÈres, and variants of the L were used by other publishers besides VÉrard, e.g. by Jacques Maillet at Lyons, and Pierre Le Rouge and Michel Le Noir at Paris. The most noticeable examples of the L, besides the one here given, are the man-at-arms L of the 1488 edition of the Mer des Histoires (P. Lerouge), the monkey-and-bagpipes L, here shown, from Maillet's 1494 edition of the Recueil des Histoires Troyennes, a St. George-and-the-Dragon L in a Lyons reprint of the Mer des Histoires, and the January-and-May L which, I believe, was first used by VÉrard for a 1492 edition of the Matheolus, or 'quinze joies du mariage,' but of which a counterpart existed at Lyons.

It seems probable that the attention which VÉrard paid to his vellum editions, in which the woodcuts were only useful as guides to the illustrator, made him less careful than he would otherwise have been to secure the best possible work in his ordinary books. Certainly I think his most interesting cuts are to be found not in his later books but in the collection of six treatises which he had printed by Gillet Cousteau and Jehan Menard in 1492, and republished, somewhat less sumptuously, the next year, under the collective title L'art de bien vivre et de bien mourir, the reprint coming from the press of Pierre Le Rouge. The cuts in this collection have a special interest for us, because some of them were afterwards used in English books, and we may therefore be allowed to examine them at some length.

In the 1492 edition the first title-page Le liure intitule lart de bien mourir heralds only the first work, an adaptation of the old Ars Moriendi showing the struggle between good and bad angels for the possession of the dying soul. The devils tempt the sufferer to hasten his end ('interficias teipsum' one of them is saying, the words being printed on a label), they remind him of his sins ('periuratus es'), tempt him to worldly thoughts ('intende thesauro'), persuade his physicians to over-commiseration ('Ecce quantam penam patitur'), or flatter him with undeserved praise ('coronam meruisti'). To each of these assaults his good angels have a 'bonne inspiracion' by way of answer, and the devils have to confess 'spes nobis nulla' and to see the little figure of the soul received into heaven. The second treatise is called at the beginning L'eguyllon de crainte divine pour bien mourir, but on the title-page placed on the back of the last leaf 'les paines denfer et les paines de purgatoire.' Its illustrations consist of large cuts in which devils are inflicting excruciating and revolting tortures on their victims. Its colophon gives the printers' names and the date July 18, 1492. The next three parts of the book are Le TraitÉ de l'avenement de l'Antechrist, Les Quinze Signes, or Fifteen Tokens of Judgment, and Les Joies du Paradis. The printing of these was finished on October 28. Only the middle treatise is much illustrated, but here the artist had full play for his powers in representing the fish swimming on the hills, the seas falling into the abyss, the sea-monsters covering the earth, the flames of the sea, the trees wet with blood, the crumbling of cities, the stones fighting among themselves, and the other signs of the Last Day. Perhaps the best of this set of cuts is that representing the 'esbahissement' or astonishment of the men and women who had hidden themselves in holes in the earth, when at last they ventured forth. But in the last treatise, the Art de bien vivre, quaintness and horror are replaced by really beautiful work. The cuts here are intended to illustrate the Ave Maria, Lord's Prayer, Creed, Ten Commandments, and Seven Sacraments. Those in the last series are the largest in the book, each of them occupying a full page. The Creed has a series of smaller cuts of inferior work. But the picture which precedes this, representing the twelve apostles, and the pictures of the Angelic Salutation, of the Pope invoking the Blessed Virgin (here shown), and of Christ teaching the Apostles, show the finest work, outside the Horae, in any French books during the fifteenth century. These blocks appear also in two English books printed at Paris, in 1503, The Traytte of god lyuyng and good deyng, and The Kalendayr of Shyppars, and in many of the English editions of the latter work from Pynson's in 1506 onward.

Pierre Lerouge, one of VÉrard's printers, produced at least one fine book quite independently of him. This is the first illustrated edition of La Mer des Hystoires, the French version of the Rudimentum Noviciorum (see p. 50), the general plan of which it follows, though not slavishly. Pierre Lerouge printed his edition for a publisher named Vincent Commin. It is in two tall folios, with the man-at-arms L to decorate its title-pages, and splendid initials P, I, and S, the first having within it a figure of a scribe at work, the S being twisted into the form of a scaly snake, and the body of the I containing a figure of Christ. The cuts and borders of the book are not very remarkable. In 1498 VÉrard published a new edition of it, having obtained the use of the old blocks. A Lyons reprint was issued about 1500, and other editions during the sixteenth century. Two other printers who cannot be said to have learnt anything from VÉrard are Jean Bonhomme, who as early as 1486 printed an illustrated edition of a very popular book, Le livre des profits champÊtres, translated from the Latin of Petrus Crescentius, and Germain Bineaut, who in 1490 printed a Pathelin le grant et le petit which is said to have woodcuts. Guyot Marchant's series of editions of the Danse Macabre or 'danse des Morts,' has been already mentioned. An edition of the same work, printed at Lyons, February 18, 1499 (no printer's name), a copy of which is among the books which entered the British Museum under the bequest of Mr. Alfred Huth, is especially interesting as containing cuts of the shops of a printer and a bookseller, at both of which Death is at work.

Another edition of the Danse was printed by Nicole de la Barre at Paris in 1500, and others of the same character in the early years of the next century. We shall have to recur to the book again both with reference to the Horae and for the later Lyons editions, the cuts in which followed designs by Holbein.

The only other Paris printer whom we have space here to mention is Jean Trepperel, whose career began in 1492, in which year, according to Hain, he issued a Histoire de Pierre de Provence et de la belle Maguelonne, probably illustrated. In 1493 he published an edition of the Chroniques de France, with four cuts, one of the founding of a town, another of an assault, and two battle scenes. They are good of their kind, especially that which serves for all the founders of cities from Æneas and Romulus to S. Louis, but their repetition becomes a little wearisome. In an undated issue of Jehan Quentin's Orologe de Devotion the cuts are all different, but fall into two series, one badly drawn and infamously engraved, the other showing really fine work, and having all the appearance of having been originally designed for a Book of Hours.

The only other fifteenth century book of Trepperel's with which I am acquainted is a charming quarto edition of the romance of Paris et Vienne, a copy of which is in the Morgan collection. It is undated, but was printed while the Pont Notre Dame was still standing. The title-cut shows signs of breakage, and may possibly have been designed for the earlier edition by Denis Meslier mentioned by Brunet as having a single cut. The rest of the large cuts in the book have all the appearance of having been specially designed for the new edition, and are equal to the best work in the Horae. Meanwhile at Lyons the rude cuts of the books which heralded illustrated work in France had been replaced by far more artistic productions. In 1488 Michelet Topie de Pymont and Jacques Herrnberg produced a French version (by Nicole Le Huen) of Breydenbach's Peregrinatio (see p. 57) with copies of some of the original cuts, the smaller ones cut on wood, the large maps engraved on copper. The next year Jacques Maillet brought out a rival version (by Frere Jehan de Hersin) for which he acquired the original Mainz woodblocks themselves. To Maillet, also, we owe passable imitations of some of the less sumptuous books of VÉrard's. Lastly, Jean Trechsel struck out a new line in a profusely illustrated Terence of 1493. At Rouen the Missal and Breviary printed by Martin Morin were adorned with a curious initial M and B in the same style as some of the more frequent Ls, and Pierre Regnault did work which VÉrard found worthy of his vellum. Paris, however, having once gained the predominance in illustrated work, had as yet no difficulty in maintaining her position.

It remains for us to notice briefly the printers' devices in early French books. These are so numerous that it is possible to divide them into rough classes. The largest of these is formed by the marks which have as their central ornament a tree with a shield or label hung on the trunk, with supporters varied according to the owner's fancy, and which are not always easy to assign to their right place in the animal creation. Durand Gerlier preferred rams, Michel Tholoze wild men, Denys Janot a creature which looks like a kangaroo, Hemon Le Fevre dancing bears duly muzzled and chained, Simon Vostre leopards, Thielmann Kerver unicorns, Felix Baligault rabbits, Robert Gourmont winged stags, Jehan Guyart of Bordeaux dolphins. Most of these devices have a dotted background, and they are sometimes found printed in red ink, which adds greatly to their decorative effect. Another class, to which VÉrard's well-known device belongs, showed in their upper part the French lilies crowned and supported by angels. Jean Le Forestier combined this with the tree of knowledge, choosing lions as its supporters, but adding also the sacred lamb (for his name 'Jean'), and similar variations were adopted by other printers. In another large class the French printers, especially those of Lyons, followed the simple cross and circle so common in Italy. This was mostly printed in white on a black ground, as by Pierre Levet, Matthieu Vivian of Orleans, and Le Tailleur. Less often, as in the marks of Berthold Rembolt and Georges Wolf, the ground is white and the design black. Guillaume Balsarin who, as was very common, had two devices, had one of each kind. Outside these classes the special designs are too many to be enumerated. The successive Le Noirs punned on their names in at least six different devices of black heads, and Deny de Harsy with less obvious appropriateness selected two black men with white waistbands to uphold his shields. Guyot Marchant's shoemakers, with the bar of music to complete his pious motto Sola fides sufficit, form one of the earliest and best known of French marks. Pierre Regnault showed excellent taste in his flower-surrounded P, in which the letters of his surname may also be deciphered. The scholar-printer Badius Ascensius chose a useful, if not very pretty, design of printers at work, the two variants of which first appear respectively in 1507 and 1521. All these devices and countless others will be found roughly figured in Silvestre's Marques Typographiques, many of them appear also in Brunet's Manuel du Libraire, and those of the chief fifteenth century printers have been reproduced with absolute fidelity in M. Thierry-Poux's Monuments de l'imprimerie franÇaise. Only the mark of Du PrÉ and one of those used by Caillaut are therefore given here, the first (on p. 141) in honour of a pioneer in French illustration, the second, as perhaps the most beautiful of any which the present writer has seen.

The first Greek book printed in France appeared in 1507, and the awakening of classical feeling was accompanied, as in other countries, by the putting away of the last remnants of mediÆval art and literature as childish things. The old romances continued to be published, chiefly by the Lenoirs, but in a smaller and cheaper form, and for the most part with old cuts. VÉrard diminished his output, and the publishers of the Horae turned in despair to German designs in place of the now despised native work. Soon only some little octavos remained to show that there was still an unclassical public to be catered for. These were chiefly printed by Galliot du PrÉ, with titles in red and black, and sometimes with little architectural borders in imitation of the more ambitious German ones. When they disappear we say farewell to the richness and colour which distinguishes the best French books of the end of the fifteenth century. Instead of the black letter and quaint cuts we have graceful but cold Roman types, or pretty but thin italics, with good initial letters, sometimes with good head-and tail-pieces, but with few pictures, and with only a neat allegoric device on the title-page instead of the rich designs used by the earlier printers.

Geoffroy Tory of Bourges was the first important printer of the new school. His earliest connection with publishing was as the editor of various classical works, but he returned from a visit to Italy full of artistic theories as to book-making, which he proceeded to carry out, partly in alliance with Simon Colines, for whom he designed a new device representing Time with his scythe. Tory's own device of the 'pot cassÉ,' a broken vase pierced by a toret or auger, is said to refer to his desolation on the death of his only daughter. Devices of other printers have been ascribed to him on the ground of the appearance in them of the little cross of Lorraine, which is found in some of Tory's undoubted works. It is certain, however, that the cross was not his individual signature, but only that of his studio.

After the Horae, which we shall notice in our next chapter, Tory's most famous book was his own Champfleury, 'auquel est contenu l'art et science de la vraie proportion des lettres antiques,' printed in 1529. This is a fantastic work, interesting for the prelude in which he speaks of his connection with the famous Grolier, and for the few illustrations scattered about the text. The best of these are the vignettes of 'Hercules Gallicus,' leading in chains the captives of his eloquence, and of the Triumphs of Apollo and the Muses. The specimen alphabets at the end of the book also deserve notice. They show that Tory was better than his theories, for his attempt to prove, by far-fetched analogies and derivations, that there is an ideal shape for every letter, is as bad in art as it is false in history.

Tory was succeeded in his office of royal printer by Robert Estienne, and during the rest of the century the classical editions of this family of great printers form the chief glories of the French press. Their books, both large and small, are admirably printed, and in excellent taste, though with no other ornaments than their printer's device, and good initials and head-pieces. But it must be owned that from the reign of Francis I. onwards, the decoration of the text of most French books is far less interesting than the superb bindings on which the kings and their favourites began to lavish so much expense.

Only two more Paris books need here be mentioned, both of them printed in 1546, and both with cuts imitated from the Italian—Jacques Gohary's translation of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Amour de Cupido et de PsichÉ translated from Apuleius. The first of these was published by Jacques Kerver, the second by Jeanne de Marnef. Of original Paris work of any eminence we have no record after the death of Tory.

Meanwhile at Lyons a new school of book-illustration was springing up. From the beginning of the century the Lyons printers had imitated, or pirated, the delicate italic books printed by Aldus. The luckless Étienne Dolet added something to the classical reputation of the town, and by the middle of the century the printers there were turning out numerous pocket editions of the classics, which they sold to their customers in 'trade bindings' of calf stamped with gold, and often painted over with many-coloured interlacements. The fashion for small books was set, and when illustrations were fitted to them the result was singularly dainty.

Before considering the editions of Jean de Tournes and his rivals we must stop to notice the appearance at Lyons in 1538 of the belated first edition of Holbein's Dance of Death, the woodcuts for which, the work of H. L., whose identity with Hans LÜtzelburger has been sufficiently established, are known to have been in existence as early as 1527, and were probably executed two or three years before that date. Several sets of proofs from the woodcuts are in existence, with lettering said to be in the types of Froben of Basel, who may have abandoned the idea of publishing them because of the vigour of their satire on the nobles and well-to-do. The Trechsels, the printers of the French edition, are known to have had dealings with a Basel woodcutter with initials H. L., who died before June 1526, and may have purchased the blocks directly from him, or at a later date from Froben. In 1538 they issued forty-one woodcuts with a dedication by Jean de Vauzelles, and a French quatrain to each cut either by him or by Gilles Corrozet, giving to the book the title Les Simulachres et historiees faces de la mort. Its success was as great as it deserved, and ten more cuts were added in subsequent editions.

In the same year as the Dance of Death the Trechsels issued another series of upwards of a hundred cuts after designs by Holbein, the Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones, with explanatory verses by Gilles Corrozet. These, though scarcely less beautiful, and at the time almost as successful as those in the Dance of Death, are not quite so well known, and I therefore select one of them, taken from the reprint of the following year, as an illustration.

The success of these two books invited imitation, and during the next twenty years many dainty illustrated books were issued by Franciscus Gryphius, MacÉ Bonhomme, Guillaume Roville, and Jean de Tournes. In 1540 Gryphius issued a little Latin Testament, with thirty-four lines of dainty Roman type to a page, which only measures 3½ in. × 2, and in which are set charming cuts. Bonhomme's chief success was an edition, printed in 1556, of the first three books of the Metamorphoses translated into French verse by ClÉment Marot and BarthÉlemy Aneau. This has borders to every page, and numerous vignettes measuring only 1½ in. × 2. In the following year this was capped by Jean de Tournes with another version of the Metamorphoses, with borders and vignettes attributed to Bernard Salomon, usually called 'le petit Bernard,' and the success of the book caused it to be re-issued in Dutch and Italian. The borders are wonderfully varied, some of them containing little grotesque figures worthy of our own Doyle, others dainty lacework, and others less pleasing architectural essays. This, like most of the best books of its kind, was printed throughout in italics, and the attempt about this time of Robert Granjon, another Lyons printer, to supersede the italic by a type modelled on the French cursive hand, the 'caractÈres de civilitÉ,' was only partially successful. In 1563, and possibly in other years, Jean de Tournes published an almanack and engagement-book, a Calendrier historial, with tiny vignettes representing the occupations appropriate to the seasons, and alternate pages for the entry of notes by any purchasers barbarous enough to deface so charming a book with their hasty handwriting. When the brief blaze of pretty books at Lyons died out, French printing fast sinks into dulness, and the attempt of a Frenchman at Antwerp to revive its glories was only partially successful, though he has left behind him a great name. Jean Plantin was born at Tours in 1514, and after trying to earn a living first at Paris and then at Caen, set up a bookseller's shop at Antwerp in 1549, and six years later printed his first book, the Institution d'une fille de noble maison. He was soon in a position to give commissions to good artists, Luc de Heere, Pierre Huys, Godefroid Ballain, and others, and issued the Devises HÉroiques of Claude Paradin (1562), and the Emblems of Sambucus (1564), of Hadrianus Junius (1565), and Alciati (1566), with illustrations from their designs. His Horae, printed in 1566 and 1575, with florid borders, and his Psalter of 1571, attempted to revive a class of book then going out of fashion. Besides the great Antwerp Polyglott, whose printing occupied him from 1568 to 1573, and nearly brought him to ruin, Plantin printed some other Bibles, one in Flemish in 1566, and a 'Bible royale' in 1570, being noticeable for their ambitious decoration. He published also some great folio missals, more imposing than elegant. He had numerous sets of large initials, one specially designed for music books being really graceful, and a long array of variations on the device of the hand and compass which he adopted as his mark. The title-pages of his larger books are surrounded with heavy architectural borders, some of which were engraved on copper. At his death, in 1589, he had attained labore et constantia, as his motto phrased it, to a foremost position among the printers of his day, but his florid illustrated books have very little real beauty, and mark the beginning of a century and a half of bad taste from which only the microscopic editions of the Elzevirs are wholly free.