 
FINE BOOKS BY ALFRED W. POLLARD NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS LONDON: METHUEN & CO. LTD. TO PREFACE If the mere taking of trouble ensured good work, this contribution to the Connoisseur’s Library should be entitled to the modest praise of being “superior to the rest” of its author’s book-makings, since it has been ten years on the stocks and much of it has been written two or three times over, either because the writer’s own information had increased or to take account of the successful researches of others. Yet in the end defeat in one main point has to be acknowledged. The book was begun with a confident determination to cover the whole ground, from the beginnings of printing and printed book-illustration down to our own day, and in the case of printing the survey has been carried through, however sketchily. But the corresponding survey of book-illustration ends, with rather obvious marks of compression and fatigue, about 1780, leaving the story of a hundred and thirty years of very interesting picture-work untold. Pioneering is always so exciting that recognition of the impossibility of carrying out the full plan of the book within the limits either of the present volume or of the author’s working life was not made without sincere regret. The subject, however, of the abandoned chapter was not only very large, but very miscellaneous, and the survey for it would have had to include at least three other countries (France, Germany, and the United States) besides our own. To one section, moreover, that of illustrations in colour, a separate volume of this series has already been devoted. The author would, therefore, fain console himself with the hope that in one or more other volumes a competent account may be given by some other hand of the wood-engravings, etchings, steel-engravings, and lithographs, with which books have been decorated since 1780. The poorness of paper and print with which these modern illustrated books have too often been handicapped has caused collectors to take little interest in them—it even suggested the unworthy excuse for the failure to write the missing chapter that these are not really Fine Books, but only books with fine pictures in them, and so are outside our subject. But both students and collectors have their duties as well as their delights, and in view of the high artistic value of quite a large proportion of these modern illustrations, the preservation of clean and uncropped copies of the books in which they occur and the tribute of careful cataloguing and description are certainly their due. While the desired completeness has not been attained the ground here covered is still very wide, and for the book as a whole no more can be claimed than that it is a compilation from the best sources—a list of these will be found in the Bibliography—controlled by some personal knowledge, the amount of which naturally varies very much from chapter to chapter. The obligations incurred in writing it have thus been great, and a sad number of these are to fellow-workers and friends—Proctor, John Macfarlane, W. H. Allnutt, Konrad Burger, Dr. Lippmann, Anatole Claudin, and the Prince d’Essling—who have died while the book has been in progress. Among those still happily alive acknowledgment must specially be made to Sir Sidney Colvin for help received from his masterly introduction to the great monograph on Early Engravers and Engraving in England published by the Trustees of the British Museum; to Mr. A. M. Hind for use made of the list of engravers and their works in the same book; to Mr. Campbell Dodgson for dippings into the wealth of information in his Catalogue of German and Flemish Woodcuts in the Print Room of the British Museum (Vols. I and II); to Mr. Gordon Duff for help derived from his three series of Sandars Lectures on English Printing, and to Mr. Evans for information obtained from his American Bibliography. Among other obligations the chief is to the writers (notably Mr. H. R. Plomer) of numerous papers contributed to the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society and to The Library, and these are acknowledged with special pleasure. CONTENTS
LIST OF PLATES
FINE BOOKS CHAPTER I COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING From the stray notes which have come down to us about the bibliophiles of the later Roman Empire it is evident that book-collecting in those days had at least some modern features. Owing to the abundance of educated slave-labour books were very cheap, almost as cheap as they are now, and book-collectors could busy themselves about refinements not unlike those in which their successors are now interested. But in the Middle Ages books were by no means cheap, and until quite the close of the fourteenth century there were few libraries in which they could be read. Princes and other very wealthy book-buyers took pleasure in possessing finely written and illuminated manuscripts, but the ruling ideals were mainly literary and scholastic, the aim (the quite right and excellent aim) being to have the best books in as many subjects as possible. After printing had been invented the same ideals continued in force, the only difference being that they could now be carried out on a larger scale. Libraries like those formed in the sixteenth century by Archbishop Cranmer and Lords Arundel and Lumley, or that gathered in France by the historian De Thou, were essentially students’ libraries, and the books themselves and the catalogues of them were often classified so as to show what books had been acquired in all the different departments of human knowledge. Even in the sixteenth century, when these literary ideals were dominant, we find Grolier found a modest imitator in England in the person of Thomas Wotton, but with some at least of the Elizabethan book-lovers the havoc wrought in the old libraries by the commissioners of Henry VIII and Edward VI provoked an antiquarian reaction which led them to devote all their energies to collecting, from the unworthy hands into which they had fallen, such treasures of English literary and bookish art as still remained. Putting aside John Leland who worked (to what extent and with what success is not quite clear) for Henry VIII, Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the earliest of these antiquaries, to the great benefit of the libraries of Lambeth Palace and of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, though as to how he came by his books perhaps the less said the better. Parker was soon followed by Sir Robert Cotton, whose success in gathering books and documents illustrating English history was so great that his library was sequestered and very nearly altogether Bodley’s munificent donation marked an epoch in the history of English book-collecting because its tendency was to make private book-collecting of the kind which was then admired incongruous and even absurd. When there were no public libraries open to scholars, for a great man to maintain a splendid library in his own house and allow students to read in it was worthy of Aristotle’s e?a???????, the man who does everything on a scale that befits his dignity. But in proportion as public collections of books and facilities for obtaining access to them are increased, the preservation of a library on a large scale in a private house, where none of the inmates have any desire to use it, becomes an easy and justifiable object of That considerations of this kind were beginning to have weight is shown by the rapidity with which during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries one private collection after another drifted into public ownership. In some cases there were intermediate stages. Thus Archbishop Usher’s books were not bequeathed to Trinity College, Dublin, but were purchased for it by the subscriptions of the soldiers of Cromwell’s army in Ireland. The manuscripts of Sir Simeon d’Ewes remained in the possession of his family for nearly a century, were then purchased by Harley, and came to the British Museum with Harley’s collection. Stillingfleet’s manuscripts were in the same temporary ownership; his printed books came to Dublin through the public spirit of Archbishop Marsh. So again Bishop Moore’s books were purchased for the University Library at Cambridge by George I. Thus even when a collector was not inspired by, or could not afford to indulge, public motives, respect for his memory or desire to benefit an institution often brought his books to a safe haven. But more often the munificence was personal and direct. For some cause not quite easy to see the flow of benefactions to English libraries has dwindled sadly of late years,1 so that journalists with short memories write of gifts and bequests to American libraries as if they were unprecedented. Even of late years, however, the foundation of the John Rylands Library, Chancellor Christie’s gifts and bequest to the Victoria University, the Sandars legacy to the University Library, Cambridge, and Mr. Alfred Huth’s bequest to the British Museum of any fifty books it might choose to select from his fine collection, show that the stream is not quite dried up, while for nearly two centuries The example of the men who bought under the influence of an intention to bestow their books on some public institution naturally affected others, and was responsible for a good deal of rather haphazard collecting in the eighteenth century. The private modern library was often confused with the antiquarian collection, and the antiquarian collection itself was seldom dominated by any central idea. Yet collectors who devoted themselves to one subject and knew thoroughly well what they were aiming at were already coming into existence, and these also, when their work was done, were inspired by an honourable ambition to preserve it intact, and so the libraries were once more enriched. Thus Garrick, guided by his professional interest, devoted himself to early plays, and bequeathed his collection to the British Museum. Malone bought the books which were useful to him as a student of Elizabethan literature, more especially of Shakespeare, and bequeathed them to the Bodleian, while Capell left his similar collection to Trinity College, Cambridge. The library of Natural History books brought together by Sir Joseph Banks and bequeathed by him to the British Museum is another example of well-defined collecting, though of a different sort. Among men who were not themselves specialists the vogue lay in Despite the exceptions we have mentioned, in almost all of the collections of the early years of the nineteenth century two different ideals were combined: the student’s ideal of the best books in the best editions, and the antiquary’s ideal of the books by which the history of printing and its kindred arts could be most vividly illustrated. The combination is still common, for one of À Beckett’s comic histories (though I am not prepared to assert that this is a “best book”) still figures as the first entry in many sale catalogues which contain also incunabula assuredly not bought for their literary interest. It is more easy to defend such a medley on the ground of sentiment than of logic. Whoever uses books has reason to be grateful to the men who invented or diffused the art of printing, and may be interested in learning something about them. Yet it can hardly be denied that to collect What then are the associations and qualities which give books value in the eyes of a collector? We may answer the question negatively in the first instance by reducing to their proper importance the two qualities which are popularly supposed to be the most attractive to the book-hunter—rarity and age. If a book is otherwise uninteresting, what is it the better for being rare? In passing it may be noted that unless a book is interesting for other reasons its rarity is necessarily an unknown Granted, however, that it could be proved that a dull book is not merely undescribed, but absolutely, what so few works are, unique, in what way does this make it of interest to the collector? A great library might buy it for a trifle out of compassion, or under the idea that its registration in a catalogue might help to piece out a genealogy, or that it might count as another unit in statistics (a poor reason), or justify its purchase in some other haphazard way. But considerations of this kind, such as they are, cannot affect private collectors. A really dull book is merely a nuisance, and whether only one copy of it, or many, can be proved to exist, nobody wants it. If this be so we are justified in saying that, although as soon as a book is found desirable for any other reason its rarity becomes of paramount importance in determining its price, Rarity by itself is of no interest to collectors. The attractiveness bestowed by Age cannot be treated quite so summarily, because although the same line of If we go back another sixty years from 1700 we reach another typographic zone, as we may call it, within which some slight interest attaches to all examples of English printing, for the end of the year 1640 is the limit of the special catalogues of early books published by the British Museum, the Cambridge University Library, and the John Rylands Library, Manchester. The first and last of these have indexes of printers; in the second the primary arrangement is typographical. Thus all books which are old enough to have been printed before the end of 1640 are thereby invested with some slight interest solely as products of English presses. When we get back to before 1600 we are in the period covered by the different editions of the Typographical Antiquities of Joseph Ames. When we go back another hundred years we are within the fifteenth century; printing has been introduced into England for less than twenty-five years, and the smallest fragment of a book from one of the early presses at work at Westminster, Oxford, St. Albans, or the City of London, is esteemed as of interest and importance. Thus if we go far enough back Age does add to the interest of a book, but only by bringing it under another influence, that the interest of an English fifteenth century book is due to its importance in the history of printing and not to its antiquity being easily demonstrated by the fact that a contemporary unadorned manuscript of the same work will probably have only a fraction of the value of the printed edition. There are, of course, other cases in which age may be said to have some secondary influence, as in the case of books dealing with social customs, ballads and the like. But here it is still more evident that the social or literary interest is the primary consideration, and that this cannot be created, though it is greatly enhanced, by Age. Having thus to the best of our ability abated the pride both of Age and Rarity, we come back to our original question as to what are the qualities and associations which give books value in the eyes of a collector. The only good qualities which a book can possess in its own right are those of strength and beauty of form. Everything else about it is inherent in no single edition, though association of ideas may give greater dignity to one edition than to another. Type, paper, ink, presswork, the arrangement of the page, and also (though not quite in the same way or to the same extent) the illustrations, are all part and parcel of the book itself, and may be combined, at least so bookmen believe, in a really beautiful unity. No doubt as to this students run some risk of losing their sense of proportion. I myself am conscious, for instance, that I have looked at so many fifteenth century woodcuts, as compared with other works of art, that I distinctly overrate them. Mr. Robert Proctor, who knew more about fifteenth century books than any other man has ever known, or is ever likely to know, once said to me in all seriousness, that he did not think he had ever seen an ugly one. Allowing, however, for this very human tendency to set up our own esoteric standard, there yet remains a more generally recognizable beauty of form As a secondary consideration the attention collectors pay to beauty can hardly be exaggerated in respect to the condition of copies, the ratio of an unusually good to an unusually bad copy of the same book, even if the bad copy have no leaves actually wanting, being often as ten to one. The unusually bad copy, indeed, would often have no selling value at all were it not that it may be useful to students and so win a purchaser at a small price. The collector should leave it severely alone, partly because such “working copies” are the rightful perquisite of poor scholars, partly because, as he presumably buys books for his pleasure, he defeats his own object if, except in the case of the very rarest, he buys copies at which he cannot look without regretting that their headlines are cut off or the paper rotten through bad cleaning. Mr. Frederick Locker recorded in his catalogue that his copy of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience had been cut down by a previous owner to the dimensions of the old covers of a washing-book. I think it was his chivalry, his piety toward Blake’s memory, that induced him to rescue it from this dishonour. Had he bought such a poor copy simply because it was cheap, he would have fallen far below his standard as a collector. Putting on one side beauty of form, the interest of books in the eyes of a collector lies in their associations, historical, personal, or purely literary. For reasons touched on already but which we may now consider more fully, among historical associations those connected with the history of printing fill a very large place. As we have said before, the invention of an art by which books were so greatly cheapened and multiplied was an A large proportion of early printed books are without any indication whatever of their place of origin, printer, or date. The dates are obscured by the quickness or slowness of individual printers in adopting various improvements—sheet-numbering, leaf-numbering, printed capitals, titlepages, methods of imposition, etc.—which thus become uncertain and delusive landmarks. The place of origin is obscured by the existence of almost identical types in different cities and even in different countries. A fortiori the identity of the individual printer may baffle research from types being transferred or copied in all but one or two letters of the fount, which thus become the sole means of differentiating them. As helps the bibliographer has, in the first place, such a classification of The side-interests of these old books are very varied. Many of them, at least to eyes trained to perceive it, are of great beauty. Others, although the half century during which printing was in its infancy produced few masterpieces of literature, have real literary interest. More than any other single event the invention of printing hurried on the transition from the medieval world to the modern, but while many printers in Italy nearly ruined themselves by the zeal with which they helped forward the classical renaissance, all over Europe the medieval books which were still read were seized on for the press, so that in the books printed between 1470 and 1490 we are presented with a conspectus or summary of medieval literature. Caxton printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and prose renderings of the old romances. The Italian presses were busy with Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante. The enormous size of the great Speculum or EncyclopÆdia of Owing to this fact, that the early presses were so largely occupied with printing the works of the previous three centuries, there is comparatively little human interest in incunabula on their literary side. Instead of authors we have mostly to deal with editors, an assertive and depreciatory race, always vaunting their own accuracy and zeal and insisting on the incredible blunders by which previous editions had been deformed past recognition. We receive, however, no small compensation in the personal details which many of the early printers give us about themselves. Titlepages, though they occur at haphazard in a few books of the early seventies (and there is one still earlier example), did not become common till about 1490, and even twenty years later we find many books still without them. The information which we now expect to find on a titlepage was given in a paragraph, mostly at the end of the book, to which bibliographers have agreed to give the name “colophon,” from ????f??, the Greek for a “finishing stroke.” As we have already noted, in many books no information of this kind is given, but when printers, or their proof readers or editors, took the trouble to write a colophon at all, they had no reason to confine themselves to the severe brevity and simplicity of statement which marks the modern titlepage. It was in colophons that editors cast stones at their predecessors, or demanded sympathy for the severity of their own labours, and it is in colophons that we find the expressions of the printer’s piety and pride, his complaints of his troubles with his workmen and rivals, his pleas for encouragement, and To lend grace to their colophons, or sometimes as a substitute for them, the early printers and publishers often used a woodcut containing their mark, sign, or device. Like the colophon itself, this was printed as a token of the master’s pride in his work and his desire that it might be recognized as his, and many printers’ marks are very decorative and even beautiful. Comparatively neglected until recently, within the last few years the devices used in various countries have been almost exhaustively reproduced in facsimile, thus leaving few chances of fresh discovery. The mention of devices brings us to a very interesting section of early printed books, and one which has attracted only too much attention of recent years, those decorated with the primitive cuts on wood or metal with which fifteenth century printers endeavoured to imitate the glories of illuminated manuscripts, or to increase the popularity of their books with not too critical readers. Occasionally, as in the metal cuts in the best editions of the French Horae, in the Florentine and Venetian woodcuts of the last ten years of the century, and in the best work of other countries, these early pictures possess real beauty. Often they are badly spoilt by the incompetence of the cutters, who were working without the aid of modern gravers or modern methods of preparing the wood. The early German wood-cutters, whilst their outlines are often less graceful than those of their French and Italian competitors, had a special gift for characterization, and the quality of their work is much more uniform, perhaps because even before the invention of printing with movable types they were an organized craft. But in almost all fifteenth century cuts there is a certain naive simplicity which captivates those who allow themselves to study it, until they are apt, as the present writer has confessed is It has been made a cause of complaint recently against bibliographers that they know more of the work done at any insignificant fifteenth century press than of the history of printing at any subsequent time. It is not easy to coerce men into taking up any sections of a subject beyond those in which they are interested, and the supposed culprits have at least this much justification for their neglect of the later work that very little of it repays examination. Until 1465, save for some possible Dutch experiments, Germany enjoyed the monopoly of printing. From 1465 to about 1530 she shared the primacy in it with Italy, though during most of this period Italy was slightly ahead; from 1530 to about 1570 France was far in advance of the rest of Europe; after 1570 there was a higher technical level in the Low Countries than elsewhere, and Plantin and the Elzevirs gained individual reputations. But there was very little good taste even in Of the later book illustrations a somewhat better account may be given. Owing to the steady deterioration of paper and presswork, which was the real cause of the typographical decline, woodcuts by the end of the sixteenth century had gone quite out of fashion, the old simple style having been lost and no printer being able to do justice to the finer work on which designers insisted. But copper engravings throve in Germany and the Low Countries, and when the fashion of engraved frontispieces and titles took root in England in the last years of the century it was pursued with considerable success for a couple of generations, while in the eighteenth century the French livres À vignettes attained an extraordinary brilliancy and elegance, and Gravelot and other French engravers bestowed some of their skill on English books. The use of wood, now worked with the graver and no longer with the knife, was revived in England by Bewick about 1784, and was pursued with varying success for over a century, great technical skill and, at least in the When wood engraving was killed a few years ago by the extraordinary perfection attained, at a much smaller cost, by the process block, its fate was shared by the line-engraved illustrations which had appeared fitfully throughout the century, and had lingered on in the beautiful work of C. H. Jeens, who died in 1879, and in the use of old plates. As the wood engraving was killed by the half-tone block, so the line engraving disappeared before the photogravure, and the colour processes now being rapidly perfected threaten to reduce all black and white illustrations to unimportance. In so far, however, as the new processes necessitate the use of heavily loaded papers as a condition of their being even tolerably well printed, the least antiquarian of collectors may be forgiven for neglecting the books illustrated by them. Some of them can only be preserved by every plate being backed with sound paper, and a hundred years hence of all this illustrated work, much of it really beautiful, which is now being produced in such quantities, very little will remain. The modern Groliers whom we tried to call forth at the beginning of this chapter will need to be experts both in paper and in leather if they are to leave behind them any permanent record of their good taste. But this is only a crowning proof of how urgently they are needed. It would be pleasant to glance briefly at some of the more literary considerations which bring books within the collector’s scope. But the scheme of this series restricts the subject of the present volume to books which are prized either for their typographical beauty, their place in the history of printing, or the charm of their illustrations. This is in itself so large a field that no more pages must be wasted on introducing it. 1 Even Mr. Carnegie will only help to found new libraries, not to make old ones more efficient. 2 During the Civil War itself presses were also set up temporarily at Newcastle-on-Tyne, at Shrewsbury, and perhaps elsewhere. CHAPTER II BLOCK-BOOKS The collector of the time of George III, whose heart was set on Typographical Antiquities, and who was ambitious enough to wish to begin at the beginning, must have hungered after a block-book. Even in the days of Bagford, at the very outset of the eighteenth century, interest had been aroused in the block-printed editions of the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, so that Bagford himself travelled from Amsterdam to Haarlem on purpose to see a copy of one of the Dutch editions, and set an English wood-cutter to work, with very poor success, to manufacture a bogus specimen of it, wherewith “to oblige the curious.” This, with a similar imitation of a page in the Biblia Pauperum, was intended to illustrate the History of Printing which Bagford had the temerity to plan, although such of his smaller dissertations as have been preserved show conclusively that he was quite incapable of carrying it out. The interest thus early shown in block-books sprang from an entirely reasonable, but probably incorrect, view of the part which they had played in the development of printing with movable type. It was known that woodcuts without letterpress were printed in Germany quite early in the fifteenth century, the cut of S. Christopher, formerly in the Spencer Collection, now in the John Rylands Library, bearing the date 1423.3 On the other hand, printing with movable type was practised at Mainz in the fifties, and about 1461 Albrecht Pfister published at Bamberg several books with woodcut illustrations
Facts, however, do not always arrange themselves with the neatness which commends itself to an a priori historian, and the most recent students of block-books are unable to discover sufficient justification for the early dates which their predecessors assigned to them. On the old theory, in order to put it in front of the invention of printing with movable types, the Biblia Pauperum, which appears to be the oldest of the block-books, was placed about 1430 or 1440, and the Ars Moriendi and the other chief specimens of block-printing were all supposed to have been produced before 1460, the main period of block-printing thus coinciding with the interval between the S. Christopher of 1423 and Pfister’s activity at Bamberg about 1461. Positive evidence in favour of this chronology there was none. It rested solely on the idea, at which bibliographers had jumped, that the block-books were necessary “steps towards the invention of printing,” as they have often been called, and on what seemed the improbability that any one, when the art of printing with movable type had once been invented, would have troubled himself laboriously to cut letterpress on wood. So far from block-printing being unable to co-exist with printing from movable type, it was not till nearly a century after printing had been invented that block-books finally ceased to be produced. The example generally quoted as the latest4 is the Opera nova contemplativa per ogni fedel christiano laquale tratta de le figure del testamento vecchio: le quale figure sonno verificate nel testamento The Opera nova contemplativa was from one point of view a mere survival, but Vavassore is not likely to have produced it solely to cause twentieth century antiquaries surprise. He must have had a business reason for having recourse to block-printing, nor is that reason very hard to find. From the frequency with which the early printers changed and recast their types, and the short intervals at which popular books printed with types were set up afresh, it is clear (1) that the type-metal5 employed was much softer and less durable than that now in use, and that only small impressions6 could be taken from the same setting up; (2) that only a small amount of type was cast at a time, and that type was quickly distributed and used again, never kept standing on the chance that another edition would be wanted. Now when we come to the illustrations in printed books, we find the same woodblocks used for five or six successive editions, and then, in many cases, enjoying a second lease of life as job-blocks, used at haphazard by inferior printers. It is clear, therefore, that while it was a much more difficult and laborious business to cut the letterpress of a book on blocks of wood than to set it up with movable types, when the blocks were once made much more work could be got out of them. In a word, in the case of a small book for which there was a steady demand, a printer might be tempted to have it cut as a When the theory that block-books were “Steps towards the Invention of Printing” is thus opposed by the rival theory that they were forerunners of stereotyped plates, we are left free to consider, uncoerced by supposed necessities, such evidence as exists as to the dates of the specimens of block-printing still extant. Putting aside the late Italian block-book as a mere survival, we find two7 broadly distinguished groups, one earlier, the dates of members of which can only be conjectured, the other later, several of which can only be definitely connected with the years 1470 to 1473. The characteristics of the earlier group are that they are printed (1) with a watery brown ink; (2) always on one side of the paper only; (3) without mechanical pressure;8 (4) two consecutive pages at a time, so that they cannot be arranged in quires, but must be folded and stitched separately, and the book thus formed9 begins and ends with a blank In the later block-books, on the other hand, we note one or more of the following characteristics: (1) the use of the thick black ink (really a kind of paint) employed in ordinary printing; (2) printing on both sides of the paper; (3) marks of pressure, showing that the paper has been passed through a printing-press; (4) the arrangement of the blocks in such a way as to permit the sheets to be gathered into quires. In the case of the more popular block-books which went through many issues and editions10 we can trace the gradual substitution of later characteristics for earlier ones. At what intervals of time these changes were made we have bibliographically no adequate grounds even for guessing. Analogies from books printed with movable types may be quoted on both sides. On the one hand, we find the blocks for book-illustrations enjoying an amazingly long life. Thus blocks cut at Venice and Florence between 1490 and 1500 continued in use for fifteen or twenty years, were then laid aside, and reappear between 1550 and 1560, certainly the worse for wear, but yet capable by a lucky chance of yielding The first attempt to describe the extant block-books was made by Carl Heinrich von Heinecken in 1771, in his IdÉe gÉnÉrale d’une collection d’estampes. This held the field until the publication in 1858 of Samuel Legh Sotheby’s Principia Typographica: the block-books issued in Holland, Flanders and Germany, during the fifteenth century, a painstaking and well-illustrated work in three folio volumes. The most recent and probably the final treatment of the subject is that by Dr. W. L. Schreiber, in Vol. IV of his Manuel de l’Amateur de la Gravure sur bois et sur mÉtal au xve siÈcle, published in 1902 (facsimiles in Vols. VII and VIII, 1895-1900). Dr. Schreiber enumerates no fewer than thirty-three works as existing in the form of block-books, the number of extant issues and editions of them amounting to over one hundred. Here it must suffice to offer brief notes on some of the more important. BIBLIA PAUPERUM A series of forty composite pictures, the central compartment in each representing a scene from the life of Christ, while on each side of it is an Old Testament type, and above and below are in each case two half-figures of prophets. The explanatory letterpress is given in the two upper corners and also on scrolls. Schreiber distinguishes ten issues and editions, in addition to an earlier German one of a less elaborate design and with manuscript text, which belongs to a different tradition. The earlier of these ten editions appear to have been made in the Netherlands. An edition with German text was published with the colophon, “Friederich walther Mauler zu NÖrdlingen vnd Hans Hurning habent dis buch mitt einender gemacht,” and a second issue of this (without the colophon) is dated 1470. In the following year another edition, with copied cuts, was printed with the device of Hans Spoerer. ARS MORIENDI Twenty-four leaves, two containing a preface, and the remaining twenty-two eleven pictures and eleven pages of explanatory letterpress facing them, showing the temptations to which the dying are exposed, and the good inspirations by which they may be resisted, and, lastly, the final agony. The early editions are ascribed to the Netherlands or district of the Rhine; the later to Germany. There are also editions with German text, one of them signed “hanns Sporer,” and dated 1473. A set of engravings on copper by the Master E. S. (copied by the Master of S. Erasmus) may be either imitations or the originals of the earliest of these Ars Moriendi designs. (See Lionel Cust’s The Master E. S. and the Ars Moriendi.) The designs were imitated in numerous printed editions in various countries. In addition to a copy of the edition usually regarded as the CANTICA CANTICORUM Sixteen leaves, each containing two woodcuts, illustrating the Song of Songs as a parable of the Blessed Virgin. Produced in the Netherlands. APOCALYPSIS SANCTI JOHANNIS Fifty leaves, or in some editions forty-eight, showing scenes from the life of S. John and illustrations of the Apocalypse, mostly with two pictures on each leaf. The early editions are assigned to the Netherlands, the later to Germany. A copy of the edition regarded as the fourth, lately sold by Herr Ludwig Rosenthal, bears a manuscript note, most probably as to the writer, just possibly as to the book, entering the household of the Landgrave Heinrich of Hesse in 1463.
SPECULUM HUMANAE SALUATIONIS Scenes from Bible history, arranged in pairs, within architectural borders, with explanatory text beneath. No complete xylographic, or block-printed, edition is known, but twenty leaves printed from blocks are found in conjunction with forty-four leaves printed from type, and have not unreasonably been held to prove the previous production of a complete block-printed edition now lost. In like manner, the fact that two different types are used in different parts of a Dutch printed edition has encouraged Dr. Hessels to believe that this “mixed edition” should be regarded as proving the production of two complete editions, one in each type. On this theory we have (1) a hypothetical Latin block-printed edition; ANTICHRISTUS Thirty-eight leaves, with two pictures on each leaf, illustrating the Legends relating to the Coming of Antichrist, and the Fifteen Signs which were to precede the Last Judgment. The text is in German, and the block-book was executed in Germany, probably about 1470. FRANCISCUS DE RETZA. DEFENSORIUM INVIOLATAE CASTITATIS VIRGINIS MARIAE Sixteen leaves, mostly with four pictures and four pieces of explanatory letterpress on each leaf, concerning marvels in the natural world which were supposed to be equally wonderful with that of the Virgin Birth, and therefore to render faith in this easier. Unfortunately the marvels are so very marvellous that they do not inspire belief, e.g. one story relates how the sun one day drew up the moisture from the earth with such rapidity that an ox was drawn up with it and subsequently deposited out of a cloud in another field. One edition was issued by a certain F. W. in 1470, another at Ratisbon by Johann Eysenhut the following year. JOHANN MÜLLER (JOHANNES REGIOMONTANUS). KALENDER Thirty-two leaves, containing lunar tables, tables of the eclipses for fifty-six years (1475-1530), other astronomical JOHANN HARTLIEB. DIE KUNST CHIROMANTIA Forty-four figures of hands, with a titlepage and page of text and a printed wrapper. Early issues are printed on one side of the paper only, later on both. The printer appears to have been Jorg Schaff, of Augsburg, and the date of issue about 1475. The date 1448 found in the book is that of composition, and it probably circulated in manuscript for many years before being printed. MIRABILIA ROMAE A German guide-book for visitors to Rome. Ninety-two leaves, printed with black ink on both sides of the leaf, with only a few illustrations. It was perhaps first published to meet the rush of German pilgrims to Rome at the Jubilee of Pope Sixtus IV, 1475. The blocks were probably cut in Germany, and the printing done at Rome. Some of the ornaments are said to have been used in type-printed editions by Stephan Plannck. This suggests that the book may have been published by his predecessor, Ulrich Han. In addition to these block-books of Low Country and German origin, mention must also be made of a very curious Italian one, a Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi, fully described by the Prince d’Essling. The copy of this at Berlin contains eighteen leaves, and was probably executed at Venice about the middle of the fifteenth century. Some of the blocks were subsequently used (after a scroll at the foot had been cut off) for an edition of the Devote Meditatione sopra la Passione del Nostro Mention has already been made of the Opera nova contemplativa, an adaptation of the Biblia Pauperum, printed as a block-book at Venice about 1530. The only extant French block-book, if it can be called one, is that of the “Nine Worthies” (Les Neuf Preux). This consists of three sheets, the first showing three heathen worthies—Hector, Alexander, and Julius CÆsar; the second, three from the Old Testament—Joshua, David, and Judas MaccabÆus; the third, three from medieval romance—Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Boulogne. Under each picture are six lines of verse. These three triple woodcuts, with the woodcut text, are assigned to about 1455. No English block-book has yet been discovered, nor is it in the least likely that one ever existed, though there are a few single woodcuts. Block-books possess two permanent attractions in addition to their supposed historical importance in the development of the invention of printing on which doubt is now cast—the attraction of popular literature and the attraction of the illustrated book. As we have seen, it would not have been worth any one’s while to cause a block-book to be laboriously engraved, or cut, unless a large and speedy sale could be expected for it. The most famous block-books are nearly all of a religious character, and they prove a widespread desire for simple instruction as to the incidents of the life of Christ and the events in the Old Testament history which were regarded as prefigurements of them, as to the dignity of the Blessed Virgin and the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, as to the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist, and as to the spiritual dangers and temptations of the dying and the means by which they might be resisted. The block-books are a striking example of the difficulty of gleaning where the earlier collectors have reaped, a difficulty to which we shall often have to call attention. They vary greatly in positive rarity. Of the Biblia Pauperum and Ars Moriendi, which in their different issues and editions enjoyed the longest life and early attracted attention, Dr. Schreiber (if I have counted rightly) was able to enumerate in the one case as many as eighty-three copies—many of them, it is true, mere fragments—in the other sixty-one. Of the Apocalypse fifty-seven copies were known to him, of the Speculum twenty-nine, of the Antichrist thirteen, of the Defensorium twelve, and of the Mirabilia Romae six. But of these 261 copies and fragments no fewer than 223 are recorded as being locked up in public libraries and museums, the ownership of thirteen was doubtful, and only twenty-five are definitely registered as being in the hands of private collectors, viz. of the Apocalypse, eight copies or fragments; of the Biblia Pauperum, six; of the Speculum and Ars Moriendi, four each; of the Defensorium, two; and of the Cantica Canticorum, one. The chief owners known to Dr. Schreiber were the Earl of 3 The authenticity of a still earlier date, 1418, on a cut of the Blessed Virgin at Brussels is disputed. 4 The Libro di M. Giovanbattista Palatino, printed at Rome in 1548, is spoken of by Mr. Campbell Dodgson as a “belated specimen” of a block-book. But this was a writing-book, and hardly counts. 5 Numerous references in colophons show that the metal mostly used was brass, e.g. “Primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis Vrbe libros Spira genitus de stirpe Johannes,” and the use of Chalcographi as a name for printers. But there are one or two references to printing “stanneis typis,” with types of tin. 6 Of the first book printed at Venice only 100 copies were struck off, but the number was trebled in the case of its immediate successors. At Rome Sweynheym and Pannartz mostly printed 275 copies, only in a few instances as many as 300. But at the end of the century Pynson was printing at least 600 copies of large books and as many as 1000 of small ones. 7 A very small third group, earlier than either of these, consists of woodcuts with manuscript text. The most important of these is a German Biblia Pauperum quite distinct from those started in the Netherlands. 8 Some early woodcuts were printed by pressing the block down on the paper by hand; for the early block-books, however, the usual method seems to have been to press the paper on to the face of the block by rubbing it on the back with a burnisher. The paper was thus quite as strongly indented as if passed through a press, but the impression is usually less even. The friction on the back of the paper often gives it a polished appearance. As long as this method continued in use it was, of course, impossible to print on both sides of the paper. 9 It is possible that the earliest specimens of block-printing were intended not to be bound in books but to be pasted on walls. In the case of the Biblia Pauperum, for instance, the space between the two woodcuts placed on each sheet is so small in some issues that the sheets cannot be bound without concealing part of the pictures. 10 Different issues are distinguished by the signs of wear in the blocks, or occasionally by their being differently arranged, or with changes made in the blocks. In a different edition we have to deal with a new set of blocks. 11 Since this was written the interesting collection formed by Dr. Schreiber himself has been dispersed. CHAPTER III THE INVENTION OF PRINTING—HOLLAND Up to the year 1465 only one firm of printers evinced any appreciation of the uses of advertisement. In 1457 Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, of Mainz, set their names at the end of the liturgical Psalter which they were issuing from their press, and stated also the date of its completion, “In vigilia Assumpcionis,” on the vigil of the feast of the Assumption, i.e. August 14th. Save in the case of a few unimportant books this preference for publicity remained the settled practice of the firm until Peter Schoeffer’s death early in the sixteenth century, and later still when it was in the hands of his son Johann. With other printers at first the tendency was all the other way. Albrecht Pfister placed his name in one or two of the handful of popular illustrated books which he printed at Bamberg about 1461. No other book before 1465 contains its printer’s name, and both at Strassburg and at Basel the practice of publishing anonymously continued in fashion throughout the ’seventies—in Strassburg, indeed, for the best part of another decade.
While printing continued mainly anonymous chroniclers took no note of it, but in the ten years which began in 1465 the progress of the art was rapid and triumphant. Printers, mostly Germans, invaded the chief cities of Europe, and boasted in their books of having been the first to practise it in this place or that. Curiosity as to the beginnings of the invention was thus aroused, and from 1470 onwards we meet with numerous attempts, not always accurate, to satisfy it. The earliest of these attempts is in a letter from Guillaume Ferunt enim illic, haut procul a ciuitate Maguncia, Ioannem quendam fuisse cui cognomen bonemontano, qui primus omnium impressoriam artem excogitauerit, qua non calamo (ut prisci quidem illi) neque penna (ut nos fingimus) sed Æreis litteris libri finguntur, et quidem expedite, polite et pulchre. Dignus sane hic uir fuit quem omnes musÆ, omnes artes, omnesque eorum linguÆ qui libris delectantur, diuinis laudibus ornent, eoque magis dis deabusque anteponant, quo propius ac presentius litteris ipsis ac studiosis hominibus suffragium tulit. Si quidem deificantur Liber et alma Ceres, ille quippe dona Liei inuenit poculaque inuentis acheloia miscuit uuis, hÆc chaoniam pingui glandem mutauit arista. Atque (ut poeta utamur altero) prima Ceres unco glebam dimouit aratro, prima dedit fruges alimenta mitia terris. At bonemontanus ille, longe gratiora diuinioraque inuenit, quippe qui litteras eiusmodi exculpsit, quibus quidquid dici, aut cogitari potest, propediem scribi ac transcribi & posteritatis mandari memoriÆ possit. The good Fichet is absurdly rhetorical, but here in 1470 is a quite clear statement that, according to report, there (i.e. in Germany), not far from12 the city of Mainz, a certain John, surnamed Gutenberg, first of all men thought out the printing art, by which books are fashioned not with a reed or pen, but with letters of brass, and thus deserved better of mankind than either Four years later in his continuation of the Chronica Summorum Pontificum, begun by Riccobaldus, Joannes Philippi de Lignamine, the physician of Pope Sixtus IV, who had set up a press of his own at Rome, wrote as one of the events of the pontificate of Pius II (1458-64), how “Jakob Gutenberg, a native of Strassburg, and a certain other whose name was Fust, being skilled in printing letters on parchment with metal forms, are known each of them to be turning out three hundred sheets a day at Mainz, a city of Germany, and Johann Mentelin also, at Strassburg, a city of the same province, being skilled in the same craft, is known to be printing daily the same number of sheets.”13 A little later De Lignamine records the arrival at Rome of Sweynheym and Pannartz, and also of Ulrich Han, and credits them also with printing three hundred sheets a day. Other references follow in later books without adding to our knowledge, save by proving the widespread recognition in the fifteenth century that printing was invented at Mainz; but there is nothing specially to detain us until the publication by Johann Koelhoff in 1499 of the Cologne Chronicle—Die Cronica van der hilliger Stat Coellen—in which occurs a famous passage about printing, which may be translated or paraphrased as follows:— “This right worthy art was invented first of all in Germany, at Mainz, on the Rhine. And that is a great honour to the German nation that such ingenious men “Although this art was invented at Mainz, as far as regards the manner in which it is now commonly used, yet the first prefiguration (Vurbyldung) was invented in Holland from the Donatuses which were printed there before that time. And from and out of these the aforesaid art took its beginning, and was invented in a manner much more masterly and subtler than this, and the longer it lasted the more full of art it became. “A certain Omnibonus wrote in the preface to a Quintilian, and also in other books, that a Walloon from France, called Nicolaus Jenson, was the first inventor of this masterly art—a notorious lie, for there are men still alive who bear witness that books were printed at Venice before the aforesaid Nicolaus Jenson came there, and began to cut and make ready his letter. But the first inventor of printing was a Burgher at Mainz, and was born at Strassburg, and called Yunker Johann Gutenberg. “From Mainz the art came first of all to Cologne, after that to Strassburg, and after that to Venice. The beginning and progress of the art were told me by word of mouth by the Worshipful Master Ulrich Zell of Hanau, printer at Cologne in this present year 1499, through whom the art came to Cologne.”14 Zell, or his interviewer, ignores the books printed anonymously at Strassburg by Mentelin and Eggestein, and also the handful printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg; he also is misled by Gutenberg’s long residence at Strassburg into calling him a native of that city; in other respects, so far as we are able to check this account, it is quite accurate. It tells us emphatically that “this right worthy art was invented first of all in Germany, at Mainz, on the Rhine”; and again, that “the first inventor of printing was a Burgher at Mainz named Junker Johann ‘Gudenburch’”; but between these two unqualified statements is sandwiched a reference to a prefiguration which took shape in Holland in Donatuses, printed there before the Mainz presses were at work, and much less masterly and subtle than the books which they produced. He connects no name with this “Vorbildung,” and, unhappily, he gives no clue as to how it foreshadowed, and was yet distinct from, the real invention. Sixty-nine years15 after the appearance of this carefully balanced statement, the facts as to Dutch “prefigurations” which had inspired it moved a Dutch chronicler, There lived, about 1440, at Haarlem, in the market-place opposite the Town Hall, in a respectable house still in existence, a man named Lourens Janszoon Coster, i.e. Laurence, son of John Coster. The family name was derived from the hereditary office of Sacristan, or Coster of the Church—a post both honourable and lucrative. The town archives give evidence of this, his name appearing therein many times, and in the Town Hall are preserved his seal and signature to various documents. To this man belongs the honour of inventing Printing, an honour of which he was unjustly robbed, and which afterwards was ascribed to another. The said Laurence Coster, one day after dinner, took a walk in the wood near Haarlem. While there, to amuse himself, he began to cut letters out of some beech-bark. The idea struck him to ink some of these letters and use them as stamps. This he did to amuse his grandchildren, cutting them in reverse. He thus formed two or three sentences on paper. The idea germinated, and soon with the help of his son-in-law, and by using a thick ink, he began to print whole pages, and to add lines of print to the block-books, the text of which was the most difficult part to engrave. Junius had seen such a book, called Spieghel onzer Behoudenisse. It should have been said that Coster was descended from the noble house of Brederode, and that his son-in-law was also of noble descent. Coster’s first efforts were of course very rude, and to hide the impression of the letters on the back, they pasted the leaves, which had one side not printed, together. His letters at first were made of lead, which he afterwards changed for tin. Upon his death these letters were melted down and made into wine-pots, which at the time that Junius wrote were still preserved in the house of Gerrit Thomaszoon, the grandson of Coster. Public curiosity was greatly excited by Coster’s discovery, and he gained much profit from his new process. His trade, indeed, so increased that he was obliged to employ several workmen, one of whom was named John. Some say this was John Faust, afterwards a partner with Gutenberg, and others say he was Gutenberg’s brother. This man when he had learnt the art in all its branches, took the opportunity one Christmas eve, when all good people are accustomed to attend Church, to break into the rooms used for printing, Written nearly a hundred and thirty years after the supposed events which it narrates, this story is damned by its circumstantiality. It is thus that legends grow, and it is not difficult to imagine Haarlem bookmen picking up ideas out of colophons in old books and asking the “respectable bookbinder of great age” whether it was not thus and thus that things happened. Many of the details of the story are demonstrably false; its one strong point is the bookbinder, Cornelis, for a binder of this name is said to have been employed as early as 1474 and as late as 1514 to bind the account-books of Haarlem Cathedral, and in the two years named, and also in 1476, to have strengthened his bindings by pasting inside them fragments of Donatuses printed on vellum in the type of the Speculum Humanae Saluationis. The fragment in the account-book for 1474 is rubricated, and must thus either have been sold or prepared for selling, i.e. it is not “printer’s waste,” but may have been bought by Cornelis for lining his covers in the ordinary way of trade. But we have here a possible link between Zell’s story of early Dutch Donatuses and the story of Junius about Coster and his servant Cornelis, since we find fragments of a Donatus in the possession of this particular man. There were plenty of such Donatuses in existence in the Netherlands about 1470. In 1887 Dr. Hessels, in his Haarlem the Birthplace of Printing, not Mentz, enumerated fragments of twenty different editions, printed Not one of the books or fragments of which we have been speaking makes any mention of its printer, or of the place or date at which it was produced. A copy of one of the later books, the De Salute Corporis of Gulielmus de Saliceto, was purchased by Conrad du Moulin while abbot of the Convent of S. James at Lille, a dignity which he held from 1471 to 1474. The earliest Haarlem account-book which contained Donatus fragments was for the year 1474. It is entirely a matter of opinion as to how much earlier than this any of the extant fragments As to the place or places at which these books were printed, there is no evidence of any weight. But, as has been already said, the whole series can be closely or loosely connected with the types used in editions of the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, and in 1481 Jan Veldener, a wandering printer, while working at Utrecht, introduced into an edition of the Epistles and Gospels in Dutch two woodcuts, each of which was a half of one of the double pictures in the Speculum. Two years later, when at Kuilenburg, he printed a quarto edition of the Speculum itself (Dutch version), in which he used a large number of the original Speculum blocks, all cut up into halves, so as to fit a small page. As Veldener (as far as we know) used the Speculum blocks first at Utrecht, it is supposed that it was at Utrecht that he obtained them. If the blocks were for sale at Utrecht, this may have been the place at which the earlier editions of the Speculum were issued, and thus, in the absence of any evidence which they were willing to recognize in favour of any other place, Henry Bradshaw and his disciples attributed the whole series of editions of the Speculum, Donatus, Doctrinale, etc., to Utrecht, about, or “not after,” 1471-1474. Bradshaw himself clearly indicated that this attribution was purely provisional. He felt “compelled to leave” the books at Utrecht, so he phrased it, i.e. the presumption that Veldener found the blocks of the Speculum there constituted a grain of evidence in favour of Utrecht; and if a balance is sufficiently sensitive and both scales are empty, a grain thrown into one will suffice to weigh it down. It would have been better, in the present writer’s opinion, if the grain had been disregarded, and no attempt made to assign these books and fragments to any particular place. As it is, Bradshaw’s attribution of them to Utrecht has been repeated without any emphasis on its entirely provisional character, even without any mention of this at In the eyes of Dr. Hessels, on the other hand, the legend narrated by Junius offers a sufficient reason for assigning all these books to Haarlem, and to Lourens Janszoon Coster as their printer. Dr. Hessels was even ill-advised enough to point out that, as there are twenty editions of Donatus in this group of types, we have only to allow an interval of a year and a half between each to take back the earliest very close to 1440, the traditional date of the invention of printing. This is perfectly true, but as no reason can be assigned for fixing on this particular interval the value of such a calculation is very slight. One result of all this controversy is that the whole series of books and fragments have been dubbed “Costeriana,” and the convenience of having a general name for them is so great that it has been generally adopted, even by those who have no belief in the theory which it implies. All that is known of Lourens Janszoon Coster is that he resided at Haarlem from 1436 to 1483, and that contemporary references show him to have been a chandler and innkeeper, without making any mention of his having added printing to his other occupations. It is difficult to claim more for the story told by Junius than that it represents an unknown quantity of fact with various legendary additions. It is difficult to dismiss it as less than a legend which must have had some element of fact as its basis. In so far as it goes beyond the statements of the Cologne Chronicle, it is supported only by the evidence that Coster and the venerable bookbinder Cornelis existed, and that the latter bound the account-books of Haarlem Cathedral. But no indiscretion of Hadrianus Junius writing in 1568 can affect the credit of the statements made in the Cologne Chronicle in 1499 An ingenious theory as to the form which these “prefigurements” may have taken has lately been suggested, viz. that the earliest types may have consisted simply of flat pieces of metal, without any shanks to them, and that they were “set up” by being glued upon wood or stiff paper in the order required. They would thus be movable, but with a very low degree of movability, so that we can easily understand why short books like the Donatus and Doctrinale were continually reprinted without any attempt being made to produce a large work such as the Bible. It is curious, however, that in the description Whether the Dutch “Vorbildung” of the Art of Printing subsequently invented at Mainz took the form of experiments with shankless types, or fell short of the fully developed art in some other way, does not greatly concern the collector. It is in the highest degree improbable that the claim put forward on behalf of the so-called “Costeriana” will ever be decisively proved or disproved. They are likely to remain as perpetual pretenders, and as such will always retain a certain interest, and a specimen of them always be a desirable addition to any collection which aims at illustrating the history of the invention of printing. Such a specimen will not be easy to procure, because many of the extant fragments have been found in public libraries, more especially the Royal Library at the Hague, and have never left their first homes. On the other hand, the number of fragments known has been considerably increased by new finds. Thus there is no reason to regard a specimen as unattainable. 12 Dr. Hessels supposes that this phrase indicates the Monastery of Saint Victor, outside Mainz, with which Gutenberg was connected, and that the “report,” therefore, can be traced to Gutenberg himself. If so, we have the very important fact that Gutenberg himself claimed to be the inventor. 13 Iacobus cognomento Gutenbergo: patria Argentinus, & quidam alter cui nomen Fustus, imprimendarum litterarum in membranis cum metallicis formis periti, trecentas cartas quisque eorum per diem facere innotescunt apud Maguntiam Germanie ciuitatem. Iohannes quoque Mentelinus nuncupatus apud Argentinam eiusdem prouincie ciuitatem: ac in eodem artificio peritus totidem cartas per diem imprimere agnoscitur.... Conradus Suueynem: ac Arnoldus pannarcz Vdalricus Gallus parte ex alia Teuthones librarii insignes Romam uenientes primi imprimendorum librorum artem in Italiam introduxere trecentas cartas per diem imprimentes. 14 Item dese hoichwyrdige kunst vursz is vonden aller eyrst in Duytschlant tzo Mentz am Rijne. Ind dat is der duytschscher nacion eyn groisse eirlicheit dat sulche synrijche mynschen syn dae tzo vynden. Ind dat is geschiet by den iairen vns heren, anno domini. MCCCCxl. ind van der zijt an bis men schreue. l. wart vndersoicht die kunst ind wat dair zo gehoirt. Ind in den iairen vns heren do men schreyff. MCCCCl. do was eyn gulden iair, do began men tzo drucken ind was dat eyrste boich dat men druckde die Bybel zo latijn, ind wart gedruckt mit eynre grouer schrifft. as is die schrifft dae men nu Mysseboicher mit druckt. Item wiewail die kunst is vonden tzo Mentz, als vursz vp die wijse, als dan nu gemeynlich gebruicht wirt, so is doch die eyrste vurbyldung vonden in Hollant vyss den Donaten, die dae selffst vur der tzijt gedruckt syn. Ind van ind vyss den is genommen dat begynne der vursz kunst. ind is vill meysterlicher ind subtilicher vonden dan die selue manier was, vnd ye langer ye mere kunstlicher wurden. Item eynre genant Omnebonum der schrijfft in eynre vurrede vp dat boich Quintilianus genoempt. vnd ouch in anderen meir boicher, dat eyn Wale vyss Vranckrijch, genant Nicolaus genson haue alre eyrst dese meysterliche kunst vonden, mer dat is offenbairlich gelogen. want Sij syn noch jm leuen die dat getzuigen dat men boicher druckte tzo Venedige ee der vursz Nicolaus genson dar quame, dair he began schrifft zo snijden vnd bereyden. Mer der eyrste vynder der druckerye is gewest eyn Burger tzo Mentz. ind was geboren van Straiszburch. ind hiesch joncker Johan Gudenburch. Item van Mentz is die vursz kunst komen alre eyrst tzo Coellen. Dairnae tzo Straisburch, ind dairnae tzo Venedige. Dat begynne ind vortganck der vursz kunst hait myr muntlich vertzelt d’ Eirsame man Meyster Vlrich tzell van Hanauwe. boich drucker zo Coellen noch zertzijt. anno. MCCCCxcix. durch den die kunst vursz is zo Coellen komen. 15 The first trace of the legend is in a reference to Coster as having “brought the first print into the world in 1446” in a manuscript pedigree of the Coster family compiled about 1559. 16 A page from a fragment of one of these in the British Museum forms the frontispiece to this chapter (Plate IV). 17 Et tempore mei PambergÆ quidam scripsit integrum Bibliam super lamellas, et in quatuor septimanis totam Bibliam super pargameno subtili presignavit scriptura. CHAPTER IV THE INVENTION OF PRINTING—MAINZ No contrast could be much greater than that between the so-called “Costeriana” and the incunabula printed at Mainz. Annually as a small boy I used to be taken to the Crystal Palace, and there a recognized part of the programme in each visit was to spend half an hour in solemnly pedalling backwards and forwards on a semicircular track on a machine miscalled a velocipede. Perhaps these clumsy toys really constituted a definite stage in the invention and perfection of the modern bicycle. On the other hand, whatever may be the historical facts, there is no reason in the nature of things why the modern bicycle should not have been invented quite independently of them. The relative positions of Holland and Germany as regards the invention of printing are very analogous to those of the old velocipede and the bicycle. Even if it could be proved decisively that some Dutch fragment of a Donatus was earlier than any experiment made at Mainz or Strassburg, it was at Mainz that the possibility was first demonstrated of producing by print books as beautiful as any written by the scribes, and it was from Germany, not from Holland, that printers carried the art which they had proved to be practicable to all parts of Europe, including Holland itself.
In the development of the art of printing at Mainz three men had a share, though the precise part which each of them played is matter of conjecture rather than knowledge. The first of the three was Johann Gutenberg, the Johannes Bonemontanus whom Fichet, as early as 1470, acclaimed as the first of all men to think out the Gutenberg’s real name was GÄnsfleisch, Gutenberg being an addition to his mother’s surname18 which he assumed for reasons not known to us. He was born about 1400, and just when he attained manhood his family, which belonged to the patrician party at Mainz, was banished and sought refuge at Strassburg. At Strassburg Gutenberg remained till about 1446, and legal and municipal records, so far as we can trust to their authenticity, offer us some tantalizing glimpses of his career there. When the town clerk of Strassburg came to Mainz the exile caused him to be arrested for a debt due to his family, and the matter had to be arranged to avoid a quarrel between the two cities. On the other hand, Gutenberg was himself called to account for unpaid duties on wine, and was sued for a breach of promise of marriage. In 1437 he was the defendant in a much more interesting trial. He had admitted two partners to work an invention with him, and on one of these partners dying his brother claimed, unsuccessfully, to take his place in the partnership. The use of the words “presse,” “forme,” and “trucken” in connection with this invention leaves it hardly open to doubt that it was concerned with some kind of printing, and loans which Gutenberg negotiated in 1441 and 1442 were presumably raised for the development of this. About the middle of the decade he returned to Mainz and there also borrowed money, presumably again for the same object. At this point we are confronted with five fragmentary pieces of printing, all but one of them only recently discovered. The latest of these, according to German bibliographers, is a fragment of an astronomical Calendar in German verse for an unspecified year, which might be Soon after the supposed date of the Calendar the second of the three protagonists in the development of printing at Mainz comes on the scene. This was Johann Fust, a goldsmith, who in or about August, 1450, lent Gutenberg eight hundred guilders to enable him to print books, himself, nominally or truly, borrowing the money from another capitalist, and thereby gaining the right to charge interest on it without breaking the canon law. By about December, 1452, the loan was exhausted, and Fust made a fresh advance of the same amount. The inner history of the next four years is hid from us, and the undisputed facts which belong to them have consequently been interpreted in every variety of way that human ingenuity can devise. These facts are that— (i) Printing was continued with the fount of type used for the Calendar attributed to 1448, fragments of more than a dozen different editions of Donatus printed with it (ii) When the pardoners employed by the proctor-general of the King of Cyprus came to Mainz in the autumn of 1454 to raise money by means of a papal Indulgence, valid till 30 April of the following year, they were able to substitute two typographically distinct editions for the manuscript copies which they had previously used, the text of each of these Indulgences being printed in a separate fount of beautifully clear small type, while a larger type was used for a few words. In one of these Indulgences the larger type belongs, with some differences, to the same fount as the books named in our last paragraph. This Indulgence has thirty-one lines, and four issues of it have been distinguished, three of them dated 1454 (the earliest of these being the earliest dated piece of printing) and the fourth 1455. In the other Indulgence there are only thirty lines, the large type is neater, and three issues have been distinguished, one dated 1454, the other two 1455. (iii) In November, 1455, an action brought by Fust to recover the 1600 guilders which he had lent Gutenberg, with the arrears of interest, reached its final stage. In this suit the third of the Mainz protagonists, Peter Schoeffer, was a witness on the side of Fust, and we hear also, as servants of Gutenberg, of Heinrich Keffer and Bertolf von Hanau, who may apparently be identified with printers who worked subsequently at Nuremberg and Basel. The document which has come down to us and is now preserved at the University Library at GÖttingen is that recording the oath taken by Fust, as the successful plaintiff, in order to obtain judgment for the amount of his claim. (iv) In August, 1456, Heinrich Cremer, vicar of the collegiate church at Mainz, recorded his completion of For this last undoubted date of rubrication, August, 1456, German bibliographers have lately substituted a reference to a manuscript date, 1453, in another copy of this printed Bible, now preserved in the Buchgewerbe-Museum at Leipzig, formerly owned by a well-known German collector of the last century, Herr Klemm. While, however, this date appears to have been written at a period approximating to that of the production of the book, its relevance as evidence of the date of printing is highly disputable, more especially as there appear to be signs of erasure near it. Its owner, Herr Klemm, preserved a discreet silence as to its existence, and it is certainly not obligatory at present to accept it as valid evidence. In a work which does not pretend to the dignity of a history of printing it is impossible to discuss, or even to enumerate, the different theories as to the events of the years 1453-6, which have been formulated to account for these facts. The edition of the Bible of which Heinrich Cremer rubricated the copy now at Paris is so fine a book and so great a landmark in typographical history, that the desire to regard it as the production of the man who is credited with the invention of printing, Johann Gutenberg, easily becomes irresistible. To refuse to call it the Gutenberg Bible may, indeed, appear almost pedantic, though its old name, the “Mazarine Bible,” which it gained from the accident of the copy in the Mazarine Library at Paris being the first to attract attention, still survives, and it is also known among bibliographers as the “Forty-two Line Bible,” a safe uncontroversial title based on the number of lines in most of its columns. Whoever printed it appears to have been According to this theory, it was Schoeffer who engraved the two founts of small type used in the two sets of Indulgences of 1454-5, and thus demonstrated that the new art could be applied to produce every kind of book and document which had previously circulated in manuscript. Fust gave him his daughter Christina in marriage, and Johann Schoeffer, the offspring of the alliance, distinctly tells us that this was in reward for his services. From the first, or almost the first, the firm adopted a policy of advertisement which other printers were slow to imitate, the partners giving their names in their earliest colophons and making no secret of the fact that they were using an “adinuentio artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi” which enabled them to dispense with the pen. In 1460, in the Catholicon of that year, the work of an anonymous printer to which we shall have to recur (see p. 51 sqq.), the invention is distinctly claimed for Mainz, and from 1467 this claim was taken over by Peter Schoeffer, who in the colophons of his subsequent books again and again celebrated Mainz as the city singled out by divine favour to give the art to the world. The fact that for nearly forty years (1460-99) these statements remained unchallenged, and passed into the contemporary history The desire to credit Gutenberg with some really handsome and important piece of printing has caused his name to be connected with two other large folios, a Latin Bible, of thirty-six lines to a column, printed in a variety of the type used for the Sibyllenbuch and the Kalendar of “1448,” and a Latin Dictionary known by the name Catholicon, the work of a thirteenth century writer, Joannes Balbus, of Genoa. The type of the Thirty-six Line Bible passed into the hands of Albrecht Pfister, of Bamberg, who printed a number of popular German books with it in 1461 and 1462. There is considerable evidence, moreover, that a large number of copies of the Bible itself were sold at Bamberg about 1460. The The Catholicon is printed in a small type, not very cleanly cut. It was issued without printer’s name, but with a long colophon, which has been translated: By the help of the Most High, at Whose will the tongues of infants become eloquent, and who oft-times reveals to the lowly that which He hides from the wise, this noble book Catholicon, in the year of the Lord’s Incarnation 1460, in the bounteous city of Mainz of the renowned German nation, which the clemency of God has deigned with so lofty a light of genius and free gift to prefer and render illustrious above all other nations of the earth, without help of reed, stilus, or pen, but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches and types has been printed and brought to an end. Upon this follow four Latin verses in honour of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary and the words “Deo Gracias.” We can imagine an inventor who, despite his invention, remained profoundly unsuccessful, writing In the same type as the Catholicon are two small tracts of little interest, the Summa de articulis fidei of Thomas Aquinas, and the Dialogus of Matthaeus de Cracovia; also an Indulgence of Pope Pius II. In 1467 the type is found in the hands of Heinrich BechtermÜnze at Eltvil, who died while printing a vocabulary. This was completed by his brother Nicholas, who also printed three later editions of it. During the years which precede 1457, Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, the one a goldsmith, the other a clerk in minor orders of the diocese of Mainz, are involved in the obscurity and uncertainty which surround Gutenberg’s career. Reasons have been offered for believing that it was Schoeffer who designed the small neat types used in the Mainz Indulgences of 1454-5, and that he with his skill and Fust with his money pushed the Forty-two Line Bible to a successful completion. If they printed this, they no doubt printed also a liturgical psalter Presens psalmorum23 codex venustate capitalium decoratus Rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus Adinuentione artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi absque calami ulla exaracione sic effigiatus, Et ad eusebiam dei industrie est consummatus, Per Iohannem fust ciuem maguntinum, Et Petrum Schoffer de Gernszheim Anno domini Millesimo .cccc.lvij. In vigilia Assumpcionis. The present book of the Psalms, decorated with beautiful capitals and sufficiently marked out with rubrics, has been thus fashioned by an ingenious invention of printing and stamping without any ploughing of a pen, And to the worship of God has been diligently brought to completion by Johann Fust, a citizen of Mainz, and Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim, in the year of the Lord, 1457, on the vigil of the Assumption. Thus in the Psalter of 1457 we have the first example of a book informing us when and by whom it was manufactured; it also illustrates in a very remarkable way the determination of the new partners to produce a volume which should fully rival the best shop-made manuscripts. The effort to print rubrics had already been made in the Forty-two Line Bible, but the red printing was abandoned in that instance as too troublesome. Now it was revived with complete success, and with the printed rubrics came also printed capitals or initial letters in two colours, red and blue, and several different sizes. A good discussion of the manner in which these were printed will be found in the Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Printed Books exhibited at the Historical Music Loan Exhibition (1886) by Mr. W. H. J. Weale. In an article in the first volume of Bibliographica Mr. Russell Martineau showed that part of the edition was printed twice. When Mr. Martineau wrote nine copies were known, all on vellum, viz. (i) five Two years later (29 August, 1459) Fust and Schoeffer produced another Psalter, in the same types and with the same capitals, with twenty-three instead of twenty lines to a page. This was stated in the colophon to have been printed “ad laudem dei ac honorem sancti Jacobi,” and was thus apparently commissioned by the Benedictine monastery of S. James at Mainz. Its arrangement is that generally in use at the time in German monasteries. Thirteen copies of this edition are preserved, all on vellum, viz. four in England (British Museum, Bodleian, John Rylands Library, and the Earl of Leicester’s library at Holkham), two at Paris, one at the Hague, five in Germany, and one in Mr. Morgan’s collection at New York. This last was bought by Mr. Quaritch at the sale of the library of Sir John Thorold for £4950. Between the production of these two Psalters Fust and Schoeffer printed in the same types on twelve leaves of vellum the Canon of the Mass only, obviously that it might be bought by churches which owned Missals otherwise in good condition, but with these much-fingered leaves badly worn. The unique copy of this edition of the Canon was discovered at the Bodleian Library in a Mainz Missal of 1493 and identified by Mr. Gordon In October, 1459, Fust and Schoeffer took an important step forward by printing in small type the Rationale Diuinorum Officiorum of Gulielmus Duranti, a large work explaining the meaning of the various services of the Church and the ceremonies used in them. The text is printed in double columns with sixty-three lines in each column, and the type measures 91 mm. to twenty lines. A copy at Munich is printed partly on paper, partly on vellum. All the other forty-two copies described by Mr. De Ricci are entirely on vellum. The book has also one large and two smaller capitals printed in two colours, and the first of these has been reproduced as a frontispiece to this chapter, together with a piece of the neat small type which, by demonstrating the possibility of cheap printing, set up a real landmark. In 1460 Fust and Schoeffer gave another proof of their skill in their edition of the Constitutions of Pope Clement V with the commentary of Joannes Andreae. The text of the Constitutions is printed in two columns in the centre of each page in a type measuring 118 mm. to twenty lines, with the commentary completely surrounding it in the 91 type used in the Duranti. Headings and colophon are printed in red, and the general effect is extremely rich and handsome. All the fourteen copies known to Mr. De Ricci are printed on vellum. In 1461 printing was put to a new use by the publication of a series of eight placards (one in two editions) relative to the struggle between the rival archbishops of Mainz—a papal bull deposing Diether von Isenburg, the Emperor’s confirmation of this, papal briefs as to the election of Adolf von Nassau, a petition of Diether’s to the Pope, and the manifestos of the two archbishops. All these, and also a bull of the same year as to a crusade against the Turks, are printed in the neat 91 type, In 1462 the archiepiscopal struggle led to Mainz being sacked, but on 14 August there was completed there perhaps the finest of all the early Bibles, printed throughout in the 118 type, with headings in red and numerous two-line capitals and chapter-numbers in red and blue, though spaces were left for others to be supplied by hand. Three different colophons to this book have been described, and examples of all of these are in the British Museum. Of the sixty-one extant copies registered by Mr. De Ricci at least thirty-six are printed on vellum. The Lamoignon copy bequeathed to the Museum by Mr. Cracherode has good painted capitals added by hand and is a singularly fine book. The Bible of 1462 marks the close of the great period of printing at Mainz. Whether six, seven, or nine years separate it from the Forty-two Line Bible the time had been splendidly employed. The capacity of the new art had been demonstrated to the full, and taken as a group these early Fust and Schoeffer incunabula have never on their own lines been surpassed. The disaster of the sack of Mainz and perhaps the financial strain involved in the production of the Bible almost reduced their press to silence until 1465, and it was during these years that their workmen are said to have left them and begun carrying the art into other towns and countries.24 When the partners resumed active work in 1465 they struck out a new line in their De Officiis and Paradoxa of Cicero, but attained no special excellence in such small folios and quartos. Fust died about this time, and Schoeffer, left to himself, displayed no further originality. The Bible of 1472, save for the absence of printed capitals, is a close About 1476-80 a few unimportant books were issued at Mainz by an anonymous printer known as the “Printer of the Darmstadt Prognostication,” from the fact that the first copy of the Prognostication in question to attract notice was that in the Darmstadt library. The books of this press attained undeserved notoriety from the forged dates inserted in many of them about 1800, in order to connect them with Gutenberg. The work of three other printers, Johann Neumeister, Erhard Reuwich, and Jacob Meidenbach is chiefly important in the history of book-illustration, and will be found mentioned in Chapter VII. The only other Mainz printer in the fifteenth century was Peter von Friedberg, who is chiefly notable as having printed a little series of works by Johannes Trithemius (Tritheim or Trittenheim), the erudite Abbot of Spanheim. After about 1472 Mainz was easily surpassed as a centre of printing by Strassburg, Cologne, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. But if no book had been printed there after the sack of the city ten years earlier, its fame as long as civilization lasts would still be imperishable. 18 Her maiden name was Elsa Wyrich, but she lived at the Hof zum Gutenberg at Mainz, and the name Gutenberg thus came into the family. 19 It will be noted that this connection with Strassburg offers just a grain of evidence in favour of the Donatuses having been printed there rather than at Mainz. 20 According to the excellent Catalogue raisonnÉ des premiÈres impressions de Mayence of Mr. Seymour de Ricci, eleven copies on vellum and thirty on paper can now be located, but some of these have only one of the two volumes. The vellum copy belonging to Mr. Robert Hoe sold in 1911 for $50,000. 21 In the verses by Magister Franciscus in the Justinian of 1468, subsequently twice reprinted. 22 In the Cologne Chronicle. See supra, p. 34. 23 Misprinted spalmorum. 24 It seems reasonable to believe that Ulrich Zell, the first printer at Cologne, who was a clerk of the diocese of Mainz, and Sweynheym and Pannartz, who introduced printing into Italy, owed their training to Fust and Schoeffer. CHAPTER V OTHER INCUNABULA In August, 1462, the struggle between its rival Archbishops led to Mainz being sacked. Very little more printing was done there until 1465, and we need not doubt the tradition that journeymen trained by Gutenberg and Fust and Schoeffer, finding no work for them at Mainz, carried such experience as they had gained to other towns and countries, where they appear, after a few years spent in manufacturing presses and types, in all the glory of “prototypographers.” But even before 1462 two other cities possessed the art—Bamberg and Strassburg. At Bamberg it was practised possibly by Gutenberg, who may have printed there the Thirty-six Line Bible about 1457, certainly by Albrecht Pfister, who is found in possession of the type of this Bible, and may himself have had copies for sale. The books he himself printed at Bamberg are nine in number,25 and three or four bound volumes seem to have preserved all the remnants of them that we possess, and all of these have found their way to public libraries. The large and stately folios produced by the early Strassburg printers have naturally resisted the ravages of time better than the Bamberg popular books. In the fifteenth century Basel was not yet, as it became in 1501, a member of the Swiss Confederacy, and typographically its relations with Mainz, Strassburg, Nuremberg and other German towns were very close. In what year printing began there is not known. There is no dated book from a Basel press until as late as 1474, but the date of purchase, 1468, in a book (S. Gregory’s Moralia in Job), printed by Berthold Ruppel, of Hanau, takes us back six years, and it is possible that Ruppel was at work even before this. He is identified with reasonable certainty with one of the servants of Gutenberg mentioned in connection with the lawsuit ended in 1455, and he printed Latin Bibles and other large works such as appealed to the ambition of the German prototypographers.
The second and more interesting Basel printer, Michael Wenssler, seems to have taken Schoeffer as his model, and reprinted many of Schoeffer’s editions, following Travelling along the Rhine from Mainz in the opposite direction we come to Cologne, and here Ulrich Zell, like Berthold Ruppel, a native of Hanau, but who calls himself in his books a “clerk of the diocese of Mainz,” enrolled his name on the register of the University in June, 1464, doubtless for the sake of the business privileges which the Senate had it in its power to confer. The first dated book from his press, S. John Chrysostom, Super psalmo quinquagesimo (Psalm li., according to our English reckoning), was issued in 1466, but before this appeared he had almost certainly produced an edition of the De Officiis (see the frontispiece to this chapter, Plate VI), the most popular of Cicero’s works in Germany, which Fust and Schoeffer had printed in 1465 and reprinted the next year. Avoiding the great folios on which the early printers of Mainz, Strassburg, and Basel staked their capital, Zell’s main work was the multiplication of minor theological treatises likely to be of practical use to priests. Of these he issued countless editions in small quarto, along with a comparatively few small folios, in which, however, his skill as a printer is seen to better advantage. He continued in active work until 1494, gave, as we have seen (Chapter III.), his version Zell’s earliest rival at Cologne was Arnold ther Hoernen, who printed from 1470 to 1482. He may very likely have been self-taught, for his early work is very uneven, but he developed into an excellent craftsman. He is the first notable example of a printer getting into touch with a contemporary author, and regularly printing all his works, the author in this case being Werner Rolewinck, a Carthusian of Cologne, who wrote sermons and historical works, including the Fasciculus Temporum, an epitome of history, which found much favour all over Europe. Ther Hoernen used to be credited with the honour of having printed the first book with a titlepage, the Sermo ad populum predicabilis In festo presentacionis Beatissime Marie semper virginis of 1470. Schoeffer, however, had preceded him by some seven years by devoting a separate page to the title of each of his editions of a Bull of Pius II (see p. 93), and as neither printer continued the practice these isolated instances must be taken as accidental. In the same book, ther Hoernen for the first time placed printed numbers on the leaves, but this improvement also was not followed up. The third Cologne typographer, Johann Koelhoff the Elder, was the first (in 1472) to place printed “signatures” on the quires of a book, so as to show the binder the order in which they were to be arranged. Hitherto the quires had been marked by hand, and this improvement was not suffered to drop for a time like the others, but quickly spread all over Europe. At Augsburg GÜnther Zainer completed his first book, an edition of the Latin Meditations on the Life of Christ taken from the works of S. Bonaventura, on the 13th March, 1468. Though he followed this with three heavy books which had found favour at Mainz and Strassburg, Zainer had the wisdom to strike out a line for himself. Augsburg had long been the chief centre of At Nuremberg printing was introduced in 1470 by Johan Sensenschmidt, who for a short time had as his partner Heinrich Kefer, of Mainz, another of Gutenberg’s servants. Much more important, however, was the firm of Anton Koberger, who began work the next year, and speedily developed the largest business of any printer in Germany. Koberger was able to deal successfully in all the heavy books, which after 1480 other firms found it wiser to leave alone, and seems to have employed Adolf Rusch at Strassburg and perhaps other printers elsewhere, to print for him. He also printed towards the end of the century some very notable illustrated books. Next to Koberger, Friedrich Creussner, who started in 1473, had the largest business in Nuremberg, and Georg Stuchs made himself a reputation as a missal printer, a special department from which Koberger held aloof. At Speier, after two anonymous firms had worked in 1471 and 1472 without much success, Peter Drach (1477) developed an important business. At Ulm Johann Zainer, a kinsman of GÜnther Zainer, of Augsburg, began in 1473 by printing illustrated books, which were subsequently taken up in the ’eighties by Leonhard Considerable as was this output of German printing at home, it was probably nearly equalled by the work done by German printers in the other countries of Europe to which they hastened to carry the new art. Turning first to Italian incunabula we find that the first book printed in Italy has perished utterly. The cruel little Latin grammar which passed under the name of Donatus had, as we have seen, been frequently printed in Holland and by the first Mainz printers, and there are several later instances of an edition of it being produced as soon as a press was set up, merely to show the printer’s types. This was done by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, the two Germans who began printing at the monastery of Saint Scholastica at Subiaco, some forty miles from Rome, in 1465, or perhaps in the previous year. Being a school-book, the Donatus was thumbed to pieces, so that no copy now survives, and it is only known from the printer’s allusion to it as the book “unde imprimendi initium sumpsimus” in a list of their publications drawn up in 1472. Of the three other books printed by them at Subiaco, Cicero’s De Oratore has no printed date, but a copy described by Signor Fumagalli bears a manuscript note dated Pridie Kal. Octobres M.cccclxv., i.e. 30 September, 1465, the authenticity of which has, however, been challenged, though probably without good reason. The two others both bear printed dates, the works of Lactantius, that of 29 October, 1465, and S. Augustine’s De Ciuitate Dei, 12 June, 1467. Probably even before this last book was completed the printers were already moving some of their material to Rome, where they found shelter in the palace of Pietro de’ Massimi, for their edition of the Epistulae Familiares of Cicero was completed there in the same year, probably in or before November. Even so it is not certain that this was the first book printed at Rome, for Ulrich Han, a native of Vienna and citizen of Ingolstadt, whose later work, like that of Michael Wenssler at Basel, shows a tendency to imitate Schoeffer, completed an edition of the The career of Sweynheym and Pannartz in partnership at Rome lasted but little over six years, their latest book bearing the date 31 December, 1473. Already in March, 1472, they were in difficulties, and printed a letter to Pope Sixtus IV begging for some pecuniary aid. They had printed, they said, no fewer than 11,475 volumes, and gave a list of the different books and of the numbers printed of each. Four of these editions were of 300 copies, the rest of 275, and we can see from the list that there had been three editions of the Lactantius and De Ciuitate Dei and two each of Cicero’s Epistulae Familiares, De Oratore, and Opera Philosophica, and also of Virgil, so that clearly some of their books had shown a profit. But the list is entirely made up of Latin classics, “profane” and theological, and by March, 1472, printing had been introduced into at least ten other Italian cities (Venice, Foligno, Trevi, Ferrara, Milan, Florence, Treviso, Bologna, Naples, and Savigliano), and in most, if not all of these, the one idea of the first printers was to produce as many Latin classics as possible, as though no other firm in Italy were doing the same thing. Unable to obtain help from the Pope, Sweynheym and Pannartz dissolved partnership, the former devoting himself to engraving maps for an edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia, which he did not live to see (it was printed by Arnold Bucking in 1478), while Pannartz resumed business on a somewhat smaller scale on his own account, and died in 1476. At Venice, the first printer, Johann of Speier, seems to have had some foreboding of what might happen, and thoughtfully protected himself against competition by procuring from the Senate an exclusive privilege for In 1470, the way thus being left clear, a Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson, set up the second press in Venice, and by the beauty of his fine Roman type speedily attained a reputation which has lasted to this day. Another fine printer, Christopher Valdarfer, produced his first book in the same year. In 1471 three other firms (an Italian priest, Clemente of Padua, and two Germans, Adam of Ammergau and Franz Renner of Heilbronn) began publishing, and in 1472 yet seven more (three Germans and four Italians). But the pace was impossible, and by this time men were rapidly falling out. As we have seen, Sweynheym and Pannartz, after their ineffectual attempt to obtain a subsidy from the Pope, dissolved their partnership at Rome after 1473, and Ulrich Han in 1471 had taken a moneyed partner, with whose aid he weathered the storm. At Venice Wendelin, after producing thirty-one books in the previous two years, reduced his output to six in 1473, and soon after seems to have ceased to work for himself. Jenson’s numbers sank from twenty-eight in 1471-2 to six in 1473-4. Valdarfer gave up after 1471, and is subsequently found at Milan. Other Venetian printers also dropped out, and only two new firms began work in 1473. At Florence after the first printer Bernardo Cennini and his sons had produced a Virgil in 1471, and Johann Petri of Mainz Boccaccio’s Philocolo and Petrarch’s Trionfi in 1472, printing ceased for some years. Presses started at Foligno, Trevi, and Savigliano came to a speedy end. At Treviso, where Gerardus Lisa had published To devise any summary description of fifteenth century printing at Venice is wellnigh impossible. Some 150 firms were at work there; at a low estimate some four thousand extant books and editions must be credited to them, and these embraced almost every kind of literature for which readers could be found in the fifteenth century, and many varieties of craftsmanship. From a decorative point of view, the firm of Erhard Ratdolt did exceptionally good work, and it is also remarkable for specializing mainly on astronomy, mathematics, and history. Liturgical printing began somewhat late (there seems to have been a prejudice against printed service books in Italy, and I can remember none printed at Rome); in the fifteenth century Johann Hammann or Herzog and Johann Emerich were its chief exponents. Franz Renner produced chiefly Latin theology, a department much less predominant at Venice than in Germany. Several firms, e.g. Jacques Le Rouge, Baptista de Tortis, Andreas Torresanus (father-in-law of Aldus and a very fine printer), and Georgius Arrivabene devoted themselves like Jenson first mainly to Latin classics and then to law; others, such as Filippo di Pietro mingled Latin and Italian classics. Filippo’s kinsman, Gabriele di Pietro, was one of the earliest vernacular printers. Many firms, such as that of Bonetus Locatellus, who seems to have had a University connection, and printed all kinds of learned Latin books, despised the vernacular altogether. The brothers Giovanni and Gregorio dei Gregorii were perhaps the most prolific and miscellaneous printers in both Latin and Italian. Johannes Tacuinus, a learned printer towards the end of the century, is notable for adorning his books with pictorial capitals, mostly of boys at play. Aldus Manutius will be spoken of in a later chapter. While all this activity was displayed at Venice other cities were not idle. At Milan upwards of eight hundred In France also the earliest books were addressed to students of the classics, though they were produced on a much more limited scale. There the first printers, three Germans, had been invited to set up their presses at Paris in the Sorbonne by two of its professors, Guillaume Fichet and Jean Heynlin, of Stein, better known in his own day as Johannes de Lapide. Between the summer of 1470 and the autumn of 1472 eighteen works were printed at the Sorbonne, mostly of the kind which would be of use to its students. Among them was Sallust, three works of Cicero, Virgil’s Bucolics and Georgics, the Satires of Juvenal and Persius, Terence, some text books, the Speculum Humanae Vitae of Bishop Roderic of Zamora, and the Orations of Fichet’s patron, Cardinal Bessarion. In August, 1472, the Cardinal arrived in France on a fruitless mission to rouse the king to a crusade against the Turks. He was rebuffed and ordered to leave France. Fichet accompanied him, and never returned to Paris. As early as the previous March Heynlin seems to have been called away, and now the At Lyon printing was introduced by the enterprise of one of its citizens, BarthÉlemi Buyer, who engaged Guillaume Leroy (a native of LiÈge) to print for him, and subsequently employed other printers as well. The first Lyon book was a little volume of popular religious treatises, containing among other things the De miseria humanae conditionis of Pope Innocent III. It was completed 17 September, 1473. Until nearly 1490 the books printed at Lyon were mainly popular in character with a considerable proportion of French books, many of them illustrated. From 1490 onwards learned Latin books occur more frequently, and printing rapidly became as general or miscellaneous as at Paris itself, although only a single attempt was made, unsuccessfully, to rival the Paris Horae. The two cities between them probably In Holland the first books which bear the name of their printer and date and place of imprint are those produced at Utrecht by Nicolaus Ketelaer and Gerardus Leempt, who began work in 1473. It is tolerably certain, however, that some of the so-called “Costeriana” (see Chap. II) preceded this date, and they are at least as likely to have been printed at Haarlem as at Utrecht, there being no decisive evidence in favour of either place. No namable printer appears at Haarlem until the end of 1483, when Jacob Bellaert set up a short-lived press there. For some seven years (1477-84) excellent work was done at Gouda by Gerard Leeu, who then moved to Antwerp. At Delft, where a fine Bible was printed by Jacob Jacobszoen and Mauricius Yemantszoen in 1477, printing was kept up continuously by Jacobszoen, Christian Snellaert, and Hendrik Eckert till the end of the century, though there seems to have been only work enough for one firm at a time. At Zwolle, Pieter van Os, who began work in 1479, was able to maintain himself, with a brief interval about 1482, till past the magic date 1500. Lastly, at Deventer, where Richardus Pafraet started in the same year, an output was speedily attained greater than in any other Dutch town, and for the latter years of the century a rival firm, that of Jacobus de Breda, shared Pafraet’s prosperity. The great majority The beginnings of printing are much more interesting in the Southern Netherlands, which correspond roughly to what we now call Belgium. Here also the first positive date is 1473, the year in which Johann of Paderborn in Westphalia, best known to English collectors as John of Westphalia, printed three books at Alost. A fourth followed in May, 1474, but by the following December John had removed to Louvain, a University town, where he remained doing excellent and abundant work till nearly the end of the century. At Louvain he had found another printer, Jan Veldener, already in the field, and seems to have hustled him away not very honourably. Veldener, however, was not ruined, but is subsequently found at Utrecht and Kuilenburg, and again for a short time at Louvain. At Bruges the first printers were Colard Mansion and William Caxton, names well known to English book-lovers, though not all the labours of Mr. William Blades and Mr. Gordon Duff have made it quite clear which of the two was the leader. Only two English books were printed, the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy and The Game and Play of the Chess, when Caxton returned to England and set up his presses in the Almonry at Westminster. Whether he had any pecuniary interest in the French Recueil and the Quatre DerniÈres Choses, and whether printings at Bruges began with the Recuyell, or, as Mr. Proctor contended, with the French Boccaccio De la ruine des nobles hommes et femmes of 1476, are points of controversy. From 1477 till his flight from Bruges to avoid arrest for debt in 1484, Mansion worked steadily by himself, and the total output of his press amounts to twenty-five French works and two in Latin. At Brussels the Brothers of the Common Life, who worked also as printers in other places, published numerous The true incunabula of the Netherlands are, of course, the “Costeriana.” Whatever view we may take of their date and birthplace, they were undoubtedly home products, with a strongly marked individuality. Ketelaer and Leempt, however, at Utrecht, Veldener at Louvain and elsewhere, Caxton and Mansion at Bruges, were real pioneers. In a sense this is true also of John of Westphalia and Gerard Leeu, notably of the former, who had learnt his art in Italy and by the type which he had brought thence raised the standard of printing in his new home. It is, indeed, almost exclusively at Deventer that we get the dull commercial work which has nothing primitive or individual about it, and thus, perhaps because their grand total is so much smaller than in the case of Germany, Italy, or even France, the special interest of incunabula attaches to rather a high proportion of the early books of the Netherlands. If this be true of the Netherlands, it is even truer of the two countries with which we have still to deal in this rapid survey, Spain and England. Of Spanish incunabula about seven hundred are now registered; of English, three hundred is a fairly liberal estimate of the grand total still extant. Within the limits of the fifteenth century neither country reached the purely mechanical stage of book production to which so many German and Italian books belong after about 1485. In England, indeed, this stage was hardly reached until the general downfall of good printing towards the end of the sixteenth century. The first book printed in Spain was a thin volume of poems in honour of the Blessed Virgin, written by Bernardo Fenollar and others on the occasion of a congress Another Fleming, of the name of Matthew or Matthaeus, printed the Manipulus Curatorum of Guido de Monte Rotherii at Saragossa in October, 1475, and five other presses were established there before 1500, that of Paul Hurus being the most prolific. At Tortosa a single book (the Rudimenta Grammaticae of Perottus) was printed by Nicolaus Spindeler and Pedro Brun early in 1477, and in August of the same year Antonio Martinez, Alonso del Puerto, and Bartolome Segura completed the first fully dated book (the Sacramental of Sanchez de Vercial) at Seville, where printing subsequently throve as much as anywhere in Spain. The following year Spindeler and Brun, having moved from Tortosa, introduced printing into Barcelona, a date MCCCCLXVIII in a treatise by Bartholomaeus Mates, Pro condendis orationibus, being obviously a misprint, At Salamanca printing was introduced as early as 1481, and continued more actively after 1492, mainly for the production of educational works. At Burgos Friedrich Biel, who had been trained under Michael Wenssler at Basel, began printing in 1485, and a native of the place, Juan de Burgos, brought out his first book in 1490, both of these firms doing excellent work. Altogether, twenty-four towns and places in Spain possessed presses during the fifteenth century, but in many cases only for a short time. The outline of the story of printing in England during the fifteenth century may be very quickly sketched, fuller treatment being reserved for a later chapter. At Michaelmas, 1476, Caxton rented premises in the Almonry from the Abbot of Westminster, and here he stayed till his death in 1491, printing, as far as we know, about a hundred books and documents. In 1478 a press was set up at Oxford, presumably by Theodoric Rood of Cologne, whose name, however, does not appear in any book until 1481. By 1485 Rood had been joined by an English stationer, Thomas Hunte, but in 1486 or the following year the press was closed after printing, as far as we know, only seventeen books. The few books printed at Oxford were all more or less scholastic in character, and six out of eight works printed by Caxton’s second rival (apparently a friendly one), the Schoolmaster-Printer at St. Albans, belonged to the same class, his two more popular books being Caxton’s Chronicles of England, with a new appendix, and the famous Book of St. Albans. Of these eight works, the earliest bearing a date was issued in 1480, the latest in 1486. A more formidable competitor to Caxton than either the Oxford or the St. Albans printer began work in the City of London in 1480. This was John Lettou, i.e. John the Lithuanian, who, as Mr. Gordon Duff notes, used type identical save in a single letter with a fount used at Rome in 1478 by Johann Bulle of Bremen. Lettou appears to have been financed in the first instance by a Londoner, William Wilcock. In 1482 he was joined by William Machlinia (presumably a native of Malines), and after five law books had been printed in partnership, Lettou dropped out, and Machlinia continued working by himself, possibly until as late as 1490 or 1491, when his stock seems to have been taken over by Richard Pynson, a Norman, from Rouen. On Caxton’s death in 1491 his business passed into the hands of his foreman, Wynkyn de Worde, a native of Lorraine. The only other press started in the fifteenth century was that of Julyan Notary, who worked at first with two partners, I.B. and I.H. Of these I.B. was certainly Jean Barbier, and I.H. probably Jean Huvin of Rouen. We have no information as to the nationality of Notary, but if, as seems probable, he was a Frenchman, printing in England for some twenty years after Caxton’s death was wholly in the hands of foreigners. Meagre and bare of details as is this sketch of the beginnings of printing in the chief countries of Europe, it should yet suffice to prove that the purely arbitrary date 1500 and the slang word incunabula, used to invest all fifteenth century impressions with a mystic value, are misleading nuisances. By the time that printing reached England it was beginning to pass into its commercial stage in Germany and Italy. In both of these countries, and in a less degree in France, scores and hundreds of books were printed during the last fifteen years of the century which have little more connection with the invention of printing, or the story of its diffusion, than English or Spanish books a century later. From the point of view What constitutes a true incunable cannot be defined in a sentence. We must consider the country or city as well as the book, the individual man as well as the art of which he was perhaps a belated exponent. The same piece of printing may have much more value and interest if we can prove that it was produced in one place rather than another. After the publication of his Index, Mr. Proctor satisfied himself that some anonymous books in roman type which he had classed as the work of an unidentified press at Naples were really among the earliest specimens of Palmart’s typography in Spain, and one does not need to be a Spaniard to appreciate the distinction thus added to them. If sentiment is to count for anything we must admit the interest of the first books printed in any country which possesses an important history and literature—if only because we may legitimately be curious to know on what books a printer, with all the extant literature to choose from, ventured his capital as likely in that particular country and time to bring him the quickest and most profitable return. That the first large book in Germany was a Bible, the first books in Italy Latin classics, the first produced for the English market one that we must call an historical romance, cannot be regarded as merely insignificant. Nor are the differences in the types and appearance of the page unimportant, for these also help to illustrate national characteristics. If this is true of the early books printed in any country, it is also true in only slightly less degree of those which first appeared in any great city which afterwards became a centre of printing. Strassburg, Cologne, and Nuremberg, Rome, Venice, and Florence, Paris and Lyon, Antwerp and London (if we may be permitted for once to ignore the separate existence of Westminster), each has its own individuality, and in each case it is interesting to see with what wares, and in what form, the first printers endeavoured to open its purse-strings. But when we come to towns and townlets some distinction seems needed. I may be misled by secret sympathy with that often scholarly, too often impecunious figure, the local antiquary. To him the first book printed in his native townlet, though by a printer merely stopping on his way between one great city and another, must needs be of interest, and it is hard that its price should be forced beyond his reach by the competition between dealers keen to do business with a rich collector to whom the book will have none of the fragrance it would possess for him. Typographical itinerancy, this printing by the roadside, as we may almost call it, must needs be illustrated in great collections, like any other habit of the early printers. But the ordinary private collector can surely dispense with buying books because they have been printed in places which have no associations for him, of which perhaps he has never heard. As for the individual man, if we would keep any oases green in what may easily become a sandy desert, we must surely treasure every trace of his personality. One large element in the charm of incunabula is the human interest of difficulties overcome, and wherever a craftsman began work by cutting a distinctive type to suit the calligraphic fashion of the neighbourhood, at whatever date he started, his books will still have some interest. When he becomes articulate and tells us of his difficulties, or boasts of how they have been overcome, we may value his work still higher. As the first book printed at Florence, the Commentary To the Reader. Bernardino Cennini, by universal allowance a most excellent goldsmith, and Domenico his son, a youth of very good ability, have been the printers. Pietro, son of the aforesaid Bernardo, has acted as corrector, and has made a collation with many very ancient copies. His first anxiety was that nothing by another hand should be ascribed to Servius, that nothing which very old copies showed to be the work of Honoratus should be cut down or omitted. Since it pleases many readers to insert Greek words with their own hand, and in their own fashion, and these in ancient codices are very few, and the accents are very difficult to mark in printing he determined that spaces should be left for the purpose. But since nothing of man’s making is perfect, it must needs be accounted enough if these books (as we earnestly hope) are found exceptionally correct. The work was finished at Florence on October 5, 1472. It is impossible to read a colophon such as this without feeling ourselves in the very atmosphere of the printing house, with the various members of the printer’s family at work around us. Blank spaces are found in many early books where Greek quotations occurred in the manuscripts from which they were printed. But it was not every printer who took so much trouble as Cennini to justify the omission. As many as twenty-one years later, when printing in the great towns was becoming merely mechanical, we find the same personal note in a little grammar-book printed at Acqui. Here the colophon tells us: The Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu (God be praised!) comes to a happy end. It has been printed amid enough inconveniences, since of several things belonging to this art the printer, in making a beginning with it, could obtain no proper supply, owing to the plague raging at Genoa, Asti and elsewhere. Now this same work has been corrected by the prior Venturinus, a distinguished Late as he appeared and small as was the town at which he produced his one book—his hopes and promises as to others seem to have come to naught—this man had the true pioneer spirit, and deserves to be remembered for it. Of a different kind, but no less, is the interest in what is perhaps my own favourite colophon, that recording the death of Gerard Leeu at Antwerp, while engaged in printing an edition of The Chronicles of England for the English market. Here ben endyd the Cronycles of the Reame of Englond, with their apperteignaunces. Enprentyd in the Duchy of Braband in the towne of Andewarpe In the yere of our Lord M.cccc.xciij. By maistir Gerard de leew a man of grete wysedom in all maner of kunnyng: whych nowe is come from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete harme for many [a] poure man. On whos sowle God almyghty for hys hygh grace haue mercy. Amen. Leeu had been killed accidentally by one of his workmen in the course of a dispute, and this testimonial to him in the colophon, which reads as if the compositor had slipped it in of his own accord, is very gracious and touching in its simplicity. Just as the possession of a personal colophon brings a book within a circle of interest to which it otherwise would not have approached, so we may justly value a piece of printing all the more if it chances, through any accident, to throw light on the printer’s methods. I have felt a peculiar affection for an edition of Valerius Maximus, printed by Schoeffer in 1471, ever since I discovered that 25 Two editions of Boner’s Edelstein, both illustrated with over a hundred woodcuts, one dated 14th February, 1461 (copy at WolfenbÜttel), the other undated (Royal Library, Berlin); Die Historij von Joseph, Danielis, Judith, Hester, dated in rhyming verse 1462 “nat lang nach Sand Walpurgentag” (Rylands Library and BibliothÈque Nationale); the Belial seu Consolatio peccatorum of Jacobus de Theramo (Rylands and Germanisches Museum, Nuremberg); two issues of a German Biblia Pauperum with thirty-four woodcuts (both at the BibliothÈque Nationale, the first also at Rylands and WolfenbÜttel); the same work in Latin (Rylands); lastly two editions of a poem called Rechtstreit des Menschen mit dem Tode (both at WolfenbÜttel, the second also at the BibliothÈque Nationale). 26 In its colophon the book is said to have been “a docto viro Bertolommeo Mates conditus et per P. Johannem Matoses Christi ministrum presbiterumque castigatus et emendatus sub impensis Guillermi ros et mira arte impressa per Johannem Gherlinc alamanum.” Gherlinc is only heard of again in 1494, and then not at Barcelona. CHAPTER VI THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING One great cause of changes of fashion in book-collecting is that after any particular class of book has been hotly competed for by one generation of book-lovers, all the best prizes gradually get locked up in great public or private collections, and come so seldom into the market that new collectors prefer to take up some other department rather than one in which it is impossible for them to attain any striking success. The first-fruits of printing, if reckoned strictly chronologically, are probably as nearly exhausted as any class of book which can be named. No matter how rich a man may be, the chances of his ever obtaining a copy of the Thirty-six Line Bible, the 1457 Psalter, or the first book printed at Venice, are infinitesimally small. Other incunabula, if not hopelessly out of reach even of the very rich, are only likely to be acquired after many years of waiting and a heavy expenditure when the moment of possible acquisition arrives. Many of the books hitherto here mentioned belong to this class. And yet, from what may be called the logical as opposed to the chronological standpoint, incunabula little, if at all, less interesting are still to be obtained at quite small prices by any one who knows for what to look. Any collector who sets himself to illustrate the evolution of the printed book from its manuscript predecessors, and the ways of the early printers, will find that he has undertaken no impossible task, though one which will need considerable pursuit and good taste and judgment in the selection of appropriate specimens.
Roughly speaking, it took about a century for printed
It is possible that the work in this case was all done by one man, though it is equally possible that several were engaged on it, under the direction of a master-scrivener, but in either case the fact that vignettes and demi-vignettes, psalter letters (i.e. the small red letters at the beginning of each verse of a psalm, sometimes called versals), the mysterious “p’ms letters” (possibly the dabs of colour bestowed on small initials), the writing No better starting-point for a typographical collection could be desired than fine copies of two well-printed books in which the printer has confined himself severely to reproducing the text, leaving all headings, capitals, and ornaments to be supplied by hand. In one (as in the page from a book of Jenson’s, which forms the illustration to this chapter, Plate VII) the blanks should remain blanks (as more especially in early books printed in Italy they often did remain), in the other they should have been filled in with red ink or colours by a rubricator. The owner of two such volumes is really as much at the fountain-head as the possessor of the Mainz Indulgences of 1454, or any still earlier document that may yet be found.27 This is the logical beginning, and the logic of history is quite as interesting as the chronology. From the starting-point of the book of which the printer printed nothing but the text the collector can advance in many different directions. There was no regular and unbroken progress in the development of the modern form of book, nor does it matter greatly that the examples of any particular improvement should be either absolutely or nearly the earliest. The main thing is that they should be good illustrations of the special feature The need for this differentiation accelerated the tendency to reduce the size of types, which was doubtless in the first place dictated by a desire for economy. The earlier German text-types for ordinary books very commonly measure about 6 mm. a line. To enable small differences to be shown they are quoted in the British Museum Catalogue of Incunabula by the measurements In considering what specimens of printing to collect Englishmen who have been accustomed for more than two centuries to nothing but roman types may well be bewildered, as they look through any volume of facsimiles, by the extraordinary variety of the founts. The main reasons for this variety may be sought (1) in the dependence of the first printers on the styles of writing which they found in vogue at the time, and in the countries and towns where they made their ventures; and (2) in the different styles considered appropriate to different classes of books—Latin and vernacular, liturgical and secular, etc. Even now, when bookhands can In Germany roman types were tried by Adolf Rusch (the R-printer) at Strassburg about 1464, and by both GÜnther Zainer at Augsburg and Johann Zainer at Ulm, but met with no favour until in the last years of the century they were reintroduced for the books written or As regards the Æsthetic value of the different roman types in use during the fifteenth century, the superiority of the Italian is so marked that, with the exception of the first French type, the rest, from this point of view, may be neglected. Almost all the roman types used in Italy until late in the ’seventies are either beautiful or at least interesting, and it is remarkable that some of the most beautiful are found in small places like Cagli, Mondovi, Viterbo, and Aquila, or in the hands of obscure printers, such as the self-taught priest Clemente of Padua, who worked at Venice in 1471. The pre-eminence of Jenson’s fount is indisputable, though he often did it injustice by his poor presswork. But those used by John and Wendelin of Speier, and at a later date by Antonio Miscomini, were also good, as also were several of the founts used at Rome and Milan. At Naples and Bologna, on the other hand, some quite early roman founts are curiously hard and heavy. After about 1480 roman types in Italy enter on a second stage. They no longer have the appearance of being founded directly on handwriting. Doubtless the typecutters were so used to their work that they no longer needed models, but designed new types according to their own ideas. Naturally the letters are more uniform When we pass from roman to gothic types there is a bewildering field from which to choose. Here again dull commercialism gained the upper hand about 1480, and towards the end of the century an ugly upright text-type of 80 mm. to twenty lines, with a fantastic headline type of twice its size, or a little more, found its way all over Germany. But types with a twenty-line measurement ranging round 120 mm., such as those of Peter Schoeffer or the Printer of Henricus Ariminensis, are often extraordinarily handsome. Both of Schoeffer’s earlier small types and the small type of Ulrich Zell at Cologne are engagingly neat, and at the opposite end there is the magnificently round gothic used by Ulrich Han at Rome. Most of the finest gothic types were used for Latin books of law and theology, the peculiar appropriateness of roman type being considered to be confined to works appealing to classical scholars. In Germany, for some time, not much distinction was observed, but there was a tendency in classical books to use an f and long ? starting from the level of the line, whereas in most vernacular books the tails of these letters came below the line, giving a strangely different appearance to the type. In the ’nineties a distinctively cursive type called Schwabacher, usually measuring 93 mm. to twenty lines, makes its appearance all over Germany. In Italy, both at Naples and by Ulrich Han at Rome, a very small text type, which is certainly cursive in its affinities, was used at the very outset, but found no favour. The typical The completion of books at first by a colophon, afterwards by a titlepage, may be illustrated in the same way as that by which we have traced the evolution of the text from incompleteness to completeness and the development of different classes of types. At least one printer, Johann Mentelin of Strassburg, seems to have considered the addition of colophons as the proper business of the rubricator. While printed colophons in his books are exceptionally rare, several copies have come down to us in which full colophons have been added by hand, e.g. in a vellum copy of the Speculum Morale in the BibliothÈque Nationale, after praise of the book, we read: Impressumque in inclyta vrbe Argentinensium ac nitide terse emendateque resertum per honorandum dominum Dominum Despite a few instances of this kind, however, it is certain that the majority of printers who omitted to print colophons to their books did so, not in the expectation that they would be supplied by hand, but in imitation of the manuscript books to which they were accustomed, in which it is distinctly exceptional to find any mention of the name of the scribe. But the men who took a pride in their new art, and who thought that their work was good enough to bring more custom to their press if their name were associated with it, took the opposite course, and so colophons from 1457 onwards are common in the best books, and may perhaps be found in about 40 per cent of the incunables that have come down to us. By the men who were skilful in using red ink they were often thus printed, and whether in red or in black, they frequently had appended to them the printer’s mark or device, which gave a very decorative finish to the book. Nowadays, when we have been accustomed all our lives to the luxury of titlepages, it may well seem to us merely perverse to hide the title of a book, the name of the author, and information as to where, when, and by whom it was printed in a closely set paragraph at the end of the book. But if we think for a moment of how the manuscript books to which the early printers were accustomed had been produced we shall see that it was the most natural thing in the world. A scribe would take his quire of paper or vellum, and if he were a high-class scribe, mindful of the need of keeping his text clean, he would leave his first leaf blank and begin at the top of his second. But here he would begin to write straight away, sometimes with the first words of his text, sometimes with a preliminary paragraph, which may be called the Incipit, from the important word in it. In this paragraph he would give either the name of his book Incipit Racionale diuinorum officiorum. Incipiunt Constitutiones Clementis pape V una cum apparatu Ioannis Andree. Marci Tullii Ciceronis Arpinatis consulisque Romani ac oratorum maximi Ad M. Tullium Ciceronem filium suum Officiorum liber incipit. Incipit epistola sancti Hieronimi ad Paulinum presbiterum de omnibus diuine historie libris. That it did not occur to him to devote his blank page to a displayed title of the book he was copying was due to the fact that every medieval manuscript was the direct descendant, through many or few stages, of the author’s own original draft, and that this was the most pretentious way and least natural in which any author could begin to write a book. So the scribes imitated the author in his normal beginning, and the early printers imitated the scribes, and because an author was more inclined to relieve his feelings at the end of a book than to express them volubly at the beginning, it was only when books multiplied so greatly that purchasers wanted to see at a glance what was the name of the book at which they were looking that titlepages superseded colophons. The proof of this explanation being the true one is that titlepages become common just about the time (1480 to 1490) that book-production was beginning to be divided up between publishers and printers, and that the publisher very quickly claimed them for his own. The earliest titlepages, those of the Mainz Bul zu deutsch des bapst Pius II (1463), Rolewinck’s Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation (Cologne: Arnold ther Hoernen, 1470), the Flores Sancti Augustini (Cologne, 1473), and the Kalendarium of Joannes de Monteregio and its Italian translation (Venice: Ratdolt and partners, 1476), were all more or less of the nature of “sports.” When titlepages came to stay, a year or two later than If we go back to the habits of the scribes it is easy to understand another point in the early history of books, their make-up into quires and the marking of these quires by signatures and catchwords. The word quaire or quire is a shortened form of the Latin quaternio, the name devised for four sheets of paper folded down the middle so as to form eight leaves. A gathering of five sheets making ten leaves was called a quinternion, and this, though it has yielded no modern word, was for generations such a popular form that quinterniones was sometimes used as a general expression for manuscripts. Gatherings of three sheets, making six leaves, were called terniones; gatherings of two sheets, making four leaves, duerniones. A few, but only a few, books exist—nearly all of those which I have seen are either block-books or When the scribe had arranged his quire or gathering he wrote first page by page on all the leaves on the left hand until he came to the middle of the quire, when he proceeded to write page by page on all the leaves on the right hand. Thus in a quire of four sheets the left half of the first sheet would be leaf 1, pages 1 and 2, and the right half would be leaf 8, pages 15 and 16, so that the same sheet formed the beginning and end of the quire. In the earliest printed books the quires were printed page by page exactly as the quires of a manuscript had been written. But early in the ’seventies (Peter Schoeffer can be proved to have adopted the practice between 1471 and September, 1474) the advantage was perceived of printing both the pages on the upper or lower side of a sheet at the same time, i.e. in a quaternion, page 16 together with page 1. As soon as a printer had learnt to print two folio pages together, it became easy to print four quarto pages, or eight octavo pages, or sixteen sextodecimo pages. In each case the amount of type to be printed at a pull would be approximately the same. It thus ceased to be disadvantageous to print small books, whereas so long as each page had to be pulled separately it was obviously wasteful to make that page a very small one. Even when the printers had learnt how to print two folio pages at the same time the presswork remained very laborious. The earliest presses were worked with only a-i10; k10+1 lm10 n6+1; o-z10 10 10+1; A-F10 G4: aa-nn10; oo pp10 qq10+1; rr-zz AA-CC10; DD12 EE10+1; FF GG10 HH4+1 II10. In this the index-letter shows the number of leaves in the quire, a-i10 being a short way of stating that each of the nine quires a b c d e f g h i has ten leaves in it. In the tenth quire (k) there is an extra leaf, and again in the thirteenth (n) the printer found that he had too much copy for six leaves and not enough for eight, and As has been already noted, in a moment of enthusiasm Mr. Proctor once said to the present writer that it was impossible to find a fifteenth century book that was really ugly. This was certainly putting the case for his beloved incunables a peg too high, for there were plenty of bad printers before 1500, and even such a master as Jenson was by no means uniformly careful as to the quality of his presswork. But one of the legacies which the early printers received from the scribes was the art of putting their text handsomely on the page, and the difference which this makes in the appearance of a book is very marked, little as many modern printers and publishers attend to it. But in the books of the best printers of our own day, as well as in those of the best of the fifteenth century, from 65 per cent to 72 per cent of the height of the page is devoted to the text, from 28 per cent to 35 per cent being reserved for the upper and lower margins, of which at least two-thirds is for the lower and not more than one-third for the upper. As compared with the height of a page of type the breadth is usually in the proportion of about 45 to 70 (a trifle more in a quarto), and here again the outer margin is at least twice as great as the inner. Thus in a book with a page measuring 10 by 7¼ inches, the type-page should measure about 7 by 4¾ inches, with a lower margin of about 2 inches, an upper of 1 inch, an outer of 1¾ inches, and an inner of ¾ inch. It will be greatly to the advantage of book-buyers to bear these proportions in mind, in order to measure how much a book offered to them has been cut down, and also to be able to instruct their binders as to how to reduce the absurd margins of some modern “Large Paper” copies to more artistic dimensions. Whether it is legitimate further to reduce the margins of an old book which has already been mangled by a binder in order to get the proportions better balanced is a nice question of taste. If a two-inch lower margin has been halved and a one-inch upper margin left intact, if the upper margin is reduced, the book will become a pleasant “working copy” instead of an obviously mangled large one, and the collector must settle in his own conscience whether this be a sufficient justification for snipping off a centimetre of old paper. Exactly why the proportions here laid down, with their limits of variation, are right for books cannot easily be set forth. It is easiest to see in the case of the relation between the inner and outer margins. As William Morris was never tired of insisting, the unit in a book is, not a single page, but the two pages which can be seen at the same time. The two inner margins separate the two type-pages by a single band of white, which, if each inner margin were as large as the outer, would become insufferably conspicuous. As for the proportions between the lower and upper margins, the explanation may lie in the angle at which we habitually read books, or by the need for leaving room for the reader to hold the book in his hands. But whether it be a matter of inherent rightness or merely of long-established convention, the pleasure of handling a book with correct margins is very great, and a collector who secures an uncut copy of even a poorly printed book of the period when margins were understood, will find that it presents quite a pleasing and dignified appearance. And so in regard to other points, any book which illustrates the relations of the early printers to the scribes, the difficulties which they experienced 27 It will be so much the better if the collector can add to them a copy of one of the early books printed at Rome (the German ones are too rare) in which there still survives the text of the rubrics, printed not in their appropriate places, but on a separate leaf or quire for the guidance of the rubricator. 28 By Jenson and many early printers in Italy, and by Husner and a few others in Germany, the majuscules of the founts used in the text were massed together in headings with admirable effect. But for a time the heavy heading types carried all before them.
CHAPTER VII EARLY GERMAN AND DUTCH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS The natural method of illustrating a book printed with type is by means of designs cut in relief, which can be locked up in the forme with the type, so that text and illustrations are printed together by a single impression29 without any special preparation of the paper. So long as the design to be printed stands out clearly on the block it matters nothing whether it be cut on wood or on soft metal. Even as between the design cut by hand and the process line-block which has as its basis a photograph taken direct from a pen drawing, the difference can hardly be said to be one of better and worse. We lose the individuality of the wood-cutter or wood-engraver, but we are brought into closer touch with the individuality of the artist, and whether we gain or lose depends on the ability of the artist to dispense with a skilled interpreter. The one requisite for success is that either the artist, or an interpreter for him, should recognize the limits within which his work can be effective. The reproductions of the artist’s designs will be looked at, not in isolation, but as part of an ensemble made up of two pages printed in a type which, perhaps with a little trouble, can be ascertained beforehand, and they will be printed not as proofs on a special press by a special workman on paper chosen solely to suit them, but with average skill The claim made in the last paragraph must be understood as applying only to books honestly illustrated with blocks specially made for them. Books decorated with a job lot of cuts, as was often the case, especially after about 1495, may accidentally be delightful and often possess some of the charm of a scrapbook. It is good sport, for instance, to take one of VÉrard’s later books and trace the origin of the cuts with which that cheaply liberal publisher made his wares attractive. But the incongruity is mostly manifest, and collectors might well be more fastidious than they show themselves and refuse to waste the price of a good book with homogeneous illustrations in buying half a dozen dull little volumes with an old Horae cut at the beginning and the end of each. A second exception must be recognized in the books In Germany good work began early, because, to supply the demand for playing-cards and pictures of saints, schools of wood-cutters had grown up, more especially at Augsburg and at Ulm. Block-books also had come into existence in the district of the lower Rhine, and these, which in their earliest forms can hardly be later than 1460, must be divided between the Low Countries and Germany and prove the existence of competent workmen. The earliest type-printed books which possess illustrations are the little handful printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg in and about 1461, described in Chapter V, but it was at Augsburg in the early seventies that book-illustration first flourished. As has been mentioned in Chapter V, trade difficulties at first stood in the way, but by the In 1473 the heavy gothic type which Zainer used in these illustrated books was put at the disposal of the Abbot of SS. Ulrich and Afra and used to print a Speculum Humanae Saluationis, to which was added a summary in verse by Frater Johannes, an inmate of his monastery. This book was illustrated by 176 different cuts of Biblical subjects, of varying degrees of merit. In the same year, and again in 1474, Zainer printed an illustrated Plenarium, i.e. the Epistles and Gospels for the round of the Church’s year. In or shortly after 1475 he printed and illustrated a narrative of great contemporary interest, the story, written by one Tuberinus, of a child named Simon, who was supposed to have been slain by the Jews out of hatred of the Christian faith and desire to taste Christian flesh. The tale appears to contain In 1475 or 1476, and again with the date 1477, Zainer produced editions of the German Bible in large folio, illustrated with great pictorial capitals at the beginning of each book. But his greatest achievement was in an undated book of this period, the Speculum Humanae Vitae of Rodericus Bishop of Zamora, in the German translation of Heinrich Steinhowel. If this Mirror of Man’s Life had been written by a man with his eyes open instead of by a vapid rhetorician it should have been one of the most valuable documents for the social life of the fifteenth century, since it professes to contrast the advantages and evils of every rank and occupation of life, from the Pope and the Emperor down to craftsmen and labourers. There is but little joy to be gained from its text, but the Augsburg artist has atoned for many literary shortcomings by his vivid and charming pictures of scenes from the social life of his day, though it is not to be supposed that German judges took bribes quite so openly as he is pleased to represent. In addition to fifty-four woodcuts of this kind, there is a large genealogical tree of the House of Hapsburg, which is a triumph of decorative arrangement. Two other early Augsburg printers devoted themselves to illustrated work, Johann BÄmler and Anton Sorg. The former at first contented himself with prefixing a full-page frontispiece to his books, as in the Summa of Johannes Friburgensis and Die vier und zwanzig goldenen Harfen, both of 1472, and again in the picture of S. Gregory and Peter the Deacon in the Dialogues of the former printed for the monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra, and that of the dying Empress in the Historie von den sieben weisen Meistern of the following year. In the Belial Anton Sorg began printing in 1475 and issued his first illustrated book the next year. He was a prolific printer, and issued many close imitations of books originated by GÜnther Zainer and others. The most famous work specially connected with his name is Ulrich von Reichenthal’s At the neighbouring city of Ulm, where also the wood-cutters had long been at work, illustrated books began to be issued in 1473 by Johann Zainer, no doubt a kinsman of GÜnther Zainer of Augsburg. His chief books are (1) Latin and German editions of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (1473), with a fine borderpiece of Adam and Eve and numerous spirited little pictures which, though primitive both in conception and execution, are full of life, and (2) an Aesop which was reprinted at Augsburg and copied elsewhere in Germany, and also in France, the Netherlands, and England. From 1478 onwards he seems to have been in continual financial trouble. He was apparently able, however, to find funds to issue two rather notable books about 1490, the Prognosticatio of Lichtenberger, and a Totentanz. The blocks of both of these passed to Meidenbach at Mainz. Most of the forty books of a later printer, Conrad Dinckmut (1482-96), have illustrations. His Seelenwurzgarten (1483) appears at first sight to be a most liberally decorated book, crowded with full-page cuts, but of its 133 Another Ulm printer, who began work in 1482, Leonhard Holl, printed in that year a magnificent edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, with woodcut maps (one signed “Insculptum est per Iohanne Schnitzer de Armszheim”) and fine capitals. The first of these, a pictorial N, shows the editor, Nicolaus Germanus, presenting his book to the Pope. Of later Ulm books by far the most important are two by Gulielmus Caoursin, published by Johann Reger in 1496, and both concerned with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Rhodes. One volume gives their Stabilimenta or Constitution, the other Obsidionis urbis Rhodiae descriptio, an illustrated history of their defence of their island against the Turks and their subsequent dealings with the infidel, who at one time were so complaisant as to present them with no less valuable a relic than the arm of their patron, which was duly honoured with processions and sermons. Altogether the two books contain fifty-six full-page pictures, rather roughly cut, but full of vigour At Nuremberg book-illustration begins with the Ars et modus contemplatiuae vitae, six leaves of which partake of the nature of a block-book. In or about 1474 Johann MÜller of KÖnigsberg (whose variant names, Johannes Regiomontanus, Johannes de Monteregio, have trapped more bibliographers into inconsistencies than those of any other fifteenth century author) issued calendars and other works with astronomical diagrams, and prefixed to his edition of the Philalethes of Maffeus Vegius a woodcut (for which Dr. Schreiber suspects an Italian origin) showing Philalethes in rags and Truth with no other clothing than a pair of very small wings. In June, 1475, Sensenschmidt and Frisner illustrated their folio edition of Justinian’s Codex, with ten charming little column-cuts; the following month Sensenschmidt produced a Heiligenleben, with more than 250 illustrations, which, according to Dr. Schreiber, are very noteworthy as they stand, and would have been more so had not the wood-cutter been hurried into omitting the backgrounds in the later cuts, those to the “Pars aestiualis.” Sensenschmidt also printed an undated German Bible with pictorial capitals. In 1477 Creussner issued the travels of Marco Polo with a woodcut of the traveller, and about the same time Latin and German editions of the tract of Tuberinus on the supposed fate suffered by “Das Kind Simon” at the hand of the Jews. In 1481 Anton Koberger published his first illustrated book, Postilla super Bibliam of Nicolaus de Lyra, with forty-three woodcuts, which were imitated not only at Cologne, but at Venice, though their interest is not very great. In his German Bible of 1483 he himself was At Basel Martin Flach was the first printer of illustrated books, ornamenting his 1473 edition of the Ackermann von BÖhmen with a woodcut of Death, the labourer, and the dead woman, his Cato with the usual picture of a master and scholar, his Rosenkranz with a cut of a traveller beseeching the Virgin’s protection from robbers, and another of a scene in heaven, and his Streit der Seele mit dem Korper (these and the two preceding are undated) with eight illustrations of various moments in the dispute. More important than these are three profusely illustrated books from the press of Bernhard Richel. The first of these, his 1476 Spiegel Menschlicher Behaltnis, has 278 woodcuts, the work of two different hands, the earlier of the two showing less technical skill, but much more vigour and originality.30 The other two books are undated editions of the romance of Melusina, with sixty-seven cuts, in which suggestions from the first Augsburg edition have been improved on by an abler workman, and a Mandeville with 147 cuts, most of which passed into the hands of M. Hupfuff at Strassburg, who used them in 1501. After this Richel turned his attention to liturgies, and is credited by Dr. Schreiber with being the first printer to insert in his Missals the woodcut of the Crucifixion, which thenceforth is so frequently found facing the first page of the Canon. After the publication of these works illustration seems to have languished for some years at Basel, but was Probably in the same year as the Narrenschiff was first issued, Bergmann printed for Brant his In laudem gloriosae virginis Mariae, with sixteen woodcuts by the same hand. In 1495 Brant supplied him with two works in honour of the Emperor Maximilian, one celebrating the alliance with Pope Alexander VI, illustrated with coats of arms, the other the Origo bonorum regum, with two woodcuts, in which the Emperor is shown receiving a sword from heaven. Brant was now in high favour with Maximilian, and his appointment as a Syndic and Imperial Chancellor at Strassburg led to his return and a consequent notable quickening of book-illustration in his native city. At Strassburg Johann Mentelin had used woodcuts for diagrams in an undated edition of the Etymologiae of S. Isidore, printed about 1473, but the first producer of books pictorially illustrated was Heinrich To Johann PrÜss at Strassburg are now assigned editions in High and Low German of the Lives of the Fathers and of Antichrist, which Mr. Proctor, though he had a shrewd suspicion of their origin, left floating about among the German “adespota.” The cuts to the former reach the average of early work; those to the Antichrist vary greatly, that of Antichrist preaching before a queen being extraordinarily successful as a presentation of a type of coarse spiritual effrontery. The acknowledged work of PrÜss includes editions of the travels of Mandeville, of the Directorium Humanae Vitae, and of the Flores Musicae of Hugo Reutlingensis, with a rather famous cut showing how musical notes are produced by the wind, by a water wheel, by tapping stones, and hammering on an anvil. PrÜss also printed several illustrated editions of the Hortus Sanitatis. Far more prolific than either of the foregoing Strassburg printers was Johann Reinhard of GrÜningen, usually At Cologne book-illustration began in 1474 with editions of the Fasciculus Temporum of Werner Rolewinck, from the presses of ther Hoernen and Nicolaus GÖtz. But with the notable exception of two great Bibles issued by Heinrich Quentell, illustrated books before 1490 are neither important nor numerous. Even in 1490 the edition of the Historia Septem Sapientum of Johannes de Hauteselve, issued by the elder Koelhoff, was adorned with cuts obtained from Gerard Leeu at Antwerp. Quentell issued a few stock cuts in one book after another, and Johann Landen, Martin von Werden (if he be rightly identified with the printer “Retro Minores”), and Cornelis von Zierickzee all used a few cuts, some of the latter’s having a curiously Italian appearance. But the only important illustrated book, other than the Bibles, is the Cologne Chronicle, issued (not to his profit, since he was imprisoned for it) by the younger Koelhoff in 1499, with armorial cuts and a few pictures of kings and queens somewhat too frequently repeated. Quentell’s Bibles in High and Low German are in curious contrast to all this work. They are illustrated with 125 large oblong pictures, firmly if rather coarsely cut, and full of story-telling power, several successive incidents being sometimes brought into the same picture in true medieval fashion. The book was imitated at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and the illustrators of the Venetian Malermi Bible of 1490, and even Hans Holbein himself, did not disdain to take ideas from it. At LÜbeck a finely decorated edition of the Rudimentum Noviciorum, a universal history, was issued by
At Mainz, which led the way so energetically in typography, book-illustration is not represented at all until 1479, and then almost accidentally in the Meditationes of Cardinal Turrecremata, printed by Johann Neumeister “ciuem Moguntinensem,” with thirty-four curious metal-cuts imitating on a smaller scale the woodcuts in the editions printed at Rome by Ulrich Han. Two years later these metal-cuts were used by Neumeister at Albi, and they are subsequently found at Lyon. That this book was printed at Mainz was made practically certain by the type appearing subsequently in the possession of Peter von Friedberg, but that the cuts were executed at Mainz seemed to me improbable until the publication of Dr. Schreibers work on German illustrated books acquainted me with the existence of an Agenda Moguntinensis of 29 June, 1480, also attributed to Neumeister’s press, with a metal-cut of S. Martin and the beggar, and the arms not only of Archbishop Diether and the province of Mainz, but of Canon Bernhard von Breidenbach, of whom we shall soon hear again. The Agenda and its metal-cuts are thus firmly fixed as executed at Mainz, and the metal-cuts of the Meditationes must therefore be regarded as Mainz work also. In 1486 Mainz atoned for her long delay in taking up Naturally craftsmanship was not extinguished by the arrival of a single artist. We find it at work again in the charming and little known cut to a Leipzig edition of the Eclogues of Theodulus, printed in 1491, which the delight of recent discovery tempts me to show here (see Plate X), and at Mainz itself in the simple cuts to the Hortus Sanitatis, printed by Meidenbach, also in 1491, though here again there is an advance, as instead of plants and animals drawn out of the illustrator’s head merely for decorative effect we find in many of the cuts fairly careful copies made from the life. In Conrad Botho’s Cronecken der Sassen, printed by Schoeffer the following year, most of the armorial illustrations and pictures of the foundation of towns are merely decoratively treated, but in one cut in which a rather wild-looking Charlemagne with lean legs is shown seated in a chair of state surmounted by an eagle, an idol crushed under his feet, the designer has given free play to his imagination.
The transition to different ideals of illustration thus begun at Mainz was carried on at Nuremberg, where Michael Wolgemut illustrated two important works, the Schatzbehalter in 1491 and the famous Nuremberg Chronicle in 1493, this latter with the help of his stepson, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, and no doubt also of several inferior designers. The Schatzbehalter, of which the text is ascribed to Stephanus Fridelinus, a Nuremberg Franciscan, is one of several examples of a too ambitious scheme of decoration perforce abandoned for lack either of time or of money. In the first half there are ninety-two different full-page woodcuts, mostly illustrating Scripture history, but in some cases allegorical; in the second half the number is no more than two. The pictures executed before the scheme was thus cut down vary greatly in quality, from the fine design of Christ kneeling before the throne of the Father and pointing to the emblems With this Nuremberg work we may perhaps class that in the one book printed at the Cistercian monastery at Zinna, near Magdeburg, the Psalterium Beatae Mariae Virginis, of Hermann Nitschewitz, the most richly decorated German book of the fifteenth century, executed in honour of the Emperor Frederick and his son Maximilian, who in the page here shown (Plate XI) are both represented. Primitive Dutch and Flemish book-illustrations when
In the production of the early block-books (see Chapter II) the Low Countries had played a principal part, and we meet again with traces of them in later illustrated books, cuts from the Biblia Pauperum being used by Peter van Os at Zwolle in his Episteln ende Evangelien of 5 January, 1487, and one from the Canticum Canticorum in his edition of Mauberne’s Rosetum Exercitiorum Spiritualium in 1494. Two cut-up pieces from the block-book Speculum Humanae Saluationis were used by Veldener in his Episteln ende Evangelien completed at Utrecht 19 April, 1481, and all the old blocks, each divided in two, in a new edition of the Speculum printed at Kuilenburg 27 September, 1483, with twelve new cuts added to them. Sir W. M. Conway has also shown that a set of sixty-four cuts used in a Boec van der Houte or Legend of the Holy Cross, issued by Veldener at Kuilenburg earlier in 1483 (on 6 March), must have The first printer in the Low Countries who commissioned a woodcut for a book printed with movable type was Johann of Paderborn (John of Westphalia) at Louvain, the cut being a curious little representation of his own head, shown in white on a black oval. This he used in his Institutiones of Justinian of 21 November, 1475, and a few other books, and a similar but even better likeness of his kinsman, Conrad, appeared the next year in the Formulae Epistularum of Maneken (1 December, 1476). Although Johann of Paderborn thus led the way in the use of cuts, he only resorted to them subsequently for a few diagrams, and towards the end of his career for some half-dozen miscellaneous blocks for devotional books. The portrait of Johann of Paderborn being used only as a device, book-illustration begins, though on a very small scale, with Veldener’s edition of the Fasciculus Temporum (29 December, 1475), with its handful of poor little cuts modelled on those of the Cologne editions. Five years later Veldener reprinted the Fasciculus with a few new cuts, the originals of which have been found in the LÜbeck Rudimentum Noviciorum. The only picture which seems to have been specially designed for him was a folio cut in his Passionael (Utrecht, 12 September, 1480), where in delicate simple outline a variety of martyrdoms are shown as taking place in the hollows of a series of hills. Mention has already been made of his two Kuilenburg reprints of block-books. In the same place he issued Dutch and Latin Herbals with cuts copied from Schoeffer’s Mainz Herbarius, and this completes the story of his illustrated ventures.
We come now to Gerard Leeu, who on 3 June, 1480, issued at Gouda the first completely illustrated book from a Dutch press, the Dialogus creaturarum moralisatus, a glorified version of the old bestiaries, full of wonderful stories of animals. This was illustrated with 121 Later in 1484 (25 October) Bellaert issued a Boeck des Golden Throens with four-column cuts, often repeated, of an Elder instructing a maiden; in May, 1485, Le FÈvre’s Jason, and a little earlier than this an undated edition of the same author’s Recueil des histoires de Troie, both in Dutch and both profusely illustrated; on Christmas Eve in the same year a Dutch De proprietatibus rerum, and in 1486 versions of Pierre Michault’s Doctrinal, in which a dreamer is shown the schools of virtue and of vice, and of Guillaume de Deguilleville’s PÉlÉrinage de la vie humaine, the medieval prototype of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The De proprietatibus is the only one of these books of 1485-6 that I have seen, and its full-page cuts are notable both for their own sake and as having been widely copied, although they illustrate only eleven of the nineteen books. No other Low Country printer showed anything like the enterprise of Leeu and Bellaert in commissioning long sets of original woodcuts from competent craftsmen, but several fine illustrated books were produced by other firms. Beginning in 1484 Peter van Os printed numerous illustrated books at Zwolle, few of which attain excellence. Yet one of the earliest of them, the Sermons of S. Bernard, has a frontispiece of the Virgin and Child and the Saint gazing at them which is unequalled by any other single cut in the Low Country book in its large pictorial effect. At Gouda, in 1486, Gottfried van Os issued the Chevalier DÉlibÉrÉ of Olivier de la Marche, with sixteen large cuts, in which the author’s minute instructions for each picture are faithfully carried out with extraordinary freedom and spirit, though the ambitious designs are more suitable to frescoes than to book-illustrations. About the end of the century the book was reprinted at Schiedam with the same cuts, from which facsimiles were made in 1898 by Dr. Lippmann and published by the Bibliographical Society. At Louvain in 1487 Egidius van der Heerstraten issued the De praeclaris mulieribus of Boccaccio with copies of the cuts of the Ulm edition of great interest for the differences in handling revealed when the two are compared. A little later than this another Louvain printer, Ludovicus de Ravescot, published the De anno die et feria Dominicae Passionis of Petrus de Rivo, with a title-cut of the author kneeling before the Virgin and Child, and three large cuts of the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, somewhat in the temper of the illustrations in the Cologne Bibles, but with characteristic Low Country touches. Lastly, mention must be made of the clumsy outline cuts in the Bruges edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, issued in 1484 by Caxton’s partner Colard Mansion. Mansion certainly, and possibly Caxton also, were among the early experimenters with copperplate illustration, but the story of these will be told in Chapter XV. 29 Dr. Schreiber, in the introduction to Tome V of his Manuel de l’amateur de la gravure sur bois au xve siÈcle, dealing with German book-illustrations, shows that some little difficulty was found at first in effecting this. In Boner’s Edelstein (Bamberg, 1461), probably the first illustrated book printed in Germany, the cuts were printed after the text. In Zainer’s Heiligenleben, the first illustrated book printed at Augsburg, the cuts must have been printed first, as part of the text is sometimes printed over them. 30 A set of proofs of cuts to this book, previously in the possession of the Marquis of Blandford and Mr. Perkins, was among the favourite possessions of William Morris, and is now owned by Mr. Morgan. An illustrated Plenarium, assigned by Dr. Copinger to Richel, appears to be a “ghost,” due to some confusion with this Spiegel. CHAPTER VIII EARLY ITALIAN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS As a frontispiece to this chapter (Plate XIII) we give a page from the 1487 edition of the Devote meditatione sopra la Passione del Nostro Signore, printed at Venice by “Jeronimo di Sancti e Cornelio suo Compagno,” the woodcuts in which, as already mentioned, are cut down from those in a block-book of some twenty or five-and-twenty years earlier, and must thus rank as the earliest Italian illustrations. The illustration of books printed in movable type began in Italy as early as 1468, Ulrich Han issuing that year at Rome an edition of Cardinal Turrecremata’s Meditationes, decorated with thirty-one rude cuts chiefly from the life of Christ. A few of these have a coarse vigour, but in the greater number any merit in the original designs (professedly taken from the frescoes with which the Cardinal had decorated the cloisters of the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva) is lost in bad cutting. Notwithstanding this the work went through at least three editions (three new pictures being added to the second and one omitted), and served as a model for the metal-cuts of Neumeister’s editions at Mainz and elsewhere, and for the small neat woodcuts of one by Plannck. But though Han’s venture was thus successful beyond its deserts, it took Italy nearly twenty years to make up its mind to welcome printed illustrations. During this time nothing approaching a style of book-illustration emerges, though individual books of importance appeared at several towns. Thus at Verona the De re militari of Robertus Valturius (written not later than 1468) was printed in 1472 by a certain Joannes of that city, with
At Naples, Sixtus Riessinger printed Boccaccio’s Libro di Florio et di Bianzefiore chiamato Filicolo in 1478, and also (without date) an Italian version of Ovid’s Heroides, both with numerous cuts, some of them by no means devoid of charm. In 1485 an illustrated Aesop was produced at the expense of a book-loving jurist, Francesco Tuppo, probably from the press of certain “fidelissimi Germani.” The cuts in this, which are hard and heavy but of considerable merit (see Plate XIV), may possibly be due to a mixture of Italian and German influences, but are more probably the work of a Spanish wood-cutter. A picture of an astronomer engaged on his calculations found in the Arte di Astrologia of Granollachs, probably also printed in 1485, may be from the same hand. In the Aesop each picture is placed in an architectural frame, in the upper sections of which there are representations sometimes of Hercules and a lion, sometimes of his wrestle with Antaeus, sometimes of a battle of mounted pygmies. The first page of text also has a fine decorative border, the design being in white on a black ground. At Florence an ornamental capital in a Psalter printed in 1489 is the earliest woodcut in any extant dated book. But engravings on copper had been employed as early as 1477 for three pictures in Bettini’s Monte Santo di Dio, and in 1481 for nineteen in a Divina Two books printed at Milan in 1479 contain illustrations, the Summula di pacifica conscientia of Fra Pacifico di Novara, being ornamented with three engravings; two of the degrees of consanguinity and the third of a crown bearing the names of the virtues of the Madonna, while the Breuiarium totius juris canonici of Paolo Attavanti printed by Pachel and Scinzenzeler has a little woodcut, which purports to be a portrait of the author. In Venice book-illustration appears to have begun in the office not of a printer, but of an illuminator. Quite a number of books printed by various firms during the years 1470 to 1472 have a woodcut groundwork to their illuminated borders, and in the Spencer copy of the Italian Bible (Malermi’s translation), printed in 1471 by Adam of Ammergau, the six miniatures of the Creation, with which the blanks left on leaves 11 and 12 are filled, have in the same way rough woodcuts beneath their colouring.31 The workshop in which these decorated borders and miniatures were supplied seems to have closed or given up the practice in 1473, and until Erhard Ratdolt and his partners LÖslein and Maler began publishing in 1476, no more woodcuts were produced at Venice. The work of the new firm was decorative rather than pictorial, consisting mainly of the fine borders and capital letters with which they ornamented their Calendars (1476, 1477, and 1482), their Appian, Gesta Petri Mocenici of Coriolanus Cepio and De situ orbis of Dionysius Periegetes, all in 1477, Arte di ben morire of the following year, and Euclid of 1482. With the exception of the earlier Calendars, where the borders to the titlepage (the first so decorated) are of flower-vases, these consist of highly conventionalized foliage (jasmine? vine, oak, etc.) or
In the later years of his stay at Venice, Ratdolt seems to have lost interest in book-decoration, but the popularity of woodcuts steadily increased throughout the ’eighties, and by the end of the decade was in full tide. In 1484 Bernardinus Benalius gave some rough illustrations to the Fioretti of Saint Francis; in 1486 Pietro Cremonese bestowed a formal but quite interesting decorated titlepage on the Doctrinale of Alexander Gallus, with the title inscribed in a cartouche, above which rise an urn and lamps. In the same year we have in the Supplementum Chronicarum printed by Bernardinus Benalius a few cuts of some size “translated” into an Italian style from those on the same subject in Quentell’s Cologne Bible (c. 1480), also a little view of Venice copied in reverse from the Fasciculus Temporum. The Supplementum Chronicarum was re-issued several times (the author, Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis, bringing the statement of his age up to date in each edition which he revised), and changes were constantly made in the cuts. In 1486 also The information on the last two pages is all epitomized from the Prince d’Essling’s great work Les livres À figures VÉnitiens (1907, etc.), and is quoted here in some detail The event of 1490 was the publication by Lucantonio Giunta of an edition of Niccolo Malermi’s Italian version of the Bible, illustrated with 384 cuts, many of them charming, measuring about three inches by two. The success of this set a fashion, and several important folio books in double columns similarly illustrated appeared during the next few years, a Vite di Sancti Padre in 1491, Boccaccio’s Decamerone, Masuccio’s Novellino, and a Legendario translated from the Latin of Jacobus de Voragine in 1492, a rival Italian Bible and an Italian Livy in 1493, a Morgante Maggiore in 1494, and an Italian Terence in 1497, while in quarto we have a Miracoli de la Madonna (1491), Vita de la Vergine and Trabisonda Istoriata (1492), Guerrino Meschino (1493), and several others. In some of these books cuts are found signed with F, in others with N, in others with i or ia; in the Malermi Bible and some other books we sometimes find the signature b or .b. Such signatures, which at one time aroused keen controversy, are now believed to have belonged not to the designer, but to the workshop of the wood-cutters by whom the blocks were cut. In the case of the Malermi Bible of 1490 workmen of very varying skill were employed, some of the illustrations to the Gospels being emptied of all delight by the rudeness of their cutting. Where the designer and the cutter are both at their best the result is nearly perfect of its kind, and it is curious to think that some of these dainty little blocks were imitated from the large, heavy woodcuts in the Cologne Bibles printed by Quentell some ten years earlier. In the rival Bible of 1493 the best cuts are not so good, nor the worst so bad as in the original edition of 1490. In the other books (I have not seen the Masuccio) the cutting is again more even, but the designs, though Two editions of Dante’s Divina Commedia, both published in 1491, one by Bernardinus Benalius and Matheo Codeca in March, the other by Pietro Cremonese in November, must be grouped with the books just mentioned, as they are also illustrated with small cuts (though those in the November edition are a good deal larger than the usual column-cuts), and these are signed in some cases with the letter .b. which appears in the Malermi Bible of 1490. Neither designer has triumphed over the monotonous effect produced by the continual reappearance of the figures of Dante and his guide, and the little cuts in the March edition are far from impressive. On the other hand it has a good frontispiece, in which, after the medieval habit, the successive incidents of the first canto of the Inferno are all crowded into the same picture. Popular as were the little vignettes, they were far from exhausting the energies of the Venetian illustrators of this decade. At the opposite pole from them are the four full-page pictures in the 1493 and later editions of the Fascicolo de Medicina of Joannes Ketham. These represent a physician lecturing, a consultation, a dissection, and a visit of a doctor to an infectious patient, whom he views by the light of two flambeaux held by pages, while he smells his pouncet-box. This picture (in the foreground of which sits a cat, afterwards cut out to reduce the size of the block) is perhaps the finest of the four, but that of the Dissection has the interest of being printed in several colours. Erhard Ratdolt had made some experiments in colour-printing in the astronomical books which he printed at Venice, and at Augsburg completed the crucifixion cut in some of his missals partly by printed colours, partly by hand. In 1490 a Venetian printer, Johann Herzog, had illustrated the With the illustrations to the Ketham may be mentioned for its large pictorial effect, though it comes in a quarto, the fine cut of the author in the Doctrina della vita monastica of San Lorenzo Giustiniano, first patriarch of Venice. The figure of San Lorenzo as he walks with a book under his arm and a hand held up in benediction is imitated from that in a picture by Gentile Bellini, but he is here shown (Plate XV) preceded by a charming little crucifer, whose childish face enhances by contrast the austerer benignity of the saint.
However good the large illustrations in Venetian books, the merits of them are rather those of single prints than of really appropriate bookwork. The little column-cuts, on the other hand, are almost playful in their minuteness, and even when most successful produce the effect of a delightful border or tailpiece without quite attaining to the full possibilities of book-illustration. The feverish production of these column-cuts began to slacken, though it did not cease, in 1493, and about that date a few charming full-page pictures are found at the beginning and end of various small quartos. From the treatment of the man’s hair and beard it is clear that the delightful frontispiece to the Fioretti della Biblia of 1493 (Prince d’Essling, I, 161) was the work of the illustrator of the second Malermi Bible from which the small cuts in the text are taken. The three cuts to the Fioretti of S. Francis, completed 11 June in the same year, that of the Chome l’angelo amaestra l’anima of Pietro Damiani, dated in the following November, of an undated Monte de la Oratione, and again of the De la confessione of S. Bernardino of Siena, all in the same style, form a group of singular beauty (see Prince d’Essling, I, 284 The primacy usually given to the Hypnerotomachia among all these books is probably in part due to considerations which have little to do with its artistic merit. The story is a kind of archaeological romance which appealed greatly to the dilettante, for whose benefit Leonardo Crassus commissioned Aldus to print it, but which was far from exciting the popular interest which shows its appreciation for a book by thumbing it out of existence. The Hypnerotomachia is probably almost as common a book as the Nuremberg Chronicle or the The story of the Hypnerotomachia, or “Strife of Love in a Dream,” as its English translator called it, is greatly influenced by the Renaissance interest in antique architecture and art which is evident in so many of its illustrations. Polifilo’s dreams are full, as the preface-writer says, of “molte cose antiquarie digne di memoria, & tutto quello lui dice hauere visto di puncto in puncto & per proprii uocabuli ello descriue cum elegante stilo, pyramidi, obelisce, ruine maxime di edificii, la differentia di columne, la sua mensura, gli capitelli, base, epistyli,” etc. etc. But he is brought also to the palace of Queen Eleuterylida, and while there witnesses the triumphs or festivals of Europa, Leda, Danae, Bacchus, Vertumnus, and Pomona, which provide several attractive subjects for the illustrator. The second part of the book is somewhat less purely antiquarian. Lucrezia Lelio had entered a convent after being attacked by the plague which visited Treviso from 1464 to 1466, and so here also Polia is made to take refuge in the temple of Diana, whence, however, she is driven on account of the visits of Polifilo, with whom, by the aid of Venus, she is ultimately united. One other point to be mentioned is that many of the full-page Venetian illustrations, both in quartos and folios, have quasi-architectural borders to them, the footpiece being sometimes filled with children riding griffins or other grotesques, while school-books were often made more attractive to young readers by a border in which a master is flogging a boy duly horsed for the purpose on the back of a schoolfellow. In two of the most graceful of Venetian borders, those to the Herodotus of 1494 (and also in the 1497 edition of S. Jerome’s Epistles) and Johann MÜller’s epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest (of 1496), the design is picked out in white on a black ground. A few Florentine woodcut illustrations have borders of the kind just mentioned in which the design stands out in white on a black ground. In one of these borders there are rather ugly candelabra at the sides, at the top two lovers facing each other in a circle supported by Cupids, at the foot a shield supported by boys standing on the backs of couchant stags. Another has mermen at the top, a shield within a wreath supported by eagles at the foot, and floral ornaments and armour at the sides. In a third on either side of the shield in the footpiece boys are tilting at each other mounted on boars. In a fourth are shown saints and some of the emblems of the Passion, supported by angels. But as a rule, while nearly all Florentine woodcuts have borders these are only from an eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch in depth, and the pattern on them is a leaf or flower or some conventional design of the simplest possible kind. A very few cuts have only a rule round them, one of the largest a triple rule. A rude cut of the Crucifixion is found in Francesco di Dino’s 1490 edition of Cavalca’s Specchio di Croce surrounded by a rope-work border two-fifths of an inch deep, and this border, partly broken away, also surrounds a really beautiful PietÀ (Christ standing in a tomb, His cross behind Him, His hands upheld by angels) in Miscomini’s 1492 edition of The earliest work of the new school of illustration is the magnificent cut of the Virgin in a mandorla appearing to S. Jacopone da Todi as he kneels in prayer. This, surrounded by the triple rule already mentioned, is prefixed to an edition of Jacopone’s Laude printed by Francesco Buonacorsi and dated 28 September, 1490. Apparently the earliest dated cut with a typical Florentine border is that to the Lunare of Granollachs printed by Lor. Morgiani and Giovanni da Magonza in September, 1491. It measures more than 6 inches by 4, and is copied, and transfigured in the process, from the heavy cut in a Naples edition of 1485. Two months later the same firm issued the Soliloquii of S. Augustine with an extraordinarily fine title-cut of the saint (the same picture did duty in 1493 for S. Antonino) writing at a desk in his cell. This has a border, but with a white ground instead of a black. On 1 January, 1491-2, still from the same firm, we have surely the prettiest Arithmetic ever printed, that of Filippo Calandri, with delightful little pictures and border pieces, cut in simple outline, in the Venetian rather than the Florentine manner. On 20 March, Morgiani and his partner produced a new edition of Bettini’s Monte Santo di Dio with the three copperplates of 1481 (see Chapter XV) skilfully translated into duly bordered woodcuts, the first two filling a folio Some pains have been taken to make clear both the experiments as to style, size, and borders in the Florentine book-illustrations of 1490-2, and the external uniformity in size and borders in the great bulk of the work of the next few years, because in the first number of the Burlington Magazine and subsequently in his fine book on Florentine Drawings, Mr. Bernhard Berenson put forward with considerable confidence the theory that nine-tenths of the Florentine book-illustrations of this period were made from designs supplied by a single artist whom he identifies with a certain Bartolommeo di Giovanni. This Bartolommeo contracted in July, 1488, with the Prior of the Innocents to paint before the end of October seven predelle (Innocenti Museum, Nos. 63-70) for an altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi, the commission for which had been given to Domenico Ghirlandajo. Mr. Berenson believes that in addition to these predelle (the only works with which Bartolommeo is connected by any evidence other than that of style) he In the year 1492, when the form of the Florentine woodcuts had become fairly fixed, Savonarola was called to the death-bed of Lorenzo the Magnificent, only to refuse him absolution. His Amore di GesÙ and Trattato dell’ UmiltÀ were printed in June of that year by Miscomini, each decorated with a single cut. During the six years ending with his execution in May, 1498, some twenty-three different tracts from his pen, illustrated with one or more woodcuts, were printed at Florence, most of them in several different editions. In the De Simplicitate Christianae vitae (1496) a friar is shown writing in his cell; in other cuts we see a friar preaching, or visiting the convent of the “Murate” or Recluses of Florence, or talking with seven Florentines under a tree, but in no case has any attempt been made at portraiture. This is true also of the Compendio di Revelatione (1495), in which there are some charming cuts showing Savonarola escorted by four holy women representing Simplicity, Prayer, Patience, and Faith, on an embassy to the Blessed Virgin. In the first of these they meet the devil attired as a hermit; in the second they arrive at the gate of the celestial city of which the wall is crowded with saints and angels; in the third they are ushered forth by S. Peter. A tract by Domenico Benivieni in defence of Savonarola, besides a cut of the usual size representing Benivieni arguing with his opponents, has a full-page one of the river of blood flowing from Christ’s wounds and sinners cleansing themselves in it and marking their foreheads with the sign of the cross. One of the finest cuts in the Savonarola series represents a citizen of Florence in prayer before a crucifix. But almost all of them are good. Besides the Savonarola tracts the miscellaneous religious
For the Rappresentazioni or miracle-plays in honour of various saints originality was more imperative, and numerous cuts were designed, only a few of which have come down to us in editions of the fifteenth century, most being known as they survive in reprints of the second half of the sixteenth. Our example (Plate XVII) is from an undated edition of La Festa di San Giovanni, in which, as on many other titlepages, an angel is shown above the title-cut as the speaker of the Prologue. Purely secular literature in the shape of Novelle was no doubt plentiful, despite the influence of Savonarola, but most of it has perished, thumbed to pieces by too eager readers. A volume of Novelle at the University Library, Erlangen, is illustrated with delightful cuts, and others survive here and there in different libraries. Of more pretentious quartos Angelo Politiano’s La Giostra di Many of the best of the quartos and all the illustrated folios were financed by a publisher, Ser Piero Pacini of Pescia, who was succeeded early in the sixteenth century by his son Bernardo. Pacini in 1495 began his career with a very ambitious venture, a folio edition of the Epistole et Evangelii et Lectioni as they were read in the Mass throughout the year. This has a decorative frontispiece, in the centre of which stand SS. Peter and Paul, while small cuts of the four evangelists are placed in the corners. The text is illustrated with 144 different woodcuts, besides numerous fancy portraits of evangelists, prophets, etc. A few of the cuts are taken from the Meditationes of S. Bonaventura, and one or two, perhaps, from other books already published; but the enormous majority are new, and from the consistency of the portrait-types of Christ, S. Peter, S. John, etc., appear all to have been designed by the same man. Some are less successful than others, but the average is exceptionally high, and the best cuts are full of movement and life. An Aesop followed in 1496, Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore in 1500, and the Quatriregio, a dull poem in imitation of Dante by Bishop Frezzi, in 1508. It has been conjectured, however, that an earlier edition of the Quatriregio may have been printed in the fifteenth century with the same illustrations, and there is considerable reason to doubt whether any fresh cuts in the old style were made at Florence after the temporary cessation of publishing brought about by the political troubles of 1501. On the other hand, the old cuts went on being used, sometimes in the originals, sometimes in copies, throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century, and it is only in these reprints that many of them are known to survive. At no other Italian town was there any outburst of book-illustration at all comparable to those at Venice and
In contrast to those in the De claris mulieribus, the cuts in the Epistulae of S. Jerome are distinctly Venetian in style. As one of the two architectural borders is dated 1493, it is possible that the book was at first intended to be issued at Venice, but was transferred to Ferrara At Milan the Theorica Musicae of Franchino Gafori, printed in 1492 by Philippus Mantegatius, has a title-cut of a man playing the organ, and four coarsely cut pictures, together occupying a page, showing primitive musical experiments. Four years later the same author’s Practica Musicae was issued by another printer, Guillaume Le Signerre, with a title-cut illustrating the different measures and the Muses and signs of the Zodiac to which they belong, and with two fine woodcut borders surrounding the opening pages of Books I and III, and II and IV. In 1498 Le Signerre produced two much more profusely illustrated books, the Specchio dell’ Anima of Ludovicus Besalii and an Aesop, some of the cuts of the former being used again in 1499 in the Tesoro Spirituale of Johannes Petrus de Ferrariis. After this he migrated to Saluzzo, and in 1503 produced there a fine edition of the De Veritate Contritionis of Vivaldus, with a frontispiece of S. Jerome in the desert. At Modena in 1490 Dominicus Rocociola printed a Legenda Sanctorum Trium Regum, with a rather pleasing cut of their Adoration of the Holy Child; and two years later, at the same place, the Prognosticatio of Johann Lichtenberger, printed by Pierre Maufer, was illustrated with three full-page quarto cuts and forty-two half-page ones, careful directions for each picture being supplied in the text, but the cuts being modelled on those in the German editions at Ulm and Mainz. At Aquila in 1493 an Aesop was produced, copied from the Naples edition of 1485. At Pavia in 1505 the Sanctuarium of Jacobus Gualla was illustrated with seventy woodcuts and some excellent initials. At Saluzzo in 1508 another work by Vivaldus, printed by Jacobus de Circis and Sixtus de Somachis, was decorated with three large woodcuts of very exceptional merit: a portrait of the Marquis Ludovico II (almost too striking 31 In the masterly work of the Prince d’Essling on Les livres À figures VÉnitiens, the discovery of this interesting fact is inadvertently ascribed to Mr. Guppy, the present librarian of the John Rylands Library. It was made by his predecessor, Mr. Gordon Duff, a note by whom on the subject was quoted in my Italian Book-Illustrations (p. 18), published in 1894. 32 The same trick is used in the Rudimenta astronomica of Alfraganus, printed at Ferrara by Andreas Bellfortis in 1493. 33 Also used in an undated edition of the Flores Poetarum. 34 Mr. Berenson prefers to call him “Alunno di Domenico,” Ghirlandajo’s pupil. 35 Introduction to the Roxburghe Club edition (presented by Mr. Dyson Perrins) of the Epistole et Evangelii of 1495. 36 There were two issues or editions of this book in 1489, one of which is said to have only the cut of S. Maurelius. CHAPTER IX EARLY FRENCH AND SPANISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Although interrupted by the death of its veteran author, Claudin’s magnificent Histoire de l’imprimerie en France, in the three volumes which he lived to complete, made it for the first time possible for students to trace the early history of book-illustration at Paris and Lyon, the two great centres of printing in France. No illustrated books were printed at the Sorbonne, nor by its German printers when they set up in the rue S. Jacques, nor by their rivals there, Keysere and Stoll, and the French printers at the sign of the Soufflet vert. In January, 1476-7, in the first French book printed at Paris, the Chroniques de France or de S. Denis, Pasquier Bonhomme so far recognized the possibility of illustration as to leave a space for a miniature on the first page of text,37 but he used no woodcuts himself, and his son Jean suffered himself to be anticipated in introducing them by Jean Du PrÉ. Although he worked on rather narrow lines, Du PrÉ was the finest of the early Parisian printers, and possessed far better taste than the prolific publisher, Antoine VÉrard, of whom so much more has been written. His first book, a Paris Missal issued in partnership with Didier Huym, 22 September, 1481, has a large picture of the PÈre Éternel and the Crucifixion. Although this is fairly well cut, it is baldly handled, and was far surpassed two months later (28 November) in a similar missal for the diocese of Verdun, by a really fine metal-cut of a priest and other worshippers at prayer at an altar. From the priest’s uplifted hands a little figure
In 1486 Jean Du PrÉ was very busy. At Paris he completed in June a Vie des anciens Saintz PÈres, with a large cut of S. Jerome writing in a stall and the holy fathers passing before him, also numerous very neat column-cuts and capital letters. Meanwhile, at Abbeville Du PrÉ was helping Pierre GÉrard to produce one of the finest French books of the fifteenth century, the The great Paris publisher Antoine VÉrard started on his busy career in 1485, and the history of book-illustration at Paris is soon immensely complicated by his doings. Many of the printers at Paris printed for him; illustrations originally made for other men gravitated into his possession and were used occasionally for new editions of the book for which they had been made, much more often as stock cuts in books with which they had nothing to do; while if another firm brought out a successful picture-book, VÉrard imitated the cuts in it with unscrupulous and unblushing closeness. The monograph of my late friend and colleague John Macfarlane38 describes some 280 books published by VÉrard between 1485 and 1512, and like most bibliographical work done at first hand by personal examination of the books themselves gets at the root of the matter, although the absence of information as to VÉrard’s predecessors and contemporaries, such as has since been supplied by M. Claudin, prevented the author from pressing home some of his points. Thus in his estimate that sets of blocks had been “expressly cut to adorn some thirty editions,” Macfarlane did not make sufficient allowance for the cases in which these apparent sets were themselves not original, having been acquired by VÉrard from earlier owners. Nevertheless, he had no difficulty in finding support for his contention that “the illustrations in VÉrard’s books, when closely examined, hardly bear out their reputation.” Thus he showed that “besides being repeatedly used in book after book, it not VÉrard’s earliest book was the translation of Boccaccio’s Decamerone by Laurent du Premierfait, completed 22 November, 1485, and illustrated with a single In June, 1493, VÉrard published in three large folio volumes, printed for him by Jean Morand, Les Croniques de France, with pictures of a coronation, royal entry into a town, a king sitting in judgment, etc. etc., the cutting being only of average delicacy, but good enough to do justice to the vigour of some of the designs. From this point onwards his interest seems more and more to have centred in his illuminated copies, and almost all the later VÉrard illustrations in M. Claudin’s great work are
A few books printed or published by less prolific firms remain to be noticed before we speak of the Horae which form so important a section among Paris illustrated books as to require separate treatment. One of VÉrard’s printers was Pierre Le Rouge, a member of a family which worked also at Chablis and at Troyes. In July, 1488, and February, 1488-9, Le Rouge printed “pour Vincent Commin Marchand libraire” La mer des histoires in two great folios with large cuts of the kind VÉrard subsequently used in his Chroniques de France, and on the titlepage a particularly fine capital L. Philippe Pigouchet, mainly a printer of Horae, produced in 1499 for his usual publisher, Simon Vostre, a charmingly illustrated edition of a dull poem, Le Chasteau de Labeur, attributed to the playwright We must turn now to the Paris Horae. As already noted, among the pictures in Jean Du PrÉ’s Verdun Missal of November, 1481, there are a set of cuts which seem to have been designed for a Horae, though if they were even put to this use no copy of the edition in which they appeared has been recorded. The earliest illustrated Horae of which copies exist are three editions published by VÉrard, in February 1485-6, August 1486, and July 1487, all of them small and with insignificant cuts, and all known only from single copies, of which that of the earliest edition (in private hands) is imperfect, while the woodcuts in the other two, both at the BibliothÈque Nationale, are heavily coloured. VÉrard’s Horae of 1486 and 1487 are said to have been printed for him by Jean Du PrÉ, and in the next group of editions Du PrÉ on his own account seems to have played the chief part, with Levet and Caillaut as subordinate actors. It is probable that the group may have been started by a Psalter printed by Levet 23 September, 1486, and reprinted 19 February, 1488-9, the cuts of these appearing in an undated Horae ad usum Romanum, printed by Du PrÉ, now in the British Museum. This measures about 45/8 × 3¼ inches, and of the same size, but with different woodcuts, are another undated
In the Horae of the group we have been describing the subjects of the larger cuts became fairly well settled, in accordance with the normal contents of the prayer book. For the Kalendar there is the figure of a man with an indication of the parts of his body presided over by the different planets: for the sequence of the Gospels of the Passion, sometimes a Crucifixion, sometimes a picture of S. John; for the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Shepherds, Magi, Circumcision, Massacre of the Innocents or Flight into Egypt, and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin; for the Hours of the Cross, a Crucifixion; for the Hours of the Passing on, we come now to VÉrard’s countermove to Du PrÉ’s group, Horae measuring 6 inches or a little under by about 3½. Editions of these were issued in April, 1488-9, and in January, February, and April of the following year. The last of these, completed 10 April, 1489-90, I wrongly described, in an article in Vol. III of Bibliographica, as having a titlepage bearing the words Les figures de la Bible. It has such a titlepage in the copy in the British Museum, but I have now woke up to the fact that it is a modern fabrication, added either by an artful bookseller or an artless owner. In these Horae the borders are made up of four pieces, one of which extends along most of the outer and lower margins, and shows children wrestling with each other, or playing with hobbies or go-carts. On 10 July, 1493, these are found in a Horae issued by Laurens Philippe. VÉrard could the better afford to part with them, since in August, 1490, perhaps earlier, he had substituted much larger borders, the subjects in which seem imitated from those of Du PrÉ’s metal-cuts, the printed page now measuring about 8 × 5 inches, and thus winning for them the title Grandes Heures, by which they are generally known (see Plate XX). The large cuts, of which, though not all appear in every edition, there seems to have been seventeen, illustrate the following subjects:— 1. Prayer to the Virgin; 2. Anatomical Man; 3. A chalice the circumference of which represents the measurement of Christ’s wound; 4. Fall of Angels; 5. Creation of Eve and Fall; 6. Controversy in heaven between Mercy, Justice, Peace, and Reason, and Annunciation; 7. Reconciliation of Joseph and The cutting is good and the pictures are both quaint and decorative, their larger size enabling them to avoid the overcrowding which had damaged the effect of the earlier sets. These cuts continued in use till 1498, successive editions in May, July, and October of that year, from the press of Jean Poitevin, showing their gradual replacement by copies of Philippe Pigouchet’s second set. This famous printer-illustrator was certainly printing as early as 1488, though Mr. Proctor in his “Index” makes the Horae for the use of Paris, finished 1 December, 1491, his earliest book. Although not his earliest book, I still believe that this was Pigouchet’s earliest Book of Hours, and regret that M. Claudin, while rejecting supposed editions of 1486 and 1487, should have accepted as authentic one of 16 September, 1488, said to have very rude and archaic cuts, while owning that he could not trace a copy. Until the book can be produced I shall continue to believe that this edition of 16 September, 1488, is a ghost begotten of a double crime, a bookseller’s manipulation of the date of one of Pigouchet’s best-known editions, that of “le xvi iour de Septembre Lan Mil cccc.iiii.xx et xviii,” by omitting the x in xviii, and a bibliographer’s endeavour to make this imaginary edition of 16 September, 1488, more credible by assuming—and asserting—that its cuts were rude and archaic because over three years earlier than any authenticated Horae from Pigouchet’s press. His edition of 1 December, 1491, was printed partly for sale by himself, partly for de Marnef, who subsequently owned the blocks. Besides the usual illustrations for the Hours, it has pictures of S. John writing and of the Betrayal for the Gospels of the Passion, of David’s choice of punishments for the Penitential Psalms, and of Les trois vifs et At the end of 1495 or early in 1496 Pigouchet began replacing the woodcuts of this series of editions with a new set much more graceful and less stiff, a few changes being made in the subjects. At the same time he substituted new borderpieces for the old, among the new blocks being a fine series of the Dance of Death, which were brought into use as they were completed, so that we can trace the increase of them from month to month, so frequent now were the editions. In 1497 and 1498 further additions were made to the large pictures by the addition of new metal cuts with criblÉ backgrounds for the Anatomical Man, chalice, Stem of Jesse, Adoration by the Shepherds, Descent from the Cross, Death of Uriah, and the Church Militant and Triumphant. By the end of 1499 new criblÉ borderpieces had been added, illustrating the life of Joseph, history of the Prodigal Son, history of Susanna, Fifteen Tokens of Judgment, Christ Seated in Judgment, the Cardinal Virtues, and woodland and hunting scenes. From August, 1498, to the end of 1502 Pigouchet’s editions were at their finest. Meanwhile the cuts of his second set In 1525 Geoffroi Tory, a native of Bourges (born about 1480), who at this period of his life was at once a skilled designer, a scholar, and a printer, completed a Horae which, though somewhat thin and unsatisfying compared with the richer and more pictorial work of Pigouchet at his best, far surpassed any edition produced at Paris for the previous twenty years. Part of the edition was taken up by the great publisher of the day, Illustrated books were published at Lyon somewhat earlier than at Paris, and in point of numbers, if the comparison be confined to secular books with sets of cuts especially appropriated to them, the provincial city probably equalled, if it did not surpass, the metropolis. But if it must be reckoned to the credit of Lyon that it had After 1480 all the firms we have named continued to issue illustrated books of varying merit. On 30 September, 1483, Leroy completed a Livre des Eneydes with cuts which are often grotesque, though sometimes neat and sometimes giving evidence of a vigour of design too great for the wood-cutter’s skill. In 1485 he found a Lyonnese cutter able to copy for him the Paris cuts of Jean Bonhomme’s edition of the Destruction de Troye la Grant quite competently, though in a much heavier style. In May, 1486, he printed a Livre des Sainctz Anges with a figure of Christ in a mandorla (perhaps suggested by the engraving of the same subject in Bettini’s Monte Santo di Dio), and this, despite a certain clumsiness in the face, is quite good. In the same year, in an edition of Fierabras, Leroy went back to cuts of incredible rudeness, Nicolaus Philippi and Marcus Reinhart in 1482 illustrated a Mirouer de la vie humaine (from the Latin of Rodericus Zamorensis) with Augsburg cuts purchased from the stock of GÜnther Zainer40, and copied a Paris edition in their Vie des Saintz pÈres hermites and German originals in their Mandeville and Aesop. Their edition of the Postilla Guillermi (c. 1482) has rather a fine Crucifixion and some primitive but vigorous illustrations of the gospels. Martin Huss issued an undated Exposition de la Bible with rude cuts and a French Belial (version of Pierre Ferget), first printed in November, 1481, and at least five times subsequently. After his death in 1482 his business was carried on by a kinsman, Mathieu Huss, who became a prolific publisher of illustrated books, with cuts of very varying merit. Two of his earliest ventures were the Proprietaire des Choses (2 November, 1482), a French version of the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and a Fasciculus temporum (1483), both with very rude cuts. During a partnership with Johann Schabeler he issued (about 1484) a French version of Boccaccio’s De casibus illustrium virorum, the pictures in which are hard, stiff, and a little grotesque, but not without character. Of his later books several are illustrated with cuts borrowed or copied from other editions; but beyond a Legende dorÉe with shaded column-cuts, frequently reprinted, he does not seem to have commissioned any important illustrated book. While the pictorial work of the Lyonnese presses was thus largely imitative, at least two very important books were first illustrated there. The earlier of these was the Roman de la Rose, of which the first printed edition, decorated with eighty-six cuts mostly small and rudely executed, but which at least have the merit of intelligently following the text, is now attributed to the press of Ortuin and Schenck at Lyon about 1481.41 These primitive pictures were quickly copied by a cutter of somewhat greater skill but much less intelligence, who “improved” the original designs without troubling to understand them. This new set of cuts was used twice at Lyon, by Jean Syber (about 1485) and by Leroy (about 1487), and was then acquired (less one of the two larger cuts) by Jean Du PrÉ of Paris, who issued an edition about 1494. About 1497, and again a few years later, new editions were issued in which most of the same cuts reappear, Jean Petit having a share in both editions and VÉrard in the first, despite the fact that he had issued a rival edition about 1495.42
The other famous Lyonnese illustrated book was an annotated edition of Terence “with pictures prefixed to every scene” printed in 1493 by Johann Trechsel. This has a curious full-page picture at the beginning, giving the artist’s idea of a Roman theatre, with a box for the aediles at the side and a ground floor labelled “Fornices.” The text is illustrated by 150 half-page cuts, a little hard, but with abundance of life (see Plate XXI). These certainly influenced the Strassburg edition of GrÜninger (1496), and through GrÜninger’s that published at Paris How eagerly Lyonnese publishers looked out for books to imitate may be seen from the rival Lyonnese renderings of Breidenbach’s Peregrinationes and Brant’s Narrenschiff. Of the Breidenbach, Michel Topie and Jac. de Herrnberg issued in November, 1480, an adaptation by Nicolas Le Huen with copies on copperplate of the maps and on wood of the smaller pictures, both very well executed. Rather over a year later, in February, 1490, a translation by “frere iehan de Hersin” was published by Jacques Maillet with the original Mainz blocks. As for the Ship of Fools, Jacques Sacon, the leading publisher at the end of the century, issued an edition of Locher’s Latin version with close copies of the Basel cuts in June, 1498, and in the following August a French edition was published by Guillaume Balsarin with cuts so hastily executed that in many cases all the background has been omitted. A few illustrated incunabula were issued at ChambÉry, and isolated books elsewhere, but with the exception of Lyon and Abbeville no French provincial town produced any notable work. In Spain the fine gothic types and frequent use of woodcut capitals give a very decorative appearance to most of the incunabula, but pictorial illustrations are rare, and of the few sets of cuts known to us several are borrowed or copied from French or German editions. The earliest Spanish illustrated book known to me is a Fasciculus Temporum, printed by Bart. Segura and Alfonsus de Portu at Seville in 1480, with a dozen metal-cuts of the usual stock subjects; the earliest with original illustrations, the Marquis of Villena’s Trabajos de Hercules, printed by Antonio de Centenera at Zamora, 15 January, 1483, with eleven extraordinarily rude cuts of the hero’s adventures. In 1484 and 1485 an unidentified printer at Huete produced editions of the Copilacion de Leyes of Diaz de Montalvo, with some striking metal-cut pictorial capitals, illustrating
At Barcelona several illustrated books were printed by Juan Rosenbach, one of the earliest of them, the Carcel d’Amor of Diego de San Pedro (1493), having sixteen original cuts, characteristically Spanish in tone and showing good craftsmanship. In or about the same year Friedrich Biel of Basel (usually quoted as Fadrique de Basilea, or Fadrique Aleman) headed an edition of the Passion de Christo with a striking metal-cut of Christ standing upright in the tomb, watched by the B. Virgin and S. John. For his Spanish Aesop of 1496 he presumably copied the German cuts, and he certainly did so for his Exemplario contra engaÑos of 1498, the 116 cuts of which are all careless copies of those in PrÜss’s edition of the Directorium humanae vitae. Even when in (or about) the next year he was issuing the first edition of the Celestina or Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, he could not do so without German models, As a rule, these Spanish versions of foreign cuts have the interest which always attaches to a free rehandling by a craftsman with a characteristic touch and style of his own. None the less it is refreshing to turn to more original work, and at least a little of this (though some one with wider knowledge than myself may further minimize the statement) is to be found at Seville. Here in 1494 Ungut and Stanislaus Polonus issued a Regimiento de los principes, translated from the Latin of Aegidius Columna, with a fine title-cut of a young prince (his hair is long) seated in a chair of state, holding a sword and royal orb. The same partners were responsible for another striking titlepage in 1495, that of the Lilio de Medicina, Bernardus de Gordonio, where two angels are seen upholding seven lilies in a pot; they also issued in the same year the Contemplaciones sobre el Rosario de Nuestra SeÑora, a fine and typically Spanish book, printed in red and black, with good capitals, two large cuts and fifteen smaller ones, enclosed in borders of white tracery on a black ground. In the last year of the century they issued an Improbatio Alcorani with a swart picture of a disputation on the titlepage, not easily forgotten (see Plate XXII). It was at Seville also that in 1498 Pedro Brun printed in quarto the romance of the Emperor Vespasian, illustrated with fourteen excellent cuts, some of them full of life and movement; but for these a foreign model is quite likely some day to be discovered. On the other hand, at Valentia also there was at least a little work indisputably of native origin, as in the case of the title-cut to the De regimine domus of S. Bernard, printed by Nic. Spindeler about 1498, and (less certainly) another to the Obra allaors de S. Christofol, issued by Peter Trincher in the same year. Pictorial title-cuts are not so common in Spanish books 37 Similar spaces were left in the typographically anonymous French version of Valerius Maximus, printed about the same date. 38 Antoine VÉrard. By John Macfarlane. Illustrated monographs published by the Bibliographical Society. No. VII. Printed at the Chiswick Press, September, 1900. 39 So in the Lucain Suetonne et Saluste of 1490, five cuts of battle-scenes, all borrowed from the Mer des Histoires, printed by Lerouge in 1488, are made to do duty sixty-four times. 40 In 1491 these are found at Saragossa in an edition printed by Hurus. 41 It has also been attributed to Jean Croquet at Geneva, but there is only a typographical argument for this ascription, whereas on the side of Lyon, in addition to (rather weaker) typographical arguments, we have to reckon with Lyonnese paper, the similarity of the illustrations to those of a cutter employed by Martin Huss, and the fact that the book was copied in two editions undoubtedly Lyonnese. See F. W. Bourdillon’s The Early Editions of the Roman de la Rose (1906). 42 Only a few of the cuts in this were specially designed for it, all the later ones being taken from stock in VÉrard’s most haphazard fashion. CHAPTER X LATER FOREIGN BOOKS One of the chief charms of the books of the fifteenth century is that they are so unlike those of our own day. In the first year of its successor a great step was taken towards their modernization by the production of the first of the Aldine octavos, and the process went on very rapidly. In the early days of printing all the standard works of the previous three centuries that could by any possibility be considered alive were put on the press. By 1500 men were thinking of new things. New editions of many of the old religious and didactic treatises, the old poems and romances, continued to be printed, though mostly in a form which suggests that they were now intended for a lower class of readers, but the new publishers would have little to do with them. Scholarship, which till now had been almost confined to Italy, spread rapidly to all the chief countries of Europe, and amid the devastation which constant war soon brought upon Italy, was lucky in being able to find new homes. With the new literary ideals came new forms for books, and new methods of housing them. Before 1500 several publishers had found it worth their while to print editions in five huge volumes of the Speculum of Vincent de Beauvais, each volume measuring eighteen inches by thirteen and weighing perhaps a dozen pounds, though paper in those days was not yet made of clay. These great volumes had been cased in thick wooden boards, covered with stout leather and protected with bosses or centre-pieces and corner-pieces of metal. They were not intended to stand on shelves like modern books, but were laid on their sides, singly, on shelves and desks, and from Aldus Manutius, who led the revolution, has often been wrongly praised. He can hardly be called a great printer. He burdened Greek scholarship for three centuries with a thoroughly bad style in Greek types, and the cursive substitute which he provided for the fine roman founts for which Italy had been famous almost drove them from the field. Both the Greek type and the italics were the outcome of confused thinking. They were based upon styles of handwriting which Aldus and his scholarly friends doubtless found more expeditious than the formal book-hands which had previously been in use. Quickness in writing is an excellent thing. But a sloping type takes just as long to set up as an upright one, and absolutely nothing is gained by the substitution of an imitation of a quicker hand for the imitation of a slower one. Aldus had begun publishing at Venice early in 149543 with an edition of the Greek grammar of Lascaris, an earlier edition of which, issued at Milan in 1476, had As we have seen, the introduction of the Aldine italics, though in themselves a better fount than the Greek type, was almost as mischievous in its effects. On the other hand, the service which Aldus rendered to scholarship by his cheap and handy series of the Latin and Italian classics was very great. The first book which he printed in his new type was a Virgil, and this was quickly followed by works by Petrarch and Dante and a whole On the death of Aldus in 1515 his business was for some time carried on by his father-in-law, Andrea de Torresani, an excellent printer, but with little of Aldus’s scholarship. In 1533, at the age of twenty-one, Paulus Manutius, the youngest son of Aldus, took over the management of the firm, and proved himself an even finer scholar than his father. Financially he was no more successful, and when he was made printer to the Pope the anxiety of carrying on business at Rome as well as at Venice only added to his difficulties. On his death in 1574 his son, Aldus Manutius the younger, succeeded him and worked till 1597, but without adding anything to the reputation of the firm, perhaps because he had been pushed on prematurely in his boyhood, as is witnessed by his compilation of a volume of elegant extracts at the age of nine. The family of printers and publishers which came nearest to rivalling the fame of the Aldi in Italy during the sixteenth century was that of the Giunta. Springing originally from Florence, members of it worked for some time simultaneously at Florence and Venice, and Lucantonio Giunta, the earliest member of it to rise into note, was already one of the foremost publishers at Venice in the closing years of the fifteenth century, and subsequently printed for himself instead of always employing other men to print for him. The speciality of this Venetian firm was at first illustrated books of all kinds, afterwards the production of large and magnificent missals and other service books of the Roman Church, and these they continued to publish until nearly the end of the sixteenth century. At Florence, Filippo Giunta competed with Aldus of Venice in printing pretty little editions of the classics, his competition sometimes taking the form of unscrupulous imitation. At Rome, Eucharius Silber and his successor Marcellus were the chief printers from 1500 to 1516. A little later the Bladi took their place, and under the auspices of the Council of the Propaganda of the Faith a press was set up for printing in Syriac, Armenian, and other Oriental languages. The output also of the presses in other Italian cities was still considerable. Nevertheless, from the same causes which produced her political decay Italy rapidly ceased to be the head-quarters of European printing, yielding this honour to France about the end of the first quarter of the century, and by some thirty or forty years later becoming quite uninfluential. To the German printing trade, also, the sixteenth century brought a notable decline of reputation. In its first two decades Johann Schoeffer (son of Peter) produced some fine books at Mainz; at Strassburg GrÜninger poured forth illustrated books, and Johann Knoblouch and Matthias SchÜrer were both prolific. The importance of Cologne diminished, though the sons of Heinrich Quentell had a good business. Augsburg, on the other hand, came to the front, the elder and younger Schoensperger, Johann and Silvanus Otmar, Erhard Oglin, Johann Miller, and the firm of Sigismund Grim and Marcus Wirsung all doing important work. At Nuremberg the chief printing houses were those of Hieronymus HÖlzel, Johann Weissenburger, and Friedrich Peypus. Leipzig and Hagenau both greatly increased their output, and with the advent of Luther, Wittenberg soon became an important publishing centre. Luther’s activity alone would have sufficed to make the fortunes of any publisher had it not been for the fact that as each pamphlet from his pen was produced at Wittenberg by Hans Lufft, or some other authorized printer, it was promptly pirated in A little before Germany gave herself up to theological strife, the conjunction at Basel of the great printer Johann Froben and the great scholar Erasmus temporarily raised that city to importance as an intellectual centre. Froben had begun printing at Basel in 1491, but until he formed his friendship with Erasmus in 1513 published only a few editions of the Bible, some of the papal Decretals, the works of S. Ambrose, and a few other books of no special interest. From 1513 onwards his output increased rapidly both in quantity and importance, so that by the time of his death in 1527 he had printed over three hundred books, including almost all the works of Erasmus and many books in Greek. During this period, also, border-pieces and initials were designed for him by the two Holbeins (Hans and Ambrosius) and other skilful artists, and he was entitled to rank as the greatest printer-publisher in Europe in succession to Aldus. After his death in 1527 the supremacy of European printing rested for the next generation indisputably with France. During the fifteenth century printing in France had developed almost entirely on its own lines. Vernacular books of every description had poured from the presses of Paris and Lyon, and many of them had been charmingly While the name of Robert Estienne is thus connected with these royal Greek types he was himself distinctly a Latinist, and his own personal contribution to scholarship was a Latin Dictionary (Thesaurus Linguae Latinae) published in 1532, which remained a standard work for two centuries. He published, too, as did also Simon de Colines, many very pretty little editions of Latin classics in sextodecimo, some in italics, others in roman type, thus carrying a step further the triumphant march of the small book, which Aldus had only taken as far as octavos. Simon de Colines, while sharing in work of this kind, did not neglect other classes of literature, and, as has already been noted, joined with Geoffroi Tory, another scholar-printer, who was also a scholar-artist, in producing some remarkable editions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin. This scholar-artist, Geoffroi Tory, was a native of Bourges, who had been a professor at several of the Paris colleges and was at one time proof-reader to Henri Estienne. His career as a printer began in 1522 and ended with his death in 1533, after which his business was carried on by Olivier Mallard, who married his widow. Tory printed a few scholarly books and wrote and published a curious work, to which he gave the name Champfleury, on the right forms and proportions of the letters of the alphabet. It is, however, by his Books of Hours that he is now chiefly remembered. While all this good work was going on in Paris the printers at Lyon were no less busy. At the beginning of the century Aldus had been justly annoyed at the clever counterfeits of his italic octavos which were put on the market at Lyon. But in Sebastian Gryphius (a German, born in 1491 at Reutlingen) Lyon became possessed of a printer who had no need to imitate even Aldus. After printing one or two works in the four preceding years his press got into full swing in 1528 and, by the time of his death in 1556 he had issued very Against the pretty bindings and vignettes and the popular books to which they were applied little or no opposition was raised, and they continued to be issued till the taste for them died out about 1580. But against all the scholarly work of the French presses the leaders of the Church took up an attitude of unrelenting hostility. Foremost in this opposition, regretful that their predecessors had introduced printing into France, were the theologians of the Sorbonne, who forbade the study of Hebrew as dangerous and likely to lead to heresy, and looked with eyes almost as unfriendly on that of Greek. In 1546 (just after the iniquitous campaign against the Vaudois) Etienne Dolet was hanged on a charge of atheism, and his body cut down and burnt amid a pile of his books. In 1550, despite his position as a royal printer, Robert Estienne, who had just completed his fine folio edition of the Greek Testament, was obliged to seek safety by flying to Geneva, and a generation later Jean de Tournes the younger, of Lyon, was obliged When Robert Estienne fled to Geneva, his brother, the physician, Charles, was allowed to succeed to his office at Paris, and he in turn was followed by a younger Robert, who died in 1571. Meanwhile Robert I had taken with him a set of matrices of the royal Greek types, and with these and other founts printed at Geneva until his death in 1559. His son, Henri Estienne II, then took over the business, but was of too restless and roving a disposition to conduct it with success. As a scholar he was even greater than his father, excelling in Greek as Robert had in Latin, and producing in 1572 a Greek dictionary (Thesaurus Graecae Linguae) which became as famous as the Latin one which Robert had published forty years earlier. Henri Estienne the younger died in 1598, but the Estienne tradition was kept up by his son Paul (1566-1627) and grandson Antoine (1592-1674), the latter bringing back into the family the office of royal printer at Paris, and printing an edition of the Septuagint. Under the discouraging conditions of the middle of the sixteenth century French printers gradually ceased to be scholars and enthusiasts, but Christopher Plantin, a Frenchman, born in the neighbourhood of Tours in 1514, built up by his energy and industry a great business at Antwerp, the memory of which is preserved in the famous Plantin Museum. He had started at Antwerp in 1549 as a binder, but about six years later turned his attention to printing, in consequence (it is said) of an accident which disabled him for binding-work. The most famous of his books is the great Antwerp Polyglott edition of the Bible in eight volumes, published between the years 1569 and 1573. Over this he came so near After Plantin’s death the branch business which he had left at Leyden was carried on by another of his sons-in-law, Franciscus Raphelengius, who printed some pretty little editions of the classics and other good books. Plantin’s own work as a printer was costly and pretentious rather than beautiful, and the bad style of his ornaments and initials exercised a powerful influence for evil on the printers of the ensuing century. The mention of Plantin’s Antwerp Polyglott may remind us that the first Polyglott edition of the Bible had been printed between 1514 and 1518 at AlcalÀ, in Spain, under the auspices of Cardinal Ximenes. The Latin name of AlcalÀ being Complutum, this edition is generally quoted as the Complutensian Polyglott. Among the notable features in it is the use of a singularly fine Greek type in the New Testament. Absolutely different from the Aldine and all the other Greek types imitating the rapid handwriting of the Greek scholars of the sixteenth century, this was based on the book-hand used in some early manuscript, possibly the one which the Pope had lent from the Vatican to aid Cardinal Ximenes in forming his text. It was on this Greek type that Mr. Robert Proctor, shortly before his death, based his own fount of Greek, supplying the majuscules which (with a single exception) are wanting in the original and making other improvements, but keeping closely to his model and thus producing by far the finest Greek type ever cast. This has been used to print notable editions Save for the Complutensian Polyglott there is nothing striking to record of the Spanish printing of the sixteenth century, which retained its massive and archaic character for some decades, and then became as dull and undistinguished as the printing of all the rest of Europe tended to be towards the end of the century. The enthusiasm with which the new art had at first been received had died out. Printers were no longer lodged in palaces, monasteries, and colleges; Church and State, which had at first fostered and protected them, were now jealous and suspicious, even actively hostile. Thriving members of other occupations and professions had at one time taken to the craft. A little later great scholars had been willing to give their help and advice, and at least a few printers had themselves been men of learning. All this had passed or was passing. Printing had sunk to the level of a mere craft, and a craft in which the hours appear to have been cruelly long and work uncertain and badly paid. In the eighteenth century the Dutch journeymen were certainly better paid than our own, and it may be that it was through better pay that they did better work in the seventeenth century also. It seems certain, moreover, that the improvements in the construction of printing presses which were introduced in that century originated in Holland. The primacy of the Dutch is proved by the large amount of Dutch type imported into England, and indeed the Dutch books of the seventeenth century are neater and in better taste than those of other countries. It was in Holland also that there worked the only firm of printers of this period who made themselves any abiding reputation. The founder of this firm, Louis Elzevir, was a bookseller and bookbinder at Leyden, where, in 1583, he began printing on his own account, and issued between that year and his death in 1617 over a hundred different books of no very special note. No fewer than five of his seven sons carried on his business, 43 He was born at Bassiano in the Papal States in 1450.
CHAPTER XI FOREIGN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY As we have already said, the charm of the woodcut pictures in incunabula lies in their simplicity, in their rude story-telling power, often very forcible and direct, in the valiant effort, sometimes curiously successful in cuts otherwise contemptibly poor, to give character and expression to the human face, and as regards form in the harmony between the woodcuts and the paper and type of the books in which they appear. In the book-illustrations of the sixteenth century the artist is more learned, more self-conscious, and his design is interpreted with far greater skill by the better trained wood-cutters of his day. More pains are taken with accessories, and often perhaps for this reason the cut does not tell its story so quickly as of old. It is now a work of art which demands study, no longer a signpost explaining itself however rapidly the leaf is turned. Lastly, the artist seems seldom to have thought of the form of the book in which his work was to appear, of the type with which the text was to be printed, or even of how the wood-cutter was to interpret his design. Book-illustration, which had offered to the humble makers of playing-cards and pictures of saints new scope for their skill, became to the artists of the sixteenth century a lightly valued method of earning a little money from the booksellers, their better work being reserved for single designs, or in some cases for the copperplates which at first they executed, as well as drew, themselves. Thus the book-collector is conscious, on the one hand, that less pains have been taken to please him, and on the other that he is separating by his hobby Although we have taken off our caps in passing to Erhard Reuwich and Michael Wolgemut for their admirable work, the one in the Mainz Breidenbach, the other in the Schatzbehalter and Nuremberg Chronicle, it is Albrecht DÜrer who must be regarded as the inaugurator of the second period of German book-illustrations. During his Wanderjahre DÜrer had produced at Basel for an edition of S. Jerome’s Epistles, printed by Nicolaus Kesler in 1492 (reprinted 1497), a rude woodcut of the saint extracting a thorn from his lion’s foot. DÜrer’s important bookwork begins in 1498, when his fifteen magnificent woodcuts illustrating the Apocalypse (which influenced all later treatments of this theme) were issued twice over at Nuremberg, in one edition with German title and text, in the other with Latin. Stated in their colophons to have been “printed by Albrecht DÜrer, painter,” neither edition bears the name of a professional printer. The types used in each case were those of Anton Koberger, DÜrer’s godfather, and the effect of the artist’s personal superintendence, which the colophons attest, is seen in the excellence of the presswork. The following year Koberger published an illustrated edition of the Reuelationes Sanctae Birgittae (German reprint in 1502), and DÜrer has been supposed to have helped in this, but the theory is now discredited. In 1501 he Several borders and illustrations formerly ascribed to DÜrer are now attributed to one of his pupils, Hans Springinklee, who lived in DÜrer’s house at Nuremberg, where he worked from about 1513 to 1522. Most of Springinklee’s bookwork was done for Anton Koberger, who published some of it at Nuremberg, while some was sent to the Lyon printers, Clein, Sacon, and Marion, who were in Koberger’s employment. A border of his design bearing the arms of Bilibaldus Pirckheimer is found in several works which Pirckheimer edited (1513-17). In a Hortulus Animae, printed by J. Clein for Koberger at Lyon, 1516, fifty cuts are by Springinklee. The Hortulus Animae was as popular in Germany as the illustrated Horae in France and England. In 1517 another edition appeared with Erhard SchÖn as its chief illustrator, and only a few of Springinklee’s cuts. The next year Springinklee produced a new set of cuts, and SchÖn’s work was less used. Springinklee and SchÖn were also associated in Bible illustrations printed for Koberger by Sacon at Lyon, and to Springinklee are now assigned two full-page woodcuts in an EichstÄtt Missal (H. HÖlzel, Nuremberg, 1517), and a border to the Reuelationes Birgittae (F. Peypus, Nuremberg, 1517), formerly ascribed to DÜrer. A woodcut of Johann Tritheim presenting his Polygraphia to Maximilian, formerly attributed to Holbein as having been printed at Basel (Adam Petri, 1518), is now also placed to the credit of Springinklee, who, moreover, worked for the Weisskunig and probably for other of the artistic commemorations of himself which Maximilian commissioned. Hans Sebald Beham is best known as a book-illustrator from his work for Christian Egenolph at Between the Nuremberg book-illustrators and those of Augsburg, to whom we must now turn, a connecting link may be found in the person of Hans Leonhard SchÄufelein, born about 1480, soon after his father, a NÖrdlingen wool merchant, had settled at Nuremberg. He worked under DÜrer, and his earliest book-illustrations were made for Dr. Ulrich Pinder, the owner of a private press at Nuremberg. Several unsigned cuts in Der beschlossen gart des rosenkrantz Marie (Pinder, 1505), and thirty out of thirty-four large cuts in a Speculum Passionis (Pinder, 1507), are ascribed to SchÄufelein, his associate in each book being Hans Baldung. About 1510 SchÄufelein removed to Augsburg, and, despite his return to his paternal home at NÖrdlingen where he took up his citizenship in 1515, he worked for the chief Augsburg publishers for the rest of his life, though between 1523 and 1531 nothing is known as to what he was doing. Among the earlier Augsburg books with illustrations attributed to SchÄufelein are Tengler’s Der neu Layenspiegel (1511), Henricus Suso’s Der Seusse (1512), Heiligenleben (1513), Geiler’s Schiff der Penitentz (1514), and the Hystori und wunderbarlich legend Katharine von In the Theuerdank of 1517 about twenty cuts are assigned to SchÄufelein, some of them bearing his signature. The following year he illustrated Leonrodt’s Himmelwagen for Otmar with twenty cuts, mostly signed, some of which were used afterwards on the titlepages of early Luther tracts. After an interval SchÄufelein is found in 1533 working for Heinrich Steyner of Augsburg, who employed him to illustrate his German editions of the classics, Thucydides (1533), Plutarch (1534), Cicero (1534), Apuleius (1538), etc. The blocks for some of his cuts subsequently passed into the possession of Christian Egenolph of Frankfort. The first native Augsburg artist whom we have to notice is Hans Burgkmair, who was born in 1473, and began bookwork in 1499 by illustrating missals for Erhard Ratdolt with pictures of patron saints and of the Crucifixion. The chief Augsburg publisher for whom he worked in his early days was Johann Otmar, for whom he illustrated several books by the popular preacher, Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg (Predigen teutsch, 1508 and 1510, Das Buch Granatapfel, 1510, Nauicula Poenitentiae, 1511), and other devotional and moral works. In 1515 Hans Schoensperger the younger employed him to supply a dedication cut and seven designs of the Passion for a Leiden Christi, and to the Theuerdank published by Schoensperger the elder at Nuremberg in 1517 he contributed thirteen illustrations (only one signed). He had already been employed (1510) on a few of the cuts in the Genealogy of the Emperor Maximilian, which a wholesome fear lest its accuracy should JÖrg Breu, who was born and died (1537) some half-dozen years later than Burgkmair, like him illustrated Missals for Ratdolt and contributed Passion-cuts to Mann’s Leiden Christi. His most important piece of bookwork was the redrawing of the cuts in Anton Sorg’s edition of Reichenthal’s Conciliumbuch for a reprint by Steiner in 1536. Illustrations by him also occur in a Melusina (1538), and German versions of Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus and De Casibus Illustrium virorum issued after his death by the same firm. Leonhard Beck contributed largely to the illustration of Maximilian’s literary ventures, especially the Theuerdank, Weisskunig, and Saints of the House of Austria (published at some date between 1522 and 1551).
We come now to Hans Weiditz, the immense extension of whose work by the attributions of recent years can only be compared to Mr. Proctor’s raising of Bartolommeo de’ Libri from one of the smallest to one of the most prolific of Florentine printers. Only two or three Augsburg woodcuts bearing his initials are known, while scores and even hundreds are now assigned to him, most of which had previously been credited to Burgkmair. Weiditz began bookwork in or before 1518, in which year he contributed a title-cut to the Nemo of Ulrich von Hutten, while in 1519 he made twelve illustrations to the same author’s account of Maximilian’s quarrel with the Venetians. In 1518 he had begun working for the firm of Grimm and Wirsung, and this, with a few commissions from other Augsburg publishers, kept him busy till about 1523, when he himself moved to Strassburg, whence his family had come, while in the same year Grimm and Wirsung gave up business and sold their blocks to Steiner. These included not only many title-borders by Weiditz, twenty illustrations to two comedies of Plautus and a set of cuts to the Deuotissime meditationes de vita et passione Christi, and another to a German Celestina, all published in 1520, but a series of some 260 masterly illustrations to a German version of Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae. Steiner used some of these cuts in a Cicero De Officiis of 1531, which has in addition sixty-seven important cuts by Weiditz, presumably of the same period, and also in a Justinus of the same year, but the work for which they were specially designed did not appear until a year later. Needless to say, selections from both the Petrarch and the Cicero sets appear in later work. After removing to Strassburg, Weiditz copied some Wittenberg Bible cuts and also Holbein’s Apocalypse set for Knoblauch in 1524. In 1530 he illustrated for J. Schott the Herbarium of Brunfels, which went through several editions both in Latin and German, and for this comparatively humble work was praised by name in both editions, so that until 1904 it was only as the illustrator of the Herbal that he was known. Many of his Augsburg woodcuts subsequently passed to that persistent purchaser of old blocks, Christian Egenolph of Frankfort. Before passing away from the Nuremberg and Augsburg book-illustrators, it seems necessary to describe briefly, but in a more connected form, the literary and artistic enterprises of the Emperor Maximilian, to which After this failure Maximilian planned a Triumphal Arch and Procession, the programme for the Arch being drawn up by Stabius, that of the Procession by Treitzsaurwein. The plan of the Arch was largely worked out by DÜrer, with help from Springinklee, Traut, and Altdorfer, whose designs were carried out in 192 woodblocks cut by Hieronymus Andrea and his assistants. When the impressions from these are put together they make a design measuring nearly twelve feet by ten. In the centre is the Gate of Honour, to the left and right the gates of Praise and Nobility. Above the main gate rises a tower on which are displayed the Emperor’s ancestors and their arms, above the other gates a series of incidents of Maximilian’s life, surmounted by busts of his imperial predecessors and of contemporary princes. This was printed in 1517-18 at Nuremberg, and in 1526-8 and 1559 at Vienna. On the Procession or Triumph, DÜrer, Springinklee, SchÄufelein, Burgkmair, and Beck were all engaged. The 138 blocks composing it were cut by Andrea and Jost de Negker in 1516-18, and it was printed by order of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1526. A Triumphal Car designed by DÜrer in 1518, in connection with the same project, was published in eight sheets in 1522. A series of representations of Saints of the House of Hapsburg had been planned soon after the abandonment of the Genealogy, and assumed shape in 1514. From drawings now attributed to Leonhard Beck, 123 woodblocks The romance of Theuerdank was written by Melchior Pfintzing, under Maximilian’s direction, to celebrate his wooing of Mary of Burgundy and other exploits. The bulk (seventy-seven) of the illustrations in it are now ascribed to Beck, seventeen to SchÄufelein, thirteen to Burgkmair, and three, two, and one respectively to SchÖn, Traut, and Breu. It was published as a sumptuous folio, several copies being struck on vellum by the elder Schoensperger at Nuremberg in 1517, and reprinted two years later. The Weisskunig, or White King, an account of Maximilian’s parentage, education, and exploits, was dictated by him in fragments to Treitzsaurwein, but never fully edited. Of the 249 illustrations about half are by Burgkmair, most of the others by Beck. With the exception of thirteen the blocks were preserved at Vienna, and the book was printed there for the first time in 1775. Lastly, the Freydal, which was to have given an account of Maximilian’s tourneys and “Mummereien,” is known to us by the preservation of the original miniatures from which the illustrations were to have been made, but only five blocks out of 256 were actually cut. The patronage of the Emperor Maximilian gives special importance to the work done during his lifetime at Nuremberg and Augsburg, but there was no lack of book-illustrations elsewhere. At TÜbingen some of the mathematical works of Johann StÖffler were curiously decorated, and the second edition of his Ephemerides (1533) has a fine portrait of the author in his seventy-ninth year. At Ratisbon, Albrecht Altdorfer was the most important worker for the wood-cutters, and to him are now attributed thirty-eight cuts illustrating the Fall and Redemption of Man, published at Hamburg in 1604, under the name of DÜrer, as “nunc primÙm È tenebris in At Wittenberg, from a little before 1520, the influence of Martin Luther made itself as much felt as that of Maximilian at Augsburg and Nuremberg. Hither, in 1505, had come a Franconian artist, Lucas Cranach, who had already illustrated some missals for Winterburger of Vienna. Numerous pictures of saints, which he drew for the Wittenberg Heiligthumsbuch of 1509, are subsequently found dispersed in other works, such as the Hortulus Animae. A few title-cuts on tracts by Luther and others are assigned to him, but a great mass of bookwork, including numerous fine borders, found in Wittenberg books of the Luther period, while showing abundant traces of the elder Cranach’s influence, is yet clearly not by him. It has recently been assigned, with some probability, to his eldest son, Hans. His younger son, Lucas Cranach II, also supplied a few borders and illustrations to the Wittenberg booksellers. Georg Lemberger also produced borders for titlepages and some Bible cuts, and two other Wittenberg Bible-illustrators of this school were Erhard Altdorfer, brother of Albrecht, whose best bookwork is found in a fine Danish Bible printed at Copenhagen in 1550, and Hans Brosamer, Bibles, or parts of the Bible, with whose cuts appeared both at Wittenberg and at Frankfort. At Strassburg, Hans Baldung Grien, whose work shows the influence of DÜrer, illustrated the Granatapfel (1510) and other works by Geiler of Kaisersberg, the Hortulus Animae printed by Flach (1510), etc. Johann WÄchtlin, who had contributed a Resurrection to a set of Passion cuts published by Knoblauch in 1506, illustrated a Leben Christi for the same printer in 1508. We find his work again in the Feldbuch der Wundarznei of Hans von Gersdorff, printed by Schott in 1517. The work of After his return to Basel in 1519, Hans Holbein remained at work there until 1526, and it was during this period that his book-illustrations, properly so called, were executed, including those to the Apocalypse and his two most famous pieces of bookwork, his Dance of Death and Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones, both of which were first published in 1538 at Lyon by Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel. These (with perhaps some exceptions) and many of his other designs45 were cut in wood by Hans Lutzelburger who signed a Holbein titlepage to a German New Testament printed by Thomas Wolff in 1523, and who, if rightly identified with the Hans Formschneider with whose widow the Trechsels were in correspondence in 1526 and 1527, must have died about the time that Holbein left Basel. Pen copies, moreover, of some of the cuts of the Dance of Death are preserved at the Berlin Museum, and one of these is dated 1527, so that there can be no question that the originals belong to this period of Holbein’s life, and the British Museum possesses a set of proofs of forty out of the original series of forty-one, printed on four sheets, ten on a sheet. It has been conjectured that the occupations of some of the great personages whom Death is depicted as seizing may have been considered as coming under the offence of scandalum magnatum and so have caused the long delay before the blocks were used, but as this explanation does not apply to the illustrations to the Old Testament it seems inadequate. As published in 1538 by the Trechsels the cuts are accompanied by French quatrains from the pen of Gilles Corrozet and other appropriate matter, and have prefixed to them a titlepage reading: Les Simulachres & Historiees Faces de la Mort, autant elegammet pourtraictes que artificiellement imaginees. That Holbein’s Old Testament designs also belong to his Basel period is shown by copies of them appearing in a Bible printed by Froschouer in 1531, though the original cuts were not published till seven years later. As printed by the Trechsels they are eighty-six in number, and while the cutting of the best is worthy of Lutzelburger, their execution is too unequal for it to be certain that the whole series was executed by him. The cuts were also used by the Trechsels in a Bible of the same year, and both the Bible and the cuts under their own title Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones were republished by the Frellons. Considerations of space forbid more than a bare mention of the Bambergische Halssgericht (1508), with its all too vivid representations of the cruel punishments then in use, and the illustrated classics published at later dates by Johann Schoeffer at Mainz, or of the work of Jakob KÖbel at Oppenheim with its rather clumsy imitations of Ratdolt’s Italian ornaments, or of the illustrated books printed by Johann Weissenburger at Landshut, or of those from the press of Hieronymus Rodlich at Siemen, the Thurnierbuch of 1530, Kunst des Messens of the following year, and Fierabras of 1533. After about 1535 little original book-illustration of any importance was produced in other German cities, but in Nuremberg and Frankfurt it continued plentiful, Virgil Solis and Jobst Amman working assiduously for the booksellers in both places. In no other country did the first thirty years of the sixteenth century produce so much interesting work as in
Signatures which occur with some frequency between 1515 and 1529 are the z.a., z.A., and I.A. used by Zoan Andrea, i.e. Johannes Andreas Vavassore. This Zoan Andrea was an assiduous copyist. Early in his career (1515-16) we find him imitating DÜrers large illustrations to the Apocalypse; in 1517 his title-cut for the De modo regendi of Antonio Cornazano imitates that of Burgkmair on the 1515 De rebus Gothorum of Jornandes. In 1520 he prefixed to a Livy printed by Giunta an excellent portrait modelled, as the Prince d’Essling has shown, on a sculpture set up at Padua to the memory either of the historian himself or of one of his descendants; in Turning to the general course of book-illustration in Venice as it may be studied in the great work of the Prince d’Essling, unhappily left without the promised introduction at the time of his lamented death, we find several different influences at work. As has been already noted, the shaded work which had begun to make its appearance before 1500, as in the frontispiece to the Epitome Almagesti of Regiomontanus (1496), rapidly became the predominant style. We find it combined with some of the charm of the earlier outline vignettes in the small pictures of a Virgil of 1507, and in some of those of another edition in 1508, though the larger ones in this are heavy and coarse. The extreme of coarseness is found in an edition of the Legendario di Sancti of 1518, the woodcuts being more suited to a broadside for a cottage wall than to Venetian bookwork. The style is seen at its best in the illustrations of a well-known Horae printed by Bernardinus Stagninus in 1507, and, generally speaking, it is in the Missals, Breviaries, and Horae published by L. A. Giunta, Stagninus and the De Gregoriis (see Plate XXV) that the most satisfactory bookwork of this period is found. Another style which may be traced in many books of Despite his connection with the Hypnerotomachia, which, however, was printed on commission, Aldus concerned himself little with book-illustrations, and if the miserable cuts which he put into his edition of Hero and Leander of Musaeus are fair specimens of what he thought sufficiently good when left to himself, he was well advised in holding aloof from them. Nevertheless, the popularity which he gained for the small octavos which he introduced in 1501 was an important factor in the development of book-illustration in the sixteenth century. Although Aldus did not illustrate them himself, it was impossible that the lightly printed handy books which he introduced should remain permanently unillustrated, and when italic type was ousting roman and small books taking the place of large, the introduction of smaller illustrations, depending for their effect on the delicacy of their cutting, became inevitable. If we take any popular book of the century, such as the Sonetti of Petrarch, and note the illustrations in successive editions, we shall find them getting smaller and smaller and more and more lightly cut and lightly printed, in As to French book-illustrations of the sixteenth century, a competent historian should have much to say, but the present writer has made no detailed study of them, and in the absence of any monograph to steal from must be content with recording general impressions, only here and there made precise by references to books which he has examined. Far more than those of Germany or Venice, French publishers of the sixteenth century relied on the great stock of woodcuts which had come into existence during the decades 1481-1500. That they did so may be regarded as some compensation for the exceptional rarity of most of the more interesting French incunabula. We have spoken disrespectfully of the little devotional books printed about 1500 with an old Horae cut on the back of the titlepage or at the end, but in the popular books printed by the Lenoirs and other publishers as late as 1530, and even later, cuts will be found After about 1503 the French Horae decline rapidly in beauty and interest, but many fine missals were issued by Wolfgang Hopyl and other firms, some with one or more striking pictures, almost all with admirable capitals. Among non-liturgical books it is difficult to find any class for which new illustrations were made at all freely. Several books of Chronicles by Monstrelet, Robert Gaguin, and others have one or more cuts at the beginning which may have been made for them, e.g. a folio cut of S. Denis and S. RÉmy, with shields of arms found in the Compendium super Francorum gestis by Robert Gaguin (this, however, dates back to 1500), a double cut of S. Louis blessed by the Pope and confronting the Turks (found in Gaguin’s Sommaire Historial de France, c. 1523, and elsewhere), another double cut of Clovis baptized and in battle (Gaguin’s Mer des Chronicques, 1536, but much earlier), a spirited battle scene (Victoire du Roy contre les VÉnitiens, 1510), etc. But wherever we find illustrations in the text, there we are sure to light on a medley of old cuts (e.g. in Les grands chronicques de France, 1514, Gaguin’s Chronicques, 1516, and the Rozier historial, 1523), and it will be odds that Millet’s Destruction de Troie will be found contributing its woodcuts of the Trojan War as illustrations of French history. When an original cut of this period can be found, it seldom has the charm of the best work of the last five years of the fifteenth century, but is usually quite good; there is, for instance, a quite successful metal-cut with criblÉ background of Justinian in Council in an edition of his laws printed by Bocard for Petit in 1516, and some of the liturgical cuts are admirable. There is thus no reason to impute the falling off The inception of a new style must certainly be connected with the name of Geoffroi Tory, whose best work is to be found in his Books of Hours, which have already been described in an earlier chapter. Its predominant note is a rather thin elegance of outline, in which the height of the figures is usually somewhat exaggerated. Tory is supposed to have brought home this style after his visit to Italy, but its application to bookwork appears to have been his own idea. There is, indeed, a striking resemblance between the little cuts of Tory’s third Horae set, dated 8 February, 1529, and those in an Aldine Horae of October of the same year, but to the best of my belief Tory reckoned his year from 1 January, not in the old French style from Easter, and if so it was Tory who supplied the Aldine artist with a model, which indeed is a logical continuation of his editions of 1525 and 1527. It is greatly to be regretted that his own Champfleury of 1527 is so slightly illustrated. The little picture of Hercules Gallicus which comes in it is quite delightful. If any guide were in existence to the illustrated French books of the thirties in the sixteenth century it would probably be possible to trace the spread of Tory’s influence. In 1530 Simon Colines illustrated Jean Ruel’s Veterinaria Medicina with a good enough cut in the old French style slightly modified. For the same author’s De Natura Stirpium of 1536 he provided a woodcut, of an alcove scene in a garden, the tone of which is quite new.
In 1543 appeared, again from the press of Denis Janot, “imprimeur du Roy en langue franÇoise,” another emblem book, Le Tableau de Cebes de Thebes, ancien philosophe & disciple de Socrate: auquel est paincte de ses couleurs, la uraye image de la vie humaine, & quelle uoye l’homme In 1545 we find this same style of design and cutting on a larger scale in Les dix premiers livres de l’Iliade d’HomÈre, Prince des Poetes, traduictz en vers FranÇois, par M. Hugues Salel, and printed by Iehan Loys for Vincent Sertenas. The cuts are in two sizes, the smaller being surrounded with Toryesque borders. It is difficult to pass any judgment other than one of praise on such delicate work. Nevertheless, just as the fanfare style of binding used by Nicolas Eve, with its profuse repetition of small tools, is much more effective on a small book cover than on a large, so here we may well feel that some bolder and clearer design would be better suited to the illustration of a folio. In the title-cut here shown (Plate XXVI) a rather larger style is attempted with good results. The year after the Homer there appeared at Paris from the press of Jacques Kerver a French translation of the Hypnerotomachia by Jean Martin. This is one of the most interesting cases of the rehandling of woodcuts, the arrangement of the original designs being closely followed, while the tone is completely changed by the substitution of the tall rather thin figures which had become fashionable in French woodcuts for the short and rather plump ones of the Venetian edition, and by similar changes in the treatment of landscape. In the second half of the century at Paris excellent woodcut portraits, mostly in an oval frame, are sometimes found on titlepages, and in other cases decoration is supplied by a neatly cut device. Where illustrations are needed for the explanation of works on hunting or any other subjects they are mostly well drawn and cut. But At Lyon, as at Paris, at the beginning of the century the store of fifteenth century cuts was freely drawn on for popular editions. Considerable influence, however, was exercised at first by Italian models, afterwards by Germany, so that while in the early sixteenth century Latin Bibles the cuts are mostly copied from Giunta’s Malermi Bible, these were gradually superseded by German cuts, which Anton Koberger supplied to the Lyonnese printers who worked for him. While in Italy the small octavos popularized by Aldus continued to hold their own, in France, from about 1530, editions in 32° came rapidly into fashion, and about the middle of the century these were especially the vogue at Lyon, the publishers often casing them in very gay little trade bindings sometimes stamped in gold, but often with painted interlacements. The publication by the Trechsels in 1538 of the two Holbein books, the Dance of Death and illustrations to the Old Testament, must have given an impetus to picture-making at Lyon, but this was at first chiefly visible in illustrated Bibles and New Testaments. Gilles Corrozet, who had written the verses for both the Holbein books, continued his career, as we have seen, at Paris. The most typical Lyonnese illustrated books were the rival editions of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in French, one printed by MacÉ Bonhomme in 1556, with borders to every page and little cuts measuring about 1½ in. by 2, and a similar edition (reissued in Dutch and Italian) of the next year from the press of Jean de Tournes, the borders and little pictures in which are attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1557 De Tournes issued also the Devises HÉroiques of Claude Paradin, and he was also the publisher of a Calendrier Historial, a memorandum book charmingly decorated with cuts of the seasons. Partly owing to religious troubles the book trade at Lyon soon after this rapidly declined, but the French style was carried on for a while at Antwerp by Christopher 44 Mr. Dodgson also ascribes to Traut the illustrations in the Legend des heyligen vatters Francisci (Nuremberg, 1512), and some of the cuts in the Theuerdank (1517). 45 Including perhaps the four sets of decorative capitals attributed to Holbein, one ornamental, the others representing a Dance of Peasants, Children, and a Dance of Death. CHAPTER XII PRINTING IN ENGLAND (1476-1580)46 Something has already been written about the earliest English books on the scale to which they are entitled in a rapid survey of European incunabula. We may now consider them more in detail as befits a book written in English.
William Caxton, a Kentishman, born about 1420, had been brought up as a mercer in the city of London, and the relations between the English wooltraders and the clothmakers of Flanders being very intimate, he had, as he tells us himself, passed thirty years of his life (in round numbers the years from twenty years of age to fifty) “for the most part in Brabant, Flanders, Holland, and Zealand.” During the last few years of this time he had held the important position of Governor of the English merchants at Bruges, but about 1469 he surrendered this in order to become secretary to Edward IV’s sister, Margaret, wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Some years before this, Raoul LefÈvre, chaplain to the Duke’s predecessor, had compiled an epitome of the histories of Troy, Le Recueil des histoires de Troye, and in March, 1469, Caxton amused himself by beginning to translate this into English. Dissatisfied with the result he laid it on one side, but was bidden by his patroness, the Duchess, to continue his work. This he finished on 19 September, 1471, while staying at Cologne. According to a distinct statement by Wynkyn de Worde, whom (at least as early as 1480) he employed as his foreman, Caxton printed at Cologne “himself to avaunce” the first Latin edition of the De Proprietatibus Rerum, a kind of Caxton does not seem to have followed up this beginning at all quickly, and it was not till printing had been brought much nearer to Bruges by the starting of presses at Alost in 1473 and at Louvain in 1474 that he was stirred to action. The first printer at Louvain was Jan Veldener, who worked there from 1474 to 1477, and Mr. Gordon Duff conjectures that Caxton may have received some help from him. There is no doubt, however, that his partner at Bruges was Colard Mansion, a skilled for as moche as in the wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery and not stedfast, myn eyen dimmed with ouer-moche lokyng on the whit paper ... and also because I haue promysid to dyuerce gentilmen and to my frendes to adresse to hem as hastily as I myght this sayd book. Therfore I haue practysed & lerned at my grete charge and dispence to ordeyne this saide book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see. There is nothing here to encourage the idea which Mr. Proctor seems to have entertained that Colard Mansion had already begun work on his own account, and that Caxton obtained his help for his English books. It seems more likely that it was Caxton who made the start, and that the first two books printed at Bruges were both in English, the first being the Recuyell, and the second The Game and Pleye of the Chesse, a translation of a moral treatise in which the functions of the chessmen were used as texts for sermonizing, written in Latin by Jacobus de Cessolis. After this a new type was cut and another didactic book, Les Quatre DerenniÈres Choses, a treatise of the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven) printed in it in French. These three books probably appeared in 1475 and the early months of 1476. By this time Charles the Bold was picking a quarrel with the Swiss, and his disastrous defeat at Morat on 21 June, 1476, must have powerfully quickened the desire with which we may reasonably credit Caxton, of being the first printer in his native land. He made arrangements to rent a shop in the Sanctuary at Westminster from the following Michaelmas and departed for England, taking with him the newer of the two types and leaving the older one to Colard Mansion, who printed with it the original French of LefÈvre’s Recueil des histoires de Troye, and the same author’s Les Fais et prouesses du The first dated book produced by Caxton in England was The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers, a translation by Earl Rivers (the brother of Edward IV’s queen) from a French version of an anonymous Latin book of the fourteenth century. Caxton was entrusted by the Earl with the oversight of the translation, and contributed to it an amusing Epilogue, in which he gives some unfavourable remarks about women attributed to Socrates, with his own comments. The Epilogue is dated 1477, and in one copy more minutely, 18 November. Though this is the first dated English book, it cannot be said that it was the first book printed in England, as it was probably preceded both by Caxton’s English version of LefÈvre’s Jason, and also by some of the thin quartos in the same type. Among the earlier books printed by Caxton after he set up his press at Westminster was Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, of which later on he printed a second edition which he imagined to be from a better text, and ornamented with clumsy pictures of the pilgrims. He printed also in separate volumes most of Chaucer’s other works, including his translation of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; also Gower’s Confessio Amantis, some of the shorter poems of Lydgate, Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, and several translations of French romances (Charles the Great, Paris and Vienne, the Four Sons of Aymon, etc.), translations of Aesop and of Reynard the Fox, Higden’s Polychronicon, and the Chronicles of England, the Golden Legend (the name given to the great collection of Lives of the Saints by Jacobus de Voragine), several editions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, a Latin Psalter, a decorative edition of the Prayers called the Fifteen Oes with a border to every page (see Plate XXVII), numerous moral treatises and books of devotion, and several Indulgences. In all just one hundred books and documents issued from his press, printed in eight different During Caxton’s lifetime only one other Englishman set up a press, an anonymous schoolmaster at St. Albans, who began work in 1480 (possibly in 1479) and printed till 1486, producing first six scholastic books and then two English ones. He appears to have borrowed some type from Caxton, so that it was presumably with the latter’s goodwill that he reprinted his version of the Chronicles of England, adding thereto an appendix entitled Fructus Temporum, or Fruits of Time. It is from Wynkyn de Worde’s reprint of this edition in 1497 that we obtain our only knowledge of the printer, for we are there told that it was “compiled in a booke and also enprynted by one sometyme scolemayster of saynt Albons, on whose soule God haue mercy.” His other popular book was that famous trio of treatises Of Haukyng and Huntyng and also of Cootarmuris, commonly known as the Book of St. Albans. The second treatise, which is in metre, ends with the words “Explicit Dam Julyan Barnes in her boke of huntyng,” and this is the only basis for the popular attribution of all three treatises to a hypothetical Juliana Bernes or Berners, who is supposed to have been the daughter of Sir James Berners (executed in 1388), and Prioress of the Nunnery of Sopwell, Between 1478 and 1486 or ’87, some seventeen books were printed at Oxford by Theodoric Rood of Cologne, who towards the end of his career was in partnership with an English bookseller named Thomas Hunte. The earliest of his books,48 all of which are in Latin, was an Exposition on the Apostles’ Creed wrongly attributed to S. Jerome. By the accidental omission of an X this is dated MCCCCLXVIII, i.e. 1468, but such misprints are common in early books, and no one now maintains that it was printed until ten years later. Among the other books printed at Oxford we may note an edition of Cicero’s Pro Milone, the spurious Letters of Phalaris, and a very large folio, Lyndewode’s Provincial Constitutions of the English Church. That the Oxford press came to an end so soon and that none was started at Cambridge during the fifteenth century may be attributed to a statute of Richard III’s permitting the free importation of books into England. Although this measure was amply justified by the interests of learning, it made it practically impossible for any scholastic press to maintain itself in the limited English market against the competition of the fine editions which could be imported from Italy. Caxton’s press was at Westminster, which in the fifteenth century was much more sharply distinguished for business purposes from the city of London than it is After 1482 Lettou was joined by William of Mechlin, or Malines, in Belgium, usually known by the Latin name of his birthplace, Machlinia. Lettou and Machlinia printed five law books together, and then Lettou disappears and Machlinia in 1483 started working by himself, at first at a house near the bridge over the Fleet, where he printed eight books, and then in Holborn, where he printed fourteen. When working by himself he printed in addition to law books some works of a more popular character, a Book of Hours, the Revelation to a Monk of Evesham,49 Speculum Christiani (a devotional work interspersed with English verse), the Chronicles of England, and several editions of “A little treatise against the Pestilence” by a certain Bishop Canutus of Aarhus. One of these editions was the first English book which has a titlepage. It is printed in two lines, and reads:— “A passing gode lityll boke necessarye & The exact date at which Machlinia died, or gave up work, is not known. He was printing in 1486, but his books after that are undated. We may take 1490 or a little Up to the death of Caxton the only native English printer besides himself was the unidentified schoolmaster-printer at St. Albans, Thomas Hunte, who joined Theodoricus Rood at Oxford, being only a stationer. After his death, for over twenty years there was no native Englishman at work as a master printer50 at all. Two of the three presses at work were in the hands of Wynkyn de Worde of Lorraine and Richard Pynson of Normandy, and the third was worked for some time with two French partners by Julyan Notary, who was probably a Frenchman himself, since in 1498 he spells his name as Notaire. By far the most prolific of these three firms was that of Wynkyn de Worde, who was born, as his name implies, at Worth, now in Alsace, but formerly part of the Duchy of Lorraine. He probably came to England with Caxton in 1476, since we hear of him as early as 1480 in a legal document about a house. After Caxton’s death De Worde made a cautious start, only issuing five books in the first two years and not putting his own name in an imprint until 1494. By the end of the century, however, he had printed 110 books of which copies or fragments survive, and by the time of his death in 1534 the number had risen to 800, an extraordinarily high total, more especially when it is remembered that the small quarto editions of romances and popular works of devotion, of which he printed a great many, were peculiarly likely to be thumbed to pieces, so that his actual output was probably much greater. As far as his choice of books was concerned In 1500 De Worde moved from Caxton’s house at Westminster to the sign of the Sun in Fleet Street, perhaps for the greater protection offered by the city against attacks by anti-alien mobs. In 1508 he was appointed printer to the Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII, a very old lady, who died the following year. De Worde himself must have been a very old man at his death towards the end of 1534 or early in January, 1535, as he had by that time been at work in England for between fifty and sixty years. Towards the end of his life he seems to have had some of his books printed for him by John Skot, and Robert Copland was also employed in his business. The output of Richard Pynson was only about half that of Wynkyn de Worde, and his taxable property amounted to only £60 against over £200 at which De Worde was assessed. Nevertheless the fact that for the last twenty-two years of his life (1508-30) he was the King’s Printer helped to procure him a few important books, and also kept his workmanship at a considerably higher standard. As already mentioned, he probably came to England about 1490 and took over Machlinia’s stock, employing Guillaume Le Talleur of Rouen to print two law books for him while his own Julian Notary’s business was on a far smaller scale than those of Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson, for less than fifty books are known to have been printed by him. Summing up the work of these printers who were active before 1500, we may note that Caxton printed 100 books and editions that have come down to us; De Worde 110 before 1500, about 800 altogether; Pynson 88 before 1500, nearly 400 altogether; Notary about 8 before 1500, and 48 altogether; Lettou and Machlinia about 30, Oxford 17, St. Albans 8. Thus the total number of English incunabula at present known is about 360, but Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde were both large printers in the sixteenth century. As we have seen, Pynson became King’s Printer in 1508. He had been preceded in that office by William Faques, who like himself was a Norman, and was the first to hold the title. He was worthy of the distinction, for though he only printed eight books and documents that have come down to us, his work was very good. His dated books belong to the year 1504, when he printed a proclamation against clipped money, with a fine initial H and some neat woodcuts of coins; also a beautiful little With Robert Copland we come to the first native English printer after Caxton and the schoolmaster of St. Albans. Copland is rather an interesting person, who made translations and wrote prefaces and addresses to the reader in verse, besides printing books. His name occurs in the imprints of only twelve books, spread over twenty-two years, 1514-35, the explanation being that he was probably working for De Worde during this time, and only occasionally indulged in a private venture. After a long interval he printed two books for Andrew Borde in 1547-8, and appears to have died while the second was in progress. He was succeeded by William Copland, probably his son, who printed numerous romances and other entertaining books, and died in 1568 or 1569. At intervals during the years 1516-28, John Rastell, an Oxford graduate, barrister of Lincoln’s Inn and brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, issued nine dated law books. In 1526 he printed two jest books, in 1529 he became involved in religious controversy on the Protestant side, and died in poverty and prison in 1536. Altogether some forty books are attributed to him, including some plays, which may perhaps rather have been printed by his son William. William Rastell was also a lawyer, and not sharing his father’s Protestantism, became a Judge of the Queen’s Bench under Mary, on whose death he fled to Louvain. As a printer he worked only from 1530 to 1534, printing over thirty books, including several works by his uncle, Sir Thomas More, and five plays by John Heywood. Between 1518 and 1524 Henry Pepwell printed a few popular books at the sign of the Trinity in S. Paul’s Churchyard; for the rest of his life he appears to have been only a stationer. John Skot, who printed at four different addresses in the city of London between 1521 and 1537, worked partly for De Worde, partly on his own account, printing upwards of thirty books for himself, a few of them legal, the rest popular English books. Two printers began to issue books in 1523. Robert Bankes, who turned out a few popular books in his first six years, was then silent for a time, and reappears in the religious controversies of 1539-42, and Robert Redman, who seems to have followed in Pynson’s footsteps both in S. Clement’s Without Temple Bar and at the sign of the George. In his office of Royal Printer Pynson was succeeded by Thomas Berthelet, or Bartlet, who had probably worked with him for upwards of ten years before starting on his own account in Fleet Street at the sign of Lucrece in 1528. We know of altogether about 400 pieces of printing from his press, but a large proportion of these consists of editions of the Statutes and Proclamations. For the Proclamations some of Berthelet’s bills survive, and we learn that he charged a penny a piece for them, and imported his paper from Genoa. With his official printing must be reckoned his editions of the Necessary Doctrine of a Christian Man, issued with the royal sanction on 29 May, 1543. In order to produce sufficient copies of this he printed it simultaneously eight times over, all eight editions bearing the same date. Of the books which he printed on his own account the place of honour must be given to his handsome edition of Gower’s Confessio Amantis in an excellent black-letter type in 1532, and the various works of Sir John Eliot, all of which came from his press. On the accession of Edward VI Berthelet ceased to be Royal Printer, the post being given to Grafton. Berthelet died in September, 1555, leaving considerable property. He was buried as an Esquire with pennon and coat armour Richard Grafton, who succeeded Berthelet as Royal Printer, had a very chequered career. He was originally a member of the Grocers’ Company, and, in conjunction with Edward Whitchurch and Anthony Marler of the Haberdashers’ Company, superintended the printing of the English Bible of 1537, probably at Antwerp, and that of 1539 by FranÇois Regnault at Paris. When Bible-printing was permitted in England Grafton and Whitchurch shared between them the printing of the six editions of the Great Bible during 1540 and 1541. But when Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the chief promoter of Bible-printing, was beheaded, Grafton was himself imprisoned. In 1544, on the other hand, he and Whitchurch obtained an exclusive patent for printing Primers, and before Henry VIII’s death Grafton was appointed printer to the Prince of Wales. Thus when Edward became king Grafton displaced Berthelet as Royal Printer, and henceforth had time for little save official work. Five editions of the Homilies and seven of Injunctions, all dated 31 July, 1547, were issued from his presses; in 1548 he published Halle’s Union of Lancaster and York and several editions of the Order of Communion and Statutes; in 1549 came two Bibles and five editions of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI; in 1550 a reprint of Halle and an edition of Marbeck’s Book of Common Prayer noted; in 1551 Wilson’s Rule of Reason; in 1552 six editions of the second Prayer Book of Edward VI, and more Statutes. Proclamation-work, of course, went on steadily throughout the reign, and on Edward’s death Grafton printed the enormously long document by which the adherents of Lady Jane Grey tried to justify her claim to the Crown. He did his work very handsomely, but on the triumph of Mary, though he impartially printed a proclamation for her nine days after “Queen Jane’s,” he naturally lost his post and might easily have lost his head also. For the rest of his life he was mainly occupied While Grafton was the King’s printer for English books, the post of Royal Printer in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew had been conferred in 1547 on Reginald or Reyner Wolfe. Wolfe, who had come to England from Gelderland, was at first a bookseller, and was employed by various distinguished persons as a letter-carrier between England and Germany. When he set up as a printer in 1542, with type which he seems to have obtained from a relative at Frankfort, he was employed by the great antiquary, John Leland, and by John Cheke, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, for whom he printed in 1543 two Homilies of S. Chrysostom in Greek and Latin, this being the first Greek work printed in England. During Edward VI’s reign he does not seem to have been given much to do in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, but printed Cranmer’s Defence of the Sacrament and Answer unto a Crafty Cavillation. After keeping quiet during Mary’s reign he enjoyed the patronage of Elizabeth and Archbishop Parker, and lived, like Grafton, till 1573. Though he never worked on a large scale, Wolfe certainly raised the standard of printing in England. In John Day it is pleasant to come to a native Englishman who did equally good work, and that in a larger way of business. Day was a Suffolk man, born in 1522 at Dunwich, a town over which the sea now rolls. He began printing in partnership with William Seres as early as 1546, but, save some fairly good editions of the Bible, produced nothing of importance during this period. His first fine book, published in 1559, is The Cosmographicall Glasse, a work on surveying, by William Cunningham. This has a woodcut allegorical border to the titlepage, a fine portrait of Cunningham, a map of Norwich, and some good heraldic and pictorial capitals. Its text is printed throughout in large italics. The book thus broke away entirely from the old black-letter traditions of Richard Tottell was another printer of some importance. The son of an Exeter man, he began printing about 1553, and early in his career received a patent which gave him a monopoly of the publication of law books. These, to do him justice, he printed very well, and he also published a number of works of literary interest. Chief among these, and always associated with his name, is the famous Songs and Sonnets of Wyatt and Surrey and other Tudor poets, edited by Nicholas Grimald, but often quoted, for no very good reason, as Tottell’s Miscellany. To his credit must also be placed editions of Lydgate’s Falles of Princes, Hawes’s Pastime Henry Denham (1564-89), Henry Bynneman (1566-83), and Thomas Vautrollier (1566-88), and the latter’s successor, Richard Field, were the best printers of the rest of the century. Denham was an old apprentice of Tottell’s, who gave him some important books to print for him. Herbert remarks of him: “He was an exceeding neat printer, and the first who used the semicolon with propriety.” Among his more notable books were Grafton’s Chronicle (for Tottell and Toy, 1569), editions of the Olynthiac orations of Demosthenes in English (1570) and Latin (1571), An Alvearie or quadruple dictionarie containing foure sundrie tongues, namelie, English, Latine, Greeke, and French, with a pleasing titlepage showing the royal arms and a beehive (1580), Thomas Bentley’s The Monument of Matrons: containing seuen seuerall Lamps of Virginitie, a work in praise of piety and Queen Elizabeth (1582), Hunnis’s Seuen Sobs of a Sorrowfull Soule for Sinne, a metrical version of the penitential psalms (1585), and the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587). Henry Bynneman, though not so high in Archbishop Parker’s favour as John Day, was yet recommended by him to Burghley in 1569, and deserved his patronage by much good work. He printed an English version of Epictetus, Dr. Caius’s De Antiquitate Cantabrigiensis AcademiÆ (1568), a handsome book with the text in italics, according to the fashion of the day, Van der Noodt’s Theatre of Voluptuous Worldlings (1569), a Latin text of Virgil believed to be the first printed in Thomas Vautrollier, a French refugee, set up a press at Blackfriars, at which he printed several editions of the Prayer Book in Latin (Liber Precum Publicarum in Ecclesia Anglicana), and of the New Testament in Beza’s Latin version, for which latter he was granted a ten years’ privilege in 1574. In 1579 he printed two very notable works, Fenton’s translation of the History of Guicciardini and Sir Thomas North’s Plutarch, the latter being one of the handsomest of Elizabethan books. In 1580 and again in 1584 he went to Edinburgh, printing several books there in 1584 and 1585. His second visit is said to have been due to trouble which came upon him for printing the Spaccio della Bestia Triomphante of Giordano Bruno. His press at Blackfriars continued to work during his absence. His daughter Jakin married Richard Field, who succeeded to his house and business in 1588, and continued his excellent traditions. A company of stationers had existed in London since 1403, and in 1557 this was reconstituted and granted a Royal Charter. The object of the Crown was to secure greater control over printing, so that no inconvenient criticisms on matters of Church or State might be allowed to appear. The object of the leading printers and booksellers, who formed the court of the company, was to diminish competition, both illegitimate and legitimate. Both objects were to a very considerable degree attained. The quarter of a century which followed the grant of a charter witnessed a great improvement in the English standard of book production. Up to this time it seems probable that few English printers, who had not the royal patronage, had found their craft profitable. Caxton no doubt did very well for himself—as he richly deserved. He enjoyed the favour of successive kings, “The fifty years of freedom from 1484 to 1534 not only brought us the finest specimens of printing we possess, but compelled the native workman in self-protection to learn, and when competition was done away with his ambition rapidly died also. Once our English printing was protected, it sank to a level of badness which has lasted, with the exception of a few brilliant experiments, almost down to our own day.”54 As a rule, whatever Mr. Duff writes about English printing is incontrovertible, but this particular pronouncement seems curiously unfounded. Whether we consider what they printed or how they printed it, the work of the English presses from 1535-57 is better, not worse, than the work of the corresponding period, 1512-34. There is nothing in the earlier period to compare with the Great Bibles, and the books of Berthelet and Reyner Wolfe are fairly equal to those of Pynson. If we take 1557 as a fresh point of departure, the books issued from then to about 1580 present a still more remarkable advance. While the work of the rest of Europe deteriorated, that of England, in the hands of such men as Day, Denham, and Bynneman, improved, and alike for their typography, their illustrations and decorations and their scholarship, they surpass those of any previous period since the days of Caxton, and deserve far more attention from collectors than they have yet received. 46 For English provincial printing after 1500 see Chapter XIII. 47 A fourth treatise, that on Fishing with an Angle, is often included in the attribution with even less reason. This was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496, with the following curious explanation of its being tacked on to the Book of St. Albans: “And for by cause this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were enprynted allone by it self & put in a lytyll paunflet, therfore I haue compyled it in a greter volume of dyuerse bokys concernynge to gentyll & noble men, to the entent that the forsayd ydle persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fyshynge sholde not by this meane utterly destroye it.” 48 Two points may be noted about Rood: (i) he does not put his name in his earliest books, and as there is a change of type in his signed work, it is possible, though unlikely, that the books in type 1 are from another press; (ii) he is not to be identified, as was once proposed, with a certain Theodoricus of Cologne, lately proved by Dr. VoulliÈme to be Theodoricus Molner, a stepson of ther Hoernen. 49 The place-name here is an early misreading for “Eynsham.” 50 This statement should perhaps be modified to admit of the possibility that Julian Notary was English rather than French, as is generally assumed. 51 This and the Dives and Pauper of 1493 (which, until the discovery of the Doctrinale, was reckoned Pynson’s first dated book) and several other of his earliest editions were published partly at the expense of a merchant named John Rushe, who took six hundred copies of the Dives and the Boccaccio at 4s. apiece. See Two Lawsuits of Richard Pynson, by H. R. Plomer, in The Library, second series, Vol. X. 52 See The Library, second series, Vol. VIII, pp. 298 sqq. 53 In The Library, second series, Vol. IX, pp. 257-81. 54 “The Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders of Westminster and London, 1476-1535” (last paragraph).
CHAPTER XIII ENGLISH BOOKS PRINTED ELSEWHERE THAN AT LONDON During the fifteenth century presses were set up in more than fifty places in Germany, in more than seventy in Italy, in nearly forty in France, in more than twenty in the Netherlands, in twenty-four in Spain, in only three (counting London and Westminster as one) in England. In London and Westminster over 330 books are known to have been printed; in Oxford and St. Albans only twenty-five. The reason for this paucity of provincial printing in England must be found by the social historian. The beginning of the sixteenth century brought no change in the facts. For thirty years from March, 1487, there was no printing-press at Oxford. In December, 1517, a Latin commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle appeared with the imprint “Academia Oxonie,” and in four subsequent books, printed in 1518, the printer of this gave his name as Johannes Scolar. A fragment of a sixth book has lately been found at the British Museum. In 1519 Scolar’s place was taken by Carolus Kyrforth, who printed a Compotus, or small arithmetic book. A prognostication by Jaspar Laet may have been printed apparently either by Scolar or Kyrforth. After the appearance of these eight books there was no more printing at Oxford until a press was started there in 1585 by Joseph Barnes, under the auspices of the University. The last book of the Schoolmaster-printer appeared at St. Albans in 1486, and after this there was no more printing there until 1534. In that year, at the request of Abbot Catton, a printer named John Hertfort, or Herford, printed there The At York a Directorium was printed by Hugo Goes, and there is a seventeenth century reference to a Donatus minor and Accidence from his press. Three small books are also known to have been printed by Ursyn Mylner in 1514 and 1516. Previous to this, in or about 1507, an Expositio hymnorum et sequentiarum for use at York had been printed at Rouen by Pierre Violette for a stationer named Gerard Freez (also known as Gerard Wandsforth), who died in 1510. This Gerard Freez had a brother Frederick, who is described not only as a bookbinder and stationer, but as a printer, and may therefore have printed books which have perished without leaving any trace behind them. But the only extant York books of the sixteenth century are the Directorium of 1507, two small service-books of 1513, and a little grammatical work in 1516. After this there was no more printing in York until 1642. At Cambridge a stationer named John Laer, of Siberch, i.e. Siegburg, near Cologne, settled, in or about 1520, and acted as publisher to an edition of Croke’s Introductiones in Rudimenta GrÆca, printed at Cologne by Eucharius Cervicornus. After this, in 1521 and 1522, Siberch himself printed nine small books at Cambridge, the first of them being a Latin speech by Henry Bullock addressed At Tavistock in 1525 a monk named Thomas Richard printed a translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae for “the ryght worschypful esquyer Mayster Robert Langdon.” Nine years later, in 1534, the same press printed the Statutes concerning the Devonshire Stannaries or Tin Mines. These are the only two early books known to have been printed at Tavistock. At Abingdon in 1528, John Scolar, presumably the same man who had previously worked a few miles off at Oxford, printed a Portiforium or Breviary for the use of the monastery. No other early book is known to have been printed there. From 1539, when John Hertfort was summoned from St. Albans, to the end of the reign of Henry VIII, we know of no provincial printing in England. But on the accession of Edward VI the extreme Protestants who had fled from England to the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, came flocking back, and some of them seem to have stopped at Ipswich. Two, or perhaps three printers, all in the Protestant interest, worked there in the first few months of the new reign. The first of these, Anthony Scoloker, printed seven books at Ipswich in 1547 and 1548, and then went on to London. The second, John Overton, brought over with him from Wesel the text of Bishop Bale’s Latin bibliography of the Illustrious Writers of Britain, printed there by Theodoricus Plateanus, otherwise Dirick van der Straten, and may or may not have printed at Ipswich two additional sheets, which he dated there 31 July, 1548.56 The third printer, John Oswen, On his arrival at Worcester late in 1548, or early in 1549, John Oswen obtained a special privilege from Edward VI for printing service-books for use in the Principality of Wales, and produced there three editions of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI and a New Testament. Besides these, from 1549 to 1553 he printed eighteen other books, mostly of controversial theology, calling himself in his imprints “Printer appoynted by the Kinges Maiestie for the Principalitie of Wales and the Marches of the same.” On the accession of Mary, it being no longer safe to print Protestant theology, Oswen’s press ceased working. At Canterbury in 1549 John Mychell, or Mitchell, who had moved there after producing a few books in London, printed an English psalter, “poynted as it shall be songe in churches.” During Edward’s reign Mychell printed at Canterbury altogether some twenty books and tracts, mostly more or less controversial treatises on the Protestant side. On the accession of Mary he ceased publishing till 1556, when his press was employed by Cardinal Pole to print his Articles of Visitation. The next year, by the charter granted to the Stationers’ Company, printing outside London was forbidden, the prohibition being subsequently relaxed in favour of the two Universities, although it was nearly thirty years before they availed themselves of their right. In the previous eighty years only about a hundred books57 had been produced at the provincial presses, and in the year in which the charter was granted it can hardly be said that any press outside London was in existence. The new regulation stood in the way of development, but it was a development for which there seems to have been little demand. We may see some slight confirmation of this (1) A Puritan press which printed various tracts on Church government, written by Thomas Cartwright. These were printed secretly in 1572 and 1573, first at Wandsworth, afterwards at Hempstead, near Saffron Walden, in Essex. The press was seized in August, 1573, and the type handed to Henry Bynneman, who, the next year, used it to reprint Cartwright’s attack, interpolating Whitgift’s replies in larger type. (2) A Jesuit press which printed for Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons in 1580 and 1581, first at Greenstreet House in East Ham, afterwards at Stonor Park, near Henley. The press was managed by Stephen Brinckley, who was ultimately captured and imprisoned for nearly two years. (3) The Puritan travelling press, from which issued the famous Martin Marprelate tracts in 1588 and 1589. Some of these were printed in East Molesey, in Surrey; others in the house of Sir Richard Knightley at Fawsley, near Daventry, others in that of Roger Wigston of Wolston Priory, between Coventry and Rugby. The chief printer of them was Robert Waldegrave, who eventually fled first to La Rochelle, where he may have printed one of the tracts, and then to Edinburgh, where he became a printer of some importance. While there was thus very little secret printing in England, exiled Protestants, Catholics, and Nonconformists all in turn made frequent recourse to foreign presses, and apparently succeeded in circulating their books in England. Religious repression, however, though the chief, was not the only cause of English books being printed abroad. From a very early time the superior skill of foreign printers had procured them many commissions to print service-books for the English market, alike on account of their greater accuracy, their In addition to service-books, a good many of the smaller Latin grammatical works were printed for the English market in France and the Low Countries, their destination being occasionally stated, but more often inferred from the appearance in them of English explanations of Latin words or phrases. A few attempts were also made to issue popular English works in competition with those produced at home. The most formidable of these rivalries was that of Gerard Leeu at Antwerp, who, Soon after 1500 another Antwerp printer, Adriaen von Berghen, in addition to Holt’s Lac Puerorum, published the commonplace book of a London merchant which passes under the name of Arnold’s Chronicle, and is famous as containing the earliest text of the Nutbrown Maid. A little later still, Jan van Doesborch was at work at the same place, and between 1505 and 1530 produced at least eighteen popular English books, including Tyll Howleglas, Virgilius the Magician, Robin Hood, and an account of recent discoveries entitled, “Of the new landes and of the people found by the messengers of the kynge of portyngale named Emanuel.” Doesborch’s books are poorly printed and illustrated, but his texts are not noticeably worse than those in contemporary editions published in England. The reverse is the case with two English books produced (1503) by the famous Paris publisher, Antoine VÉrard, The traitte of god lyuyng and good deying and The Kalendayr of Shyppars. These have the illustrations which book-lovers prize so highly in the Kalendrier des Bergers and Art de bien viure et de bien mourir, but the translations seem to have been made by a Scot, only less ill equipped in Scottish than in French. In a third translation, from Pierre Gringore’s Chasteau de Labeur, VÉrard was more fortunate, for the Castell of Labour was rendered into (for that unpoetical period) very passable verse by Alexander Barclay. VÉrard, however, had no cause to congratulate himself, for both Pynson and De Worde reprinted Barclay’s translation with copies of the woodcuts, and the other two It may be supposed that the Act of 1534, restricting the importation of foreign books into England, finally put an end to competition of the kind which Leeu, VÉrard, and Doesborch had attempted. But isolated English books have continued to appear abroad down to our own day, and form a miscellaneous, but curious and interesting appendix in the great volume of the English book trade. From 1525 onwards, however, until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, compared with the masses of theological books alternately by Protestant and Roman Catholic English exiles, printed in the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and France, the output of secular work sinks into insignificance. The stream begins with Tyndale’s New Testament, of which a few sheets were printed at Cologne (see Plate XXVIII), two editions at Worms, and half a dozen or more at Antwerp before it was suffered to appear in England. The first English Bible is believed to have been printed (1535) by Christopher Froschauer at Zurich, the second (1537) at Antwerp, the third (1539) was begun at Paris and completed in England. Besides their New Testaments, Tyndale and George Joy published a good many controversial works at Antwerp. In the next generation the city became one of the strongholds of the Romanist exiles after the accession of Elizabeth, and Hans de Laet, John Fouler, Willem Sylvius, and Gillis van Diest the younger were frequently called on in 1564-6 to provide paper and print for Stapleton, Harding, William Rastell, and the other antagonists of Bishop Jewel. In 1528 and the following year books by Tyndale, Roy, and Frith appeared purporting to be printed by “Hans Luft at Malborowe in the land of Hesse.” A later book with this imprint has been shown by Mr. Sayle to have been printed at Antwerp; whether these earlier works were really produced at Marburg, or, as has been conjectured, at Cologne, or again at Hamburg, is In 1574 we encounter at Amsterdam a curious group of nine little books “translated out of Base-Almayne into English,” in which Hendrik Niclas preached the doctrines of the “Family of Love.” From that time onwards a good deal of theological literature on the Protestant side was published by Amsterdam presses. Richard Schilders at Middelburg was also an extensive publisher of this class of book. Presses at Leyden and Dort made similar contributions, but on a smaller scale. On the Roman Catholic side the head-quarters of propagandist literature, as we have seen, were at first at Antwerp and Louvain, at both of which places John Fouler had presses. In the ’eighties the existence of the English college at Rheims caused several Catholic books to be printed there, notably the translation of the New Testament which was made in the college itself. For like reasons much Catholic literature was published from 1602 onwards at St. Omer, and from 1604 onwards at Douai. Books of the same class, though in smaller numbers, appeared also at Paris and Rouen. Individually the books from the presses we have been naming, both on the Romanist and the Puritan side, are It was doubtless the existence of these foreign safety-valves which rendered the course of English printing after the grant of a charter to the Stationers’ Company so smooth and uneventful.60 Two violations of the terms of the charter were winked at or authorized, in some way not known to us, by the Crown. The first of these was the printing of a few books for the use of foreign refugees by Antony de Solempne at Norwich. Most of these books were in Dutch, but in 1569 Antony Corranus, previously pastor of the Spanish Protestant congregation at Antwerp, published through de Solempne certain broadside tables De Operibus Dei in Latin, French, Dutch, and English, of which copies only of the first and second have been traced. In 1570 another English broadside commemorated the execution at Norwich of Thomas Brooke. Archbishop Parker seems to have resented the publication, unexamined, of the De Operibus Dei, but de Solempne placed the royal arms and a loyal motto (Godt bewaer de Coninginne Elizabeth) on some of his books, and seems in some way or another to have secured the Queen’s protection. Mr. Allnutt, to whose exhaustive articles on “English Provincial Printing” in the second volume of Bibliographica all subsequent writers on the subject must needs be indebted, conscientiously includes among his That printing at Oxford made a new start in 1585 was due no doubt to the example of Cambridge, which two years earlier had at last acted on a patent for printing granted by Henry VIII in 1534, the year, it will be remembered, in which restrictions were placed on the importation of foreign books on account of the proficiency in the art to which Englishmen were supposed to have attained. In the interim Printers to the University seem to have been appointed, but it was not till 1583 that a press was set up, whereupon, as soon as a single book had been printed, it was promptly seized by the Stationers’ Company of London as an infringement of the monopoly granted by their charter. Although the Bishop of London seems to have backed up the Stationers, Lord Burghley (the Chancellor of the University) and the Master of the Rolls secured the recognition of the rights of the University. Forty years later they were again attacked by the Stationers, and the Privy Council forbade the Cambridge printer to print Bibles, Prayer Books, Psalters, Grammars, or Books of Common Law, but in 1628 the judges pronounced strongly in favour of the full rights of the University, and the next year these were recognized with some modifications by the Privy Council. While Burghley was Chancellor of Cambridge, Dudley, Earl of Leicester, held the Oxford Chancellorship, and doubtless felt that, charter or no charter, it concerned his honour to see that his University should be allowed all the privileges possessed by the other. Under his auspices a press was started late in 1584 or early in 1585 by Joseph Barnes, an Oxford bookseller, to whom the University lent £100 to enable him to procure the necessary equipment, and on Leicester’s visiting the University on 11 January, 1585, a Carmen gratulatorium in four elegiac couplets was presented to him, printed on an octavo leaf at the new press. The first book to appear was a Speculum Moralium Quaestionum in uniuersam Ethicen Aristotelis, by John Case, a former fellow of S. John’s, with a dedication to Leicester by the author and another by the printer. In the latter the promise was made “ea solum ex his prÆlis in lucem venient que sapientum calculis approbentur & Sybille foliis sint veriora,” but the remaining publications of the year were a polemical treatise by Thomas Billson, two issues of a Protestant adaptation of the Booke of Christian exercise appertaining to Resolution, by Robert Persons, the Jesuit, and two sermons. In 1586 no fewer than seventeen books were printed (a number not again attained for several years), and among them was an edition of six homilies of S. Chrysostom, “primitiÆ typographi nostri in grÆcis literis preli.” After this the Similar causes to those which brought about the sudden increase in the Oxford output in 1642 led to the establishment of presses at Newcastle and York. In 1639, when Charles I marched against the Scots, his head-quarters were at Newcastle, and the Royal Printer, Robert Barker,61 printed there a sermon by the Bishop of Durham, the Lawes and Ordinances of Warre, and some proclamations. In March, 1642, again Barker was Charles I left York on 16 August, 1642, and six days later the Royal Standard was raised at Nottingham. His Majesties Instructions to his Commissioners of Array, dated “at our Court at Nottingham, 29th August, 1642,” were printed by Barker at York. Two days later the King ordered that the press should be brought to Nottingham, but we next hear of Barker at Shrewsbury, where he served the King’s immediate needs, and then remained at work for the rest of the year and the greater part of 1643 reprinting Oxford editions and publishing other royalist literature. After the capture of Bristol for the King on 2 August he removed once more and printed there during 1644 and 1645. During the confusion of the Civil War an Exeter stationer, Thomas Hunt (the local publisher of Herrick’s Hesperides), had a book printed for him—Thomas Fuller’s Good Thoughts in Bad Times—which is described in the dedication as the “First Fruits of the Exeter Presse,” and another is said to have been printed there in 1648. But we hear of no other presses being set up. After the Restoration printing was allowed to continue at York. Otherwise provincial printing outside the Universities was once more non-existent. The arrival of William of Orange caused some broadsides to be printed at Exeter in 1688, and in the same year Thomas Tillier printed at Chester, not only An account of a late As a side-consequence of the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695, it became possible for any private person to buy a printing press, hire a journeyman printer, and start printing any books he pleased. Several private presses were thus set up during the second half of the eighteenth century, the most famous of them being that of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham. Walpole started in 1757 by printing two of the Odes of his friend Gray, and at intervals during the next twenty-seven years printed several of his own works, and a few other books, of which an edition of Grammont’s MÉmoires was the most important. Walpole’s example was followed by George Allan, M.P. for Durham, and Francis Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk; also in the nineteenth century by Thomas Johnes, who printed his translation of Froissart Passing north of the Tweed, where the most formidable competitors of the London printers now abide, we find the first Scottish press at work at Edinburgh in 1508. In September of the previous year Andrew Myllar, a bookseller who had gained some experience of printing at Rouen, and Walter Chapman, a merchant, had been granted leave to import a press, chiefly that they might print an Aberdeen Breviary, which duly appeared in 1509-10. The books which anticipated it in 1508 were a number of thin quartos, The Maying or Disport of Chaucer, dated 4 April, the Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane, dated 8 April, the Porteous of Noblenes, “translated out of franche in scottis be The next printer of whom we have certain information is Thomas Davidson, who in February, 1541 (1542), produced a handsome edition of The New Actis and Constitutionis of Parliament maid be the Rycht Excellent Prince Iames the Fift. This was his only dated book, but he issued also a fine edition of The hystory and croniklis of Scotland, translated by “Johne Bellenden, Archdene of Murray, chanon of Ros,” from the Latin of Hector Boece, and some smaller works. The next Scottish printer is John Scot, whom the Since John Scot printed mainly on the Catholic side, the Protestant General Assembly in December, 1562, started a printer in opposition to him, Robert Lekpreuik, lending him “twa hundreth pounds to help to buy irons, ink and papper and to fie craftesmen for printing.” He had previously, in 1561, like Scot, printed the Confession of the Faith, also Robert Noruell’s Meroure of an Chr[i]stiane and an Oration by Beza. The grant allowed him was in connection with an edition of the Psalms, which eventually appeared in 1565, together with the Form of Prayer and Ministration of the Sacraments used in the English Church at Geneva and the Catechism (dated 1564). Lekpreuik continued active till 1574, and after an interval issued three books in 1581 and perhaps one in 1582. In Mr. Aldis’s List he is credited with ninety-one publications (mostly controversial) as against four assigned to Davidson and fifteen to Scot. During 1571 he printed Thomas Bassandyne, who had previously published books at Edinburgh, began printing there in 1572. He produced but ten (extant) books and documents in all, but his name is famous from its connection with the first Scottish Bible, of which he produced the New Testament in 1576, the Old Testament being added, and the whole issued by his successor, Alexander Arbuthnot, in 1579. Besides the Bible, only five books were printed by Arbuthnot. Between 1574 and 1580 twenty-six were produced by John Ross, and on his death Henry Charteris, a bookseller, took over his material, and by the time of his death in 1599 had printed forty more. But the best Edinburgh work towards the end of the century was produced by two craftsmen from England, Thomas Vautrollier, who produced ten books in 1584-6, and Robert Waldegrave (1590-1603), who had to flee from England for his share in the Marprelate tracts, and during his thirteen years in Edinburgh issued 119 books. When Joseph Ames was desirous of obtaining information about early printing in Ireland he applied to a Dr. Rutty, of Dublin (apparently a Quaker), who could only furnish the name of a single book printed there before 1600, this being an edition of the Book of Common Prayer, which states that it is “Imprinted by Humphrey Powell, printer to the Kynges Maiesti, in his Highnesse realme of Ireland dwellyng in the citie of Dublin in the greate toure by the Crane. Cum Privilegio ad imprimendum solum. Anno Domini MDLI.” We know from the records of the English Privy Council that Humphrey Powell, an inconspicuous English printer, was granted £20 in July, 1550, “towards his setting up in Ireland,” and this Prayer Book was doubtless the first fruits of his press. Powell remained in Dublin for fifteen years, but the only other products of his press still in existence are two proclamations, one issued in 1561 In 1571 John O’Kearney, Treasurer of St. Patrick’s, was presented with a fount of Irish type by Queen Elizabeth, and a Catechism by him and a broadside poem on the Last Judgment, by Philip, son of Conn Crosach, both in Irish type, are still extant. But there seems to be no trustworthy information as to where they were printed, though it was probably at Dublin. An Almanac, giving the longitude and latitude for Dublin, for the year 1587, appears to have been printed at London. But in 1595 William Kearney printed a Proclamation against the Earl of Tyrone and his adherents in Ireland “in the Cathedrall Church of the Blessed Trinitie, Dublin.” We reach continuous firm ground in 1600 when John Francke, or Franckton (as he called himself in 1602 and thenceforward), printed one or more proclamations at Dublin. In 1604 Franckton was appointed King’s Printer for Ireland, and he continued at work till 1618, when he assigned his patent to Felix Kyngston, Matthew Lownes, and Thomas Downes. Some four-and-twenty proclamations and upwards of a dozen books and pamphlets from his press are extant, some of them in Irish type. In 1620 the office of Printer-General for Ireland was granted for a period of twenty-one years to Kingston, Lownes, and Downes, all of them members of the London Stationers’ Company, and the usual imprint on the books they issued is that of the Company (1620-33) or Society (1633-42) of Stationers. They seem to have appointed an agent or factor to look after their interests, and the last of these factors, William Bladen, about 1642 took over the business. The earliest allusion to books printed in what afterwards became the United States of America occurs in the diary of John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay, The Massachusetts records make it probable that Day printed several books and documents now lost. An imperfect copy of Harvard Theses with the imprint “CantabrigiÆ Nov. Ang., Mens. 8 1643” is the next production of his press still extant. After this comes an historical document of some interest: “A Declaration of former passages and proceedings betwixt the English and the Narrowgansets, with their confederates, wherein the grounds and iustice of the ensuing warre are opened and cleared. Published by order of the Commissioners for the United Colonies. At Boston the 11 of the sixth month 1645.” Another broadside of Harvard Theses (for 1647) and a couple of almanacs for 1647 and 1648, the first of which has the imprint “Cambridge Printed by Matthew Daye and to be solde by Hez. Usher at Boston. 1647”, are the only other remnants of this stage of the press. Of Matthew Day nothing more is known. Samuel Green appears to have taken over Day’s business without any previous technical training, so that it is thought that Day may have helped him as a journeyman. The first book ascribed to Green is: A Platform of Church Discipline gathered out of the word of God: and agreed upon by the Elders: and Messengers of the Churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New-England. To be presented to the Churches and Generals Court for their consideration and acceptance in the Lord. The Eighth Moneth, Anno 1649. Printed by S.G. at Cambridge in New-England and are to be sold at Cambridge and Boston Anno Dom. 1649. His next extant piece of work is an almanac for 1650, his next the third edition (the second, as noted above, had been printed at London in 1647) of the Bay Psalter, “printed by Samuel Green at Cambridge in New-England, 1651.” This was followed in 1652 by Richard Mather’s The Summe of Certain Sermons upon Genes. During the progress of the Indian Bible Green had continued his English printing on his other press, and had produced among other things Propositions concerning the subject of Baptism collected by the Boston Synod, and bearing the imprint “Printed by S.G. for Hezekiah Vsher at Boston in New England 1662.” Printing at Boston itself does not appear to have begun until 1675, when John Foster, a Harvard graduate, was entrusted with the management of a press, and during that and the six following years printed there a number of books by Increase Mather and other ministers, as well as some almanacs. On his death in 1681 the press was entrusted to Samuel Sewall, who, however, abandoned it in 1684. Meanwhile, Samuel Green had continued to print at Cambridge, and his son, Samuel Green junior, is found working by assignment of Sewall and for other Boston booksellers. In 1690 his brother Bartholomew Green succeeded him, and remained the chief printer at Boston till his death in 1732. At Philadelphia, within three years of its foundation in 1683, a Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense, or America’s Messinger: being and [sic] almanack for the year of grace 1686, by Samuel Atkins, was issued with the imprint, “Printed and sold by William Bradford, sold also by the Author and H. Murrey in Philadelphia and Philip Richards in New York, 1685,” and in the same year there was published anonymously Thomas Budd’s Good Order established in Pennsilvania & New Jersey in America, being a true account of the country; with its produce and commodities there made. In 1686 Bradford printed An Epistle from John Burnyeat to Friends in Pensilvania and A General Epistle given forth by the people of the Lord called Quakers; in 1687 William Penn’s The Meanwhile, William Bradford had set up his press in New York in 1693, and obtained the appointment of Government Printer. His earliest productions there were a number of official Acts and Proclamations, on which he placed the imprint, “Printed and Sold by William Bradford, Printer to King William and Queen Mary, at the City of New York.” In 1700 he was apparently employed to print an anonymous answer to Increase Mather’s Order of the Gospel, and a heated controversy arose as to whether the refusal of Bartholomew Green to print it at Boston was due to excessive “awe” of the President of Harvard or to a more praiseworthy objection to anonymous attacks. Bradford remained New York’s only printer until 1726, when Johann Peter Zenger set up a press which became notable for the boldness with which it attacked the provincial government. Such attacks were not regarded with much toleration, nor indeed was the press even under official regulation greatly beloved by 55 Mr. Duff is no doubt right in his suggestion that this is A very declaration of the bond and free wyll of man: the obedyence of the gospell and what the gospell meaneth, of which a copy, with colophon, “Printed at Saint Albans,” is in the Spencer Collection at the John Rylands Library. This increases Hertfort’s total to eight. 56 Mr. Duff plausibly suggests that Overton’s name in the colophon was merely a device for surmounting the restrictions on the circulation in England of books printed abroad. 57 Those recorded by Mr. E. G. Duff in his Sandars Lectures on “The English Provincial Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders to 1557,” by my reckoning number 114. 58 This reckoning was made in 1896, but the proportion has not been substantially altered. 59 The colophon to the Chronicles which commemorates Leeu has already been quoted (p. 81). 60 Before the incorporation of the Company brought English printing more easily under supervision, at least a few books had been issued by English printers with spurious foreign imprints, of which the most impudent was “At Rome under the Castle of St. Angelo.” 61 Robert Barker himself was imprisoned for debt in the King’s Bench at London in 1635, and died there in 1646. What is here written applies to his deputy, who may have been his son of the same name. 62 The assertion by Mr. Charles Evans (American Bibliography, p. 3) that one of these, “the Crowninshield copy, was privately sold by Henry Stevens to the British Museum for £157 10s.,” despite its apparent precision, is an exasperating error.
CHAPTER XIV ENGLISH WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS A few illuminated manuscripts of English workmanship and a few with illustrations in outline have come down to us from the fifteenth century, but amid the weary wars with France and the still wearier struggles of Yorkists and Lancastrians, the artistic spirit which had been so prominent in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seems to have died out altogether. Until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or perhaps we should rather say until the advent of John Day, few English books were illustrated, and of these few quite a large proportion borrowed or copied their pictures from foreign originals. Nevertheless, English illustrated books are rightly sought after by English collectors, and though we may wish that they were better, we must give the best account of them we can. As we shall see in a later chapter, there is some probability that an engraving on copper was specially prepared for the first book printed by Caxton, The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye. For the present, however, we must concern ourselves only with illustrations on wood, or on soft metal cut in relief after the manner of wood, a difference of more interest to the technical student than to book-lovers. The first English books thus illustrated appear in or about 1481, the year in which Jean Du PrÉ began the use of cuts in Paris. England was thus fairly well to the front in point of time; it is the quality which is to seek. The first of these illustrated books was probably an undated edition of the Mirrour of the World, a translation of a French version of a Latin Speculum or Imago mundi. Besides some woodcut diagrams copied Apparently Caxton himself realized that these English-made woodcuts were a failure, for the only two important illustrated books which he issued after this, the Speculum Vitae Christi, printed about 1488 (see Plate XXIX), and the Fifteen Oes of a year or two later, both seem to be decorated with cuts of Flemish origin. The Fifteen Oes (a collection of fifteen prayers, each beginning with O), though I have called it important, is so mainly as proving that Caxton must have printed a Horae of the same measurements (of which it may, indeed, have formed a part), illustrated with a set of very spirited woodcuts, undoubtedly imported from Flanders and subsequently found in the possession of Wynkyn de Worde. That the cuts in the Speculum Vitae Christi are also Flemish is a degree less certain, but only a degree. Some of these were used again in the Royal Book, the Doctrinal of Sapience, and the Book of Divers Ghostly Matters. But the seven books which we have named are the only ones for which Caxton troubled to procure sets of cuts, and of these seven sets, as we have seen, one was certainly and another probably imported, one certainly and another probably copied, and only three are of English origin, and these the rudest and clumsiest. While our chief native printer made this poor record his contemporaries did no better. Lettou and Machlinia used no woodcuts which have come down to us save a small border, which passed into the possession of Pynson; for use at Oxford two sets of cuts were imported from the Low Countries, one which Mr. Gordon Duff thinks was originally designed for a Legenda Aurea, the other clearly meant for a Horae. These were used together in the Oxford edition of Mirk’s Liber Festivalis, and the cut of the author of the Legenda Aurea (Jacobus de Voragine) Wynkyn de Worde inherited Caxton’s stock of woodcuts, and early in his career used some of them again in reprints of the Golden Legend and Speculum Vitae Christi, and in his larger Horae used the full set of cuts which, while in Caxton’s hands, is only known from those which appear in the Fifteen Oes. About 1492 he purchased some ornamental capitals (Caxton had only used a single rather graceful rustic A) and one or more cuts from Govaert van Os of Gouda. In his 1494 edition of Walter Hylton’s Scala Perfectionis (the first book in which he put his name) he used a woodblock consisting of a picture of Christ suckled by His mother with a long woodcut inscription, part of which reads “Sit dulce nomen domini nostri ihesu christi et nomen genitricis virginis marie benedictum,” the whole surrounded by a graceful floral border. In 1495 came Higden’s Polychronicon with a few woodcut musical notes, the “hystorye of the deuoute and right renommed lyues of holy faders lyuynge in deserte” (usually quoted as the Vitas Patrum), with one large cut used six times and forty small ones used as 155, and about the same time a handsome edition of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum, with large cuts (two-thirds of the folio page) prefixed to each of the twenty-two books, apparently copied partly from those in a Dutch edition printed at Haarlem in 1485, partly from the illustrations (themselves not original) in a French edition printed at Lyon, of which Caxton, who finished the translation on his death-bed, had made use. In 1496, in reprinting the Book of St. Albans De Worde added a treatise on Fishing with an angle, to which he prefixed a cut of a happy angler
As we have already noted in Chapter XII, Wynkyn de Worde was singularly unenterprising as a publisher, and although he lived for nearly a quarter of a century after the accession of Henry VIII, during all this time he printed no new book which required copious illustration. On the other hand, he was a man of fixed habits, and one of these habits came to be the decoration of the titlepage of nearly every small quarto he issued with a woodcut of some kind or other, the title itself being sometimes printed on a riband above it. When a new picture was absolutely necessary for this purpose it was forthcoming and generally fairly well cut, but a few stock woodcuts, a schoolmaster holding a birch for grammatical books, a knight on horseback for a romance, etc., were used again and again, and often the block was picked out (we are tempted to say “at random,” but that would be an exaggeration) from one of the sets already described, which De Worde had commissioned in more lavish days. One of Richard Pynson’s earliest books was an edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales with about a score of woodcuts of the pilgrims obviously influenced by those in Caxton’s second edition, but in no way an improvement on them. It is true that not only is the miller again allowed his bagpipe, but a little mill is placed in the corner of the cut to identify him beyond doubt. On the other hand, the knight’s horse is bedecked with the cumbrous skirts used in the tilt-yard, but which would have become sadly draggled ere much progress had been made along the miry road to Canterbury. The clerk,
If Pynson had dealt largely in illustrated books the borrowings and copyings here recited might seem insignificant. He published, however, very little English work which can be set against them, and even of the cuts which pass for English the native origin is not always sure. I should be sorry to pledge myself, for instance, as to the provenance of some neat but rather characterless column-cuts in his edition of the Speculum Vitae Christi Towards the end of his career in the collection of This emphatic discouragement of book-illustrations during so many years in the sixteenth century was perhaps the best thing that could have happened—next to an equally emphatic encouragement of them. There can have been no reason in the nature of things why English book-illustrations should continue over a long period of time to be third-rate. A little help and a little guidance would probably have sufficed to reform them altogether. Nevertheless it can hardly be disputed that as a matter of fact they were, with very few exceptions, third-rate, the superiority of Pynson’s to Wynkyn de Worde’s being somewhat less striking than is usually asserted. In the absence of the needed help and guidance it was better to make a sober dignity the ideal of book-production than to continue to deface decently printed books by the use of job lots of column cuts. The borders and other ornaments used by Berthelet, Reyner Wolfe, and Grafton, the three principal firms of this period, are at least moderately good. All three printers indulged in the pleasing heresy of pictorial or heraldic capitals, Wolfe in the Homiliae duae of S. Chrysostom (1543), Grafton in Halle’s Chronicle entitled The Union of the Families of Lancaster and York (1548), and Berthelet in some of his later proclamations. As regards their devices, Grafton’s punning emblem (a tree grafted on a tun), though in its smallest size it may pass well enough, was not worthy of the prominence which he sometimes gave it; but Wolfe’s “Charitas” mark, of children throwing sticks at an apple tree, is perhaps the most pleasing of English devices, while Berthelet’s “Lucrece,” despite the fact that her draperies have yielded to the Renaissance temptation of fluttering in the wind rather more than a Roman lady would have thought becoming at the moment of death, is of its kind a fine piece of work. As for pictures, from which Berthelet, as far as I remember, was consistent in his abstinence—Wolfe and Grafton were wisely content to make an exception in favour of Holbein, a little medallion cut after his portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt adorning Wolfe’s edition of Leland’s Naeniae
In 1548 we come across a definitely illustrated book, Cranmer’s Catechism, published by Walter Lynne, with a delicately cut titlepage64 showing figures of Justice, Prudence, and Victory, and also the royal arms, and in the text numerous small Biblical pictures, two of which are signed “Hans Holbein,” while others have been rashly attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1556 we find Heywood’s Spider and the Fly illustrated not only with various woodcuts of spiders’ webs, but with a portrait of the author stiff and ungainly enough in all conscience, but carrying with it an impression of lank veracity (see Plate XXXII). About this time, moreover, William Copland was issuing folio and quarto editions of some of the poems and romances which had pleased the readers of the first quarter of the century, and some of these had the old cuts in them. It is evident that illustrations would have come back in any case—book-buyers can never abstain from them for long together. But it is only fair to connect this return with the name of John Day, who made a strenuous effort, which only just failed of success, to bring up book-illustration to the high level at which he was aiming in printing. Day had issued a few books during the reign of Edward VI, notably a Bible with an excellent pictorial capital showing the promoter of the edition, Edmund Becke, presenting a copy of it to the King. As a staunch Protestant he had been in some danger under Queen Mary, but with the accession of The full title of the Book of Martyrs, which we have now reached, is Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and described the great persecutions and horrible troubles, that have bene wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, especially in this Realm of England and Scotlande, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande unto the tyme nowe present. It bears an elaborate titlepage showing Protestants and Catholics preaching, Protestants being burnt at the stake contrasted with Catholics offering the sacrifice of the Mass, and finally the Protestant martyrs uplifted in heaven, while the Catholic persecutors are packed off to hell. The text is very unevenly illustrated, but the total number of woodcuts even in the first edition (1563) is very considerable, and as many new pictures were added in the second (1570), the book was certainly the most liberally illustrated with cuts specially made for it which had yet been produced in England. One or two of the smaller cuts, mostly the head of a martyr praying amid the flames, are used several times; of the larger cuts only a very few are repeated, and, considering the monotonous subject of the book, it is obvious that some trouble must have been taken to secure variety in the illustrations. A few of these occupy a whole page, that illustrating the Protestant legend of the poisoning of King John by a fanatic monk being divided into compartments, while others showing some of the more important martyrdoms are A few years after this, in 1569, when the new edition of the Book of Martyrs was in preparation, Day issued another illustrated book: A christall glasse of christian reformation, wherein the godly maye beholde the coloured abuses used in this our present tyme. Collected by Stephen Bateman, better known as the “Batman uppon Bartholomew,” i.e. the editor by whom the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus was “newly corrected, enlarged, and amended” in 1582. The Christall glasse of christian reformation is a dull book with dull illustrations, which are of the nature of emblems, made ugly by party spirit. A more interesting book by the same author and issued in the same year was The travayled Pylgrime, bringing newes from all partes of the worlde, to which Bateman only put his initials and which was printed not by Day, but by Denham. This, although I cannot find that the fact has been noted, is largely indebted both for its scheme and its illustrations to the Chevalier DÉlibÉrÉ of Olivier de la Marche, though the woodcuts go back not to those of the Gouda and Schiedam incunabula, but to the Antwerp edition of 1555, in which these were translated into some of the most graceful of sixteenth century cuts. Needless to say, much of the grace disappears in this new translation, although the cutting is more effective than in the Book of Martyrs. Besides these two books by Stephen Bateman, 1569 The only other book issued by Day with borders to every page was the (supposititious) Certaine select prayers gathered out of S. Augustines Meditations, which he calleth his selfe-talks with God, which went through several editions, of which the first is dated 1574. This is a much less pretentious book, the borders being decorative instead of pictorial, but it makes rather a pretty little octavo. Another 1569 book which has cuts is the edition of Grafton’s Chronicle of that year, printed by Henry Denham, but as the cuts look like a “job” lot, possibly of German origin, and are only placed at the beginnings of sections in the short first book, while all the history from 1066 onwards is left unillustrated, this speaks rather of decadence than progress.
In 1581, towards the close of his career, Day was employed to print John Derrick’s Image of Ireland, Meanwhile, other printers and publishers had produced a few more illustrated books in the ’seventies. Thus in 1575 Henry Bynneman had printed Turberville’s Booke of Faulconrie for Christopher Barker. The numerous excellent illustrations of hawks (and probably those of dogs also) are taken from French books, but there is a fairly vigorous picture of Queen Elizabeth hawking attended by her suite, badged, back and front, with large Tudor roses, and this (see Plate XXXIII) looks like English work. In a much later edition—that of 1611—it is curious to note that the portrait of the Queen was cut out and one of James I substituted. In 1576 a rather forbidding woodcut portrait of George Gascoigne was printed (by R. Smith) in that worthy’s Steele Glas. In 1577 came a very important work, the famous Chronicle, begun on a vast scale by Reyner Wolfe and completed for England, Scotland, and Ireland by Raphael Holinshed, now published by John Harrison the elder. This has the appearance of being much more profusely illustrated than the Book of Martyrs or any other English folio, but as the cuts of battles, riots, executions, etc., which form the staple illustrations, are freely repeated, the profusion is far less than it seems. The cuts, moreover, are much smaller than those in Foxe’s Martyrs. As a rule they are vigorously designed and fairly well cut, and if it had come fifty years earlier the book would have been full of promise. But, as far as pictorial cuts in important books are concerned, we are nearing the end. In 1579 H. Singleton published Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender with a small cut of no great merit at the head 63 He had apparently returned the blocks borrowed from Du PrÉ for the Falles of Princes, as none of them is used in 1527, although one or two are copied. I have not met with all the Chaucer illustrations, and it is possible that a few of these are new. 64 Used again the same year in a treatise by Richard Bonner. CHAPTER XV ENGRAVED ILLUSTRATIONS The good bookman should have no love for “plates,” and to do them justice bookmen have shown commendable fortitude in resisting their attractions, great as these often are. As a form of book-decoration the plate reached its highest development in the French livres-À-vignettes of the eighteenth century, the charm of the best bookwork of Moreau, Eisen, and their fellows being incontestable. It would, indeed, have argued some lack of patriotism if French book-lovers had not yielded themselves to the fascination of a method of book-illustration which had thus reached its perfection in their own country, and they have done so. But as he reads the enthusiastic descriptions of these eighteenth century books by M. Henri BÉraldi, a foreign book-lover may well feel (to borrow the phrase which Jonson and Herrick used of the over-dressed ladies of their day) that the book itself has become its “own least part.” A book which requires as an appendix an album of original designs, or of proofs of the illustrations, or (worse still) which has been mounted on larger paper and guarded so that these proofs or designs can be brought into connection with the text, is on its way to that worst of all fates, the Avernus of extra illustration or Graingerism. When it has reached this, it ceases to be a book at all and becomes a scrap-album of unharmonized pictures. Lack of means may make it easy for a bookman to resist the temptation to supplement the illustrations in a book with duplicates in proof or any like extravagances, but even then few books which have plates in them fail to bring trouble. If the plates are protected with “flimsies,” It is the charm of the earlier books illustrated with incised engravings that the impressions are pulled on the same paper as the rest of the book, very often on pages bearing letterpress, and almost always, even when they chance to occupy a whole page, the back of which is left blank, as part of the quire or gathering. The price, however, which had to be paid for these advantages was a heavy one, the trouble not merely of double printing, as in the case of a sheet printed in red and black, but of double printing in two different kinds, one being from a raised surface, the other from an incised. It is clear that this trouble was found very serious, as both at Rome and Florence in Italy, at Bruges in the Low Countries, at WÜrzburg and EichstÄtt in Germany, and at Lyon in France, the experiment was tried independently and in every case abandoned after one or two books had been thus ornamented.
At Rome, after the failure of his printing partnership with Pannartz, Conrad Sweynheym betook himself to engraving maps to illustrate an edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, and this was brought out after his death by Arnold Buckinck, 10 October, 1478. Thirteen months earlier Nicolaus Laurentii, of Breslau, had published at Florence the Monte Santo di Dio of Antonio When a second edition of the Monte Santo di Dio was needed in 1491 the copperplates were replaced by woodcuts, a fact which may remind us that not only the trouble of printing, but the small number of impressions which could be taken from copperplates, must have been a formidable objection to their use in bookwork. But at the time the first edition may well have been regarded as a success. If so, it was an unlucky one, as Nicolaus Laurentii was thereby encouraged to undertake a much more ambitious venture, an annotated Divina Commedia with similar illustrations, and this, which appeared in 1481, can only be looked on as a failure. No space was left at the head of the first canto, and the engraving was printed on the lower margin, where it is often found cruelly cropped. In subsequent cantos spaces were sometimes left, sometimes not, but after the second the engravings are generally founded printed on separate slips and pasted into their places, and in no copy do they extend beyond canto xix. They used to be assigned to Botticelli, but the discovery of his real designs to the Divina Commedia has shown that these of 1481 were only slightly influenced by them. In Germany the only copper engravings found in fifteenth century books are the coats of arms of the Bishops and Chapters of WÜrzburg and EichstÄtt in the books printed for them at these places by Georg and The only French book of the fifteenth century known to me as possessing copper engravings is a very beautiful one, the version of Breidenbach’s Peregrinatio ad Terram Sanctam, by FrÈre Nicole le Huen, printed at Lyon by Michel Topie and Jacob Heremberck in 1488, and adorned with numerous excellent capitals. In this all the cuts in the text of the Mainz editions are fairly well copied on wood, but the large folding plans of Venice and other cities on the pilgrims’ route are admirably reproduced on copper with a great increase in the delicacy of their lines.
We come now to a book bearing an earlier date than any of those already mentioned, but not entitled to its full pride of place because it is doubtful to what extent the engravings connected with it can be reckoned an integral part of it. This is the French version of Boccaccio’s De casibus illustrium virorum (“Des cas des nobles (1) Prologue, the Author presenting his work to his patron, Mainardo Cavalcanti. (2) Book I. Adam and Eve standing before the Author as he writes. (3) Book II. King Saul on horseback, and lying dead. (4) Book III. Fortune and Poverty. (5) Book IV. Marcus Manlius thrown into the Tiber. (6) Book V. The Death of Regulus. (7) Book VI. Not known. (8) Book VII. A combat of six men. (9) Book VIII. The humiliation of the Emperor Valerian by King Sapor of Persia. (10) Book IX. Brunhilde, Queen of the Franks, torn asunder by four horses. From the reproductions which Laing gives in his monograph it is evident that the engraver set himself to imitate the style of the contemporary illuminated manuscripts of the Bruges school, and that he used his graver rather to get the designs on to the paper than with any real feeling for the characteristic charm of his own art. My own inclination is to believe that we must look on these plates as a venture of Colard Mansion’s rather in his old capacity as an illuminator, anxious to decorate a few special copies, than as a printer intent on embellishing a whole edition. The engravings may have been There is still one more engraving connected with an early printed book to be considered, and though the connection is not fully established, the facts that the book in question was the first from Caxton’s press, and that the engraving may possibly contain his portrait, invite a full discussion of its claims. The plate (see Frontispiece to Chapter I, Plate II) represents an author on one knee presenting a book to a lady who is attended by five maids-of-honour, while as many pages may be seen standing in various page-like attitudes about the room. A canopy above a chair of state bears the initials CM and the motto Bien en aveingne, and it is thus clear that the lady represents Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, and that the offering of a book which it depicts must have taken place after her marriage with Charles the Bold, 3 July, 1468, and before the latter’s death at Nancy, 5 January, 1477. During the greater part of this time Caxton was in the service of the Duchess; the donor of the book is represented as a layman, and a layman not of noble birth, since there is no feather in his cap; he appears also to be approaching middle-age. All these points would be correct if the donor were intended for Caxton, and as we know from his own statement that before his Recuyell of the histories of Troy was printed he had presented a copy of it (in manuscript) to the Duchess, probably in or soon after 1471, until some more plausible original is proposed the identification of the donor with our first printer must For over a quarter of a century after the engraving of the plans in the Lyon Breidenbach printers seem to have held aloof altogether from copperplates. In 1514 we find four engraved plans, of only slight artistic interest, printed as plates in a topographical work on Nola by Ambrogius Leo, the printer being Joannes Rubeus (Giovanni Rossi) of Venice. Three years later, in 1517, a really charming print is found (set rather askew in the Museum copy) on the titlepage of a thin quarto printed at Rome, for my knowledge of which I am indebted to my friend, Mr. A. M. Hind. The book is a Dialogus, composed by the Right Reverend Amadeus Berrutus, Governor of the City of Rome, on the weighty and still With the Dialogus of Bishop Berrutus copper engravings as book-illustrations came to an end, as far as I know, for a period of some forty years. I make this statement thus blankly in the hope that it may provoke contradiction, and at least some sporadic instances be adduced. But I have hunted through descriptions of all the books most likely to be illustrated—Bibles, Horae, editions of Petrarch’s Trionfi and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and books of emblems, and outside England (the necessity of the exception is almost humorous) I have lighted on nothing.
We may, perhaps, trace the revival of engraved illustrations to the influence of Hieronymus or Jerome Cock, an Antwerp engraver, who in May, 1551, issued a series of plates from the designs of F. Faber, entitled Praecipua aliquot Romanae antiquitatis ruinarum monimenta, without any letterpress save the name of the subject engraved on each plate. Cock followed this up in 1556 with twelve engravings from the designs of Martin van Veen illustrating the victories of Charles V, which are also celebrated in verses in French and Spanish. He issued also various other series of Biblical and antiquarian plates, which do not concern us, and in 1559 a set of thirty-two illustrating the funeral of Charles V. For this, aided by a subsidy, Christopher Plantin acted as publisher, and we thus get a connection established Although woodcuts were considered sufficiently good for Plantin’s Bible of 1566, for his great Polyglot it was indispensable to have titlepages engraved on copper, and to the first volume he prefixed no fewer than three, engraved by P. van der Heyden after designs by P. van der Borcht. All of them are emblematical, the first symbolizing the unification of the world by the Christian faith and the four languages in which the Old Testament was printed in the Polyglott, the second the zeal of Philip II for the Catholic faith, the third the authority of the Pentateuch. While some volumes had no frontispiece others contained a few illustrations, and the total For his Missals and Breviaries as for his Horae Plantin sometimes used woodcuts, sometimes copperplates. For his editions of the works of S. Augustine and S. Jerome (1577) he caused really fine portrait frontispieces to be engraved by J. Sadeler from the designs of Crispin van den Broeck. As regards his miscellaneous secular books he was by no means given to superfluous illustrations, and, as we have seen, continued to use woodcuts contemporaneously with plates. Probably his earliest secular engravings (published in 1566, but prepared some years earlier) are the anatomical diagrams in imitation of those in the Roman edition of Valverde mentioned below, to which he prefixed a better frontispiece than that of his model. In 1574 he produced a fine book of portraits of physicians and philosophers, Icones veterum aliquot ac recentium medicorum philosophorumque, in sixty-eight plates, with letterpress by J. Sambucus. The next year he issued another illustrated book, the De rerum usu et abusu of Bernardus Furmerius, sharing the expense of it with Ph. Gallus, a print-seller, for whom later on he published several books on commission. From 1578 onwards he printed for Ortelius, the great cosmographer. In 1582 he published the Pegasides of Y. B. Houwaert, in 1584 Waghenaer’s Spieghel der Zeevaerdt, and other illustrated books followed. But none of them, little indeed that Plantin ever produced, now excite much desire on the part of collectors. Of what took place in other countries and cities in the absence of even tentative lists of the books printed after 1535 anywhere except in England it is difficult to say. In 1560 an anatomical book translated from the Spanish of Juan de Valverde was published at Rome with engraved diagrams of some artistic merit and a rather Another noteworthy Venetian book, with engraved illustrations, which I have come across is an Orlando Furioso of 1584, “appresso Francesco de Franceschi Senese e compagni,” its engraved titlepage bearing the information that it has been “nuouamente adornato di figure di rame da Girolamo Porro,” a little-known Milanese engraver, who had reissued Pittoni’s Imprese in 1578. The illustrations are far too crowded with incident to be successful, and their unity is often sacrificed to the old medieval practice of making a single design illustrate several different moments of the narrative. Their execution is also very unequal. Nevertheless, they are of interest to English collectors since, as we shall see, they served as models for the plates in Sir John Harington’s version of the Orlando in 1591. All of Of sixteenth century engraved book-illustrations in France I have no personal knowledge. In Germany, as might be expected, they flourished chiefly at Frankfort, which in the last third of the century had, as we have seen, become a great centre for book-illustration. Jost Amman, who was largely responsible for its development in this respect, illustrated a few books with copper engravings, although he mainly favoured wood. But it is the work of the De Brys, Theodor de Bry and his two sons Johann Israel and Johann Theodor, which is of conspicuous importance for our present purpose, for it was they who originated and mainly carried out the greatest illustrated work of the sixteenth century, that known to collectors as the Grands et petits voyages. This not very happy name has nothing to do with the length of the voyages described, but is derived from the fact that the original series which is concerned with America and the West Indies is some two inches taller (fourteen as compared with twelve) than a subsequent series dealing with the East Indies. For the idea of such a collection of voyages Theodor de Bry was indebted to Richard Hakluyt, whose famous book The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, published in 1589, was in preparation when De Bry was in England, where he worked in 1587-8. The first volume, moreover, was illustrated with engravings by De Bry after some of the extraordinarily interesting water-colour drawings made by an Englishman, John White, in Virginia, and now preserved in the British Museum.67 This first part was published in Latin at Frankfort by J. Wechel in 1590 and a second edition followed the same While the illustrations to the Voyages formed their chief occupation, the De Brys found time to engrave many smaller plates for less important books. Thus in 1593 Theodor de Bry issued an emblem book Emblemata nobilitati et vulgo scitu digna (text in Latin and German), in which each emblem is enclosed in an engraved border, mostly quite meaningless and bad as regards composition, but of a brilliancy in the “goldsmiths’ style” which to lovers of bookplates will suggest the best work of Sherborn or French. The plates marked B and D, illustrating In 1595 there was printed, again with Latin and German text, a Noua Alphabeti effictio, historiis ad singulas literas correspondentibus. The motif is throughout scriptural. Thus for A Adam and Eve sit on the crossbar on each side of the letter, the serpent rests on its peak amid the foliage of the Tree of Knowledge. In B Abel, in C Cain is perched on a convenient part of the letter, and so on, while from one letter after another, fish, birds, fruit, flowers, and anything else which came into the designer’s head hang dangling on cords from every possible point. Nothing could be more meaningless or lower in the scale of design, yet the brilliancy of the execution carries it off. The year after this had appeared Theodor de Bry engraved a series of emblems conceived by Denis Le Bey de Batilly and drawn by J. J. Boissard. The designs themselves are poor enough, but the book has a pretty architectural titlepage, and this is followed by a portrait of Le Bey set in an ornamental border of bees, flowers, horses, and other incongruities, portrait and border alike engraved with the most brilliant delicacy (see Plate XXXVII). In the following year, again, 1597, the two younger De Brys illustrated with line engravings the Acta Mechmeti Saracenorum principis, and (at the end of these) the Vaticinia Severi et Leonis as to the fate of the Turks, also the David of Arias Montanus. The plates are fairly interesting, but in technical execution fall far below those of their father.
Turning now to England, we find engraving in use surprisingly early in some figures of unborn babies in The Birth of Mankind, translated from the Latin of Roesslin by Richard Jonas and printed in 1540 by Thomas Raynold, a physician, who five years later issued a new edition revised by himself, again with engravings. In 1563 John Shute for his work on The First and Chief Groundes of Architecture produced four amateurish engravings to illustrate four of the five “orders,” a woodcut being considered good enough for the fifth. In 1568 we find the first edition of the “Bishops’” Bible adorned with an engraved titlepage in the centre of which, in an oval, is a not unpleasing portrait of the Queen, holding sceptre and orb, set in a mass of strapwork, amid which are seated Charity and Faith with the royal arms between them, while below the portrait a lion and dragon support a cartouche enclosing a text. Besides this titlepage, attributed by Sir Sidney Colvin to Franciscus Hogenberg, before the book of Joshua there is an engraved portrait of Leicester, while the “Blessed is the man” Not until 1590, when Hugh Broughton’s Concent of Scripture was accompanied by some apocalyptic plates engraved by Jodocus Hondius (subsequently copied by W. Rogers), do we come across what can really be called engraved illustrations in an English book, and these, which are of little interest, were speedily eclipsed the next year by Sir John Harington’s Orlando Furioso in English Heroical verse with its engraved titlepage and forty-six plates. Of these the translator writes in his introduction: As for the pictures, they are all cut in brasse, and most of them by the best workemen in that kinde, that haue bene in this land this manie yeares: yet I will not praise them too much, because I gaue direction for their making, and in regard thereof I may be thought partiall, but this I may truely say, that (for mine owne part) I have not seene anie made in England better, nor (in deede) anie of this kinde in any booke, except it were in a treatise, set foorth by that profound man, maister Broughton, the last yeare, upon the Reuelation, in which there are some 3. or 4. pretie figures (in octauo) cut in brasse verie workemanly. As for other books that I haue seene in this realme, either in Latin or English, with pictures, as Liuy, Gesner, Alciats emblemes, a booke de spectris in Latin, & (in our tong) the Chronicles, the booke of Martyrs, the book of hauking and hunting, and M. Whitney’s excellent Emblems, yet all their figures are cut on wood, & none in metall, and in that respect inferior to these, at least (by the old proverbe) the more cost, the more worship. The passage is of considerable interest, but hardly suggests, what is yet the fact, that, save for the addition on the titlepage of an oval portrait of the translator and a representation of his dog, all the plates in the book are closely copied from the engravings by Girolamo Porro in the Venice edition of 1584. The English titlepage was signed by Thomas Cockson. We are left to conjecture to whom Harington was indebted for the rest of the plates. Although, as we shall see, from this time forward a great number of English books contain engraved work, those which can be said to be illustrated during the next sixty years are few enough, a study of Mr. A. M. Hind’s very useful List of the Works of Native and Foreign Line-Engravers in England from Henry VIII to the Commonwealth,68 tempting me to place the number at about a score. The year after the Orlando Furioso came another curious treatise by Hugh Broughton, not printed with type, but “graven in brasse by J. H.,” whom Sir Sidney Colvin identifies with Jodocus Hondius, a Fleming who lived in England from about 1580 to 1594, and may have done the plates in the Concent of Scripture and some at least of those in the Orlando. Six years later (1598) we find Lomazzo’s Tracte containing the artes of curious Paintinge with an emblematical titlepage and thirteen plates by Richard Haydock, the translator, four of the plates being adapted from DÜrer’s book on Proportion, and all of them showing very slight skill in engraving. In 1602 came Sir William Segar’s Honour, Military and Civil, with eight plates showing various distinguished persons, English and foreign, wearing the robes and insignia of the Garter, the Golden Fleece, S. Michael, etc. Three of the plates are signed by William Rogers, the most distinguished of the English Elizabethan engravers, and the others are probably his also. Most of them are very dignified and effective in the brilliantly printed “first states” in which they are sometimes found, but ordinary copies with only the “second states” are as a rule disappointing. The beginning of the reign of James I was directly responsible for one ambitious engraved publication, Stephen Harrison’s The Archs of Triumph erected in honor of the High and mighty prince James, the first of that name king of England and the sixt of Scotland, at his Maiesties Entrance and passage through his Honorable In 1608 came Robert Glover’s Nobilitas politica et civilis, re-edited two years later by T. Milles as the Catalogue of Honour, with engraved illustrations (in the text) of the robes of the various degrees of nobility, attributed by Sir Sidney Colvin to Renold Elstracke, the son of a Flemish refugee, and also two plates representing the King in a chair of state and in Parliament. After this we come to two works illustrated by an English engraver of some note, William Hole, Tom Coryat’s Crudities (1611), with a titlepage recalling various incidents of his travels (including his being sick at sea) and five plates (or in some copies, six), and Drayton’s Polyolbion (1612, reissued in 1613 with the portrait-plate in a different state), with a poor emblematic title, a portrait of Prince Henry wielding a lance, and eighteen decorative maps of England. In 1615 we come to a really well-illustrated book, the Relation of a Journey, by George Sandys, whose narrative of travel in Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land, and parts of Italy, is accompanied with little delicately engraved landscapes and bits of architecture, etc., by Francis Delaram. The work of the decade is brought to a close with two print-selling ventures, the Basili?logia of 1618 and Her?ologia of 1620. The former of these works describes itself as being “the true and lively effigies of all our English Kings from the Conquest untill this present: with their severall Coats of Armes, Impreses and Devises. And a briefe Chronologie of their lives and deaths. Elegantly graven in copper. Printed for H. Holland and are to be sold by Comp.[ton] With the second of the two ventures Henry Holland was also concerned, but the expenses of the book were shared by Crispin Passe and an Arnhem bookseller named Jansen. Its title reads: “Her?ologia Anglica: hoc est clarissimorum et doctissimorum aliquot Anglorum qui floruerunt ab anno Cristi MD. usque ad presentem annum MDCXX.” It is in two volumes, the first containing thirty-seven plates, the second thirty. Two of these represent respectively Queen Elizabeth’s tomb and the hearse of Henry Prince of Wales. All the rest are portraits of the notable personages of the reigns of Henry VIII and his successors, some of them based on drawings by Holbein, the majority on earlier prints, and all engraved by William Passe (younger brother of Simon) and his sister Magdalena.
The next decade was far from productive of works illustrated with more than an engraved titlepage and a portrait, but in 1630 appeared Captain John Smith’s True Travels with several illustrations, one of them by Martin Droeshout; in 1634-5 came Wither’s Emblems, with plates by William Marshall, and in 1635 Thomas Heywood’s Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, with an engraved title by Thomas Cecill and plates representing the several orders, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones being entrusted to John Payne, Dominations to Marshall, Powers and Principalities to Glover, Virtues to Droeshout, etc. Some of the plates record the name of the patron While fully illustrated books were thus far from numerous in the half century which followed the Orlando Furioso of 1591, the output of engraved titlepages and portraits to be prefixed to books was sufficient to find work for most of the minor engravers. The earlier titlepages were mostly architectural and symbolical, their purport being sometimes explained in verses printed opposite to them, headed “The Mind of the Front.” William Rogers engraved a titlepage to Gerard’s Herbal (1597), which is never found properly printed, and others to Linschoten’s Discourse of Voyages into ye East and West Indies (1598), Camden’s Britannia (1600—a poor piece of work), and Moffett’s Theatrum Insectorum, this last having only survived in a copy pasted at the head of the author’s manuscript at the British Museum. William Hole did an enlarged title for Camden’s Britannia (1607), titles for the different sections of Chapman’s Homer, a portrait of John Florio for the Italian-English dictionary which he was pleased to call Queen Anna’s New World of Words, a charming titlepage to a collection of virginal music known as Parthenia The best-known titlepages engraved by Renold Elstracke are those to Raleigh’s History of the World (1614) and the Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince James (1616), the latter a good piece of work which when faced, as it should be, by the portrait of the king by Simon van de Passe, makes the most decorative opening to any English book of this period. Passe himself was responsible for the very imaginative engraved title to Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620), a sea on which ships are sailing and rising out of it two pillars with the inscription: “Multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia” (Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased). His son William, besides his work on the Her?ologia, already mentioned, engraved a complicated title for Chapman’s version of The Batrachomyomachia or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, humorously called The Crowne of all Homer’s Worckes. After 1620 the old architectural and symbolical titlepages began to be replaced by titles in compartments, in which a central cartouche is surrounded by little squares, each representing some incident of the book. Portraits of the author remained much in request, and nearly a hundred of these were done by William Marshall, who was employed also on about as many engraved titlepages. As has been noted, his work was strangely uneven, and he fully deserved the scorn poured on him by Milton for the wretched caricature of the poet prefixed to the Poems of 1645. Yet Marshall could at times do a good plate, as, for instance, that in Quarles’s Hieroglyphikes already mentioned, a portrait of Bacon prefixed to the 1640 Oxford edition of his Advancement of Learning and the charming frontispiece to Brathwait’s Arcadian Princess. Marshall at his worst fell only a little below the work of Thomas Cross; at his best he rivalled or excelled the good work of Thomas Cecill and George Glover. After Cromwell’s strong hand had given England some kind of settled government the book market revived, and some ambitiously illustrated books were soon being published. The too versatile John Ogilby, dancing-master, poet, and publisher, appeared early in the field, his version of the Fables of Aesop, “adorned with sculpture,” being printed by T. Warren for A. Crook in 1651. The next year came Benlowe’s Theophila, or Love’s Sacrifice, a mystical poem, some copies of which have as many as thirty-six plates by various hands, with much more etching than engraving in them. In 1654 Ogilby produced his translation of Virgil, a great folio with plates dedicated to noble patrons by Pierre Lambart. Ogilby’s other important ventures were the large Odyssey of 1665, and the Aesop’s Fables of the same year, with plates by Hollar, D. Stoop, and F. Barlow, and two portraits of the translator engraved respectively by Pierre Lambert and W. Faithorne. Faithorne embellished other books of this period, e.g. the Poems of the “Matchless Orinda” (1667), with portraits, and publishers who could not afford to pay Faithorne employed R. White. The presence of a portrait by White in a copy of the first edition of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, to which it was very far indeed from certain that it really belonged,69 has once made the book sell for over £1400, but save for the sake of completeness his handiwork is not greatly prized by collectors, nor is there any English illustrated book of this period after the Restoration which is much sought after for the sake of its plates, although those of Ogilby’s Virgil were sufficiently well thought of to be used again for Dryden’s version in 1697. Meanwhile, books with illustrations en taille douce were being issued in some numbers both at Paris and at Amsterdam. In the former city FranÇois Chauveau (1613-76), in the latter Jan and Casper Luyken are We meet the first advance guard of the brilliant French eighteenth century school of book-illustration in 1718, when a pretty little edition of Les Amours de Daphnis et ChloÉ (as translated by Bishop Amyot from the Greek of Longus) made its appearance with twenty-eight plates by BenoÎt Audran, after the designs of no less a person than the Regent of France, and duly labelled and dated “Philippus in. et pinx. 1714.” The plates vary very much in charm, but that with the underline ChloÉ sauve Daphnis par le son de sa flÛte certainly possesses it, and one of the double-plates in the book, Daphnis prend ses oyseaux pendant l’Hyver pour voir ChloÉ, is really pretty. We find no other book to vie with this until we come to a much larger and more pretentious one, the works of MoliÈre in six volumes, royal quarto, published in 1734. This was illustrated with thirty-three plates, in the mixture of etching and engraving characteristic of the French school of the day, by Laurent Cars, after pencil drawings by FranÇois Boucher, and by nearly two hundred vignettes and tailpieces (not all different) after Boucher and others by Cars and FranÇois Joullain. Another edition of this in four volumes with Boucher’s designs reproduced on a smaller scale was published in 1741 and reprinted three times within the decade. After the MoliÈre, books and editions which collectors take count of come much more quickly. There was an edition of Montesquieu’s Le Temple de Gnide in 1742 (imprint: Londres), a Virgil in 1743 with plates by Cochin, engraved by Cochin pÈre, the Contes of La Fontaine (Amsterdam, 1743-5) also illustrated by Cochin, Guer’s Moeurs et usages des Turcs, with plates after In the four-volume edition of the Fables of La Fontaine (1755-9) with illustrations after J. B. Oudry, we come to a very ambitious piece of work, handsomely carried out, which a book-lover may yet find it hard to admire. Oudry’s designs are always adequate, and have more virility in them than is often found in the work of this school, and they are competently interpreted by a number of etchers and engravers, some of whom, it may be noted, worked together in pairs on the same plate, so that we find such signatures as “C. Cochin aqua forti, R. Gaillard cÆlo sculpsit,” and “GravÉ À l’eau forte par C. Cochin, terminÉ au burin par P. Chenu”—a very explicit statement of the method of work. But adequate as the plates may seem, if they are judged not as book-illustrations but as engravings, no one could rate them high, and as a book what is to be said of an edition of La Fontaine’s Fables, which fills four volumes, each measuring nearly nineteen inches by thirteen? The bookman can only regard such a work as a portfolio of plates with accompanying text, and if the plates as plates are only second rate, enthusiasm has nothing to build on. We return to book-form in 1757, when Boccaccio’s Decamerone was published in Italian (imprint: Londra) in five octavo volumes, with charming vignettes and illustrations mostly by Gravelot, although a few are by Boucher and Eisen. Gravelot, who was more industrious than successful as an illustrator, is seen here to advantage, and deserves some credit for having made his designs not less but more reticent than the stories he had to illustrate. This praise can certainly not be given to the famous 1762 edition of the Contes of La Fontaine, the cost of which was borne by the Fermiers-GÉnÉraux (imprint: Amsterdam). The fleurons by Choffard are
During the next few years illustrated books became the fashion, so that in 1772 Cazotte wrote Le diable amoureux, nouvelle d’Espagne, with the false imprint Naples (Paris, Lejay) and six unsigned plates, said to be by Moreau after Marillier, on purpose to ridicule the craze for putting illustrations into every book. In 1768 the indefatigable Gravelot had illustrated an edition of the works of Voltaire, published at Geneva, with forty-four designs. In 1769 Les Saisons, a poem by Saint Lambert, was published at Amsterdam, with designs by Gravelot and Le Prince and fleurons by Choffard. In We must go back now to England, where at the end of the seventeenth century the requirements of book-illustration were neglected, partly because of the growing It should, perhaps, have been mentioned that two years before Crusoe an English engraver, John Sturt In 1723 William Hogarth began what might have proved a notable career as a book-illustrator had not he soon found more profitable work. He illustrated the Travels of Aubry de la Mottraye in 1723, Briscoe’s Apuleius (1724), Cotterel’s translation of Cassandra (1725), Blackwell’s Compendium of Military Discipline (1726), and (also in 1726) Butler’s Hudibras, his plates to which, though grotesque enough, show plenty of character. For some years after this he worked on frontispieces, e.g. to Leveridge’s Songs (1727), Cooke’s Hesiod (1728), J. Miller’s comedy, The Humours of Oxford (1729), Theobald’s Perseus and Andromeda (1730), and in 1731 to a MoliÈre, Fielding’s Tragedy of Tragedies, and Mitchell’s Highland Fair. But the success of his set of prints on “The Harlot’s Progress” diverted him from bookwork, although many years after he contributed frontispieces to Vols. II and IV of Tristram Shandy, and in 1761 a head-and tailpiece (engraved by Grignion) to a Catalogue of the Society of Arts. In 1733 Hubert Gravelot was invited from France by Du Bosc to help in illustrating Picart’s Religious Ceremonies. He illustrated Gay’s Fables in 1738, Richardson’s Pamela in 1742, Theobald’s Shakespeare in 1740, and, mainly after Hayman, Hanmer’s in 1744-6. Neither of the sets of Shakespeare plates deserves any higher praise than that of being neat and pretty, but at least they were a whole plane above those in Rowe’s edition. The year after Gravelot came to England, in 1733, Pine produced the first volume of his Horace, engraved throughout, and with head- and tailpieces in admirable Besides his work on Hanmer’s Shakespeare, Francis Hayman designed illustrations to Moore’s Fables of the Female Sex (1744), which were well engraved, some of them by Charles Grignion, a pupil of Gravelot’s, born in England (1717), but of foreign parentage. Hayman also illustrated the Spectator (1747), Newton’s Milton (1749-52), and later on, with the aid of Grignion, Smollett’s Don Quixote (1755), and Baskerville’s edition of Congreve’s Poems (1761). The plates to the earlier edition of Don Quixote, that of 1738, had been chiefly engraved by Gerard van der Gucht after Vanderbank, but two are by Hogarth.
Samuel Wale (died 1786), a pupil of Hayman, was also an illustrator, and in 1760 supplied Sir John Hawkins with fourteen drawings for his edition of Walton’s Angler. These were engraved by the luckless W. W. Rylands, who was hanged for forgery in 1783, and the Walton thus produced is one of the prettiest and least affected of the illustrated books of its day (see Plate XL). Wale also drew designs for Wilkie’s Fables (1768) and Goldsmith’s Traveller (1774). He also worked for the magazines which about the middle of the century made rather a feature of engravings, often as headpieces to music. A few of the isolated books may be named, thus Paltock’s Peter Wilkins (1750) was illustrated very well by Louis Peter Boitard, who had previously contributed numerous plates to Spence’s Polymetis, and in 1751 supplied a frontispiece to each of the six books of the Scribleriad by R. O. Cambridge. Another book which, like Peter Wilkins, was concerned with flight, Lunardi’s Account of the first aerial voyage in England (1784), has a portrait of the author by Bartolozzi and two plates. For Baskerville’s edition of the Orlando Furioso (Birmingham, 1773) recourse was had to plates by De Launay, after Moreau and Eisen. 65 “In quo precipue tractat: An amico sepe ad scribendum prouocato ut scribat, non respondenti sit amplius scribendum.” 66 It was probably from his Horae plates that Plantin illustrated the rerum Sacrarum Liber of Laur. Gambara in 1577. They are printed with the text and are of average merit. 67 They were bought to accompany the fine set of De Bry collected by Mr. Grenville, but have since been transferred to the Department of Prints and Drawings. 68 Contributed to the work by Sir Sidney Colvin, Early Engravers and Engraving in England, already quoted. 69 This was an early proof of the portrait which is found in a slightly different state in copies of the third edition, and seemed to be an insertion in the first edition rather than an integral part of it. CHAPTER XVI MODERN FINE PRINTING After the Restoration, printing and the book trade generally in England became definitely modern in their character, and the printer practically disappears from view, his work, with here and there an exception, as in the case of Robert Foulis or John Baskerville, being altogether hidden behind that of the publisher, so that it is of Herringman and Bernard Lintott and Dodsley that we hear, not of Newcomb and Roycroft. Notwithstanding this decline in the printer’s importance, there was a steady improvement in English printing. As an art it had ceased at this time to exist. If a publisher wished to make a book beautiful he put in plates. If he wanted to make it more beautiful he put in more or larger plates. If he wanted to make it a real triumph of beauty he engraved the whole book, letterpress and all, as in the case of Sturt’s Prayer Books and Pine’s Horace. That a printer by the selection and arrangement of type, by good presswork and the use of pretty capitals and tailpieces, could make a book charming to eye and hand, without any help from an illustrator—such an idea as this had nearly perished. There was little loss in this, since if any artistic work had been attempted it would assuredly have been bad, whereas the craftsmen, when set to do quite plain work, gradually learnt to do it in a more workmanlike way. In this they were helped by certain improvements in printing which rendered the task of the pressman less laborious. In the middle of the seventeenth century William Blaew, of Amsterdam, invented an improved press, “fabricated nine of these new fashioned The next move came from the north. Robert Foulis (the name was originally spelt Faulls), born in 1707, the son of a Glasgow maltster, had been originally apprenticed to a barber. He was, however, a man of bookish tastes, and, when already over thirty years of age, was advised to set up in business as a printer and bookseller. With his brother Andrew, five years younger than himself and educated for the ministry, he went on a book-buying tour on the Continent, and on his return started book-selling in 1741, and printed in that year Dr. William Leechman’s Temper, Character, and Duty of a Minister of the Gospel, and four other books, including a Phaedrus and a volume of Cicero. In March, 1743, he was appointed Printer to the University of Glasgow, and his edition of Demetrius Phalerus de Elocutione in Greek and Latin was the first example of Greek printing produced at Glasgow. A Horace which was hung up in proof in the University, with the offer of a reward for every misprint detected (in spite of which six remained), followed in 1744, an Iliad in 1747, an edition of Hardyknute in 1748, and a Cicero in 1749. In 1750 as many Meanwhile, in the English Midlands an interesting and creditable, though wrong-headed, attempt to improve on existing founts had been made by John Baskerville, a Worcestershire man, born in 1706, who worked at Birmingham, and in 1757 printed there in his own types The most conspicuous exponent of Baskerville’s methods was an Italian, Giovanni Battista Bodoni, born in Piedmont in 1740. Bodoni settled at Parma, and it was at Parma that he did most of his printing. Even more notably than Baskerville, he tried to give to the pages which he printed the brilliancy of a fine engraving. He used good black ink (which is to his credit), exaggerated the differences between his thick strokes and his thin, and left wide spaces between his lines so as to let the elegance of his type stand out as brilliantly as possible While the names of Caslon, the brothers Foulis, and Baskerville in Great Britain, and of Bodoni in Italy, stand out from amid their contemporaries, the premier place in French book-production was occupied by members of the Didot family. The first of these was FranÇois Didot (1689-1757); his eldest son, FranÇois Ambroise (1730-1804), was a fine printer; his younger son, Pierre (1732-95), was also a typefounder and papermaker. In the third generation Pierre’s son Henri (1765-1852) was famous for his microscopic type, while Pierre II (1760-1853), the eldest son of FranÇois Ambroise and nephew of Pierre I, printed some fine editions of Latin and French classics at the press at the Louvre; and his brother Firmin Didot (1764-1836) won renown both as a typefounder and engraver, and also as a printer and improver of the art of stereotyping, besides being a deputy and writer of tragedies. In the fourth generation, the two sons of Firmin Didot, Ambroise (1790-1876) and Hyacinthe, carried on the family traditions. Incidentally, Ambroise wrote some valuable treatises on wood-engraving and amassed an enormous library, which, when sold at auction in 1882-4, realized nearly £120,000. With the names of Bodoni and the Didots we may link that of the German publisher and printer Georg Joachim Goeschen, grandfather of the late Viscount Goschen. He was born in 1752, died in 1828, and worked the greater part of his life at Leipzig. He brought out Coming back to England, we may note the beginning of the Chiswick Press in 1789, the year of the French Revolution. Charles Whittingham was then only twenty-two (he had been born at Coventry in 1767), and for his first years as his own master he was content to print hand-bills and do any other jobbing work that he could get. He began issuing illustrated books in 1797, and after a time the care he took in making ready wood-blocks (the use of which had been revived by Bewick) for printing gained him a special reputation. From about 1811 to his death in 1840 he left one branch of his business in the city under the charge of a partner, while he himself lived and worked at Chiswick, whence the name the Chiswick Press by which the firm is still best known. His nephew, Charles Whittingham the younger, was born in 1795, was apprenticed to his uncle in 1810 and worked with him until 1828. Then he set up for himself at Tooks Court off Chancery Lane, and came rapidly to the front, largely from the work which he did for William Pickering, a well-known publisher of those days. On his uncle’s death in 1840 the younger Whittingham inherited the Chiswick business also. Four years after this, in 1844, he led the way in the revival of old-faced types. The examples of Baskerville at home and of Bodoni and other printers abroad had not been without effect on English printing. Brilliancy had been sought at all costs, and in the attempt to combine economy with it the height of letters had been increased and their breadth diminished so that, while they looked larger, more of them could be crowded into a line. The younger Whittingham had the good taste to see that the rounder, more evenly tinted type, which Caslon had made before these influences had come into play, was much pleasanter Not content with reviving old type, the younger Whittingham revived also the use of ornamental initials, causing numerous copies to be cut for him from the initials used in French books of the sixteenth century. Some of these are good, some almost bad, or while good in themselves, suitable only for use with black-letter founts and too heavy for use with roman letter. Still the attempt was in the right direction, and the books of this period with the imprint of the Chiswick Press are worth the attention of collectors interested in the modern developments of printing. During the succeeding forty years there is little by which they are likely to be attracted save the issues of the private press kept and worked by the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel of Worcester College, Oxford, of which he is now Provost. While he was yet a lad Mr. Daniel had amused himself with printing, and a thin duodecimo is still extant entitled Sir Richard’s Daughter, A Christmas Tale of Olden Times, bearing the imprint “Excudebat H. Daniel: Trinity Parsonage, Frome, 1852.” In 1874 Mr. Daniel resumed his old hobby at Oxford, printing Notes from a catalogue of pamphlets in Worcester College Library, and in 1876 A new Sermon of the newest Fashion by Ananias Snip, of which the original is preserved in the library of Worcester College. It was, however, in 1881, by an edition of thirty-six copies of The Garland of Rachel “by divers kindly hands,” that the Daniel Press won its renown. Rachel was Mr. Daniel’s little daughter, and the eighteen contributors to her “Garland” Another venture in which a high literary standard was combined with much care for typography was The Hobby-Horse, a quarterly magazine edited by Herbert P. Horne and Selwyn Image between 1886 and 1892, after which it appeared fitfully and flickered out. The change in the type, the setting it close instead of spaced, and the new initials and tailpieces which may be noted at the beginning of Vol. III (1888), constituted a landmark in the history of modern printing of an importance similar to that of the return to old-faced type in Lady Willoughby’s Diary. The progress of the movement can be followed (i) in the catalogue of the Exhibition of Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, held at the New Gallery in the autumn of 1888, with an article on printing by Mr. Emery Walker; (ii) in three books by William Morris, viz. The House of the Wolfings, The Roots of the Mountains, and the Gunnlaug Saga, printed under the superintendence of the author and Mr. Walker at the Chiswick Press in 1889 and 1890. In 1891 William Morris gave an immense impetus to the revival of fine printing by setting up a press at No. 16 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, close to his own residence, Kelmscott House. “It was the essence of my undertaking,” he wrote subsequently, “to produce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of printing and arrangement of type,” and Morris’s example brought into the field a host of competitors and plagiarists and a few workers in the same spirit. By his side throughout his venture had stood Mr. Emery Walker, who had no small part in starting the whole movement, whose help and advice for more than twenty years have been freely at the service of any one who has shown any inclination to do good work, and who, Similar capitals on a less bold scale, some in gold, others in red, others in blue, are a conspicuous feature in the masterpieces of the Ashendene Press belonging to Mr. St. John Hornby. This was started by Mr. Hornby at his house in Ashendene, Herts, in 1894, and was for some time worked by Mr. Hornby himself and his sisters, with, as at least one colophon gratefully acknowledges, “some little help of Cicely Barclay,” who subsequently, under a different surname, appears as a joint proprietor. The early books—the Journals of Joseph Hornby, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, etc.—are not conspicuously good, but in 1902, in a type founded on that used by Sweynheym and Pannartz at Subiaco, Mr. and Mrs. Hornby produced the first volume of an illustrated Divina Commedia which cannot Fine della prima Cantica appellata Inferno della Commedia di Dante poeta eccellentissimo. Impressa nella Stamperia Privata di Ashendene a Shelley House, Chelsea, per opera e spesa di St. John & Cicely Hornby coll’ aiuto del loro cugino Meysey Turton. Le lettere iniziali sono l’opera di Graily Hewitt, le incisioni in legno di C. Keates secondo disegni fatti da R. Catterson Smith sopra gli originali dell’ edizione di 1491. Finita nel mese di Dicembre dell’ anno del Signore MCMII, nel quale dopo dieci secoli di bellezza cadde il gran Campanile di San Marco dei Veneziani. The third type happily inspired by the example of Morris was the Greek type designed by Robert Proctor on the model of that used for the New Testament of the Complutensian Polyglott in 1514, with the addition of majuscules and accents, both of them lacking in the original. An edition of the Oresteia of Aeschylus in this type was being printed for Mr. Proctor at the Chiswick Press at the time of his death, and appeared in 1904. In 1908 it was followed by an edition of the Odyssey printed at the Clarendon Press. Like Morris’s gothic founts, this Greek type may or may not be admired, but that it attains the effects at which it aims can hardly be denied. No page of such richness had ever before been set up by any printer of Greek. To write of books printed in types which for one reason or another seem less successful than those already named is a less grateful task, but there are several designers and printers whose work approaches excellence, and who worked independently of Morris, though with less sure touch. Foremost among these must be placed Mr. Charles Ricketts,70 whose Vale type, despite a few blemishes, is not very far behind the Golden type of the Kelmscott Press, and whose ornament at its best is graceful, and that with a lighter and gayer grace than Morris’s, The Eragny books printed by Esther and Lucien Pissarro on their press at Epping, Bedford Park, and the Brook, Chiswick, were at first (1894-1903, Nos. 1-16) printed by Mr. Ricketts’s permission in the Vale type. In June, 1903, a “Brook” fount designed by Mr. Pissarro was completed, and A Brief Account of the Origin of the Eragny Press printed in it. Mr. Pissarro’s books are chiefly notable for their woodcuts, which are of very varying merit. In the United States, in addition to some merely impudent plagiarisms, several excellent efforts after improved printing were inspired by the English movement of which Morris was the most prominent figure. Mr. Clarke Conwell at the Elston Press, Pelham Road, New Rochelle, New York, printed very well, both in roman and black letter, his edition of the Tale of Gamelyn (1901) in the latter type being a charming little book. Mr. Berkeley Updike of the Merrymount Press, Boston, and Mr. Bruce Rogers during his connection with the Riverside Press, Boston, have also both done excellent work, which is too little known in this country. The artistic printing which Mr. Rogers did while working for the Riverside Press is especially notable because of the rich variety of types and styles in which excellence was attained. 70 Like Proctor, Mr. Ricketts had no press of his own. His books were printed for him by Messrs. Ballantyne. SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY GENERAL WORKS Ferguson, J. Some Aspects of Bibliography. Edinburgh, 1900. Peddie, R. A. A List of Bibliographical Books published since the foundation of the Bibliographical Society in 1893 (Bib. Soc. Transactions, vol. x., pp. 235-311). London, 1910. Bigmore and Wyman. A Bibliography of Printing. With notes and illustrations, 2 vols. London, 1880. Reed, T. B. A List of Books and Papers on Printers and Printing under the Countries and Towns to which they refer. (Bibliographical Society.) London, 1895. Bibliographical Society. Transactions. London, 1893, etc. Edinburgh Bibliographical Society. Transactions. Edinburgh, 1896, etc. Le Bibliographe Moderne. Paris, 1897, etc. Bibliographica. 3 vols. London, 1895-7. Centrallblatt fÜr Bibliothekswesen. Leipzig, 1888, etc. The Library. London, 1889, etc. Zeitschrift fÜr BÜcherfreunde. Bielefeld, 1897, etc. Brunet, J. C. Dictionnaire de GÉographie ancienne et moderne À l’usage du libraire et de l’amateur de livre. Par un Bibliophile. Paris, 1870. With notes on the introduction of printing into the places named. Crane, W. Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New. Second edition. London, 1901. Duff, E. G. Early Printed Books. (Books about Books.) London, 1893. 8vo. Humphreys, H. N. Masterpieces of the Early Printers and Engravers: Series of facsimiles from rare and curious books, remarkable for illustrative devices, beautiful borders, decorative initials, printers’ marks, and elaborate titlepages. Fol. London, 1870. Kristeller, P. Kupferstich und Holzschnitt in vier Jahrhunderten. 4to. Berlin, 1905. Lang, A. The Library. With a chapter on modern English illustrated books by Austin Dobson, London, 1881. —— Second edition. London, 1892. Lippmann, F. Druckschriften des xv. bis xviii. Jahrhunderts in getreuen Nachbildungen herausgegeben von der Direction der Reichsdruckerei unter Mitwirkung von Dr. F. Lippmann and Dr. R. Dohme. Fol. Berlin, 1884-7. Morgan, J. P. Catalogue of Early Printed Books from the libraries of William Morris, Richard Bennett, etc., now forming portion of the library of J. P. Morgan. [By S. Aldrich, E. G. Duff, A. W. Pollard, R. Proctor.] 3 vols. Large 4to. London, 1907. With many facsimiles. Rouveyre, E. Connaissances nÉcessaires À un bibliophile. 10 vols. Paris, 1899. I.—COLLECTORS AND COLLECTING Elton, C. I. and M. A. The Great Book Collectors. London, 1893. Fletcher, W. Y. English Book-Collectors. London, 1902. Quaritch, B. Contributions towards a Dictionary of English Book Collectors. London, 1892-9. Davenport, C. English Heraldic Book-Stamps. London, 1909. With biographical notes. Guigard, J. Nouvel Armorial du Bibliophile. Guide de l’amateur des livres armoriÉs. 2 tom. Paris, 1890. With biographical notices of many French collectors. Book Prices Current. London, 1893, etc. American Book Prices Current. New York, 1895, etc. Livingston, L. S. Auction Prices of Books. 1886-1904. 4 vols. New York, 1905. Lawler, J. Book Auctions in England in the Seventeenth Century. London, 1898. Roberts, W. Catalogues of English Book Sales. London, 1900. —— Rare Books and their Prices. London, 1896. Wheatley, H. B. Prices of Books: An inquiry into the changes in the price of books which have occurred in England at different periods. London, 1898. Brunet, J. C. Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres, contenant 1o un nouveau dictionnaire bibliographique, etc. CinquiÈme Édition. 6 vols. Paris, 1860-5. Graesse, J. G. T. TrÉsor de livres rares et prÉcieux: ou Nouveau Dictionnaire bibliographique. 7 vols. Dresde, 1859-69. These two books mark the close of the fashion of General Collecting. II.—BLOCK-BOOKS Sotheby, S. L. Principia typographica. The block-books issued in Holland, Flanders, and Germany during the fifteenth century, etc. 3 vols. Fol. London, 1858. Schreiber, W. L. Livres xylographiques et xylo-chirographiques. Fac-similÉs des livres xylographiques. (Manuel de l’amateur de la gravure sur bois et sur mÉtal au xve siÈcle, tomes 4, 7, 8.) 8vo and fol. Leipzig, 1895, 1900, 1902. Pilinski, A. Monuments de la xylographie ... reproduits en fac-similÉ sur les exemplaires de la BibliothÈque Nationale, prÉcÉdÉs des notices par Gustave Pawlowski. Fol. Paris, 1882-3.
Biblia Pauperum. Biblia pauperum. Nach dem Einzigen in 50 Darstellungen herausgegeben von P. Heitz, W. L. Schreiber. 4to. Strassburg, 1903. Cust, L. H. The Master E. S. and the Ars Moriendi. 4to. Oxford, 1898. III. and IV.—THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING—HOLLAND AND MAINZ Grolier Club. A description of the Early Printed Books owned by the Grolier Club, with a brief account of their printers and the history of typography in the fifteenth century. Fol. New York, 1895. Quotes numerous early references to the invention of printing, and gives some facsimiles. EnschedÉ, C. Laurens Jansz. Coster de uitvinder van de boekdrukkunst. Haarlem, 1904. —— Technisch onderzoek naar de uitvinding van de boekdrukkunst. Haarlem, 1901. Hessels, J. H. Gutenberg: Was He the Inventor of Printing? London, 1882. —— Haarlem the Birthplace of Printing, not Mentz. London, 1887. —— Article “Typography” in the EncyclopÆdia Britannica. Gutenberg Gesellschaft. VerÖffentlichungen. Mainz, 1902, etc. 4to.
Dziatzko, C. Was wissen wir von dem Leben und der Person Joh. Gutenbergs? [1895.] —— Gutenberg’s frÜheste Druckerpraxis auf Grund einer ... Vergleichung des 42-zeiligen und 36-zeilgen Bibel. (Sammlung, No. 4.) 1890. Hessels, J. H. Gutenberg: Was He the Inventor of Printing? London, 1882. —— The So-called Gutenberg Documents. (Reprinted from The Library.) London, 1912. V.—OTHER INCUNABULA Panzer, G. W. Annales Typographici ab artis inventÆ origine ad annum MD. (ad annum MDXXXVI). 11 vols. 4to. NorimbergÆ, 1793-1803. Hain, L. Repertorium Bibliographicum, in quo libri omnes ab arte typographica inventa usque ad annum MD. typis expressi ordine alphabetico vel simpliciter enumerantur vel adcuratius recensentur. StuttgartiÆ et TubingÆ, 1826. —— Indices uberrimi oper C. Burger. LipsiÆ, 1891. Copinger, W. A. Supplement to Hain’s Repertorium Bibliographicum. (Index by Konrad Burger.) 3 vols. London, 1895-1902. Reichling, D. Appendices ad Hainii Copingeri Repertorium Bibliographicum. Additiones et emendationes. 7 pt. Monachii, 1905-11. Pellechet, M. L. C. Catalogue gÉnÉral des Incunables des bibliothÈques publiques de France. [Continued by M. L. Polain.] Vols. i.-iii. Paris, 1897, etc. Proctor, R. An Index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum, with notes of those in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 2 vols. London, 1898. British Museum. Catalogue of Books Printed in the Fifteenth Century, now in the British Museum. Vols. i-ii. [Block-books and Germany, Mainz-Trier.] 4to. London, 1908, etc. Providence, R.I. Annmary Brown Memorial. Catalogue of Books mostly from the Presses of the First Printers, showing the progress of printing with movable metal types through the second half of the Fifteenth Century. Collected by Rush C. Hawkins. Catalogued by A. W. Pollard. 4to. Oxford, 1910. Burger, K. Monumenta Germaniae et Italiae typographica. Deutsche und italienische Inkunabeln in getreuen Nachbildungen. Parts 1-8. Fol. Berlin, 1892, etc. Gesellschaft fÜr Typenkunde des 15. Jahrhunderts. VerÖffentlichungen. Fol. Uppsala, 1907, etc. Type Facsimile Society. Publications. (1900-4 edited by R. Proctor; 1904-8 by G. Dunn.) 4to. Oxford, 1900, etc. Woolley Photographs. Woolley Photographs. Photographs of fifteenth century types of the exact size of the originals, designed to supplement published examples, with references to Robert Proctor’s Index of Books in the British Museum and Bodleian Library. [Edited by George Dunn, with a list of the 500 photographs.] Fol. Woolley, 1899-1905. Haebler, K. Typenrepertorium der Wiegendrucke. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1905, etc. 8vo. This supplies the measurement and some guide to the characteristics of every recorded fifteenth century type, with helps to the identification of the printers of unsigned books by means of the different forms of M, Qu, etc. Bernard, A. J. De l’Origine et des DÉbuts de l’Imprimerie en Europe. 2 vols. Paris, 1853. Valuable for its numerous references to notes and dates in individual copies. Hawkins, Rush C. Titles of the First Books from the Earliest Presses established in different Cities, Towns, and Monasteries in Europe, before the end of the Fifteenth Century. With brief notes upon their printers. 4to. New York, 1884. Claudin, A. Histoire de l’imprimerie en France. Vols. i.-iii. 4to. Paris, 1900, etc. Thierry-Poux, O. Premiers monuments de l’imprimerie en France au xve siÈcle. [40 sheets of facsimiles.] Fol. Paris, 1890. Holtrop, J. W. Monuments typographiques des Pays-Bas au quinziÈme siÈcle. [130 plates of facsimiles.] Fol. La Haye, 1868. Campbell, M. F. A. G. Annales de la Typographie NÉerlandaise au xve siÈcle. (With four supplements.) La Haye, 1874 (1878-90). Fumagalli, G. Lexicon typographicum Italiae. Dictionnaire gÉographique d’Italie pour servir À l’histoire de l’imprimerie dans ce pays. Florence, 1905. Haebler, K. Bibliografia iberica del siglo 15. La Haya, 1904. —— The Early Printers of Spain and Portugal. [Bibliog. Soc. Illust. Monographs, 4.] 4to. London, 1897. —— Typographie ibÉrique du xve siÈcle. Reproduction en fac-similÉ de tous les caractÈres typographiques employÉs en Espagne et en Portugal jusqu’À 1500. Fol. La Haye, 1902. VI.—THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRINTED BOOK Pollard, A. W. An Essay on Colophons. With specimens and translations, by A. W. Pollard, and an introduction by R. Garnett (Caxton Club). Chicago, 1905. —— Last Words on the History of the Titlepage. 4to. London, 1890. Roberts, W. Printers’ Marks: A Chapter in the History of Typography. London, 1893. BÜchermarken. Die BÜchermarken oder Buchdrucker und Verlegerzeichen. 4to. Strassburg, 1892, etc. 1. ElsÄssische BÜchermarken bis Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Herausgeg. von P. Heitz, 1892. 2. Die Italienischen Buchdrucker- und Verlegerzeichen bis 1525. Herausgeg. von P. Kristeller, 1893. 3. Die Basler BÜchermarken bis Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts. Herausgeg. von P. Heitz, 1895. 4. Die Frankfurter Drucker und Verlegerzeichen bis Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts. Herausgeg. von P. Heitz, 1896. 5. Spanische und Portugiesische BÜcherzeichen des xv. und xvi. Jahrhunderts. Herausgeg. von. K. K. Haebler, 1898. 6. KÖlner BÜchermarken bis zum Anfang des xvii. Jahrhunderts. Herausgeg. von Dr. Zaretzky, 1898. 7. Genfer Buchdrucker, und Verlegerzeichen von xv. xvi. und xvii. Jahrhundert. Von P. Heitz, 1908. Silvestre, L. C. Marques typographiques, ou recueil des monogrammes ... des libraires et imprimeurs en France, depuis l’introduction de l’imprimerie jusqu’À la fin du xve siÈcle. Paris, 1853-67. Jennings, O. Early Woodcut Initials. London, 1908. VII.—EARLY GERMAN AND DUTCH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Dodgson, C. Catalogue of early German and Flemish woodcuts preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Vols. i.-ii. London, 1903, 1911. Muther, R. Die deutsche BÜcherillustration der Gothik und FrÜhrenaissance (1460-1530). 2 Bde. 4to. MÜnchen, 1884. Schreiber, W. L. Catalogue des incunables À figures imprimÉs en Allemagne, en Suisse en Autriche-Hongrie et en Scandinavie, avec des notes critiques et bibliographiques. (Manuel de l’amateur de la gravure sur bois et sur mÉtal au xve siÈcle, tom. 5 & 6.) Leipzig, 1910. Cockerell, S. C. Some German Woodcuts of the Fifteenth Century. 4to. Hammersmith, 1897. Conway, Sir W. M. The Woodcutters of the Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge, 1884. VIII.—EARLY ITALIAN ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Lippmann, F. The Art of Wood-Engraving in Italy in the Fifteenth Century. London, 1888. Pollard, A. W. Italian Book-Illustrations, chiefly of the Fifteenth Century. (Portfolio monographs, 12.) London, 1894. Kristeller, P. Early Florentine Woodcuts. With an annotated list of Florentine illustrated books. London, 1897. Essling, Prince d’. Les Missels imprimÉs À Venise de 1481 À 1600. Description, illustration, bibliographie. Ouvrage ornÉ de planches sur cuivre et de 250 gravures. Fol. Paris, 1894. —— Études sur l’art de la gravure sur bois À Venise. Les livres À figures vÉnitiens de la fin du 15e siÈcle et du commencement du 16e. Fol. Paris, 1907, etc. IX.—EARLY FRENCH AND SPANISH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS Murray, C. F. Catalogue of a collection of early French Books in the library of C. Fairfax Murray. Compiled by H. W. Davies. 4to. London, 1910. Vindel, P. Bibliografia grafica: Reproduccion en facsimil de portadas, retratos, colofones y otras curiosidades Útiles Á los bibliÓfilos, que se hallan en obras Únicas y libros preciosos Ó raros. 2 tom. Madrid, 1910. 1224 facsimiles of titlepages, illustrations, etc., of Spanish books, unfortunately neither well selected, nor well arranged, but still useful. X.—LATER FOREIGN BOOKS Proctor, R. An index to the Early Printed Books in the British Museum. Part II. 1501-20. Germany. London, 1903. Nijhoff, W. Bibliographie de la typographie nÉerlandaise des annÉes 1500 À 1540. La Haye, 1901, etc. —— L’art typographique dans les Pays-Bas, 1500-1540: Reproduction en fac-similÉ des caractÈres, typographiques, des marques d’imprimeurs, etc. Fol. La Haye, 1902, etc. Renouard, A. A. Annales de l’imprimerie des Aldes, ou histoire des trois Manuces, et de leurs Éditions. TroisiÈme Édition, avec notes de la famille des Juntes, etc. 3 vols. Paris, 1834. —— Annales de l’imprimerie des Estiennes ou histoire de la famille des Estiennes et de ses Éditions. 2e Édition. Paris, 1843. Rooses, Max. Christopher Plantin, imprimeur anversois. Biographie et documents. 2e Édition. Fol. Anvers, 1896. Willems, A. Les Elzevier. Histoire et annales typographiques. Bruxelles, etc., 1880. Goldsmid, E. M. Bibliotheca curiosa. A complete catalogue of all the publications of the Elzevir presses. Edinburgh, 1888. XI.—SIXTEENTH CENTURY ILLUSTRATIONS Many of the books entered under VII, VIII, and IX relate also to this period. Butsch, A. F. Die BÜcherornamentik der Renaissance, eine Auswahl stylvoller Titeleinfassungen, Initialen, Leisten, Vignetten und Druckerzeichen hervoragender italienischer, deutscher, und franzÖsischer Officinen aus der Zeit der FrÜhrenaissance. 4to. Leipzig, 1878. XII.—ENGLISH PRINTING, 1476-1580 Hazlitt, W. C. Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, from the Invention of Printing to the Restoration. London, 1867. Hazlitt, W. C. Collections and Notes. Three series with supplements. London, 1876-89. —— A General Index to Hazlitt’s Handbook and his Bibliographical Collections, 1867-1889. By G. T. Gray. London, 1893. British Museum. Catalogue of Books in the Library of the British Museum printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of Books in English printed abroad, to the year 1640. [Mainly by G. W. Eccles.] 3 vols. London, 1884. Duff, E. G. Catalogue of Books in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of Books in English printed abroad to the end of the year 1640. 4to. Manchester, 1895. Sayle, C. E. Early English Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge, 1475-1640. Cambridge, 1900-7. The books are arranged under the printers. Ames, J. Typographical Antiquities: Being an historical account of printing in England; with some memoirs of our antient printers, and a register of the books printed by them, 1471-1600. With an appendix concerning printing in Scotland and Ireland to the same time. 4to. London, 1749. —— Considerably augmented.... By W. Herbert. 3 vols. 4to. London, 1785-90. —— Greatly enlarged, with copious Notes and Engravings by T. F. Dibdin. Vols. i.-iv. 4to. London, 1810-19. Duff, E. G. English Printing on Vellum to the end of 1600. (Bibliographical Society of Lancashire.) 4to. Aberdeen, 1902. —— A Century of the English Book Trade: Short notices of all Printers, Stationers, Bookbinders, and others connected with it, 1457-1557. 4to. Bibliographical Society, London, 1905. —— The Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders of Westminster and London, 1476-1535. (Sandars Lectures.) Cambridge, 1896. —— Early English Printing: A series of facsimiles of all the types used in England during the fifteenth century. Fol. London, 1896. —— (and others.) Handlists of English Printers, 1501-1557. Parts 1-3. 4to. Bibliographical Society, London, 1896, etc. Arber, E. A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640. 5 vols. 4to. London, 1875-94. Blades, W. The Life and Typography of William Caxton. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1861-3. —— Biography and Typography of Caxton. London, 1882. Duff, E. G. William Caxton. (Caxton Club of Chicago.) 4to. Chicago, 1905. Ricci, Seymour de. A Census of Caxtons. (Bibliographical Society, Illust. Monographs, 15.) London, 1909. Plomer, H. R. A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898. (English Bookman’s Library.) London, 1900. Reed, T. B. History of the Old English Letter Foundries. 4to. London, 1887. XIII.—EARLY PRINTING IN ENGLISH OUTSIDE LONDON Allnutt, W. H. English Provincial Presses. (Bibliographica, Parts 5-7.) London, 1895. Duff, E. G. The English Provincial Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders to 1557. (Sandars Lectures.) Cambridge, 1912. Bowes, R. A Catalogue of Books Printed at or relating to the University, Town and County of Cambridge, 1521-1893. Cambridge, 1894. Madan, F. L. Oxford Books. Vol. 1. The Early Oxford Press: A Bibliography of Printing and Publishing at Oxford “1468-1640.” —— —— Vol. 2. Oxford Literature, 1450-1640, and 1641-1650. Oxford, 1895, 1912. —— A Chart of Oxford Printing, “1468”-1900. With notes and illustrations. 4to. Oxford, 1903. —— A Brief Account of the University Press at Oxford. With illustrations, together with a chart of Oxford printing. 4to. Oxford, 1908. Davies, R. A Memoir of the York Press. With notices of Authors, Printers, and Stationers in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Westminster, 1868. Dobson, A. Horace Walpole: A Memoir. With an Appendix of Books Printed at the Strawberry Hill Press. New York, 1893. Aldis, H. G. A List of Books Printed in Scotland before 1700, including those Printed furth of the realm for Scottish Booksellers. With brief notes on the Printers and Stationers. 4to. Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, Edinburgh, 1904. Dickson, R., and Edmond, T. P. Annals of Scottish Printing: from the Introduction of the Art in 1507 to the beginning of the 17th Century. 4to. Cambridge, 1890. Dix, E. R. McC. A List of Irish Towns and Dates of Earliest Printing in each. Second edition. Dublin, 1909. —— The Earliest Dublin Printing. With list of books, etc., printed in Dublin prior to 1601. Dublin, 1901. Gilbert, Sir J. T. Irish Bibliography. Two papers. With an introduction, notes, and appendices by E. R. McC. Dix. Dublin, 1904. Watkins, G. T. Bibliography of Printing in America: Books, etc., relating to the history of printing in the New World. Boston, 1906. Evans, C. American Bibliography.... A Chronological Dictionary of all books, pamphlets, and periodical publications printed in the United States from 1639 to 1820. 4to. Chicago, 1903, etc. Thomas, J. The History of Printing in America. With a Biography of Printers, etc. Second edition. 2 vols. Albany, 1874. Roden, R. F. The Cambridge Press, 1638-1692: A history of the first printing press in English America, together with a bibliographical list of the issues. New York, 1905. XIV.—ENGLISH WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS Chatto and Jackson. A Treatise on Wood Engravings: Historical and Practical. Second edition. London 1861. Linton, W. J. The Masters of Wood-Engraving. Folio. London, 1889. XV.—ENGRAVED BOOKS—ILLUSTRATIONS Hind, A. M. A Short History of Engraving and Etching for the use of Collectors and Students. With full bibliography, classified list, and index of engravers. Second edition, revised. London, 1911. Colvin, Sir S. Early Engraving and Engravers in England, 1545-1695. Fol. British Museum. London, 1905. Hind, A. M. List of the Works of Native and Foreign Line-Engravers in England from Henry VIII to the Commonwealth. British Museum. London, 1905. Reprinted from Sir S. Colvin’s work. Cohen, H. Guide de l’amateur de livres À gravure du 18e siÈcle, 6e Édition, augmentÉe par Seymour de Ricci. Paris, 1912. Levine, J. Bibliography of the 18th Century Art and Illustrated Books. London, 1898. BÉraldi, J. H. Estampes et livres, 1872-1892. 4to. Paris, 1892. A catalogue of the compiler’s own collection of French illustrated books. XVI.—MODERN FINE PRINTING Straus, R., and Dent, R. K. John Baskerville: A Memoir. 4to. Cambridge, 1907. Goschen, Viscount. The Life and Times of Georg Joachim Goeschen, Publisher and Printer of Leipzig, 1752-1828. 2 vols. London, 1903. Werelet, E. Études bibliographiques sur la famille des Didot, imprimeurs, etc., 1713-1864. (Extrait de l’Histoire du Livre en France.) Paris, 1864. Warren, A. The Charles Whittinghams, Printers. (Grolier Club.) New York, 1896. Morris, W. A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press. With a short description of the Press by S. C. Cockerell, and an annotated list of the books printed thereat. Hammersmith, 1898. Ricketts. A Bibliography of the Books issued by Hacon and Ricketts. (The Vale Press.) London, 1904. Steele, R. The Revival of Printing. London, 1912. INDEX Abbeville, illustrated books, 145 sq. Aberdeen Breviary, printed at Edinburgh, 239 sq. Abingdon, printing at, 226 Acqui, colophon, 80 Ad te levavi woodcut, 144 Aesop, illustrated editions, 106, 111, 120, 124, 125, 139, 141, 162, 251, 256, 289 AlcalÀ, Cardinal Ximenes’ Polyglott printed at, 176; Greek Testament type imitated by Proctor, 307 Aldus Manutius. See Manutius. Alexander Gallus, early edition of his Doctrinale “jetÉ en moule,” 42; colophon of Acqui ed. quoted, 80 sq.; Venice ed. of, 126; Pynson’s, 213 Alexander of Villedieu. See Alexander Gallus Allan, George, private press, 238 Allnutt, W., on English provincial printing, 233, 238 Alphabeti noua effictio. De Bry’s, 280, 285 Altdorfer, Albrecht, illustrator, 188 sq. — Erhard, Bible illustrated by, 190 Alunno di Domenico. See Bartolommeo di Giovanni American colonies, early printing in, 243-9 Ammann, Jost, book-illustrations, 193, 278 Amsterdam, English books printed at, 232; engravings, 289, 292; presses improved at, 297 Anabat, Guil., his Horae, 156 Andrea, Hieronymus, wood-cutter, 188 Antichristus, block-book, 27 Antwerp, printing, 72, 175 sq.; woodcuts, 202 sq.; English books printed, 229 sqq.; engraved illustration, 274 sqq. Apocalypsis S. Johannis, block-book, 26 Aquila, good roman type, 89; illustrated Aesop, 141 Arbuthnot, Alexander, Edinburgh printer, 242 Ariosto, Lodovico, Orlando Furioso, illustrated editions, 277, 283, 296 Ars Moriendi, block-book, 25 Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir, VÉrard’s edition, 149, De Worde’s, 254 Arundel, Earl of, Caxton’s cut of his device, 251 Ascensius. See Badius Ascensius Ashendene Press, 306 Audran, BenoÎt, engraver, 290 Augsburg printing, 62, 169; book-illustration, 102 sqq., 184 sqq. Augustine, S., Abbeville edition of his De Ciuitate Dei, 146 .b., woodcuts signed, 128 sq. Bacon, Francis, engraved title to Novum Organum, 288 Badius Ascensius, Jodocus, printer at Lyon and Paris, 170 Bagford, John, his copies from block-books, 19 BÄmler, Johann, illustrated books, 104 Bankes, Robert, London printer, 216 Banks, Sir Joseph, his natural history books, 5 Barbier, Jean, partner of Julyan Notary, 214 Barcelona, early printing, 75; illustration, 162 Barclay, Alexander, translator of Sallust, 217; of Gringore’s Chasteau de Labeur, 230, 254, 256 Barker, Robert, Royal Printer, 216 sq. Barnes, Dam Julyan, “her boke of huntyng,” 208 — Joseph, Oxford printer, 235 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, editions of his De Proprietatibus Rerum, 121, 159; printed by Caxton, 204; by De Worde, 212, 253; edited by S. Bateman, 263 Bartolommeo di Giovanni, Mr. Berenson’s attribution of Florentine woodcuts to, 136 Bartolozzi, F., portrait of Lunardi, 296 Basel printing, 60, 170, book-illustration, 109, 191 sq. Basiliologia engravings, 285 Baskerville, John, Birmingham printer, 299 sq. Bassandyne, Thomas, Edinburgh printer, 242 Bateman, Stephen, illustrated books by, 263 Bay Psalter, first book printed in North America, 244 sq. Beck, Leonhard, illustrator, 186, 188 sq. Beham, Hans Sebald, illustrator, 183 Belgium, early printing, 73 Belial siue Consolatio peccatorum. See Theramo, Jac. de Bellaert, Jacob, illustrated books, 120 sq. Bellini, Gentile, woodcut after, 130 Benlowes, E., Theophila, 289 Berenson, Bernhard, attributes all early Florentine cuts to “Alunno di Domenico,” 135 Berghen, Adriaen von, English books printed by, 230 Bergomensis, Jac. Phil., his Supplementum Cronicarum, 126; De claris mulieribus, 140 Berkeley, Sir William, on free schools and printing, 249 Berrutus, Amadeus, engraving in his Dialogus, 273 Berthelet, Thomas, connection with Pynson, 213, 258; Royal Printer, 216, 259 Bettini, Ant., illustrated editions of his Monte Santo di Dio, 124, 268 sq. Bible, English, early editions, 217, 231 sq., 260, 281; French Bible historiÉe, 150; German, illustrated editions of, 108, 112, 113, 114; Indian (Narraganset), 246 sq.; Italian, illustrated editions of, 125, 128; Latin, the 42-line, 47 sqq., 96; the 36-line, 51 sq., 83; of 1462, 57; of 1472, 57; Polyglott, 175, 176, 275; Scottish, 242 Biblia Pauperum, block-book, 25, 118; its plan imitated in Horae borders, 152, 155 Biel, Fried., illustrated books, 162 Binneman. See Bynneman Birmingham, Baskerville’s press at, 299 Birth of Mankind, first English book with engravings, 280 Bladen, William, Dublin printer, 243 Bladi, printers at Rome, 169 Blaew, William, improves printing-press, 297 Blomefield, Francis, private press, 238 Boccaccio, Giov., De Casibus Illustrium virorum, 144, 159, 186, 213, 256, 258 note, 270; De claris mulieribus, 106, 122, 162, 186; Decamerone, 291 Bodleian Library, effect of its foundation on private book-collecting, 3 Bodoni, Giovanni Battista, printer at Parma, 300 Boec von der Houte. See Cross, the Holy Boitard, Peter, illustrator, 296 Bonaventura, S., illustrations to his Devote Meditatione, 123, 125, 138 Bonhomme, Jean, his illustrated books, 144, 158 Book-illustration, natural method of, 100; in Germany and Holland, 102-22, 181-94; in Italy, 123-42, 194-6; in France and Spain, 143-64, 197-202; in England, 250-66; engraved, 267-96 Borderpieces, stamped by illuminators, 125; Venetian, 125, 133; Florentine, 133; other Italian, 140, 142; Spanish, 162; Basel, 191; London, 252, 256, 258 sq., 266 Boston, Mass., early printing, 247; modern, 308 Boucher, FranÇois, illustrator, 290 Bradford, Andrew, printer at Philadelphia, 248 — William, first printer at Philadelphia, 247; and at New York, 248 Bradshaw, Henry, his claim for bibliography, 12; on the printer of the Speculum, 40 Brandis, Lucas, first LÜbeck printer, 64, 114 Brant, Sebastian, connected with book-illustration, 110, 112, 161, 213, 254, 256 Brass, types made of, 212 note Breidenbach, Bernhard von, his arms on a Mainz Agenda, 114; his Peregrinatio in Montem Syon, 115, 161, 162, 270 Brinckley, Stephen, Jesuit printer, 228 Bristol printing, 237 sq. British Museum, bequests to, 4-6; block-books in, 31 Brosamer, Hans, Bibles illustrated by, 190 Broughton, Hugh, plates in his Concent of Scripture, 283 Bruges early printing, 73, 122, 205 sq.; engravings in books printed at, 270-3 Brussels early printing, 73 Brydges, Sir Egerton, private press, 239 Buckner, John, Virginia printer, 249 Bulkley, Stephen, printer at York, 237 Bulle, John, printer at Rome, Lettou’s relation with, 210 Bunyan, John, portrait in Pilgrim’s Progress, 289 Burghers, Michael, engraver, 294 Burgkmair, Hans, illustrator, 185 sq., 188 sq. Burgundy, Margaret Duchess of. See Margaret Bynneman, Henry, London printer, 220, 228 Cagli, good roman type, 89 Calendar of Shepherds, French editions, 145; English, 254, 256 Cambridge, printing at, 225, 234 sq., 300 Cambridge, Mass., printing at, 244 sq., 308 Canon Missae, Mainz edition of, 55; Crucifixion woodcut to, 109, 129 Canterbury, printing at, 227 Canterbury Tales. See Chaucer Canticum Canticorum, block-book, 26, 118 Caoursin, Gulielmus, woodcuts in books by, 107 Capell, Edward, bequeaths his Shakespeare books to Trin. Coll., Camb., 5 Capitals, pictorial and heraldic, 69, 104, 197, 259 sqq. Carmelianus, Petrus, pictures in his Carmen, 257 Cartwright, Thomas, his tracts printed at a secret press, 228 Caslon, William, typefounder, 298 Catholicon, possibly printed by Gutenberg, 52 Caxton, William, 204, 208; press at Bruges, 73, 205 sq.; at Westminster, 76, 207 sq.; method of printing in red, 86; illustrated books, 250-2; possible engraved portrait of, 272 sq. Cazotte, J., his Le diable amoureux, 292 Cecill, Thomas, engraver, 286 Cennini, Bernardo, first printer at Florence, 67; colophon of his Virgil, 80 Cervicornus, Eucharius, printer at Cologne, 225 Chapman, Walter, printer at Edinburgh, 239 Charteris, Henry, printer at Edinburgh, 242 Chaucer, Geoffrey, early editions, 207, 251, 255, 258 Chauveau, FranÇois, engraver, 289 Chess, Game and Play of the, 205, 251 Chester, printing at, 237, etc. Chiromantia, block-book, 28 Choffard, P. P., fleurons by, 291 sq. Christian Prayers, Book of (Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book), 264 Christopher, S., early woodcut of, 119 Ciripagus, meaning of the word, 43 Civil War, its effects on Oxford printing, 236 Clark, John, engraver, 294 Classics, first editions of the, 6 Claudin, Anatole, his Histoire de l’Imprimerie en France, 143 Clement V, 1460 edition of his Constitutiones, 56 Clemente of Padua, self-taught printer at Venice, 67, 89 Cochin, C., Paris engraver, 290 sq. Cock, Hieron, Antwerp engraver, 274 — Peter, Alost engraver, 281 Cockson, Thomas, London engraver, 283 Colines, Simon, his Horae, 157; relations with the Estiennes, 171; illustrated books, 199 Collectors and Collecting, 1-18, 83 Cologne, printing at, 61, 169, 205, 225, 231; book-illustration at, 113 Cologne Chronicle, its story of the invention of printing, 34 Colonna, Francesco. See Hypnerotomachia Poliphili Colophons, 14; specimens quoted, 80 sq.; in manuscript, 91 Colour-printing in incunabula, 129 sq., 253 Columna, Aegidius, his Regimiento de los principes, 163 Colvin, Sir Sidney, his Early engravings quoted, 281, 300 Complutensian Polyglott. See AlcalÀ Constance, Das Conciliumbuch, illustrated editions of, 106, 186 Conway, Sir M., his Woodcutters of the Netherlands Conwell, Clarke, American printer, 308 Copland, Robert, London printer, 215, 258 — William, London printer, 215, 260 Cornelis, the bookbinder, of Haarlem, 37 sq., 41 Corrozet, Gilles, his verses to Holbein’s cuts, 192; other illustrated books by, 200 sq. Coryat, Thomas, Crudities, 285 Coster, Lourens, legend of his inventing printing, 37 sqq. “Costeriana,” group of books so called, 39-41, 72 Cotton, Sir Robert, his collections, 2 Cranach, Lucas, his bookwork at Wittenberg, 190 Cremer, Heinrich, copy of 42-line Bible rubricated by, 47 sq. Creussner, F., Nuremberg printer, 63, 108 Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of, arms on title of Great Bible, 260 Croquet, Jean, of Geneva, first edition of Roman de la Rose attributed to, 160 note Cross, the Holy, block-book history of, 118 Cunningham, William, his Cosmographicall Glasse, 218, 261 Dalles, Jean, Lyonnese wood-cutter, 159 Daniel, Rev. C. H. O., private press, 303 Danse Macabre, illustrations to, 145, 151 Dante Alighieri, illustrated editions of Divina Commedia, 129, 269, 306 sq. Darmstadt Prognostication, printer of the, forged dates in his books, 58 Davidson, Thomas, Edinburgh printer, 240 sq. Day, John, London printer, 218 sq., 234; illustrated books, 260 sq. — Matthew, printer at Cambridge, Mass., 245 — Stephen, first printer in North America, 244 De Bry, family of engravers, 278-80, 282 Defensorium inviolatae castitatis Virginis Mariae, block-book, 127 Defoe, Daniel, plates to Robinson Crusoe, 294 Delaram, Francis, engraver, 285 sq. Delft, early printing at, 72 Denham, Henry, London printer, 220 Derrick, John, Image of Ireland, 264 Deventer, early printing at, 72, 74 d’Ewes, Sir Simeon, fate of his manuscripts, 4 Dialogus Creaturum, woodcuts in, 119 Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers, Caxton’s, 207 Didot, family of printers at Paris, 301 Digby, Sir Kenelm Digby, benefactions to libraries, 5 Dinckmut, Conrad, illustrated books, 106 sq. Doesborg, Jan van, English books printed by, 230 Dolet, Etienne, printer at Lyon, 174 Donatus, Aelius, early editions of his De octo partibus orationis, 35, 36, 46, 51, 65 Douay, English Catholic books printed at, 232 Dorat, C. J., Les Baisers, 293 Doves Press, 306 Downes, Thomas, English bookseller, patentee for Irish printing, 243 Drach, Peter, Speier printer, 63 Drayton, Michael, Polyolbion, 285 Dublin, early printing at, 242 sq. Du Bosc, Claude, engraver, 294 Dudley, Earl of Leicester, encourages Oxford printing, 235 Duff, E. G., on woodcuts in 1471 Bible, 125 note; on Berthelet and Pynson, 213; on free trade in books, 223; on a book printed at St. Albans, 225 Du Guernier, Louis, engraver, 294 Du Guesclin, Bertrand, woodcut of, 146 Du Moulin, Conrad, buys a De Salute Corporis, 39 DuprÉ, Jean, fine printer at Paris, 71; his illustrated books, 143 sqq., 160; his Horae, 151 sq. DÜrer, Albrecht, book-illustrations by, 181 sq., 188 Dutch printing and book-illustration. See Holland Duranti, Gulielmus, Rationale diuinorum officiorum, 1459 edition, 56 Dyson, Humphrey, book-collector, 3 Edinburgh printing, 239-42 Editions, number of copies in early, 21 Edward VI, woodcut of, 260 Egenolph, Christian, illustrated books, 183, 187 EichstÄtt service-books, engravings in, 270 Eisen, C., illustrator, 291 sqq. Eliot, John, books by, printed at Cambridge, Mass., 246 Elizabeth, Queen, portraits of, 264, 265, 281 sq.; her “Prayer Book,” 264 Elston Press, 308 Elstracke, Renold, engraver, 285 sq., 288 Elzevir, family of printers, 177 sqq. Emden, Puritan books printed at, 232 England, printing in, 76 sq., 204-28, 233-9, 302-8 English books printed abroad, 228-32 English engraved illustrations, 280-9, 293-6 English woodcut illustrations, 250-66 Engraved illustrations, 267-96 Epistole ed Evangelii, illustrated Florentine ed., 136, 139 Eragny Press, 308 Erasmus, Desiderius, his relations with Froben, 170, 191 Erven, G. van der, printer at Emden, 232 E. S., the Master, Ars moriendi engravings by, 25 Essling, Prince d’, his Livres À figures venitiens quoted, 125 note, 127, 130 sq. Estienne, family of scholar-printers, 171 sqq. Eton, printing at, 234 Eustace, Guil., his Horae, 156 Exeter, early printing at, 237 F, woodcuts signed, at Venice, 128; at Paris, 200 Fabyan’s Chronicle, Pynson’s ed., 257 Faithorne, W., engraver, 289 Faques or Fawkes, Richard, London printer, 215 Faques, William, Royal Printer, 214 Fell, Bishop, buys Dutch types for Oxford, 298 Ferrara, early printing at, 68, 70; book-illustrations, 140 Fichet, Guillaume, letter on invention of printing, 33, 44; invites printers to the Sorbonne, 70 Field, Richard, London printer, 221 Fifteen Oes, Caxton’s edition, 252 First books printed in different countries and towns, their interest, 78 sq. Fisher, Bishop, woodcuts to his funeral sermons, 254 Florence, early printing, 67, 70, book-illustration at, 133-9, 267; Venetian imitation of Florentine style, 196 Florio, John, engraved portrait, 287 Foliation, or leaf-numbers, first used by ther Hoernen, 62 Foster, John, first printer at Boston, Mass., 247 Fouler, John, English printer at Antwerp and Louvain, 232 Foulis, Robert and Andrew, Glasgow printers, 298 Foxe, John, his Actes and Monuments, or Book of Martyrs, 219, 262 France, printing in, 70-2, 170-5, 224; book-illustration, 143-61, 197-202, 289-93 Franciscus, Magister, Schoeffer’s corrector, 51 Francke (or Franckton), John, Dublin printer, 243 Frankfort am Main, book-illustration at, 184, 193, 278 sqq. Franklin, Benjamin, printer at Philadelphia, 248 Freez (or Wandsforth), Gerard, York printer, 225 Freiburger, Gering and Crantz, first Paris printers, 70 sq. Frezzi, Bishop, Quatriregio, illustrated editions, 139 Froben, Johann, scholarly printer at Basel, 170; his book-decorations, 191 Front, the Mind of the, 287 Froschauer, Christopher, Zurich printer, his English books, 231 sq. Fust, Johann, dealings with Gutenberg, 46 sqq.; books printed by, 53 sq., 86 Gafori, Francesco, illustrations to his music-books, 141, 196 Gaguin, Robert, illustrations to his chronicles, 198 Game and Pley of the Chesse, 206 Garamond, Claude, French Royal Greek types cut by, 172 Garland of Rachel, 303 Garrick, David, his collection of plays, 5 Geiler, Johann, of Kaisersberg, illustrations to his books, 185, 190 Geminus, Thomas, engraved work, 281 Geneva, English books printed at, 232 GÉrard, Pierre, first printer at Abbeville, 145 Germany, printing in, 44-64, 169 sq., 224; book-illustration, 102-17, 181-94 Giunta, family of printers at Florence and Venice, 128, 168 sq., 195 Giustiniano, Lorenzo, portrait of, 130 Glasgow, fine printing at, 298 Glover, Rev. Joseph, benefactor of Harvard College, 244 Goes, Hugo, York printer, 225 Goeschen, Georg Joachim, printer at Leipzig, 301 Golden Legend, Caxton’s editions, 207, 251 Gouda, printing and illustration, 72, 119, 122 Graf, Urs, book-decorations by, 191 Grafton, Richard, Royal Printer, 217, 259; his Chronicle, 264 Gravelot, H., engraver at Paris, 291 sqq., and London, 295 Greek printing in Italy, 167, 301; in France, 171 sqq.; in Spain, 176; in England, 176, 218, 226, 234, 300, 307 Green, Bartholomew, printer at Boston, Mass., 247 sq. — Samuel, printer at Cambridge, Mass., 245 sqq. Gregorii, Giov. and Greg. dei, printers at Venice, 69, 195 Grenewych by Conrade Freeman, spurious imprint, 232 Grenville, Thomas, character of his collection, 6 Grien, Hans Baldung, illustrator, 190 Grignion, Charles, engraver, 296 Gringore, Pierre, Chasteau de Labeur, 150 sq.; English editions, 230 sq., 254 Grolier, Jean, example as a book-buyer, 2; supports Aldus, 168 GrÜninger, Johann, of Strassburg, illustrated books, 111 sq. Gryphius, Sebastian, Lyon printer, 173 Gutenberg, Johann, claims to the invention of printing, 33-6, 44 sqq.; books he may have printed, 51 sq. Haarlem, its claims to be the birthplace of printing, 37 sqq., 72 Hakluyt, Richard, Voyages, 278 Hamman, Johann. See Herzog Han, Ulrich, early printer at Rome, 65, 67 sq., types, 90; printed the first Italian illustrated book, 123 Hardouyn, Germain and Gilles, their Horae, 156 Harington, Sir John, on the plates in his Orlando Furioso, 283 Harrison, Stephen, Archs of Triumph, 284 Hartlieb, Johann, block-book of Die Kunst Chiromantia, 28 Harvard College, printing at, 244 sq. Haydock, Richard, engraver, 284 Hayman, Francis, illustrator, 296 Heber, Richard, character of his collection, 6 Hempstead (Essex), secret printing at, 228 Henry V, woodcut of Lydgate offering book to, 257 Henry VII, books decorated by VÉrard for, 148; woodcut of his funeral, 254 Henry VIII “protects” English book-trade, 222, 234 Heroologia engravings, 285 Hertfort or Herford, John, printer at St. Albans and London, 224 sq. Herzog, Johann, prints Sarum Missal at Venice, 229 Hessels, Dr., his theories on the invention of printing, 38 sqq. Heynlyn, Jean, superintends first Paris press, 70 Heywood, Thomas, woodcut of, 260; engravings to his Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, 286 Higman, Nicolas, Horae, 156 Hobby-Horse, experiments in printing in, 304 Hogarth, William, book-illustrations, 295 sq. Hogenberg, Franciscus and Remigius, engravers, 281 sq. Holbein, Ambrosius, book-decorations, 191 — Hans, book-decorations and illustrations, 191 sq., 259 sq. Hole, William, engraver, 285, 287 Holinshed, Raphael, Chronicle, 265 Holland, claims to the invention of printing, 32-43; printing in, 72; book-illustrations, 119-22 Holland, H., print-seller, 285 Hollar, Wenceslaus, engraver, 287 Homer, the Florentine, 167; in French, 201; Chapman’s, 287; Ogilby’s Odyssey, 287; Proctor’s, 307 Hondius, Jodocus, engraver, 283 sq. Hopyl, Wolfgang, Missals by, 198, 229 Horace, Pine’s ed., 295 sq., 300; Foulis, 298 Horae, Paris editions, 151-7, 264; Plantin’s, 275 Hornby, C. St. John, private press, 88, 306 Hroswitha, illustrations to her Comedies, 182 Hunte, Thomas, Oxford stationer, partner in Rood’s press, 76, 209 Hurning, Hans. See Walther, F., and Hans Hurning Hurus, Paul, illustrated books, 162 Huss, Martin, illustrated books, 158 Huvin, Jean, probable partner (I. H.) of Jul. Notary, 214 Hylton, Walter, Scala perfectionis, De Worde’s ed., 253 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 90, 131 sq.; French version of, 201 i, ia., woodcuts signed, 128 I.D., woodcut signed, 159 Imprese, engravings of, 277 Incipits of books, quoted, 93 Incunabula, study of, 12 sq.; the word misleading, 77; points of, 78 sq. Indulgences, printed at Mainz, 47 Ipswich, printing at, 226 Ireland, printing in, 242 sq. Italy, printing in, 65-70, 165-9, 224; book-illustration in, 123-42 James I, works and portrait, 288 Janot, Denis, printer of French illustrated books, 200 Jenson, Nicolas, printer at Venice, 67, 85 Jesuit press (1580), 228 Jewel, Bishop, books against, printed at Antwerp and Louvain, 232 Johnes, Thomas, private press, 238 Johnson, Marmaduke, printer at Cambridge, Mass., 246 Junius, Hadrianus, his story of Coster, 37 sq. Justinian, in Council, metal-cut of, 198 Kearney, William, Dublin printer, 243 Kefer, or Keffer, Heinrich, servant of Gutenberg, 47, 63 Keimer, Samuel, printer at Philadelphia, 248 Keith, George, his Appeal from the Twenty-eight Judges, 248 Kerver, Thielmann, Horae, 156 Ketham, Johannes, Fascicolo di Medicina, illustrated, 129 Kipling, R., contribution to a school magazine, 8 Knoblochtzer, H., Strassburg printer, 60; illustrated books, 111 KÖbel, Jakob, printer at Oppenheim, 193 Koberger, Anton, largest Nuremberg printer, 63; illustrated books, 108, 183 Koelhoff, Johann, father and son, printers at Cologne, 113 Kyngston, Felix, English bookseller, patentee for Irish printing, 243 Kyrforth, Samuel, Oxford printer, 224 Laer, John, of Siberch. See Siberch La Fontaine, Jean, illustrated editions of his Fables and Contes, 290 sq. Laing, David, on the Bruges Des cas des nobles hommes, 271 La Marche, Olivier de, illustrations to his Chevalier DÉlibÉrÉ, 122, 147, 149, 263 Lambeth Palace, printing at, 234 Lant, Thomas, engraver, 282 La Rochelle, Marprelate tract printed at, 228 Laud, Archbishop, benefactions to libraries, 5 Lauer, Georg, early printer at Rome, 68 Le Bey, Denis, his Emblems, 280 Leeu, Gerard, printer at Gouda and Antwerp, 72; colophon recording his death quoted, 81; sells cuts to Koelhoff, 113, 120; his illustrated books, 119 sq.; English books printed by, 229 sq. Legate, John, Cambridge printer, 235 Legge, Cantrell, Cambridge printer, 235 Le Huen, Nicole, his adaptation of Breidenbach, 161, 270 Leipzig printing, 64, 169; book-illustrations, 116 Lekpreuit, Robert, Scottish printer, 241 Lemberger, Georg, bookwork at Wittenberg, 190 Le Rouge, Pierre, prints for VÉrard, 150 Leroy, Guil., first printer at Lyon, 71; illustrated books, 158 sq. Le Signerre, Guil., illustrated books, 141 Le Talleur, Guil., printer at Rouen, prints for Pynson, 211 sq. Lettou, John, first printer in the City of London, 77, 210, 252 Lignamine, Joh. Phil. de, on the invention of printing, 34; his own press, 68 Lirer, Thomas, Chronik, illustrated ed., 107 Lisa, Gerard, first printer at Treviso, 67 sq., 70 Locatellus, Bonetus, Venice printer, 69 Locker-Lampson, F., his copy of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, 11 London, printing in the City of, 77 Longus, Daphnis et ChloÉ, 290 Louvain, early printing at, 73; book-illustration, 122; English books, 232 Lownes, Matthew, English bookseller, patentee for Irish printing, 243 LÜbeck early printing, 64; book-illustration at, 113 sq. Lucrece, Berthelet’s device of, 259 Lutzelburger, Hans, Holbein’s wood-cutter, 192 Luyken, Jan and Casper, engravers, 289 Lydgate, John, woodcut of, 257. For his Falles of Pryncis, see Boccaccio, De Casibus Lyne, John, engraver, 282 Lyon, printing at, 71, 171, 173 sq.; illustration, 157-61, 202 Macfarlane, John, monograph on Antoine VÉrard, 147 Machlinia, William, printer at London, 77, 210, 252 Madan, Falconer, on Oxford printing, 236 Magdeburg early printing, 64 Mainz, printing as a practical art invented at, 44-58; book-illustration, 114 sq. Malborow in the land of Hesse, doubtful imprint, 231 Malermi Bible. See Bible, Italian Malone, E., bequeaths books to the Bodleian, 5 Mansion, Colard, Bruges printer, 72, 122, 205 sq., 271 sq. Manutius, Aldus, his work, 166-8; large roman type, 90; italic octavos, 91, 167, 196; Hypnerotomachia, 131 sq.; Lyonnese counterfeits of his octavos, 173 — — the younger, 168 — Paulus, 168 Marchant, Gui., illustrated books, 145 Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, Caxton’s patron, 204, 272 — Duchess of Richmond, woodcut of her funeral, 255 Margins, right proportions, 97 Marprelate press, 228 Marsh, Archbishop, library founded by, 4-5 Marshall, William, engraver, 286 sqq. Mary, Princess, daughter of Henry VII, woodcut of her reception of Spanish Embassy, 257 Master and Pupil, method of depicting, 135 and note Maximilian, the Emperor, illustrated books in his honour, 182 sq., 185 sq., 188 sq. Maynyal, George, prints service-books for Caxton, 229 Mentelin, Johann, first printer at Strassburg, 60; manuscript colophon of, 91 sq. Merrymount Press, Boston (Mass.), 308 Middelburg, English books printed at, 232 Milan early printing, 68 sq.; book-illustration, 125, 141 Miller, W. H., character of his collection, 6 Millet, Jacques, illustrations to his Destruction de Troye la Grant, 144, 158, 198 Milton, John, portrait by Marshall, 288 Mirabilia RomÆ, block-book, 28 Misprinted dates at Barcelona, 75; at Oxford, 209 Mitchell, John. See Mychell MoliÈre, FranÇois, illustrations to, 290, 293 Molner, Theodoricus, confused with Theod. Rood, 209 Mondovi, good roman type, 89 Montanus, Arias, relations with Plantin, 275 sq. Monte Regio, Johannes de. See MÜller Montesquieu, Le Temple de Gnide, 290, 293 Moore, Bishop, fate of his books, 4 Moreau, French illustrator, 292 Morris, William, admired Subiaco type, 88; on the double page as the unit in a book, 98; on the illustrator of Caoursin, 108; his set of proofs of Richel’s Spiegel, 109 note; his decorative bookwork, 126; the Kelmscott press, 304 sq. Moxon, Joseph, his Mechanick Exercises, 298 MÜller, Johann, his Calendars, 27, 125; his work as a printer, 108 Musurus, Marcus, Aldus copies his Greek script, 167 Mutius Scaevola, border representing, 256 Mychell (or Mitchell), John, printer at Canterbury and London, 227 Myllar, Andrew, first Scottish printer, 239 Mylner, Ursyn, York printer, 225 N, woodcuts signed, 128 Naples early printing, 70; book-illustration, 124 Negker, Andrea and Jost de, wood-cutters, 188 Neobar, Conrad, printer of Greek, 172 Netherlands. See Holland; Belgium Neuf Preux, Les, French block-book, 29 Neumeister, Johann, printer at Foligno, Mainz, Albi, etc., 114 Newcastle, printing at, 236 sq.; New Testament, Tyndale’s, 231; Eliot’s, 246 Niclas, Hendrik, his books printed at Amsterdam, 232 Nitschewitz, Hermann, Psalterium B.M.V., 117 Norwich, Dutch books printed at, 233; other printing at, 238 Notary, Julyan, early printer at London, 77, 213 sq., 222 Nuremberg, printing at, 63, 169; book-illustration at, 108, 116 sq., 181-4, 193 Nuremberg Chronicle. See Schedel Nut-Brown Maid, the earliest text in Arnold’s Chronicle, 230 Ogilby, John, illustrated books, 289 O’Kearney, John, Irish printing by, 243 Opera nova contemplativa, Venetian block-book, 20 sq., 29 Oppenheim, book-decoration at, 193 Ortuin and Schenck, printers of Roman de la Rose, 160 Os, Pieter van, early printer at Zwolle, 72 Ostendorfer, Michael, illustrations by, 190 Oswen, John, printer at Ipswich and Worcester, 229 sq. Overton, John, printer (?) at Ipswich, 226 Ovid, illustrations to his Metamorphoses, 292 Oxford, printing at, 76, 209, 224, 234 sqq., 252, 302 sq. Pacini, Piero and Bernardo, publishers of illustrated books at Florence, 139 Paderborn, Johann. See Westphalia, John of Palmart, Lambert, first printer in Spain, 75, 78, 89 Paper, made at Hertford, 212; Tottell seeks a monopoly for making, 220 Paris, printing in, 70 sqq., 171 sqq.; book-illustration, 143-56, 197-201, 289-93 Parker, Archbishop, his efforts to rescue old books, 2; patron of John Day, 219; and of Bynneman, 220; his De Antiquitate Brit. Eccl. perhaps printed at Lambeth, 219, 234; engraved portrait, 282 Parma, Baskerville’s press at, 300 Passe family, engravers, 286, 288 Passio domini nostri Jesu Christi, Venetian block-book, 28, 123 Paulirinus, Paulinus, on the word ciripagus, 43 Pavia, book-illustration at, 141 Peartree, Montagu, article on possible portrait of Caxton, 273 Pepwell, Henry, London printer, 216 Pepys, S., bequest of his books, 5 Petrarca, F., illustrated editions of his Trionfi, 127, 139 Petri, Johann, early printer at Florence, 67 Pfister, Albrecht, printer of illustrated books at Bamberg, 19, 32, 51, 59 Philadelphia, first printing at, 247 Philippe, Regent of France, engraved illustrations to Longus, 290 Phillipps, Sir Thomas, private printing by, 239 Pigouchet, Philippe, prints Le Chasteau de Labeur, 150; his Horae, 154 Pinder, Ulrich, private press at Nuremberg, 184 Pine, John, engraver, 294 sqq. Plantin, Christopher, printer at Antwerp, 175 sq.; woodcut illustration, 202 sq.; engraved, 274 sqq. Plateanus, Theodoricus (Dirick van der Straten), printer at Wesel, 226 Plates, troubles arising from in books, 267 Pleydenwurff, Wilhelm, book-illustrations by, 116 Poitiers, early printing at, 72 Polidori, Gaetano, his private press, 239 Pope, erasure of the word, 260 Popish apparel, Puritan tracts against, 232 “Poppy-printer” of LÜbeck, 114 Porro, Girolamo, engraves plates for Orlando Furioso, 277, 283 Powell, Humphrey, English printer in Dublin, 242 Printing, changes in the primacy of, 16, 169, 170, 177; invention of, 32-58; early progress of, in various countries, 59-82; its technical development, 83-99; in the sixteenth century, 165-79; in England, 204-23; in the provinces of England, 224-8, 233-8; on the Continent for the English market, 229-33; private, 238 sq.; in Scotland, 239 sqq.; in Ireland, 242 sq.; in the English colonies in America, 243 sqq. Private presses in England, 238 sq., 303 sqq. Proctor, Robert, found beauty in all incunabula, 10, 39; classification of them, 12; Greek type, 176, 307 Provincial printing in England, 9, 76, 208 sq., 224-7, 234-8 PrÜss, Johann, of Strassburg, illustrated books, 111, 162 Psalms, the New England version of the, 244 sq. Psalter, Latin, of 1457, 54, 83; of 1459, 55; cost of writing and illuminating a manuscript, 84 Ptolemy, Cosmographia (or Geographia), illustrated editions of, 66, 107 Pynson, R., number of copies in his editions, 21; work as a printer, 211, 212 sq., 222; book-illustrations, 255-9 Quarles, Francis, Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man, 287 Quentell, Heinrich, of Cologne, his illustrated books, 113; his Bible cuts copied, 112, 114, 126, 128 Quinterniones, a name for manuscripts, 94 Quire, origin of the word, 94 Quiring in old books, 94 sqq.; collection by, 96 sq. R-printer, the, of Strassburg, 60 Rappresentazioni, illustrated Florentine editions, 138 Rarity, effect on value of books, 7 sq. Rastell, John, lawyer-printer, 215, 222, 258 — William, printed English plays, 215 Ratdolt, Erhard, early printer at Venice, 69; titlepage to his Calendar, 93; his decorative work at Venice, 125 sq.; at Augsburg, 106; colour-printing by, 129 Rawlinson, Richard, gives manuscripts to the Bodleian, 5 Raynold, Thomas, his ed. of the Birth of Mankind, 280 Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, 206, 254; engraving in Chatsworth copy of Caxton’s, 272 Redman, Robert, Pynson’s successor, 216, 222 Red printing, difficulty of, 86, 228 sq.; colophons in, 92 Regiomontanus. See MÜller Reinhard, Johann. See GrÜninger Retza, Fran. de, block-book of his Defensorium, 27 Reuwich, Erhard, illustrator of Breidenbach’s Peregrinatio, 108, 115 sq. Reyser, Georg, first WÜrzburg printer, 64, 269 sq. — Michel, first EichstÄtt printer, 64, 269 sq. Rheims, English Catholic books printed at, 232 Richard III, Statute permitting free importation of books into England, 209, 222 Richard, Thomas, printer at Tavistock, 226 Richel, Bernhard, early printer at Basel, his illustrated books, 109, 158 Ricketts, Charles, the Vale Press books, 307 Rodericus Zamorensis, illustrated editions of his Speculum Humanae Vitae, 104, 159, 162 Rodlich, Hieronymus, his illustrated books, 193 Rogers, Bruce, fine printer, 308 Rolewinck, Werner, all his books printed by ther Hoernen, 62; Venice editions of his Fasciculus Temporum, 126; Seville ed., 161 Roman de la Rose, early editions of, 160 Roman type, 88-90 Rome, printing at, 65, 167; book-illustration at, 123, 268, 273, 276 Rome under the Castle of St. Angelo, spurious imprint, 233 Rood, Theodoricus, printer at Oxford, 76 Ross, John, Edinburgh printer, 242 Rouen early printing, 72, 146; English books, 225, 229 Ruppel, Berthold, of Hanau, Basel printer, 47, 60 Ruscelli, Jerononimo, his Imprese, 277 Rusch, Adolf, the R-printer, 60; roman type used by, 88 Rylands, W. H., engraver, 296 Ryther, Augustine, engraver, 282 Saint Albans, printing at, 76, 208, 224 sq., 253 Saint Andrews, printing at, 241 Saint Omer, English Catholic books printed at, 232 Saluzzo, book-illustration at, 141 Sanctis, Hieronymus de, wood-cutter and printer at Venice, 127 Sanderson, Cobden, fine printing by, 306 Sandys, George, Relation of a Journey, 285 Santritter, Johann, illustrator and printer at Venice, 127 Saragossa, early printing at, 75; illustration, 162 Sarum service-books mostly printed abroad, 229; their importation into Scotland forbidden, 240 Savonarola, Girolamo, illustrated editions of his tracts, 133 sq., 137 Savile, Sir Henry, his press at Eton, 234 Saxton, Christopher, maps by, 282 Sayle, C., his catalogue of English books in Cambridge University Library, 233 Schatzbehalter. See Stephan SchaÜfelein, Hans Leonhard, book-illustrations by, 184, 188 sq. Schedel, Hartmann, his Liber Chronicarum, 117 Schilders, Richard, English books printed by, 232 sq. Schoeffer, Johann, printer at Mainz, 58, 169 — Peter, a witness on the side of Fust, 47; his share in the invention of printing, 50 sq.; books printed by him, 53-8; his method of printing, 81-6, 95; his type, 90 SchÖn, Erhard, illustrations by, 183 Schreiber, W., his Manuel de l’Amateur, quoted, 24, 100 note, 114; his block-books, 31 Schwabacher type, 90 Scolar, Johannes, printer at Oxford, 224; and at Abingdon, 226 Scoloker, Anthony, printer at Ipswich and London, 226 Scot, John, Scottish printer, 240 sq. Scotland, printing in, 239-42 Secret printing in Elizabeth’s reign, 228 Segar, Sir W., Honour, Military and Civil, 284 Selden, W., his books go to the Bodleian, 5 Sensenschmidt, Johann, first printer at Nuremberg, 63; his illustrated books, 108 Sessa, family of printers, illustrated books, 196 Seville, early printing at, 75; illustration, 161, 163 Shakespeare, First Folio, 8; illustrations to, 294 sqq. Shrewsbury, printing at, 237 sq. Siberch, John Laer of, first Cambridge printer, 225 Sibyllenbuch, early Mainz fragment of, 46 Sidney, Sir Philip, title-border to 1598 ed. of his Arcadia, 266; engraving of his funeral, 282 Siemen, illustrated books published at, 193 Signatures of artists or wood-cutters in Italian books, 128, 194; in German books, 194; in French books, 157, 159 Signatures (typographic), first used by Joh. Koelhoff, 62; their origin, 94; example of collation by, 96 Silber, Eucharius, printer at Rome, 169 Simon, “das sÜsses kind,” woodcuts of his history, 103, 108 Small books, 214; stages in their popularity, 166, 173, 178 Smith, Richard, book-collector, 3 Solempne, Antony de, Dutch printer at Norwich, 233 Sorbonne, first Paris press at the, 70; roman type used at, 89; persecution of printers by its theologians, 174 Sorg, Anton, of Augsburg, illustrated books, 105 Spaces left blank for headings and capitals, 85; for illustrations, 143 Spain, early printing in, 74-6, 176 sq., 224; book-illustration, 161-4 Spanish Armada, engravings of, 282 Speculum Humanae Saluationis partly block-printed, 26, 39; fate of the blocks, 40, 118; Augsburg ed. of, 103; Basel ed. of (in German), 109, 150; French ed. at Lyons, 158 Speculum Humanae Vitae. See Rodericus Zamorensis Speculum Vitae Christi, Caxton’s edition, 252 sq. Speier, early printing at, 63 — Johann of, first printer at Venice, 66 sq., 89 — Wendelin of, successor of Johann, 67, 89 Spenser, Edmund, woodcuts to his Shepheardes Calender, 265 Spindeler, Nic., illustrated books, 162 sq. Spoerer, Hans, block-books printed by, 25 Springinklee, Hans, illustrator, 183, 188 Stagninus, Bernardinus, his illustrated service-books, 195 Stanheim, Melchior, arbitrator on book-illustrating, 63, 103 Stationers’ Company, 221 sq., 227, 233 sq. Steele, Robert, on English books printed abroad, 233 Stephan, P., Schatzbehalter, 116 Steyner, Hans, illustrated books by, 185, 187 Stillingfleet, Archbishop, fate of his library, 4 StÖffler, Hans, mathematical works by, curiously decorated, 189 Story, John, Edinburgh printer, 240 Strassburg, printing at, 59 sq., 169; book-illustration at, 112 sqq., 187, 190 sq. Straten, Dirick van der. See Plateanus Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole’s press at, 238 Stuchs, G., Nuremberg printer, 63 Stule, Karolus, Edinburgh publisher, 240 Sturt, John, engraver, 294 sq. Subiaco, books printed at, 65 Sweynheym and Pannartz, number of copies in their editions, 21 note, 66; early reference to, 34; books printed by, 65 sq.; their types, 88 — Conrad, engraves maps for 1478 Ptolemy, 66, 268 Tacuinus, Joannes, Venice printer, 69 Tate, John, papermaker, 212 Taverner, John, London stationer, 222 Tavistock, printing at, 226 Terence, illustrated editions of, 107, 112, 131, 150, 160, 163, 213 Theramo, Jacobus de, illustrated editions of his Belial, 121 Ther Hoernen, Arnold, second Cologne printer, 62 Thomas, Thomas, Cambridge printer, 235 Thomas À Becket, erasure of the service for, 260 Tillier, Thomas, Chester printer, 237 Tin, types made of, 21 note Titlepage, early examples of, 62, 93, 210 Tortosa early printing, 75 Tory, Geoffroi, printer at Paris, 173; his Horae, 156 sq., 199 Tottell, Richard, London printer, 219 Tournes, Jean de, father and son, printers at Lyon, 174 Traut, Wolfgang, illustrator, 182, 188 Trechsel family of printers at Lyon, 160, 171, 174, 192 sq. Treviso, early printing at, 67 sq., 70 Tuberinus, his account of the death of “das susses kind Simon,” 103, 108 TÜbingen, book-decoration at, 189 Turberville, George, Booke of Faulconrie, 265 Turrecremata, Cardinal, illustrated editions of his Meditationes, 114, 123 Tyndale, W., editions of his New Testament, 231 Types, characteristics of, in early books, 86 sq. Ugo (VGO), woodcuts signed, 194 Ulm early printing, 63 sq.; illustrated books, 106 sqq. Ungut and Polonus, illustrated books of, 163 United States of America, colonial printing in, 243-9; modern fine printing, 308 Updike, Berkeley, fine printer, 308 Usher, Archbishop, fate of his library, 4 Utrecht, “Costeriana” attributed to, 40, 72 Utterson, E. V., private printing by, 239 Valdarfer, Christopher, printer at Venice and Milan, 67 Valentia, early printing at, 74 sq.; illustration, 162 Valturius, R., De re militari, Verona editions of, 123 sq.; French version of, 200 Van der Gucht, Michael, engraver, 294 Vautrollier, Thomas, printer at London and Edinburgh, 221, 242 Vavassore, Giovanni Andrea, block-printed Opera nova Contemplativa by, 21; woodcuts signed z.a., etc., by, 194 sq. Veldener, Jan, early printer at Louvain, Kuilenburg and Utrecht, 40, 73, 118, 119, 205 Venice early printing, 66 sq.; book-illustration, 125-32, 194-7, 277 VÉrard, Antoine, publisher at Paris, 147-50; his Horae, 151 sq.; his English books, 230; his use of old cuts, 101, 148, 160 Vergetius, Angelus, French Royal Greek types designed by, 172 Verona early book-illustration, 123 sq. Villena, Marquis of, Trabajos de Hercules, 161 Vincent de Beauvais, his Speculum, 165 Violette, Pierre, Rouen printer, 225 Virgil, printed by B. Cennini, colophon quoted, 80; GrÜninger’s, 112; Leroy’s, 158; Aldine, 167; first English, 226 sq.; Ogilby’s, 289; Baskerville’s, 300 Virginia, early printing in, 249 Viterbo, good roman type, 89 Voltaire, edition of his works printed with Baskerville’s type, 300 Vostre, Simon, books printed by Pigouchet for, 150, 154 sqq. WÄchtlin, Johann, illustrator, 190 Waldegrave, Robert, prints Marprelate tracts, 228. See prints at Edinburgh, 242 Wale, Samuel, illustrator, 296 Walker, Emery, expert in printing, 304 sqq. Walpole, Horace, private press, 238 Walther, F., and Hans Hurning, printers of a Biblia Pauperum, 25 Walton, Izaak, illustrations to his Angler, 296 Wandsforth, Gerard. See Freez Wandsworth, secret press at, 228 Weiditz, Hans, illustrator, 186 sq. Wenssler, Michael, Basel printer, 60 sq. Wesel, Bale’s Catalogus printed there, 226 Westphalia, John of, early printer at Alost and Louvain, 73; used roman type, 89; his woodcut portrait, 119 White, John, his drawings of Virginia, 278 — Robert., engraver, 289 Whittingham, Charles (uncle and nephew), printers, 302 sq. Wilcocks, William, gave commissions to Wynkyn de Worde, 210 Williams, Archbishop, gifts of books by, 5 Wilson, J. D., on English books printed abroad, 233 Winthrop, John, allusion to printing at Cambridge, Mass., 243 Wittenberg, printing at, 169; illustrations, 190 Wolfe, Reyner, Royal painter, 218, 259 Wolgemut, Michael, book-illustrator, 116 Woodcuts, early, their charm and distinctiveness, 15 Worde, Wynkyn de, on Caxton’s printing the De proprietatibus, 214 sq.; on the St. Alban’s printer, 208; on Fishing with an Angle, 209 note; his work as a printer, 211 sq.; his assessment, 222; book-illustrations, 253 sq. WÜrzburg, early printing at, 64 — Missals, engravings in, 270 Wyer, Robert, London printer, 222 Ximenes, Cardinal, Polyglott Bible, 176 York, printing at, 225, 236 sqq. z.a., z.A., woodcuts signed, 194 Zainer, GÜnther, first Augsburg printer, 62 sq.; used roman type, 88; his illustrated books, 103 — Johann, first Ulm printer, 63; used roman type, 88; his illustrated books, 106 Zarotus, Antonius, first printer at Milan, 68, 70 Zell, Ulrich, his story of the invention of printing, 35; the first printer at Cologne, 61 Zenger, Joh. Peter, New York printer, 248 Zinna, the Psalterium B.V.M. printed at, 117 Zoan Andrea. See Vavassore, 194 Zurich, English books printed at, 231 sq. Zwolle early printing, 72; book-illustrations at, 122 PRINTED BY | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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