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 FROM THE 
 
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 COLLECTED BY 
 
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 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL' UNIVERSITY 
 
 
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 DATE DUE 
 
 PRINTED IN U.SA 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029482019 
 

 HstL03r3vurP AJUF\AHD. 
 
 Fac-simile of the twenty-eighth page of the Biblia Pauperum, representing, with the text from 
 the Old Testament, David prevailing over Goliath, and Christ delivering the souls of the 
 patriarchs and prophets from limbo. [Frontispiece. 
 

 v9 flu cnOittto^- bgcflK fentiimo imtr 
 
 MUosramre AHJUAHO. 
 
 Fac-simile of the twenty-eighth page of the Biblia Pauperum, representing, with the text from 
 the Old Testament, David prevailing over Goliath, and Christ delivering the souls of the 
 patriarchs and prophets from limbo. [Frontispiece 
 
The BOOK: 
 
 ITS 
 
 GUTENBERG TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRI B^O U C H O T , 
 
 Of the National Librmy^ Paris. 
 
 WITH A TREATISE ON THE 
 
 aict of CoUectme; attH aDegfccibing: €arlj prtnteD 2Book0, 
 
 LATIN-ENGLISH AND ENGLISH-LATIN TOPOGRAPHICAL INDEX OF THE 
 EARLIEST PRINTING PLACES. 
 
 Edited by H. GREVEL. 
 
 CONTAINING ONE HUNDRED AND SE]^!^Y-TWO FACSIMILES 
 
 OF EARLY TYPOGRAPHY, BOOK-ILLUSTRATIONS, PRINTERS' MARKS, BINDINGS, NUMEROUS BORDERS, 
 INITIALS, HEAD AND TAIL PIECES, AND A FRONTISPIECE. 
 
 ILonDon : 
 
 H. GREVEL & CO., 
 
 33, KING STREET, CO VENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
 1890. 
 
 ft 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 HAZELL WATSON AND VINEY, LIMITED 
 
 LONDON AND AYLESBURY. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 / 
 
 HE first edition of M. Henri Bouchot's fascinat- 
 ing volume, Le Livre, translated and enlarged 
 by Mr. E. C. Bigmore, under the title of 
 ^ The Printed Book, having become exhausted, 
 I have availed myself of the opportunity to subject the work 
 to a careful revision. 
 
 The extensive additions, which include sixty-five new 
 illustrations, and the entirely fresh matters treated of in this 
 edition, make it practically a new work, while under the 
 process it has grown to nearly double its original size. 
 
 Considering the wide range of the subject, this work can 
 claim to be no more than a summary and condensed survey 
 of the history of The Book, and of the arts involved in its 
 production. At the same time, it may be found to prove a 
 useful compendium of the thousands of unknown and forgotten 
 essays that have been published on the history of The Book, 
 and which M. Bouchot has so skilfully contrived to condense 
 into a single volume. 
 
 The technical aspect of the subject has not been forgotten 
 either, and is dealt with in separate chapters, which have 
 

 A.&'^fjff Lo^^y 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 HAZELL WATSON AND VINEY, LIMITED 
 
 LONDON AND AYLESBURY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 / 
 
 HE first edition of M. Henri Bouchot's fascinat- 
 ing volume, Le Livre, translated and enlarged 
 by Mr. E. C. Bigmore, under the title of 
 ?* The Printed Book, having become exhausted, 
 I have availed myself of the opportunity to subject the work 
 to a careful revision. 
 
 The extensive additions, which include sixty-five new 
 illustrations, and the entirely fresh matters treated of in this 
 edition, make it practically a new work, while under the 
 process it has grown to nearly double its original size. 
 
 Considering the wide range of the subject, this work can 
 claim to be no more than a summary and condensed survey 
 of the history of The Book, and of the arts involved in its 
 production. At the same time, it may be found to prove a 
 useful compendium of the thousands of unknown and forgotten 
 essays that have been published on the history of The Book, 
 and which M. Bouchot has so skilfully contrived to condense 
 into a single volume. 
 
 The technical aspect of the subject has not been forgotten 
 either, and is dealt with in separate chapters, which have 
 

 A.<i<}^799 i-O^^/ 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 HAZELL WATSON AND VINEY, LIMITED 
 
 LONDON AND AYLESBURY. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 / 
 
 HE first edition of M. Henri Bouchot's fascinat- 
 ing volume, Le Livre, translated and enlarged 
 by Mr. E. C. Bigmore, under the title of 
 The Printed Book, having become exhausted, 
 I have availed myself of the opportunity to subject the work 
 to a careful revision. 
 
 The extensive additions, which include sixty-five new 
 illustrations, and the entirely fresh matters treated of in this 
 edition, make it practically a new work, while under the 
 process it has grown to nearly double its original size. 
 
 Considering the wide range of the subject, this work can 
 claim to be no more than a summary and condensed survey 
 of the history of The Book, and of the arts involved in its 
 production. At the same time, it may be found to prove a 
 useful compendium of the thousands of unknown and forgotten 
 essays that have been published on the history of The Book, 
 and which M. Bouchot has so skilfully contrived to condense 
 into a single volume. 
 
 The technical aspect of the subject has not been forgotten 
 either, and is dealt with in separate chapters, which have 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 had the advantage of being revised by specialists in the 
 several subjects. This has been particularly the case with the 
 chapters on Types and on Binding, which have received a 
 careful treatment ; although, considering the importance of each 
 subject, a whole volume might hardly have been sufficient to 
 treat these topics exhaustively. A special chapter, based on 
 a treatise by M. A. Einsle, of Vienna, has also been added, 
 on the art of collecting and describing early printed books. 
 This will doubtless be welcomed by many students who 
 have no access to such recondite information. For the same 
 reason the bibliographer will be glad to have the appended 
 Topographical Index, by which he will be enabled at once 
 to discover the English names of the towns on the early 
 Latin titles. 
 
 H. G. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 14 . .TO 1462. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Origin of the Book — Engravers in relief — The St. Christopher of 1423 — Origin of the 
 Xylographs — The Xylographs, Donatus and Specidinn — The Laurent Coster 
 legend — From block books to movable characters — John Gensfleisch, called 
 Gutenberg — The Strasburg trial — Gutenberg at Mayence — Fust and Schoeffer — 
 The letters of indulgence — The Bible — The Catholicon — The Mayence Bible — 
 Causes of the dispersion of the first Mayence printers — General considerations . i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1462 TO 1500. 
 
 The Book and the printers of the second generation — The German workmen dispersed 
 through Europe — Caxton and the introduction of printing into England — Nicholas 
 Jensen and his supposed mission to Mayence — The first printing in Paris ; William 
 Fichet and John Heinlein — The first French printers ; their installation at the 
 Sorbonne and their publications — The movement in France — The illustration of 
 the Book commenced in Italy — The Book in Italy ; engraving in relief and metal 
 plates — ^The Book in Germany: Cologne, Nuremberg, Basle — The Book in the 
 Low Countries — -French schools of ornament of the Book ; Books of Hours ; 
 booksellers at the end of the fifteenth century — Literary taste in titles in France 
 at the end of the fifteenth century — Printers' and booksellers' marks — The 
 appearance of the portrait in the Book 42 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1500 TO 1600. 
 
 French epics and the Renaissance — Venice and Aldus Manutius— Italian illustrators 
 — The Germans: Theuerdanck, Schaufelein — The Book in other countries — 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 French books at the beginning of the century, before the accession of Francis I. 
 — EngHsh printers and their work— Engraved plates in Enghsh books— Geoffroy 
 Tory and his works- Francis I. and the Book— Robert Estienne— Lyons a centre 
 of bookselling: Holbein's Dances of Death— School of Basle— Alciati's emblems 
 and the illustrated books of the middle of the century— The school of Fontainebleau 
 and its influence— Solomon Bernard— Cornelis de la Haye and the Promptuaire 
 — Jean Cousin — Copperplate engraving and metal plates — Wo^riot — The portrait 
 in the book of the Sixteenth century— How a book was illustrated on wood at the 
 end of the century — Influence of Plantin on the Book ; his school of engravers — 
 General considerations — Progress in England — Coverdale's Bible .... 107 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1600 TO 1700. 
 
 Tendencies of the regency of Marie de Medici — Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gaultier 
 — J. Picart and Claude Mellan — Lyons and J. de Fornazeris — The Book at the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century in Germany, Italy, England, and Holland — • 
 Crispin Pass in France — The Elzevirs and Enschede and their work in Holland — 
 Sebastian Cramoisy and the Imprimerie Royale — Illustration under Callot, Delia 
 Bella, and Abraham Bosse — The publishers and the Hotel de Rambouillet — The 
 reign of Louis XIV., Antoine Vitre syndic at his accession — His works and 
 mortifications ; the Polyglot Bible of Le Jay — Art and illustrators of the grand 
 century — SSbastien Leclerc, Lepautre, and Chauveau — Leclerc preparing the 
 illustration and decoration of the Book for the eighteenth century . . . 161 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Book in the Eighteenth Century. 
 
 The Regency — Publishers at the beginning of the eighteenth century — Illustrators in 
 France ; Gillot — The school of Watteau and Boucher — Cars — The younger 
 Cochin ; his principal works in vignettes — French art in England ; Gravelot — 
 Eisen — Choffard — The Baisers of Dorat ; the Contes of Lafontaine — The pub- 
 lisher Cazin and the special literature of the eighteenth century — The younger 
 Moreau and his illustrations — The Revblution — The school of David— Duplessi- 
 Bertaux — The Book in Germany; Chodowiecki — In England; Boydell and 
 French artists — Caslon and Baskerville — English books with illustrations — Wood 
 engraving in the eighteenth century; the Papillons — Printing offices in the 
 eighteenth century . . . .194 
 
Contents. 
 chapter vi. 
 
 The Book in the Nineteenth Century. 
 
 1 
 
 The Didots and their improvements — The folio Racine — The school of Didot — Fine 
 
 pubhcations in England and Germany — Literature and art of the Restoration — 
 
 Romanticism — Wood engraving — Bewick's pupils, Clennell, etc. — The illustrators 
 
 of romances — The generation of 1840 — The Book in our days in Europe and 
 
 Type, Presses, and Paper 250 
 
 Bookbinding. 
 
 Early bindings ; superiority of English work — Panel-stamps invented in the Low 
 Countries — The binding of the first printed books — French binding in the time 
 of Louis XIL — Influence of German and Netherlandish binders on the art in other 
 countries — Italian bindings— Aldus — Maioli — Grolier — Francis I. — Henry II. and 
 Diana of Poitiers — Catherine de Medici — Henry III. — The Eves — The " fanfares " 
 — Louis XIII. — Le Gascon — Florimond Badier — Louis XIV. — Morocco leathers — 
 Cramoisy — The bindings of the time of Louis XIV. — The Regency — Pasdeloup — 
 The Deromes — Dubuisson — Thouvenin — LesnS — The nineteenth century — English 
 binders — Roger Payne — Francis Bedford — Blocking 262 
 
 Libraries 3°/ 
 
 The Art of Describing and Cataloguing Incunabula 322 
 
 The Method of Collecting Them ■ • 352 
 
 Latin-English and English-Latin Topographical Index .... 3"7 
 
 General Index ^'' 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The Fool ; Playing Card of Taroc (fifteenth century) . . 3 
 
 2. St. Christopher (1423) . . .4 
 
 3. Xylographic Plate, cut in Flanders (1440), representing Jesus after the flagellation . 5 
 
 4. Xylographic Plate, representing St. John. Ca. 1440. With a text of the command- 
 
 ments of the Church ......... . . 6 
 
 5. Part of a Donatus taken from a xylograph, the original of which is preserved in the 
 
 Bibliotheque Nationale ......... . 7 
 
 6. Fac-simile of page 5 of the first edition of the ^r5 MonV/'irfi' . . 11 
 
 7. Xylographic figure from the Ars Moriendi, copied in reverse in the Art au Morier . 12 
 
 8. Figure of the school of Martin Schongauer, taken from the Rationarium Evangelistarum 
 
 of 15051 ^i<i copied from the corresponding plate of the Ars Meinorandi , . 13 
 
 9. Portrait of Gutenberg, from an engraving of the sixteenth century . . 15 
 
 10. Letters of indulgence, from the so-called edition of thirtj'-one lines, printed at Mayence 
 
 in the course of 1454 21 
 
 11. Fragment of the Gutenberg Bible, printed in two columns. Beginning of the text in 
 
 the second column ; original size ...... . . 23 
 
 12. Fac-simile of the Psalter, 1459 . -31 
 
 13. Colophon of the Catholicon, supposed to have been printed by Gutenberg in 1460 . 33 
 
 14. Colophon of the Bible printed in 1462 by Fust and Schoeff'er, which is the first dated 
 
 Bible . . 35 
 
 15. Imprint of Arnold Ther Hoernen, printer, of Mayence . . . .45 
 
 16. Mark of Colard Mansion ..... ..... 46 
 
 17. Specimen of Caxton's type, from the Canterbury Tales, 1476 .... 46 
 
 18. "WoodcMt iroTCi Carton's Game and Playe of lite Chesse . ... . . 47 
 
 19. The Knight, a woodcut from Caxton's G«M« «Krf/'/o>'« 0/ Me C/i^sse .... 48 
 
 20. Music, a woodcut from Caxton's AfjVro;;)- 0/ Me fFor/rf . . . .49 
 
 21. William Caxton, from Rev. J. Lewis's Life ..... ... 50 
 
 22. Fyshing with an Angle . ..... ... 51 
 
 23. Mark of Wynkyn de Worde . . 52 
 
 24. Mark of Richard Pynson ........ . • 53 
 
 25. Imprint of Nicholas Jenson to ayns^/HMK, printed in 1470 at Venice . . -55 
 
 26. Letters of Gasparin of Bergamo. First page of the first book printed at Paris, in 1470 58 
 
 27. Colophon in distichs in the Letters of Gasparin of Bergamo, first book printed at Paris, 
 
 at the office of the Sorbonne . . 59 
 
xii List of Illustrations. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 28. i?/«ton?«c of Fichet, printed at Paris in 1471 .60 
 
 29. Mark of Guerbin, printer at Geneva, 1482 ... . • ■ • 63 
 
 30. Wood engraving in Matteo Pasti, for Valturius' De He Militari (Verona : 1472) . . 64 
 
 31. Title-page of tlie Ca&wrfanb, first ornamental title known 66 
 
 32. Engraving on metal by Baccio Baldini for jE/AfoM/eSaKto i^«'i'/o, in 1477 ... 68 
 
 33. Metal engraving by Baccio Baldini from the i3aKfe of 148 1 69 
 
 34. Plate from the /Ty/^^crotomacfaa Po/;>&'ff, printed by Aldus Manutius, in 1499 . .7' 
 
 35. The planet Mercury and the City of Rome, engraving from the Divina Comedia (Venice, 
 
 1491) 72 
 
 36. Plate from Bonino de Bonini's Dante, at Brescia, in 1487 . ' . . . -73 
 
 37. The creation of woman, plate from the Schatzbehalter, engraved after Michael 
 
 Wohlgemuth 74 
 
 38. The daughter of Jephthah, plate taken from the Schatzbehalter, engraved after Michael 
 
 Wohlgemuth 76 
 
 39. Title of the A^jfrewA^^-g- Ororacfe, printed by A. Koberger, 1493. Fol. ... 77 
 
 40. Title of the Apocalypse, by Albert Durer, printed in 1498 78 
 
 41. Title of Sebastian Brandt's Ship of Fools, printed in 1497 at Basle, by Bergman de Olpe 79 
 
 42. The Bibliomaniac. Engraving from the. Ship of Fools 80 
 
 43. A medical man of the fifteenth century, from La Mer des Histoires .... 84 
 
 44. Mark of Philip Pigouchet, French printer and wood engraver of the fifteenth century 85 
 
 45. Mark of Jean Dupre, printer at Lyons .......... 86 
 
 46. Mark of Simon Vostre, printer at Paris, 1501 ........ 87 
 
 47-49. Ornaments of Simon Vostre ........... 87 
 
 50. Border in four separate blocks in the Heures a I'Usaige de Rome, by Pigouchet, for 
 
 Simon Vostre, in 1488 ............ 88 
 
 51. Plate copied from Schongauer's Carrying of the Cross, taken from the Heures of 
 
 Simon Vostre .............. 89 
 
 52. The Death of the Virgin, plate taken from the Heures of Simon Vostre, printed in 
 
 1488 . . ............ 90 
 
 53. Mark of Antoine Verard, printer at Paris, 1498 91 
 
 54. Border of the Grandes Heures of Antony Verard ........ 93 
 
 55. Plate from the Tristan published by Antoine Verard 94 
 
 56. Page of the Grandes Heures of Antoine Verard : Paris, fifteenth century ... 95 
 
 57. Typographical mark of Thielman Kerver ... 97 
 
 58. Plate from a Book of Hours of Simon Vostre, representing the Massacre of the Innocents 98 
 
 59. Dance of Death, said to be by Verard. The Pope and the Emperor .... 99 
 
 60. Z>a«(reo/Z)m* of Guyot Marchant in i486. The Pope and the Emperor . . .101 
 
 61. Mark of Guy Marchant, printer at Paris, 1485 102 
 
 62. Frontispiece to Terence, published by Treschel at Lyons in 1493. The author writing 
 
 his book ...... ,„. 
 
 €3. Mark of Treschel, printer at Lyons, 1489 joc 
 
 64. The anchor and dolphin, mark of Aldus Manutius, after the original in the Terse 
 
 liime o[ 1^20 jQ 
 
 65. Aldus Manutius _ , , 
 
 -* '••■■•• ...III 
 
 66. Mark of Lucantonio Giunta, of Venice .... . . jj, 
 
 67. Title of the Theuerdanck ... , , , 
 
 114 
 
List of Illustrations. xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 68. Plate taken from the 7"feMf>-rfo«c^, representing Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy . 115 
 
 69. Portrait of Queen Elizabeth from the Book of Christian Praiers, printed by John Day, 
 
 1578 .... 117 
 
 70. Woodcut from Coverdale's Bible, 1535. Cain killing Abel . . . . 118 
 
 71. Woodcut by Hans Holbein from Cranmer's Catechism, 1548 .... 120 
 
 72. Mark of Philippe le Noir, printer at Paris, 1536 ... . . 123 
 
 73. Vignette taken from the Illustrations de la Gaule et Singularitez de Troye. Queen 
 
 Anne of Brittany as Juno ...... . . . 124 
 
 74. Mark of Francois Juste, printer at Lyons, 1526 . . 125 
 
 75. Mark of Guillaume Eustace, 1 5 17, binder and bookseller at Paris . . . .126 
 
 76. Title of the £«#)■/(; rf'£&'oMO)'« rfMM^n'c/ic fl Pan's, by Guillaume Bochetel . . . 127 
 
 77. Mark of Geoffroy Tory, printer at Paris, 1529 128 
 
 78. Full page of the ii/eKres of Simon de Colines, by Tory . . . . . . .129 
 
 79. i/««rc5 of GeoflCroy Tory. The Circumcision ...... . . 130 
 
 80. Mark of Simon de Colines, printer at Paris, 1527 ........ 131 
 
 81. //«"-«s of Simon de Colines, with the mark of the Cross of Lorraine .... 132 
 
 82. Emblematical letter Y, taken from the CAoOTj*/?eMi'_y of Geoffroy Tory . . . -133 
 
 83. Macault reading to Francis L his translation of Diodorus Siculus. Wood engraving 
 
 attributed to Tory ............. 135 
 
 84. Robert Estienne, after the engraving in the Chronologie Colle'e . . . . 137 
 
 85. Mark of Robert Estienne, printer at Paris, 1541 ... .... 138 
 
 86. Mark of Francois Estienne, printer at Paris, 1538 139 
 
 87. Printing office of Josse Badius of the commencement of the sixteenth century . . 140 
 
 88. Portrait of Nicholas Bourbon. Wood engraving of the commencement of the sixteenth 
 
 century . ............. 141 
 
 89. King and Death. Vignette {rom the Dance of Death hy Holbein . .... 142 
 
 90. Page of the ilf^/nwo)'/>Aos?s of Ovid, by Petit Bernard. Edition of 1564 . . . 144 
 
 91. Portraits of Madeleine, Queen of Scotland, and of Marguerite, Duchess of Savoy, after 
 
 the originals of Cornelius of Lyons . . . . . . . . . .146 
 
 92. Portraits of Francis, Dauphin, and of Charles, Duke of Angouleme, after the originals 
 
 of Cornelius of Lyons ............ 146 
 
 93. Captain of foot, from the ^B/r/^ rf« //«Kn' //. a iyoM, 1549 ...... 147 
 
 94. Title of Jean Cousin's Zizire rfe Por/raZ/Mr^, published in 1593 by Le Clerc . . . 149 
 
 95. Engraving by P. Woeriot for Georgette de Montenay's £'»;i/i?>«fs .... 152 
 
 96. Portrait of Christopher Plantin, printer of Antwerp 155 
 
 97. Plantin's Mark 156 
 
 98. Frontispiece of a book from Plantin's printing office . . . . . . -159 
 
 99. Mark of Etienne Dolet, printer.at Lyons, 1542 . . 160 
 
 100. Letter engraved by A. Bosse ... 161 
 
 loi. Title of the ilf«VaK/a/o^7'e, engraved by Leonard Gaultier ...... 163 
 
 102. Title engraved by Claude Mellan for Urban VIlI.'s Poesies, printed at the Royal 
 
 Printing House, in 1642 167 
 
 103. Title of Pluvinel's Afawtjg-? .ffoya/, engraved by Crispin Pass in 1624 .... 171 
 
 104. Title of the /«4»'ta^jo« of the Elzevirs .......... 172 
 
 105. Mark of Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir, printers at Leyden, 1620 . . . . 173 
 
 106. Plate taken from the^Lumiere dii Cloistre. Copperplate by Callot .... 176 
 
xiv. List of Illustrations. 
 
 PAGI 
 
 107. Title of the Maniere Universelle, by Desargues, in 1643, by Abraham Bosse. . • l?^ 
 
 108. Print by Abraham Bosse, representing the booksellers of the Palace under Louis XIII. 175 
 
 109. Frontispiece of the Dictionnaire de I'Academie, 1st edition 1694 183 
 
 110. Antoine Vitre, printer to the King, by Ph. de Champagne 184 
 
 111. Tailpiece o{ Sehastien Leclerc {or the Promenade de St. Germain . . . .186 
 
 112. Small figure of Sebastien Leclerc for Richesource's pamphlet 188 
 
 113. Frontispiece by C. Le Brun, for the first edition of Racine, 1676 i8g 
 
 1 14. Letter by Cochin for the Memoires d'Artillerie of Suvirey de St. Remy . . . 194 
 
 115. Vignette by Gillot for the Chien et le Chat, fable by Houdart de la Motte, in 1719 . 197 
 
 116. Vignette for Z)n/>/tms «/ CT/oe by Cochin, for Coustelier's edition 201 
 
 117. Title-page engraved by Fessard after Cochin for the works of Madame Deshoulieres, 
 
 1747 . . 203 
 
 118. Vignette taken from P. Corneille's 7"A(;'&/-c, by Gravelot . . . . 204 
 
 119. Border designed by Choifard, in 1758 205 
 
 120. Frontispiece by Eisen for the Fovo^e by I'Abbe de la Porte, 175' .... 206 
 
 121. Vignette by Eisen for the Quiproquo in the Conies of Lafontaine, in the edition of the 
 
 Fermiers Ge'ne'raux ............. 208 
 
 122. Card of the publisher Prault, uncle by marriage of Moreau le Jeune . . . 210 
 
 123. Tailpiece from the il/fi-'e/mM ;^€7^;VZ,wz*, by Moreau le Jeune ... . 211 
 
 124. Vignette of the Pardon Obtenu, designed by Moreau le Jeune, for Laborde's Chansons, 
 
 in 1773 . . 213 
 
 125. Title designed by Moreau le Jeune in 1769 for the publisher Prault .... 215 
 
 126. Frontispiece of the G/ossarwm of Du Dange, Paris, Osmont, 1733 .... 217 
 
 127. Illustration by Stothard, from one of the Jfse^safes . . .... 220 
 
 128. Illustration by Blake, from Blair's Grave ... ..... 221 
 
 129. Tailpiece engraved on wood by Jean Baptiste Papillon (before 1766) . . . 222 
 
 130. Experiment in engraving in relief by Moreau le Jeune for Renouard's edition of La 
 
 . . . . 224 
 
 Fontaine's Fables 
 
 131. Portrait of Thomas Bewick .... . . .... 225 
 
 132. Wood block by Bewick, from his Fables, 1818. The fox and the goat . . . 226 
 
 133. Wood block from Bewick's British Birds. The common duck 227 
 
 134. Benjamin Franklin, by C. N. Cochin 228 
 
 135. M. Ambroise Firmin Didot . .......... 233 
 
 136. Wood engraving by Clennell after West, for the diploma of the Highland Society . 235 
 
 137. Vignette by Deveria for the Fiance' de la Tombe 237 
 
 138. Vignette by Jean Gigoux for Gz7 B/ns 239 
 
 139. Vignette by Daumier for the Cholera a Paris 241 
 
 140. Vignette by Gavarni for Paris Marie' 242 
 
 141. Bsdzac writittg his Contes Dro'latiques. Vignette by Gustave Dore .... 243 
 
 142. Illustration by Cruikshank, from Three Courses and a Dessert, by Clarke . . . 244 
 
 143. Wood engraving by Clennell after Stothard, for Rogers's Poems, 1812 . . .245 
 
 144. Illustration by Ludwig Richter, from Bechstein's Mdrchenbuch 247 
 
 145. Type-founder in the middle of the sixteenth century. Engraving by Jost Amman 252 
 
 146. Mark of Jodocus Badius of Asch. Engraving a la croix de Lorraine . . . .258 
 
 147. Workman engaged on the vat with the wire frame. Engraving by Jost Amman . 259 
 
 148. Balance used by Jenson, at Venice 261 
 
List of Illustrations. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 149. Bookbinder's shop in the sixteenth century. Engraving by Jost Amman . . 264 
 
 150. Cover of the Evangeliarium of Noyon, made of skin, copper, and horn, with reliquaries 265 
 
 151. Cover of a book in enamelled goldsmith vsrork of Limoges, fifteenth century, represent- 
 
 ing Merlin I'Enchanteur transformed into a scholar 266 
 
 152. Bibliomaniac of the SA;]^ 0/ Foo/s 267 
 
 153. Binding in gold, ornamented with precious stones, having been used for a cover of an 
 
 Evangeliarium of the eleventh century (Louvre) ....... 269 
 
 154. Binding for Louis XIL Collection of M. Dutuit, of Rouen . .... 271 
 
 155. Arms of the University of Oxford, in which a bound book appears . . . 273 
 
 156. Cover of an old Koran ......... ... 275 
 
 157. The fourth part of a binding for Thomas Maioli (sixteenth century) . . 275 
 
 158. Binding for Grolier in the collection of M. Dutuit . ...... 279 
 
 159. Binding for Francis L, with the arms of France and the Salamander .... 280 
 
 160. Mark of Guyot Marchant, printer and bookbinder. He published the Danse Macabre 
 
 of 1485 281 
 
 161. Binding for Henry II., with the "H " and crescents 282 
 
 162. Binding for Henry II. (Mazarin Library) . . 283 
 
 163. Italian binding for Catherine de Medici, with the initials '.' C. C." .... 285 
 
 164. Binding with the arms of Mansfeldt, with lined scroll work, from the Didot collection 287 
 
 165. Part of a binding having belonged to Jacques de Thou (sixteenth century) . . 289 
 
 166. Mark of Nicholas Eve, binder of Henry III. and Henry IV. .... . 290 
 
 167. Sixteenth century binding, called « /a /flji/are. In the Dutuit collection . . . 291 
 
 168. Le Gascon binding ............. 293 
 
 169. Binding executed by Le Gascon for the MS. of Lafontaine's Adonis, having belonged 
 
 to Fouquet (seventeenth century) .......... 295 
 
 170. Le Gascon binding for Cardinal Mazarin ....... 297 
 
 171. Mosaic binding of the eighteenth century for the Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante . . 299 
 
 172. Mosaic binding of the eighteenth century with the arms of the Regent. M. Morgand's 
 
 collection ...... ...... 301 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 14 
 
 TO 1462. 
 
 Origin of the Book — Engravers in relief — The St. Chris- 
 topher of 1423— Origin of the Xylographs — The 
 Xylographs, Donatus and S;peculum — The Laurent 
 Coster legend — From block books to movable 
 characters — John Gensfleisch, called Gutenberg 
 —The Strasburg trial— Gutenberg at Mayence— 
 Fust and Schoeffer— The letters of indulgence— 
 The Bible— The Catholicon— The Mayence Bible 
 — Causes of the dispersion of the first Mayence 
 printers — General considerations. 
 
 HE Book has ever been 
 the most faithful reflec- 
 tion of the period in 
 which it was written and 
 illustrated. Simple and 
 genuine from the beginning, embellished 
 
 
 v.^:<??:<%>ii 
 
 W 
 
2 The Book. 
 
 with crude illustrations, it assumed in the sixteenth century 
 the grand airs of the Renaissance, gay or serious according 
 to requirements, decked in what were then called histoyres, or 
 wonderful engravings, daintily printed either in Gothic, Roman, 
 or choice Italic characters. At the close of the fifteendi 
 century it had partly abandoned wood for metal or line 
 engravings, heightening its mysticism or its satire at the whim 
 of passing politics and religious wranglings. Then, under the 
 influence of the painters and courtiers of the Grand Monarque, 
 it becomes completely transformed, donning the perruque, so to 
 speak, indulging in allegory and conventionalities, pompous 
 and showy, .and continuing the coquetries of the regency, the 
 pastorals and insipidities of the following reigns, until at last it 
 suddenly assumes with the heroes of the Revolution the airs of 
 classic art. Thus the Book, the child of Painting, has always 
 been as closely connected with the manners of our forefathers 
 as that art itself. The artist submits more than he thinks to 
 the tendency of his surroundings ; and if he at times impresses 
 his mark, it is because he has more or less received his first 
 influence from others. 
 
 The fashion of emblematic representation in the sixteenth 
 century placed under the portrait of Gaston de Foix a figure 
 of a fast-growing plant, ripe as soon as it was in .bud, with 
 the Latin inscription, " Nascendo maturus." The Book deserves 
 the same device ; from its first day up to now it is a marvel 
 of simplicity and harmony. There was hardly any groping 
 in the dark, except with those ex;periments which preceded 
 the discovery of printing ; it may be said that from the moment 
 Gutenberg conceived the idea of separating the characters, of 
 arranging the words in the form, of inking them, and of taking 
 a proof on paper, the Book was perfect. At best we see in 
 
The Block-Books. 3 
 
 later times some modifications of detail, but the art of printing 
 was mature, mature from its birth. 
 
 But before arriving at what appears to us to-day so simple, 
 namely, the movable type placed side by side, forming sentences, 
 many years passed. It is certain that long before Gutenberg 
 
 Fig. I.— The Fool: Playing Card of Taroc (fifteenth centurj-). 
 
 a means was found of cutting wood and metal in relief, and 
 reproducing by pressure the image traced. Signs-manual and 
 seals were a kind of printing, inasmuch as the relief of 
 their engraving is impressed upon some sheet by the hand. 
 But between this simple fact and the uncritical histories of 
 certain special writers, attributing the invention of engraving 
 
4 The Book. 
 
 to the fourteenth century, there is all the distance of historical 
 facts and legends. Remembering that the numerous guilds of 
 tailleurs d'images, or sculptors in relief, had in the Middle Ages 
 the specialty of carving ivories and of placing effigies on tombs, 
 it can be admitted, without much stretch of imagination, that 
 these people one day found a means of multiplying the sketches 
 of a figure often asked for, by modelling its contour in bold lines 
 in relief on ivory or wood, and afterwards taking a reproduction 
 
 Fig.-2.— St. Christopher (1423). 
 
 on paper or parchment by some kind of pressure. When and 
 where was this discovery produced ? We cannot possibly say ; 
 but it is certain that playing cards (Fig. i) were produced by 
 this means, and that from the year 1423 popular figures were 
 cut in wood, as we know from the St. Christopher of 'that date 
 belonging to Lord Spencer. 
 
 It IS not our task to discuss this question at length, nor to 
 decide if at first these reliefs were obtained on wood or metal. 
 
The Block-Books. 
 
 One thing is certain, that the single leaf with a figure printed 
 upon it preceded the xylograph ic book, in which text and 
 illustration were cut in the same block. This latter process 
 did not appear much before the second quarter of the fifteenth 
 
 I. LIJ i 
 
 ■rrr\'\'V\'X^ 
 
 Fig. 3._Xylographic Plate, cut in Flanders (1440), representing Jesus after the flagellation. 
 
 century, and it was employed principally for popular works, the 
 taste for which was then universal. The engraving was pro- 
 bably a kind of imposition, being palmed off as a manuscript ; the 
 vignettes were often covered with brilliant colours and glittering 
 gold, and the whole sold for something better. 
 
The Book. 
 
 The first attempts at these little figures in relief, invented 
 by the image-makers and diffused by the makers of playing 
 
 
 Fig. 4.— Xylographic Plate, representing St. John. Ca. 1440. With 
 a text of the commandments of the Church. 
 
 cards, were but indifferent. The drawing and the cutting were 
 equally unskilful, as we may convince ourselves from the fac- 
 similes given by M. H. Delaborde in his Histoire de la Gravure. 
 
The " Doa'atus." 7 
 
 An attempt had, however, been made to put some text at the 
 foot of the St. Christopher of 1423, and the idea of giving 
 more importance to the text must have dawned upon many 
 booksellers. At the mercy of the writers who fleeced them, 
 
 1 tionis (luf ppofim miie pav 
 
 titora omtom fiptfiranmt' 
 
 mm\xxmmMt mumm 
 
 aurminuttubjgjofmox quorardwlr- 
 
 ^ii0:€U«f ^mle t abWio.©fiiipa- 
 fiiionf9i!rtlrarii0:uf ao. aputi. aiitf 
 atiurrrum,rte.ntra.ftrcu.rirfa. rofra. 
 rrja^mm JiirerjiiiraMiutem o*-' 
 |)Oitf.prr.jGpe jpfei\fifim.yDft.rratts 
 tiItra.rf)jr(rr.(«>jja,rimrfr.u%.Cfnjo 
 pr«r0«©uo Dinmim rni^ W parrnn 
 aput mlla*anrr m^ .atiurrrmn imnii 
 ftr0-n0 rfim.dtraf0m. nrniutrmo'' 
 ^ratfmpIilronnal)onr0.(rga^ut« 
 ilii00,riPiTatmnlta00«nitfniauf04n* 
 trammta;mfrarrcru4umtnardlutr 
 ^au0t3nft4)0nr mbunal^ patirtnti 
 'jg3(frmara.jj)trri»(irtplttia Crdmfa 
 
 Fig. 5. — Part of a Donatus taken from a xylograph, the original of which i^ 
 preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale. 
 
 obliged to recoup themselves by charging exaggerated prices for 
 the most ordinary books, they proposed to take advantage of the 
 engraving in order to obtain on better terms the technical work 
 needed for their trade. At the epoch of the St. Christopher, 
 
8 The book. 
 
 in 1423, several works were in demand in the universities, the 
 schools, and with the public. Among the first of these were 
 the Latin Syntax of ^lius Donatus on the eight parts of 
 speech, a kind of grammar for the use of young students, and 
 also the famous Speculum, a collection of precepts addressed to 
 the faithful, which were copied and recopied without satisfying 
 the demand. 
 
 To find a means of multiplying these treatises at little cost 
 was a fortune to the inventor. It is to be supposed that many 
 artisans of the time made an attempt ; and without doubt it was 
 less the booksellers themselves, mostly mere dealers as they 
 were, than the image cutters and sculptors who were tempted 
 to the adventure. But none had yet been so bold as to cut 
 in relief a series of blocks with engravings and text destined 
 to compose a complete work. That point was reached very 
 quickly when some legend was engraved at the foot of a 
 vignette, and it may be thought that the Donatus was the 
 most ancient of books so obtained among the " Incunabula," 
 as we now call them, a word that signifies origin or 
 cradle. 
 
 The first books then were formed of sheets of paper 
 or parchment,' laboriously printed from xylographic blocks, 
 that is to say, wooden blocks on which a tailleur dimages 
 had left the designs and the letters of the text in relief. He 
 had thus to trace his characters in reverse, so that they 
 could be reproduced as written ; he had also to avoid faults, 
 because a phrase once done, well or ill, was permanent. It 
 was doubtless this difficulty of correction that gave the idea 
 of movable types. If the engraver made gross mistakes, it was 
 necessary to cancel the faulty block altogether. This at least 
 explains the legend of Laurent Coster, of Haarlem, who, 
 
The Coster Legend. 9 
 
 according to Hadrian Junius, his compatriot, discovered by 
 accident the secret of separate types while playing with his 
 children. And if the legend of which we speak contains the 
 least truth, it must be found in the sense above indicated, that 
 is in the correction of a mistake, rather than in some innocent 
 game with which the churchwarden of Haarlem was occupied. 
 However, we shall have occasion to return to the subject of 
 these remarks, but in passing we must state that engraving in 
 relief on wood alone gave the idea of making xylographic 
 blocks and of forming them into books. Movable type, the 
 capital point of printing, the pivot of the art of the Book, 
 suggested itself later on, according to necessities that m.ade 
 themselves felt when there was occasion to correct an erroneous 
 inscription ; but, at any rate, it was not known at the outset. 
 Doubtless, to vary the text, means were found to replace 
 entire phrases by other phrases, preserving the original figures ; 
 and thus the light dawned upon these craftsmen, while 
 occupied in the manufacture and sale of their books. 
 
 According to Hadrian Junius, Laurent Janszoon Coster had 
 published one of those Speculums which were then so popular 
 (the mystic style of which exercised so great an attraction on 
 the people of the fifteenth century), viz., the Specuhim Humance 
 Salvationis. Written before the middle of the fifteenth century, 
 made popular by manuscripts, in spite of its fantastic Latinity 
 and of its false quantities, this ascetic and badly conceived 
 poem from the first tempted the xylographists. Junius, as 
 we see, attributes to Laurent Coster the first impression of 
 the Speculum, no longer the purely xylographic impression 
 of the Donatus from an engraved block, but that of the 
 more advanced manner in movable types. In point of fact, 
 this book had at least four editions, similar in engravings 
 
lo The book. 
 
 and size of letters, but of different text. It must then be 
 admitted that the fount was dispersed, and typography dis- 
 covered, because the same unintelligible fount of letters could 
 not be adapted to different languages. On the other hand, 
 the identity of the vignettes indicates sufficiently the mobility 
 of the types. In comparison with what may be seen in later 
 vorks, the illustrations of the Speculum are by no means bad ; 
 they have the appearance, at once naive arid picturesque, of 
 the works of Van Eyck, and not at all of the character of the 
 German miniaturists ; properly illuminated and gilded, they lent 
 themselves to the illusion of being confounded with the histoyres, 
 drawn by hand, and this is what the publisher probably 
 endeavoured. 
 
 All the xylographic works of the fifteenth century may then 
 be classed in two categories : the xylographs, rightly so called, 
 or the block books, such as the Donatus with fixed type, 
 and the books with more or less fixed plates and with movable 
 types, like the Speculum, of which we speak. This mystic 
 and simple literature of pious works for the use of people of 
 modest resources acquired in printing the means of more rapid 
 reproduction. Then appeared the Biblia Pauperum, (see 
 Frontispiece), one of the most celebrated and the most 
 often reproduced of the block- books, and the Ars Moriendi 
 (see Fig. 6), a kind of dialogue between an angel and the devil 
 at the bedside of a dying person, which, inspired no doubt by 
 older manuscripts, retained for a long time in successive editions 
 the first tradition of its design. On labels displayed among the 
 figures are found inscribed the dialogue of the demons and 
 angels seeking to attach to themselves the departing soul, the 
 temptations of Satan on the subject of faith, and the responses 
 of the angel on the same subject. 
 
The Block-Books. h 
 
 We can see what developments this theme could lend to 
 
 Fig. 6. — Fac-simile of page 5 of the first edition of the Ars Moriendi. 
 
 the mysticism of the fifteenth century. Composed of eleven 
 
12 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 designs, the Ars Moriendi ran up to eight different editions. 
 From the middle to the end of the fifteenth century the text 
 was in Latin, then in French, under the title U Art mi Morier 
 (Fig. 7). In the French edition will be found the blocks that 
 served for the second impression of the work. About 1480, more 
 than fifty years after the first attempt, the Ars Moriendi was still 
 
 Fig. 7.— Xylographic figure from the Ars Moriendi, copied in reverse in the Art au Morier. 
 
 so much in demand that an attempt was made to take it up agair 
 with all the resources of typography as much as in its earliesi 
 days. The original subjects, copied in a very indifferent manner 
 adorned the text, which was set up in Gothic letters, with c 
 new and more explicit title : Tractahis brevis ac valde utili 
 de Arte et Scientia bene moriendi (410, s.l. et a.), but th< 
 
The Block-Books. 
 
 13 
 
 order is inverted, Fig. 5 of the xylographic work becoming 
 No. 3 of the edition of 1480. 
 
 The Ars Memorandi, another xylographic work, of which 
 
 the subject, taken from the New Testament, was equally well 
 
 Fig. 8. — Figure of the school of Martin Schongauer, taken from the Rationariurn Evangelistai um 
 of 1505, and copied from the corresponding plate of the Ars Memorandi. 
 
 adapted to the imagination of the artists, had an equally 
 glorious destiny. The work originally comprised thirty blocks, 
 the fifteen blocks of text facing the fifteen engravings. The 
 designs represented the attributes of each of the Evangelists, 
 
14 THE BOOK. 
 
 with allegories and explanatory legends. Thus, in that whict 
 relates to the Apostle Matthew, 
 
 No. I represents the Birth and Genealogy of Jesus Christ, 
 
 No. 2 the Adoration of the Magi, 
 
 No. 3 the Baptism of St. John, 
 
 No. 4 the Temptation of Christ, 
 
 No. 5 the Sermon on the Mount, 
 
 No. 6 the Parable of the Birds. 
 
 The angel that supports the whole is the emblem of St. 
 Matthew the Evangelist. 
 
 This mnemonic treatment of the Gospels proceeded from 
 symbols of which we have no means of finding the origin, 
 but which without doubt went back many centuries earlier. 
 However that may be, their success was as great as that of the 
 already quoted works. In 1505 a German publisher published an 
 imitation of it, under the title of Rationarium Evangelistarum 
 (Fig. 8) ; and this time the copyist of the illustrations,; 
 although trying to retain the tradition of the first xylographers, 
 none the less reveals himself as an artist of the first order, 
 at least a pupil of Martin Schongauer. Some of the con- 
 ceptions of the Rationarium recall exactly the engravings of 
 the great German master, among others that of the Child 
 Jesus (plate 12), which nearly approaches the style of the 
 Infant Jesus of Schongauer ; besides, the principal figures leave 
 but litde doubt on the subject. We find the same wings 
 on the angels and on the eagles, the same head-dresses on the 
 human characters, often the same attitudes. 
 
 From the preceding can be judged the extraordinary favour 
 which these productions enjoyed. From their origin they were 
 diffused through the whole of Europe, and attracted the atten- 
 tion of excellent artists. Nevertheless their beginnings were, 
 
Gutenberg. 
 
 15 
 
 difficult. The movable types used, cut separately in wood, were 
 not constituted to give an ideal impression. We can besides 
 understand the cost that the making of these characters must 
 have occasioned, which were designed to stand one by one 
 without the possibility of ever making them perfectly uniform. 
 Progress was made in substituting for this imperfect process types 
 that were similar, identical, easily produced, and used for a long 
 time without breaking. Following on the essays of Laurent 
 
 Fig. 9. — Portrait of Gutenberg, from an engraving of the sixteenth centurj'. 
 
 Coster, continuous researches were brought to bear on this 
 point ; but as the invention was said to be his, and as it was 
 of importance to him not to divulge it, so that he should not 
 forego his profit, it so happened that much time was lost in 
 his workshop without much success. Here history is somewhat 
 confused. Hadrian Junius positively accuses one of Laurent 
 Coster's workmen of having stolen the secrets of his master 
 and taken flight to Mayence, where he afterwards founded a 
 
1 6 The Book. 
 
 printing office. According to Junius, the metal type had been 
 the discovery of the Dutchman, and the name of the thief who 
 appropriated it was John. Who was this John ? Was it John 
 Gensfleisch, called Gutenberg, or rather John Fust .? But 
 it is not at all likely that Gutenberg, a gentleman of 
 Mayence, exiled from his country, ever took service with the 
 Dutch inventor. As to Fust, as we shall see, he only was 
 mixed up with the association of printers of Mayence as a 
 money-lender, from which the unlikelihood of his having been 
 with Coster may be gathered. We also find Gutenberg retiring 
 to Strasburg, where he pursued his researches. There he 
 was, a kind of broken-down gentleman, a ruined noble, whose 
 great knowledge was, however, bent entirely on invention. 
 Perhaps, like many others, he may have -had in his hands 
 one of the printed works of Laurent Coster, and conceived 
 the idea of appropriating the infant process. In 1439 he 
 associated himself with two artisans of the city of Strasburg, 
 ostensibly in the fabrication of Mirrors, which may be other- 
 wise understood as the printing of Speculums, the Latin word 
 signifying the same thing. These men were obliged to sur- 
 round themselves with precautions ; printing ■ was as yet only 
 a practical means of multiplying manuscripts, to impose on the 
 unsuspecting ones, and fortune awaited him who, keeping his 
 counsel, made use of this invention. The following will prove 
 this, as well as bearing on the subject. 
 
 A legal document discovered in 1790 by Wencker and 
 Schoepflin in the Pfennigthurm of Strasburg, and afterwards 
 translated into French by M. Leon de Laborde, makes us at 
 length acquainted with the work of Gutenberg and of his 
 associates Andrew Dritzehen and Andrew Heilmann. Appa- 
 rently these three men were, as we have said, Spiegelmachers, 
 
Gutenberg. 17 
 
 that is makers of mirrors. Ttiey had jointly entered into a 
 deed by the terms of which, if one of the partners died in 
 the course of their researches, his heirs would have no rights 
 beyond an indemnity corresponding to the amount invested by 
 him. It happened that Andrew Dritzehen did die, and that 
 one of his brothers aspired to occupy his place in the partner- 
 ship. The dead man left debts behind him ; he had squan- 
 dered his florins by hundreds in his experiments. Gutenberg 
 having offered to pay up the amounts expended, the heirs of 
 Dritzehen, who wanted more, summoned him before the judge 
 to show why he should not make place for them in the work 
 of experiments and making of mirrors. The witnesses in their 
 testimony before the court told what they knew of the inventions 
 of the partnership. One among them deposed that, after the 
 death of Dritzehen, Gutenberg's servant went to the workshop 
 and begged Nicholas Dritzehen, brother of the deceased, to dis- 
 place and break up four forms placed in a press. A second 
 testified that the works of Andrew had cost him at the least 
 three hundred florins, an enormous sum for those days. Other 
 witnesses painted Gutenberg in a curious light : they made him 
 out to be a savage, a hermit, who concealed from his asso- 
 ciates certain arts which the deed did not stipulate. One fact 
 proved that the experiments were directed towards the manu- 
 facture of metallic characters. A goldsmith, named Dunne, 
 maintained that he had received more than a hundred florins 
 for work belonging to printing material " das zzi dem trucken 
 gehoret." "Trucken!" — "Typography!" Here the word was 
 found, and from that day usage has sanctioned it. 
 
 Thus before 1439 John Gensfleisch, or Gutenberg, was 
 devoted to the art of reproduction of texts, and had conse- 
 crated his life and feeble resources to it. Three problems 
 
 2 
 
1 8 THE BOOK. 
 
 presented themselves to him. He wanted types less fragile 
 than wooden types and less costly than engraving. He wanted 
 a press by the aid of which he could obtain a clear impression 
 on parchment or paper. He desired also that the leaves of his 
 books should not be anopistographs, or printed on one side 
 only. There were many unknown things to vex his soul, of 
 which he himself alone could have a presentiment. Until then, 
 and even long after, the xylographs were printed au frotton, or 
 with a brush, rubbing the paper upon the form coated with ink 
 thicker than ordinary ink ; but he dreamt of something better. 
 
 In the course of his work John Gutenberg returned to 
 Mayence. The idea of publishing a Bible, the Book of books, 
 had taken possession of his heart. The Spiegelmacher of 
 Strasburg was on the road to ruin. The cutting of his types 
 had ruined him, and on his arrival in his native town, his 
 stock in trade, which he carried away with him, was of no great 
 weight : some boxes of type, an inconvenient form, and perhaps 
 an ordinary press, like a wine-maker's press, with a wooden screw. 
 The idea of using this unwieldy instrument for the impression 
 of his forms had already occurred to him ; but would not 
 the frotton serve still better ? The force of the blow from the 
 bar would break the miserable type, the raised parts of which 
 could not resist the repeated strokes. In this unhappy situa- 
 tion Gutenberg made the acquaintance of a financier of 
 Mayence, named Fust, who was in search of a business, and 
 who put a sum of eleven hundred florins at his disposal to 
 continue his experiments. Unfortunately this money dis- 
 appeared, it melted away, and the results obtained were 
 it appears, absolutely ludicrous. 
 
 It is certain that John Fust did not enter on the engage- 
 ment without protecting himself From the first he bound his 
 
Gutenberg and Fust. 19 
 
 debtor in a contract for six per cent, interest, besides a share 
 in the profits. In addition he stipulated repayment in case of 
 failure. Gutenberg, incautious, as is the way of inventors, 
 had signed away all that he possessed to procure funds. It 
 is however presumed that, during the continuance of his 
 investigations, he set up in type some current books with the 
 resources at his disposal, that served a little to lighten his 
 debts. But the printing house of the Zum Jungen at Mayence 
 was far from shining in the world, because the partnership 
 with Fust was aimed only at the publication of a Bible, and 
 not at all with the Speculums and Donatus that were so much 
 in vogue at that time. Besides, the money-lender made a 
 point of pressing his debtor, and did not allow him any leisure 
 to labour outside the projected work. 
 
 About this time a third actor entered upon the scene. Peter 
 Schoeffer, of Gernsheim, a caligrapher, who was introduced into 
 the workshop of Gutenberg to design letters, benefited by the 
 abortive experiments, and, taking up the invention at its deadlock, 
 carried it forward. John of Tritenheim, called Trithemius, the 
 learned abbot of Spanheim, is the person who relates these facts ; 
 but, as he got his information from Schoeffer himself, too much 
 credence must not be given to his statements. Besides, Schoeffer 
 was by no means an ordinary artisan. If we credit a Strasburg 
 manuscript written by his hand in 1449, he had been a 
 student of the " most glorious university of Paris." In the 
 workshop of Gutenberg his industrious and inventive spirit, to 
 use the same expressions as the Abbot of Tritenheim, found 
 natural food and a productive mine, and this caligrapher dreamt 
 of other things than merely drafting his letters for wood blocks, 
 to be cut by the engravers. Gutenberg, arrested in his career 
 by the wants of life, the worries of business, ar^d perhaps also by 
 
20 The Book. 
 
 the 'fatigues of his labours, may have let the new-comer know- 
 something of his expectations. One cannot know, but it is 
 certain that, shortly after, John Fust was so fascinated by 
 Schoeffer, so attracted by his youth and his skill, that he 
 resolved to put new capital into the business. He did more : 
 to permanently attach him, he gave him his granddaughter in 
 marriage — not his daughter, as was thought until M. Auguste 
 Bernard rectified this mistake. 
 
 We have now come to 1453, the year preceding the first 
 dated monument of printing in movable types. The Letters of 
 Indulgence. It may be acknowledged that this sudden affection 
 of Fust for his workman depended on some interested motive, 
 and not upon any particular kindness of heart, of which the 
 Mayence citizen seemed incapable. Had this former student 
 of the university of Paris found the means of rapidly found- 
 ing metallic types, the search for which had cost Gutenberg so 
 many sleepless nights ? Did he complete it by applying to 
 the fount the matrix and punch which had then and for 
 centuries served the makers of seals and the money-coiners ? 
 Perhaps, as was most probable, the two associates arrived at 
 the same result, and, putting their experiences together, were 
 enabled to conquer difficulties hitherto insurmountable 
 
 The year 1454 witnessed the diffusion throughout Christen- 
 dom of letters of indulgence, accorded by Pope Nicholas V. 
 to the faithful who wished to aid in funds the King of Cyprus 
 against the Turks. These circular letters, scattered abroad by 
 thousands to every corner of the world, had employed numerous 
 copyists. Arrived at Mayence, the distributers found a work- 
 shop ready prepared to furnish copies in the shortest possible 
 time. They set to work and brought together all the available 
 type, cast or cut, to set up these famous letters. Among 
 
The Letters of Indulgence. 
 
 21 
 
 the impressions was that of which we give a reproduction 
 (Fig. lo), which belongs to the edition called that of thirty-one 
 lines. The original, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, was 
 delivered for a consideration to Josse Ott von Mospach on 
 the 31st of December, 1454. 
 
 It is not without interest, for the history of the Book and 
 
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 tnamSjigiUum a&(iocoi&iiiAt«frt pjefoiritij littcne tcTrimoniAUl^ <rtdip€»^inOatum \v.utu(»*eo^/»fc arnio ;uift e P fg rfMn J 
 
 rf*v iFmnjapImitfimEabfoImitinfeattatifiioiriBinrriia 
 
 Sj^l£feuCIT9tHrtUlU£ 0«snfi^ru6jcp«2rua(mnimartprilTima!^irt;f<''ate^^^^ 
 
 V'2pt«t ci*^ .ic aiictc 3ptka niict)! ^miffa « tibi pccfla £0o t« abfoluo ab wiib; pcfb miS sttirie sfcffit i obliii* 6iid ab oniibj tafl 
 
 QGUq; nine ccfurie *% vcm««ctt<:iltici« <a Jute Mel ab tjoie ;pniuIsAti& fi qua« itiaurifti donfid ttbi pleifliniA oim pcfnftuozt inAid ' 
 (paitia ^ i;Qmfl*wiir3uqi«iii dtW^faiicte maui&ccctie in W EW ft eiitcM&ut.3a nomine patri« -^ filii « fpicitws fiiufti amoi . 
 
 /ov?. .JfaiiM;irira£tu£ retniCfionismnuRtisarrimla 
 
 SslSaUCuSflir nil "Vt OB^ffiJJci m fimja 650 <c abftltto at omii^ ^cnS.tids stride sMlis t oHfti? teRIMoiSo te "onrta 
 6fiS£liit'»fea«moiH»i«Sc8ihi;((0|Sp.tibTvffla«pMija»tiiquasv!opKccidpas«»ffciira4lm^ 
 ^^cfOttiuD^CamiQuuJ^^iqU^ daucs iu nuu<«Ii£ui to l"":u Ic cxt<t>;>nt .In iiofo pn^ u filji u Ipus'lancu amat . 
 
 Fig. 10. — Letters ofindulger.ee, from the so-called edition of thirty one- lines, printed at 
 Mayence in the course of 1454. 
 
 Printing, to note here that these letters of indulgence, the 
 clandestine traffic in which was largely accelerated by the rapidity 
 of production and, it may be said, the small cost of each 
 copy, formed one of the causes of the religious reform of 
 Martin Luther. They afforded a means of raising money, 
 and were so generally resorted to that in the register of the 
 Hotel de Ville of Paris, preserved in the Archives Nationales 
 
22 The Book. 
 
 (H 1778), it may be seen that the sheriffs requested the Pope 
 to allow them to employ them in the reconstruction of the 
 bridge at the Hotel de Ville. 
 
 The ice once broken, Fust and Schoeffer found it hard to 
 keep a useless hand. For them Gutenberg was more of a 
 hindrance than a profit, and they sought brutally to rid them- 
 selves of him. Fust had a most easy pretext, which was to 
 demand purely and simply from his associate the sums 
 advanced by him, and which had produced so little. Gutenberg 
 had to all appearance commenced his Bible, but, in face of 
 the claims of Fust, he had to abandon it altogether, types, 
 forms, and press 
 
 In November 1455 he had retired to a little house outside 
 the city, where he tried his best, by the aid of foreign help, 
 to establish a workshop, and to preserve the most perfect 
 secrecy. Relieved of his company, Fust and Schoeffer were 
 able to continue the impression of the Bible and to complete 
 it without him. If matters really came to pass in this way, 
 and Schoeffer had no claim to having previously discovered 
 the casting of type, there is but one word to designate their 
 conduct : robbery, and moral robbery, the worst of all. But 
 what can we think of these people ? 
 
 One thing appears to be certain : that the so-called 
 Gutenberg Bible, whether commenced by Gutenberg or not, 
 was issued by Fust and Schoeffer alone about the end of 1455 
 or at the beginning of 1456, and proves to be the first com- 
 pleted book. Having retired to his new quarters, Gutenberg 
 was taking care not to remain too much in the background, 
 but the reconstitution of his workshop must have cost him 
 enormous time. He also missed the caligrapher Schoeffer: his 
 own Gothic letters, engraved on steel with a punch, had not 
 
The Gutenberg Bible. 
 
 the same elegance. When his work appeared in 1458 it could 
 not sustain comparison. The Bible which Schoeffer issued was 
 more compact, the impression was more perfect, the ink better, 
 
 Iite-uotat tefittiripif no0 gmtBm 
 
 flffdlat Itmu0 uagccrazm t kuitit?. 
 tmx!d uagt6ata::qiiE nuimi^ uora^ 
 nm0.f5utt9 illiaMafeimrq leufaiuj^ 
 iTOupramtJiijilfiiufipUbrinmHi: 
 Wm0,lpmtlfomitj|^i^6^"aipl^ 
 Stfim^aij maim feautric mdtii. 
 unt a IQu film namtqm apim tUo$ 
 iQrmbmuummat«2)atm£rubt(|ut 
 fepiitpitn6riiiuDimIib5:£tm£ulm^ 
 catiingut rud^^quia in dicte iimitu : 
 fm a? natcaf tfiOtoua. lecdua ftqui^ 
 tur ramiutquau 1100 rcgnni^ pmu ^ 
 fttim Didra?.€)uart? matarljim ia f 
 
 Fig. II. — Fragment of the Gutenberg Bible, printed in two columns. Beginning of the 
 text in the second column ; original size. 
 
 the type less irregular. Thus the original inventor, in his con- 
 nexion with Fust, made an unfortunate competition for himself. 
 We give here a fragment of this celebrated book, a kind of 
 mute witness of the science and mortifications of the first printer. 
 
24 THE BOOK. 
 
 It is also called the Mazarine Bible, from the fact that De Bure 
 discovered the first copy in the Mazarine Library, and was the 
 first to give evidence concerning it. The book was issued at 
 the end of 1455 or beginning of 1456, for a manuscript note 
 of a vicar of St. Stephen at Mayence records that he himself 
 finished the binding and illuminating of the first volume on 
 St. Bartholomew's Day, 1456, and the second on the 15th of 
 August. St. Bartholomew's Day is the 13th of June, and 
 not the 24th of August, as the catalogue of the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale has it. 
 
 Mr. Bernhard Quaritch gives a resu7ne of arguments put 
 forth by foreign writers, tending to clear up the claims of Guten- 
 berg to the first Bible, and as the subject is of very high 
 importance we cannot do better than here reproduce, with his 
 permission, the arguments in favour of Gutenberg. He says : — 
 
 " A late critic who first believed in the Coster legend, then 
 recanted, then believed again and still believes in it, on the 
 faith of three things, namely (i) the actual existence of undated 
 Donatus fragments evidently early and of Dutch origin ; (2) 
 a phrase used in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499 ; (3) the 
 Junius story printed in 1588 — has discussed the history of 
 the first press of Mayence in a very acute and able essay on 
 Gutenberg. His conclusion is that no Book is known earlier 
 than the above forty-two line Bible, and that it was printed 
 about 1454-55 by Peter Schoeffer ; that there exists no trace 
 of Gutenberg as a printer ; that the thirty-six line Bible printed 
 in types used by Pfister at Bamberg in and after 1461 may 
 have been produced at Mayence before 1460. This judgment is 
 unconsciously biassed by a certain patriotic animus against the 
 name of the man to whom the invention of Printing is usually 
 ascribed on sufficient evidence. It may not be amiss, therefore, 
 
The Gutenberg Bible. 25 
 
 to quote a succession of accessible authorities on the subject 
 for those who are not in immediate possession of the facts. 
 
 " 1454. An Indulgence of this date is printed in the type 
 of the forty-two line Bible. 
 
 " 1456. The rubrication of the Paris copy of the forty- two 
 line Bible proves it anterior to this year. 
 
 " 1457. The Psalter of this date bears the names of John 
 Fust and Peter Schoefifer. 
 
 " 1468. Peter Schoeffer, surviving John Fust, prints the 
 Institutes of Justinian, with a statement that a different John 
 had preceded John and Peter in the practice of printing at 
 Mayence. 
 
 " 1465-99. Ulrich Zell, who left Mayence in 1462, declares 
 plainly the absolute priority to all other typographers of John 
 Gutenberg, who made experiments in printing from 1440 to 
 1450, and began to print a Bible in missal-type in 1450. 
 
 " 1470. Pierre Fichet, in the Paris edition of Gasparinus of 
 this year, states that John Gutenberg invented typography at 
 Mayence. 
 
 " The specific information in the Cologne Chronicle is the 
 most valuable of all the early external evidences, for which 
 reason I quote it in full below. Of the printed monuments 
 themselves, all persons on all sides are agreed that no Book 
 is now in existence except the forty-two line Bible, to which 
 we can with documentary certitude assign so early a date as 
 '455-56- A work of such magnitude, as well as earliness, must 
 have occupied some years in its production. With all the 
 practical facilities of our own time, two such volumes, in such 
 type, so carefully worked by means of assiduous revision and 
 rearrangement, could hardly be printed by a London printer 
 now, with less than a year's effort ; at the infancy of printing. 
 
26 The Book. 
 
 we may reckon four or five years for the time that was 
 necessary. If Schoeffer printed it, he (who, by his own 
 statement, was the third Mayence typographer) must have 
 begun the work in 1450, and must have prepared himself for 
 it by several years' preliminary studies (in the choosing and 
 making of types, the elaboration of the process, the construction 
 of machinery and appurtenances, the gathering of material, etc.). 
 Consequently, if Schoeffer was the printer of the forty-two 
 line Bible, he must have begun his practical career as a 
 typographer not later than 1445. This logical conclusion is 
 a clear redtutio ad absurdum. We do not know when 
 Schoeffer was born ; most authorities say between 1420 and 
 1430. We do know that he was alive and still printing at 
 the end of the year 1502, that in 1465 Fust called him 'puer 
 mens,' that in 1449 he was a student and caligrapher at Paris. 
 Men began earlier and finished sooner in those days than 
 now ; old age was considered to have set in at fifty : {^^ 
 persons reached the age of seventy. The probability is that 
 Schoeffer was about eighteen years of age in 1445 ; but it 
 is sufficient for our purpose to know that he could have 
 had nothing to do with typography in 1449 when he wrote 
 and ornamented a manuscript in Paris. It is utterly impossible 
 that a young student in Paris, so engaged in that year, could 
 have produced the two volumes of the forty-two line Bible at 
 Mayence between 1450 and 1456, without any preparation or 
 training — except by a miracle, which does not usually happen 
 in the workaday world. 
 
 "We reproduce here, out of the Cologne Chronicle (printed in 
 1499 by Johann Koelhof), the passage referring to the inven- 
 tion of printing : 
 
 " ' Of the Art of Bookprinting. 
 
The Gutenberg Bible. 27 
 
 " ' When, where, and by whom was invented the inexpressibly useful 
 art of printing books ? 
 
 ****** 
 
 " ' Item. This highly valuable art aforesaid was invented first of all 
 in Germany at Mayence on the Rhine. And it is a great honour to the 
 German nation that such ingenious men are to be found therein. And that 
 happened in the year of our Lord a.d. 1440; and from that time onward until 
 the date of (14)50, the art, and what appertains to it, were investigated 
 and essayed. And in the year of our Lord 1450, it was then a golden 
 year, it was then begun to print, and the first book that was printed 
 was the Bible in Latin, and it was printed with a massive character such 
 as the letter in which Mass-books are now printed. Item, whileas the 
 art was invented at Mayence as aforesaid in the mode in which it is now 
 commonly used, the first prefigurement was, however, invented in Holland, 
 in the Donatuses which were formerly printed there. And from and out 
 of them the beginning of the aforesaid art was taken, and it was much 
 more masterly and subtilely invested than the same manner was ; and 
 the longer it has been practised the more artistic has it become. Item, 
 there is one named Omnebonus who writes in a preface to the book 
 named Quintilianus, and also in many other books, that a foreigner from 
 France named Nicolaus Genson was the first who invented this masterly 
 art, but that is manifestly false, since there are yet alive those who 
 testify that books were printed at Venice before the aforesaid Nicolaus 
 Genson came thither, where he began to cut and prepare letters (types). 
 But the first inventor of Printing was a citizen of Mayence, and was born 
 at Strassburg, and was named junker Johan Gudenburch. Item, from 
 Mayence the aforesaid art came first to Cologne, next to Strassburg, and 
 then to Venice. The worthy man. Master Ulrich Tzell of Hanau, still 
 a printer at Cologne at the present time in the year 1499, by whom the 
 aforesaid art was brought to Cologne, has related verbally to me the 
 beginning and progress of the aforesaid art. Item, there is also a set 
 of wrong-headed men, and they say that books were printed formerly 
 also ; but that is not true, since there are found in no lands any of the 
 books which were printed at those times.' 
 
 "If we analyse the above statement — vi^hich, though dated 
 1499, must be regarded as the result of conversations between 
 1465 and 1472 — we find the following points: — 
 
2 8 THE BOOK. 
 
 "(i) Johann Gutenberg was the actual inventor of printing, 
 in 1440. 
 
 " (2) The first book printed by him, after preliminary essays 
 in 1440-50, was a Bible, in missal- type, printed (or begun) 
 in 1450; 
 
 "(3) There had been a foreshadowing or suggestion of 
 printing in the Donatus sheets impressed in Holland before 
 Gutenberg's time ; 
 
 " (4) There had been no typography anywhere before the 
 time of Gutenberg ; notwithstanding the assertions of some 
 wrong-headed and perverse persons ; 
 
 " (5) A reiteration of the statement concerning Gutenberg. 
 
 " If No. (3) could possibly have referred to typography at 
 Harlem or elsewhere in Holland, it would have stultified all 
 the rest of the chapter, (i), (2), (4), and (5) being in direct 
 contradiction to such an interpretation. Only a rash man 
 will see in it anything else but an allusion to the printing 
 of engraved blocks or Xylography, which was an invention of 
 great utility for multiplying school-books, cheaper and easier 
 than the old way of having copies multiplied by penmen ; but 
 not equal to the masterly and subtle invention of movable types. 
 
 " The Harlem story, beginning with Coornhert and Junius 
 in the fifteen -sixties (just a hundred years after Zell's removal 
 to Cologne), is seen to be pure fable when unassociated with 
 the above paragraph (3). The perverted ingenuity which has 
 frequently torn that paragraph away from its context, and used 
 it as a confirmation for the Coster legend, cannot be too 
 strongly deprecated." 
 
 Of the copies of the Gutenberg Bible which turned up 
 during the last forty years the following recapitulation may not 
 be uninteresting : — 
 
The Gutenberg Bible. 29 
 
 "1847. A copy sold in London; bought by Wiley and 
 Putnam against Sir Thomas Phillipps for Mr. 
 Lennox of New York, for ^500. Now in the 
 Lennox library. 
 
 "1858. The duplicate from the Munich library, sold at 
 Augsburg, bought for the Emperor of Russia 
 for 2,336 florins, about ^245. 
 
 "1858. The Bishop of Cashel's copy, sold in London; 
 bought by Mr. Quarltch for ;£'595. Passed into 
 Lord Crawford's library, and was bought by 
 him again at Lord Crawford's sale in 1887 for 
 ^2,650. 
 
 " 1872. An imperfect copy, with seventeen leaves in 
 fac-simile, appeared for sale in Berlin by Mr. Albert 
 Cohn at 4,000 thalers (about ^600), and after 
 passing through the hands of two purchasers 
 successively, was bought at about ^^ 1,800 for 
 a New York library, in which it now remains. 
 
 " 1873. Mr. Henry Perkins' copy, sold at Hanworth 
 Park, near London, in 1873; bought by Mr. 
 Quaritch for ^2,690. Now in Mr. Huth's 
 library. 
 The Perkins' copy on vellum (two or four leaves 
 in fac-simile), bought for Lord Ashburnham for 
 ^3,400. Now at Battle. 
 
 1878. A copy on vellum, with painted initials and 
 miniatures, was found in Spain by M. Bachelin. 
 He had it restored by Pilinski in fac-simile, and 
 sold it (after offering it to Mr. Quaritch for 
 ^2,000) to Mr. Albert Cohn, who resold it to the 
 late Mr. H. Klemm of Dresden. It is the most 
 
30 THE BOOK. 
 
 interesting copy now in evidence, being the only 
 one with contemporary miniatures, and is now 
 deposited for exhibition in the new Buchhandler- 
 Borse at Leipzig. 
 "1884. In February, the Kamensky copy of the Old 
 Testament portion bought by Mr. Quaritch at 
 Sotheby's for £^6o. Now in America. 
 
 "In May, an odd volume belonging to Lord 
 Gosford fetched .2^500. 
 
 " In December, Sir John Thorold's copy was 
 bought by Mr. Quaritch at Sotheby's for ^3,900- 
 It still remains in Great Britain. 
 " 1887. Mr. Quaritch bought Lord Crawford's copy, as men- 
 tioned above, for ;^2,650. 
 " 1889. February. Lord Hopetoun's copy bought by Mr. 
 Quaritch at Sotheby's for ^2,000." 
 
 But so many copies absolutely similar in aspect, and of so 
 regular a style, put in the market from day to day by Fust 
 and Schoeffer, gave rise to protests from the caligraphers. 
 Criticism always attends upon success, but having once obtained 
 the result, the two associates did not hesitate to proclaim them- 
 selves as the printers of the Bible. On the publication of the 
 Psalter, which followed the Bible at a year's interval, they 
 gave their names and added a date, 1457, the first instance 
 of a date being recorded in a book. This second work, which 
 preceded the Gutenberg Bible, was of so skilful a typography, 
 that it might have been passed as the work of an expert 
 caligrapher ; the faults remarked in the letters of indulgence 
 are no longer perceptible ; type had attained perfection ; in. 
 two years printing had reached its culminating point. 
 
The Psalter. 
 
 31 
 
 We here reproduce a facsimile of the second edition of 
 this celebrated work printed in 1459, two years later. 
 
 The Bibles, like the Durandus of 1459 and the Catholicon of 
 1460, had an interest for many purchasers, while the Psalter would 
 have concerned only a few wealthy churches. All the existing 
 
 emte f|ulteinti9 tomiuo^ 
 ttme remain Jmo jRotluf - 
 
 Xultate iu^ 
 ftimtinD:tr 
 
 ofitemiti 
 jfatectD tiere 
 
 Fig. 12.— Fac-simile of the Psalter, 1459. 
 
 copies of both Psalters indicate that they were adapted simply to 
 Mayence uses, and until one is found which conforms to the use of 
 some church outside that city, we shall be inclined to consider 
 that the book was privately printed in the modern sense, and 
 that the issue was extremely limited. It is not the sort of 
 book which would have been wilfully destroyed, or which could 
 
32 THE BUUK. 
 
 have perished from decay. Many an honest man miglit have 
 been tempted to steal it, but its. obvious splendour and value 
 would have made it safe even in the hands of a plunderer. 
 The cost of production must have been enormous, and could 
 only have been paid for by private munificence. The sale of 
 copies, as ordinary book-ware, could never have reached any 
 possible figure high enough to cover ' such an expense. This 
 explains the extraordinary scarcity and enormous price of the 
 Psalter, a copy of the second edition of which was sold 
 at Sir John Thorold's sale for the extraordinary sum of 
 ^4.950. 
 
 In spite of his disappointments, Gutenberg did not rest 
 idle. If he had seen his two enemies rob him of his claim 
 of priority in the invention, he wanted to show that, reduced 
 to his own exertions and to the restricted means furnished 
 him by charitable people, he also could print well. Two years 
 after the Bible another dated book, set up in Gothic letters, 
 appeared at Mayence ; this was the Catholicon of John 
 Balbus, of Genoa. It had not yet occurred to these first 
 printers to exercise their art otherwise than on religious works. 
 It is admitted by general opinion that the Catholicon issued 
 from the press of Gutenberg ; on the other hand, M. Bernard 
 believes that it ought to be attributed to a printer of Eltvil, 
 who published in 1467 a vocabulary called the Vocabularium 
 ex quo with the same types. The former theory may be sus- 
 tained by the words of the colophon of the book, which is a 
 sort of hymn to God and a recognition to the city of Mayence 
 without any mention of the name of the printer. Now in the 
 situation in which Gutenberg found himself, in the face of his 
 rivals, would he not have claimed the great discovery as his 
 own ? But if M. Bernard is mistaken, and if our supposition 
 
THE CATHOLICON. 33 
 
 has no foundation, what a beautiful act of humility, what a 
 noble idea of his character, Gutenberg gives us when he 
 writes : " With the aid of the Most High, Who unlooses the 
 tongues of infants and often reveals to babes that which is 
 sealed to learned men, this admirable book the Catholicon was 
 finished in the year of the incarnation of our Saviour 
 MCCCCLX. in the mother-country of Mayence, famous city of 
 Germany, which God, in His clemency, has deigned to render 
 
 ^IHfTimJ pjtfioio fttjuc nuhi mfivntium Imkjiig fi 
 wnt oiforre.Quj cgnnolcpc ^uulio reuclAt quoo 
 fSipiGntibuo ccUf.l^ic liber cgrcsiucatbolicon. 
 .Ofiicc mcarnticioiiio ^knnw5 00 orcc Ix /llmd m ur 
 ba maqinntind n<arionio mditc g^rmdtitcr.Qiidm 
 Oci dcmcncia tarn <alro mscnii luminc.dono eg (^ 
 tuiru.cvccn's ttrrdi; n^donibuo pn>Fcrtv.ilIuftrdn! 
 qj Di^n/ittis cfV Aon oildmi.fVili.dut pcnnc fiifFm 
 90.^ mii'd p^ttx>n44 Formdi; c^ concozoia^ot* 
 oonc ct moDuIo.imprcflu0 atcp confcrtus eft. 
 IfJiijf tibi fanch? patci* nato ox flammo facm.taus 
 ct bono: Ono trino rribuattij ct uno Gcdcfic iau 
 se libra boc atbolicv plauoe Qui Uuoatv pfam 
 (cmpcr non ijnquo.mdnAm P<ECD.C6R./ ^CI>IIB _ 
 
 Fig, 13. — Colophon of the Catholicon, supposed to have been printed by 
 Gutenberg in 1460. 
 
 the most illustrious and the first of cities ; and this book was 
 perfected without the usual help of pen or style, but by the 
 admirable linking of formes and types " ! 
 
 Its excessive rarity is too well known to require any 
 comment, and its literary merit is so considerable that the 
 London editor of Stephani Thesaurus Latinus has pronounced 
 it "the best Dictionary for the Latin Fathers and Schoolmen." 
 Sir John Thorold's copy sold for ^400 and WodhuU's for 
 
 3 
 
34 THE BOOK. 
 
 The history of these first printers, it is easy to understand, has 
 to be regarded with caution, for they were of so Httle consequence 
 in those days that authentic documents relating to them have 
 for ever disappeared. If we except that of the Pfennigthurm of 
 Strasburg, of which we have before spoken, and the deed of claim 
 for money from Fust to Gutenberg dated 1455, we are forced 
 to quote from authors living a long time afterwards, who 
 perpetrated, without knowing better, the errors of oral tradition. 
 It is nearly always the same with men who have occupied a 
 large place in the history of art ; posterity only finds out their 
 genius at the time when no one knows anything about them. 
 For Gutenberg the situation was still more terrible ; his rival, 
 Peter Schoeffer, survived him, who for his own reputation's 
 sake did not care to preserve his rival's memory ; and if, as is 
 believed, Gutenberg left pupils and heirs, Henry Bechtermunze, 
 Ulrich Zell, and Weigand Spiess, he has the additional mis- 
 fortune that Bechtermunze is now reputed as the printer 
 of the Catholicon, of which we have just given the history. 
 We need not here refer to Albert Pfister, one of his work- 
 men, dismissed at the end of his work, who having obtained 
 from his master some rejected types, was presumed later to 
 have invented printing. We find this artisan established at 
 Bamberg about 1460, where he set up Bibles in movable 
 types, the first known being the thirty-six line Bible, a 
 specimen of which is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale 
 and the British Museum. But Albert Pfister showed that he 
 was not at all an inventor by the mediocrity of his work, 
 and more so by the old types that he used. If he had known 
 the secret of engraving the punches, he would have cast new 
 letters and have given a better appearance to his work. 
 
 In these statements all is supposition and contradiction. 
 
The Mayence Bible. 35 
 
 That which is certain — and the dates are there to prove it — 
 is the enormous progress made and the productions of Peter 
 Schoeffer. In 1459 he published his third book, Durandus' 
 Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, in folio. As in the Psalter, 
 Schoeffer employed initial letters printed in red, which the rival 
 workshop could not do in the Catholicon, the rubrics of which 
 were to be painted by hand, as in manuscripts. A great 
 number of types were broken at the beginning, but he was 
 
 ]^ndbocopurcu1u5Timmac ooplctU'Ctad 
 cufcbta^ Xxi mdudrtc in aiutatp (p^guntt) 
 perlobannc fii{> duc*ct (Setru fdiifter Xx 
 g^rnflx^ni den cu biotcf cm(cic5cfV confui 
 tnatu. Anno incarnacoig t)fiicc« AV'tccdxt]* 
 Invigilia aflumpcois g^fofcvirgntis mane. 
 
 Fig. 14. — Colophon of the Bible printed in 1462 by Fust and Schoeffer, which is the 
 first dated Bible. There are two different editions with this signature. The 
 above is from the second edition. 
 
 confident of ultimate success. In 1460 he gave the Constitutiones 
 of Pope Clement V., with a gloss and commentaries by John 
 Andre ; here was the first example of a process much employed 
 in manuscripts, but of which the typographical composition was 
 very difficult. Again, in 1462 a new Latin Bible issued from 
 his workshop in two folio volumes, which is the first dated 
 edition. The first volume has two hundred and forty-two 
 folios in double columns, the second two hundred and thirty- 
 nine. It commences with an epistle of St. Jerome, and on 
 
36 THE BOOK. 
 
 the last leaf of the second volume is the colophon here 
 reproduced. 
 
 This book, one of the first worthy of the name, and which 
 is called by preference the Mayence Bible, appeared in one 
 of the most troubled epochs that the episcopal city had had 
 to go through. Subject to its archbishops, who were at the 
 head of all the lay lords and fighting men, the city found 
 itself in 1462 the prey of two prelates of equal title, who 
 refused to give way to one another : Diether of Isenburg 
 and Adolph of Nassau. Adolph surprised Mayence on the 
 27th October, 1462, pursuing his adversary, who scaled the 
 walls with a rope to escape quicker, and the city was sacked 
 and pillaged from its foundations. What became, in the 
 midst of this turmoil, of the obscure persons who were then 
 the printers of the Bible ? Doubtless their insignificance saved 
 them from disaster, but as it was long before peace was 
 re-established, and as, on the other hand, the entire edition of 
 their last volume could not be kept back, we incline to believe 
 that they were for a time going about the country as itinerant 
 booksellers. Paris was their point of travel already indicated 
 — Paris, towards which all their desires were directed. The 
 university where Peter Schoeffer was instructed in letters, 
 and which truly passed for the first in Europe, appeared to 
 them an opening of the first order. If we may believe 
 Walchius (Decas Fabularum Generis Humani : Strasburg, 1609, 
 4to, p. 181), John Fust himself went to that city, where he 
 put books on sale from sixty crowns a copy, then fifty, then 
 forty, according to the prevailing system in matters of discount. 
 Fust was above all things a business man ; he caused it to be 
 spread about that he had a marvellous copyist establishment 
 beyond the Rhine, and that he had come to dispose of several 
 
The Mayence Revolution. ■^•j 
 
 copies ; upon which the corporate scribes of the university, 
 becoming aware of the imposition, cried out furiously and 
 declared it a diabolical invention. We may now take this tale 
 of Walchius as a fable, for the registers of Parliament, on being 
 consulted, rest silent on the proceedings instituted against the 
 "magician" of Mayence. At the same time, we must not lose 
 sight of the fact that the booksellers had their masters, their 
 syndicate, if we may use the modern word, charged to prohibit 
 fraudulent publications. They were too much interested in the 
 suppression of printed books to discard the matter coolly. 
 Parliament had nothing to do with it. 
 
 The revolution of Mayence had by far greater results than 
 
 one would have expected from these insignificant changes. The 
 
 printing workshops, or at least the successors of Gutenberg, 
 
 began to be dispersed, and Fust and Schoeffer having established 
 
 a school of printers in the city, their trade was no longer a 
 
 secret. Deprived of their liberties by the new Archbishop, many 
 
 of them expatriated themselves. We shall have occasion later 
 
 to name some of these exiles, through whom the art of printing 
 
 was spread almost simultaneously throughout the world : at 
 
 Cologne and at Strasburg, in Italy and Spain, without reckoning 
 
 Holland, France, Switzerland, and the country around Mayence. 
 
 We have before named the episcopal city of Bamberg ; it had 
 
 the singular fortune to be the second city to possess a printing 
 
 office, but it disappeared as quickly as it was established, with its 
 
 founder Albert Pfister, without leaving the least trace ; we do not 
 
 find printing there again till 1480, more than twenty years later. 
 
 Gutenberg died early in 1468. He was interred in the 
 
 Church of the Dominicans at Mayence, by the pious care of a 
 
 friend, who attributed the invention of printing to him on his 
 
 tomb. 
 
38 THE BOOK. 
 
 We may begin to comprehend the influence of this man 
 upon a discovery of which all the world was then talking, but 
 amongst the troubles of the archiepiscopal city the respective 
 merit of the inventors did not receive their proper due. Peter 
 Schoeffer and John Fust were but little affected by the political 
 crisis. After two years' suspension, they, always working and 
 always surpassing themselves, reappeared with a Cicero, De 
 Officiis, 1465, quarto. This time they freed themselves from 
 religious publications, and, still more extraordinary, they also 
 employed Greek types. 
 
 Such, detached from the incredible contradictions of writers 
 on the history of printing, and sketched solely on its main lines, 
 is the origin of printing as it exists at this day. First came 
 the image engraved in relief, which we need not go so far as 
 China to find, like some of our predecessors. Upon this image 
 were often cut, by the same economical process, legends of 
 explanation that presented the idea of imitation of manuscript ; 
 and the xylographs appeared with or without pictures. Then 
 from the correction of errors in these books followed the 
 discovery of movable characters. This wooden type, possible 
 when it was used with a frotton for printing, would quickly 
 break under the press, the idea of which was gained from the 
 common press of the wine-makers. Then a kind of type metal 
 had to be found which could be cast in a mould struck by a 
 punch. This punch was not invented for that purpose ; it served 
 previously for the makers of coins and seals. The fabrication 
 of type from the matrix was a simple adoption. The lead 
 thrown into the matrix gave the desired type. Thus the first 
 books were made, of which we have briefly related the 
 composition. 
 
 As to the proportion of glory due to each one of the first 
 
The Mayence printing Office. 39 
 
 printers, it is necessary to guard equally against error on one 
 side or the other. We have sought to separate from the heap 
 of publications probable theories or those based on certain 
 documents. That the origin of the Donatus, and the Block-books, 
 was Dutch it would be puerile to deny, because, on one side, 
 the block engravings are surely of the school of Van Eyck, 
 and, on the other hand, Ulrich Zell, who inspired the Cologne 
 Chronicle of 1499, assigned positively to Holland the cradle 
 of the Donatus. At any rate, it was by a pupil of Gutenberg, a 
 question we have discussed. After this we will trouble ourselves 
 but little about Laurent Coster. The name makes no difference 
 in a matter of this kind. 
 
 As to Gutenberg, we have not been able to go as far as 
 M. E. Dutuit, who in his Manuel <£ Estampes (vol. i., p. 236, etc.) 
 doubts Gutenberg's right to the title of inventor. It is sufficient 
 to state that in a letter of William Fichet, prior of the Sorbonne, 
 of whom we shall have more to say presently, to Robert Gaguin, 
 which Dr. Sieber of Basle found at the beginning of a work 
 entitled Gasparini Pergamensis orihographm liber, published in 
 1470, nearly twenty years after the first work at Mayence, 
 Gutenberg is proclaimed the inventor of printing. Without any 
 other, this testimony of a savant who was the first to bring the 
 German printers to Paris appears to us well nigh irrefutable. 
 
 As to John Fust and his grandson by marriage, Peter 
 Schoeffer, they are so well defended by their works, that there 
 is no more to say here ; doubtless grave presumptions arise as 
 to the propriety of their conduct towards Gutenberg, but we are 
 not so presumptive as to censure them beyond measure. We 
 know nothing precise of the time or of the men either. 
 
 Let us now imagine humble workmen, the most simple of 
 gens de mestiers, to employ the French expression then in use, 
 
40 The Book. 
 
 shut up in a kind of dim workshop, like a country forge, formed 
 in little groups of two or three persons, one designing and the 
 other cutting the wood, with a table near at hand, on which 
 is held the engraved block after its reliefs have been rubbed 
 with sombre ink, who afterwards, by means of the frotton, apply 
 the damped paper to the raised parts of the block ; we 
 shall then have without much stretch of imagination all the 
 appurtenances of the xylographic impression. If we add to 
 this primitive workshop the matrix in which the types are cast, 
 the box in which they are distributed, the form on which they 
 are arranged to compose the pages, and a small hand-press, 
 with blacker ink and paper damped to permit the greasy ink to 
 take better, we have a picture of the printing office at the time 
 of Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, and of the first printers 
 with movable types. 
 
 Thus typography was born of painting, passing in its infancy 
 through wood-cutting, revolutionizing ideas and in some degree 
 the world. But the mighty power of the new art was not con- 
 fined to itself; it extended the circle of engraving, which till 
 then had suffered from the enormous difficulties of reproduction. 
 As if the time were ripe for all these things, nearly at the 
 moment when the first printers were distinguishing themselves 
 by serious works, a Florentine goldsmith accidentally discovered 
 the art of line engraving.* What would have become of this 
 new process if the presses of Gutenberg had not brought their 
 powerful assistance to the printing of engravings? It will be 
 found then that printing gave back to engraving a hundredfold 
 that which it received from it, and bore it along with its own 
 rapid advance. 
 
 * The opinion that Finiguerra was the unconscious inventor of line engravings 
 is now abandoned. 
 
The Development of Typography. 41 
 
 Then reappeared, following the new processes, the illustra- 
 tions, in a measure abandoned by the Mayence workmen during 
 the period of transformation. Our object is to speak at 
 length of the Book ornamented and illustrated according to 
 the means of relief engravings; to demonstrate the influence 
 of painting, of sculpture, of art, on the production of the Book ; 
 and thus to help the reader at the same time to understand 
 the almost sudden and irresistible development of typography, 
 and to mention its foremost representatives. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 1462 TO 1500. 
 
 The Book and the printers of the second generation — The German workmen dispersed 
 through Europe — Caxton and the introduction of printing into England — Nicholas 
 Jenson and his supposed mission to Mayence— The first printing in Paris ; 
 William Fichet and John Heinlein— The first French printers ; their installation 
 at the Sorbonne and their publications — The movement in France — The 
 illustration of the Book commenced in Italy — The Book in Italy; engraving 
 in relief and metal plates — The Book in Germany : Cologne, Nuremberg, 
 Basle — The Book in the Low Countries — French schools of ornament of the 
 Book ; Books of Hours ; booksellers at the end of the fifteenth century — 
 Literary taste in titles in France at the end of the fifteenth century — 
 Printers' and booksellers' marks — ^The appearance of the portrait in the Book. 
 
 ONSIDERING the influence of printing on 
 the book trade of the fifteenth century, as 
 referred to in the preceding pages, the dealers 
 in manuscripts were not disposed to give way 
 at the first blow. An entire class of work- 
 men would find themselves suddenly without employment if the 
 new art succeeded ; these were the copyists, miserable scribes, 
 who for meagre remuneration frequented the shops of the 
 merchants, where they transcribed manuscripts by the year. 
 Before printing, the publication of books was done in this way, 
 and the booksellers were rather middlemen between the copyist 
 and the buyer than direct dealers with stock-in-trade. It is 
 evident that they would not have provided themselves with 
 
Dispersion of German Printers. 43 
 
 these costly books long in advance without being sure of 
 having a ready sale for them. 
 
 However small the remuneration of the writers was, still 
 they clung to it ; and they were naturally the first to protest 
 against the new invention. At the same time, their opposition 
 and that of the booksellers was soon overcome, swamped, and 
 choked by the growing crowd of printers. Then, as always 
 happens in similar cases, in place of fighting against the current, 
 most of the former workers in manuscript followed it. The 
 caligraphers designed letters for engraving in wood, the book- 
 sellers sold the printed works, and the illuminators engraved in 
 relief their histoyres. For a long time the latter continued 
 to decorate books with the ornamental drawings with which 
 they had adorned the manuscripts, and so contributed to form 
 the fine school of illustrators who have carried their art to so 
 high a point since the end of the fifteenth century. 
 
 As previously related, the revolution of Mayence caused the 
 flight of a crowd of artisans who found their liberty suddenly 
 compromised by the conqueror. ■ The want of money at this 
 time always entailed a diminution of patronage, and the 
 journeyman printers stuck at all times to their privileges. It 
 thus happened then that their guild, in place of remaining shut 
 up at Mayence many years longer, was, as it were, turned out, 
 and scattered to the four points of the compass by the 
 dispersion of its members, and thus spread many years before 
 the time that would otherwise have been the case. In point of 
 fact, in the common order of things, a workman here and there 
 quits the principal workshop to try the world. He makes his 
 way timidly, the unconscious apostle of a marvellous art. If he 
 succeeds, he gathers some pupils around him ; if he fails, no trace 
 of him remains ; in any case invention propagates itself more 
 
44 THE BOOK. 
 
 gradually. With printing it was a thunderclap. No sooner had 
 we realized its appearance than the exodus commenced. The 
 greater part of the Mayence men bent their way to Italy : to 
 Subiaco, to Rome, like Arnold Pannartz and Conrad Sweynheim, 
 who printed that splendid edition of Ladantii Opera, 1468, in 
 which the Greek quotations were printed for the first time, as well 
 as the first edition of Virgilii Opera, 1469 (the excessive rarity of 
 which is so great that a copy sold lately from Lord Hopetoun's 
 library for ^^590), Ulrich Hahn, commonly called Ulricus 
 Gallus, who was employed by Cardinal Torquemada to print 
 his Meditationes ; to Venice, such as Johannes de Spira, the 
 printer of Plinii Sec. Hist. Nat. Libri (1469) ; Vendelin de 
 Spira, the printer of Petrarcas Sonetti (1470), a book of the 
 highest degree of rarity ; Christopher Valdarfer, Bernard Pictor 
 (of Augsburg), Erhardt Ratdolt, Peter Loslein ; to Ferrara, like 
 Andrew Belfort ; to Foligno, John Neumeister ; Henry Aiding 
 tried Sicily ; Andrew Vyel, of Worms, printed at Palermo. 
 Lambert Palmart was at Valencia, in Spain, in 1477 ; Nicholas 
 Spindeler at Barcelona ; Peter Hagenbach at Toledo. Nearer 
 home to Mayence — that is, at Cologne — we find Ulrich Zell, a 
 pupil of Gutenberg, who dated his first work 1466. It was 
 Arnold Ther Hoernen who numbered a book with Arabic 
 figures ; it was Koelhof, the printer of the Cologne Chronicle, 
 who first used signatures to indicate: to the binder the order 
 of the sheets ; it was at Eltvil that Henry Bechtermunze, as 
 we have already said, printed his Vocabularium in German, 
 with the types of the Catholicon ; at Basle, Berthold Ruppel, 
 of Hanau, was the first established in that city, which, after 
 Mayence, was destined to do the most for printing ; at Nurem- 
 berg we find Koberger, who took nearly the first rank among 
 his contemporaries, set as many as twenty-four presses to work, 
 
Dispersion of German Printers. 45 
 
 and was named by Badius the prince of printers. The very 
 year that followed the death of Gutenberg, a body of monks, the 
 Brothers of the Common Life of Marienthal, in the Rheingau, 
 themselves published a copy of the Indulgences granted by 
 Adolph of Nassau, Archbishop of Mayence. Before 1480, 
 presses were everywhere in Germany : at Prague, Augsburg, 
 Ulm, Lubeck, Essling, etc. 
 
 ^<gy:pKd'f:ntcrcHg J?flrrthii?ft7iirn 
 «tttteaa»o g rtoeto c loqugtigfnmo 
 ig_giBo^bno^tier flrao ee f cBu etcn 
 CaccUariolU uRtifltm t buds Cfi 
 tienhg ^ bm c rfbzum tcritrim(t <^fe. , 
 ^gl mmmbus cDntcttO'pzopitifg^ 
 cmfteitnnmmbug totozemc^enti'^ 
 fcripto dc cotcerta<tptomgpering 
 3trnotbu t^er boatie bitictentiflinig 
 tTnpreflfl'fimtn fab annig&)m im' 
 ff2-cctC 'lp)euij' bic tjltimo mcnltg 
 tnaij' Bequocrillo matte ftKo^E. 
 lauget gtcc tapgr fcculccum rcmia 
 
 Fig. 15. — Imprint of Arnold Tlier Hoernen, printer, of Mayence. 
 
 It is, however, to be remarked that the Mayence men 
 did not branch out in Holland. Is it that they found there 
 the descendants of Laurent Coster firmly established in their 
 workshops ? Must we admit then the co-existence, the simul- 
 taneous advance, of the invention in Germany and in the Low 
 Countries ? It is a problem for us as for many others. Let us 
 state, however, that Flemish printers were established at Utrecht 
 in 1473, at Delft, Bruges, Gouda, Zwoll, Antwerp, and Brussels. 
 
46 THE BOOK. 
 
 At Louvain there was a Conrad of Westphalia, who published 
 an undated work, the type of which denotes a very early age, 
 but this seems an isolated instance of a German printer being 
 
 a6mgeeDarco6irb 
 mattjTotjedHettout 
 
 Fig. 1 6. — Mark of Colard Mansion. 
 
 established in the Netherlands, and perhaps he was only a simple 
 dealer. La Serna-Santander does not think it unlikely that 
 Conrad was the father of John of Westphalia, whose principal 
 works, Cicero de claris oratoribus, 1475, Virgilii Opera, 1476, 
 
 Jfca: «« i^ fcmet? xi tBa« fb»f> ^wift 
 Co at^t) m (on) S»^otK» (cntsnoi; 
 
 Tnt2 fo«^ ]^ ^^n) p^tfi; anb^ au^ee 
 Tnbp S(kt2 ^ ou« 0^ ^ fQ of de i» ^ fe^ 
 
 'triSx^ aflfe tBe ib &0P6 ^6 ettlb ^ pc^c 
 Out of^6 ^t»de i^ tSos^te fb» IBe a8Pe 
 pk ficefi (|uo^ ^ nolB ^it moo^ ^ou &(n6Pe 
 ^i^9 tS^ )>e Gf^ ant? tB« f^ue g^x^Cg ^ve 
 
 Fig. 17. — Specimen of Caxton's type, from the Canterbury Tales, 1476. 
 
 Juvenalis et persii satyrce and Johannis de Milts repertorium in 
 jure canonico (sic), both of 1475, were all printed at Louvain. 
 
 Colard Mansion, who came from France and learned the art 
 of printing either in Mayence or Cologne, was printing at Bruges 
 
William Caxton. 
 
 47 
 
 about 1476. His first work was Le Jardin de Devotion, and 
 his type is an imitation of the peculiar French type called 
 Grosse batarde. He was also employed by William Caxton, 
 who had been for some years trading as a merchant in the 
 Low Countries, to print the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, 
 by Raoul Le Fevre, which Caxton had translated into English 
 
 at the command of Queen Margaret. This was issued in 1474, 
 and was the first book printed in the English language. In 
 1475 or 1476 Caxton returned to England with a fount of types, 
 which he had employed Mansion to cut and cast for him, and 
 established himself as a printer in the precincts of Westminster 
 Abbey. In 1477 he produced the first book printed in England, 
 
48 
 
 The Book. 
 
 The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers (a copy sold lately 
 from the Duke of Buccleuch's library for £6']o), followed by a 
 large number of important works, amongst which we may 
 mention : Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (no date) ; Moral Proverbs, 
 1478; Cordyale, 1479; Chronicles, ist ed., 1480 (a copy sold for 
 ;^470 at the Duke of Buccleuch's sale) ; Myrrour of the World, 
 1480 ; Tiilly, Of Old Age (a copy from Lord Crawford's library 
 sold lately for ^320) ; Godefrey of Boulogne, 1481 ; Higden's 
 
 _— jjniiiiitrmw 
 
 Fig. 19.— The Knight, a woodcut from Caxton's Game and Playe of the Chesse. 
 
 Polycronycon, 1482 ; Pilgrimage,— Festival,— Confessio,~Golden 
 Legend, 1483; Knight of the Tottr,—^ sop, —Order of Chivalry, 
 1484; King Arthtir,— Charles,— Paris and Vienne, 1485; Good 
 Manners, 1487 ; Directorium, 1489 ; Fayts, 1490. For further 
 particulars about England's greatest printer, we must refer the 
 reader to the excellent work by Mr. W. Blades, The Life and 
 Typography of W. Caxton, 1863. 
 
 William Caxton produced over sixty works, the colophons 
 
William Caxton. 49 
 
 of many of them revealing much of the personal life and 
 character of the first English printer. Some of them were 
 ornamented with woodcuts ; we reproduce two from the 
 Game and Playe of the Chesse, printed in folio about 1474. 
 The first represents a king and another person playing at 
 chess ; the smaller cut is a representation of the knight, who 
 is thus described in Caxton' s own words : " The knyght ought 
 to be maad al armed upon an hors in suche wise that he have 
 
 Fig. 20. — Music, a woodcut from Caxton's Mirrour of the World, 
 
 an helme on his heed and a spere in his right hond, and 
 coverid with his shelde, a swerde and a mace on his left syde, 
 clad with an halberke and plates tofore his breste, legge harnoys 
 on his legges, spores on his heelis, on hys handes hys gaunte- 
 lettes, hys hors wel broken and taught, and apte to bataylle, 
 and coveryd with hys armes." The other Caxton block which 
 we reproduce is a representation of music from the Myrrour of 
 the World, a thin folio volume of one hundred leaves printed 
 
 4 
 
so 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 in 1480, with thirty-eight woodcuts. These specimens will 
 serve to show the rudimentary character of English wood 
 engraving in the fifteenth century. No authentic portrait of 
 Caxton is known, and the one that is generally accepted is 
 really a portrait of an Italian poet, Burchiello, taken from an 
 
 Fig. 21.— William Caxton, from Rev. J. Lewis's Life. 
 
 octavo edition of his work on Tuscan poetry, printed 1554; 
 this was copied by Faithorne for Sir Hans Sloane as the 
 portrait of Caxton, and was reproduced by Ames in his 
 Typographical Antiquities, 1749. Lewis prefixed the portrait 
 here given to his Life of Mayster Willyam Caxton, 1737, which 
 
WVA^YN DE WORDE. 5 1 
 
 is a copy of Faithorne's drawing with some alterations. John 
 Lettou and William Machlinia, both contemporaries of Caxton, 
 issued various statutes and other legal works. 
 
 Wynkyn de Worde, a native of Lorraine, and one of 
 
 Fig. 22. — Fyshing with an Angle. 
 
 Caxton's earliest co-operators, was the first who used Roman 
 type in England. Four hundred books were printed by 
 him, among them Voragine's Legenda aiirea, with woodcuts, 
 1498 ; Huon de Bordeaux (from which Shakespeare derived his 
 
52 
 
 The Book. 
 
 Midstimmer Night's Dream), and, perhaps his best known, 
 Treatyses perteynynge to Hawkynge and Htmtynge, Fysyhing with 
 an Angle, by Dame Juliana Barnes, or Berners, 1496, from 
 which we reproduce here the man with the angle. A copy 
 of this book sold lately for £\20. 
 
 Pvichard Pynson, who died in 1529 or 1531, was 
 Henry VIII. 's first printer. There are more than two hundred 
 of his works still extant, mostly in Old English and pro- 
 fusely illustrated, such as the Descrypcyon of Englonde, fol., 
 and he also was among the first who used Roman type in 
 
 P'ig. 23.— Mark of Wj'nkyn de Worde. 
 
 England. From Westminster the art spread in England to 
 Oxford, where Theodoricus Rood, from Cologne, printed an 
 Exposicio Sancti Jeronimi in 1478; and to St. Albans in 1480 
 by a printer who has never been identified, and who produced 
 the famous Chronicle of England, fol., 1483, and Boke of St. 
 Albans, fol., i486. 
 
 Wynkyn de Worde used no less than nine diff'erent marks, 
 all of them bearing Caxton's initials,— evidencing the regard 
 of the pupil for his master ; the mark which we reproduce 
 is one of rare occurrence. Richard Pynson began in 1493, 
 and continued well into the sixteenth century, and was 
 
Richard Pynson. 53 
 
 one of the first of the " privileged " printers, authorized to 
 issue the legal and parliamentary publications. One of the 
 marks used by him is here reproduced. Julian Notary began to 
 print in 1498, and established an office in London in conjunction 
 with Jean Barbier 1499. There are twenty-three books traced 
 to Notary's office. The only style of illustration used by any of 
 these early printers was the woodcut, and of this there was very 
 little beyond the title-page and printer's mark. The artistic 
 
 Fig. 24.— Mark of Richard Pynsoii. 
 
 form of the Book originated on the Continent, but England 
 was not slow to adopt it and fashion it to her own ends. 
 
 The invasion, we see, had been most rapid. In less than 
 fifteen years every important city had followed the movement, 
 and was ready to establish printing offices. If we may credit 
 a certain doubtful document, Charles VII. had on the 3rd 
 of October, 1458, sent to Mayence one of the best medal 
 engravers of the Mint of Tours to study the process of which 
 marvels were spoken. "The 3rd of October, 1458. the King 
 
54 The Book. 
 
 having learned that Messire Guthenberg, Hving at Mayence, in 
 the country of Germany, a skilful man in cutting and making 
 letters with a punch, had brought to light the invention of 
 printing by punches and types, desirous of inquiring into such 
 a treasure, the King has commanded the directors of his mints 
 to nominate persons well instructed in the said cutting and 
 to send them secretly to the said place to inform themselves 
 of the said mode and invention, to understand and learn 
 the art of the same, in order to satisfy the said Lord King. 
 Thereupon was pointed out to the said King and was under- 
 taken by Nicholas Jenson, who took the said journey to bring 
 intelligence of the said art and of the execution of it in the 
 said kingdom, which first has made known the said art of 
 impression to the said kingdom of France" {Bibliotheque de 
 r Arsenal, Hf 467, pp. 410, 411). 
 
 Nicholas Jenson on his return met with a cool reception 
 from Louis XL, who did not care to propagate the works 
 of his father. It may be, supposed that this coolness was 
 the cause of his expatriating himself and retiring to a place 
 where he could find freer scope for the exercise of his industry. 
 Ten years after the above mission we find him established at 
 Venice, his art of engraver of letters joined to that of printer. 
 His PrcBparatio Evangelica by Eusebius, translated by Trape- 
 zuntius, and his Justinian, were composed in 1470, with such mar- 
 vellous and clear Roman types that from that day the best typo- 
 graphers have imitated his founts. In spite of its success, he 
 did not confine himself to these letters, but he made also Gothic 
 ones, in which by preference he printed theological books. 
 
 Notwithstanding the attempts of Jenson in the name of the 
 King of France — that is, if these attempts ever took place in the 
 manner indicated above — the invention was not knowrt to have 
 
Nicholas Jenson. 55 
 
 commended itself to the powerful University of Paris. It was 
 very difficult to introduce innovations into that learned body, 
 unless one had some powerful influence in the university. 
 We have seen John Fust, compelled suddenly to retake the 
 road to Germany, in a fair way to find himself taxed with 
 sorcery, — at that time no slight matter. For unauthorised 
 
 barbarum ac feruin legibys adcuhiofeuitaeufum 
 tradudtu in. forma prouihd^ redegiti 
 
 .FINIS. 
 
 Hiftoriasueteres peregnnaqj geO-a reuofuo 
 luftinus.lege me:fum. trogus ipfe breuis* 
 
 Me gallus ueneta Ien,fon Nicolaus m urbe 
 Formauit:Mauro principe Chriftophpro, 
 
 ivstini historiciclarissimiin 
 trogi pompeii historias liber 
 xluii;feliciter explicit. 
 
 ;m.cc€€.lxx. 
 
 Fig. 25. — Imprint of Nicholas Jenson to a Justinian, printed in 1470 at Venice. This 
 type has prevailed up to now. 
 
 persons the sale of unlicensed books had had most unhappy 
 consequences, and Parliament was not able to interfere. 
 
 Thus ten years had passed since the journey of Jenson, 
 and ten or twelve since the first manifestations of typography 
 at Mayence, and yet the diabolical discovery had not found 
 admittance to the Sorbonne. What was still more extraordinary, 
 a Cologne printer issued about 1472 a small folio in Gothic 
 
56 The Book. 
 
 type, thirty-one long lines to a page, which was a work written in 
 French. The Histoires de Troyes of Raoul Le Fevre, chaplain 
 to the dukes of Burgundy, first found a publisher in Germany, 
 and soon after another in England, before a single press was 
 definitely installed at Paris. 
 
 As we have said of Peter Schoeffer, German students came 
 
 in numbers to the university, where they pursued their studies, 
 
 and frequently remained later as professors. It has been found 
 
 that in 1458 a former student of the University of Leipzig named 
 
 John Heinlein, a native of Stein, in the diocese of Spire, 
 
 entered as director of the college of Burgundy, from whence 
 
 he passed to the Sorbonne in 1462, the year of the troubles 
 
 in Mayence. After the mania for latinising names so common 
 
 at that time, he called himself Lapidanus, from the name of 
 
 his native place, which means Stone in German. Heinlein met 
 
 in Paris a Savoyard, William Fichet, born in 1433 at Petit 
 
 Bornand, who became an Associate of the Sorbonne about 1461, 
 
 and finally Rector, as he himself was in 1468. These two men, 
 
 bound together with great friendship, and possessed of that instinct 
 
 inherent to men of elevated studies, guessed at once what 
 
 enormous help printing would bring to bear on their work. 
 
 Besides, it grieved them to see through the whole of France, 
 
 especially in Touraine, German canvassers carrying about their 
 
 goods in bales under cover of other commerce, a practice from 
 
 which the most grave inconveniences might result. It occurred 
 
 to them that to prevent fraud they would themselves create a 
 
 printing establishment; but if they deliberated on it, it must 
 
 have been done secretly, for the registers of the Sorbonne 
 
 are silent on their enterprise. 
 
 If Fichet conceived the idea, it may be believed that 
 Heinlein, owing to his German connections, put it into 
 
Gering, Freyburger, and KRANTZ. 57 
 
 execution. M. Philippe thinks that he was formerly at Basle. 
 In all probability it was from that city he tried to obtain his 
 workmen. It was in 1466, after six years had elapsed since 
 the printers were dispersed and fled from Mayence. At all 
 events, it was from Basle that Ulrich Gering, Michael Frey- 
 burger, and Martin Krantz, printers recommended to the two 
 Sorbonnists, started, and in due course arrived in Paris. Of 
 these three men, ' who were the first to establish a printing 
 office on the French side of the Rhine, Ulrich Gering was a 
 student as well as a printer, and so was Freyburger, a native 
 of Colmar. As for Krantz, he probably was a letter-founder, 
 and the only real workman of the three companions. 
 
 It is often regretted that there are no authentic portraits 
 of these men, nor of Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, to 
 transmit their features to us. As regards Gutenberg, every 
 one will recall the fur cap and the tight breeches of 
 Thorwaldsen's statue at Mayence, but there is really no 
 genuine portrait of Gutenberg, except the traditional features 
 of the inventor reproduced in the previous chapter. As 
 to Gering, M. Philippe, in his Histoire de I'Origine de 
 r Imprimerie a Paris, publishes a grotesque figure muffled in 
 the ruff of the sixteenth century, after a picture preserved at 
 Lucerne, but it is not remarkable as a work of art. 
 
 The printing office of the three Germans was set up within 
 the walls of the Sorbonne — in cedibtLS Sorbonnicis — in 1469. 
 There they set to work at once, — no difficult matter, seeing 
 that at that time a printing establishment consisted simply of a 
 room, none too light, a table, and press, and some forms. Krantz 
 doubtless cast the types chosen by the Sorbonnists; for there 
 were then two sorts of letters in use, the German Gothic and 
 the Roman. They kept to the Roman, as being more round 
 
53 THE BOOK. 
 
 and clear ; and when once the matrices were obtained and their 
 type was cast, they entered on their task with ardour. 
 
 The tendencies of Fichet and Heinlein had no leaning 
 
 ISafparlni pcrgamenfis.ctariDTimi orato'' 
 rif/Cpiftola^ liber focliciter incipit; 
 
 J Audeo plurimum ac Ixtor in 
 ca tc fcntentia effe^'ut nihil a 
 I me fieri fine caufa putcf 'JS^go 
 (etii ctfi multo^^ uercbac fufpi;' 
 tionef /Cj a me fempronifi annquu fami''/ 
 liaiE meu rciici^ba^rame cu ad inccedi bi.'' 
 le animi tui fapietia iudic'iu meu refj^re-v 
 ba' nihil erat.qre id a tc improbari pu' 
 tarcm«Narn aim &. meof noffef more'f.'a: 
 lUiiis natura n ignorares-'n dubitaba ctd 
 de hoc fafto meo iudicatuni's eOfcs* l^ou 
 igit haf ad Ge faibo Irafyquo nouam..tibi. 
 de vcbuf a me geftif opinionem facia-^fed 
 lit fi quando aliter tomief noftiroC dc mc 
 fctirc intelligcs* tii q puobe caufam meH 
 nofti/defcnfione mca fufcipiaf ♦Masc fi itf 
 cevLS-' nihil eft quo tilceri.us cfficium tu' 
 urn requiram* Vale ; 
 
 Fig. 25. — Letters of Gasparin of Bergamo. First page of the first 
 book printed at Paris, in 1470. 
 
 towards transcendental theology, but rather towards the literature 
 of the ancients and contemporary rhetorical works. Besides, it 
 may be said, considering that men are far from perfect, Fichet 
 counted on making the authorised presses serve his own purpose 
 
Gering, Freyburger, and Krantz. 59 
 
 We find him publishing a treatise on Rhetoric in quarto in 
 147 1, and always engaged in supervising the work confided 
 to his artists. The partners commenced with a large volume of 
 Letters of Gasparin of Bergamo, which was set up in quarto with 
 the Roman type, the character of which had then been accepted. 
 At the end of the work, the production of which took much 
 time— possibly a year— the three printers placed a quatrain in 
 
 dFoclix ipta^' Cafpatlni fini<'« 
 
 (tVt fol lumen-'fic doftdnam fundif in orbem 
 
 Mtif arum nutciXyregia pacifiuf " 
 ([Nincptope diuinarri/tu qua gcrmanU nouit 
 
 ikit em faibcndi/fufcipe promerita* 
 Iffvlmos eccc librof.'quos b^ec ingluftria finxit 
 
 Ira ncorum in tcrcif.acdibuf atc| tuif .. 
 ^P^Jicbael VcialtLCuf^Martinufci magLf^cr 
 
 Mof impreffcrunt-ac facient aliof; 
 
 Fig. 27. — Colophon in distichs in the Letters of Gasparin of Bergamo, first 
 book printed at Paris at the office of the Sorbonne. 
 
 Latin distichs, which is at once a statement of identity and a 
 promise for the future :— 
 
 " Primos ecce libros quos hsec industria finxit 
 Francorum in terris sedibus atque tuis ; 
 Michael, Udalricus, Martinusque magister 
 Hos impresserunt, ac facient alios." 
 
 If we try to apportion to each of the three printers his 
 share in the production of the book, it may be supposed that 
 the intellectual part of the composition and the correction fell 
 to Michael Freyburger and to Ulrich Gering, while the heavier 
 work of founding, placing in forms, and press work fell to 
 
6o 
 
 The Book. 
 
 Krantz. This essay, satisfactory as it appeared, was far from 
 perfect. The first Parisian printers had multiplied abbrevia- 
 tions and irregular contractions, and enormous difficulties and 
 inevitable faults ensued. Further, either they had more than 
 one punch, or the matrix got deformed, for the characters 
 
 t3e quincg vhet02tds elemetif attem extdn^ 
 [ecus compzehEndendbus omnetn^ ' 
 
 !^ 
 
 I 
 
 Rdfidofe diccndi racio([qua» ladf" 
 (imf patet^uinqi rebus ad fum' 
 i mum confidS- facultatc^finc/offido;. 
 lateriayCt inftcumenco* Nam to' 
 idem rebus 'qui reliquis ardbus dcleftanS " 
 limites fibi definiunt; 
 ^^B^VLTAS(qua? eft ccrtayfadltS/cJ pzS 
 . ^ pta dtccndi potcn:a*s)tribus rebus coftat'arte^ 
 jUvimttationCyet cxcrdtadonc; 
 |j ^ES eft p2fceptio'quae dat ccrfcam uUm/rA- 
 ^ Honcmcp dicendi; 
 
 MITATIO cft'qua tmpclUmur cu diU^" 
 genti cadoneyqueyquidyCt quatam tmitcmur- 
 ut aliquo^ ft miles in dtcedo ualcamus eKc- 
 ^ERCITATIO eft affiduus ufus^cofue- 
 tufe cp dicendi; 
 ""^NjIS eft qux fit di£l6nc perfuafto; 
 
 TICIVM eft.'appfite dicere ad pcrfua 
 fionem. Quod opus partibus fuis quincf con' 
 funii^UIRjiiwendone^difpofxdone^elaudonc/ 
 
 Fig. i%.—Rhetoriqne of Fichet, printed at Paris in 1471. The 
 marginals are drawn by hand. 
 
 frequenriy differ. In spite ot these objections, we must com- 
 mend them for having used, before all others, the cb and os, 
 which were uniformly written e in the manuscripts, thus giving 
 rise to errors without number. Their punctuation was the 
 comma, semicolon, and the full stop. 
 
FiCHET AND Heinle IN. 61 
 
 Fichet and Heinlein had become the modest librarians of 
 the Sorbonne, and this new employment gave them greater 
 facilities for superintendence. The printing office did not 
 remain inactive. It issued successively the Orlhography of 
 Gasparin of Bergamo, the Letters of Phalaris, two books of 
 ./Eneas Sylvius, the Conspiracy of Catiline of Sallust, the 
 Epitome of Titus Liviiis of Florus, and finally the Rhetorics of 
 William Fichet, which, if we may credit a letter addressed to 
 Bessarion, was finished in 1471. Afterwards they produced the 
 Letters of Bessarion, the Elegantia Latincs LingiKS of Valla 
 (the first folio volume issued from the Sorbonne presses), and 
 many others; to wit, thirteen volumes in 1470-71 and seventeen 
 in 1472. 
 
 At the end of 1742 the workshop was somewhat broken 
 up, Fichet having left for Rome and Heinlein having gone to 
 preach in Germany. The three printers had sufficiently shown 
 by their works that they were in earnest ; in addition, they 
 had from the first presented gratuitously copies of their works 
 to the nobles, who, being accustomed to pay highly for 
 manuscripts, did not fail to note the difference. The 
 Associates then resolved to quit the Sorbonne and to 
 found an establishment for themselves, their patrons being 
 no longer there to sustain them in case of failure ; and 
 if we judge by the sacrifice they made in giving up their 
 presses and types they were not without anxiety on their 
 new venture. 
 
 Their oldest dated books, the Mamtale Confessorum 1473 
 (March) and the Manipulus Curatorum of Montrocher 1437 
 (May), were also the first that they printed in their new quarters, 
 at the sign of the " Golden Sun " in the Rue St. Jacques. They 
 remained there as partners up to the year 1477, when Gering 
 
62 The Book. 
 
 alone signed at the " Golden Sun."^ Afterwards he took in 
 associates, George Mainyal in 1480 and Berthold Rembold in 
 1494, who lived with him in the Rue de la Sorbonne, where he 
 established himself on leaving the Rue St. Jacques. Ulrich Gering 
 died on the 23rd of August, 15 10, after a half-century of work. 
 
 The movement inaugurated by the Sorbonne was promptly 
 followed. German workmen opened their printing offices 
 nearly everywhere in France ; then the French themselves 
 took the same course. At Lyons in 1472 a Frenchman was 
 established, the same at Angers, Caen, Metz, Troyes, Besancon, 
 and Sallns. But in the central provinces we find Henry Mayer 
 at Toulouse, John Neumeister at Albi ; in the east, Metlinger 
 at Dijon ; and Michael Wensler, of Basle, at Macon, without 
 counting others, between 1470 and 1480. 
 
 We have now arrived at an epoch of greater efforts. The 
 Lyons printers used ornamental letters, from which engravings 
 in the Book were developed. Since the block books, illustrations 
 had been neglected, as the means were wanting to distribute 
 the plates here and there in the form ; Schoeffer still employed 
 initial letters in metal very like vignettes, like many others. 
 
 If we search for the precise epoch in which illustration 
 appeared in the history of the Book, we shall perhaps have 
 to go back to the time of Albert Pfister, printer of Bamberg, 
 who issued in 1461 an edition of the Fables of Ulrich Boner 
 with a hundred and one figures on wood, and the first book 
 printed in the German language. This may be said to be the 
 unconscious combination of xylography with typography, a kind 
 of transformation of old elements to new things without any 
 importance, for art counted for nothing in this adaptation. 
 
 Up to this time Germany had not, in its school of painters 
 or illuminators, men capable of giving a personal impulse to 
 
BOOK Illustration in Italy. 
 
 63 
 
 ornamentation. In the Qerman editions of the block books 
 the influence of Van Eyck was remarkable, and the German 
 printers who went to seek their fortunes in Italy fell into 
 the midst of a circle admirably prepared to impart their ideas 
 to them. It appears that the first book printed in Italy with 
 woodcuts in the text and with an ascertained date is the work 
 of a German established at Rome, namely Ulrich Hahn, in 1467. 
 If we may believe an account in the Anmiaire du Bibliophile,^ 
 which, being without citation of authority, we quote for what it 
 is worth — but is no doubt a fable, as Joh. Winterberger 1482 is 
 
 Fig. 29. — Mark of Guerbin, printer at Geneva, 1482. 
 
 acknowledged as the first Vienna Printer, — Ulrich Hahn established 
 a press at Vienna about 1462, but was driven thence by the 
 publication of a pamphlet against the burgomaster of the city. 
 Under these unfortunate circumstances, he was attracted to 
 Rome by the famous Torquemada, who confided to him the 
 impression of his work the Meditaiiones, which he wanted to 
 adorn with illustrations. Hahn was himself an engraver, as were 
 also most of his confreres at that time — that is, he cut in relief 
 the design already drawn on wood so that it could be inter- 
 calated in the text like a large letter. Passavant relates that 
 the designs of the Meditaiiones were taken from compositions 
 
64 
 
 The Book. 
 
 of Fra Angelico, who died in 1455. It is now impossible 
 to verify this fact, so much did the German artist preserve 
 the crude manner of his country in working these plates. 
 Be that as it may, the book, the printing of which was 
 finished on St. Sylvester's Day, 1467, is the first known with 
 engravings printed in Italy, and only three copies of it exist : 
 
 VN 
 
 Fig. 30.— V\?ood engraving in Matteo Pasti, for Valturius' Dj Re Militari 
 (Verona : 1472). 
 
 one at Vienna, one at Nuremberg, and one in Lord Spencer's 
 library ; it is printed in Gothic type in folio. 
 
 Illustration found a true artist at Verona, in Matteo Pasti, 
 who furnished designs for a volume on military art by Valturius, 
 printed in Roman characters in folio, at the expense of John of 
 Verona, and dedicated to Sigismond Pandolfi. Fasti's eighty- 
 two wood engravings are simple outlines, cleverly executed, 
 of which we here reproduce one of the principal -an archer 
 
Early Book Illustration. 65 
 
 shooting at a butt. Published in 1472, the volume of 
 Valturius thus followed very soon after the Meditationes, 
 but the engravings enable us already to see how the Italian 
 process, consisting mostly of lines without shadows, differed 
 from the Dutch and German. One thing to be remarked 
 here is also the purity of the design, as compared with a 
 certain irregularity of the engraving ; we feel in these figures 
 Italian art at its height, despite the somewhat coarse translation 
 of the wood-engraver. 
 
 At Venice the German discoveries had borne fruit. At the 
 end of the fifteenth century, fifty years after the invention of 
 typography, the printing offices and booksellers' shops were 
 counted by hundreds. It was in this city that for the first time 
 a title with frontispiece giving the contents, the place, the date, 
 and the name of the printer, was given to the Book. We give 
 here this ornamental title, placed before a Calendario of John 
 de Monteregio, printed by Pictor, Loslein, and Ratdolt in 1476, 
 folio. 
 
 The German Erhardt Ratdolt was probably the promoter 
 of these innovations. He soon afterwards published the first 
 geometrical book with figures, the Elements of Euclid, 1482, 
 folio ; in the same year he produced the Poeticon Astronomicum 
 of Hyginus, previously printed at Ferrara, in which he displayed 
 illustrations on wood of excellent design, but heavily and 
 comparatively unskilfully engraved. Yet the art of the Book 
 could not remain inferior in this city, where so many artists 
 were piling up marvels. Nicholas Jenson, the emigrant from 
 France, of whom we have spoken above, had, in imitation of 
 Italian manuscripts, introduced that Roman letter, the primitive 
 type of which has come down to our time pretty well untouched. 
 At the death of Jenson in 1481, his materials passed into the 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 hands of Andrew d'Asola, called Andrea Torresani, who did 
 not neglect the good traditions of his master, and who produced 
 before anyone else a book bearing signatures, catchwords, and 
 pagination {Letters of St. Jerome, 1488). Torresani was the 
 father-in-law of Aldus Manutius, who was to be for ever illus- 
 trious in the art of printing at Venice, and to conduct his art 
 to the highest pitch of perfection. 
 
 /^^^^ Veftacpradiognipaireeunlibrodoio 
 1 1 Nonfupiuprecioligcinmlmai' 
 
 ^^ / Dilkalcndanoicbe tratucol'eafai 
 ^^i^ ^ C on gran facilita : ma gran huorc 
 Qui numefoaureo : e tutn 1 fegrt fuoto 
 
 Defcnpu dil gran polo da ogni'hr 
 
 QLiandoti fole ; eluna ediplifai ' 
 
 C^ancecencferc^ca ftotbcxoio 
 In un inftanti^tu faiqual bora fia 
 
 Qualfaialannolgiomo ; tempo remexe: 
 
 Clictuca ponci (on daftrologis - 
 loaniie de monceregio queftp fexc ■■ 
 
 Coglicrcal fi-ucco acid non grauc fij 
 
 In bieuc tempo: e con pocbi pcncxe - 
 Cbl cemcCotaUpexe 
 Scainpanirtu-l nomidiimprcfTon 
 Sonqui'dabairodiiofTicolon 
 
 Vcnedjs. 14- ^«.' , 
 
 Bcrrrafdiispiclorde Augulra I^^^^H) ^^T 
 Pctrus loflcm' ^c Langcncen ^^^^^\ 
 Eabaitlo? iJtrdoL dc Augnlh 'e:>a ^^ 
 
 Fig. ^i. — Title-page of the Calendario, first ornamental title known. 
 Printed in 1476 at Venice. 
 
 But if decoration by "means of relief blocks found a favour- 
 able reception in Italy, and, above all, a group of artists capable 
 of carrying it to success, there were at the same time other 
 experiments which originated in a different direction. The 
 discovery of Maso Finiguerra gave to the art a new process 
 of reproduction, and printing presses were now able to make 
 the working of engraved plates possible and practicable. In 
 order to make that which follows comprehensible, we must enter 
 
Illustration on Metal Plates. 6j 
 
 into a few technical details, the whole subject having 
 been so admirably and fully treated by MM. Delaborde and 
 Duplessis. 
 
 In the engraved wood block, as in the printing type, it is a 
 projection in the wood or metal which, being inked and passed 
 under a press, leaves on paper its lines in black. Naturally then 
 the intercalation of an engraving of this kind in typographical 
 composition is made without difficulty, as the impression of both 
 is taken at one pull. On the other hand, a line engraving is 
 obtained from incised lines on a plate of copper ; that is, an 
 instrument called a burin traces the lines, which are filled with 
 greasy ink. These incised lines are only inked. The surface 
 of the plate is then cleaned off to avoid smudging. The sheet 
 of paper destined for the impression has then to be made very 
 pliable and pulpy, so that at the striking of the press it runs, 
 so to speak, to find the ink in the lines and to reproduce 
 them. It is therefore impossible to make simultaneous im- 
 pressions from both raised and incised plates. 
 
 This kind of reproduction, however, which, contrary to 
 that from wood, allowed of half-tints or shading, attracted in 
 good time the workers in the production of the Book. It 
 appeared to them possible to reconcile the two printings by the 
 successive passage of the same sheet of paper through the press, 
 to receive at first the impression from the type, and afterwards 
 from the ink in the incisions of the copper plate. The first 
 manifestation of this new method of illustration was made at 
 Florence, the home of line engraving, by Nicholas di Lorenzo 
 in 1477, for the work of Antonio Bettini, of Siena, called El 
 Monte Santo di Dio. Here the artists were not the first 
 in the field. If we accept the common opinion, Baccio Baldini 
 borrowed from Sandro Botticelli the subjects of his plates. 
 
68 
 
 The book. 
 
 In any case, Italian engraving seeks its source in Pollajuolo, 
 Botticelli, and Baldini. It is not the simple work of a niellist, but 
 it had not yet reached its perfect expression either in the work 
 
 Fig. 32.— Engraving on metal by Baccio Baldini for El Monte Santo di Die, in 1477. 
 
 or in the impression ; the illustrations of the Monie Santo are 
 proof of this, as are also those of the Dante, by Baldini, in 1481, 
 for the same Nicholas di Lorenzo. From this we reproduce 
 the Misers. 
 
Early Illustration in Italy. 
 
 69 
 
 At this epoch engravings by the burin were taken with a 
 pale ink, the composition of which is not anything Hke the fine 
 black ink of Schoeffer or of the old Italian printers. And 
 besides in most cases the proofs were obtained by rubbing {(xu 
 frotton) like the ancient block books, an eminently defective 
 process. The press was not yet well adapted to the delicate 
 work of line engraving, and the workmen, who did not insert 
 the plates until after the text was printed, preferred not to risk 
 the loss of their sheets by the use of inappropriate presses. 
 These, with the insignificant attempts made by the Germans in 
 
 ' ^^^°^^^^$^ 
 
 ^^^^M 
 
 ,jas--- 
 
 fti^ 
 
 ffl 
 
 M 
 
 a 
 
 ^K 
 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 P 
 
 S 
 
 
 g 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 0^ 
 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^b^ 
 
 ^^^! 
 
 
 Ik 
 
 ig^ 
 
 ^US^a 
 
 ^™™-^ 
 
 r^^aiZ—^ J 
 
 Fig. 33. — Metal engraving by Baccio Baldini from the Dante of 1481. 
 
 1479,* are the beginnings of the process of line engraving in 
 the ornamentation of the Book. In fact, the process failed to 
 take the position which was expected of it, owing to the incon- 
 venient mode of working. Relief engraving still made great 
 advances ; with it the sheets used for the impression did not 
 require working more than once to produce the illustrations with 
 the text ; in a word, the labour was not so great. A century 
 elapsed before line engraving completely dethroned the vignette 
 
 * Breviarium ecclesie Htrbiplensis : Et. Dold., 1^79, folio, copperplate 
 engravings. 
 
70 THE BOOK. 
 
 on wood, and a century in which the • latter attained its 
 height, and showed what able artisans could make of a process 
 apparently the least flexible. 
 
 Not to leave Italy, which had the honour of making the 
 book with engraved illustrations known to the world, we pass 
 over some years, during which Arnold Bucking brought out at 
 Rome a Cosmographia of Ptolemy, 1478, with incised plates, which 
 is the first printed atlas that was produced, while as regards 
 ordinary publications there appeared in all parts classical and 
 Italian works, such as Cicero, Virgil, Tacitus, Pliny, Eusebius, 
 among the ancients, and Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, etc., as 
 regards the modern authors. Among the editions of Dante, we 
 may cite that of Peter of Cremona, dated i8th of November, 
 1491 (Fig. 35), with one wood-engraving to each canto, of which 
 the earlier ones are after Botticelli, and perhaps even drawn 
 by him directly on the wood. Passavant believes these figures 
 to be cut in relief in the metal. On some of the plates there 
 is a signature, a Gothic if), the signification of which leaves a 
 free field > for conjecture, and perhaps for error. There is also 
 another edition containing twenty plates printed, 1481, ten years 
 before the woodcut edition, which is extremely rare ; one in the 
 Hamilton Palace Library sold in May 1884 for ;^38o ; the Royal 
 Library of Berlin recently agreed to pay ^1,200 for a proof set 
 of these plates. 
 
 As we shall see later apropos of German vignettes of the 
 same period, the characteristic feature of Italian engraving was 
 sobriety, the complete absence of useless work, and the great 
 simplicity of the human figure. This special manner will be 
 found in the famous first edition of Francesco Colonna's Hypnero- 
 tomachia Poliphili, printed in 1499 by Aldus, which has been 
 frequently reproduced, and even copied sixty years after its first 
 
Early Illustration in Italy. 
 
 71 
 
 publication by a French printer, a rare occurrence in the book 
 trade. On account of its exquisite woodcuts this work has 
 always been a great favourite with book-collectors, especially 
 with artists, notwithstanding its continual increase in price. 
 Mr. Beckford's copy sold for \;^ 130. 
 
 The Italian illustrators, whether they operated simply on 
 wood, or, as some writers have it, engraved their cuts in relief 
 
 Fig- 34. — Plate from the Hypneroiomachia Poliphili, printed by Aldus 
 Manutius, in 1499. 
 
 on metal, always brought their figures conspicuously forward, 
 by making the surroundings more accentuated and often dotted 
 over, thus forming a dark background. This was also the 
 ordinary process in their ornaments, among the most interesting 
 of which are the borders of the plates to an edition of Dante 
 by Bonino de Bonini, Brescia, 1487, of which a specimen is 
 here reproduced. 
 
 If we return from Italy, which then took the lead, to 
 
72 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 Germany, we find at Augsburg about the year 1470 a school 
 of Formsckneiders, whose obscure workshops were of no great 
 advantage to the booksellers. These ill-advised artists went 
 even further Apparently furious at seeing printing so widely 
 spread as to render their bad woodcuts difficult to pass off" 
 as original designs, they united in a body to forbid Giinther 
 
 
 w^^^s?^ * * * * 
 
 
 fig' 35' — The planet Mercury and the city of Rome, engraving from 
 the Divina Comedia (Venice, 149 1). 
 
 Zainer and Schiissler to put engravings into their books. 
 They must nevertheless have come to an ultimate arrange- 
 ment, for Zainer printed in 1477 a Book on Chess by Jacopo 
 da Cessole, with vignettes. He was besides one of the few 
 German printers who employed Roman characters in place 
 of the Gothic of Peter Schoeffer. At Cologne in 1474 Arnold 
 Ther Hoernen published a work entitled Fasciculus Temporum^ 
 
EARLY Illustration in Germany. 
 
 n 
 
 with small illustrations engraved on wood. A Bible without 
 date contained most interesting illustrations. As to the 
 celebrated Todtentantz, or Dance of Death, published about 
 1485, it contains forty-one plates in relief of the most ordinary 
 
 Fig. 36. — Plate from Bonino de Bonini's Dante, at Brescia, in 1487. 
 
 kind and the least personal mark, the same as in the 
 Chronicle of Cologne of 1499, of which the figures, though less 
 German and less distorted, do not come up to the more 
 German, but more artistic Nuremberg books. 
 
74 THE BOOK. 
 
 At Nuremberg, Antony Koberger, called by Badius the 
 prince of booksellers, directed an immense establishment, 
 employing more than a hundred workmen, without counting 
 
 Fig. 37- — The creation of woman, plate from the Schaizbehalter, engraved 
 after Michael Wohlgemuth. 
 
 smaller houses at Basle and Lyons. At Basle Johannes 
 Froben, born 1460, at Hammelburg in Franconia, established 
 a printing press in 1491, and printed chiefly the works of 
 
Early Illustration in Germany. 75 
 
 Erasmus and the Latin Fathers, particularly the fine edition 
 of St. Atigustin. To many of his tides and borders Hans 
 Holbein lent his hand. Koberger was a capable and a for- 
 tunate man. He had at first put forth a Bible very indifferently 
 illustrated with the cuts of the Cologne Bible, but he had some- 
 thing better in view than copying others. Michael Wohlgemuth, 
 born at Nuremberg in 1434, was then in the full vigour of his 
 talent. To his school the young Albert Diirer came to study ; 
 and as his business was to draw on wood as well as to engrave 
 on copper and paint on panel, Koberger was attracted to him, 
 and engaged him to make a set of illustrations for a book. 
 The projected work was the Schatzbehalter, a sort of ascetic com- 
 pilation, deficient both in interest and in arrangement. Michael 
 Wohlgemuth set to work ; and, thanks to the ability of his 
 engravers, of whom William Pleydenwurff was probably one, 
 Koberger was able to issue the book in the course of 1491 
 in three hundred and fifty-two folios of two columns. Without 
 being perfection, the designs of Wohlgemuth, very German, 
 very striking, present the vigour and merit of the future 
 school of Nuremberg. The figure is no longer a simple line, 
 in the manner of the block books, but a combination of inter- 
 laced cuttings, intended to imitate shades. Such are those 
 representing The Creation of Eve 2Xi.A The Datighter of Jephthah 
 reproduced here. If we were to look for harmony between the 
 text and engravings of this curious work, we should find grace 
 and gaiety laid aside ; on the other hand, we should perceive a 
 freedom and boldness that would fascinate and permit us to 
 appreciate at their value the Nuremberg artists and Koberger, 
 the printer. In fact, the German artists are here more 
 individual, each one taken by himself, than the Italian illus- 
 trators could be, condemned as they were to the hierarchical 
 
76 
 
 The Book. 
 
 commonplace and to a certain form of forced idealism into 
 which the art of Italy was dragged little by little. The German 
 painters, naturalists and believers, presented their heroes in the 
 
 Fig. 38.— The daughter of Jephthah, plate taken from the Schatzbehalter , 
 engraved after Michael Wohlgemuth. 
 
 image of that robust nature that was before their eyes. It was 
 in this rude and unpolished spirit that Michael Wohlgemuth 
 illustrated the Schatzbehalter ; he also designed the illustrations 
 
Early Illustration in Germany. yy 
 
 for the Nuremberg Chronicle of Dr. Hartman Schedel, printed 
 by Koberger in 1493 (Fig. 39). 
 
 With Durer, at the latter end of the fifteenth century, the 
 Book was no more than a pretext for engravings. Thausing, 
 his biographer, says that the great artist felt the necessity of 
 designing an Apocalypse at Rome at the time when Luther was 
 premeditating his religious revolution in face of the worldly 
 splendours of the pontifical court. The Apocalypse, published 
 in 151 1 in Latin, with Gothic characters, was an album of 
 
 c^^-^ ...^ 
 
 Fig. 39. — Title of the Nuremberg Chronicle, printed by 
 A. Koberger, 1493. Fol. 
 
 fifteen large wood engravings. The Four Horsemen is the 
 best of these plates, and the boldest ; but in this gross fancy, in 
 these poor halting old hacks, the fantastic and grand idea which 
 the artist meant to convey can hardly be seen. It may be said 
 the genius of Durer was little adapted to vignettes, so large 
 they were, and did not easily lend itself to the exigencies of 
 a spun-out subject. The title of his Apocalypse is of its kind 
 a curious example of German genius, but, in spite of its vigour, 
 it does not please like an Italian headpiece or like a French or 
 
78 
 
 The Book. 
 
 Flemish frontispiece. The other works of Diirer published in 
 the fifteenth century, The Life of the Virgin and The Passion, 
 
 Fig. 40.— Title of the Apocalypse, by Albert Diirer, printed in 1498. 
 First edition without text. 
 
 were also sets of prints to wtlch the text was afterwards 
 added 
 
The "Ship of Fools:' 
 
 79 
 
 For the rest of his illustrations Dtirer belongs to the 
 sixteenth century, and we shall have occasion to recur to his 
 works. At present it remains to mention a curious work printed 
 at Basle by Bergman de Olpe in 1497, which appears to be the 
 
 Smlrtffra1Hauljj» 
 
 l^armgointf i^fivatme mm 
 
 facis laudata Nauis; per Sebaftianii Bratit:vematufa voJa 
 garicp fermoneSi rhythtno^cudbo^jtnortaliumfatuitati'g 
 femitas eifugere cupietiiu diredione/ fpeculo /cdmodoq^ 8C 
 falute : proc^inertisigniu^q^ftultici^ppetuatnfainia/exe« 
 cratione/8C confutationc/nup fabricata : Atqp iamprfdem 
 per lacobutn Locher/cognometo Philomiifutn : Suetrii ;in 
 latin ii tradiida eloquiu •- c3£ per Sebaflianu Braat *. dciiuo 
 fcdulotjreuifajfoeliciexorditurprincipio. 
 
 .14-9 7' 
 
 Nihil fine caufa. 
 
 lotdcOIpe 
 
 Fig. 41. — Title of Sebastian Brandt's Ship of Fools, printed in 
 1497 at Basle by Bergman de Olpe. 
 
 first comic conception of fifteenth century artists : the Nams 
 Stultifera, or Ship of Fools of Sebastian Brandt. This work 
 of the school of Basle lacks neither originality nor boldness. 
 At the time when it was published its success was immense, 
 
8o 
 
 The Book. 
 
 from the strange tricks of its clowns, with fools' caps, with 
 which every page was adorned. Alas ! the best things fell 
 under the satire of these jesters, even the Book and the Book 
 lover, if we may judge by the sarcasms which the personage 
 here reproduced volleys against useless publications. " I have 
 the first place among fools. ... I possess heaps of volumes 
 that I rarely open. If I read them, I forget them, and I am 
 no wiser." Brunet saw in these humorous caricatures more 
 
 Fig. 42. — The Bibliomaniac. Engraving from the Ship of Fools. 
 
 art than is really to be found in them. Their value is owing 
 more to their spirit and humour than to any other artistic 
 merit. Even the engraving is singularly fitted to the subject, 
 with its saving cutting, and its close, hair-like texture. The 
 designer was certainly not a Holbein, but he is no longer the 
 primitive artisan of the first German plates, and his "go" is 
 not displeasing. 
 
 We have before spoken, apropos of engraving by the burin 
 
The Book in the Low Countries. 8i 
 
 in Italy, of the small share of Germany in the production of 
 illustration by that means, and we do not therefore see any real 
 and serious attempt in the two little coats of arms in copperplate 
 in the Missale Herbipolense, printed in 1479. 
 
 The Flemish had not taken any great flight in the midst 
 of this almost European movement. The school of Burgundy, 
 whose influence was felt in all the surrounding countries, had 
 lost its authority in consequence of the progress achieved at 
 Mayence. Without doubt the great Flemish artists were still 
 there, but they were honoured painters, and their inclination did 
 not prompt them to work for the booksellers beyond making 
 them offers of service. The first of these, officially esta- 
 blished in Flanders, were two Germans, as we have mentioned 
 before, John of Westphalia and John Veldener, of Wlirtzburg, 
 who established themselves in the University of Louvain in 
 1473, three years after the first Paris printers. John Veldener 
 edited the Fascicidus Temporum, a book which had enormous 
 success in the fifteenth century, and the first book in which 
 borders and ornaments occur, which later on, because these 
 borders consisted of vine branches, were called in France 
 Vignettes. 
 
 At Haarlem, in spite of the Block-Books attributed to 
 Laurent Coster, illustration was backward. About 1485, a Dutch 
 translation of the Malheurs de Troye of Le Fevre was issued. 
 This French book was published at Cologne before France 
 possessed the smallest typographical workshop. At Bruges 
 Colard Mansion illuminated the cuts of his Metamorphoses of 
 Ovid in 1484. Simple engraving appeared to him too far 
 remote from manuscripts, the vogue of which had not yet passed 
 away. At Zwoll, Peter van Os, from Breda, used the xylo- 
 graphic plates of the Biblia Pauperum, while the master a la 
 
 6 
 
82 The Book. 
 
 navette, John of Vollehoe, an artist in the best sense of the 
 word, was ornamenting certain popular publications with his 
 designs. At Utrecht Veldener came from Louvain to establish 
 a workshop. He published for the second time a Fasciculus 
 in 1480 ; he created, as we stated, a style of decoration with 
 flowers and leaves, which shortly after developed into the 
 trade of Rakmensckneiders. Antwerp had attracted Matthias 
 van der Goes, Gerard de Leeu from Gouda, and he produced 
 the romance of Belle Vienne and the first Dutch translation 
 of ^sop's Fables, 1485. Schiedam had an inventive engraver 
 who illustrated an edition of the Chevalier Delibdrd of Oliver 
 de la Marche, in folio, with Gothic letters, after 1483, as we 
 read in the colophon : — 
 
 " Cet traittie fut parfait I'an mil 
 Quatre cens quatre vings et trois 
 Ainsi que sur la fin d'avril 
 Que I'yver est en son exil, 
 Et que I'este fait ses explois. 
 Au bien soit pris en tons endrois 
 De ceulx a qui il est offert 
 Par celui qui Tant a souffert, 
 La Marche." 
 
 The French language, bright and harmonious, thus found 
 hospitality in other countries. For many examples of French 
 books published abroad, we cannot cite one German work 
 printed in France. Spreading from the north to the south, 
 typography had from 1490 its two principal centres at Paris 
 and Lyons. After the success of the three Germans at the 
 Sorbonne, events took their own course. In 1474 Peter Caesaris 
 and John Stol, two students who had been instructed by Gering 
 and Krantz, founded the second establishment in Paris, at the 
 sign of the " Soufflet Vert;" and they printed classical works. 
 Ten years later appeared Antoine Verard, Simon Vostre, and 
 
French Schools of Illustration. 83 
 
 Pigouchet, the first of whom gave to French bookselHng an 
 impulse that it has not since lost ; but before them Pasquier- 
 Bonhomme published his Grandes Chroniques in 1476, three 
 volumes folio, the oldest book printed at Paris in French with 
 a date. 
 
 The French school of illustration was at its most flourishing 
 point at the end of the fifteenth century, but solely in miniature 
 and ornamentation by the brush. The charming figures of the 
 manuscripts had at this time a Flemish and naturalistic ten- 
 dency. The most celebrated of the great artists in manuscripts, 
 Jean Foucquet, could not conceal the source of his talent nor 
 the influence of the Van Eyck school, yet the touch remained 
 distinctly personal. He had travelled, and was not confined to 
 the art circles of a single city, as were so many of the earliest 
 painters of Flanders. He had gone through Italy, and from 
 thence he brought with him architectural subjects for his curious 
 designs in the Heures of Etienne Chevalier, now at Frankfort, 
 a precious fragment of which is preserved in the National 
 Library of Paris. Side by side with this undoubted master, 
 whose works are happily known, lived a more modest artist, 
 Jean Perreal, called Jean de Paris, painter to Charles VIII., 
 Louis XII., and Anne of Brittany. 
 
 In joining with these two masters, Foucquet and Perreal, one 
 who serves as a transition between them, Jean Bourdichon, designer 
 to the kings of France from Louis XI. to Francis I., we at once 
 obtain a not despicable assemblage of vital forces. Without 
 doubt these men could not enter in the same line either with 
 the admirable school of Flanders, or the Germans of Nurem- 
 berg, or the masters of Italy ; but, moderate as we may 
 deem their merit, they did their work well, painting miniatures, 
 colouring coats of arms, rendering to the kings, their masters, 
 
84 
 
 The Book. 
 
 all the little duties of devoted servants without pretension, and 
 leading the way, according to their means, for the great artistic 
 movement in France of the seventeenth century. That these men, 
 leaving the brush for the pencil, devoted themselves to design 
 illustrations on wood is undeniable. It is said that one of them 
 followed Charles VIII. to the Italian wars, and probably sketched 
 the battles of the campaign as they took place. Now in the 
 
 Fig> 43-— A medical man of the fifteenth century, from La Mer c/es Histoires. 
 Printed .oy Le Rouge. Paris, 1488. 
 
 books published at this epoch in France we meet with vignettes 
 which so very nearly approach miniatures, that we can easily 
 recognise in them French taste and finish. Such are, for 
 example, the illustrations of the Mer des Histoires, printed by 
 Le Rouge in 1488, where the delicacy of design is matched in 
 some parts with extraordinary dexterity in engraving. Never- 
 theless, others leave something to be desired; they maim the 
 best subjects by their unskilful line and their awkwardness of 
 
French School of Illustration. 
 
 85 
 
 handling (Fig. 43). Were not these engravers on wood printers 
 themselves : the Commins, Guyot Marchants, Pierre Lecarrons, 
 Jean Trepperels, and others ? We are tempted to see in 
 certain shapeless work the hasty and careless labour of an artist 
 hurried by the press. As mentioned above, considering the 
 part taken by the booksellers in the making of the plates, our 
 supposition does not appear inadmissible in itself 
 
 Fig. 44. — Mark of Philip Pigouchet, French printer and wood 
 engraver of the fifteenth century. 
 
 Printing had been established about twenty years in Paris 
 when Philip Pigouchet, printer and engraver on wood, began 
 to exercise his trade for himself or on account of other pub- 
 lishers. P'ormcrly bookseller in the University, he transported 
 his presses to the Rue de la Harpe, and took for his mark the 
 curious figure here reproduced (Fig. 44). At this moment a 
 true shopkeeper, Simon Vostre conceived the idea of launch- 
 ing forth Books of Hours, until then disdained in France, and 
 
86 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 of publishing them in fine editions with figures, borders, orna- 
 ments, large separate plates, and all the resources of typography. 
 The attempts made at Venice and Naples between 1473 and 
 1476 warranted the enterprise. Entering into partnership with 
 Pigouchet, the two were able on the 17th of April, 1488, to 
 publish the Heures a r Usaige de Rome, octavo, with varied 
 ornaments and figures. The operation having succeeded beyond 
 their hopes, thanks to the combination of the subjects of the 
 
 Fig. 45. — Mark of Jean Dupre, printer at Lyons. 
 
 borders, subjects that could be turned about in all manner 
 of ways so as to obtain the greatest variety, Simon Vostre 
 applied to the work, and ordered new cuts to augment the 
 number of his decorations. Passavant's idea is commonly 
 received, that the engraving was done in relief on metal, 
 because the line in it is very fine, the background stippled, 
 and the borders without scratches. Wood could not have 
 resisted the force of the impression ; the reliefs would have been 
 .crushed, the borders rubbed and badly adjusted. In all the 
 
BOOKS OF Hours. 
 
 87 
 
 successive editions hard work and wear are not remarked, and 
 we are forced to admit the use of a harder material than the 
 pear or box-wood of ordinary blocks. 
 
 Y\%. 46. — Mark of Simon Vostrc, printer at Paris, 1501. 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ffl 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^m 
 
 S 
 
 1^1^^ 
 
 1'^ 
 
 ^^p! 
 
 i^ 
 
 ^M^& 
 
 WtM 
 
 Fig. 47. — Ornament of 
 Simon Vostre. 
 
 Fig. 48. — Ornament of 
 Simon Vostre. 
 
 Fig. 49. — Ornament of 
 Simon Vostre. 
 
 According to his wants, Simon Vostre designed new series 
 of ornaments. Among them were histories of the saints, biblical 
 figures, even caricatures directed against Churchmen, after the 
 
The Book. 
 
 manner of the old sculptors, who thought that sin was rendered 
 more horrible in the garb of a monk. 
 
 " Honores sont saiges et sots, 
 Augustins, carmes et bigots," 
 
 says the legend. Then there were the Dance of Death and 
 
 ut nof) toffte pef{ratffme5:(t quote not) 
 fees miquifate mtiitBta nunc it) \>u(^ 
 uete *Pxmio.'(i|i mane me qncfterie no fu6 
 ifiatti.TSt , i^rebo $ tebiptoi meue ^mtt 
 iiinouiflimo bie be tetra furtectucue fu 
 j£;tii)catnemea9ibe6o beurt) fafuatote 
 mefl.*.du€^ifucue fil cSoi6£c (i n3 afi' 
 yqcufi mei 9|pecfut« fttt/6t i tame. J^.«. 
 j^^^bet aiati) meci ^ite mee : bimtttci 
 1^^ abuetfun; me efoqutii meutt; . goi 
 quae It) amaritubme aie mee.bicii beo.lfio 
 ft me conbenate-JInbica mic6i:ratme ita 
 lubtcee. HCunqutb 6on(i ti6i ^ibetur ft ra<> 
 fflntetie (t oppiimne meogue monnil fua 
 mm'4 conf ifiil t'pioztl abiuueeif IKunquib 
 ocuft catncifiBt funttautficut^ibct ^omo 
 (itH '3tbe6t6r'1l3ungutb (icutbtee^omime 
 biee tut (I anm tui 0cut gumana funf f cm^ 
 i(LOtai^t(\aetae tmquitnf^ mc3 et pecca'/ 
 tutt} mm Jccufcti6.^t fcioe gj nicgif tptil 
 fecetitt) cii fit nemo qui be mqnu tua pop_ 
 fit etuere. ^. i£iut fojatum rcfufcitaili a 
 monumeto fetibtl !Eu ete bt!e bona cequte 
 (J focil inbuf^^enf ie.*. Siui Setutue ee tu 
 bicatt Siuoe (t mottuoe (i fecuf S pec tSnc 
 %uei65Dminebonotequiett}.(ic.«'jLiii. 
 
 Fig. 50. — Border in four separate blocks in the Heures a VUsaige de Rome, by Pigoucliet, 
 for Simon Vostre, in 14S8. Small figures from the Dance of Death. 
 
 sibyls, allying sacred with profane, even the trades, all forming 
 a medley of little figures in the margins, in the borders, 
 nesded among acanthus leaves, distorted men, fantastic animals, 
 and saints piously praying. The Middle Ages live again in 
 
Books of Hours. 
 
 89 
 
 these bright and charming books, so French in their origin, 
 yet withal imbued with good sense and a tolerant spirit. 
 
 .sf:^^. 
 
 «0muK[abta mea aperies ^^ 
 
 Fig. 51. — Plate copied from Schongauer's Carrying of the Cross, 
 taken from the ffeures of Simon Voslre. 
 
 The Book rose under Simon Vostre and Philip Pigouchet 
 to the culminating point of ornamentation. Here design and 
 engraving are at their proper value and sustain each other. 
 
90 
 
 The Book. 
 
 It is not only the stippled backgrounds of the borders that 
 please the eye, but the whole effect is such as to compel the 
 question, Who was this unknown designer, this painter of bold 
 conceptions, whose work is so complete ? However, some of 
 
 Fig. 52. — The Death of the Virgin, plate taken from the fjlsy 
 Heures of Simon Vostre, printed in 1488. The border |!a>|!^1 
 is separate. 
 
 the large full-page illustrations have not an originality of their 
 own, nor the French touch of the borders. Thus the plate of 
 the Passion here reproduced (Fig. 51) is inspired line for line by 
 the German, Martin Schongauer. Are we to suppose then that 
 already the trade with cliches from the original blocks was 
 
Books of hours. 
 
 91 
 
 established between France and Germany, or was it that a 
 copy was made of it by a French designer ? It is difficult to 
 say. Still the coincidence is not common to all the missals 
 of the great Parisian bookseller. The Deaik of the Virgin 
 (Fig. 52) here reproduced is an evident proof of it. It forms 
 part of the 1488 book, and is certainly a truly French work. 
 It may be said that from the artistic association of Philip 
 
 ppPWWP?MmB 
 
 Wl^^BlHlM 
 
 f'S' ii- — Mark of Antoine Verard, printer at Paris, 1498. 
 
 Pigouchet and Simon Vostre emanated the art of book illus- 
 tration in France ; they worked together for eighteen years, 
 in steady collaboration, and, as far as we know, without a 
 cloud. When Vostre started in business in 1488 he lived 
 in the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, at the sign of " St. Jean 
 I'Evangeliste ; " and in 1520 he was still there, having 
 published more than three hundred editions of the Hours for 
 the use of the several cities. 
 
92 The Book. 
 
 Contemporary with Simon Vostre, another publisher was 
 giving a singular impulse to the Book by his extreme energy, 
 true taste, and the aid of first-class artists. Antoine Verard, 
 the most illustrious of the old French booksellers, was a cali- 
 grapher, printer, illuminator and dealer (Fig. 53). Born in 
 the second half of the fifteenth century, he established himself 
 in Paris on the Pont Notre Dame, both sides of which were 
 then covered with shops, and about 1485 commenced his fine 
 editions with a Decameron in French by Laurent de Premier- 
 fait. M. Renouvier remarks in his notice of Verard that his 
 first books were not good ; the plates were often unskilful, 
 and were probably borrowed or bought from others. This may 
 be very well understood in a beginner whose modest resources 
 did not permit bold enterprises ; moreover, the figures were 
 in most cases groundworks for miniatures, outlines and sketches 
 rather than vignettes. 
 
 Antony Verard was accustomed to take a certain number 
 of fine copies on vellum or paper of each book published by 
 him, in which qualified painters added miniatures and orna- 
 ments. It is curious now to find what the cost to one of 
 the great lords of the court of Charles VIII. was of one of 
 these special copies in all the details of its production. 
 We find it in a document published by M. Senemaud in 
 a provincial journal {Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique de la 
 Ckarenie, 18,59, part 2, p. 91), which enables us at the same 
 time to penetrate into a printing office of a great French 
 publisher of the fifteenth century. According to this docu- 
 ment, Verard did not disdain to put his own hand to the 
 work, even to carrying the book to the house of his patron if 
 he happened to be a man of consequence. It is an account 
 of Charles de Valois-Angouleme, father of Francis I. He 
 
Books of hours. 
 
 93 
 
 was then living at Cognac ; and he ordered Verard to print 
 separately for him on vellum the romance of Tristan, the 
 Book of Consolation of Boetius, the Ordinaire du Chretien, and 
 
 /[€go^otmmtrt ^ 
 , f(()nKe»«.?8.«i. / 
 
 the Heures en Franfois, 
 each with illuminations 
 and binding. In the 
 detail of expenses 
 Verard omits nothing. 
 He reckons the parch- 
 ment at three sous four 
 deniers the sheet, the 
 painted and illuminated 
 figures at one ecu the 
 large and five sols the 
 small. We give here 
 the outline of one of the 
 plates of the Tristan, 
 
 ' Saittafticica 
 3etu(abetefi(t( I 
 tcctiSe.^uipen I 
 bStitCuit)figno 
 (tocciSutpiic^iti 
 eieiaiiSitquiaj 
 iciaSie tcfncSetj 
 
 Fig. 54. — Border of the Grandes Hemes of Antony Verard : 
 Paris, 1498 (?). 
 
 ordered by the Due d'Angouleme, reduced by two-thirds, and 
 from its work (Fig. 55) it may be judged that the profession of 
 the illuminator, even for the time, was by no means brilliant. 
 The binding was in dark-coloured velvet, with two clasps- 
 
94 
 
 The Book. 
 
 with the arms of the Duke, which cost sixty sous each. 
 The work finished, Verard took the road for Cognac, carrying 
 the precious volumes. He was allowed twenty livres for his 
 travelling expenses ; and this brings the total to two hundred 
 and seven livres ten sous, equivalent to ^200 to ^240 of 
 present money. 
 
 Fig. 55. — Plate from the Tristan published by Antoine Verard, a copy of which 
 was illuminated for Charles of Angouleme. 
 
 Verard had preceded Simon Vostre in the publication of 
 Books of Hours, but his first volume, dated 1487, was not 
 successful, owing to the want of borders and frontispieces. At 
 the most he had introduced coarse figures intended for illumi- 
 nation, which were rather wooden daubs than vignettes. In 
 
Books of Hours. 
 
 95 
 
 1488, the same year that Simon Vostre commenced his 
 publications, Verard put forth, by "command of the King our 
 
 Oeaa it) aSmtounit; mtan) inth 
 ScX>)mine aS aStnuanSii me 
 ftpina-^ToiMpatrirtfifio et 
 fpfii fancto^icnt crat i») pri»v 
 ripioet nnncet|»nper.(U. (I'^jxtmus 
 
 /■TTn*^ 
 
 .rfflrKp 
 
 Fig. 56. — Page of the Grandes Heures of Antoine Verard : Paris, 
 fifteenth century. 
 
 lord," the book called the Grandes Hezires, which is in quarto, 
 Gothic letter, without paging, twenty lines to the full page. 
 
96 THE Book. 
 
 This Grandes Hewes contained fourteen engravings, large 
 borders in four compartments, smaller subjects and initials 
 rubricated by hand. He thus published more than two 
 hundred editions between 1487 and 15 13, and among them the 
 Mystere de la Passion, with eighty figures ; the Grandes 
 Ckroniques, in three folio volumes, printed by Jean Maurand ; 
 the Bataille Juda'ique of Flavius Josephus ; the Legende Doree 
 of Voragine, all books for which he called to his aid rubri- 
 cators, illuminators and miniaturists. From the outset he had 
 two shops where he published his productions : one on the 
 Pont Notre Dame, the other at the Palace of Justice, " au 
 premier pilier devant la chapelle oil Ton chante la messe de 
 messeigneurs les presidents." After 1499, when the Pont 
 Notre Dame was burned Verard transported his books to the 
 Carrefour St. Severin. At his death in 15 13 he resided in 
 the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, " devant Nostre-Darne de 
 Paris." 
 
 Besides Verard, Vostre, and Pigouchet, many others will 
 be found who imitated them in the publication of Books of 
 Hoitrs. The first was Jean du Pre, who published a Paris 
 missal in 1481, and who was at once printer and bookseller. 
 Like Pigouchet, Du Pre printed Books of Hours for provincial 
 publishers, without dreaming of the competition he was creating 
 for himself. It is not the least curious feature in connection 
 with the study of the History of the Book, to notice the 
 encroachments of the publishers upon one another, as well as 
 the friendly exchanges, the loans even of plates ' and type. 
 Thielman Kerver, a German, also began to put forth Books of 
 Hours in 1497 in Paris, ornamenting them with borders and 
 figures on wood, and modelling his work completely upon that 
 of Simon Vostre. But after having imitated him, he became 
 
BOOKS OF Hours. gj 
 
 associated with him in the pubUcation and sale of the Paris 
 Missal. The competition of these men was evidently an honest 
 one, also the sale of pious works was sufficient to maintain 
 all engaged in it. Established on the Pont St. Michel, 
 at the sign of the " Unicorn," he sold his stock to Gilles 
 Remade about the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Thielman Kerver in his own works shows himself as the 
 rival of Simon Vostre. The Hardouins, who followed the same 
 
 Fig., 57. — Typographical mark of Thielman Kerver. 
 
 profession, do not appear to have attained the success of their 
 predecessors ; and, if we except the Heures a /' Usage de Rome, 
 published in 1503 by Gilles Hardouin on the Pont au Change, 
 at the sign of the " Rose," they servilely imitated their 
 predecessors. There was also among the disciples of Vostre, 
 Guillaume Eustache, bookseller to the king, "tenant la boutique 
 dedans la grant salle du palais du coste de messeigneurs les 
 presidens, ou sur les grans degres du coste de la conciergerie 
 
98 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 k I'ymage St. Jean I'Evangeliste." Eustache made use of the 
 work of Pigouchet and Kerver, not to mention the printers 
 of the end of the fifteenth century. 
 
 We have named the principal and the fortunate ones ; but 
 
 Fig. 58. — Plate from a Book of Hours of Simon Vostre, representing 
 the Massacre of the Innocents. 
 
 what has become of the crowd of other pubUshers whose 
 ambition was equally aroused before the success of Vostre 
 and Verard ? There were Denis Meslier, with his quarto 
 Heures de Bourges, and Vincent Commin, bookseller of the Rue 
 Neuve Notre Dame, who thus appealed to his customers : — 
 
The Dances of Death. 99 
 
 "Qui veult en avoir? On en treuve 
 A tres grand raarche et bon pris 
 A la Rose, dans la rue Neuve 
 De Nostre-Dame de Paris." 
 
 There were also Robin Chaillot, Laurent Philippe, and a 
 hundred others whose names have died with them or are 
 robbed of the fruit of their works. 
 
 But if pious books of this kind found vogue and a large 
 
 f^ig- 59- — Dance of Death, said to be by Verard. The Pope and 
 the Emperor. 
 
 sale at this epoch, the dealers did not keep to ascetic publica- 
 tions only. By a singular mixture of the sacred and the profane, 
 the book-men displayed also on their stalls the Decameron of 
 Boccaccio as well as the Hours of the Immaculate Vii^gin, and 
 the purchasers took an interest in the one as well as in 
 the other. Besides, the end of the fifteenth century had its 
 literary preferences, its alluring titles, its attractive frontispieces. 
 At the commencement of the present century double titles — 
 Atala ; or, The Child of Mystery : Waver ley ; or, 'Tis Sixty 
 Years Since- — were common, although now out of fashion. 
 
loo The Eodk. 
 
 Afterwards came books of travels — Voyages au Pays des 
 Milliards, Voyages aux Pays des R^voluliomtaires, etc. Also in 
 the fifteenth century, and even from the fourteenth, a series of 
 titles was in public favour. There was first the Ddbats, or 
 "Dialogues:" Debat de la Dame et de I' Escuyer, Paris, 1490, 
 folio ; Dialogue of Dives and Pauper, London, Richard 
 Pynson, 1493 ; and many other eccentric titles. There appeared 
 also thousands of complaintes, a kind of lay in verse or prose ; 
 blasons, light pieces describing this or that thing ; doctrinals, 
 that had nothing to do with doctrine. And among the most 
 approved subjects, between the piety of some and the gaiety 
 of others, the Dances of Death established themselves firmly, 
 showing, according to the different spheres of society then 
 prevalent, Death taking the great ones of the earth, torturing 
 alike pope, emperor, constable, or minstrel, grimacing at youth, 
 majesty, and love. Long before printing appeared, the Dances 
 of Death found their delineators ; they were some consolation 
 for the wretched against their powerful masters, the revenge 
 of the rabble against the king. They may be sefen painted, 
 sculptured, illuminated, when engraving was not there to multiply 
 their use ; they may be seen largely displayed on walls, sombre 
 and awe-inspiring, at Dresden, Leipzig, Erfurt, Berne, Lucerne, 
 Rouen, Amiens, and Chaise-Dieu. It was the great human 
 equality, which first tempted the French, then the inimitable 
 Holbein, Death cries to the lords and fortunate of this world : — 
 
 " Et apr^s quant vous serez morts 
 Tout ainsy que poures truans, 
 Vous serez hydeus et puans, 
 Des nostres et de noz livr^es ! . . . 
 II ne souffist assez de dire 
 De voz meschans corps la misere, 
 Qui ne sont pas d'autre matere, 
 Certainement, que nous ne sommes." 
 
The Dances of Death. 
 
 lOI 
 
 We can imagine the impression tliese bitter ironies made 
 on the oppressed and disdained lower classes. The first Dance 
 of Death was produced by Guyot Marchant in 1485, in ten 
 leaves and seventeen engravings, in folio, with Gothic cha- 
 racters. Marchant describes himself as " demeurant en Champ 
 Gaillart a Paris le vingt-huitiesme jour de septembre mil quatre 
 cent quatre vingtz et cinq" (Fig. 60) The book must have 
 gone off rapidly, for it was republished in the following year, 
 with additions and new engravings. French illustration was 
 
 Fig. 60.— Dance of Death of Guyot Marchant in 14S6. The 
 Pope and the Emperor. 
 
 already moving forward, as may be judged by the reproduc- 
 tions ,here given from the folio edition of i486. It is the 
 pope and emperor, glory and power, that are led and plagued 
 by Death, hideous Death, with open body and frightful grin. 
 
 We could wish that the tendencies and processes of what 
 may be called the second generation of printers were well 
 understood. In a few years they surmounted the difificultiee of 
 their art, and made the Book a model of elegance and simpli- 
 city. The smallest details were cared for, and things apparently 
 the most minute were studied and rendered significant. 
 
102 
 
 The Book. 
 
 Speaking of titles, an enormous progress was here made in the 
 publications of the end of the century. In Italy subjects 
 of decoration were used as a framework for the front page, 
 wherein were included useful indications. The most ancient 
 specimen of this kind has already been referred to. A model 
 of this species is the 5"/. Jerome, published at Ferrara by 
 Lorenzo Rossi, of Valenza, in 1497, folio; the title, much 
 adorned, is in Gothic letters ; the engraved initial is very 
 adroitly left in outline, so as not to burden or break the text. 
 In Germany bad taste and prodigality already began to be 
 
 l-'ir. 61. — Mark of Guy Marchant, printer at Parie, 1485. 
 
 apparent ; the letters become interlaced, the Gothic type is 
 covered with useless fantastic appendages and gets bewildering, 
 and the tides become intricate ; later they became illegible even 
 to the Germans themselves. In France the front page gave 
 the most circumstantial indications of the contents of the work, 
 with the name and abode of the printer and bookseller. These 
 titles were often ornamented with moveable frameworks, printed 
 in Gothic, sometimes in two colours, which necessitated two 
 printings, one for the black and one for the red ink. The mark 
 of the printer or publisher generally appeared, and it was nearly 
 always a charming piece of work. These French marks were 
 
PRINTERS' MARKS. IO3 
 
 all treated more or less heraldically ; that is to say, the initials 
 occupy a shield, sustained by supporters and cut with extreme 
 care. The first was that of Fust and Schoeffer at Mayence, of 
 admirable simplicity and grace. In France this early specimen 
 of the trade mark took with Simon Vostre and Verard the 
 shape of delicate illustrations, finely designed and carefully 
 engraved ; but the custom of allusive marks did not prevail, as 
 we shall have occasion to see, until the sixteenth century. The 
 marks of Pigouchet, Vostre, and Verard have already been 
 given ; that of Thielman Kerver is conceived in the same 
 principles of taste and art. The sign of his house being the 
 " Unicorn," Kerver took as supporters to his shield two 
 unicorns affrontees. 
 
 In these colophons are sometimes found philosophic aphorisms, 
 satirical remarks, marvels of poetry. One bookseller pays 
 homage to the powerful university, which dispenses glory and 
 riches to the poor tradesmen by buying many books. Andrew 
 Bocard engraved on his mark this flattery as a border : — 
 
 " Honneur au Roy et a la court, 
 Salut a r University 
 Dent nostre bien procede et sourt 
 Dieu gart de Paris la cit6 ! " 
 
 The Germans introduced into their colophons some vain- 
 glorious notices. Arnold Ther Hoernen, already mentioned, 
 who printed the Theutoitista at Cologne in 1477, boasted in it 
 of having corrected it all with his own hands. Jean Treschel 
 (Fig. 63), established at Lyons in 1493, proclaims himself a 
 German, as the Germans were the inventors of that art 
 which he himself possessed to an eminent degree. He prided 
 himself • on being what we may call a skilled typographer ; 
 " virum hujus artis solertissimum," he writes without false 
 
104 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 modesty. At times, in the colophons of his books, he at- 
 tempted Latin verse, the Sapphic verse of Horace, of a playful 
 turn, to say that his work was perfected in 1494. 
 
 Arte et expensis vigilique cura 
 Treschel explevit opus hoc Joannes, 
 Mille quingentos ubi Christus annos 
 
 Sex minus egit. 
 Jamque Lugduni juvenes, senesque, 
 Martias nonas celebres agebant 
 Magna Reginae quia prepotent! 
 
 Festa parabant." 
 
 Fig 62. — Frontispiece to Terence, published by Trescliel at Lyons 
 in 1493. The author writing his book. 
 
 The portrait is another element of illustration, the figure of 
 the author is prefixed to his work. It had already been a 
 custom in the manuscripts to paint on the first leaf of the work 
 the likeness of him who wrote it, frequently in the act of 
 presenting his book to some noble patron ; and in this way 
 is often preserved the only known portrait of either patron or 
 author. Printing and engraving rendered these effigies more 
 
The Portrait in the Book. 105 
 
 common, the portraits of one often served for another, and the 
 booksellers used them without very much -scruple. As we shall 
 see later, this became in the sixteenth century a means of 
 illustrating a book in the most simple manner, but only at 
 the time when the portrait, drawn or painted, commenced to 
 be more widely used. Previously the cliches of which we spoke 
 went everywhere, from the Italians to the French, from yEsop 
 to Accursius ; these uncertain features date back from the 
 manuscript romances of chivalry, from whence they were 
 
 Fig. 63.— Mark of Treschel, printer at Lyons, 1489. 
 
 servilely copied in typography. The Italians from the first 
 mixed the ancient and the modern. Thus in a Breviarimn 
 des Decrets, printed in 1478, there is an engraved portrait of 
 Paul Florentin. 
 
 In France the author is often represented writing, and it was 
 so up to the middle of the sixteenth century. In an edition 
 of Dii Cas des Nobles Homines, by Jean Dupre, in 1483, 
 Boccaccio is represented seated, having before him his French 
 translator, Laurent de Premierfait. This plate is one of the 
 oldest rei3resentations of authors in French books. In the 
 
io6 The Book. 
 
 Roman de la Rose, first edition of Paris and Lyons, in folio, 
 probably published by Guillaume Leroy about 1485, Guillaume 
 de Lorris, the author, is shown in his bed : — 
 
 " Une nuyt comme je songeoye, 
 Et de fait dormir me convient, 
 En dormant un songe m'advint. . . ." 
 
 There is also a portrait of Alain Chartier in his Fails, 
 printed in 1489. In the Terence of Treschel, of Lyons, in 
 1493, we see a grammarian (Fig. 62) of the fifteenth century in 
 a furnished room of the time, occupied in writing at a desk ; this 
 is Guy Jouvenal, of Le Mans, the author of the commentary. 
 
 Thus was printing developed, carrying with it to the 
 countries where it was established the rules of an unchangeable 
 principle ; but, according to its surroundings, it was so trans- 
 formed in a few years that its origin was no longer recognised. 
 It was light in Italy, heavy in Germany, gay in France. 
 Painting, of which it was accidentally the outcome, returned 
 to it under the form of illustration a short time after its first 
 and fruitful essays. The Gothic character which was general in 
 Germany, continued to be used in F"rance by the Vostres, the 
 Verards, and others up to the middle of the sixteenth century, 
 although the earliest printers before this used Roman type ; it 
 was also the prevailing type used in English books. In Italy 
 it was Jenson, a Frenchman, who introduced the alphabet 
 preserved to the present time ; and it was the Venetians and 
 Florentines who were the first to learn the art of judicious orna- 
 mentation of the Book. The French came very near perfection, 
 thanks to their printers and booksellers, at the end of the 
 century ; and the Germans found illustrious artists to scatter 
 their compositions in their large, heavy works. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 1500 TO 1600. 
 
 French epics and the Renaissance— Venice and Aldus Manutius— Italian illus- 
 trators — The Germans : Theuerdanck, Schaufelein — The Book in other countries 
 — French books at the beginning of the century, before the accession of 
 Francis I. — English printers and their work — Engraved plates in English 
 books — Geoffrey Tory and his works — Francis I. and the Book — Robert 
 Estienne — Lyons a centre of bookselling : Holbein's Dances of Death — School 
 of Basle — Alciati's emblems and the illustrated books of the middle of the 
 century — The school of Fontainebleau and its influence — Solomon Bernard — 
 Cornells de la Haye and the Profn;ptuaire — ^Jean Cousin — Copperplate 
 engraving and metal plates — Woeriot — The portrait in the Book of the six- 
 teenth century — How a book was illustrated on wood at the end of the century 
 — Influence of Plantin on the Book ; his school of engravers— General con- 
 siderations — Progress in England — Coverdale's Bible. 
 
 UR simple division into chapters, it will be 
 understood, does not exactly correspond with 
 the most momentous epochs in the history of 
 the Book in France and abroad. Doubtless 
 it would be easy for France alone to find 
 some limits and to supply a framework within which contem- 
 porary publishers might be grouped. But in order to present, 
 as in a synoptical table, an essential and abridged sketch of 
 the Book in all European countries, it appeared to us 
 more convenient to take the confused and tangled notions 
 by centuries and to unfold them conjointly in Italy, Germany, 
 
I08 THE BOOK. 
 
 England and France, in taking up by the way the most 
 salient features. Moreover, after the sixteenth century neither 
 Italy nor Germany counts for much in comparison with 
 France, which, less fortunate, perhaps, at the beginning than 
 her neighbours, surpassed them in all the pride of her 
 genius. 
 
 The commencement of the sixteenth century found the 
 French army in Italy, under the command of Louis XII. Led 
 from glory to glory, the French successively visited Pisa, Capua, 
 and Naples, and that which has since been called the Renais- 
 sance impressed itself little by little on the conquerors. At 
 Venice there lived Aldus Pius Manutius, then the greatest 
 printer of the entire world. Aldus became proprietor of the 
 celebrated printing office of Nicholas Jenson, through his father- 
 in-law, Andrea Torresani, of Asola, who himself acquired it on 
 the death of the French printer ; and he had in a few years 
 conducted it to a position without a rival. We have seen 
 him already printing, at the end of the fifteenth century, 
 the admirable volume Hypnerotomachia, the renown of which 
 became universal. Aldus was fifty-two years of age, having 
 been born in 1447 ; and his learning was increased by daily 
 intercourse with learned Italians, among others with the cele- 
 brated Pico de la Mirandola. His establishment at Venice ever 
 since the year 1488 had for its object the creation of a chair in 
 Greek, in which language he was well instructed from his youth. 
 The idea having come to him of issuing editions of the prin- 
 cipal Greek writers, which up to then remained in manuscript, 
 he was induced to start a printing office with that purpose. He 
 first published the Hero and Leander of Musseus in 1494, quarto, 
 in a Greek character apparently designed by him, and engraved 
 perhaps by Francisco da B.ologna ; then the Greek Grammar 
 
Aldus Manutius. 
 
 109 
 
 of Constantine Lascaris, with the date of 1494 ; and the Works 
 of Aristotle in five folio volumes. At the time of the Italian 
 wars, Aldus was making a revolution in typography, by produc- 
 ing more compact sizes and finer characters, which would 
 permit a volume of the smallest height to contain the matter 
 of a folio printed with large type. Legend says that the new 
 letters were copied exactly from the handwriting of Petrarch 
 (of which author he published an edition in 1501, the first 
 Italian work printed in Italic type), inclining like all cursive 
 
 Fig. 64. — The anchor and dolphin, mark of Aldus 
 Manutius, after the original in the Terze Rime of 
 1520, where it appears for the first time. 
 
 writing ; the name of Italic was given to . this character, which 
 was also called Aldine, from its inventor. It was engraved by 
 Francisco da Bologna. Aldus also published in octavo size, with 
 this kind of letter, an edition of Virgil in 1501. To procure 
 a perfect copy of this first Aldine Virgil is almost hopeless, 
 and the somewhat defective copies which lately turned up at 
 the Sir John Thorold's and Wodhull's sale brought ^145. Then 
 he produced a Horace, a Juvenal, a Martial, etc. The following 
 year, 1502, he gave an edition of the Terze Rime of Dante 
 
no The Book. 
 
 and for the first time took as his typographical mark an anchor 
 encircled by a dolphin.* 
 
 His marriage with the daughter of Andrea Torresani, of 
 Asola, brought together into his possession two printing houses. 
 The burden became too heavy for Manutius to think henceforth 
 of doing all the work himself Besides, the wars did not allow 
 him any repose, of which he bitterly complained in his prefaces. 
 He therefore attracted young Greek scholars, who supervised, 
 each one in his specialty, the works in progress, and founded 
 a society, a kind of Aldine academy, in which the greatest names 
 of the epoch were united. Aldus conveys the perfect idea of a 
 great printer at those times, doing honour to celebrated men, 
 in the midst of business preoccupations and of the annoyance 
 caused by the war. It is said that Erasmus, passing through 
 Venice, called on him, and as he was not duly announced to 
 him, was rather badly received by the powerful printer. All at 
 once, at the name of the distinguished visitor being mentioned, 
 Aldus, for an instant taken aback, rose at once and showed him 
 how highly he appreciated men of letters. 
 
 The war resulted in the alteration of this state of affairs. 
 In 1505 Aldus quitted Venice to travel over the world, and on 
 his return he found himself poorer than when he went away. 
 Andrea Torresani, his father-in-law, came to his aid ; but the 
 great printer had received his death-blow ; and in spite of the 
 activity which he brought to the new establishment, he went 
 from bad to worse until 15 15, when he expired, leaving to his 
 son Paul his affairs in a state of inextricable confusion. 
 
 * Tory in his Cham;pfleury explains thus the mark of Aldus and his device, 
 which was in Greek the "Make haste slowly" of Boileau : "The anchor signifies 
 tardiness, and the dolphin haste, which is to say that in his business he was 
 moderate." 
 
Aldus Manutius. m 
 
 He had early abandoned book illustration to devote himself 
 to the scientific and useful in his publications ; moreover, the 
 size of book chosen by him was badly suited for the introduction 
 of plates ; but other publishers employed artists in the orna- 
 mentation of the Book. Lucantonio Giunta, the most celebrated 
 
 Fig. 65. — Aldus Manutius. 
 
 among them, was at once printer and engraver, a striking 
 example of the affinity of the two trades from their origin. 
 In 1508 Lucantonio Giunta, or Zonta, as he then spelt his 
 name, published a Roman Breviary in large quarto, with twelve 
 engravings in Lombardo-Venetian manner, signed " L. A.," in 
 very good style. The same artist-publisher cut a portrait of 
 
112 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 Virgil for an edition of that poet about 1515. Furthermore, 
 Giunta did not alone illustrate the book from the resources 
 of his own office. Other des-igners lent him their assistance. 
 We find evidence of this in the Bible printed by him in 1519 
 in small octavo. 
 
 The most meritorious of the artists of Venice at this time 
 was John Andrea, known as Guadagnino. He designed the 
 vignettes for Florus s Epitome in T. Livi Hist, lib., and for 
 Areiinus de Prima Bella Punico, printed at Venice for Melchlor 
 
 Fig. 66. — Mark of Lucantonio Giunta, of Venice. 
 
 Sessa and Peter of Ravenna (1520, folio); in 1516 he copied 
 the plates of Diirer's Apocalypse for the edition of Alexander 
 Paganini, of Venice. One of the Venetian works which 
 signalised the beginning of the sixteenth century was the 
 Trionfo di Fortuna of Sigismond Fanti, of Ferrara, printed 
 by Agostino da Portese in 1527. 
 
 Venice was the home of Titian, and at the time which 
 occupies us now, the great artist was at the height of his 
 glory. In 15 18 two brothers, Nicholas and Dominic dal 
 Gesu, published a translation of the celebrated Golden Legend of 
 
Italian Illustrators. 113 
 
 Voragine, the success of which was enormous in France. The 
 plates which were added to the work were manifestly inspired 
 by the school of the Venetian master. Unfortunately the 
 engravers were not always equal to the genius of the drawings. 
 
 To resume, the city of Venice was, at the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century, one of the most prolific in publishers and 
 artists of talent. Since the first establishments of the Germans, 
 typography had successively employed in Venice Nicholas Jenson, 
 a Frenchman, the inventor of the Roman character; Erhard 
 Ratdolt, the first to employ illustrations there; and Aldus 
 Manutius, scholar and printer, whose progress in printing elevated 
 that art to the highest rank among human discoveries ; there 
 were also remarkable engravers and draughtsmen, among others 
 John Andrea and Giunta, without mentioning the anonymous 
 masters of the school of Titian. The part of Venice in the 
 movement was thus great, but it may be explained by the 
 riches of its citizens, the extent of its commerce, and the 
 genius of its own artists. 
 
 If we now return from Venice to the north, to Milan, we 
 find the school of Leonardo da Vinci making itself apparent in 
 the Book. In order of date we will mention the Mysterii Gesta 
 Beaics Veroniccs Virginis, published by Gotardo de Ponte, 15 18, 
 small quarto, with figures in the style of Luini, and Vitrtivius 
 in Italian by Cesariano. On the testimony of the author, the 
 wood engravings in a book of Fra Luca Pacioli, De Divina 
 Proportione, are even attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. But M. 
 Delaborde, in spite of the declaration in the preface of Pacioli, 
 does not believe in the direct collaboration of the master, 
 although M. Passavant does. 
 
 In Germany, Nuremberg continued, with Albert Diirer and 
 the artists of his school, to supply illustrations for books at the 
 
 8 
 
114 The book. 
 
 beginning of the century. The master reprinted his valuable 
 engravings of the Life of the Virgin in 151 1, and also those 
 of the Apocalypse. But after him the art already began 
 to decline; a hundred years later nothing remained of the 
 honour and glory gained by Germany in the commencement. 
 Among the most interesting of the Nuremberg publications is a 
 chivalric poem by Melchior Pfinzing, composed for the marriage 
 of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. As M. Delaborde 
 in his Debuts de r Impriinerie well remarks, this was not a 
 book intended to be sold by a bookseller ; it was a work of art 
 
 
 Fig. 67.— Title of the Theuerdanck. The flourishes of the 
 letters are printed. 
 
 destined originally by an emperor for his friends, and he took 
 care that it should be an unapproachable work. Bold strokes, 
 majestic letters, intertwined ornaments, are here multiplied. Three 
 persons worked upon it for five years ; these were, if we credit 
 Peutinger, Hans Leonard Schaufelein, the painter, Jost Necker, 
 the engraver, and Hans Schonsperger, the printer of Augsburg, 
 who must have changed his native city for Nuremberg. When 
 they were able to take a proof, experts would hardly take it for a 
 book composed in movable characters; they were sure, on the 
 contrary, that it was a true xylograph, cut in wood ; and, in fact, 
 from the title here reproduced, the error was excusable. This 
 
The " Theuerdanck." 
 
 "5 
 
 work, which is now called the Theuerdanck, from the name of 
 the hero of the romance, is ornamented with a number of wood 
 engravings, numbered by Arabic figures. We reproduce one of 
 the last plates, in which Theuerdanck — Maximilian — is con- 
 ducted to the presence of the Queen — Mary of Burgundy. The 
 designs of Schaufelein almost recall the work of Albert Diifer, 
 his master; but, as we said of him, these works, heavy and 
 
 Fig. 68. — Plate taken from the Theuerdanck, representing Maximilian and 
 Mary of Burgundy. Engraved on wood after Schaufelein. 
 
 broad, although very clever, do not always suit as cuts inserted 
 in the text. However, our criticism does not refer so much to 
 the Theuerdanck, where the letters, excessively ornamented and 
 overwhelming, furnish a framework more suitable for the 
 engravings than to other works of a more slender character, 
 where the German plate completely overshadows the text. 
 
 When we have mentioned the Passionale Christi of Lucas 
 
ii6 The Book. 
 
 Cranach, published by Johannes Griinenberg at Wittemberg in 
 152 1 — twenty-six inferior wood engravings — we shall have men- 
 tioned the most important of the interesting and rare volumes 
 published in Germany at the commencement of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 The Netherlands, Spain, and England were working, but 
 without great success. In the Low Countries Plantin and his 
 gigantic enterprises may be recalled. In Spain the taste had 
 hardly developed itself; and although the drawing of illus- 
 trations may be careful enough, the wood-cutting is pitiable. 
 We will mention the Seneca of Toledo in 15 10, and the 
 Chronicle of Aragon in 1523. 
 
 Typography and the illustration of the Book in England 
 in the sixteenth century did not make the same progress as 
 in France and Italy. Much good work was done, but it was 
 mostly with foreign material. Type was obtained from French 
 and Dutch founders, and most of the woodcuts had the same 
 origin. In the early part of the century most of the publica- 
 tions were translations of popular foreign books, such as 
 Voragine's Golden Legend, Caxton's translations of Cicero, 
 Boetius, etc. The numerous restrictions and privileges re- 
 strained the establishment of an English school, which was 
 to come later with the spread of wealth and education. Books 
 were mostly printed in Gothic type, or "black letter," and 
 the woodcuts were of the coarsest kind. An exception was 
 the beautiful Prayer-book of John Day, 1578, known as 
 Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-book, from the fine portrait of the 
 Queen, which we reproduce ; but in this the woodcuts were 
 designed by Albert Durer and Hans Holbein. Pynson was 
 the first to use Roman type in England, in the Oratio in 
 pace nuperrimd, 15 18, quarto; and the first English Bible in 
 
Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-book. 
 
 117 
 
 Roman type was printed at Edinburgh in 1576. It is 
 thought that until about 1600 printers were their own 
 
 Fig, 69. — Portrait of Queen Elizabeth trom the Book cf Christian Praicrs, 
 printed by John Eay, 1578, 
 
 type-founders, as no record exists of founding as a separate 
 trade until that time 
 
 The greatest achievement of the sixteenth century in 
 
ii8 
 
 The Book. 
 
 England was the printing of the first English Bible, in Cover- 
 dale's translation, in 1535, folio, but even this was printed 
 abroad, the latest investigation giving it to Van Meteren at 
 Antwerp. The woodcuts in it are by Hans Sebald Beham ; 
 we reproduce one representing Cain killing Abel. Tyndall had 
 previously printed abroad an English New Testament. Another 
 importation was Brandt's Shyp of Folys, printed by Pynson, 
 1509, and John Cawood, 1570, the woodcuts in both being 
 copied from the originals before referred to. 
 
 Fig. 70. — Woodcut from Coverdale's Bible, 1535. 
 Cain killing Abel. 
 
 The size usually adopted was in folio, and in this size the 
 series of Chronicles appeared : Froissart, by Pynson, in two 
 volumes, 1523-5; Holinshed, in two volumes, 1577 — the 
 first and genuine edition of this chronicle, with numerous 
 woodcuts. In the same size Chaucer was first given to 
 the world entire by T. Godfray in 1532, and many times 
 reprinted, and Sir Thomas More's Works in 1557. Polemical 
 and religious treatises were mostly printed in quarto, as were 
 the poets: Spenser's Faerie Queene, in 1590; Langland's 
 Pierce Plowman, in 1550; and Sidney's Arcadia, in 1590. 
 
The English Printers. iig 
 
 Plays were also printed in quarto, in which shape at the 
 end of the century some of Shakespeare's single plays were 
 issued. 
 
 Richard Grafton, the leading English printer, first printed 
 the English Bible, in an edition of 2,500 copies, at Paris, 
 in connection with Edward Whitchurche (1538-9), which was 
 confiscated by Francis I. ; then Cranmer's Bible, 1539-41 ; Edw. 
 Halle's Chronicle and first Common Prayer Book, 1549; and he 
 also printed Lady Jane Grey's proclamation of the first English 
 Common Prayer Book, known as Edward VI.'s (a copy was sold 
 lately from Lord Crawford's library for ^155). Edward's book is 
 curious as having on the last page a royal order as to the price 
 at which it was to be sold : " No maner of persone shall sell the 
 present Booke vnbounde aboue the price of two shillynges and 
 two pence. And bound- in Forell for \\s. y^d., and not aboue. 
 And the same bound in Shepes Lether for iii^-. \\\d., and not 
 aboue. And the same bounde in paste or in boordes, in 
 Calues Lether, not aboue the price of iiii.f. the pece '' 
 Cranmer's Catechism was printed by Nicholas Hill in 1548, 
 with twenty-nine woodcuts by Hans Holbein, one of which 
 we reproduce, representing Christ casting out devils. 
 
 The Stationers' Company was founded in 1556, in the reign 
 of Queen Mary, and was chiefly composed of printers. By 
 Act of Parliament every book printed in England was to be 
 entered at Stationers' Hall. 
 
 Hugh Singleton established a printing office in the City of 
 London 1553, and was appointed printer to the City of London 
 
 1584. 
 
 Humphrey Powell carried on the first printing office at 
 
 Dublin, 1551-66. 
 
 From the great perfection to which the liturgies, or books 
 
I20 
 
 The Book. 
 
 of hours, had been brought by Vostre, Verard, and others in 
 France, it is not perhaps extraordinary that the service books 
 for EngHsh use should have been mostly printed abroad. 
 Those for Salisbury and York were produced at Paris, Rouen, 
 and Antwerp. A Salisbury Primer in English was printed by 
 John Kyngston and Henry Sutton in 1557, and Wynkyn 
 de Worde printed a York Manual in 1509. 
 
 
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 Fig. 71. — Woodcut by Hans Holbein from Cranmer's 
 Catechism, 1548. 
 
 Translations from the classics were popular, and in the 
 second half of the century arose that passion for voyage and 
 travel which has so largely contributed to the wealth and 
 extension of England. This was begun by Eden's translation 
 of Peter Martyr's Decades of the New World; or, West India, 
 London, 1555, quarto, followed by Hakluyt's Principall A^aviga- 
 tions, Voyage's, and Discoveries, 1589, folio. Many accounts 
 of single voyages and discoveries were issued, and the taste 
 thus created culminated in the establishment of the East India 
 Company in the last year of the century. 
 
 The first specimen of copperplate engraving for books in 
 England is a frontispiece to Galen's De Temperamentis, printed 
 at Cambridge 1521 ; but the number of books containing 
 
THE English Printers. 121 
 
 copperplates engraved before 1600 is extremely limited, the 
 most notable being portraits of Queen Elizabeth, Lord 
 Leicester, and Lord Burleigh in Archbishop Parker's Bible 
 of 1568; Saxton's Atlas, 1579, the first atlas in England; 
 Harrington's translation of Ariosto, 1591, with forty-seven 
 engraved plates. 
 
 The first printer at Cambridge was John Siberch, 1521. 
 Peter of Treves established himself at South wark in 15 14. 
 Among his productions is a Higden's Polychronicon, 1527, 
 folio. John Oswen printed at Ipswich 1538, and among the 
 English towns in which printers established themselves in the 
 century were York, Canterbury, Tavistock, Norwich, and 
 Worcester. 
 
 The establishment of the Reformed Church, and the 
 diffusion of education among the people which followed, created 
 an original English school of literature in the sixteenth century, 
 and this gave employment and great impetus to typography 
 in England, so that by the time we reach the end of the 
 century- we find a great improvement in the art of the Book, 
 to be carried to still greater perfection in the next. 
 
 In France, on the contrary, we find an enormous commerce 
 in books at the commencement of the sixteenth century. All 
 the publishers mentioned in the preceding chapter were still 
 living, and labouring under the effects of the French con- 
 quests in Italy. The dithyrambic literature then inaugurated, 
 and which reached its zenith under Louis XIV., exercised a 
 bad influence equally upon the printers and decorators of the 
 Book. Doubtless the composition of the text and engravings 
 was done hastily, for the great people did not like to wait for 
 this kind of books. Le Vergier d Honneur, written by Octa- 
 vian de St. Gelais and Andry de la Vigne, was thus published 
 
122 The Book. 
 
 about the end of the fifteenth century and ornamented with 
 hasty vignettes, probably at the expense of Antoine Verard. 
 Upon the accession to the throne of Louis XII., Claude de 
 Seyssel, his master of council, composed Les Louenges du Roy 
 Louis XII. in Latin, and soon after translated it into French 
 for the same Verard, who printed it in 1508. 
 
 The taste for the history of the Gauls induced the pub- 
 lishers to reproduce La Mer des Histoires, which had already 
 been published in the fifteenth century ; Thielman Kerver put 
 forth the Compendium of Robert Gaguin in 1500 on account 
 of Durand Gerlier and Jean Petit. The French version of 
 this work was given in 15 14 by Galliot du Pre, with vig- 
 nettes, and afterwards under the name of Mirouer Historial, 
 by Renaud Chaudiere in 1520, by Nyverd, and others; the 
 same with the Rozier Historial, with figures, in 1522 and 1528. 
 Among the most popular works was the Illustrations de la 
 Gaule et Singularitez de Troye, by Jean le Maire de Beiges, 
 printed everywhere in Paris and ornamented. In 15 12 it was 
 published by Geoffroy de Marnef, in 15 15 by Jean and Gilbert 
 de Marnef, by Regnault, by Philippe le Noir (whose curious mark 
 we here reproduce, and who also printed a hundred admoni- 
 tions in four hundred lines of verse, for the guidance of a true 
 knight, viz., Les Cent Hystoires de Troye, 1522, and a Hystoire 
 du Sainct Greaal, 1523), and others, always in the Gothic 
 characters which still prevailed in France at the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century. 
 
 We give from the Illustrations de la Gaule of Jean le Maire 
 an interesting woodcut (Fig. ^i) representing Queen Anne of 
 Brittany as Juno, in which we can without much difficulty trace 
 the hand of a Bourdichon or a Perreal. The truly French style 
 of this figure leaves no doubt as to its origin. At the same 
 
THE French Book Illustrators. 
 
 I -'3 
 
 time, it may possibly have been inspired by tlie Virgin of a 
 German master, say one of 1466, judging from the accessories, 
 and even from the pose. This engraving will be found in the 
 edition of 151 2 of Gilbert de Marnef, in Gothic letter, quarto. 
 On the reverse are the arms and device of Jean le Maire de 
 Beiges. 
 
 The time that elapsed from the death of Louis XI. until the 
 accession of Francis I. — that is to say, from 1483 to 1515 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^h 
 
 ^^^^^^Mfc^ 
 
 ^ps 
 
 »Wfe^^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^^^ 
 
 iOH^^^^^S 
 
 ^m 
 
 ^^S^m 
 
 ^^v^>j^^SKi^S^}'J9h^ 
 
 m 
 
 ^m 
 
 
 
 1^ 
 
 o^^K^ 
 
 
 ^^qj^ji^Bm 
 
 laB 
 
 L.ffi^^^'mK 
 
 
 
 ft 
 
 ^W 
 
 
 SKj!^ 
 
 ?^^1^^^^ "m^ 
 
 
 1 
 
 ^m 
 
 Fig. 72. — Mark of Philippe le Noir, printer at Paris, 1536. 
 
 was, to employ an old expression, the golden age of French 
 printing and illustration. Under Charles VIII. and Louis XII. 
 the designers on wood were not yet affected by the neighbour- 
 ing schools ; neither the accentuated Italian influence nor 
 the German processes had reached them ; they reproduced 
 what they saw, and they did it in their own fashion and 
 manner, without foreign influence. Neither did the kings 
 ignore them, for Louis XII. preserved to the printers of the 
 
124 
 
 The Book. 
 
 university all their rights and privileges in a magniloquent 
 ■ordinance, in which the art of typography was extolled in the 
 
 fig, 72. — Vignette taken from the Illustrations de la Gaule et Singularitez de Troye. 
 Queen Anne of Brittany as Juno. 
 
 highest terms. It restores to them all the advantages they 
 had lost. For instance, it recites, "In consideration of the great 
 
The French Book Illustrators. 125, 
 
 benefit that has come to our kingdom by means of the art and 
 science of printing, the invention of which seems more Divine 
 than human, which, thanks to God, has been invented and found 
 in our time by the help and industry of booksellers, by which 
 our holy Catholic faith has been greatly augmented and 
 strengthened, justice better understood and administered, and 
 Divine service more honourably and diligently made, said, and 
 celebrated, ... by means of which our kingdom precedes 
 all others," etc., etc. (Blois, 9th April, 15 13). 
 
 Certainly Louis made the best of himself and his kingdom 
 
 Fig. 74. — Mark of Franfois Juste, printer at Lyons, 
 1526. Printer of i?ad«/ms. 
 
 in this preamble, but it must be recognised that France already 
 held a predominant rank in the new industry, and that except 
 from the Italians she had no fear of serious rivalry. '' The school 
 of ornamentists made constant progress, not to forget Guillaume 
 Eustace, who published some very fine works, missals and 
 books of hours, with woodcuts ; and Francois Juste, the 
 printer of Rabelais and a translation of Sebastian Brandt's La 
 Grad nef des folz dn Monde. Before the] books of hours, the 
 booksellers contented themselves with miserable blocks, placed 
 side by side, forming a framework of good and bad together ;. 
 but after Simon Vostre, Verard, and the others they had 
 
126 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 remarkably improved. The borders, at least in the books of 
 hours, had become the principal part of the book; they were 
 composed of flowers, architectural, complicated, and simple sub- 
 jects, all of perfect taste and extreme elegance ; and, as we have 
 observed with regard to the representation of Anne of Brittany 
 in the Illustrations de la Gaule, the figure subjects were no 
 longer mechanical, commonplace, and tiresome blocks, but. 
 
 Fig. 75. — Mark of Guillaume Eustace, 1517, 
 binder and bookseller at Paris. 
 
 on the contrary, more often works specially designed and 
 engraved by artists of merit. 
 
 Geoffroy Tory, born at Bourges in 1480, continued after 
 Vostre and Verard the onward march of illustration of the 
 Book. He was a sort of encyclopaedist, who knew and fore- 
 saw everything, but with a singularly subtler and finer genius 
 than his predecessors. There is now very little doubt that by 
 
Geoffroy Tory. 
 
 127 
 
 trade Tory was an engraver and printer. However, he pub- 
 lished with Jean Petit one of his first volumes, The Geography 
 of Pomponius Mela, in 1507, and Gilles de Gourmont printed 
 it. Tory was thus an erudite and diffusive commentator. 
 
 Fig. 76. — Title of the Entree d'Eleonore .d'Antriche a 
 Paris, by Guillaume Bochetel. Printed by Geoffroy 
 Tory in May, 1531, quarto. 
 
 He published later a book with poor engravings, entitled, 
 Valerii Probi Grammatici Opusculum, 1510, waiting until his 
 good star should place him on the right road. 
 
 He had for his mark, say the bibliographers, the cross of 
 
128 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 Lorraine (|), small enough to be lost in the ornamentation of 
 his plates. In fact this sign is to ' be found again in Tory's 
 mark— the " Pot Casse "—the broken jar— and also sometimes in 
 the letter G, which was his ordinary signature. This opinion, 
 which we will not try to contradict in a popular work like this, 
 appears to us to err, as others used this mark, as may be 
 judged from the essentially different touches of engravings bear- 
 ing the cross of Lorraine, and particularly those of Woeriot in 
 the middle of the century. 
 
 Fig. 77.— Mark of Geoffrey Tory, 
 printer at Paris, 1529. 
 
 If M. A. Bernard* may be crediteJ, Geoffroy Tory culti- 
 vated all the sciences with equal success. For our purpose, 
 suffice it to assign to him the first place in the art of decora- 
 tion of books of hours. Doubtless his travels in Italy 
 had contributed to modify his taste and to draw hirri aside 
 from the sober and simple manner that then characterised 
 French engraving ; but he nevertheless preserved the indelible 
 
 * Geoffroy Tory, Peintre et Graveur, Premier Imprimeur Royal, R&formateur 
 de r Orthogra;phe et de la Typographie : Paris, 1857, 8vo. 
 
Geoffroy Tory. 
 
 129 
 
 traces of his original style, in the same way as some people can- 
 not divest themselves of their provincial accent. The Heures de 
 
 Ominc.ne in furore 
 
 ruoarguas me:neq; 
 
 in ira tua cornpias 
 
 me. 
 
 M iferere mei dbmi= 
 
 ne, quor^ia infirmus 
 
 fiim:|ana me dominc, quoniam con= 
 
 rurbara funt oiTa mca. 
 
 Eit anjma mca turbara eft valdc : fed 
 
 cu domine vfquequo'' 
 
 Cionuertcrc dominc,& ctipc animam 
 
 meam: faiuum mc fac pi'opter mi(e= 
 
 ricordiamtuam. 
 
 Qwoniam non eft in mortfc . qui me= 
 
 mor fit rui:in inferno auce, quis con= 
 
 fitebitur ribi 
 
 L.aboraifi in gemitu mco.lauabo per 
 
 fingulas nodtes Icdii meum, lachry* 
 
 mismeisftrarum meum rigabo. 
 
 yurbatus ^ft a furore oculus nicus. 
 
 Fig. 78. — Full page of the Heures of Simon de Coliner, by Tory. 
 
 la Vierge, which he designed, and which he had engraved about 
 1520, for account of Simon de Colines, is marvellously surrounded 
 by ornaments, until then unknown in France ; at the same time, 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 and in spite of other tendencies, it is purely a French work, and 
 the specimen given here is a convincing proof. We should 
 not here omit to mention the remarkable collection of Voyages, 
 in fact the first which deserves this designation, printed by 
 
 Fig. 79. — Heures of Geoffioy Tory. The Circumcision. 
 
 Simon de Colines, under the title of Extrait ou Recueil des 
 toles nouvellement troitvees en la grand mer Oceane on temps du 
 roy Despaigne Ferndd et Elisabeth sa femme (1532). This 
 rare work fetched at the Beckford Sale _;^ 126. 
 
 Geoffroy Tory wrote a curious book, half poetic and half 
 
Geoffroy Tory. 131 
 
 learned, in which he studied at the same time the form of the 
 letter from the typographic and the emblematic point of view, 
 and also the French orthography of the time. He tells us himself 
 that he set about to commence this book on the twelfth night, 
 1523, when, after a frugal repast, he was, he says, "dreaming 
 on my bed and revolving my memory, thinking of a thousand 
 little fancies, serious and gay, among which I thought of some 
 
 SDECOLINES 
 
 Fig. 80. — Mark of Simon de Colines, 
 printer at Paris, 1527. 
 
 antique letters that I had made for Monseigneur the treasurer 
 for war. Master Jehan Grolier, councillor and secretary of our 
 lord the King, amateur of fine letters and of all learned per- 
 sonages." Tory called his book Champfieury, atiquel est conienu 
 Hart et science de la deue proportion des lettres . . . selon le corps 
 et le visage humain, and he published it himself in small folio, 
 putting upon it the sign of Gilles de Gourmont, in 1529. 
 
 In reality Tory had been fascinated by the theories of 
 
132 
 
 The Book. 
 
 Dtlrer on the proportions of the human body ; for he says, 
 "Albert Diirer, the noble German painter, is greatly to be 
 praised in that he has so well brought his skill in painting to 
 
 Fig. 8l. — Heures of Simon de Colines, with the mark of 
 the Cross of Lorraine. 
 
 bear on the designing of geometrical forms, the ramparts of 
 war, and the proportions of the human body." He wished thus 
 to mdicate to his contemporaries the true measure of letters, 
 "the number of points and turns of the compass that each 
 
Geoffroy Tory. 
 
 133 
 
 one requires." The most amusing part of this curious treatise 
 is his short academical preface, where, with sportive fancy, 
 the great publisher studies the orthography of his time, and 
 exclaims against the coiners of new words, the Latinisers of the 
 language, "the skimmers of Latin, jesters and gibberers, . . . 
 who mock not only their shadows, but themselves." The 
 entire passage was copied by Rabelais, nearly literally, and he 
 
 Fig. 82. — Emblematical letter Y, taken from 
 the Champfleury of Geoffroy Tory. 
 
 indicates that its author was possessed of good sense, which, 
 unhappily, all his contemporaries were not. 
 
 He added to his theories a number of designs of geometrical 
 letters, technically considered, but he was afterwards carried 
 away in the train of the Greeks and Romans, as was then 
 the fashion, perhaps a little further than he meant, losing him- 
 self in a crowd of idle dissertations. To these geometrical 
 engravings he added small and charming figures, which he said 
 were by Jean Perreal, as well as emblematical letters of the 
 
134 The Book. 
 
 nature of the Y which is here given, with explanatory , text 
 and commentary. His Y had two branches : one of virtue 
 and the other of vice ; that of virtue carries palms, crowns, a 
 sceptre, and a book ; that of vice, birches, a dagger, a gallows, 
 and fire. 
 
 With the importance that cannot be denied to his works, 
 Geoffroy Tory founded a school ; and it w^as from his work- 
 shop that the plates came for the book of Paulus Jovius on 
 the dukes of Milan, published by Robert Estienne in' 1549, 4to. 
 The portraits of the dukes in this work have been attributed to 
 Tory himself, but he died in 1533, and there is not the least 
 indication that he engraved these sixteen portraits with his 
 own hand sixteen years before their publication. Besides, 
 our doubt as to the cross of Lorraine being the exclusive 
 signature of Tory, as has been believed, leads us to think it the 
 collective mark of a workshop, for we meet it on works long 
 after the death of the master. As a proof, the mark is found 
 on the engravings of L' Entree du Roi a Pans (Roffet in 4to) 
 in 1549, which cannot be taken as a posthumous work of Tory, 
 for these engravings had their origin at a certain particular 
 date. But in spite of the absence of the monogram, the 
 admirable block from the Diodorus Siculus of Antoine Macault 
 might, from its design and engraving, be considered as by Tory 
 himself. Holbein — who, about the same time, designed a some- 
 what similar scene, where the King of France, seated on 
 a throne, received poison from the hands of Death — never did 
 anything better. Within the scanty proportions of the design, all 
 the figures are portraits. Duprat, Montmorency and the three 
 sons of the King may be recognised; Macault, on the left, is 
 reading his translation to a circle of nobles and men of letters. 
 This admirable woodcut, too little known, is one of the truest and 
 
GE.OFFROY TORY. 
 
 13s 
 
 most skilful of the monuments of French engraving ; it is equal 
 to the best inventions of Holbein, which have never exceeded 
 it, and it marks the culminating point of the illustration of the 
 
 Fig. 83. — Macault reading to Francis I. his translation of Diodorus Siculus. 
 Wood engraving attributed to Tory. 
 
 Book before the exaggerations of the school of Fontainebleau. 
 Geoffroy Tory was not the publisher. The Diodorus Siculus, 
 doubtless prepared two or three years before, was not published 
 
136 THE Book. 
 
 until 1535, in quarto, with his ordinary mark of the Pot 
 CassS. The original magnificent manuscript on vellum, from 
 the Hamilton collection, of this celebrated book, with the minia- 
 tures by Geoffrey Tory, was sold lately for the sum of ^1,000. 
 We have now arrived through him to the middle of the 
 reign of Francis I., who was called the father of letters, and 
 who for various reasons favoured the arts. Doubtless grand 
 paintings and the decoration of the royal palaces attracted him 
 more than vignettes in books or the efforts of printers ; but, 
 at the same time, books interested him. He studied much, and 
 even had books sent after him in his travels. An account in 
 the French National Archives shows that Claude Chappuis, his 
 librarian, and bookseller, packed entire cases, which were sent 
 after him to Dauphin^ at the time of the wars of Piedmont, 
 the carriage costing twenty livres tournois. Francis was 
 subject, moreover, to sudden outbreaks of curious fits of 
 wantonness and mischief It was perceived a little later 
 that the doctrines of Luther were propagated by the Book ; 
 and the Sorbonne was up in arms. She even attempted to 
 impose her own expurgated text of the Bible on the publishers, 
 to the exclusion of all others. Theodore Beza, an enemy of the 
 Sorbonnists, said with regard to this, with all the amenity 
 which characterizes him : 
 
 " Nos grandz docteurs au ch6rubin visage 
 Ont d^fendu qu'homme n'ait plus a voir 
 La Saincte Bible en vulgaire language 
 Dont un chascun peut congnoissance avoir ; 
 Car, disent ils, d^sir de tout savoir 
 N'engendre rien qu'erreur, peur et souci . 
 Arguo sic, s'il en est doncques ainsi 
 Que pour I'abus il faille oster ce' livre, 
 II est tout Clair qu'on leur devroit aus'si 
 Oster la vin dont chascun d'eux s'enivre." 
 
ROBERT ESTIENNE. 1 37 
 
 This piece is only cited to show to what lengths matters 
 had gone, thanks to printing. It is very certain that all the 
 pamphlets, placards, and other horrors published to raise 
 religious warfare, did not at all further the progress of the 
 Book. The king was not, however, indifferent to the technical 
 question ; books merited encouragement, at least as much as 
 chastisement, and besides, as time passed on, gradually trans- 
 formed men and ideas. In spite of his apparent severities, was 
 not the King himself a little affected by coming in contact 
 with the new religion, like his sister Marguerite, or his sister- 
 in-law, Renee of Ferrara ? 
 
 Fig. 84. — Robert Estienne, after the engraving 
 in the Chronologie Cottee. 
 
 However that may be, he twice showed himself a resolute 
 partisan of the celebrated Robert Estienne, son-in-law and 
 associate of Simon de Colines, whose work in point of erudition 
 and typography assumed from day to day more importance. 
 Robert Estienne had the great honour of being chosen from 
 all his contemporaries by King Francis as the royal printer. 
 This prince had ordered him to have engraved by Claude 
 Garamond, after the caligraphic design of Ange Vergece, the 
 first cutter of matrices of his time, a special Greek character in 
 three sizes, which was used in 1544 to compose the Ecclesias- 
 tical History of Eusebius. These were the famous royal types 
 — typi regii — the use of which Estienne did not fail to mention 
 
138 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 on the title-pages of his works. These types gave room for 
 reflection and something to write about, since Francis I. founded 
 the Royal Printing House, but the truth is that Estienne kept 
 these characters in his own office for use in the royal editions ; 
 and they may now be seen in the Imprimerie Nationale at 
 Paris, where they are kept. 
 
 Robert Estienne married the daughter of Josse Badius of 
 Asch—Badms Ascencianus, one of the first Parisian typographers 
 
 Fig. 85. — Mark of Robert Estienne, printer at Paris, 1541. 
 
 of the time. We reproduce the mark of Badius (Fig. 87), 
 representing the interior of a printing house, and shall return 
 in a special chapter to the functions of these workshops. 
 Meantime it appeared proper to present to the reader a 
 printing office at the time of Robert Estienne and Geoffioy 
 Tory. 
 
 Robert Estienne does not appear to have concerned himself 
 much about the decoration of the Book. The purity of the 
 text and the characters were essentials with him, erudition, and 
 
ROBERT ESTIENNE. 
 
 139' 
 
 not art. He published many works in Latin and Greek, among 
 them the Thesaurus, a great Latin dictionary published in 
 1532, also a Bible, with notes by Vatable, revised by Leon de 
 Juda. Hence his trouble! Leon de Juda being a partisan 
 of Zwingli, the Sorbonne accused the Bible of leaning towards, 
 the Huguenots; Francis L took the part of Estienne, but 
 when that prince died Estienne fled to Geneva, where he was. 
 accused of having taken the royal types with him. The truth 
 was that he simply carried off the matrices. 
 
 Kig, 86. — Mark of Francois Estienne, printer at Paris, 1538. 
 
 At this time everything served for the decoration of the 
 Book : there were portraits, blazons, topographical plates, 
 costumes, and emblems. Small portraits engraved on wood 
 usually ornamented the works of the poets, like that of Nicholas 
 Bourbon, for example, a marvel of truth and skill. The blocks 
 of frontispieces in the folios were multiplied ; large initial 
 letters, ingeniously engraved and stippled, like that at the 
 commencement of this chapter, were used. Jacques Kerver 
 reproduced in 154S for himself, and with plates made for him, 
 
140 
 
 The Book. 
 
 the famous Songe de Foliphile, published by Aldus in 1499. 
 The widow of the publisher Denis Janot, Jeanne de Marnef, 
 published one of the most delightful books of the time, 
 L' Amour de Cupidon et de Psyche of Apuleius, with delicious 
 figures on wood after Italian engravings. How many more 
 might we not name in the extraordinary profusion of charming 
 books ! 
 
 Without entering into detail, something must be said about 
 
 Fig. 87.— Printing office of Josse Badius at tlie 
 commencement of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Lyons, then a most extensive and prosperous centre of book- 
 selling. Lyons had the signal honour of being the first to 
 publish in France the celebrated cuts of the Dance of Death of 
 Holbein, the Basle painter. Doubtless Treschel, the printer, was 
 not the first, although a copy of a German edition is not known, 
 because in the Lyons edition the cuts are already worn and 
 broken. However, the Cabinet d'Estampes of Paris has some 
 of the figures of the Dance with a German text, probably 
 printed from the type of Froben at Basle. Treschel's title was 
 
The School of Basle. 
 
 141 
 
 Les Simtdachres et Historides Faces de la Mort atitant elegam- 
 ment pourtraictes que artificiellement imaginees, and the volume 
 in quarto was printed by Frelon. The Icones veteris Testa- 
 menti, which preceded the publication of the Dance of Death, 
 had also been printed at Basle with those of Lyons, as M. 
 Georges Duplessis states in a notice on the different editions 
 of this work. 
 
 With Holbein, as with Geoffroy Tory, we arrive at the 
 
 Fig. 88. — Portrait of Nicholas Bourbon. Wood engraving 
 of the commencement ot the sixteentli century. 
 
 zenith of illustration and marvellous skill of the engraver. 
 It was Hans Lutzelburger who cut the blocks after the designs 
 of the Basle master, but, if we were to institute comparisons, 
 contrary to what generally happens, the translator reaches 
 almost to the height of his model ; the line is perfection itself, 
 it is precise and intelligent, simple, and, withal, explicit. If the 
 work of Lutzelburger be admitted, it must also be admitted 
 that Holbein designed his cuts on wood before 1526, the date 
 of the death of the Basle engraver, for it was immediately before 
 
142 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 1526 that Holbein lived in Basle, and it was afterwards that 
 he travelled. We can add nothing to the universal praise of 
 the book of Treschel, of Lyons ; every detail has been written of 
 Holbein, and repetitions are unnecessary. We would ask the 
 reader to compare the Francis I. of Tory and the King in 
 Holbein's Dance of Death ; there is a certain family resemblance 
 between the two cuts, which is a singular honour for Tory. 
 At the commencement of the century Basle must have had 
 
 Fig. 89.— King and Death. Vignette from the 
 Dance of Death by Holbein. 
 
 a school of Formschneiders working for export. Besides the 
 numerous products used at Lyons, it had also a trade in cliches, 
 illustrations, which, having been used, were sold again. Among 
 these exchanges of engravings were many plates of Brandt's 
 ■Ship of Fools, sold in 1520 to Galliot du Pre, publisher, of 
 Paris, who used them in the Eloge de la Folic of Erasmus. 
 It must be admitted that these blocks had a singular life, and 
 -a great success, for Galliot du Pre builds his hopes upon them : 
 
ALciATfs Emblems. 143 
 
 " Va et cours selon tes fortunes, 
 FoUie ! simulant tes faces ; 
 Mais quelques choses que tu fasses, 
 Rapporte force de p6cunes." 
 
 The reign of Francis I. saw a great advance in the national 
 art of illustration. The arrival at the court of Italian artists 
 of the decadence, such as Rosso and Primaticcio, produced a 
 revolution in taste. The exaggerated slightness of the figures 
 brought by these artists from beyond the Alps was considered 
 as of supreme distinction ; one saw in their twisted draperies 
 and mannered poses some undefined and precious beauty that 
 tempted the ready intelligence of the court of France. The 
 simple and ingenuous figures of the old French artists were 
 ranked among the refuse of another age, and their compositions 
 were regarded with contempt, and deemed antique. 
 
 The rage for emblems and for allegories and mythological 
 figures generally was well suited to these eccentric and bizarre 
 inventions. On the other hand, an entire class of artists or 
 artisans, book illustrators first, then enamellers and jewellers, 
 seized on these Italian models, with which the King encum- 
 bered his galleries, and which, at great expense, covered the 
 walls of Fontainebleau. One can understand what skilful men 
 could make of such a movement and of so thoughtless an 
 infatuation. The publishers put themselves to work, and 
 composed works of which the sale was assured from the 
 ideas that they furnished to other designers. This explains 
 the quantity of Alciati's Emblems and Ovid's Metamorphoses, 
 published at Lyons and Paris, and copied and recopied by the 
 art industries of the time Without it the enormous success 
 of such mediocre productions as the Emblems, in which the 
 meaning of the enigma or rebus cannot always be graspd, is ill 
 
144 
 
 IHE BOOK. 
 
 understood. It was Alciati who made this literature the fashion. 
 He was a sort of Epicurean jurisconsult and miser, at once a 
 Gargantua and a Harpagon, who had as many lords and 
 
 Fig. 90.- Page of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by Petit Bernard. Edition of 1564. 
 
 masters on earth, as there were kings and princes who would 
 bid against each other to engage him. He had quitted Italy, 
 seduced by the offers of Francis I., but when Sforza paid him 
 
''Le Petit Bernard." 145 
 
 a larger sum, he returned, giving as reason for his vacillation 
 that the sun had to travel round the earth and warm it by its 
 rays ; this was an emblematic answer, for his emblems had all 
 the coarse, sceptical, facetious humour of which few were then 
 the dupes. At most these philosophical aphorisms, when they 
 represented to be serious, have their droll side in that their 
 author often practised the reverse of his teaching. A miser 
 himself, he abuses the avaricious ; leaving his country for the 
 love of gain, he blames those to whom " a better condition is 
 offered by foreigners." Yet he is sometimes logical and consis- 
 tent, as when he assures us that " poverty hinders genius to 
 succeed," and when, finally, lover of good cheer, he died of 
 indigestion in 1550. 
 
 His book of Emblems had a vogue that lasted until the 
 seventeenth century, and repetitions were infinitely multiplied : 
 at Paris by Wechel in 1534; at Lyons by Hans de Tornes, 
 who came from Suabia, one of the greatest Lyons publishers ; 
 by Roville, also one of the first Lyons publishers, and by 
 Bonhomme ; at Venice by the Alduses ; in fact, everywhere, 
 translated into French, . Spanish, and Italian. 
 
 Bernard Salomon, called Le Petit Bernard, born at Lyons, 
 was one of the designers of the school of Fontainebleau — that 
 is to say, of the Franco- Italian school of which we have 
 spoken above — who furnished many of the engravings for 
 books printed at Lyons. He illustrated the edition of Alciati's 
 Emblems published by Bonhomme in 1560 ; and designed 
 skilful little plates, which, with the text, were surrounded by 
 a border from the workshop of Geoffroy Tory, for Ovid's 
 Metamorphoses, published by Hans de Tornes in 1564. 
 Bernard had all the defects and all the good qualities of those 
 of his time, from Jean Cousin to the least of them ; he was 
 
 10 
 
146 THE BOOK. 
 
 a Primaticcio on a small scale, but agreeably so. His designs 
 for the New Testament were also very careful, but in them 
 more than elsewhere the manner and the affectation of the 
 school of Fontainebleau are apparent. 
 
 Fig. gi.—Portraits of Madeleine, Queen of Scotland, and of Marguerite, Duchess of Savoy 
 after the originals of Cornelis of Lyons. 
 
 The workshops of the second city of France, we see, had 
 at this time attained considerable importance ; but before the 
 books of which we are about to speak, Roville published two 
 anonymous books, one L Entree du Rot Henri II. a Lyon, in 
 
 Fig. 92. — Portraits of Francis, Dauphin, and of Charles, Duke of Angoiileme, after the originals 
 of Cornelis of Lyons. Woodcuts taken from Roville's Promptuaire des Medailles. 
 
 1549, ornamented with very graceful woodcuts, the other the 
 Promptuaire des Mddailles, comprising a series of charming por- 
 traits under the guise of reproductions from the antique. The 
 designs of the Entree are often attributed to Jean Cousin, as 
 
CORNELIS DE LA HAVE. 
 
 147 
 
 it is a rule with certain amateurs to give a known name to a 
 work ; but it must be remembered that Lyons then had cele- 
 brated artists, the Petit-Bernard, alluded to above, and Cornells 
 de la Haye, of whom we shall have more to say ; and it is 
 therefore not necessary to go to Paris or to Rome to find 
 the author of these illustrations. 
 
 Cornells de la Haye was a painter who executed nearly the 
 
 Fig. 93. — Captain of foot, from the Entree de Henri II. a Lyon, i549- 
 
 same work as Fran9ois Clouet in Paris, portraits on panel, in a 
 clear and harmonious tone, then much the fashion. During a 
 journey of the King, he had, if Brantome may be credited, 
 portrayed the entire court, keeping the sketches for himself 
 Ten or fifteen years after, Catherine de Medicis, passing 
 through Lyons, saw these portraits again and highly praised 
 them, recognising her old costumes, wondering at the courtiers 
 
148 THE Book. 
 
 of the day, who had never seen her in such attire. This artist 
 is now known, thanks to various works that have been found, 
 among others two portraits of the sons of Francis I., preserved 
 by Gaignieres, who attributed them resolutely to Cornelis, 
 doubtless on the faith of inscriptions that have disappeared. 
 Both of them were engraved on wood at Lyons, and published 
 in Roville's book the Promptuaire des Me dailies, mentioned 
 above, with small differences of detail altogether insignificant. 
 It is not impossible then that Cornelis designed these portraits 
 and that they were drawn by him on wood after the cabinet 
 models spoken of by Brantome. The delicate figures of the 
 Promptuaire are the work of a master ; the differences men- 
 tioned are those of the artist, not of the copyist, who would 
 not be permitted to make any alterations. It is the first time, 
 we believe, that these comparisons have been made ; they will 
 perhaps help the learned Lyonnais to pierce the mystery, but 
 in any case our suppositions are more favourable to Cornelis 
 de la Haye than to the fancies of Robert Dumesnil [Peinlre- 
 graveur Frangais, tome vi., p. 343). To judge by the four 
 little medallions here reproduced (Figs. 91,. 92) the art of 
 engraving on wood was rarely more skilful than in these 
 portraits. What is there astonishing if a man like Cornelis 
 had designed the figures of the Entree de Henri II. ? In any 
 case, why should we choose Jean Cousin rather than Le 
 Petit-Bernard ? At this time, we know, the kings had their 
 ordinary painters in their suite ; but we do not know that 
 Jean Cousin ever followed the court to Lyons in 1549, as he 
 did not hold an official position, like Clouet. 
 
 This artist, however, produced well-authenticated works ; 
 one of them is signed and initialed, and leaves no doubt it is 
 the Livre de Perspective de Jehan Cousin Senonois, Maistre 
 
Jean Cousin. 
 
 149 
 
 Painctre, published in 1560 by Jean le Royer, printer to the 
 King for mathematics. This profession of printer for mathe- 
 matics had its difficulties of engraving, for Le Royer tells us 
 in his preface that he had himself to finish the plates com- 
 menced by Albin Olivier. In another practical treatise, entitled 
 Livre de Portraiture, published in 1593, Jean Cousin is styled 
 
 Fig. 94. — Title of Jean Cousin's Livre de Portraiture, published in 1593 by Le Clerc. 
 (The spot on the title is in the original, preserved among the prints of the Bibliotheque Nationale.) 
 
 " peintre giometrien." It is beyond doubt that this master 
 produced figures and ornaments for many works, but what books 
 were they? The custom was then to repeat the engraved 
 borders of titles, the compartments, that is to say, the passe- 
 partout, in the middle of which the text was printed. Cousin 
 must have designed many of these title-pages on wood, for 
 that of the Livre de Portraiture affords a curious element of 
 
150 The Book. 
 
 comparison ; but he was not by any means the inventor. In 
 1555 was sold at Antwerp a book printed from engraved 
 plates after John Vriedman, by Gerard Juif, which is simply 
 a collection of compartments for title-pages for the use of 
 publishers. 
 
 It is about this time that metal plates may be seen in con- 
 junction with wood engraving in the illustration of the Book, 
 and the best artists soon attached their names to important 
 publications of this kind. We have explained in a former 
 chapter in what this process is least convenient in the impres- 
 sion of a book. In fact, two successive printings, that of the 
 plates and that of the text, were additional trouble and a 
 frequent cause of errors ; but wood-cutting was in some measure 
 abandoned in the middle of the sixteenth century, especially 
 for separate plates, and engraved plates took a considerable 
 importance under different artistic influences. The first was the 
 facility of etching a metal plate compared to the difficulty of 
 cutting a wood block. It thus naturally happened that the 
 artists of the burin wished to employ their art in illustration, 
 and taste was soon drawn to the new process. 
 
 In France the first volume of this kind was printed at 
 Lyons, in 1488, by Topie de Pymont in folio : this was the 
 Peregrinations en Terre Sainte of Bernard de Breydenbach, 
 with figures on engraved plates copied from the Mayence 
 edition of i486. Since, then, this process was abandoned until 
 about 1550, as much for the reasons given above as for others, 
 we only meet with a stray plate in a book now and again, 
 which remains as a bait, and has but little reference to the text. 
 Under the reign of Henry II. the smallness of the volumes did 
 not always admit of wood engravings, and the artists in copper 
 found a footing among illustrators ; they made attempts, such as 
 
Peter Woe riot. 151 
 
 that of the Histoire de Jason of Rene Boivin in 1563, which 
 brought about under Charles IX. a charming volume of en- 
 graved plates by P. Woeriot. 
 
 The Emblems of Georgette de Montenay were also in the 
 nonsensical style of those by Alciati, but they had an advan- 
 tage, as the author assures us : — 
 
 " Alciat fist des emblemes exquis, 
 Lesquels, voyant de plusieurs requis, 
 Desir me prist de comraencer les miens, 
 Lesquels je croy estre premiers chrestiens." 
 
 This pretension does not make them more intelligible, but 
 the engravings of Woeriot, unskilful as they are, import an 
 element of interest which makes the rest passable. It was 
 also at Lyons, the rival and often the master of Paris in 
 typography, that the author printed his work. 
 
 By the privilege dated 1566, five years before publication, 
 we see that it empowered Peter Woeriot, engraver to the Duke 
 of Lorraine, to portray, engrave, and cut in copper the said 
 figures called emblems for the time and terms of five years 
 (October i8th, 1566). Peter Woeriot sometimes signed his 
 prints with the small Lorraine cross adopted by Geoffroy Tory's 
 workshop, as may be seen in our engraving. 
 
 Copperplate engraving had by this time established itself, 
 and the works that were so illustrated increased. The archi- 
 tect, Du Cerceau, published his admirable collection of Les 
 Plus Beaux Bastiments de France in folio 1576-79, in which 
 he had lavished numerous plans and views of the royal and 
 princely castles. Thevet put forth his Cosmogrctphie Universelle 
 and his Hommes Illustres, the latter adorned with skilfully en- 
 graved portraits. In Paris the publishers Mamert Patisson, who 
 married the widow of Robert Estienne, the type and mark of 
 
152 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 whom he took, Adrien le Roy, and Robert Ballard, his confreres, 
 published the celebrated Ballet Comique de la Royne Faict aux 
 Nopces de Monsietir le Dtic de Joyeuse, composed by Balthasar 
 de Beaujoyeux, page to Henry III.; and in this book, in which 
 were thrown slight etchings, the King displayed all his im- 
 modesty and lasciviousness. The Book has often had the uncon- 
 scious mission of transmitting to posterity the unworthiness of 
 
 Fig- 95.— Engraving by P. Woeriot for Georgette de Montenay's EmbUmes. 
 
 its author or of its heroes. From this time the Book has left 
 its golden age to enter into the vanities of courtiers and 
 political abstractions. 
 
 Among the publications opposed to the Government of the 
 time, the two associates Jacques Tortorel and Jean Perrissin, 
 of Lyons, had published a celebrated collection of plates on the 
 religious wars that stained the reign of Charles IX. with blood. 
 At first engraved on metal, these plates were worn out, and 
 
The Portrait in the Book. 153 
 
 were gradually replaced by others engraved on wood, on which 
 several artists worked, among them Jacques le Challeux and 
 also Jean de Gourmont, one of the most celebrated wood- 
 cutters of the sixteenth century. This was a work composed 
 of single leaves in folio size, which had an extraordinary sale 
 among the religious people of the time. 
 
 At the same time, illustration on wood did not stand still. 
 The portraits of authors produced by the pencil of Clouet and 
 his school were commonly put at the head of their works. We 
 cannot say whether Clouet himself designed the portraits of 
 Tiraqueau and of Taillemont in 1553 ; of Du Billon, the author 
 of the Fort Inexpugnable, in 1555 ; Papon and Ambroise Pare 
 in 1561 ; Grevin, Ramus, and others ; but the precision of 
 these physiognomies recalls the peculiar manner of the French 
 artists of the sixteenth century. The Poems of Ronsard in 
 1586 contains a series of very clever portraits, among them 
 that of Muret, his commentator, one of the most perfect 
 of its kind. Christopher de Savigny, author of the Tableaux 
 Accomplis de Tons les Arts Liberaux, published by Jean and 
 Frangois de Gourmont in 1587, is represented at full length in 
 the frontispiece of his work, offering the book to the Due de 
 Nevers, to whom it was dedicated. This plate in folio, pro- 
 bably engraved by Jean de Gourmont, is the best finished that 
 can be seen. The work of Savigny, forgotten as it may be 
 now, had a great reputation in its own time ; and Bacon took 
 from it the idea of his celebrated cyclopaedia, Advancement of 
 Learning: London. 
 
 Speaking of the Due de Nevers, it will not be without 
 interest to our readers to mention here a manuscript found 
 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, which enables us to give an 
 account of the work then necessary for the publication of an 
 
154 The Book. 
 
 illustrated book. In 1577 the Duke arranged for the impression 
 of an apologetic book, of which, however, no trace remains ; 
 and his intendant writes a long letter to him on the subject 
 of composition and bindings. It was necessary that the work 
 should be produced quickly, bound and gilt, for presents. The 
 intendant thinks calf would be the most expeditious covering. 
 "It would be much the best to use black or red calf, . . . 
 well gilt above, and not vellum, which is a thin parchment 
 that quickly shrinks." The statements of this man of business 
 show that five proofs of each sheet were taken for typo- 
 graphical correction, and that twelve full days were wanted 
 for the binding, The most interesting part of this memoir is 
 that which treats of the engraving on wood of the portrait. 
 The plate was designed by an artist who had afterwards gone 
 away. If it was not satisfactory, but the ornaments would 
 pass, the intendant proposes to "fix a little piece of wood 
 in the block for another portrait to be drawn upon." Here 
 we see correction by elimination. " The pear- wood on which 
 the original figure was engraved was to be taken out and substi- 
 tuted by another piece of wood of harder material. The 
 portrait of the Duchesse de Nevers was better, yet the 
 pear-wood had given way under the work. That of 
 Madame is more passable. Nevertheless, there is still some- 
 thing to say to one eye. The wood cannot carry the 
 subtlety of the line." Here, in a few clear and explicit 
 lines by a man of the time, we see the arrangement of a 
 publication of the sixteenth century, at a time when wood 
 engraving was declining, to give way to engraving on metal, 
 which was soon to reign supreme, through the most important 
 publishing house of the century, the Plantins of Antwerp. 
 Christopher Plantin, like Jenson, came originally from 
 
Christopher Plantin. 155 
 
 Tours. After having learned his art with Mace at Caen, he 
 went to Paris, from which the wars soon drove him. He left 
 for the Low Countries, and there Philip II. nominated him as 
 chief printer — architypographus. Established at Antwerp in 
 
 toaxHU 'U^rnic Jai- 
 
 <^~Vincis iGrni pateris , PCmtine, tuosque Cabores 
 \;£temuni cetermm Jama Lyijucttir amu. 
 ^'~?&: Qtuiare opus. Invu&et tu tun^ris ceHu, 
 lH^lrcs tcmtum. mndit at ifie vtros ■ 
 
 Fig. 96.— Portrait of Christopher Plantin, printer of Antwerp. Engraved by Wierix. 
 
 1555, he surrounded himself, as had done the Estiennes and 
 Alduses, with most of the learned and literary men of his 
 time, among them Justus Lipsius, to whom Balzac attributed 
 the Latin prefaces signed by Plantin. It is certain, however, 
 that he was neither an Estienne nor an Aldus. His artistic 
 
iS6 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 probity caused him to submit the proofs of his works to 
 strangers, with promise of recompense for faults indicated ; the 
 Estiennes also had employed the same system. Plantin, not 
 to be behind any of his contemporaries in typographical 
 perfection, brought from France the celebrated type-founder 
 Guillaume Lebe, and charged him to supply him with a special 
 fount* Under the orders of Philip II., he printed the cele- 
 
 Fig. 97. — Plantin's r/ark. 
 
 brated Polyglot Bible, in eight folio volumes, absolutely perfect 
 in its execution ; unfortunately the Spanish Government, having 
 
 * In the Bibliotheque Nationale is a copy of an octavo Album de Caracferes, 
 in which Leba has written, "This gloss, made in Paris (1574) by me, is my 
 fourteenth letter, and the text is made on the pattern of the preceding one for 
 size, but of a better art ; and from this was printed the great Bible of Antwerp by 
 Plantin, to whom I sold a fount" (folio 6). On folio 20 he wrote, "I do not 
 know whence came this small Hebrew that I received from Plantin to make a 
 smaller one for him. He sent me this half-sheet, and I have not seen at Venice 
 another part." 
 
Christopher Plantin. 157 
 
 advanced him funds in the course of publication, prosecuted 
 him with the utmost rigour to obtain repayment. This very 
 nearly shut up his printing house, but he took courage and 
 overcame his difficulties, and set his affairs in order, until he 
 became, in 1589, the year of his death, the principal publisher 
 of Flanders. His mark was a hand holding a compass, with 
 the motto Lahore et constantia. 
 
 Plantin, who died at the age of seventy-four, left a 
 prosperous business to be divided between his three daughters. 
 There was first the house at Antwerp, which employed seven- 
 teen presses even at the time when he was in trouble, and 
 there were further branches at Paris and Leyden, of less 
 consequence. His second daughter married Jean Moret, called 
 Moretus, and to him descended the Antwerp establishment ; 
 he and his descendants continued the printing house until 
 recently ; in the present day the house of the great printer and 
 publisher is a typographical museum. The Plantin printing 
 office — Officina Plantiniana—\s understood to apply to the 
 founder as well as to his descendants. The fashion of engrav- 
 ing in metal spread itself before the death of the -head of the 
 house, and his successors continued it. The principal engravers 
 with the burin of the Low Countries were employed by them : 
 the Wierix, the Galle, the Pass, the Mallery, the Van Sichem ; 
 it was a real school of illustration, that created by degrees 
 a precious and sustained style, not without influence on the 
 artists of that epoch. It was from this particular manner that 
 came Thomas de Leu and Leonard Gaultier in France ; and 
 it is from Antwerp that came those small religious engraved 
 figures that have lasted to our time in their incomprehensible 
 mysticism. 
 
 The title-pages of the Plantin printing office inaugurated 
 
158 THE BOOK. 
 
 the passe-partout engraved by the burin, overloaded and com- 
 plicated, of which the seventeenth century took advantage. 
 To tell the truth, these elaborate displays, blackened by ink, 
 do not well accord with the titles; and there is a long 
 distance between this decadence and the books ornamented 
 with wood blocks by the Italians and French of the com- 
 mencement of the century. Exception must be made in favour 
 of Rubens, who made the designs for many of these titles. 
 The heavy and squat architecture of the time was least of all 
 appropriate to these decorations, which wanted grace. It 
 passed from Plantin into France through the engravers; it 
 went to Rome with Martin de Vos and Jean Sadeler ; it 
 made its way everywhere ; and from that day to this it has 
 never ceased. At the time of which we write it had taken 
 its flight in France, and spread itself in Europe with extra- 
 ordinary success. Engraving in relief, holding its own until 
 then, gave way little by little before this invasion. When 
 Henry IV. mounted the throne wood engraving had well-nigh 
 finished its upward movement ; it still remained in the canards, 
 or popular pieces sold at low prices, but it is easy to see 
 what these hasty cuts are worth. 
 
 We have now seen, in broad outlines, the history of the 
 Book and its decoration in the sixteenth century in France : 
 at first there were the French epics in Italy, the Books of 
 Hours, the Romances of Chivalry; then about 1550, with the 
 reign of Henry II., the religious pamphlets commenced, book- 
 selling spread itself ; the strife between illustrations on metal 
 plates and those in relief assumed shape, it continued under 
 Henry III., and terminated abruptly by the victory of the first 
 at the extreme end of the century. With political passions, 
 printing has become a weapon of warfare, which it will never 
 
Christopher Plantin. 
 
 159 
 
 cease to be. They knew in the sixteenth century what 
 perfidious accusations or excessive praises were worth. The 
 
 Fig. 98. — Frontispiece of a book from Plantin's printing office. 
 Metal engraving. 
 
 Book followed, besides, the fate of its author. If the writer 
 
 was burned, so was his book, as was the case with Etienne 
 
 Dolet, born 1509 at Orleans, who having learnt typography 
 
i6o 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 at Gryphius's office, Lyons, and established a printing office 
 at Lyons, 1537, was burnt in Paris for his heterodox publi- 
 cations 1546. Witness also the Christianismi Restitutio of 
 the Catholic Servetus, printed at Vienne, in Dauphine, and 
 
 Fig. 99. — Mark of Etienne Dolet, printer at Lyons, 1542. 
 
 consigned to the flames with its author at Geneva in 1553. A 
 single copy was saved from the fire, and is now preserved in 
 the Bibliotheque Nationale ; it is the identical copy annotated 
 by Colladon, the accuser of the unhappy Servetus, and still 
 bears traces of fire on its leaves. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1600 TO 1700. 
 
 Tendencies of the regency of Marie de Medici — Thomas de Leu and Leonard 
 Gaultier — J. Picart and Claude Mellan — Lyons and J. de Fornazeris — The 
 Book at the beginning of the seventeenth century in Germany, Italy, England, 
 and Holland — Crispin Pass in France — The Elzevirs and Enschede and their 
 work in Holland — Sebastian Cramoisy and the Imprimerie Royale — Illustration 
 under Callot, Delia Bella, and Abraham Bosse — The publishers and the Hotel 
 de Rambouillet — The reign of Louis XIV., Antoine Vitr6 syndic at his acces- 
 sion — His works and mortifications ; the Polyglot Bible of Le Jay — Art and 
 illustrators of the grand century — Sebastien Leclerc, Lepautre, and Chauveau 
 — Leclerc preparing the illustration and decoration of the Book for the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 II. 'f'l ,'" ""* 
 
 EVER did the art of printing pass 
 through a more critical period than that 
 at which we have now arrived, when the 
 science of the old printers assumed a 
 commercial character, in which taste lost 
 itself under the influence of religious 
 architecture. Changed into cathedral 
 porticos, the Book is crowded with un- 
 sightly columns, mitred and crossed 
 saints. Figures on copper plates replaced the foliage and the 
 arabesques of the older booksellers. Through the Plantins and 
 their imitators, the architectural passion was far spread. It 
 inundated France, ran through Germany and Italy, and reigned 
 
 1 1 
 
 Fig. 100. — Letter engraved by 
 A. Bosse. 
 
1 62 THE BOOK. 
 
 pre-eminent in Holland. Literary taste also underwent a 
 change ; manners were no longer those of the sixteenth century, 
 bold, free, and gay ; from the religious wars a certain hypocrisy 
 arose ; bombast replaced the natural ; the gods were preparing, 
 as a contemporary said, to receive Louis XIV. and his genius. 
 It is not that artists were wanting at the opening of the 
 seventeenth century who could, in giving free scope to their 
 talent, show themselves worthy successors of those who went 
 before them. Unhappily the booksellers had no longer a loose 
 bridle on their neck ; they rather had the rope round it, for they 
 were hung or burned at the least infraction of political or religious 
 propriety. Yet the reign of Henry IV. was relatively an easier 
 period for the workers at the Book, in which they were less 
 confined to the strict terms of excessive regulations ; but after 
 this prince severity increased, and during the year 1626 a new 
 law was promulgated punishing with death the printers or 
 distributers of prohibited books. Doubtless the books that were 
 thus secretly sold, and prohibited in defence of good manners, 
 were neither typographical nor artistic chefs-d'ceuvre. The author 
 displays the indecencies by which he hoped to make profit 
 and fame, regardless of type or illustration. But during the 
 regency of Marie de Medici, it was not only the authors of a 
 bad standard that were in danger of being hung ; the printer 
 or seller of the pamphlet or book of a reputed heterodox author 
 was also hung, and it became difficult to steer safely among 
 these prohibitions. The consequence was, that enormous numbers 
 of works were made with frontispieces decorated with colon- 
 nades and mitred saints, and displaying high-sounding titles of 
 sound orthodoxy. The somewhat gross mysticism, from the 
 office of Plantin, formed the most solid stock of every 
 respectable dealer. 
 
Thomas de Leu. 
 
 163 
 
 Under Henry IV. as well as under the minority of Louis 
 XIII., two French illustrators received from the school of 
 
 'A.PaSJS^ Che^PieireJ^eiialfcrntcS.'TacqufsaTima^eS'PierriJ^ 
 
 Fig. loi. — Title of the Metanialogie, engraved by Leonard Gaultier. 
 
 Antwerp their inspiration for the ornament of the Book. 
 Thomas de Leu, probably from Flanders, was allied with the 
 
1 64 THE Book. 
 
 old Parisian painter and engraver of celebrated portraits, Antoine 
 Caron, in furnishing the engraved plates for the Images de 
 Plate Peinture des Deux Philostrates, Sophistes Grecs, Paris, 
 Claude Cramoisy, 1609, folio; and Leonard Gaultier, his con- 
 temporary worker in company with Jaspar Isaac and other 
 artists in the Book. Leonard Gaultier contributed most to 
 spread in France the Plantinian style, and his somewhat cold 
 but characteristic talent suited this art more than that of any one 
 else then could. He was also an engraver of portraits, now rare 
 and valuable, in the style of Wierix or of Thomas de Leu ; but, 
 at the demand of publishers and booksellers, he composed other 
 plates, at first historical figures representing the royal family 
 and the nobles for the publisher Leclerc, in a simple and natural 
 manner ; he also designed pious figures, recording a miracle 
 or representing the ceremonies of a jubilee and other devo- 
 tional things. But he made his great success in the composition 
 of frontispieces to theological and pious works, printed by 
 nearly all the booksellers. Leonard Gaultier had a knack of 
 his own for pilasters and Grecian columns, under which he 
 boldly placed entire councils of cardinals and bishops, as in the 
 heading of the Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum, into which he 
 crowded nearly forty figures. He blended also with a certain 
 grace the sacred and the profane, placing among ideal saints 
 the wanton fine ladies of the time, with their large collarettes 
 and jewels falling, down on their naked breasts. The work of 
 Andre Valladier, chaplain to the King, entitled Mdtandalogie 
 Sacrde, published by Peter Chevalier in 1609, was adorned 
 with a title of this particular kind, in which Gaultier had no 
 rival, and which preserves the precision of Flemish masters in 
 the detail of ornaments of the toilet. 
 
 He was one of the first who worked for Sebastien Cramoisy, 
 
Leonard Gaultier. 165 
 
 printer and publisher, who had established his shop in the Rue 
 St. Jacques at the sign of the Stork. We shall have occasion 
 to speak of him later in connection with the Royal Printing 
 House, of which he was the first director ; he is mentioned 
 now because in 161 1 Leonard Gaultier engraved for him the 
 frontispiece of L'Aigle Fran fats, a collection of sermons by 
 Thomas Girault. The publisher made a kind of passe-partout 
 of it, for he used the same plate in 1618 for the Sermons of 
 Raymond de Hezeque. 
 
 Besides the publications of Sebastien Cramoisy and Cheval- 
 lier, Leonard Gaultier illustrated also those of Nicholas Buon 
 and many other publishers of the time in Paris and Lyons. 
 With such a profusion of works emanating from a single artist 
 without reckoning those which were produced in great quantity 
 by men of less note, wood engraving was dead. At most they 
 ventured to put a wood block of a printer's mark on a title ; 
 more ordinarily this mark was not alone sufficient, and showed 
 the disdain in which taste then held wood-cutting. Such is 
 fashion, heedless of the most elementary rules of art. To put 
 type within an engraved title, or to ornament a printed text 
 with engravings, is a heresy of principle that was established 
 in the eighteenth century, by dint of its cleverness and talent. 
 But at the beginning of the seventeenth, in spite of Leonard 
 Gaultier or Thomas de Leu, these overloaded titles, over- 
 powering the very front of the Book, offend the eye by their 
 excessive blackness, and incontestably make us regret the 
 admirable frontispiece on wood of the preceding century. 
 
 This is, properly speaking, all the ornament at the acces- 
 sion and during the reign of Louis XII L Leonard Gaultier 
 composed also some small vignettes for an edition of Homer, 
 but they are mediocre and ■ but little to the point. The 
 
1 66 The Book. 
 
 frontispiece was the resource of the unoccupied engraver, and 
 many others followed the same path. Jean Picart made a 
 frontispiece with architecture and figures for the Histoire de 
 la Maison de Chdtillon-sur-Marne for Sebastien Cramoisy. 
 A cold and hard artist he was, the rival of Gaultier, and one 
 of the most employed of the vignette engravers of Paris. 
 There was also Jaspar Isaac, a mediocre craftsman, but a 
 designer of clever titles, among which is that of the continua- 
 tion of the Annales of Baronius for the publisher Denis de 
 la Noue. Then Claude Mellan, whose great and clever talent 
 did not disdain second-rate works, in which he gave free play 
 to his burin. It must be said, however, that his bold touch 
 did not accommodate itself well to reduced spaces, and that 
 he was not working in the field which suited his inventive 
 powers. We mention his portrait of Louis XIV. at the head 
 of the Code Lotas XIV. ; the title of the Perfection du 
 Chrestien, in which is included a portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, 
 A. Vitre, 1647, folio ; that of the Instruction du Dauphin 
 for Cramoisy, 1640 ; that of the Works of St. Bernard for 
 the Royal Printing House ; and, lastly, perhaps the best of 
 all, the Poesies of Pope Urban VIII., of which we here give 
 a copy. 
 
 Lyons did not remain long behind in the movement, but 
 how changed from its great reputation of the sixteenth 
 century ! J. de Fornazeris engraved the frontispieces to Jiistus 
 Lipsitis, published by Horace Cardon in 16:3. Peter Favre 
 and Audran imitated them. C. Audran designed for Claude 
 Landry the Theologia Naturalis of Theophilus Reynaud, and 
 the bookseller Picquet ordered from him the title for the 
 Annales Minortim in 1628. Everywhere taste was modelled 
 on the works of the capital, to name only the principal 
 
Engraved Titles in French Books. i6y 
 
 centres, Rouen, Rheims, Sens, down to Venes, a small town 
 of the Department of Tarn, where Guillaume de Nautonnier 
 published in 1603 his curious book Mdcomdtrie, whose frontis- 
 
 Fig. 102. — Title engraved by Claude Mellan for Urban VIII.'s Poesies, printed at the 
 Royal Printing House, in 1642. 
 
 piece was bordered by views of cities, with an equestrian 
 portrait of King Henry. 
 
 And if we pass to Germany, we find at Mayence 
 mediocre engravings for titles according to the pattern then 
 prevalent everywhere. The title of the Droit Civil of Aymar 
 
1 68 THE BOOK. 
 
 Vailius, that of the works of St. Bonaventura in 1609 for the 
 bookseller Antoine Hierat, and that of the Viridarium Virtutum, 
 rather cleverly treated by the burin in 16 10. What a period 
 had passed since Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer ! There was 
 still one Ivo Schoeffer at Mayence, but only the name lived; 
 no trace remained of the old printers of the other century. 
 It was the same at Bamberg, Cologne, Nuremberg, and Basle, 
 in all the cities that were an honour to typography in former 
 times. Cologne was neither better nor worse favoured than 
 others. The booksellers Boetzer, Kinck, and De Binghy 
 had passable engravings for their titles ; and the Commentartes 
 of Salmeron may be mentioned, with portraits after the 
 original Germans of the fifteenth century. At Nuremberg 
 we may cite a curious specimen treating of natural history by 
 Basil Besler, in which the artist gives the interior of a 
 zoological cabinet of the time ; but what has become of 
 the blocks and the typography in the city of Koberger ? 
 Basle held its own later in relief engraving. In the mean- 
 time there was a mediocre set of the Dance of Death on 
 copper, published by Miegen, 162 1. 
 
 At Jena and Frankfort-on-the-Main were prosperous print- 
 ing houses, but engravings and ornamentation were neglected. 
 Frankfort, however, employed the frontispiece in the Traitd du 
 Commerce of Sigismond Scaccia, published by Zuner in 1648 ; 
 it was divided into compartments, in which the Bourse, the 
 Exchange, and the quay of the city were represented. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to mention the Italian cities which 
 followed the movement. Venice from the middle of the sixteenth 
 century had used engraved frontispieces, among which was that 
 of Domenic Zenoi for the Portraits des Hommes Illustres of 
 Nicholas Valegio. In the same city James Piccini worked for 
 
Crispin Pass. 169 
 
 Sgava in 1648, but he was equally at the service of Roman 
 publishers, for whom he designed a number of titles. By 
 the side of him Frederic Greuter adorned the publications of 
 Alexander Zanetti, not without talent, but without individuality. 
 Bologna, Brescia, Florence, and Naples, had no original senti- 
 ment ; they followed indifferently the manner of the day. 
 
 In Holland, artists were somewhat numerous. The family of 
 the Passes designed vignettes for books, and engraved frontis- 
 pieces, admirably studied and composed. The clear and truly 
 individual style of their works places their illustrations in the first 
 rank among those of their time. They had, at the same time, 
 the genius that created and the intelligent burin that faithfully 
 represented an idea. They imagined with skill the scenes that 
 they depicted without borrowing much from their predecessors. 
 From 1599, the date of the publication of the Hortus Deliciarum, 
 one of their best works, up to about 1623, they were in Holland, 
 at Arnheim and at Amsterdam. In 1623 we find one of them, 
 the most celebrated, Crispin the younger, designing figures for 
 the Manege Royal of Pluvinel, published by Angelier in Paris, 
 and for another edition, with folding plates, in 1624 for Guillaume 
 Lenoir, at the sign of the White Rose Crowned. This mag- 
 nificent work, in which the King, Louis XIII., is represented 
 receiving lessons from the riding master Pluvinel, appeared in 
 a third and more complete reimpression in 1625 with another 
 publisher, Michel Nivelle. Here we see the Dutch appreciated 
 in France, in Paris, at that time the city the most ready to 
 understand and pay for the works of eminent artists. In 1624 
 Gombauld published an Endymion — Boileau later associated 
 Gombauld with other poets to dub him a maker of pitiable sonnets 
 — Nicholas Buon, the bookseller named above, undertook the 
 publication, and employed Pass, Leonard Gaultier, and J. Picart 
 
170 
 
 The Book. 
 
 to furnish plates in octavo size. Heavy and black as were these 
 vignettes, they none the less make a good appearance in the 
 edition of the forgotten poet ; and it is due to truth to recognise 
 how much Pass was above his collaborators. The following 
 year, 1625, he engraved the Dionysiaques of Nonus, for Robert 
 Fouet, and the Roman des Romans of Du Verdier, comprising 
 more than ten engravings, in a very free and bold manner. 
 The Berger Extravagant and the Acadimie de FEspde came 
 in 1628, among numerous others. 
 
 In point of fact, Crispin Pass did not devote himself entirely 
 to Parisian publishers ; he always kept up his interests in 
 Flanders so as to return there from time to time ; but he did 
 not find in his own country the ready and assured sales of 
 Paris. Still the city of Leyden had then one of the most 
 renowned workshops of typography; the Elzevirs had commenced 
 to make a good place for themselves among the printers 
 of Europe by the extreme correctness of their editions, the 
 distinctness of their work, and their marvellous art in the taste 
 and arrangement of the Book. In reality, the sizes and characters 
 of their books were too small, but if the smallness of the page 
 did not allow room for vignette or ornament, they bore a certain 
 practical elegance that was not without charm. The origin of 
 the printing house was due to Louis Elzevir, who published 
 in 1592 an ^d^wkori oi Eutropius 2X Leyden. He left sons, who 
 went into partnership, and founded, as we know, a house 
 which was unrivalled. 
 
 Bonaventure Elzevir, grandson of Louis, was the most 
 illustrious of this family, so remarkably devoted to its art. He 
 took Abraham as partner, and together they published those 
 little Latin classics in duodecimo of which the value is now so 
 great. Among others, Pliny issued from their presses in the year 
 
THE Elzevirs. 
 
 171 
 
 1635, in three volumes, Virgil in 1636, and Cicero in 1642. 
 To-day amateurs, above all those afflicted with bibliomania, hunt 
 for unbound Elzevirs when they have full margins. From 
 about 1633 to 1639 these volumes were composed of paper of 
 rather small size, making a page of a hundred and thirty to a 
 hundred and thirty-three millimetres; from 1639 onwards the 
 
 Fig. 103. — Title of Pluvinel's Manege Royal, engraved by^Crispin Pass in 1624. 
 
 paper was larger, and the page in i2mo measured from about 
 a hundred and thirty-five to a hundred and thirty-seven. One 
 must be a book-lover to understand the interest attaching to 
 these figures, and employ his entire activity in the discovery 
 of these undiscoverable books, which are zealously kept under 
 lock and key as soon as they are found. 
 
 One of the most esteemed of their works is the De Imitatione 
 
172 
 
 The Book. 
 
 of Thomas a Kempis, printed by Jean and Daniel Elzevir about 
 1653, and known as the edition without date. But as the 
 association of Jean and Daniel is known to have lasted only 
 from 1652 to 1654, the date 1653 appears to be most plausible. 
 We reproduce the entire title of this typographical bijou, which 
 merited a cleverer engraver. 
 
 Fig. 104.— Title of the Imitation of the Elzevirs. 
 
 The rarest of all the numerous Elzevirs, possibly by reason 
 of the popularity of its subject, is the Pastissier Francois, Louis 
 and Daniel Elzevir, Amsterdam, 1655, of which M. Morgand 
 had an uncut copy, measuring a hundred and forty-three milli- 
 metres, in 1878, The Benzon copy sold in 1875 for ^^ 140, and 
 
THE Elzevirs. 175 
 
 another copy which lately turned up at M. Techener's Sale 
 brought ^96. 
 
 It is to be remarked that the Elzevirs frequently avoided 
 dating or even signing their books, for reasons easily understood. 
 Publishing numerous works, they were afraid of compromising 
 themselves in the eyes of the powerful, and they let them go 
 forth without any trade mark. These artists in typography were, 
 besides, the most prudent and subtle of men. Working at a 
 time when bookselling had become an acknowledged commerce, 
 and a trade requiring all the skill and resources of others, 
 they wisely availed themselves of these resources, gathering for 
 
 Fig 105. — Mark of Bonaventure and Abraham Elzevir, 
 printers at Leyden, 1620. 
 
 themselves honour and profit without having done anything 
 more than seizing their opportunity. Using, as they did, the 
 characters of Claude Garamond, of Jacques Sanlecques, and 
 the paper of Angouleme, M. Didot thence claims them as 
 French publishers. 
 
 After the Elzevirs another celebrated printer's family made 
 its mark in Holland, who afterwards acquired the Elzevir fount, 
 viz., the Enschede family, who carried on a flourishing printing 
 office and type foundry. Isaak, born in 1681, printed, in con- 
 junction with his son John, a folio Bible. John began already 
 as a boy of nine years, under the supervision of his father 
 
174 
 
 The Book. 
 
 to cut types in wood, and published in 1777 several classical 
 works and a pattern book of types, Proef van Lettern, which 
 even now is considered a very important contribution to the 
 history of printing. 
 
 In France the Elzevirs had no rivals ; but a fashion was 
 introduced towards the end of the sixteenth century for the 
 association of several publishers in the production of important 
 and costly books. There were, among others, the company of 
 the Grand Navire in 1610, of the Source in 1622, and of the 
 Soleil in 1629. In 1631 several publishers united and founded 
 a second company of the Grand Navire. These were the two 
 Cramoisys, Sebastien and Gabriel, Denis Bechet, Jean Branchu, 
 Denis Moreau, Claude Sonnius, and Denis Thierry. The 
 associates took a ship as their mark, but without putting their 
 names on the masts, as the original company of the Grand 
 Navire had done. They published, at mutual exjDense and 
 divided profits, great works, of which each one of them had 
 the right of sale, but of course reserving to themselves the 
 right to publish such others as they pleased. Sebastien 
 Cramoisy passes as the chief, the moral director of another 
 company, formed to publish the Fathers of the Church, with 
 the royal types, a company affiliated to the Grand Navire and 
 signed in 1638 by Denis Moreau, Gille Morel, Etienne Richer, 
 Claude Sonnius, and Gabriel Cramoisy. But as regards their 
 personal works, if they had neither the perfection nor the 
 aspect of those of Froben, Aldus, the Estiennes, or even of 
 Plantin, they at least surpassed the French books of the time. 
 Formerly syndic of the Corporation in [602, twenty-nine years 
 before the constitution of the Grand Navire, Cramoisy was 
 also sheriff of Paris, and carried on his trade in a shop in 
 the Rue St. Jacques which had been that of Father Nivelle, 
 
CRAMOISY. 175 
 
 the doyen of booksellers, who died in 1603 at the age of 
 eighty years. 
 
 The position of Cramoisy made it natural that Cardinal 
 Richelieu should fix his eyes on him for the direction of the 
 Royal Printing House. This establishment, founded by the 
 King in 1640, was installed within the Louvre, in a long 
 series of consecutive rooms which formed a workshop without 
 rival in the world. Sublet des Noyers was named superinten- 
 dent, Trichet du Fresne corrector ; and under this triple 
 direction the presses set to work. The first book was the 
 Imitation de Jesus-Christ, dated 1640, folio, a fine book 
 enough, but not to be compared to the Elzevir editions. The 
 types used in this book are attributed to Claude Garamond, 
 founder of the sixteenth century, to whom are due the Greek 
 types of Francis I. With the Royal Printing House, as often 
 happens with State enterprises, the cost was great, and the 
 return nothing. Only a few years after its foundation it had 
 swallowed up nearly 400,000 livres, a very heavy sum for a 
 badly balanced treasury ; it had produced sixty or seventy 
 volumes of moderate value ; and after Cramoisy the manage- 
 ment was so little in earnest that it turned the workshops 
 into a stable, called "the little stable of the King," at the 
 commencement of the eighteenth century. 
 
 To return to the artists of the Book under Louis XI I L 
 and Cardinal Richelieu, we must go back a little, before the 
 foundation of the Royal Printing House, and we shall take up the 
 French school of illustration at a time when Jacques Callot was 
 giving it a vigorous lift and trying to do away with its affected 
 and hard style. It must be acknowledged that Callot was 
 not a vignettist, a special designer ; his art aimed higher, 
 and in most cases succeeded better ; yet he did not disdain 
 
1/6 
 
 The Book. 
 
 frontispieces, and made some for the Coustumier de Lorraine, 
 the Harpalice of Bracciolini, and for a crowd of others of which 
 the enumeration would be tedious. Certain of his works passed 
 into Italy, where they helped to raise the debased level of the 
 Book. He then adorned several works with etchings, among 
 them the Lwniere dti Cloistre, published by Francois Langlois 
 1646. This was again one of the symbolic and sententious 
 works with which the public taste is never satiated, and a kind 
 
 Fig. 106. — Plate taken from the Lumiere du Cloistre. Copper-plate by Callot. 
 
 of guide for the priest. At the bottom of the little etching 
 here given, representing birds falling from a tree, we read, — 
 
 " Ses petits hors du nid le courbeau jette en bas, 
 Lorsque par leur blancheur ils lui sont dissemblables. 
 Le bon prelat de mesme au cloistre n'admet pas 
 Ceux qui n'ont rien d'esgal a ses mceurs venerables." 
 
 Callot also made another set of emblems on the life of 
 the Virgin Mary, and even published in 1620 a series of 
 prints in quarto for the tragedy of Soliman of Bonarelli, for 
 Cecconnelli. France imposed herself on fallen Italy, where she 
 dispersed her works, and if an engraver arose there, he did 
 
Callot. 177 
 
 not disdain to be consecrated in France. Witness Delia Bella, 
 who went from Italy to France, where he was taken under the 
 protection of Cardinal Richelieu. This was about the time of the 
 establishment of the Royal Printing House, and it was expected 
 that employment would be found for him sooner or later. 
 
 Callot was the model chosen by the young Italian artist, 
 and this choice might have been less happy. Delia Bella took 
 from his master the philosophic vein, the drollery of design, 
 which he exercised from the outset in humorous frontispieces, 
 among others that of Scarron's works, where nine fish-women, 
 taking the place of the Muses, dance around the poet. But 
 he passed from gay and pleasant to severe, and made large 
 designs of architectural titles. In 1649 he designed the plates 
 for the large and ill-arranged volume of Valdor on Louis XIII., 
 published by Antoine Estienne at the Royal Printing House. 
 His success was not in that direction ; Delia Bella was a 
 painter of groups, of ornaments, of subjects somewhat heavy 
 and laboured, but which, after numerous transformations, 
 opened a new road to the vignettists of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 With Abraham Bosse the decoration of the Book took a 
 wider range. Numerous and charmingly ornamented letters, 
 heads of pages, and tailpieces appear. There are few artists 
 that have done so much for graceful illustration and harmony 
 between the vignette and the printed page. His prodigious 
 fecundity made him attempt every style ; and after the gaieties 
 of the prints in which he laughed with his contemporaries, 
 he adopted a graver mood and designed more serious sub- 
 jects on copper. However, the book entitled La Maniere 
 Universelle, by Desargues, with numerous geometrical figures 
 and a pleasing frontispiece, bearing the dedication to the 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 Seigneur de Noyers, superintendent of the Royal Printing 
 House, was a critical work, in which Bosse, under serious 
 pretence, did not spare an enemy. They were not, however, 
 
 Fig. 107. — Title of the Maniere Universelle, by Desargues, in 1643, by Abraham Bosse. 
 
 angry with the artist, for the following year Bosse published 
 fourteen plates for the Suetonius printed at the Louvre. 
 
 He successively designed plates for the Histoire de St. 
 
Abraham Bosse. 
 
 179 
 
 Louis, numerous vignettes for books of piety, figures for the 
 Pucelle of Chapelain and for the Larcins de la Fortune. He 
 was always himself, refined and ingenious, even in the most 
 barren or the most complicated subjects. 
 
 
 ...... ..._,j„.. pj.-|^ 
 
 ..S...iit.«.»ii; .. ,f| V 
 
 I" LEI-' 1 LV " \. Wj.''" ^ V^-Jp.>5lS:iiVS.7'':Si'i||^-.i 
 
 ^^ — ■ J- .^fc— — r^ ^ . ■ ■ ■ * ; - ■- « ■.■■& ■^ — "■^ :t : A\ ii i «». ■■■»: — ^4^H 
 
 J .. 1 ^ 1 ■ I P , ir* n> jJM.iV*v4 I II 11 III |l |iMIMIi|iP'IIM'^H I'H "li >I|W| 
 
 Fig. 108. — Print by Abraham Bosse, representing .the booksellers 
 of the Palace under Louis XIII, 
 
 He has left us in a celebrated print a representation of a 
 bookseller's shop of his time. It is for us an interesting work, 
 inasmuch as it shows us in a simple and naive manner the 
 picturesque side of these stores, where the dealer and his wife 
 
i8o The book. 
 
 offered and displayed new works to their customers. The shop 
 is compact, and very much like the open-air stalls of to-day ; 
 posting-bills placed above the shelves indicate the " new 
 books;" and if the inscriptions given by Bosse be credited, 
 the Palace dealer offered his books with singular eclecticism : 
 Boccaccio, Aretin, the Astr'ee of D'Urfe, the Bible, or Machia- 
 velli. In the hands of the woman is seen the romance 
 Marianne '■ 
 
 " Icy les cavaliers les plus adventureux 
 En lisant les romans s'animent d combattre ; 
 Et de leur passion les amants langoureux 
 Flattent les mouvements par des vers de thedtre," 
 
 says the text of Bosse. What was commonly done then is 
 still done ; they went shopping and rummaging the stalls, and 
 those of the Palace were particularly attractive. 
 
 If we credit Sauval, the increase in the number of booksellers, 
 in the middle of the century, was due to the wits of the Hotel 
 de Rambouillet. The passion for novelty, for recent works, had 
 produced that quantity of publishers, he says, that we have seen 
 on the Pont Neuf, and that we still see to-day at the Palace 
 and the University, the number of whom is so multiplied in 
 all these places that in the Palace ~ they amount to more than 
 other dealers ; and as to the neighbourhood of the University, 
 they are obliged, in order to lodge the rest, to extend the 
 ancient bounds from St. Yves to the river (Sauval, AntiquiUs 
 de Paris, viii., 354). 
 
 In fact, each year saw an increase in the number of pub- 
 lishers in corporation, with syndic and adjuncts. During the 
 reign of Louis XIII., the single year 16 10 saw fifty new houses 
 started, and among them Antoine Vitre, who was to become 
 the most illustrious of his contemporaries. But, as there were 
 
Antoine Vitre. i8i 
 
 no more than six printers, it may be inferred that all the rest 
 were booksellers, in the true sense of the word, to begin with 
 those who encumbered afterwards the great salle of which Sauval 
 speaks. Antoine Vitre was syndic in May, 1643, on the acces- 
 sion of Louis XIV. He had four adjuncts. With him the Book 
 marked the solemn style that the commencement of the century 
 had imparted to it. Appointed royal printer for the Oriental 
 languages in 162 1, he undertook a Syriac work, the first that 
 ever was attempted in Paris. The project of a Polyglot Bible 
 suggested to him the idea of acquiring for the King the Oriental 
 manuscripts and matrices of Savary de Breves. The King left to 
 him the care of negotiating the business, but did not reimburse 
 him without numerous difficulties, in the midst of which the printer 
 almost lost the means of conveniently continuing his trade. The 
 advocate Le Jay charging himself with the enormous expenses 
 necessitated by the Polyglot Bible, it was set up in the hope 
 that Cardinal Richelieu would pay the cost. He was willing 
 to do so, but required that his name should figure on the book ; 
 and as Le Jay, an independent man, formally opposed it, Vitre 
 met with ill-will from the Minister, which increased from day 
 to day. In 1645 the impression was finished, but, Le Jay was 
 ruined, and though we admire the paper, the type, and the 
 extraordinary size of the nine volumes of the Polyglot Bible, we 
 find in it so many faults, errors, and misprints that it has become 
 almost valueless, being hardly worth its binding. There were 
 terrible mortifications in the business, and Vitre had to bear the 
 brunt of them more than any one. Nevertheless he did not 
 let his presses stand still, but published successively Arabic, 
 Turkish, and Persian works. His action against the Savary 
 heirs, as representing the King, in the acquisition mentioned 
 above, continued also after the printing of the Bible, and 
 
1 82 The book. 
 
 hindered its progress. He struggled on; and the Assembly of 
 Clergy, of which he was the printer, sought to help him out of 
 his difficulties. The matter being once terminated, the Cardinal 
 being dead, and Vitre having been named by Colbert director 
 of the Royal Printing House in place of Cramoisy, he also 
 died, and was accused later of having destroyed the types and 
 matrices of the Polyglot Bible, so that they should not be used 
 after him. This fable, long accredited, has since been ascer- 
 tained to be false, for the punches and matrices passed to the 
 Royal Library, thence to the Royal Printing House, which was 
 reorganised in 1691. 
 
 Antoine Vitre, in spite of his misfortunes, was a great 
 personage. He was painted by Champagne and engraved by 
 Morin, as was Richelieu himself. The portrait, which we here 
 reproduce (p. 184), is from the book of M. Delaborde, La 
 Gravure. Such was the man whom we meet at the beginning 
 of the reign of Louis XIV. as syndic of booksellers; and it 
 was by no means a sinecure, a canonry giving honour and 
 profit ; quite the other way. With the Draconian rules on the 
 subject, the syndic assumed a heavy burden towards the King, 
 as well as towards its confreres. Religious quarrels envenomed 
 every question, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes 
 had for its immediate result new and more severe royal 
 ordinances. 
 
 The reign of Louis XIV. saw the zenith of engraving with 
 the burin, but not that of printing or illustration. Doubtless it 
 would be puerile to pretend that typography had not made any 
 material progress ; it had done so in engraving and in setting 
 up the type ; work was done more quickly, because the presses 
 had become more perfect. But the wise harmony of the 
 old printers, their sure taste, even up to their old irregular 
 
The Reign of Louis xiv. 183 
 
 clichds, were no longer there to form a graceful and charming 
 
 Fig. 109. — Frontispiece of the Dictionnaire de T Academie, 1st edition, 1694. 
 
 whole, which to modern precision is as different as a picture 
 
1 84 
 
 The Book. 
 
 by Van Eyck from a chromo-lithograph. Under Louis XIV., 
 titles became regular, following, as we have said in the 
 beginning, and modelling themselves on, the affected and 
 peruked people who read them. All art .entered on this path 
 of sublimity and grandeur. The painter Le Brun is the 
 
 
 
 Fig. no.— Antoine Vitre, printer to the King, by Ph. de Champagne. 
 
 highest exponent of this false Olympus, where an heroic pose 
 became necessary for the most simple movements. Made 
 popular by engraving by Pesne, Audran, Poilly, Edelinck, and 
 a hundred others, this tendency overran everything : art and 
 industry, painting and tapestry, illustration and typography 
 
Sebastien Leclerc. I 8s 
 
 itself. All was grand, in reverse of other times, when all was 
 small and mean. The embellishments of the Book were full 
 of gods in perukes and goddesses in armour, Louis XIV. as 
 Apollo, as the sun illuminating the world, as we see in the 
 frontispiece to the first edition of the Dictionnaire de V Academie. 
 " Nee pluribus impar " was not the device of one man ; it was 
 the haughty and glorious cry of a whole people, from great to 
 small, from the sublime painter to the modest printer. 
 
 In most cases these exaggerations are not beneficial to the 
 art. Here they were. But, for the matter that specially occupies 
 us, it does not appear that the Book was much advanced. It 
 approached a marvellous epoch of a delicate and graceful art ; 
 but it did not find its true expression ; it dragged painfully after 
 the works of Plantin, throwing its etchings and line engravings 
 heavily in the middle of texts, in gross and bad taste. Yet 
 taste in literature had an onward tendency ; Moliere and La 
 Fontaine produced on their contemporaries the effect that in 
 our day the naturalists have produced on the romanticists ; but 
 this was not for long. Majesty recovered its rights with 
 Bossuet, Boileau, and the others. 
 
 Sebastien Leclerc was one of the rare artists of the end of 
 the seventeenth century who gave thought to the vignette in the 
 midst of this outbreak of pompous commonplace. A successor 
 of Callot in manner, sought after by the publishers, he began 
 this style with a romance of La Calprenede, and continued with 
 the Promenade de St. Germain of Louis le Laboureur, bailly de 
 Montmorency, to whom Boileau said such curious things. This 
 ileuette is one of the rarest books of Leclerc, and we reproduce 
 one of the pages, with a charming tailpiece, which comes very 
 near those of the eighteenth century. There was, moreover, 
 the charm of this ingenious designer ; he adorned the works 
 
1 86 THE BOOK. 
 
 of his contemporaries with graceful vignettes and decorations 
 full of suppleness. It may be believed, besides, that he did 
 not remain behind his confreres in figure composition or 
 allegorical and Divine emblems. His art did not go far enough 
 to throw off the errors of the existing school ; he was content 
 not to copy any one and to make his works truly his own. 
 
 JE laboure un champ piem ctepines 
 Qm nt rapport e fruit ny fiem, 
 pt me fens picjuer jufqu^au castsr 
 "Par mille point es ajfapnes 
 Que mon defHn a de maiheuri 
 Ce neft que labeur ^ doolcur 
 
 Fig. III. — Tailpiece of Sebastien Leclerc for the Promenade de St. Germain. 
 
 Such were, for example, the vignettes of the Histoire de 
 Turenne, where the heads of the chapters, the ornamented 
 letters, and the tailpieces, harmoniously blend with each other, and 
 make the book, although a little heavy as to impression, a most 
 agreeable work. Leclerc then found himself ready to design 
 vignettes for the works of Racine for the publisher Claude 
 
SAbastien Leclerc. 187 
 
 Barbin, another name frequently encountered in Boileau. The 
 title of Vol. ii. merits attention. 
 
 The same year of this last publication, 1676, Sebastien 
 Leclerc illustrated the Metamorphoses of Ovid for Benserade, 
 the engraving of which cost the King more than 10,000 
 livres. Thus adorned, the book had not a bad appearance, 
 but a satirist of the time, Hardin very probably, made on it 
 this quatrain : — ■ 
 
 " Mais quant a moi j'en trouve tout fort beau : 
 Papier, dorure, images, caractere, 
 Hormis les vers qu'il fallait laisser faire 
 A La Fontaine." 
 
 It m.ay be imagined what an engraver could produce 
 working ever since 1650 and dying in 171 5, that is, a life 
 of work as long as could be hoped for. Leclerc was the 
 absolute contemporary of the King. He died, like him, at the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century, leaving work widely 
 scattered among books, funeral orations, and placards. After 
 the example of Callot and Bosse, he did not disdain satire. 
 One of his prettiest vignettes served to illustrate some 
 pamphlet of Richesource against the journalists of his time ; 
 it represents a dandy of about 1679 offering his gazette: 
 
 " Venez, savans ; venez me faire vos avances 
 D'un louis tous les ans de contribution ; 
 Vous aurez les lundis nouvelles conferences 
 Dans des cayers volans de cette impression ; 
 Je I'ai jusques icy pratique de la sorte, 
 Et comme ce bdton soutenu qui me porte." 
 
 This proves that already the young pamphleteers understood the 
 means how to frighten the authors of their time. 
 
 By the side of this unrivalled combatant we may be per- 
 mitted to place Lepautre, twenty years older than Leclerc, whose 
 
1 88 The book. 
 
 studies had been principally directed on architecture. In the 
 moments of leisure from his special work he devoted himself 
 to frontispieces and vignettes ; nevertheless, although he had 
 before him the charming designs of Leclerc, he confined him- 
 self to a cold and hard manner, keeping, indeed, as much as 
 
 Fig. 112.— Small figure of Sebastien Leclerc for Richesource's pamphlet. 
 
 possible to titles, in which his particular talent could find scope. 
 He designed also the Chartreux Missal of 1679, the Gallia 
 Christiana after Marot, the Dioptrique Oculaire of P. Cherubin 
 engraved by Edelinck, and a thousand other works of small 
 repute. 
 
 Very different was Frangois Chauveau, who, without having 
 
Sebastien Leclerc. 
 
 189 
 
 the delicacy of Sebastien Leclerc or his art of arrangement, 
 treated at least with grace small figures and illustrations. 
 Certainly there is an enormous distance between these correct 
 and commonplace engraved plates and the delightful wood 
 
 Fig. 1 13. — Frontispiece by C. Le Brun, for the first edition of Racine,'l676. 
 
 engravings of the time of Geoffroy Tory, for example. But, be 
 their worth what it may, they were in excellent keeping ; and even 
 with Moliere they did not cut such a bad figure. Chauveau 
 was associated with many of the works of Leclerc, who induced 
 
igo The Book. 
 
 him often to be less heavy, inasmuch as Leclerc corrected 
 many of his compositions in engraving them. It was so with 
 Moliere, and still more so with Racine in the plate of the 
 Plaideurs, in which Chauveau revealed himself a precursor 
 of the eighteenth century. Unhappily he did not always 
 follow this manner. Consecutively, and with various success, he 
 illustrated Alaric, Andromaque, and the Metamorphoses of Ovid 
 by Benserade, with Leclerc ; the Pucelle of Chapelain, and the 
 Tragedies of Racine, to which Le Brun did not disdain to put 
 his hand. 
 
 In short, the connecting link between the beginning of the 
 seventeenth and that of the eighteenth century in the develop- 
 ment of illustration is Sebastien Leclerc. He had known the 
 artists of the first period ; he lived to see appear one of the 
 precursors of the vignettists of the following century, Claude 
 Gillot. Thanks to him, overloaded titles and unskilful vignettes 
 underwent a gradual transformation. In the delicacy and 
 slightness of his designs may be seen the dominant note of 
 the eighteenth century, coquetry, and we get already a foretaste 
 of Choffard. He was nearly the only one who did not fall 
 into the exaggerations of the engravers of the time ; he ran 
 parallel with them without touching them, anxiously guarding 
 his own well-accentuated personality. By the smallness and 
 slenderness of his figures, Leclerc recalls somewhat the school 
 of Fontainebleau ; but he is above all the reflection of Callot, 
 a Lorrainer like himself. 
 
 In Holland, a Frenchman, Bernard Picart, son of Etienne 
 and pupil of Leclerc, was making a great name as an illus- 
 trator. He established himself as a print-seller at Amsterdam 
 at the sign of LEtoile, and successively designed vignettes for 
 many works, among others the Boileau of 1718. His vignettes 
 
English Works. 191 
 
 and tailpieces, without possessing either the spirit of Leclerc 
 or the grace of the eighteenth century, express an ingenious 
 and inventive art that had broken with the strained traditions 
 of preceding epochs. 
 
 From these two artists the decoration of the Book rapidly 
 advanced. The true form is found, and charming designers are 
 not wanting to apply it. 
 
 The troubled state of England during the greater part of 
 the seventeenth century no doubt accounts for the fact that the 
 art of the Book made but very little progress. Theological 
 controversies, the persecutions by the Puritans, and, above all, 
 the great civil war and its antecedents and results, gave rise to 
 a flood of publications of an ephemeral kind, which from their 
 nature were hurriedly produced ; and there was little room for 
 pure literature and art. In the early part of the century, under 
 the influence which Elizabeth left, and which James fostered, 
 some important works were issued, with finely engraved illus- 
 trations ; but wood engraving declined further and further, until 
 it was artistically dead, to be revived in the next century. 
 The works of the numerous poets and dramatists were printed 
 in quarto, and collected editions of them in folio. Thus were 
 issued the works of Shakespeare, first collected by Jaggard and 
 Blount, 1623, folio, with an engraved portrait by Droeshout, 
 the faithfulness of which was vouched in an opposite page of 
 verse signed by Ben Jonson. Don Quixote first appeared 
 in an English dress in 1612-20, published by E. Blount in 
 quarto ; and Jaggard, Blount's partner in the Shakespeare, 
 published Boccaccio's Decameron, in two volumes folio, 1620. 
 Among other notable works of the early part of the century 
 were Drayton's Polyolbion, 1613 ; Chapman's Homer, 161 1- 15, 
 folio, three volumes ; Lord Bacon, whose essays and other 
 
192 THE BOOK. 
 
 single publications appeared in the seventeenth, to be collected 
 as his Works in the next century ; and William Prynne, 
 whose Histrio Mastrix, 1633; so offended Charles I. by its 
 references to the Queen and the court ladies, that the author 
 had to undergo a severe and degrading punishment. Many 
 of these works were illustrated with engravings of merit 
 on steel and copper by W. Hollar, P. Lombart, W. Marshall, 
 Hole, W. Pass, W. Faithorne, and R. Vaughan. So that here 
 were all the materials for the foundation of an English school, 
 to be cruelly broken up shortly afterwards by the distractions 
 of civil warfare. 
 
 In 161 1 Robert Barker first printed the Authorised Version 
 of the Holy Bible, which has been more often reprinted than 
 any other book, and which exists to this day as the great 
 standard of the English language. 
 
 The taste for books of travel which arose in the last 
 century was largely increased by the voyages and discoveries 
 of the English in North America and the subsequent Puritan 
 exodus there. These early accounts of Virginia and New 
 England, many of which are tracts of a few leaves only, now 
 fetch fabulous prices. The great collection of voyages under 
 the name of Purchas : his Pilgrimes, was printed in five folio 
 volumes, 1625-26, while De Bry, Hulsius, and Linschoten 
 were enriching the world with their collections of travels, 
 printed in Germany and Holland. All of these works were 
 adorned with finely engraved plates, those to Purchas being 
 engraved by Elstrack, and, besides, it had a famous map of 
 the world, engraved by Hondius. 
 
 The controversial spirit engendered by the religious quarrels 
 of the century and by the great civil war gave incessant work to 
 the printers ; and the many tracts and pamphlets thus produced 
 
English works. 193 
 
 were frequently illustrated by crude and coarse woodcuts, of 
 no value from an artistic point of view, but curious from 
 the indications they afford of the costumes and manners of 
 the time. 
 
 The first edition of Walton's Angler was printed by 
 R. Marriott in 1653, 16 mo, with plates in the text, engraved 
 on steel by Lombart. Butler's Hudibras appeared in 1663-78, 
 and Milton's Paradise Lost in 1667, quarto. Fuller's Worthies 
 of England was printed 1662, folio. We have roughly men- 
 tioned the principal English books of the century, and next 
 approach the revival of literature and art in the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BOOK IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The Regency — Publishers at the beginning of the eighteenth century — Illustrators 
 in France ; Gillot — The school of Watteau and Boucher — Cars — The younger 
 Cochin ; his principal works in vignettes — French art in England ; Gravelot — 
 Eisen — Choffard — The Baisers of Dorat ; the Conies of Lafontaine — The 
 publisher Cazin and the special literature of the eighteenth century — • The 
 younger Moreau and his illustrations — The Revolution — The school of David — 
 Duplessis- Bertaux — The Book in Germany ; Chodowiecki — In England ; Boydell 
 and French artists — Caslon and Baskerville — English books with illustrations — 
 Wood engraving in the eighteenth century; the Papillons— Printing ofSres 
 in the eighteenth century. 
 
 ATER on, about the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, the manners and tastes 
 of the French produced an unconscious 
 but tenacious reaction. It seemed as if 
 the conceptions of romanticism had lasted 
 long enough, and that the cycle of chevaliers 
 
 Fig. 114. — Letter by Cochin 111 r 1 
 
 ior \hft Memoires d' Ar- ^nd lords of the Middle Ages had passed 
 
 tillerie of Suvirey da j 1 , , . ,, , 
 
 st.Remy. ^way, and that a return to what is called 
 
 the Natural was effected in literature and 
 art. At the death of Louis XIV. the Olympes and its gods, 
 the majestic poses and suns, had become wearisome. By a 
 little half-open door, gaiety escaped from its prison and fled. 
 For the Book that door was opened by the engraver Sebastien 
 Leclerc. 
 
Beginning of the Eighteenth Century. 195 
 
 The ancient school was replaced. Constrained during three 
 quarters of a century, French manners began to be joyous 
 under the regency of the Due d' Orleans. The representatives 
 of another age still lived, Rigaud still painted his portraits in 
 wigs, but there were new comers, enlivened by the new fashions, 
 less solemn and more bewitching. Le Brun was then far in 
 the past, and as amusing to the ladies of the regency as are 
 now to us the fashions of the Second Empire. 
 
 The Book, as its manner was, followed the movement, and 
 gradually found the elements of its decoration in the tenden- 
 cies of the day. Small sizes were multiplied, types showed 
 elegance, and vignettes became more and more agreeable and 
 spirited. Amateurs had their ex-libris or book-plates engraved. 
 The smallest pamphlets were covered with ornamental letters, 
 head and tailpieces, already very clever. Costume also, in its 
 lighter form, gave to designers a means of agreeably com- 
 posing a page of illustration and disseminating fancy in the 
 figures. These revolutions were simply brought about from 
 day to day, as taste became more pronounced and found its 
 expression. 
 
 The commerce of the Book was still extending from the 
 end of the preceding century ; and if the number of printers 
 was limited and arrested by certain somewhat hard laws, 
 production in Paris was enormous. Among regulations that 
 weighed most heavily on publishers figured the obligation put 
 upon them by the ordinance of 1 7 1 3 to deposit eight copies of 
 illustrated books. In 1725 the King issued other regulations 
 to affirm the rights of the university over the corporation, 
 forcing the masters to assist in a body at the processions of 
 the Sorbonne and to offer on the Day of the Purification 'a 
 candle to the rector. In spite of this ordinance, more religious 
 
196 THE Book. 
 
 than useful to commerce, the fashion of vignettes increased. 
 The principal shops were ransacked, as they are still, for novel- 
 ties ; the Rue St. Jacques and the Quai des Augustins, where 
 they were grouped, were resorted to. The most important 
 booksellers in 1727 were Coignard, the Barbous — who essayed 
 afterwards, with Lengley Dufresnoy, to copy the Elzevirs, — 
 Cavalier, Robustel, Fournier, Ballard, and D'Houry. Of the 
 two last, D'Houry printed the calendars, and Ballard had the 
 privilege for music. Another, Leonord, published the books of 
 the Dauphin. At these and other publishers', recent works 
 were examined, those who did not buy gave their advice and 
 took ideas, and so this fashion slowly set in. It was thus that 
 Houdart de la Motte published with G. Dupuis in 1719 a 
 collection of fables, with illustrations by Claude Gillot, which 
 was the talk at the booksellers'. 
 
 All was original in this book: the author, who had formed, 
 five years before, the eccentric idea of translating the Iliad 
 without knowing a word of Greek ; the text, a kind of imitation 
 of Lafontaine, without salt or savour ; the size, quarto, admir- 
 ably printed by Dupuis, in the Rue St. Jacques, with plates by 
 Coypel, Masse, and, above all, the charming vignettes of Gillot, 
 the most pleasing and clever of all his collaborators, a sort of 
 Callot fallen into the eighteenth century, and who ought to take 
 the first place in it by primogeniture. Gillot has been called, 
 not without reason, "the last pagan of the Renaissance;" and 
 this pagan had the honour to give us Watteau. 
 
 The Count de Caylus tells the story. Gillot had resigned 
 the pencil for the etching needle on seeing the work of his 
 pupil. He had no reason to complain ; his pictures were of no 
 value, and his prints gave other artists the idea of imitating 
 them. The whole French school of the eighteenth century 
 
Claude Gillot. 
 
 197 
 
 may have had its origin in this forgotten book, illustrated by 
 the master of Watteau. In fact, in the manner of the little 
 etching here given we may easily perceive the coquetry and 
 affectation that were later the dominant tone of vignettes. 
 For, it may well be said, the graceful, feminine, and arch 
 manner of which we are going to speak was, above all, con- 
 ventional and false. In opposition to the designers and 
 engravers of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth 
 
 Fig. 115.— Vignette by Gillot for the Chien et k Chat, fable by Houdart de la Motte, in 1719. 
 
 century, who reproduced naturally scenes of daily life even if 
 somewhat idealized, it came to pass that, through the moral 
 education of the artists, they put forth the ideal in the most 
 ordinary things of life. Shepherds were no longer the gross 
 and rustic peasants that we find in primitive Flemish paintings 
 or in the Hours of Simon Vostre ; they were coxcombs, 
 pomaded and adorned with ribbons, playing the bagpipes, and 
 making love to court shepherdesses. 
 
 At first it was Watteau who influenced all the engravers 
 
198 The Book. 
 
 in the pretty and the smart ; Boucher did the rest ; and fatally 
 the Book followed, and followed impetuously, surpassing, if 
 possible, the painted works. If the severe poses, the grave 
 touch, of the preceding century are no longer found, they often 
 go too far in the contrary direction. It may be well said 
 here that the arts are ordinarily the result of the manners of 
 an epoch. The financial scheme of Law was not without 
 influence on the entire eighteenth century, by the terrible 
 manner in which it upset fortunes, awoke appetites, gave rein 
 to aspirations hitherto held in check. Claude Gillot, the 
 designer, was one of the first victims of the Scotch banker ; he 
 lost his fortune on the Exchange ; but who may say what his 
 artistic ambition dreamt of in the midst of all these disorders ? 
 One thing is certain : that Watteau, his pupil, broke abruptly 
 with the style of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Laurent Cars was the engraver who multiplied the com- 
 positions of Boucher, and set the fashion. He engraved also, 
 after the painter of shepherds and nymphs, illustrations to 
 Moliere, the most agreeable that there are for style and spirit. 
 In engraving certain works of Lemoyne, Cars did not com- 
 pletely desert the ancient school. He appears thus at the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century as if divided between two 
 manners, each equally possible to him. 
 
 The work of these engravers was almost exclusively done 
 by etching, biting with acid a copper plate covered with 
 varnish, on which the drawing was made by means of a point. 
 This process, always previously used for sketches, served also 
 for finishing vignettes, which up to then had been finished by 
 the burin. The suppleness of the work was greater, and the 
 artist remained more himself than he could be with the stiff 
 cutting instrument of the seventeenth century. 
 
Cars— The Quarto Moliere. 199 
 
 The sizes of books had not yet all come to octavo or 
 duodecimo. The CEuvres de Moliere published by Prault in 
 1734 in six volumes quarto, under the direction of Marc 
 Antoine Joly, give the idea of an enormous work, not at all 
 of theatrical pieces. To tell the truth, these somewhat ex- 
 aggerated dimensions gave artists more room for illustration ; 
 later, when smaller forms predominated, text and engravings 
 were so compressed that they were not always clear and readable 
 to every eye. However, the quarto was not graceful, it was not 
 in harmony with the delicate, the pastoral pieces, then in vogue, 
 and as a current size it had to disappear in illustrated 
 publications. 
 
 The class of artisans employed on the Book is hardly 
 identical in the eighteenth century with that of printers and 
 publishers. In the beginning, as we have seen, the engravers 
 of wood blocks and the printers were often the same people, 
 preparing their characters or their blocks, and afterwards 
 putting them under the press. The great printing offices had 
 very quickly changed that. Each particular work had its 
 special workman. Typography had its type-founders, com- 
 positors, forwarders, inkers, and pressmen. In the eighteenth 
 century this was supplemented by designers, engravers, plate- 
 printers ; and these different professions occupied themselves on 
 the Book in manipulating the sheets in their turn. In the 
 midst of this crowd, the designers and engravers, esteemed as 
 was their collaboration, were not the most honoured. Their 
 homes often reflected their life as reckless artists, quick to 
 spend the money earned during the week; and we shall have 
 occasion to name some of the more miserable among them. 
 
 The booksellers, on the contrary, had become great person- 
 ages. In the preceding chapter we have seen Cramoisy and 
 
200 The Book. 
 
 Vitre,' to name only these two, acquire the greatest honours, the 
 latter even having been painted by Philippe de Champagne, 
 with many other lords of the court. In the eighteenth century 
 there were Brunet, Ballard, Mariette, Chardon, Frangois Didot, 
 and a host of others, during the time of Watteau, Boucher, 
 and Cars, of which we have just spoken ; and these several 
 publishers had houses of their own, and furnished shops and 
 printing offices with the best appurtenances. Saved from falling 
 into negligences by royal regulations on printing, they composed 
 imperishable works, with admirable characters, on paper of the 
 first quality ; and, usual consequence of their high position, they 
 paid the artists charged with their work badly. It would be 
 long and tedious to enter into this matter in detail. They made 
 progress by slow degrees, and in good time they united marvel- 
 lously copperplate engraving to printed text, so marvellously 
 that in comparing their works with the wood blocks of the 
 sixteenth century, it may be asked which of the two styles is 
 superior in elegance and good taste. 
 
 One of the ancestors of this group of vignettists was the 
 younger Cochin, who had engraved the plate of the sparrows 
 in the fables of Houdart, illustrated by Gillot. Cochin, in spite 
 of his passion for allegory and his very marked taste for affecta- 
 tion, gave, it may be said, with the designer-engraver Saint- 
 Aubin, an enormous impulse to the art of adorning books. 
 From the beginning of his career he worked for the publishers, 
 designing frontispieces, ornamented letters, and tail-pieces, or 
 transferring to copper the drawings of others. Singular type 
 of artist, educated, well brought up, epicurean and spendthrift, 
 friend of great lords, and protected by Madame de Pompadour, 
 whose young brother Abel Poisson he conducted over Italy, 
 Cochin did everything, was ready at the least request, inventing 
 
Cochin. 
 
 20I 
 
 curious menus, giving representations of fetes, and yet finding 
 the time to lavish on books and vignettes. 
 
 He worked chiefly for Jombert, a sort of learned bookseller, 
 King's printer to the artillery, who dates from July 1736. 
 Jombert held receptions to painters, gave little private soirees, 
 which Cochin attended, and there he daily made numerous 
 friends. It was in this house, of so special a character, and, 
 it may be said, so little artistic at first sight, that Cochin 
 
 Fig. n6. — Vignette for Daphnis et Chloe by Cochin, for Coustelier's edition. 
 
 invented his best frontispieces, among them that of the Calcul 
 Differentiel, that of the Asironomie Physique, and the plates 
 of the Mdthode de Dessin, after Boucher. He was one of the 
 first to produce engraved titles, with which the publisher Prault 
 ornamented his dainty volumes, and which were imitated, up to 
 the end of the eighteenth century, by all the illustrators who 
 followed. In the title to the works of Madame Deshoulieres 
 the letter itself is engraved. Since then the open letter has 
 
202 The book. 
 
 been employed in typography. These vignettes were used many 
 times by publishers, sometimes simply effacing the inscription, 
 sometimes reproducing the original design by a different artist. 
 The cupid with the swan was used in 1744 to decorate a 
 Jerusalem Delivered in Italian, by the same publisher, Prault ; 
 it was then engraved by Aveline. Fessard engraved the second 
 plate, which is here reproduced. 
 
 Nearly all the frontispieces of the Book with vignettes of the 
 eighteenth century preserve this arrangement ; an ornamented 
 and draped border, with garlands of roses, symbols, and cupids, 
 in the middle of the title, in red and black, composed in open 
 letter, often a scroll with the address of the publisher, but 
 rarely a mark. It was the time of little winged cupids, god- 
 desses, and gods. The goddesses were the favourites of the 
 kings, Madame de Pompadour or the princesses, but rarely of 
 the virtuous Marie L.eczinska, too plain and too much ignored 
 to tempt the artists ; the kings or the princes were the gods. 
 
 After Jombert, Prault, and Coustellier, Cochin worked for 
 Frangois Didot, syndic of the printers, for whom he prepared 
 a set of illustrations for Moliere. Unfortunately Didot died in 
 1757, and the project fell with him. Of the work of Cochin 
 there only remains the set of Tartufe etchings in octavo. 
 
 In the vortex into which he was plunged, he successively 
 illustrated the CEuvres de Roussemi, published at Brussels, 
 quarto ; those of Boileau, published by David and Durand, 
 octavo ; and Renault's Histoire de France, in the same size, 
 with numerous vignettes. One of these should be noted in a 
 book treating on printing; it is that in which Cochin pretends 
 to show to his contemporaries the interior of a workshop 
 in 1470. Without doubt the sketch of this print was taken in 
 one of the houses frequented by him— at Jombert's, Didot's, or 
 
Gravelot. 
 
 203 
 
 David and Durands— for that room in which compositors are 
 working and printed sheets drying was not an invention 
 of Cochin, and served to reproduce a printing office of the 
 eighteenth century, such as it existed. 
 
 Around Cochin soon worked a number of designers and 
 
 de M'^.el- M 'J' 
 
 ESHOULIERES 
 
 TOME PREMIER 
 
 A PARIS 
 CA&xj Praalt/zZci Quay cle ^ 
 
 Coaly 
 
 Fig. 117, — Title-page engraved by Fcssard after Cochin for the works of 
 Madame Deshoulieres, 1747. 
 
 etchers, too prudent to lose the opportunity. The fashion set in 
 for books beribboned, festooned, and flowered. Hubert Francois 
 Gravelot had carried to London this style of new works, for 
 he knew, better than any one, how to decorate with letters, 
 figures, and tailpieces. He did not engrave much himself, 
 leaving this work to lesser artists, and contenting himself with 
 
204 
 
 The Book. 
 
 subtle invention and graceful subjects. With Eisen, Cochin, 
 and Moreau, he is the French artist in the sense of the time, 
 
 Fig. 1 1 8.— Vignette taken from P. Corneille's Theatre, by Gravelot. 
 
 free, bold, and ingenious, but perhaps a little out of place in 
 England. He published, nevertheless, his illustrations to the 
 Decameron in 1757-61, five vols, royal 8vo, one of his most curious 
 
Choffard. 
 
 205 
 
 sets of plates, and a hundred various vignettes. On his return 
 to France he designed the Thddtre of P. Corneille, from which 
 the Galerie de Palais is here reproduced, on account of the 
 
 illustration of book- 
 selling which it represents. In 
 1764 the large salon of the Palace 
 was still, as in the time of Abraham 
 Bosse, a place where shops were 
 fitted up, and the new books dis- 
 cussed. Side by side with the 
 dressmakers and merchants of 
 every category, the bookseller 
 offers to his customer the recent 
 products of Parisian presses. Cer- 
 tain works were sold under cover 
 and not shown ; there is here 
 something to pique the curiosity 
 
 ■/"■' )'- 
 
 Fig. 119- — Border designed by Choffard in 175S. 
 
 of idle young seigneurs whose strolls in the galleries were 
 
 protracted. 
 
 Eisen has a simplicity, a good taste, and a special and 
 
206 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 singularly perfect dash for artistic effect in combination with 
 typography. It is a pity that this designer had no consultative 
 voice in the choice of impression and getting up of the Book, 
 
 Fig. 120. — Frontispiece by Eisen for the Voyage by I'Abb^ de la Porte, 1751. 
 
 The union of these two forces, the vignette and the composition, 
 is so close that we are tempted to believe that one was made 
 for the other, neither venturing to assert itself. In the pretty 
 and elaborate inventions of the artists reigned a lackadaisical 
 
LAFONTAINE'S COXTES. 20/ 
 
 affectation that was delightfully becoming ; the rock-work, which 
 it still had, suited admirably the borders of the first page. 
 The Lettres d'une Peruvienne has a very pleasing title, differing 
 little, on the whole, from that of Madame Deshoulieres, by 
 Cochin. It is the same with the Lettres Turques, published 
 at Amsterdam in 1750, and generally with all the frontispieces 
 signed by him. As to the other decorations of the Book, 
 there were also a number of ingenious artists, combining cupids 
 and flowers, heaping up blazons, delighting in playing with accu- 
 mulated difficulties. Under this assuredly involuntary but real 
 direction, publications attained proportions of luxury and co- 
 quetry until then unknown. The volume of Les Baisers by 
 Dorat (La Haye et Paris, 1770) would not have lived but for 
 Eisen and the delightful fancies with which he adorned it. 
 
 At the same time, we find Choffard, another designer and 
 etcher of much repute, and the most sought after by the 
 booksellers. Under his pencil the vignette became a chef- 
 d'oeuvre, the tailpiece was a delightful compound of judicious 
 and sportive ornament, the taste for which grew more and 
 more. From delicate foliage are suspended roses, shepherds' 
 pipes, lyres, and zithers. With the zephyrs scrolls or ribbons 
 float, carried by winged cupids. The initial letters are real 
 pictures, of such fineness and precision that the difficulties of 
 their reproduction prevent us from putting them before the 
 reader. 
 
 When the Fermiers gdneraux, those great amateur financiers 
 of the last century, conceived the idea of an edition of Les 
 Contes of Lafontaine at their expense, their eyes naturally 
 fell upon Eisen and Choffard, the artists best qualified to 
 illustrate the inimitable fancies of the great poet. The first had 
 for his task the composition of the separate plates, Choffard 
 
208 
 
 The Book. 
 
 the general decoration. Ficquet was added for the portrait 
 of the bonhomme Lafontaine — Ficquet, whose specialty in 
 this genre was dazzling in its delicacy and spirit ; Diderot 
 wrote a short introduction ; the composition was confided 
 to a printer of the first order, and it was put on sale by 
 Barbou (Paris, 1762). 
 
 Fig. 121.— Vignette by Eisen for the Quiproquo in the Contes of Lafontaine, 
 in the edition of the Fermiers Gene'raux. 
 
 It is not a book to be recommended from a moral point of 
 view, but never did typographical art, in combination with that 
 of designers and engravers, obtain a more complete success : the 
 size in octavo, the clear impression, united with the dimensions 
 of the plates in a harmonious elegance, well calculated to please 
 
The Younger Moreau. 209 
 
 the very rich personages and the joyous amateurs to whom 
 Les Conies address themselves. Although Eisen has dressed 
 the greater part of the characters in the costume of his time, 
 which is a little hurtful to one's feelings to-day, it might be 
 imagined that it was Lafontaine who was mistaken, so com- 
 pletely do these delicate, equivocal tales appear to have been 
 created for the seigneurs of the time of Louis XV. 
 
 All the special literature sought for then by rich people 
 had not the value of the Contes. There was at Rheims a 
 person, who has to-day become a la mode, as he was in 
 the time of Louis XVI., who sold under cover of secrecy 
 a quantity of licentious books of the better kind, adorned 
 with figures by Eisen, Marillier, or Cochin ; this was Cazin, 
 an artist in his way, although his good name suffered under 
 a scandalous trial. An order of the Council of State in 
 1764 enjoined him to cease his trade in the Place Royale 
 at Rheims, where he sold his particular merchandise. It 
 appears that the sentence was not without appeal, for we 
 find Cazin at Paris about 1785. He was one of those who 
 were ruined by the Revolution, after he had popularised 
 the editions known as Peiits Formats, printed by Valadel, 
 of Paris. 
 
 We have come to the most beautiful illustrated books of 
 the eighteenth century. To the illustrious artists of whom we 
 have just spoken are to be added the younger Moreau, and 
 St. Aubin, the former nephew by marriage of the publisher 
 Prault, and therefrom a decorator of the Book, the other, 
 thrown by Gravelot into full work, rapidly became the most 
 subtle and clever of the etchers of the time. Moreau did 
 not wait long after his marriage before setting to work. 
 He began with ornaments destined for the Histoire de France 
 
 14 
 
210 
 
 The Book. 
 
 of President Henault ; then he composed, in his own particular 
 manner, titles and tailpieces for his uncle by marriage. In 
 the Book he is the cultivator of garlands of roses, which he 
 grouped with an ideal grace ; he twined them round, the 
 borders of his frontispieces, and applied them judiciously in 
 his tailpieces. He excelled in inventing subjects referring to 
 the text which were not merely commonplace ornaments 
 suitable for anything. The tailpiece on p. 213, taken from 
 
 Fig. 122. — Card of the publisher Frault, uncle by marriage of Moreau le Jeune. 
 
 the works of Moliere, brings forcibly to mind the Mddecin 
 malgri Lui, with its wood-cutter unmercifully beaten with 
 sticks and muffled in a doctor's robe. It is the same with 
 other illustrations, which cannot be displaced from the position 
 assigned to them by the artist without loss of meaning. 
 
 The year 1773, which saw the publication by De Bret of 
 the CEuvres de Moliere, may perhaps be considered as that in 
 which the French Book of the eighteenth century reached its 
 culminating point. M. de Laborde, first valet de chambre of 
 
The Younger moreau. 
 
 211 
 
 the King and governor of the Louvre, published with De 
 Lormel, printer to the Academy of Music, his celebrated 
 collection of Chansons, dedicated to the young Dauphiness 
 Marie Antoinette, and partly illustrated by the younger Moreau. 
 The work is exquisite, and of simple grace, by which the 
 princess was particularly touched, and which anticipated his 
 designs for Le Devin du Village. The sentimental note of 
 the century was struck ; in it the insipid love of shep- 
 herdesses tenderly sighed, and the designer has rendered 
 delightfully this arch side of the pastoral song. 
 
 Fig. 123. — Tailpiece from the Midean malgre Lui, by Moreau le Jeune. 
 
 Our task does not permit us to linger over the works 
 of this prolific and charming artist, but we must mention 
 his inimitable plates to J. J. Rousseau, the finest and most 
 agreeable of his compositions and vignettes, also his 
 masterpiece, the Histoire du Costume, containing the most 
 typical designs of fashionable French life just before the 
 Revolution. 
 
 As evidencing the activity of French artists of the Book 
 in the eighteenth century, it may not be without interest 
 to cite the number of works illustrated by the better-known 
 artists as enumerated in the last edition of M. H. Cohen's 
 
212 
 
 The Book. 
 valuable Guide de r Amateur de Livres a Gravures du XVI IP 
 
 Steele : — 
 
 Borel, 29 ; 
 Boucher, 47 ; 
 Cars, 13 ; 
 Choffard, 50; 
 Cochin, 143 ; 
 Duplessis-Bertaux, 22 ; 
 Eisen, 135 ; 
 Fragonard, 10 ; 
 
 Freudenberger, 7 
 Gravelot, 86 ; 
 Le Barbier, 54 ; 
 Le Bas, 39 ; 
 Lemire, 77 ; 
 Lempereur, 68 ; 
 Longueil, 97 ; 
 Marillier, 116 ; 
 
 Moreau, 138 ; 
 Patas, 65 ; 
 Petit, 23 
 Picart, 62 ; 
 Ponce, 65 ; 
 St. Aubin, 70 ; 
 Simonet, 83 ; 
 
 and we also should refer the reader to the valuable work by 
 E. and J. de Goncourt, L'Art du iSeme Siecle, containing 
 908 reproductions of the best works by Watteau, Chardin, 
 Boucher, Latour, Greuze, Les Saint-Aubin, Gravelot, Cochin, 
 Eisen, Moreau, Debucourt, Fragonard, Prud'hon. 2 vols., 4to, 
 Paris, 1882. 
 
 With the Revolution the decline of the Book in France 
 arrives, as that of all the arts. Moreau, a friend of David, 
 had become affected by the new ideas and the burlesque 
 renaissance in imitation of Greek and Roman art. He made 
 his sacrifice on the altar of the gods, and engraved simple souls 
 on wood to punish himself for having painted the elegancies 
 of fallen tyrants. At this game, vigour, as well as suppleness, 
 was lost ; and if he had had only the artistic propensity of the 
 Revolution, his daughter, married to Charles Vernet, could not 
 have written of him, " That which can be most admired is, at 
 the same time, the fecundity and flexibility of Moreau's talent, 
 that marvellous facility of conceiving a picturesque scene and 
 disposing it in an interesting and truthful manner in the least 
 extended space." This was true before, — but after ? 
 
 In spite of his passion for the ideas and men of the Revo- 
 lution, Moreau found himself at the end of ' his resources 
 
The Younger Moreau. 
 
 213 
 
 Renouard, the publisher, took him up as he had received St. 
 Aubin, to whom he advanced sum after sum to prevent him 
 dying of hunger Thus, Hke most of his contemporaries, 
 Moreau '[ pressed by want, '' prit, quitta, reprit la cuirasse et 
 
 W^YW^ 
 
 Fig. 124. — Vignette of the Pardon Obtenu, designed by Moreau le Jeune, 
 for Laborde's Chansons, in 1773- 
 
 la haire." He had worked for everybody : for Louis XVI., 
 for the Republic, for Napoleon I. 
 
 Moreau dota la Republique 
 
 De la fleur de son divoumen', 
 
 Beau devoAment ! 
 
 II le jura sur une pique . . . 
 
 SoufBa le vent, 
 
 II emporta pique et serment ! " 
 
214 '^^^ Book. 
 
 The worst of it is, that after his designs for Ovid, Moliere, 
 and Rousseau, dating from the reign of Louis XVL, he should 
 have done them again in 1804, 1806, and 1808. The difference 
 was great, even probably for, his publishers, Renouard and 
 Dupreel. It does not appear either that the pontiff of the new 
 school, David, knew of his distress, for Moreau succumbed 
 in 1 8 14 to a cancerous scirrhus on the right arm, forgotten, 
 and in the greatest misery. 
 
 We have passed somewhat quickly to the end of the century 
 because it is of no importance to name each of the publishers 
 and artists, but only to sketch briefly their tastes or their 
 manner. Nor have we dwelt long on the engravers so called, 
 because of their number ; but their dexterity remains proverbial ; 
 they handled the etching-needle with extreme suppleness, and 
 often improved the drawings of illustrators during the process. 
 Many of these, not to say all, made use themselves of the 
 etching-needle, St. Aubin for example, who had the power 
 of giving to the work of others his personal mark and 
 character. 
 
 The Revolution passing over some among those, ruined 
 them, and, as stated above, they followed the movement, and 
 lost themselves in the school of David. It was Duplessis- 
 Bertaux who, after having furnished to Cazin, the publisher, 
 vignettes for his Reateil des Meilleurs Conies en Vers, 1778, 
 and many other books, after having worked for Didot, devoted 
 himself to patriotic engraving and to the reproduction of 
 scenes of the Revolution. When he published his Tableaux 
 Historiques, in three volumes folio, adorned with nearly two 
 hundred large plates, it was under the Consulate, that is to 
 say, far from the time when the work was begun. Renouvier 
 assures us, with his exclusive disdain for the eighteenth century, 
 
D uplessis-Ber ta ux. 
 
 215 
 
 that Duplessis-Bertaux was a mystifier, and that his scenes of 
 the Revolution were a hoax, " in the kind of spirit in vogue 
 
 Fig. I25.-Title designed by Mor.au le Jeune in 1769 for the publisher Prault. 
 
 under the Directory." The truth is that the artist, in place 
 of being a cheerful Callot, as might be thought from his 
 manner of engraving, so like that of the Lorraine artist, was 
 
2i6 THE BOOK. 
 
 imbued with the emphatic and exaggerated impressions of the 
 first RepubHc, its sans-culottes in the poses of the Sabines and 
 its tricoteuses apeing Penelope. 
 
 The immense artistic advance made in France in the 
 eighteenth century in the manufacture and illustration of the 
 Book made itself felt throughout Europe. In "Italy, Giam- 
 battista Bodoni, born at Saluzzo, in Piedmont, 1740, who was 
 first employed at the Propaganda Office, Rome, 1758, devoted 
 his attention chiefly to the study of oriental alphabets. He was 
 placed, 1758, at the head of Duke Ferdinand's new printing 
 office at Parma, and became one of the most celebrated 
 printers of Italy. He printed Epithalamia exoticis Unguis reddita 
 in twenty-five languages, 1775 (in connection with the marriage 
 of the Prince of Piedmont with Princess Clotilde of France), and 
 a valuable edition of Homer, three vols., 1808, inscribed to 
 Napoleon I., for which he received a pension of .1^120. In 
 Spain we find Joachim Ibarra, born 1725 in Saragossa, "the 
 Spanish Bodoni," with the title of Court printer, fie raised 
 the art of printing to a hitherto unknown height in Spain, 
 and amongst his works we may mention the Mitions de luxe 
 of the Bible, a Spanish translation of Sallust, The History of 
 Spain by Mariana, and above all his fine edition of Don 
 Quixote, in 4 vols. 4to, with brilliant illustrations (1780), which 
 is considered the ckef-dcsuvie of Ibarra's press. After his death 
 (in 1785) his widow continued the business, and issued the 
 Diccionario de la Langua Castellana, fol., 1803. 
 
 In Germany, Chodowiecki, born at Dantzic of a family of 
 apothecaries, developed his talent from ornamenting the boxes 
 of his father, and from 1758 to 1794 he designed numerous 
 plates for books and almanacs, a little heavy in engraving, 
 but singularly clever in composition. In a diary of 1773, he 
 
CHODOWIECKI. 2^7 
 
 depicted the incidents of his journey from Berlin to Danzig 
 
 Fig. 126. — Frontispiece 
 
 of the Glossarium of Du Dange, Paris, Osmont, I733- 
 
 on 
 
 horseback; he illustrated besides Goethe's Wer„.r ..A 
 
2i8 The Book. 
 
 Hermann und Dorothea, Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm, 
 Voss' Luise, and numerous other works. There were some 
 other clever designers and engravers, but the Book did not 
 make so much progress in Germany as in France and 
 England. 
 
 In England a vast improvement was manifested. Fine 
 types were cast by John Baskerville and William Caslon ; 
 printing machines were perfected. Baskerville, born 1706, at 
 Wolverley, Worcestershire, is considered the father of modern 
 English typography. Commencing type-founding in 1750, for 
 Cambridge, he contracted with the University for printing a 
 folio edition of the Bible, also of the Common Prayer Book, 
 paying a royalty of ^^20 for every thousand copies. After 1756 
 he printed Latin, English, and Italian classics ; the most 
 elegant specimen being his Horace, 1762. 
 
 The illustration of books by engraved plates was in the 
 first half of the century almost entirely done by foreigners, but 
 an English school was arising, which attained perfection in the 
 latter half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth 
 century. Wood engraving also, which, with the exception of 
 blocks for head and tailpieces, had become almost a lost art, 
 was revived by Bewick, to become later one of the chief 
 adornments of the Book. 
 
 Before 17 16 English printers obtained their best founts of 
 type from Holland, but the establishment of the Caslon 
 foundry rendered them independent. William Caslon, the first 
 great English type-founder, died 1766, but the foundry still 
 exists, pre-eminent in the beauty of its characters. We 
 must also mention the Foulis Press of Glasgow, celebrated for 
 its beautiful editions of classical works. The impetus given 
 to fine printing by these houses rapidly spread itself, and laid 
 
Bartolozzi. 219 
 
 the foundation of the perfection which English book-making 
 reached. 
 
 As mentioned before, foreigners illustrated many English 
 books in the early part of the century. Gravelot designed a set 
 of plates to Shakespeare in ismo, 1740, and another in quarto, 
 1 744, besides numerous frontispieces and other plates in all kinds 
 of books. Among other foreigners who engraved for English 
 publishers were Grignion, Kip, Van der Gucht, Houbraken, 
 and Bartolozzi. Bartolozzi, who was very prolific in the pro- 
 duction of engraved plates, may perhaps be called the founder 
 of that great English school of engraving which arose with 
 the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1 769, and the 
 encouragement given by Alderman Boydell. A biographical 
 and descriptive account of the life and works of Bartolozzi will 
 be found in the splendid work by Mr. Andrew W. Tuer. 
 Houbraken and Vertue engraved a set of fine portraits in folio 
 for Rapin's History of England, 1736; William Hogarth de- 
 signed plates for Butler's Hudibras, 1744; and among other 
 curiosities of English engraving before 1750 were Sturt's 
 edition of the Common Prayer, entirely engraved on copper 
 plates, 171 7, and an edition of Horace entirely engraved by 
 Pine, I T2>Z- That the taste for illustrated books soon grew to 
 be great is evidenced by the publication of such expensive 
 works as Boydell's edition of Shakespeare, in nine volumes 
 folio, commenced in 1791, and adorned with a hundred plates 
 from pictures specially commissioned by the spirited publisher ; 
 Claude's Liber Veritatis, with three hundred engravings by 
 Richard Earlom, 1777, Sir Robert Strange's engravings of fifty 
 historical prints about 1750, collections of views in Great Britain 
 by Kip, Buck, and Boydell ; Holbein's Collection of Portraits, 
 1792, a hundred and fifty plates to Shakespeare engraved by 
 
220 
 
 The Book. 
 
 S. and E. Harding 1793, all of which cost large sums to produce, 
 and greatly contributed to the elevation of public taste. Among 
 the artists of the latter half of the century who contributed to 
 the decoration of the Book are Thomas Stothard and William 
 Blake, whose very beautiful designs, extending into the next 
 century, excelled those of all their contemporaries in their grace 
 and spirit ; Robert Smirke, best known by his plates for 
 
 Fig. 127. — Illustration by Stothard, from one of the Keepsakes. 
 
 Shakespeare, Don Quixote, and Gil Bias ; Burney and Richard 
 Westall, born at Hertford, 1765, well known for his illustra- 
 tions to Boydell's Milton, and his Shakespeare Gallery, Hume's 
 History of England, and the Poems of Crabbe, Moore, Scott, 
 and Cowper. Thomas Stothard made more than five thousand 
 designs. His best illustrations are to be found in the 
 Town and Country Magazine, Bell's British Poets, Novelists 
 
Blake. 
 
 221 
 
 Magazine, Boydell's Shakespeare, Milton, Spencer, Don Quixote, 
 Walton's Compleat Angler, Rogers's Italy, Robinson Crusoe, 
 1790, and Pilgrim's Progress, 1794. William Blake attracted 
 great attention by his eccentricity and artistic talents. Among 
 the principal works which he illustrated are Young's Night 
 Thoughts, 1779, with forty-three full page illustrations, and 
 illustrations to Blair's Grave, 1808; illustrations to Milton's 
 
 Fig. 128. — Illustration by Blake, from Blair's Grave. 
 
 Comus, 1804; Mary Wolstonecraft's Original Stories, 1791. 
 His designs are full of feeling and delicacy, and are looked 
 upon with wonder. It may be said, generally, that the 
 English books of the eighteenth century were of a more 
 solid character than the French, although English art, espe- 
 cially in the direction of the Book, owes much to French 
 initiation. It is curious to read now the opinion of a contem- 
 porary French engraver on English art. Choffard, in the 
 
222 The Book. 
 
 preface to Basan's Dictionnaire, 1767, wrote: "They" (the 
 English), " having been supported by some foreign talent, are 
 trying to create talent among themselves ; but they are unable 
 to kindle the flame of genius that vivifies all art in France." 
 
 Engraving by leaving the figure in relief, from which 
 printing could be done with the letterpress, had, we may 
 think, nearly disappeared in the midst of the continued invasion 
 of the burin and etching. It only appeared from time to 
 time in head and tailpieces, merely as typographical acces- 
 sories, and lost in other directions. There were always wood 
 
 mmM. 
 
 Ki' 
 
 Fig. 129. — Tailpiece engraved on wood by Jean Baptiste Papillon (before 1766). 
 
 engravers, not very clever, capable only of working simple 
 lines without charm. One of them resolved to resuscitate the ' 
 art, and made various attempts about the end of the reign of 
 Louis XIV. and beginning of that of Louis XV. He was 
 named Jean Papillon, and was born at St. Quentin in 1661. 
 His experiments did not go beyond a book of prayers, with 
 thirty-six figures in relief after Sebastien Leclerc. His son, 
 Jean Baptiste, succeeded him, and continued to engrave without 
 ceasing subjects of ornament, letters, and often tailpieces, of 
 a good style upon the whole, and taking an excellent place 
 
Jean Baptiste Papillon. 223 
 
 in an elaborate book. Unfortunately, grace had fled ; the 
 processes which the artists had taught each other were lost ; 
 and the Papillons reconstituted, we may say, a vanished art. 
 Jean Baptiste also published in 1766 a theoretical treatise on 
 wood engraving, abounding in historical errors, but in which 
 something instructive may be found if taken with discretion. 
 He says in his preface : " Now that excellent work is done 
 on copper, wood engraving is neglected, and the art lost of 
 designing and cutting the shadings of the pencil on the wood 
 block ; most of those who work in it have neither design nor 
 taste, and only follow their own ideas ; it is not astonishing that 
 only very inferior pieces come from their hands, to say nothing 
 stronger ; the profound ignorance of nearly all who meddle with 
 it contrives more and more to destroy the beauties of this art 
 in which many people find neither pleasure nor grace. To 
 obviate all this, if it be possible to me, I have undertaken to 
 give my precepts and observations to those who wish to apply 
 themselves to my engraving." 
 
 It was probably these essays of Papillon that provoked 
 curious experiments on the part of other wood engravers. 
 Duplat, at the beginning of this century, proposed to prepare 
 a relief on stone, and as this would be broken under pressure, 
 'he invented a mould ; that is to say, he took a leaden matrix 
 from the stone cutting, and ran a resistant metal into this 
 mould, thus obtaining a relief similar to the stone. Renouard, 
 the publisher, made the trials ; and the younger Moreau made 
 the designs. Fancy Moreau making experiments in 181 1! 
 One of the plates of Lafontaine's Fables, published by 
 Renouard in 181 2, in two volumes, i2mo, is here reproduced. 
 
 It appears, however, that the publisher was thwarted by 
 bad printing. The printers of Didot or Mame, much as they 
 
224 
 
 The Book. 
 
 devoted all their care to it, did not yet know perfect work- 
 manship ; they put the most intense blacks into fine sheets. 
 The great publishers trusted that better days would leave to 
 more clever men the task of perfecting the invention. 
 
 Wood engraving, as stated, owes its revival and almost 
 perfection in England to Thomas Bewick, who published his 
 first work in 1770, his General History of Quadrupeds 1790, 
 and his Birds 1797. In these works he not only depicted his 
 subjects with the most scrupulous fidelity, but in the tailpieces 
 of the several chapters he drew the most quaint, humorous, and 
 
 
 
 E\^ 
 
 ^B 
 
 ^S 
 
 
 i^j'^ 
 
 ^^B 
 
 ^^ 
 
 [in 1 w< '-MW. 
 
 
 Hal? 
 
 ^K 
 
 fl 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 tt! 
 
 ■ 
 
 HGR£:-4 iJPnm 
 
 
 ^.j'^i 
 
 bSJ 
 
 JB 
 
 
 
 Hmj^^s 
 
 W^^M 
 
 ^S 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' — '-i^,'^—. 
 
 
 wfimf^^ 
 
 pS^^H 
 
 ^^Hl 
 
 LSgl^, ""^^-^^ 
 
 ^^^^ 
 
 ^^K 
 
 ^B 
 
 ri 
 
 
 iisiiiiiiir^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 
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 s^al 
 
 Fig. 130. — Experiment in engraving in relief by Moreau le Jeune for 
 Renouard's edition of Lafontaine's Fables. 
 
 faithful representations of country life. From the Fables, pub- 
 lished in 1818, we reproduce an illustration, also a specimen from 
 the second volume of the British Birds. He, with his brother, 
 John Bewick, and their pupils, among whom was Luke Clennell, 
 had an influence upon English art and the decoration of the 
 Book in England which exists to our day. Not alone with us, 
 for he may be said to have repaid the debt which we owed to 
 France for her illustrated books of the eighteenth century by 
 stimulating the art of wood engraving, which was practised by 
 Tony Johannot and the other illustrators of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
Thomas Bewick. 
 
 225 
 
 To return to the eighteenth century, with which this chapter 
 is specially occupied, we have said that the Royal Printing 
 House, after various fortunes, still existed; and in 1788 it 
 worked, for better or for worse, at the Louvre. According to 
 
 Fig. 131. — Portrait of Thomas Bewick. 
 
 the budget of that year, it cost the King 90,000 livres, ^of 
 which the director had 1,400. 
 
 There were, on the other hand, a certain number of official 
 printing offices, that of war, for example, which was devoted 
 entirely to the work of the Ministry. It was situated ^at 
 
 15 
 
226 
 
 The book. 
 
 Versailles, and was created in 1768. It is told of Louis XV. 
 that, being one day in this workshop, he found a pair of 
 spectacles, left as if in inadvertence on a printed sheet. As 
 his sight was weakening, he took the spectacles and looked 
 through them. The sheet was a hyperbolical eulogium com- 
 posed, as if at random, by the director Berrier, in honour 
 of the King. Louis XV., having read the dithyramb, replaced 
 the spectacles, and quietly said, " They are too strong ; they 
 make objects too large." 
 
 Fig. 132.— Wood block by Bewick, from his Fables, 1818. The fox and the goat. 
 
 Who would believe that at the end of the century of 
 Voltaire and Rousseau a craftsman would be found desirous of 
 leading back the typographical art to its cradle, and of making 
 xylographs again, under the name of polytypes .? A German 
 was the genius who conceived the plan. He obtained an 
 order of council for the establishment of his presses in ^785, 
 but the same council suppressed them November ist, 1787. 
 His process was to substitute for movable characters a plate 
 of fixed letters, and probably engraved. 
 
Thomas Bewick. 
 
 227 
 
 Another eccentricity of typography at the end of the century 
 was the introduction of "logography" by John Walter, by which 
 system he issued Gabriel the OtUcast. It consisted in casting 
 whole the words in most common use, in place of separate 
 letters. The system had soon to be abandoned, but he after- 
 wards started the Daily Universal Register, which subse- 
 quently assumed the name of The Times (January ist, 1785), 
 and which his son John, born i8i8, made what it is now. 
 
 In the eighteenth century there was a printing establishment 
 in France for each of the constituted bodies ; the King, the 
 
 Fig. 133. — Wood block from Bewick's Brilish Birds. Ttie common duck. 
 
 Queen, the princes, each had their own. The royal lottery 
 occupied a special printing house. 
 
 The young inmates of the blind asylum worked under the 
 direction of M. Clousier, royal printer. Louis XVI. authorised 
 the celebrated Haiiy, their master, to allow them to print ; and 
 in 1786 they composed an essay on the education of the blind. 
 Pierre Fran9ois Didot was in 1785 printer to the Prince, 
 afterwards Louis XVIII. He published the Aventt^res de 
 Tdldmaque, in two quarto volumes, from this special printing 
 office. 
 
 The English colonies 'in North America early established 
 printing there, their first book, the Book of Psalms, known 
 
228 The Book. 
 
 as the Bay Psalm Book, being dated 1640. By the middle of 
 the eighteenth century literature held a strong position in the 
 colonies, the greater part of it being, as might be expected, 
 English ; but the revolution and subsequent establishment of 
 the United States created a national American literature, which 
 
 Fig. 134. — Benjamin Franklin, by C. N. Cochin. 
 
 has flourished to this day. Among the printers of North America 
 in the eighteenth century, the most famous was Benjamin 
 Franklin, born January 17th, 1706, but he is still more 
 celebrated as a philosopher and statesman. He established a 
 printing office at Philadelphia i72'8, and as a curiosity we may 
 mention his Poor Richards Almanack, which he conducted for 
 
Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 229 
 
 twenty-five years. Interesting for printers is also his epitaph 
 which he composed himself : " The body of Benjamin Franklin, 
 Printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents worn out, 
 and stript of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms. 
 Yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will, as he believed, 
 appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected 
 and amended by its Author." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BOOK IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 The Didots and their improvements — The folio Racine — The school of Didot — Fine 
 publications in England and Germany — Literature and art of the Restoration — ■ 
 Romanticism — Wood engraving — Bewick's pupils, Clennell, etc. — The illustra- 
 tors of romances — The generation of 1840 — The Book in our days in Europe 
 and America. 
 
 OLITICAL imitators had not been found for 
 the French Revolution in all the neighbour- 
 ing countries of Europe, but its Greco- 
 Roman art established itself, and by degrees 
 was introduced into the studios of painters 
 and the printing offices. Prud'hon, Gerard, Girodet, and later 
 Desenne, without counting the younger Moreau and his 
 contemporaries of the older regime, rallied to the new study, 
 forming a school of illustrators and vignettists with which the 
 publishers could resolutely advance. England followed suit with 
 Flaxman, West, Fuseli, Barry, and a crowd of others. Among 
 the publishers the powerful family of the Didots took first 
 rank, and its members, at once type-founders, printers, book- 
 sellers, and savants of the first order, were the best fitted to 
 direct an artistic and literary movement. When Napoleon 
 crowned himself Emperor of the French, the elders of the 
 family had already brought about a number of perfections and 
 discoveries in their profession by which their workshops had 
 
The Didot Family. 231 
 
 profited. Frangois Ambroise, who died in the year of the 
 Empire, had given an exact proportion to types, a free and 
 elegant turn, but perhaps too regular and precise to be agree- 
 able. He had already invented a press called the presse a 
 un coup, in which the impression was taken by a single pull 
 instead of being produced by a series of successive strikings. 
 His brother, Pierre Francois, spoken of in the preceding 
 chapter, was a type-founder and paper-maker at Essones, and 
 counted among his official titles "printer to the Comte de 
 Provence," as Frangois Ambroise was to the Comte d'Artois. 
 
 Of these two branches equally faithful to typography, Pierre 
 Didot, son of Francois Ambroise, became the head on the 
 death of his father. Born in 1760, he had studied his art with 
 passion, and had deserved the installation of his workshops in 
 the Louvre, where he published the celebrated collection known 
 as the Louvre editions, the ckef-d'ceuvre of which was the 
 works of Racine. The splendid execution of this book, in three 
 large folio volumes, was a true typographical revolution. Never 
 in^ any country had scrupulous perfection of detail been joined 
 to so masterly a knowledge of arrangement and form of charac- 
 ters. The great artists of the Davidian school were anxious 
 of the honour of seeing their drawings reproduced as illustra- 
 tions, and those named above designed the fifty-seven plates 
 with which the edition was adorned. Pierre Didot displayed a 
 great affectation in only printing two hundred and fifty copies 
 of his irreproachable and marvellous work, of which a hundred 
 were taken with proofs before letters. Published by subscription, 
 the ordinary edition was issued at 1,200 francs, and with 
 proofs 1,800 francs. 
 
 To these superb works Firmin Didot, his brother, added 
 ingenious discoveries. Struck with certain difficulties of printing 
 
232 THE BOOK. 
 
 as well as of correction, he imagined the welding together of 
 the types of a form, when once obtained perfectly correct, so as 
 to avoid the trouble of new composition. This process, useless 
 for books of small number, had a capital importance in case of 
 reimpressions of popular and successful works. He named this 
 method Stereotype Printing, and from 1799 he published a 
 Racine in i8mo by this process. 
 
 This admirably directed house, we may indeed say this 
 school of typography, formed with Renouard, Claye, Rignoux, 
 and others, the greater number of the French publishers of the 
 middle of the century. When the Czar Alexander went to 
 Paris, he wished to do honour to the greatest French practi- 
 tioners in the science of printing, in the persons of the 
 brothers Pierre and Firmin Didot. But these were not the 
 only ones. The sons of Pierre Fran9ois Didot, Henri and 
 Pierre Fran9ois II. — the latter specially applied himself to 
 paper-making, under the name of Didot Saint Leger — 
 followed in the footsteps of their father and uncle. Pierre 
 Franqois made at Essones an excellent paper, which he 
 brought to the perfection of making it in endless rolls, such 
 as are made to-day for rotary machines. But perhaps the best 
 known of the Didot family is M. Ambroise Firmin Didot, the 
 eldest son of Firmin Didot, who died at an advanced age in 
 1876. He not only increased the reputation of his house by 
 the publication of several great works, but also was himself a 
 great collector of books. The extraordinary sale of his library 
 from 1882 to 1884, which brought nearly three millions of 
 francs, astonishing the literary world, is still in the recollection 
 of all bibliophiles. He studied the old languages, travelled in 
 Greece, Palestine, and Asia Minor, enjoyed a great reputation 
 as a hellenist, and was in 1873 elected a member of the 
 
The Didot Family. 
 
 233 
 
 Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, all the time devoting 
 his special attention to his favourite hobby, the history of 
 printing, to which we owe his writings : Gutenberg (1863), Essai 
 sur I'hisioire de la gravure sur bois (1863), Aide Manuce et 
 V Helldnisme a Venise (1875), Etude sur Jean Cousin (1872), and 
 other bibliographical works. 
 
 Fig. 135. — M. Ambroise Firmin Didot. 
 
 It was also at Essones where Bernardin de St. Pierre retired 
 about the end of the last century, and there married the 
 daughter of Pierre Fran9ois Didot 11. It is a curious coinci- 
 dence that the same village contained at once the man whose 
 works at the beginning of the century had so extraordinary a 
 success and the great family of printers who had given definitive 
 
234 THE BOOK. 
 
 impetus to typographical work. It was in this tranquil circle 
 that the author of Paul et Virginie, at the age of sixty, sought 
 repose; that the publication of his book was resolved upon 
 with all the luxury due to its success, with admirable type and 
 with plates by Prud'hon and others. He added to it the 
 Chaumiere Indienne, written in 1790, on the eve of the Reign 
 of Terror, which is one of the most delightful novels of the 
 time. 
 
 The homely and sweet writings of Bernardin de St. Pierre, 
 the heroic inventions of Girodet, Gerard, and Chaudet in the 
 Greek or Roman style, the clever but severe typography of 
 the Didots — these are the characteristics of the Book at the 
 beginning of the century. Under Louis XV. the nymphs 
 carried panniers ; Polyeucte had a wig and sword. It would 
 have been unbecoming not to give Juno or Venus the head- 
 dress adopted in paintings and vignettes. At the time which 
 now occupies us fashion in clothing influenced designers also. 
 The hair of goddesses was. a la Titus; the waist was under 
 the arms ; golden circles were on the brow. Simple mortals 
 walked naked on the roads, with plumed casques and splendid 
 shields. There were heroes putting forth their disproportioned 
 arms, others raising their eyes to heaven in impossible attitudes. 
 Such were all the vignettes, from Girodet to the humblest, 
 and last, the most forgotten. 
 
 It happens, by an oddity of which the cause is vainly 
 sought, that this classic and revolutionary school of David 
 identifies itself so well with the Napoleonic epoch, and also with 
 the people of the Restoration, that it seems expressly made for 
 them. At the same time, under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. 
 the Romans and Greeks had not the bold carriage of their 
 early days ; they became more citizenized, and looked like the 
 
Luke Clennell. 
 
 23s 
 
 national guards of the kingdom of which later an excessive use 
 was made. 
 
 A whole literature arose that was to react against the 
 Greek full of Gallicisms ; but the movement, by reversing the 
 ancient state of things, by wishing to replace antiquity by the 
 middle ages, old Romans by old French, completely changed 
 the physiognomy of the Book. The engraved vignette and the 
 copperplate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were 
 
 to lose their supremacy and to give way to etching and wood 
 engraving, which was also a revival of the Middle Ages. 
 
 After the unfortunate attempts of Papillon in France, wood 
 engraving was resorted to in England by Thomas Bewick, 
 who founded a school, as we said, of which, at the 'com- 
 mencement of our century, Clennell and the brothers Thompson 
 were members. One of the Thompsons went to France 
 about the middle of the Restoration, doubtless with the 
 
236 THE BOOK. 
 
 hope of profiting by his art, and he offered to the Print 
 Department of the National Library the diploma of the High- 
 land Society, a large folio wood block, very adroit and very 
 curiously cut, after the drawing of the celebrated Benjamin 
 West, and copied from Clennell's original block of the same 
 subject. M. Duchesne, then Keeper of the Prints, speaks of 
 this last process as of an apparition : " This print clearly shows 
 the long neglected and often reappearing art of wood engraving, 
 which, though it could never equal copper engraving, neverthe- 
 less merits the attention of amateurs when a capable hand is 
 exercised upon it." It was, we see, a curiosity then, this relief 
 cutting, the revival of which was to give an enormous 
 impulse to the Book from the facilities of printing and the 
 economies realized by the possibility of insertion in the text of 
 periodicals. In fact, metal printing necessitated more trouble 
 for engravings than for the bookwork. With wood blocks 
 surrounded by type the ordinary press sufficed. The Magasin 
 Pittoresque, which was commenced in 1833, and the success of 
 which from the first was very great, was the fruit of these new 
 combinations. Before it the Messager Boiteux of Strasburg 
 and other popular almanacs progressed very well with their 
 illustrations on wood. A kind of association of engravers, at 
 the head of which were Best and Andrew, undertook the illus- 
 trations of the Magasin Pittoresque. In a few years progress 
 was immense, other publications came into existence, and a 
 definitive return was made to the vignette in relief. The 
 French illustrated paper preceded our Illustrated London News 
 by nine years. 
 
 Lavish use was now made of wood engraving, which had 
 thus been suddenly revived in the very midst of the new 
 romantic eflfervescence, amid a war of books, which, in order 
 
The Brothers j oh an not. 
 
 237 
 
 to please, had above all to captivate the eye, reacting at once 
 against the spirit and the art of the Restoration. Never before 
 had artists to such an extent taken active part in a purely 
 literary warfare. All the fantastic tendencies of young France 
 were embodied in the lame and halting lines of the time and 
 similar wretched doggerel. Doubtless the leaders of the school 
 did not go quite so far, and their reputation even suffered 
 from such theories ; but, as always happens in such cases, the 
 disciples outstripped their masters. 
 
 The brothers Johannot were the first to enter the lists, in 
 
 Fig. 137. — vignette by Deveria for the Fiance de la Tombe. 
 
 the train of the poets and others of the romantic school, such 
 as Victor Hugo, De Vigny, Paul Lacroix, George Sand, also 
 Deveria, the most ruthless of illustrators. The last-named had 
 designed vignettes on wood, of all others, for Baour-Lormian, that 
 is to say, for the foe of the new ideas, for the Ossian and the 
 Cockney bard, who assumed an excess of fury against every- 
 thing in turn. The Ldgendes, Ballades, et Fabliaux, illustrated 
 by Deveria in 1829, although a sort of compromise with the 
 lovesick swains of mediaeval times, did not escape the shafts 
 of ridicule. 
 
 In the midst of this movement the Book became demo- 
 
238 The Book. 
 
 cratic ; it was printed on sugar-paper for reading-rooms and 
 working girls. The generation of romancists diffused its paper- 
 covered works, printing a thousand copies and selling five 
 hundred with great difficulty. Poets publishing five hundred 
 were happy with a sale of two hundred and fifty. Unheard-of 
 tides were then needed to catch the eye, ridiculous and ghastly 
 frontispieces to tickle the fancy of the riffraff. Paul Lacroix 
 called himself the " Bibliophile Jacob," and invented surprising 
 headpieces and foolish designs. And then, as in the fifteenth 
 century, as in the old times, certain mar'ks became popular with 
 the reading public. In the place of the Doctrinals, Complaints, 
 and Disputes, so common in the titles of those epochs, new 
 fancies spring up and have their day. Eccentric devices 
 recommend romantic trash, in which the assassin's dagger, 
 blood, and the horrors of the tomb have replaced the insipid 
 fancies of the fallen rdgime. Petrus Borel, the werewolf, a sort 
 of historic ghoul prowling about the graveyards enjoyed a 
 monopoly, as it were, of the ghastly titles and contents of this 
 charnel-house literature ; it was for his Champavert {Contes 
 Immoraux), published in 1833, that Gigoux composed a kind 
 of Bluebeard surrounded by female skeletons, that opened the 
 eyes of publishers to his value as a vignettist. 
 
 Although he threw himself soul and body into the romantic 
 movement, the young artist did not confine himself to the 
 subjects called " abracadabrants," following the neologism of the 
 time, any more than the booksellers only published romances. 
 An attempt was made, by publishing them in parts, to popularise 
 still further the old writers at all harmonising with the current 
 taste. The publisher Paulin thus issued the Gil Bias of Le 
 Sage, with illustrations in the text by the younger Gigoux, / of 
 which the best was expected. The history of this celebrated 
 
Jean Gigoux. 
 
 239 
 
 enterprise has been written by the artist himself in the curious 
 Causeries published recently by him, fifty years after his work 
 on Gil Bias ; and this interesting view of an epoch already far 
 distant gives us in a few words the ordinary getting up of 
 these popular impressions in parts. 
 
 It appears that Paulin, publisher in the Rue de Seine, not 
 being very well off, had associated himself with a man of 
 business named Dubochet, who had before made an enormous 
 
 Fig. 138. — Vignette by Jean Gigoux for Gil Bias. 
 
 fortune with gas. The two represented fifteen thousand to 
 twenty thousand francs, and they ordered a hundred drawings 
 on wood from the young artist. He set to work with pre- 
 caution, for Dubochet was hard to please; without knowing 
 much about the business, he harassed the engravers for the least 
 faults. Gigoux set himself to give his compositions in simple 
 line, without complicated shadows, so as to allow the wood 
 engravers to preserve a free outline. It resembled the process 
 of the old artists of the fifteenth . and sixteenth centuries 
 
240 THE Book. 
 
 of Vostre and Holbein : true engraving in relief. The 
 success of the first sheets was extraordinary ; new vignettes 
 were ordered from Gigoux ; in place of a hundred they 
 wanted three hundred, then four hundred ; at the end of the 
 work they amounted to six hundred at least. Money filled 
 the chests of the firm, but when the artist claimed a small 
 share of the profit, they laughed in his face. Dubochet 
 coolly said, " There is no agreement!' 
 
 Properly speaking, it was the first serious attempt at illus- 
 tration by the recovered method of wood engraving in relief, 
 but it was not the only one. Curmer, the publisher of the 
 Rue Richelieu, prepared a Bible in 1835 and several other 
 volumes, among which were the Paul et Virginie and the 
 Chaumiere Indienne by Bernardin de St. Pierre. He had also 
 collected around him a circle of artists which included Wattier, 
 Deveria, and Meissonier, the most perfect and correct of the 
 designers on wood, and whose dainty illustrations of Les Contes 
 Remois, by Le Comte de Chevigne, are very much coveted 
 by all bibliophiles. Meissonier made small designs, very sober 
 in style, and without much contrast of light and shade, which 
 were admirably cut by an engraver named Lavoignat, a master 
 in the best sense of the word. Curmer wrote in 1835 in the 
 preface to one of his books, "We hope that we have raised 
 a monument to wood engraving. It is easy to judge of the 
 resources presented by this art. We were compelled to have 
 recourse to England to accomplish our work. Peace to 
 publishers with such good intentions ! " 
 
 Curmer acknowledges the importance of English specialists 
 in this new process for vignettes, and the well-intentioned 
 publishers were not wanting ; they came from all parts. He 
 himself did not stop half way ; he continued his work on a large 
 
Raffet. 241 
 
 scale ; and Charles Blanc was able to say of him later, as well as 
 of Furne, "He desired to illustrate books for everybody, as the 
 great booksellers of the last century had illustrated their rare 
 editions for a small number of privileged persons." But he 
 did not always confine himself to wood engraving ; he also 
 employed etching and lithography. These, requiring separate 
 printing, did not make intercalation with the text any easier 
 than engraving with the burin ; but they served to illustrate 
 
 . Fig. 139. — Vignette by Daumier for the Cholera a Paris. 
 
 periodicals, the Charivari and U Artiste, as well as some books, 
 where they replaced the engraved plates of the preceding 
 century. At the same time, the latter process was not alto- 
 gether neglected; about 1840 'it was revived, and steel was used 
 in place of copper, as it resisted repeated impressions better. 
 The publisher Furne, while he employed wood engraving, 
 adorned with separate plates on steel his better publications. 
 For him worked Raffet, one of the romanticists enamoured of 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 The Book. 
 
 the Napoleonic era, which he had popularised, with Charlet and' 
 Bellange, by the brush, wood engraving, and lithography. Raffet 
 had transferred upon wood, as a labour of love, the three hundred 
 and fifty-one vignettes of the Histoire de Napoldon, by De 
 Norvins, which would to-day suffice for the glory and reputation 
 of many artists. In fact, the analytical and inductive spirit of 
 the artist led him to leave nothing to the chances of inspiration 
 and ordinary tricks of illustration. He laboriously reconstituted. 
 
 Fig. 140. — Vignette by Gavarni for Paris Mane. 
 
 fragment by fragment, the physiognomy of the "old army;" 
 and imbued with that perfect science of detail, he allowed his 
 pencil full play in bold and luminous inventions, in which, with 
 their peculiar bearing, the heroes of other days, the soldiers of 
 the Rhine and Italy, of Austerlitz and Waterloo, live again 
 before us. 
 
 A truly lively period was that of 1840. By the side of those 
 great artists of whom we have spoken, and who will be more 
 admired some day, there were the fantastic designers Travies, 
 
GUSTAVE DORE. 
 
 243 
 
 and Daumier, who adorned the illustrated journals with innu- 
 merable sketches, and also Grandville and Gavarni, one carica- 
 turing animals in a celebrated book, Les Animaux Peints par 
 Eux-memes, which is more than a ckef-d'osuvre ; the latter 
 pitilessly studying the vices and faults of his time, with the 
 precision of an anatomist, in Les Anglais Peints par Eux- 
 memes of Labedolliere, in the Diable a Paris, without counting 
 many other works which his penetrating imagination produced. 
 
 Fig. 141.— Balzac writing his Conies Drolaliques. Vignette by Gustave Dore. 
 
 Photography presently came, which was to reverse com- 
 pletely the conditions of illustration of the Book by the 
 numerous means of reproduction to which it gave birth. Wood 
 engraving then entered on a new phase, a complete transforma- 
 tion of its ordinary conditions, under the influence of Gustave 
 Dore. Little by little it had been attempted to produce in relief 
 the same effect which engraved plates only had hitherto done. 
 Black, half-tints, graduated tones, were tried where formerly 
 a simple line, bold and spirited, signified everything. The 
 
244 
 
 The Book. 
 
 house of Hachette, at the beginning of the century, was, 
 together with Lahure, the promoter of reHef produced and 
 carried out in this manner. The numerous periodicals of these 
 publishers spread the taste far and wide. England, for its part, 
 entered on the same road, followed by America and Germany. 
 At the present day wood engravings have reached perfection, 
 finesse, and delicacy ; but they are not, properly speaking, 
 engravings on wood, but mostly mechanical reproductions. 
 
 We have seen that French publishers were largely indebted 
 
 Fig. 142. — Illustration by Cruikshank, from Three Courses and a Dessert, 
 
 by Clarke. 
 
 to English wood engravers for their blocks. Luke Clennell, 
 one of the most distinguished of Bewick's pupils, made some 
 excellent engravings, among them the illustrations to an 
 edition of Rogers's Poems (18 12), from pen-and-ink drawings 
 by Thomas Stothard. It was Stothard's opinion that wood 
 engraving best reproduced pen-and-ink drawings. Other pupils 
 of Bewick were J. Jackson, John Thompson, who engraved 
 Harvey's beautiful illustrations to Milton and Henderson's History 
 of Wines, S. Williams, Orrin Smith, Robert Branston, and 
 C. Nesbit. Thomas Rowlandson, 1756— 1827, was celebrated for 
 
Cruikshank. 245 
 
 his illustrations to Combe's Dr. Syntax s Three Tours, etc., but his 
 greatest ability is displayed in his well-known Caricahtres. The 
 most prolific and perhaps the most popular book-illustrator of the 
 century in England, was George Cruikshank, who engraved most 
 of. his own designs on wood, steel, or with the etching needle; 
 The Catalogue of the Works of G. Cruikshank {187 1), by Mr. G. 
 W. Rei,d, formerly Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum, 
 occupies three quarto volumes, with 313 illustrations. His best 
 known works fetch large prices in spite of many unpleasing 
 mannerisms and faulty draughtsmanship. The illustrator of Oliver 
 
 Fig. 143. — Wood engraving by Clennell after Stothard, 
 for Rogers's Po«ms l8i2. 
 
 Twist, the Sketches by Boz, the Comic Almanack, 1835-53 (a set of 
 which sold lately for ^30) ; of Pierce Egan's Life in London (for 
 which ^34 was given lately in a sale-room), and other famous 
 books that achieved a hitherto unexampled popularity in the 
 earliest years of the Queen's reign, delighted, like his artistic 
 ancestor Hogarth, " to paint a moral and adorn a tale." The 
 fearless directness and sturdy realism with which he depicted 
 romantic incidents imparted a zest to his vigorous sketches 
 which has manifestly not declined. The designs of " Phiz," as 
 H. K. Browne called himself, largely contributed to the popu- 
 larity of the works of Charles Dickens ; and the mere mention 
 
246 The Book. 
 
 of Richard Doyle and John Leech will recall the palmy days 
 of Punch, although both of these artists did excellent work in 
 book illustration. Richard Doyle's bird's-eye views of society and 
 the allegorical illustrations of remarkable personages are well 
 known ; also John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character. 
 Randolph Caldecott's illustrations to Washington Irving's Old 
 Christmas should be mentioned also, as well as Sir John 
 Gilbert's illustrations to Shakespeare, and Birket Foster's 
 English Landscapes. From the days of the Bewicks to the 
 present, wood engraving has formed the most widely used 
 means of illustration in England and the United States. Its 
 adaptability to the printing machine renders it admirably 
 suited to the production of books in large numbers and at low 
 expense. Without it we could not have our Graphic and 
 Illustrated News, nor the floods of cheap but splendidly 
 illustrated magazines which are appearing on both sides of 
 the Atlantic. True, many of these blocks are due to the 
 "processes" which photography has made available, but they 
 are nevertheless the outcome of wood engraving. 
 
 The most prominent Book illustrators in Germany in the 
 nineteenth century are Moritz Ret^sch, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 
 Ludwig Richter, Adolf Menzel, Wilhelm von Kaulbach, Moritz 
 von Schwind, Friederich Preller (renowned for his landscapes 
 to the Odyssey), and Anton von Werner, the celebrated painter 
 and illustrator of Victor von Scheffel's works. 
 
 Moritz Retzsch, born 1779 at Dresden, excelled in romantic 
 subjects ; his best known works are his outlines to Goethe's 
 Faust, 181 2, twenty-six etchings. Later on he undertook for 
 Gotta the illustration of Schiller's Works in oudine ; he also 
 began a Shakespeare Gallery and produced several single etchings, 
 among which his Chessplayer (1836) is the most esteemed. 
 
RICHTER AND MENZEL. 
 
 247 
 
 Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld was born in Leipzig 1794 
 and after several years' sojourn in Italy he published in 1852 
 his celebrated Bible pictures, Die Bibel in Bildern, with two 
 hundred and forty woodcuts, a work which has made his name 
 known in every country. He also illustrated an edition of the 
 Nibelungenlied for Cotta. 
 
 Ludwig Richter (1803-84), born at Dresden, received his first 
 instruction from his father, who wanted to bring him up as 
 
 Fig. 144. — Illustration by Ludwig Richter, from Bechstein's Marchenbuch. 
 
 an engraver ; but, assisted by the bookseller Arnold, he soon 
 took his own course, and excelled in homely landscapes, 
 enlivened by human figures, with which he illustrated the most 
 popular German works. His best known works are his illustra- 
 tions to the Deutsche Volksbilcker, the popular stories of Mus(sus 
 and Bechstein, the Lords Prayer, and a number of Albums for 
 the house. 
 
 During the time when Richter's illustrations appeared, a 
 
248 The Book. 
 
 work of quite a different kind was created under the hand of 
 a young artist, which marks an epoch in the history of German 
 art. This work was Kugler's History of Frederick the Great, 
 with four hundred illustrations by Adolf Menzel, born in Breslau 
 1 815. He also executed, some forty years ago, the celebrated 
 illustrations to the Works of Frederick the Great, by order of 
 King Frederick William IV. Adolf Menzel is one of the first 
 artists now living. It is not too much to say that the modern 
 school of Book illustration was initiated by him. He was 
 the first to depart from the conventional modes of illustrating 
 history that were in vogue during his youth, and one perceives 
 in his illustrations the artist who is in love with nature, life, 
 movement, and historical accuracy. 
 
 Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805-74) possessed a great power 
 of imagination, and combined with his large and correct designs 
 the art of clever colouring. As a book illustrator he is best 
 known for his trenchant and satirical designs to Goethe's 
 Reinecke Fucks. 
 
 In our days, the great Paris publishers have returned to the 
 reproduction of the books of the eighteenth century, orna- 
 mented with vignettes on copper; many of them purely and 
 simply imitate by photographic processes the pretty editions of 
 Eisen and Moreau, but they cannot be compared with the original 
 editions. The processes of illustration are now without number -. 
 wood, metal, heliogravure, phototype, autotype, and others. And 
 if these mechanical means have at present some importance, 
 they by no means add to the intrinsic value of wood engravings 
 as works of art, but merely to the rapidity and economy of 
 their manufacture. The Book has nothing to do with all these 
 inventions and innovations, and may well confine itself to the 
 burin or the relief block. 
 
Mechanical Processes. 249 
 
 But as regards the Book, properly so called, it never was 
 the object of more excessive care, or of more unfortunate 
 precipitation. It may be remarked that works least destined 
 to live in the libraries, those thousands of lame pamphlets on 
 questions of small provincial erudition or the cap-and-sword 
 romances, are ordinarily the best and most carefully printed, in 
 comparison to other more important works composed in worn- 
 out type and printed on rotten and inferior paper. There 
 are in reading-rooms a good number of pamphlets that will not 
 easily be found fifty years hence, and will be worth their weight 
 in bank-notes, even if dirty and tattered, on account of their 
 intrinsic value. 
 
The Early Type-Founders. 251 
 
 afterwards giving a short account of the modern practice of 
 typography. 
 
 The first printers were their own type-founders. The secret 
 of the invention was the discovery of movable types. Of 
 the preHminary experiments of the inventor we know nothing. 
 If, as the Haarlem story alleges, he began by attempting to 
 cut letters in wood, or perhaps by separating the letters from 
 a fixed wooden block, he would only convince himself of 
 the impossibility of printing a book by means of such types. 
 His next step was probably to attempt, by some rude process, 
 to cast his letters in sand or clay from moulds fashioned 
 after the manner of those in use among the trinket-makers of 
 the Middle Ages. Finally, after much fruitless labour, he would 
 arrive at the excellent invention of the first German typo- 
 graphers, namely, the cutting of a punch of each letter in relief 
 on hard copper or steel, sinking the punch into a matrix of 
 hard lead or copper, adjusting the matrix to one end of the 
 cavity of a bipartite iron mould, and so casting his leaden 
 types therefrom in the same manner and by the same methods 
 as those by which type continued to be cast for four centuries 
 after. The shape of the body, or "shank," of the type was 
 given by the mould ; the " face," or letter at the end, was 
 given by the impressed image of the punch in the matrix. 
 When a fresh letter was required, a new matrix would be 
 attached, and so on through the alphabet. 
 
 Fig. 145, from an old Book of Trades by Jost Amman, 
 represents the interior of a German type-foundry about 
 1568. The founder, seated before the furnace, is in the act 
 of pouring his molten metal into the mould, in the interior of 
 which the matrix is fixed. In the basket beside him are a 
 number of types already cast, while on the shelf may be seen 
 
252 
 
 The Book. 
 
 some more moulds, sieves, crucibles, and other implements made 
 use of in the industry. 
 
 The form of character adopted by the first printers invari- 
 ably followed the models of the national scribes. In Germany, 
 for the Bible and Service Books, the Gothic or Black letter 
 was used ; while for the more secular books, such as grammars, 
 law-books, and theological treatises, a mixed letter called Bastard 
 
 Fig. 145. — Type-founder in the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 Engraving by Jest Amman. 
 
 — half Black letter, half Roman — was employed. In Holland 
 the secular hand was the Black letter. In Italy the first 
 printers copied the elegant hand of the scribes of that country, 
 and produced the character afterwards known as Roman. This 
 ■character was perfected by Jenson, the most elegant of the 
 fifteenth century Italian printers; while in 1500, Aldus, imitat- 
 ing, it is said, the handwriting of . Petrarch, produced the 
 Italic. In France, the first printers of the Sorbonne made use 
 
Early Type-founders. 253-. 
 
 of a Roman letter, which however shortly gave place to a 
 Gothic. In Flanders and Burgundy, the first printers naturally 
 adopted the flowing secretary hand of their scribes. In 
 this character Colard Mansion printed at Bruges, and from 
 his office William Caxton transferred the same character tO' 
 his infant press at Westminster in 1477. 
 
 The Roman letter did not appear in England till 15 18, 
 when Pynson used it. During the early years of the six- 
 teenth century, when printers gave up buying type from abroad 
 and attempted to cast it themselves, printing became very poor. 
 John Day, the English Plantin, was the first to revive it, 
 about 1560. Many of his founts are handsome; and some of 
 them remained in fashion for many years. But although there 
 were many printers in England in the sixteenth century, the 
 best printing was executed, and the best types were cast,, 
 abroad. 
 
 To mention only a few famous names, the Aldine family 
 in Italy, Claude Garamond in France, Froben in Switzerland, 
 and Plantin in Holland, all produced types which advanced 
 printing into a fine art, and left for future generations models 
 which are admired to our own day. 
 
 One or two interesting attempts were also made during the 
 same century to reduce to definite rule the form of printing 
 letter. Chief among these was the celebrated Champfleury 
 of Geoffroy Tory, the Paris printer, who, while fantastically 
 deriving the shape and proportion of each letter from the 
 symmetry of the human body, gave the Roman letter an 
 elegance and style which brought about a revolution in French 
 typography, and led to the abandonment of the old Gothic for 
 the new fashion. The brilliant school of French letter-cutters 
 who succeeded Garamond, — the Estiennes, under whose auspices. 
 
254 The Book. 
 
 the Imprimerie Royale of Francis I. was started ; Lebe, who 
 cut types for Plantin's famous Polyglot ; Sanlecques, Grandjean, 
 Fournier, and the Didots, were all more or less indebted to 
 the inspiration of Tory for their art. 
 
 In England the artistic perfection of the Roman type was 
 neglected until Moxon in 1676 attempted to correct it by the 
 model of the neat and serviceable letters designed by Christoffel 
 Van Dijck, and used with success by the celebrated Dutch 
 printers, the Elzevirs. Moxon's rules, however, failed to accom- 
 plish their object, and the Roman letter used in England till 
 the commencement of the eighteenth century was of the most 
 debased kind, and came for the most part from Holland. The 
 English founders of the day lacked the skill to amend it, and 
 it was not till Caslon turned his attention to letter-cutting in 
 1720 that English printing began to recover the ground it 
 had lost. Caslon's types, modelled on the best form of the 
 Elzevir types, rapidly became popular. Baskerville attempted 
 to refine them, and produced some beautiful founts, which, with 
 the aid of exquisite presswork and highly-glazed paper, bade 
 fair to eclipse those of his predecessor. The English public, 
 however, grew tired of the dazzling types of the Birmingham 
 genius, and settled down once more to the more serviceable 
 models of Caslon. Baskerville's types were bought by the 
 French for the great edition of Voltaire printed at Kehl at 
 the end of the eighteenth century. 
 
 About 1800, chiefly owing to the influence of the Italian 
 typographer Bodoni, the old-style Roman was abandoned for a 
 more modern style, which still remains the common printing 
 letter of Europe, although in our own country the Caslon old- 
 styles have been successfully revived and largely used in 
 artistic work. 
 
Type-Founding~The Fount. 255 
 
 During the four centuries, as we have said, the method of 
 type-casting has remained practically the same as that invented 
 by Gutenberg before 1454. A gradual improvement has taken 
 place in the materials used. Punches are now cut on hard 
 steel and sunk into copper ; the mould is hard iron carefully 
 "justified" and finished, and the types themselves are cast in 
 an alloy of lead, tin and antimony, calculated to combine 
 sharpness and toughness, and endure the severe strain of 
 modern machinery. 
 
 At the present time there are about twenty different sizes 
 or bodies of type, ranging from an inch to ~ of an inch. A 
 fount of type consists of capitals, " lower case " or small letters, 
 small capitals, points, figures, reference marks, signs, spaces, 
 and italic. The quantities of each letter are regulated according 
 to a " bill " calculated" on the ordinary requirements of the 
 language. In the English "bill," containing, say, 3,000 "m's," 
 there would be 9,000 "a," 14,000 " e," 800 " k," 700 capital 
 "A," 300 notes of interrogation, and so on, each sort in fixed 
 proportion. 
 
 The types are distributed into cases, partitioned into small 
 boxes, one for each sort. From these they are picked up one 
 by one by the compositor and set in a tray-like iron frame 
 called a composing-stick, in words and lines, according to the 
 "copy" to be printed. As the stick is filled, the matter is 
 carefully lifted out on to galleys, on which the pages are 
 made up. These pages of type are then imposed, usually eight 
 or sixteen at a time, and wedged fast in an iron frame or 
 chase, represented by the black lines in the accompanying 
 diagram. The imposition follows fixed rules, the pages being so 
 placed that when the sheet is printed and folded they shall 
 follow one another consecutively in their proper order. 
 
256 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 The following would be the form of imposition of a four- 
 leaf tract printed on both sides, making eight pages. 
 
 •SJ3 
 
 -JUM. S)3[nd 
 
 -paai-iCauoui 
 
 -UI'Ed OAVl 
 
 JO jBcu oj 
 
 SS90Ojd M3U 
 
 X|3ATSll[3X3 
 
 siq JO su-Baui 
 
 pS^IUIlJ SB/tt 
 
 Xq paqsn 
 
 aoiyo Jism 
 
 -qnd pBq 
 
 ?nq !qoi3q 
 
 Sjaquajno 
 
 -u 3 p X a pij 
 
 SinoqsBjJS 
 
 JO 9 UI'EU 
 
 IB 3DUap[S9I 
 
 sip )d9DX3 
 
 siq SuijriQ 
 
 » 
 
 e 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 trade of a 
 
 the defects 
 
 goldsmith, 
 
 of the bloclcs 
 
 other histo- 
 
 for such par- 
 
 rians say of a 
 
 ticular pur- 
 
 banker ; and 
 
 pose, con- 
 
 they formed 
 
 ceived the 
 
 together an 
 
 idea of com- 
 
 association, 
 
 posing them 
 
 to which the 
 
 with sepa- 
 
 one contri- 
 1 
 
 rate letters, 
 
 •saidoo pa 
 
 'sn oj uMop 
 
 -juud aqj nas 
 
 amoD jou 
 
 o; ' k\sp\ab 
 
 aAUq sauiBU 
 
 'asn luanb 
 
 asoqAV 'Siaq 
 
 -3JJ jraqj JO 
 
 -uiam fBjaAaj 
 
 aouanbasuoo 
 
 Xq uo jajBi 
 
 ui 'padoq 
 
 pas-EajDui 
 
 aq qaiqAV 
 
 UOIJ-EIOOSSB 
 
 JO , 'siooqos 
 
 Jiaqx 'sas 
 
 aq) joj uaj 
 
 -uadxa isag 
 
 9 
 
 S 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 The general 
 
 buted his in- 
 
 belief is that 
 
 dustry, a 
 
 Fust, initi- 
 
 probable 
 
 ated by him 
 
 source of 
 
 into the se- 
 
 future bene- 
 
 crets of the 
 
 fits, and the 
 
 art which he 
 
 other a cer- 
 
 had just in- 
 
 tain sum. 
 
 vented, and 
 
 appointed to 
 
 struck with • 
 
 cover the 
 
 It will be seen that these sheets placed back to back and 
 folded once across the breadth and once perpendicularly down 
 the middle, will give the eight pages in consecutive order, and 
 be a regular " quarto." 
 
 The first printers usually printed only one page at a time. 
 
 The imposed form is now ready for the press, on to which 
 the chase is lifted. The pressman first takes a proof or rough 
 impression of the type, which is carefully read and all corrections 
 marked. These corrections are made in the type, and the form 
 is then ready for printing. 
 
 The printing press -dates back to the invention of printing. 
 The first used was probably a modification of the old domestic 
 press in common use among the people for a variety of 
 purposes. It was gradually adapted and strengthened for the 
 
The Steam Printing Machine. 257 
 
 special purpose of taking impressions from type. The woodcut 
 overleaf represents the press of the Parisian printer, Badius 
 Ascensius, about 1535. The wooden screw press continued to 
 be used for three centuries, until Lord Stanhope, about 1790, 
 produced an improved model, much stronger and more 
 accurate. From that time till the present improvements in this 
 branch of the art have been very rapid. The Stanhope press 
 gave place to the simpler and more perfect Columbian and 
 Albion presses, while, early in the century, mechanical presses, or 
 printing machines, were introduced into newspaper offices, and 
 these have since developed into the monster perfecting machines 
 of the present day, — machines which, fed by an endless reel of 
 paper, will, at a single revolution, print both sides of a large 
 newspaper at the rate of twelve thousand an hour and upwards, 
 and not only print, but cut and fold ready for delivery. In 
 the year 18 14 the first steam printing machine was used in 
 England. It was the invention of a man named Friederich 
 Kcenig (born at Eisleben, 1774), who a few .years before its 
 introduction in England had offered it to Goeschen, the cele- 
 brated German publisher, and grandfather of the present 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer of England : — "You are," Koenig 
 wrote to Goschen, "the only printer in Germany who works 
 with ambition ; therefore I address myself to you. So far as I 
 can judge, you are the only man in Germany who can make 
 the most profitable and at the same time the most useful use 
 of the invention which I bring before you." 
 
 To return to the press. The form being laid on the iron bed, 
 the surface of the type is inked by means of a roller. The paper 
 is then laid upon it, and the bed passed under the descending 
 "platen" of the press. This platen is brought down with an 
 even pressure by means of a lever or screw, pressing the paper 
 
 17 
 
258 
 
 The Book. 
 
 upon the inked surface of the type. The result is that the 
 mark of the type is transferred to the paper, and we have a 
 printed impression. The recent mechanical inventions in print- 
 ing machinery all start from this simple process. Instead of the 
 flat platen, the pressure is now usually produced by the passing 
 of a cylinder over the face of the type, while the leverage. 
 
 Fig. 146. — Mark of Jodocus Badius of Asch. Engraving a la croix de Lorraine. 
 
 instead of being applied manually, is given by steam-power. In 
 the press of Ascensius, as will be seen, the pressman makes 
 use of balls instead of rollers to ink the type. These remained 
 in use for presswork till comparatively recently. 
 
 With regard to paper, it is unnecessary to point out that 
 its manufacture was understood long before the invention 
 
Paper-Making. 259 
 
 of typography or even block printing. We have here a 
 block representing the paper-maker at work in the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 The process of making paper from rags by hand was briefly 
 as follows. 
 
 The rags, having been thoroughly cleansed, were put into 
 vats, where they were worked up under a beating press until 
 
 Fig. 147. — Workman engaged on the vat with the wire frame. 
 Engraving by Jost Amman. 
 
 they became pulp. This pulp was thrown into hot water and 
 stirred until a uniform mixture was produced. Then a mould 
 of fine wire cloth, fixed upon a wooden frame, and having a 
 "deckle" to determine the size of the sheet, was taken; in the 
 middle of this frame was disposed, also in brass wire, a factory 
 mark, intended to appear in white in the sheet of paper, and 
 called the "watermark." This mould was dipped into the 
 vat of pulp and drawn out again. After gently shaking it to 
 
26o The Book. 
 
 and fro in a horizontal position, the fibres of the pulp became 
 so connected as to form one uniform fabric ; and the water 
 escaped through the wires. The deckle was then removed 
 from the mould, and the sheet of paper turned off upon a felt, 
 in a pile with many others, a felt intervening between each 
 sheet, and the whole subjected to great pressure, in order to 
 absorb the superfluous water. After being dried and pressed 
 without the felts, the sheets were dipped into a tub of size and 
 again pressed to remove surplus size. This primitive method 
 of paper-making is represented in fig. 147, and the same prin- 
 ciple is still in use for the production of hand-made paper. 
 Machinery has effected many improvements and economies in 
 the production of laid paper. 
 
 China and Japan have their special paper manufacture. In 
 Japan the material employed is the bark of the Japanese 
 mulberry tree {Morus papynfera sativd). 
 
 According to their fineness, size and weight, papers have 
 received different names, proceeding from the watermark. 
 
 Fust at Mayence used paper marked with a bull's head. 
 Jenson at Venice used a balance, of which the form varied. 
 This latter came from a mill which furnished Vicenza, Perugia, 
 and Rome. Jenson used, besides a crown, a cardinal's hat. 
 
 The bull's head underwent transformations; it had stars and 
 roses, and was special to Germany, and it may sometimes be 
 found in Italy. 
 
 The laid wires and chain-wires served to determine the 
 size of a book. Looking at a folio leaf against the light, the 
 laid wires will be seen to be horizontal, and the chain-wires 
 vertical. In quarto they will be reversed, the paper having 
 been folded in four instead of in two. The chain-wires become 
 horizontal. They return to the vertical in octavo, and so on. 
 
THE Water-Marks. 
 
 261 
 
 Such, then, is a brief account of the mechanical processes 
 undergone by the printed book in course of production. It 
 will be obvious that, for book ornament, the ordinary relief 
 wood-block is at once the simplest and most suitable. The 
 block will work with the type as part of the same page, and 
 
 r^ 
 
 Fig. 148. — Balance used by Jenson, at Venice. 
 
 receive its impression at the same time, in the same press, 
 and by the same process. The old art, made famous in the 
 block books of the old xylographers, has taken its place as 
 handmaid to the newer art of typography ; and its chief function 
 now is to lend itself sympathetically and harmoniously to the 
 adornment of the page of which the type is the most Important 
 feature. 
 
Early Examples. 263 
 
 — Morocco leathers — Cramoisy — The bindings of the time of Louis XIV.— 
 The regency — Pasdeloup — The Deromes — Dubuisson — Thouvenin — Lesne 
 — The nineteenth century — English binders — Roger Payne— Francis Bedford 
 — Blocking. 
 
 HAVING the book itself, we must now- 
 direct the reader's attention to the means 
 adopted to protect it from injnry; in other 
 words, to the art of binding'. Originally 
 the binder was simply a workman whose 
 business it was to arrange in proper order 
 the quires or gatherings of which a manuscript was com- 
 posed, sew them on to thongs of skin or bands of parchment, 
 and by means of these fix the volume to the boards of oak, 
 or other wood, of which the sides were made, and finally 
 to cover these and the back with deerskin, pigskin, or leather. 
 As luxury increased, the wooden boards which protected the 
 book were either covered with some precious silken stuff, or 
 encrusted with plates of gold or silver, adorned with cloisonne 
 enamels and precious stones or plaques of ivory, according to 
 the taste of the owner. Generally these precious bindings were 
 reserved for books of the Gospels (as on that formerly in the 
 Cathedral of Noyon, now in the Museum of the Louvre, Fig. 150), 
 Psalters, and Bibles, which alone were deemed worthy of such 
 magnificent clothing. Other books were covered with leather, 
 either left plain or simply adorned with ruled lines. The next 
 step was to decorate the covers with interlaced and other 
 patterns, produced by means of a style. Stamps were probably 
 not introduced until the eleventh century, but by the middle 
 of the twelfth the art of adorning the covers of books by 
 stamping, generally called blind tooling, had, especially in 
 England, attained a very high degree of perfection. For some 
 
264 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 reason, probably owing to the introduction of plates of copper 
 gilt, and of the champleve (much less expensive than the 
 cloisonne) process of enamelling, the art of ornamental leather 
 binding declined in this country. An example of a book- 
 cover thus decorated, representing Merlin, is given on p. 266. 
 In France, Germany, and the Netherlands it developed more 
 slowly, but continued to progress during the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries. 
 
 Fig. 149. —Bookbinder's shop in the sixteenth century. Engraving by Jest Amman. 
 
 The invention of printing led to a great increase in the 
 number of books produced, and as a consequence stimulated 
 the art of bookbinding. When books were produced singly 
 by copying, the binder could devote more time to the covering; 
 but in the Netherlandish monasteries and towns where there 
 were a large number of copyists, it was found that the orna- 
 mentation of the covers by means of small tools absorbed too 
 
EARLY Examples. 265 
 
 much time, and this led in the fourteenth century to the 
 
 -^^ ^t^f^ ..■.. ;-j ... ^-^^^^ , , ^ 
 
 'lU^N ■ 'V* 
 
 ' 't p 
 
 ^ . „" 1. I t 
 
 ilHV-i'M 'r-r-^y,' '.'vtA'. 
 
 "SK 6-V * t ^ \ I rff 
 
 
 A.VINET F . 
 
 Fig. 150. — Cover of the Evangeliarium of Noyon, made of skin, copper and horn, 
 
 with rehquaries. 
 
 invention of panel-stamps. These very commonly bore an 
 inscription with the name of the binder, who was generally a 
 
266 
 
 The Book. 
 
 bookseller as well. Each bookseller applied himself to the 
 work, or at least covered in his own house books intended for 
 
 Fig. 151.— Cover of a book in enamelled goldsmith work of Limoges, fifteenth century, 
 representing Merlin I'Enchanteur transformed into a scholar. 
 
 sale. The fashion was not then to expose for sale, as now, 
 unbound books. Purchasers wanted an article easy to handle, 
 
EARLY Examples. 
 
 267 
 
 which they were not obHged to return for ulterior em- 
 bellishment. 
 
 So to the public the first printed books were presented 
 bound in wooden boards covered with calfskin. At the four 
 corners of the larger sized volumes, brass bosses prevented 
 rubbing against the shelves of the bookcase, for at that time 
 books were ranged on their sides, and not as they are to-day. 
 We must return to the bibliomaniac of the Ship of Fools 
 
 Fig. 152. — Bibliomaniac of the Ship of Fools. 
 
 (Fig. 152), to get an idea of these depositories ; before him 
 may be seen ranged on a desk large folios, with bosses on 
 their sides, in the shelves, so defying the dust, instead of 
 being placed upright on their edges, which rendered them 
 liable to spots and stains. 
 
 Unhappily the wooden sides had in themselves a germ of 
 destruction, the worm, capable first of reducing the sides to 
 powder and then ravaging the body of the work. Certain 
 
268 THE Book. 
 
 preparations destroy the insect, but the precaution often has 
 no effect, and this may to some extent account for the dis- 
 appearance of volumes formerly abundant, but now almost 
 impossible to find. 
 
 From the beginning the operations of the binder were what 
 they still are, except for improvements. They consist in the 
 gathering and collation of the sheets of a book, folding them, 
 beating them to bring them together and give them solidity, 
 and sewing them on to the strips of strong leather or the cords, 
 which form the four, five or six bands seen on the backs. 
 Primitively these bands were brought into horizontal slots cut 
 in the thickness of the wooden boards, fastened down with 
 little pegs, or sometimes with brass nails; the head-bands into 
 similar diagonal slots. Over both boards was placed a resistent 
 skin, on which, from metal or wooden stamps cut in intaglio, 
 were struck the most pleasing decorative subjects. Calfskin, 
 brown and fine, lent itself especially to ornamentation of this 
 kind. In Central and Northern Germany pigskin was more 
 .generally employed. 
 
 The inside of the board was generally lined with parchment, 
 vellum or paper. We reproduce here the binding of a volume 
 in purely French style (Fig. 154), belonging to the late M. Dutuit, 
 of Rouen, executed at the commencement of the sixteenth 
 century for Louis XII. and his Queen, Anne de Bretagne ; not 
 more than nine or ten specimens of such bindings remain. 
 They are of coarse aspect. The workman who tooled them 
 crowded his subjects one upon another. Coats of arms, porcu- 
 pines, ermines, are treated so as to be confusing, and form a 
 medley that is not pleasing. Very similar bindings were executed 
 for Francis I., but with the salamander and an F surmounted 
 by a royal crown in the place of the porcupine and ermine. 
 
Early Examples. 
 
 269 
 
 The workmen who introduced printing into the other 
 countries of Europe were either Germans or Netherlanders, 
 
 Fig. 153. — Binding in gold, ornamented with precious stones, having been used for a 
 cover of an Evangeliarium of the eleventh century (Louvre) 
 
 who for a long time were the chief dealers in books. These 
 jarinters were either themselves bookbinders, or were accompanied 
 in their migration by binders. In France the ornamentation of 
 
270 The Book. 
 
 binding was influenced and modified to a very great extent 
 by both Netherlanders and Germans. In Italy there was no 
 national style of binding, what little there was of ornamental 
 leather binding being a mere servile imitation of Arabian work. 
 The influence of German, especially of Swabian, binders made 
 itself felt there until well into the first quarter of the sixteenth 
 century, when Oriental designs again prevailed. These were 
 often richly gilt and coloured, so much so that the leather 
 itself was almost completely covered, as on the binding of a 
 Koran (p. 275). Into Spain the Germans introduced their system 
 of ornamentation, which, however, was quickly modified by the 
 adoption of Moorish details. In no country, however, was 
 the style of ornamentation so completely denationalised as in 
 England. 
 
 Towards the middle of the second half of the fifteenth 
 century a charming innovation was introduced, by whom we 
 know not, perhaps by an Italian, more probably by a German 
 working in Italy. This is now known as gold-tooling. At 
 first it was confined to gold dots sprinkled here and there in 
 the openings of interlaced work ; then to leaves or flowers 
 in the angles formed by the borders ; then the borders were 
 adorned alternately with plain and gilt ornaments ; but the 
 gilt work was, during the remainder of the fifteenth and the 
 earlier years of the sixteenth century, generally used with 
 moderation and good taste. Venice quickly gained pre- 
 eminence over the other towns of Italy ; this is easily accounted 
 for when we call to mind the number of foreign printers, 
 artists and craftsmen gathered together in that city, where 
 bindings in the Persian, Arabian, Greek and Swabian styles 
 were produced at the same time. 
 
 The art of decorative bookbinding was greatly developed 
 
'Development of Decorative Binding. 
 
 271 
 
 by Aldus Manutius. The covers of books issued from his 
 press and bound in his offices before 1502 were all bordered 
 with a rectangular frame adorned with designs in gold, in 
 imitation of Persian or Arabian work produced by the repeti- 
 tion of a stamp. 
 
 Fig. 154. Binding for Louis XII. Collection of M. Dutuit, of Rouen. 
 
 About 1512 Aldus made the acquaintance of a wealthy 
 financier employed as French treasurer and receiver-general 
 of the Duchy of Milan. This distinguished lover of books, 
 named Jean Grolier, was, above all his contemporaries, even 
 
272 THE Book. 
 
 King Francis, the greatest patron of the art of binding. It 
 is not too much to say art, for if better had not been 
 done before, it may safely be said that nothing better has 
 been done since ; and the books of Grolier remain as the 
 most perfect and most admirable types of this kind of 
 decoration. 
 
 Born of a Veronese family established at Lyons, Jean Grolier 
 had the good fortune to succeed his father, Etienne Grolier 
 as treasurer and receiver-general of the Duchy of Milan. The 
 position of the treasurers during the campaigns of the French 
 in Italy was important ; they handled the pence levied with 
 great trouble in the cities of France " for making war." Many 
 abused their trust, and were punished, and among others the 
 Lallemants, whom documents show us to have been in con- 
 nection with Grolier, and who suffered, with Semblangay, the 
 most terrible trials of the time., 
 
 Italian art then treated the decoration of books with the 
 greatest freedom. Of the interior we have spoken in our 
 first chapters on wood engravings ; for the exterior, the cover 
 of the volume, foliage, golden flowers worked with a hot 
 iron, and polychromatic compartments obtained by coloured 
 pastes were multiplied. Thus was produced on the outside 
 that which it was no longer sought to obtain in the interior, 
 the variation of tints so highly prized during the middle age, 
 but generally forsaken since the invention of printing. In the 
 midst of these literary men was a lover of books and fine 
 connoisseur who, not content with choosing the best editions, 
 such as those of Ferrara, Venice, and Basle, bound them 
 superbly, with compartments of admirable taste, and had his 
 name and device inscribed on the sides in the fashion of the 
 time. He was named Thomas Maioli, and following the 
 
THOMAS MAIOLI. 
 
 273 
 
 custom of the book-lovers of the thiie, he offered the enjoy- 
 ment of his Hbrary to his friends. " xiio. maioli et amicorvm," 
 he inscribed, as did later Mark Lauweryn of Watervliet, 
 Grolier, and others, but he somewhat modified the enthusiasm 
 of his friendship by a sceptical device, " ingratis servire 
 
 Fig. 155.— Arms of the University of Oxford, in whicli a bound book appears. 
 
 NEPHAS," vifhich might very well be the cry of the owner of 
 books betrayed by his borrower?. 
 
 Maioli more often inscribed on his book-covers the phrase 
 " iNiMici kEi MEA MiCHi, NGN ME MiCHi." He also some- 
 times used a cypher, which was composed of all the letters 
 
 of his name. 
 
 The relations of Grolier with this unknown and mysterious 
 
 18 
 
274 The Book. 
 
 book-lover, whose name is not always found outside his 
 volumes, are not doubtful. Brunet possessed a volume that 
 had belonged to Maioli and had passed through the hands 
 of Grolier. What better proof could be wished of the com- 
 munion of ideas and tastes between the two collectors ? 
 
 But these book-lovers were not alone. Beside them were 
 princes and great lords, lay and ecclesiastic. From the 
 commencement of the sixteenth century bookbinding had 
 received an enormous impulse from the tastes and the pre- 
 dilections of these wealthy collectors. And it cannot be 
 ascribed to the simple skill of the workmen experimenting 
 in that line. The century that saw Italian artists - occupied in 
 making designs for raised pies, painting beautiful ladies and 
 the courtesans of Florence, could not be alarmed at finding 
 them painting models for bindings, with compartments of 
 varied tone and style. Maioli affected white on a background 
 of dark leather. His book- covers are adorned with scrolls of 
 foliage in white or clear paste with a very happy effect 
 (see Fig. 157). 
 
 This was the time when Grolier travelled in Italy, 
 sojourning sometimes at Naples, but generally at Milan, and 
 often visiting Venice. He had already acquired the reputation 
 of being a great lover of books, and was soon in communication 
 with the Alduses, and through them with the principal learned 
 men and binders of the time. 
 
 Following the fashion, Grolier put his name on the 
 obverse side of his books — " 10. grolierii et amicorvm " — 
 in gold letters, and on the reverse the pious ejaculation of 
 the Royal Psalmist : " portio mea domine sit in terra 
 viVENTiVM." Generally all the Grolier books which came from 
 the Alduses have the name on the obverse and the motto 
 
Kig. 156. — Cover of an old Koran. 
 
2/6 The Book. 
 
 on the reverse side ; the title was placed above the name 
 and often disposed in rows. Some large volumes had the 
 cover ornamented with an architectural design, like the 
 lamblichus of the Libri collection, which had on the front 
 the fa9ade of a temple, with the title in rows on the door. 
 This volume was printed by Aldus in 1516, and probably- 
 decorated by him for the great French amateur. 
 
 Jean Grolier is said to have himself designed some of 
 the subjects of his ornaments, and their perfection indicates 
 an active and enlightened supervision. He returned to France 
 in 1530, took up his abode at Paris, in a house near the 
 Porte de Bucy, before 1537, when he held the office of 
 treasurer of the king's finances in the Isle of France and 
 the district beyond the Seine and Yonne, until 1545, when he 
 became treasurer-general of France, which office he held 
 until his death. At Paris he came into relation with Geoffroy 
 Tory, the artist best fitted to understand him, and who was 
 himself painter, engraver, printer, and binder. It was there 
 that, in the leisure of his financial functions, between two 
 projects for revictualling the forts of Outre Seine and Yonne, 
 Grolier invented combinations, sought interlacings, and laid 
 out foliage. Tory himself tells us of these works undertaken 
 in common. It was for Grolier, as he relates in his Champ- 
 fleury, that he invented antique letters. It was for him, too, 
 that he interwove so finely his designs in compartments for 
 binding, and that he reproduced the delightful ornaments of 
 his Books of Hours in golden scrolls. 
 
 As we have said, Grolier placed his titles on the sides 
 of his books on account of the arrangement of the works 
 on the shelves of the library where they were laid. For 
 this reason also the back was neglected, and no ornament 
 
Jean Grolier. 277 
 
 used upon it ; thick and heavy with its projecting bands, 
 without any decoration between them, this jDart of the bound 
 volume was a kind of waste in a splendidly cultivated 
 garden. The profusion of books brought about a revolution. 
 There was no longer room to place on their sides the 
 innumerable books that were produced ; they were then placed 
 
 Fig. 157. — The fourth part of a binding for Thomas Maioli (sixteenth centurj-). 
 
 on their edges, as now, and the back also was decorated. 
 For this the bands were made to disappear, and were replaced 
 by decorative subjects in compartments like the sides. Then 
 with Grolier the bands reappeared, and the title was placed 
 between them, as it still is. 
 
 In the centre of each side was almost always a square. 
 
2/8 The Book. 
 
 lozenge or shield-shaped space reserved for the title on one 
 side and for his motto on the other ; at the foot of the 
 obverse, between the lines of the border, was printed in small 
 Roman capitals : lo. grolierii et amicorvm. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, this was placed immediately beneath the title ; in four 
 instances on the obverse side, and in three on the back. On 
 two others a second motto is inscribed : tanqvam ventvs est 
 
 VITA MEA. 
 
 The books of Grolier have been divided into two series : 
 those bound for himself, and those originally bound for others, 
 but which he subsequently acquired by gift or purchase. The 
 bindings of many of these were too remarkable to be destroyed, 
 and he merely had his name and motto impressed on them, or 
 if this could not well be done, he wrote them on the fly-leaf 
 The volumes bound expressly for him are all covered either 
 with morocco or yellow or brown calf, and may be grouped in 
 four classes : first, those ornamented in compartments, with 
 scrolls, full-gilt or adorned with parallel gilt lines. After these 
 come the bindings in the style of Geoffroy Tory, with gilt 
 compartments ; then, the polychromatic bindings, in which, 
 by the aid of colour or mastic, the alternating tones are 
 mixed. Grolier also had some mosaic bindings, composed 
 of little pieces of leather connected by incrustation or paste, 
 pure Italian bindings ; but these were not numerous, especially 
 if compared with those conceived in the manner of Geoffroy 
 Tory. 
 
 One of these latter works is here reproduced from a beau- 
 tiful volume in the collection of the late M. Dutuit. This copy 
 has the back flat, and the interfacings of the decoration are 
 most complicated and clever. 
 
 Grolier got his Levant moroccos through the dealers of 
 
Jean Grolier. 
 
 279 
 
 Venice, to make sure of the excellence of the material he 
 employed. 
 
 Born in 1479, the treasurer-general of France 'lived until 
 
 Fig. 158. — Binding for Grolier in the collection lof M. Dutuit. 
 
 22nd October, 1565. In 1563 an original manuscript shows 
 him much occupied with finance at over eighty-four years of 
 age ; but his passion for bindings had cooled down, for few 
 
28o 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 book-covers bearing his name are found the execution of which 
 can belong to a later date than the reign of Henry II. After 
 
 Fig, 159. — Binding for Francis I., wiih the arms of France and the 
 salamander. 
 
 great trials, after having seen Semblanqay suffer at Montfaucon, 
 Jean Lallemand beheaded, and himself having narrowly escaped 
 losing life and fortune at one blow, Grolier passed away quietly 
 
GUYOT MARCH ANT. 
 
 281 
 
 in his house, having collected most of the fine books of the 
 time and many curious medals. Christophe de Thou, his friend 
 and conf7^ere in the love of books, had saved his reputation 
 before the Parliament of Paris. After his death his library vi^as 
 transported to the Hotel de Vic, and from thence dispersed in 
 1675, a hundred years after. 
 
 Fig. i5o. — Mark of Guyot Marchant, printer and bookbinder. He 
 published the Danse Macabre of 1485. 
 
 Thus from Italy came a change in the style of French 
 binding, which, however, still remained original. The kings 
 did not fail to follow the movement, and even to anticipate 
 it, thanks to the means at their disposal. We shall see 
 Francis I. occupied with bindings, and we know the name of 
 one craftsman who worked for that monarch ; but Geoffroy 
 
282 
 
 THE BOOK. 
 
 Tory must have been his principal inspirer, and who knows 
 but that he also himself carried out the best work executed 
 for the prince, as he did for the great financier ? 
 
 
 Fig. i6l. — Binding for Henry II., with the "H" and crescents. 
 
 We have said that Louis XII. knew nothing of fine bindings. 
 During his travels in Italy he had received presentation copies 
 of magnificently covered books, and among others the poems 
 
Bindings for Henry II. 
 
 283 
 
 of Faustus Andrelinus, bound in calf in his honour. He, who 
 knew so little of the fine arts, purchased the entire library of 
 Louis de la Gruuthuuse, and substituted his own emblems for 
 
 EM taaiqiaawraggP^n 
 
 
 
 "TT-SS??! 
 
 
 
 
 
 V X" 
 
 Fig. I62.-Binding for Henry II. (Mazarme Library). 
 
 those of that wealthy Fleming. Francis I., with innate senti- 
 ment for masterpieces and the powerful protection he had given 
 them did not allow the experiments of Grolier to pass un- 
 noticed. The king did not wish to be behind the treasurer. 
 
284 The Book. 
 
 and so the binders were set to work for him. He had adopted 
 the salamander as his badge ; this emblem he used on his 
 •castles and furniture and the liveries of his people ; he lavished 
 it also on the sides of his books, together with an " F " en- 
 signed with a crown, and the arms of France with the collar 
 -of the order of St. Michael. The design of the binding here 
 represented (Fig. 159), if not by Geoffroy Tory himself, was cer- 
 tainly suggested by his works. It must not be thought that this 
 -ornamentation was produced at a single blow by means of an 
 engraved plate or a block. On the contrary, every detail 
 was separately impressed by a hot tool applied by the work- 
 man's hand to the gold laid on in advance, making it, so to 
 speak, enter into the skin or morocco. That was art binding ; 
 blocks were only used for commercial bindings, quickly im- 
 pressed and intended for ordinary purchasers. 
 
 During the reign of Francis I. the binders were the book- 
 sellers, as Verard and Vostre had been. The king generally 
 employed a publisher named Pierre Roffet, and it is his name 
 that most frequently figures in the accounts that have been pre- 
 served. Roffet not only bound, but it appears also rebound 
 books to patterns which the king desired. Philippe Lenoir and 
 Guyot Marchant were also royal workmen. The latter, placed 
 beneath his mark, here reproduced (Fig. 160), the figures of Saints 
 Crispin and Crispinian, patrons of the leather-dressers, who 
 prepared the leather for the binder. 
 
 The binders in Grolier's time had not much time to be idle. 
 Thousands of volumes were then destroyed to make the boards 
 for sides. Owing to this, many discoveries are made in our 
 days by pulling to pieces sixteenth century work,— unknown 
 playing cards and portions of early printed works. To mention 
 >only one instance, twenty leaves of the Perspective of Viator 
 
Binding for Catherine de Medici. 
 
 28s 
 
 were discovered in the binding of a volume in the National 
 Library at Paris. The board thus formed was covered in- 
 differently with sheepskin, parchment, calf, morocco, or goatskin ; 
 the books were sewn on bands or cords, according to the 
 
 Fig. 163. — Italian binding for Catherine de Medici, with the 
 initials " C. C." 
 
 owner's taste ; the edges were gilt, sometimes gauffered, and- 
 designs often impressed upon them to match those of the sides. 
 For large folios wooden boards were still used, more solid, and 
 protected from rubbing by nails in relief. But the inside of" 
 
286 THE BOOK. 
 
 the cover was as yet only covered with pai^er. Leather linings 
 were extremely uncommon. 
 
 The reign of Henry II. increased yet more the importance 
 of bindings ; it was the time when Grolier collected, and clever 
 artists came from all parts. Geoffroy Tory had given the best 
 models for letters and interfacings. The Queen, Catherine, 
 derived from her parents the taste for decoration in gold and 
 colours, and patronised the artists called by her from the court 
 of Florence ; and the favourite, Diana of Poitiers, Duchess of 
 Valentinois, rivalled her in luxury and expenditure. Henry II. 
 in the decoration of his castles, as well as his books, introduced 
 doubtful emblems. He interlaced two reversed " D's " with 
 an " H," in the form shown in the border on page 283. 
 Strictly speaking, we ought to see there two " C's " back 
 to back ; but as we find the " D " on all the bindings dis- 
 playing the arms of Diana, there can be little doubt. Other 
 emblems of Diana are to be found in the bows and crescents 
 that are plentifully displayed. The library of Diana was large, 
 owing to the king not hesitating to take valuable books for 
 her from the royal collections. Two centuries after her death 
 it was dispersed, and the greater part of the books belonging 
 to the royal collections were restored on the deaths of those 
 who then purchased them. Hence the largest number of the 
 bindings of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers will be found in 
 the National Library of Paris. 
 
 Queen Catherine also had special patterns with a monogram 
 identical with the double " D " mientioned above, but the 
 branches of the " C " were a litde longer than the branches 
 of the "H;" she also used a "K" on the sides of her 
 books. The specimen which we reproduce (Fig. 163), is a purely 
 Italian work. 
 
Private Collectors. 
 
 287 
 
 From kings and queens the fashion passed to the great 
 lords, it having come to the kings and queens from a private 
 individual. The Constable Anne de Montmorency adorned his 
 
 Fig. 164.— Binding with the arms of Mansfeldt, with lined scroll work,] 
 from the Didot collection. . 
 
 bindings with a cross and spread eagle. Among the book- 
 lovers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries 
 using distinctive marks, we may mention Philippe Desportes, the 
 
288 THE Book. 
 
 poet, who used two <I> enlaced, as did also Superintendent 
 Fouquet in the seventeenth century. The brothers Dupuy 
 adopted the double A, arranged as a star. Colbert had a 
 curled snake {cohiber for Colbert !), the Gondis two war-maces, 
 Madame de Pompadour three towers, etc. Fouquet beside 
 the <I> used a squirrel on some of his bindings. 
 
 In Germany, Count Mansfeldt adopted the ornamental style 
 with arms (Fig. 164), of which a specimen is here given. Among 
 the lords of the French courts who favoured polychromatic 
 ornament and bold compositions were the young Valois, 
 Louis de Sainte Maure, Marquis of Nesle, and Henri de Guise, 
 called " Le Balafre." 
 
 Charles IX. had his emblems and devices, the double " C " 
 crowned the legend " Pietate et jvstitia," but his brother, 
 Henry III., loved the decoration of books more than he did. 
 The passion of this king for miniatures which he cut out of 
 books is known ; his love of golden things showed itself also on 
 bindings, for which he chose special designs. Henry III. was 
 an amateur of dances of death ; he visited cemeteries, attended 
 funerals, and took a death's-head for his emblem. This em- 
 blem was, however, not his invention ; long before him Marot had 
 addressed an epigram to a lady in which he brought love and 
 death into close conjunction. However that may be, the king 
 chose skeletons and penitents' tears to ornament his books- 
 He also tolerated diamonds, although he absolutely prohibited 
 them in the adornment of ladies or fixed the number pro rata 
 with the rank of the authorised person. There was in this, 
 prince a singular mixture of taste and artistic acuteness by the 
 side of a mania or hallucination which was reflected on the 
 most intimate objects of his apparel or of his furniture. Thus 
 if we find, at the end of the sixteenth century, a death's-head 
 
JACQUES DE Thou. 
 
 289 
 
 Fig. 165.- Part of a binding having belonged to Jacques de Thou (sixteenth century). 
 
 19 
 
290 
 
 The Book. 
 
 on the sides or the back of a v'^olume, the binding is of the 
 period of Henry III. 
 
 The binders of his time are known by the mention that is 
 made of them in the royal accounts ; the Eves were the most 
 celebrated among them all. Nicholas Eve was charged with 
 the binding of the Statutes of the Order of the Holy Ghost, 
 with which the king gratified his friends. Mention of this work 
 is found in the Clairambault manuscripts, where we read, " To 
 Nicholas Eve, washer and binder of books and bookseller to 
 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 riri^it'^ '*v~-'W5 
 
 SB 
 
 i^^ 
 
 H^^S^tJyW 
 
 ^3 
 
 
 
 li 
 
 
 
 j^SP 
 
 y^^l^^ 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 Sffii 
 
 Fig" 166.— Mark of Nicholas Xve, tinder of Henry III. 
 .and Jienry IV. 
 
 the king, forty-seven and a ialf escus for washing, gilding, and 
 squaring the edges of forty-two books of statutes and ordinances 
 of the Order, bound and covered with orange Levant morocco, 
 enriched on one side with the arms of the king, fully gilt, and 
 on the other with those of France and Poland, with cyphers at 
 the four corners, and flames on the rest of the ground, with 
 orange and blue ribands," etc. 
 
 Louisa of Lorraine, wife of Henry HL, counted for little in 
 the life of her husband ; nevertheless she had a certain number 
 of books decorated with their united escutcheons. 
 
Nicolas Eve. 
 
 291 
 
 The bindings attributed to Eve were decorated all over the 
 sides and back with interlacing patterns of geometrical character, 
 
 Fig 167. — Sixteenth century binding-, called a to /a»2/n;f. In the 
 Dutuit collection. 
 
 the spaces between the parallel lines and in the middle of the 
 figures left at first quite blank, but afterwards filled in with 
 
292 The Book. 
 
 palm branches and wreaths of foliage ; to these delicate and 
 elaborate yet brilliant toolings have been given the name of 
 bindings a la fanfare. The origin of this designation is doubtful, 
 and is a good example of the peculiar terminology adopted 
 by modern amateurs. 
 
 The fine work of that time prepared the way for the coming 
 in the seventeenth century— about 1620 — of the artist known 
 as Le Gascon, with whom in our days are connected the 
 bindings executed during the reign of Louis XIII. Under 
 Henry IV. the fleur-de-lys occupied most of the covers of the 
 royal books, from vellum to Levant morocco ; works in this 
 class had nothing very remarkable. The first years of 
 Louis XIII. revealed a new process, inspired by the Eves. 
 Le Gascon embroidered delightfully on the fanfare ornaments ; 
 showing the fibres of the leaves, he made a new kind of 
 ornament, consisting of minute gold dots elaborated into lines 
 and curves of singular brilliancy and elegance. Of this style, 
 called pointilld, we give a specimen from the collection of M. 
 Dutuit (Fig. 168). The fashion had sprung up all at once ; lace, 
 banished from clothing by severe edicts, found a refuge on the 
 covering of books. 
 
 The times were hard then for binders in France ; they were 
 constrained to live in the university and to employ only its 
 workmen. A binder was never his own gilder ; he employed 
 the gaufreiirs of shoe-leather, more expert and bolder, to gild 
 his leather. Among these artisans at Paris was one named 
 Pigorreau, whom the edict found living in the midst of 
 publishers and working for them ; he was compelled to 
 choose either to remain a bootmaker or become a bookseller ; 
 he chose the latter, against the wish of the syndics of the 
 trade, against everyone, and he so made enemies for himself. 
 
Le Gascon Binding. 293 
 
 He revenged himself by turning the masters into ridicule in 
 a placard. 
 
 Le Gascon was probably the assumed name of an artist 
 
 Fig. 168. — Le Gascon binding. 
 
 in this style, perhaps of Clovis Eve, son of Nicholas. The 
 Guirlande de Julie, tooled by him for Mademoiselle de 
 Rambouillet, gave him great honour in the special circle of this 
 
294 
 
 The book. 
 
 little literary court. It was the fashion then for poor authors 
 to put a fine covering on their works and to offer them to 
 the great for their own profit. Tallement des Reaux notably 
 signalises the poet Laserre, who displayed his luxury in 
 irreproachable bindings. And then the farmers of the revenue, 
 successors of Grolier in financial trusts, formed libraries for 
 pure fashion's sake, never opening the volumes covered for 
 them in sumptuous attire. If we may believe Sauval, author 
 of the Antiquitis de Paris, they went further, and on the covers 
 of sham books inscribed imaginary titles and fantastic squibs 
 to mislead their visitors. The bookcase being carefully closed, 
 it was difficult to discover the imposition. Sauval writes, "In 
 jDlsce of books, they are content with covers of levant morocco, 
 on the backs of which, in gold letters, are inscribed the names 
 of the most celebrated authors. A binder of the university 
 assured me that not long since he and his confreres had made 
 sham books for a single financier to the amount of 10,000 
 crowns ! " 
 
 The bindings of Le Gascon will be found more often 
 covering books belonging to great personages than to this class 
 of collectors, who did not appreciate their grace and charm. 
 The king's brother Gaston possessed them, as did Mazarin, 
 an example from whose library is here reproduced (Fig. 170). 
 On this binding Le Gascon, worked gilt compartments and 
 elaborate arabesques ; in the middle of the sides are the arms 
 of the Cardinal and his pretentious device : " arma ivlii 
 ORNANT frAnciaM ! " — " The arms of Julius adorn France ! " 
 In spite of the profusion of subjects, nothing could be pro- 
 duced better calculated to please the eye or indicate a man 
 of taste. 
 
 But if Le Gascon be a legendary personage, he had aa 
 
Le Gascon Binding. 
 
 29s 
 
 imitator or rival, very near to him, named Florimond Badier, 
 whose works had at least the advantage of being signed. At 
 the bottom of the inside cover of an inlaid morocco binding 
 
 
 
 •Lt^^^^^i'^ 
 
 %ci,. 
 
 Fig. 169. — Binding executed by Le Gascon for the MS. of Lafontaine's^rfowfs, 
 having belonged to Fouquet (seventeenth century). 
 
 in the National Library at Paris is the inscription " Florimond 
 Badier fee, inv." The analogy between this work and those 
 known as Le Gascon's is palpable ; inside and outside, the 
 cover is stippled with small tools {au petit fer) in the same 
 
296 The Book. 
 
 manner. Florimond Badier was not appointed bookseller until 
 1645, and so could not have composed earlier bindings attri- 
 buted to Le Gascon, but this resemblance of style proves the 
 existence of a Parisian school, the adepts of which copied 
 one another, as they do nowadays. 
 
 The work was soon simplified ; pallets and wheel-shaped 
 tools were invented to produce that which was improperly 
 called dentelle ; this mechanical work was done by a wheel- 
 shaped tool, previously heated, on sized gold leaves, on 
 which it impressed its projections. 
 
 With Louis XIV. the passion for gilding increased. 
 Charming festoons were designed, but they were soon abused, 
 and inundated the libraries. On the sides were seen rising 
 suns, arms, and golden garlands. Cramoisy directed the royal 
 bindings, the king having devoted large sums to the purchase 
 of Levant leathers. In 1666 the Director of Works ordered 
 red moroccos ; in 1667 he received twenty-two dozen skins, 
 amounting, with the expenses of transport, to 1,020 livres 
 tournois. Successive supplies were obtained, and were used 
 for the royal library, sixty-nine dozen in 1667, forty-six dozen 
 in 1668, and three hundred and thirty-three dozen in 1670, 
 costing the king more than 12,000 livres. On these admir- 
 ably dressed skins, which, in spite of incessant use, still 
 remain now as in their first days, the king caused to be 
 applied tools of borders, and placed in the middle the arms 
 of France, with the collar of the Order of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Among the binders mentioned in the very useful work of 
 M. J. J. Guiffrey on the expenditure of Louis XIV., we 
 find Gilles Dubois, who died before 1670 ; Levasseur, binder 
 to Huet, Bishop of Avranches ; La Tour, Merins or Merius, 
 who died before 1676; and also Ruette, the reputed inventor 
 
Le Gascon binding. 
 
 297 
 
 of marbled paper for fly-leaves of books : to him the bindings 
 of the Chancellor de Seguier, with their ornament of the 
 golden fleece, and of Madame de Seguier, are attributed. It 
 
 ^ftgjl!gynyn^^y^i'f^^^^^^rt'ffWtiffff^'!^1^yn1^1^'T^T^^ff{ftf^^^^^^ 
 
 
 Fig. 170. — Le Gascon binding for Cardinal Mazarin. 
 
 was probably these men who decorated the books of the 
 brothers Dupuy, Fouquet, and Colbert, marvellous works of 
 solidity, if not always of elegance, which have resisted all 
 assaults. Unhappily, in many instances the mechanical dentelle 
 
298 The Book. 
 
 overburdened the work, and gave it a commonplace regularity. 
 In the Cond6, Colbert, and perhaps even Madame de Longue- 
 ville's collections, there are many specimens of this kind with 
 two or three filleted borders. 
 
 We have come to an epoch when the difficulties resulting 
 from confusion between the booksellers' and binders' trades 
 began to be understood. The revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes entailed a crowd of measures and rules in all -branches 
 of national industry. It was a good occasion to prevent the 
 artisans of binding from unduly parading themselves as 
 booksellers and selling merchandise of which they understood 
 nothing; Louis XIV. interfered, and separated the two com 
 munities. The binders then became the relieurs-doreurs of 
 books ; they had their own organisation, but remained subject 
 to the university ; the heads of the fraternity were called the 
 " guards." The principal arrangements of the regulation of 
 1 749 were : the members of the corporation had the sole right 
 to bind books, from the elegant volume to registers of blank 
 paper. Five years of apprenticeship and three of fellow- 
 ship were necessary to obtain the freedom and the right to 
 hold a shop. Moreover, no one could become a master-binder 
 unless he could read and write. One regulation ordained that 
 the workman should be "able to bind and ornament ordinary 
 books or others, to return them in perfect order, to sew the 
 sheets with thread on real bands, with joints of parchment, 
 and not of paper ; and in case of noncompliance, the said books 
 were to be re-bound at the expense of the offender, who 
 was besides condemned to a penalty of thirty livres for each 
 volume." Their establishment was confined to the quarter 
 from the Rue St. Andr6 des Arts to the Place Maubert ; 
 they regulated the sale of calfskin and of tools ; in a word, 
 
MOSAIC Binding. 
 
 299' 
 
 they were surrounded by precautions by which the production 
 remained always under the supervision of the masters and 
 
 Fig. 171.— Mosai: binding cf the eighteenth century for the Spaccio de 
 la Best'a Tr'.onfante. 
 
 completely satisfied the client. This exacting policy was, in 
 fact, a close imitation of the royal ordinance of 1686. 
 
 The mosaic bindings used from the end of the reign of 
 
300 The Book. 
 
 Louis XIV. were an application of pared leathers of colours 
 different from the background, pasted on to the side. The 
 binders of the regency executed a great number, now attributed 
 to Pasdeloup, just as all the crayons of the sixteenth century 
 are called Clouets, and the panels on wood, Holbeins. It 
 is not that there was great originality or any particular art 
 in these works ; more often the workman did no more than 
 imitate Le Gascon or Eve or the older binders, and accommo- 
 dated the processes of these artists to the fashion of his time. 
 Of bindings in this style we may cite the Spaccio de la Bestia 
 Trionfante (Fig. 171), printed at Paris in 1584, for which 
 the binder designed a cover of doubtful taste and undeniably 
 wanting in proportion. The tendency was then to flowers 
 occupying three-fourths of the page, to compartments too large, 
 to seeded pomegranates, as on the binding of the Spaccio here 
 reproduced. Had Pasdeloup himself invented these mediocre 
 combinations, he could not be proclaimed the regenerator of a 
 fallen art. The bastard style of these works may be compared 
 to their mosaics, constructed of pieces ; it is a little of 
 everything, and as a whole it is nothing. However, in the 
 midst of a vast amount of very inferior work, some pleasing 
 decoration is from time to time met with ; the design of a 
 volume with the arms of the Regent (Fig. 172), and his wife. 
 Mademoiselle de Blois, is neither wanting in elegance nor in 
 taste ; though far from perfection, it has better proportion and 
 balance. 
 
 We should, however, hesitate to give names to all these 
 works. Besides the Pasdeloups, there were the Deromes, partly 
 abandoning the mosaics, devising flowers and dentelles in com- 
 bination, and no longer the simple products of the fillet. They 
 formed quite a dynasty ; and if there were at least twelve 
 
Pasdeloup and Derome. 
 
 301 
 
 Pasdeloups, there were not less than fourteen Deromes all 
 booksellers and binders from the reign of Louis XIV. The 
 most celebrated was Jacques Antoine, who died in 1761. 
 
 Fig. 172. — Mosaic binding of the eighteenth century, with the arms of 
 the Regent. M. Morgand's collection. 
 
 Pierre Paul Dubuisson was not only a binder ; he was also a 
 draughtsman. He designed heraldic ornaments, and models for 
 gilding tools, in which his contemporaries emulated him. He 
 
302 The Book. 
 
 was intimate with the dehcate vignettist Eisen, and the counsels 
 •of an artist of his merit could not but be useful to him. It is 
 •an extraordinary thing that in this world of celebrated printers, 
 amateur financiers, and notable painters and engravers, not a 
 single man should have been found to give a real impulse to 
 the art of which we speak, and to prevent the dull continuance 
 of experiments on the whole so poor. Doubtless the dentelles 
 of Derome had a certain air of gaiety, to which the books of 
 the eighteenth century accommodated themselves perfectly ; the 
 tools of Dubuisson produce most pleasing designs ; but the old, 
 the great binders, had altogether disappeared. 
 
 Besides, Derome massacred without pity the rarest works. 
 He loved edges very regularly cut, and he did not fail to hew 
 down margins opposed to his taste. He sawed books as well ; 
 that is to say, in place of sewing the sheets on to projecting 
 bands, he made a groove in the back, in which the cord was 
 embedded. The books bound by him have no wear. 
 
 To these celebrated names of French binders of the eigh- 
 teenth century we may add Le Monnier, who worked for the 
 Orleans princes ; Tessier, his successor ; Laferte, who decorated 
 the small volumes of the Due de la Valliere as Chamot covered 
 the large ones ; in 1 766 Chamot was royal binder. There was 
 also Pierre Engerrand, then Bizlaux, an original, who worked 
 for Madame de Pompadour and Beaumarchais. Boyet, or 
 Boyer, worked (1670-80) in the style of Le Gascon, with the 
 same minute tooling, but simpler in character. Duseuil put very 
 elaborate and delicate tooling on his covers from about 17 10 
 to 1720. 
 
 The Revolution destroyed many of the fine works which 
 displayed the symbols of royalty or nobility, and Mercier wrote 
 certain wicked little poems against binding. Lesne was the 
 
Bookbinding in England. 303 
 
 poet of bookbinding, and he invented the process of bare limp 
 calf without boards. Certainly from Grolier to Lesne there 
 were numerous changes, so numerous that, in spite of the 
 bare calf, it may be said that the art was nearly dead. In 
 our days it has a little recovered. Amateurs have found new 
 names, and often artists, to patronise : Trautz-Bauzonnet, Cape, 
 Duru, Lortic, Marius-Michel, in France ; Bedford, Riviere 
 (whose tree-calf bindings deserve to be mentioned), Zaehnsdorf 
 (who is justly renowned for his excellent workmanship, and 
 has himself written a work on the Art of Bookbinding), Pratt, 
 etc., in England ; Matthews, Bradstreet, Smith, in the United 
 States ; and many others. Unhappily, fortune does not permit 
 everyone to furnish his library luxuriously ; the true connois- 
 seur searches rather for Groliers, Eves, and Le Gascons, 
 than concerns himself about modern workmanship. Whatever 
 may be its value, it is only fit to clothe the works of the 
 present time. A book published by Lemerre and bound 
 by Petit is in true character, but a fifteenth or sixteenth 
 century book that has passed under the hands of Trautz- 
 Bauzonnet, or Lortic, will be very much like an ancient enamel 
 in a modern frame newly gilt. An old book in its original 
 binding, even if shabby, has a certain charm and character 
 of its own, which is quite wanting when presented in a 
 modern dress. 
 
 Bookbinding in England has, with very few exceptions, 
 never attained the artistic excellence reached in France. From 
 the fifteenth century to the end of the sixteenth all the best 
 work was executed by foreigners ; amongst the most note- 
 worthy of these were Thomas Berthelet, printer and binder 
 to Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and the unknown binder 
 employed by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. John Gibson 
 
304 The Book. 
 
 of Edinburgh, who was appointed bookbinder to James VI., 
 King of Scotland, in 1581 ; Robert Barker and John Norton, 
 binders to James after his accession to the English throne ; 
 Samuel Mearne, binder to Charles II. ; and Zuckerman, were 
 all good binders, but most of their work is a mere imitation 
 of foreign designs. The one purely original English binder 
 is Roger Payne, who learnt his craft from Mr. Pote, book- 
 seller to Eton College, and from about 1767 worked for thirty 
 years in London, performing with his own hands every stage 
 of the work, even to cutting his own tools. The result was 
 good, solid work, with perfectly original and often beautiful 
 decoration, appropriate to the character of the work itself 
 His favourite style was drooping lines of leaf ornaments in 
 the borders and geometrical patterns produced by small tools. 
 After him came C. Kalthoeber, a German, who worked much in 
 the same style ; Charles Lewis, who was an artist in the true 
 sense of the word, and, coming down to our own time, Francis 
 Bedford, who, never pretending to originality, copied the best 
 designs of the French and Italian binders of the Renascence 
 and later periods. His full calf books, with handsomely tooled 
 backs, are models of solidity and taste ; and his decorations on 
 the sides of morocco-bound books are always in good taste, 
 and often of great elegance. 
 
 Parallel with the luxurious bindings with which we have 
 been exclusively occupied, there has always been the com- 
 mercial work, prepared in numbers for the trade. In the 
 fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, panel stamps were 
 much used for this class of work. Later on plates were 
 engraved with imitations of tooled work, and applied to the 
 sides by a press, parts being sometimes afterwards finished by 
 hand to make the work appear to have been executed by the 
 
MODERN WORKMANSHIP. 305 
 
 skill of the craftsman. The interlacings of Grolier and the 
 delicate work of the Eves and the Parisian binders of the 
 seventeenth century were imitated in this manner. If bindings 
 adorned with panel stamps can hardly be considered works of art, 
 they were at least honest work, and when the stamps were 
 well designed and engraved and skilfully applied, the effect 
 was often excellent ; but the blocking of later times is hateful. 
 Liturgical books, on which in old times so much loving care 
 was expended, are now almost always bound in this manner, 
 their purchasers apparently being satisfied so long as the covers 
 are gorgeously gilt. 
 
 The interest in Fine Bindings seems, however, to be 
 reviving, if we may judge from the number of the following 
 important works which have lately appeared on this fascinating 
 subject, viz. : — 
 
 Remarkable Bindings in the British Museum, with 60 monotint plates, de- 
 scribed by H. B. Wheatley. 4to. London, 1889. 
 
 Manuel Historique et Bibliographique de F Amateur de Reliures, par Le'on 
 Gruel. With 66 plates, 4to. Paris, 1887. 
 
 Facsimiles of Choice Examples of Historical and Artistic Bookbinding, by B. 
 Ouaritch. In parts of ten coloured plates each. Royal 8vo. London, 
 
 1889. 
 La Reliure Frangaise depuis I'lnvention de I'Imprimerie jusqu'd la Fin du 
 
 18" Siecle, par Marius-Michel. With 22 plates. 4to. Paris, 1880. 
 Les Reliures de I'Art a la Bibliotheque Nationale, par H. Bouchot. With 80 
 
 plates. Royal 8vo. Paris, 1888. 
 Album de Reliures Artistiques et Historiques, par le Bibliophile Julien. With 
 
 plates. 4to. Paris, 1869-72. 
 La Reliure de Luxe, par L. Derome. With St, plates. Royal 8vo. Paris. 
 La Reliure Moderne Artistique et Fantaisiste, par Octave Uzanne. With 72 
 
 plates. Royal 8vo. Paris. 
 La Reliure Ancieune, par Gustave Brunet. With 113 plates. Royal 8vo. 
 
 Paris. 
 
 20 
 
306 
 
 THE Book. 
 
 The Art of Bookbinding, by J. W. Zaehnsdorf. 8vo. London, 1879. 
 
 On Bookbindings Ancient and Modern, by J. Cundall; With 28 facs.-plates of 
 
 bookbinding. 4to. London, 1881. 
 Facsimiles of Old Bookbinding in the Collection of James Gibson Craig. With 
 
 27 beautiful plates in chromolith. Folio. Edinburgh, 1882. 
 L' Ornamentation des Reliures Modernes, by Marius Michel. With numerous 
 
 illustrations and 16 plates of reproductions. 8vo. Paris, 1889. 
 Armorial du Bibliophile, by Joannis Guigard. 2 vols. 4to. Paris, 1873. 
 Nouvel Ar7norial du Bibliophile, hy Joannis Gvigajd. 2 vols. 8vo. With 2,500 
 
 Armoiries. Paris, 1880. 
 
3o8 The Book. 
 
 three hundred works constituted ordinary collections ; the 
 powerful abbeys found in their staff the means of enriching 
 their libraries, and the products of the skill of the scribe and 
 the illuminator were objects of commerce. Some of the MSS. 
 were magnificent in their costly beauty. 
 
 Excepting kings and some princes, few people possessed a 
 library. The great expense of transcription, the want of facility 
 for procuring originals, and the enormous price of manuscripts 
 left no hope to bibliophiles of moderate fortune. Typography, 
 on the contrary, having multiplied books and put at relatively 
 modest prices reproductions formerly inaccessible, private 
 collections commenced. We have had occasion to speak before 
 of Grolier and Maioli ; they were the most illustrious, but not 
 the only ones. 
 
 At first a public library was an unknown thing. There 
 was a greater dearth of readers than of books, and yet 
 the needs of students and scholars led to devices in which 
 the principle of the modern library is involved. Perhaps 
 the richest library of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 
 was that of the King of France, but it was a private and 
 not a public library. Since the time of Jean le Bon the 
 acquisitions had been numerous, and Gutenberg's invention 
 contributed to augment the stock of volumes everywhere. 
 Charles VIII. and Louis XII. found or "conveyed" in their 
 expeditions in Italy, and were able to add to the original 
 nucleus, many rare editions, especially from the Sforzas at 
 Pavia, who had in their collections marvels without number. 
 Brought together at Blois, under the care of Jean de Labarre, 
 the royal library did not yet occupy a very large space, in 
 spite of its increase. Under Charles V. the number of 
 books was about a thousand; about 1500 or 15 10 they were 
 
The Royal Library, Paris. 309 
 
 nearly doubled, but the printed books did not number more 
 than two hundred. 
 
 So restricted, the royal library travelled with 'the other 
 treasures of the Crown ; Francis I. transported it from Blois to 
 Fontainebleau, and parts of it even went with the King to the 
 Italian wars, as related above. In its new quarters the royal 
 collection, in spite of the successive accessions of the books of 
 Jean d'Angouleme, grandfather of the King, and of those of 
 the dukes of Orleans, counted but 1,781 manuscripts and a 
 hundred and nine printed books on the shelves. The King, 
 ambitious in literature no less than in arts, nominated an 
 illustrious savant, Guillaume Bude, to the office of keeper of his 
 library ; and this office was maintained by his successors until 
 the fall of the royal power. 
 
 With Bude commenced the system of continuous acquisitions. 
 The treasury was liberally opened to vendors of rarities. At 
 this time the books, placed upon their sides, one upon another, 
 gave no idea of a modern library, with its volumes ranged on 
 end, having their titles between the bands of the back. In 
 speaking of Grolier, we remarked that the sides of a binding 
 alone had importance on account of their place on the shelves ; 
 it was the same with Francis I. 
 
 Under Henry II. the Fontainebleau collection was some- 
 what pillaged for Diana of Poitiers, but, as a corrective for 
 this dilapidation, the King adopted a measure, since pre- 
 served, which substituted for acquisitions a regular and 
 uninterrupted supply; this was the contribution by publishers 
 to the library of one bound copy on vellum of all the 
 works printed under privilege. The ordinance was made in 
 1556; the successors of Henry II. had only this means of 
 increasing the number of their volumes, with the exception 
 
3IO The Book. 
 
 that Charles IX. expended a large sum in the purchase of 
 Grolier's collection of medals. 
 
 Such was the working of the royal library for about a 
 half-century, but the idea of making it public had not come. 
 Diffused as was then the passion for books, it had not yet been 
 popularized to the point of being understood by the public at 
 large. Amateurs and lovers of reading formed special collections 
 in their houses, at times rivalling that of the King. Then the 
 fashion was no more to lay the books on their sides, but they 
 were now ranged to allow room for new acquisitions. Henry IV., 
 who had not his great-uncle's predilection for Fontainebleau, 
 commanded the removal to Paris of the books buried in the 
 castle. He added to them those of Catherine de Medici 
 coming from Marshal Strozzi ; and as the college of Clermont 
 had become vacant by the dispersion of the Jesuits, he lodged 
 the library in 1599 in one of the rooms of that establishment, 
 under the care of Jacques Auguste de Thou, keeper of the 
 library. 
 
 We now see the royal collection brought to Paris, which it 
 has never quitted ; but before its definitive installation, before 
 it was made public, it passed through a century, during which 
 additions were made, purchases increased, and the number of 
 manuscripts and printed books augmented in enormous propor- 
 tions. Henry IV. desired to place it near the court, to avoid 
 pillage and to have the chief librarian near to him. The 
 return of the Jesuits in 1604 upset the first establishment a 
 little ; the college of Clermont was evacuated ; the books were 
 transported to the Cordeliers and distributed in rooms on the 
 ground and first floors, whence the names of upper and lower 
 libraries. There was a mass of volumes very little used, for 
 the public did not enjoy them, and the King held them as his 
 
The Mazarine Library. 311 
 
 own ; but the time was near when the collection was to take 
 a very serious step under the influence of the brothers Dupuy 
 in 1645, and afterwards of Jerome Bignon. Always shut up in 
 the incommodious chambers of the Cordeliers, the library con- 
 tained 5,259 volumes, manuscript and printed, perhaps less than 
 some private libraries ; after the Dupuys it had at least 10,329 
 printed books. 
 
 Mazarin was the first to comprehend the natural use of 
 collections of books : publicity. His private library, placed 
 before 165 1 in his magnificent house in the Rue Richelieu, 
 where later the royal library was definitively lodged, was 
 opened to readers every Tuesday, from eight to eleven and 
 two to five. Dispersed in 1651, at the fall of the Cardinal, it 
 was later reconstituted, and in less than ten years afterwards 
 the former minister was able to open it in its new quarters, 
 the College of the Four Nations, where it is .still. 
 
 While the Mazarine library was administering liberally to 
 the wants of the public, that of the King remained closely shut 
 up in the rooms of the Cordeliers. To remedy this state of 
 things, Colbert offered two houses in the Rue Vivienne to the 
 King, where the books could find a more convenient lodging, 
 and allow room for increase. The removal was made in 1666. 
 The royal collection for fifty-five years was lodged only a few 
 steps from its final resting-place, the Hotel de Nevers. So 
 was called at the end of the seventeenth century the splendid 
 mansion of Mazarin, situated near the Porte de Richelieu, in the 
 street of the same name, whence his books had been previously 
 torn and sold to all the dealers. Divided into two . parts at 
 the death of the Cardinal in i66r, the palace fell to his 
 nephews, one part to the Due de Mazarin, the other to the 
 Due de Nevers. At first the King dreamed, under the advice 
 
312 The Book. 
 
 of Louvois, of acquiring the land in the neighbourhood of the 
 Rue Vivienne and of elevating a monument for his library, for 
 the thought of putting the Hotel de Nevers to this use had 
 not then occurred to him ; but the Due de Mazarin having 
 alienated his part of the palace in favour of the Company of 
 the Indies, Abbe Bignon, then royal librarian, understood the 
 advantage he could derive from the acquisition. 
 
 Thanks to the administration of Colbert and the liberalities 
 of the King, the collection had been augmented threefold. At 
 the time of the removal to the Rue Vivenne, Nicolas Clement 
 worked at the classifying and cataloguing of 35,000 volumes. 
 He distributed them into methodical classes, and devoted nine 
 years — 1675 to 1684 — to his work. But this first arrangement 
 was soon insufficient. Less than four years after, he com- 
 menced a new inventory in twenty-one volumes, which occupied 
 thirty years, having been finished in the course of March, 1714. 
 This time the numbers amounted to 43,000 printed volumes ; 
 his twenty-three principal divisions, containing all the letters of 
 the alphabet, are very nearly preserved up to our day. In 
 1697 the question of publishing this enormous work was agi- 
 tated, and on this point Clement had a curious correspondence 
 with a learned Dane named Frederick Bostgaard ; he also, in 
 a celebrated pamphlet. Idee dune Notivelle Manure de dresser 
 le Catalogue dune Bibliotheque, made some practical observa- 
 tions. He resolved this arduous question in favour of arrange- 
 ment of important collections by difference of sizes ; but his 
 project was not executed, although favoured from the first by 
 Abbe Bignon. 
 
 As the collection was not available for workers, the work 
 of Clement had only a relative importance. A councillor of 
 the Prince of Waldeck, a German of the name of Nemeitz, 
 
The National Library, Paris. 313 
 
 who travelled in France in the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, having seen it in the houses of the Rue Vivienne, 
 says that the library occupied then wenty-six rooms and con- 
 tained 75,000 volumes in all ; it was shown readily to 
 visitors, but not to the general public. Nemeitz gives some other 
 curious particulars as to the libraries of Paris {Sej'our a Paris ■' 
 Leyde, 1727, 8vo). 
 
 The bank of Law, that had been lodged for some time in 
 the Hotel de Nevers, alienated by the heirs of Mazarin, soon 
 disappeared with the ruin of his system. As we have said 
 above, Bignon appreciated the importance of the neglected 
 palace for commodiously lodging the royal collections. This 
 was in 1721. The collection was about to be subdivided into 
 four sections, or, as they weire then called in the administrative 
 style, four distinct departments : manuscripts, printed books, 
 titles, and engraved plates. The keeper of the library pressed 
 the Regent to profit by the occasion, to which he agreed. In 
 the month of September the removal commenced, and from 
 the Rue Vivienne, the royal library, the first in the world and 
 the most valuable, as Naude says, entered the former palace 
 of the Cardinal, which it was never to quit again. 
 
 We approach the epoch when the private character of this 
 great scientific establishment was definitely to cease, and it was 
 to open its doors to the learned of all countries. In 1735 It 
 was decided to print the catalogue of some divisions only : 
 theology, canonical law, public law, and 3e//es lettres. This 
 resolution coincided precisely with the opening of the doors 
 which took place in 1737, in which year appeared the first 
 volume of the catalogue comprising the sacred Scriptures. At 
 the end of the eighteenth century the royal library was finally 
 established ; the printed books then comprised about 200,000 
 
314 
 
 The Book. 
 
 volumes, and access was had by a staircase leading to six grand 
 saloons, which were surrounded by galleries. From this moment 
 the rooms became too small. At the Revolution the number of 
 books had increased to 300,000, and projects of enlargement 
 commenced and have continued to our time ; but, in spite of 
 these proposals, the surface occupied by the library has remained 
 the same since the time of Louis XV. Enlargements and 
 alterations have been made year after year on the same ground 
 without much new construction. But how the treasures have 
 been augmented to this time ! If the printed books at the 
 Revolution represented a little more than 300,000 volumes, 
 to-day they exceed two millions; the prints number two and a 
 half millions; the medals 100,000; the manuscripts, something 
 over 90,000. 
 
 If we have thus brought the summary history of the 
 National Library of Paris to our days, it was to avoid mixing 
 it with other matters. We have entered into such detail 
 regarding it as is fitting to an institution which is, next to the 
 British Museum, the most important rlibrary in the world. We 
 now return to the seventeenth century. 
 
 At the time when Henry IV. carried from Fontainebleau to 
 Paris the nucleus of volumes that was to have so brilliant a 
 destiny, the passion for books had singularly spread itself in 
 France. We have already spoken of Mazarin ; after him 
 Cardinal Richelieu designed to open his private collection to 
 the public, and in his will he manifested his clearly held 
 intention. He went further in his last wishes : he pre- 
 scribed the daily sweeping and dusting of the precious 
 collection, and its augmentation by a thousand livres tournois 
 each year. The great personages of the time were not 
 behind ; and Sauval says that in the seventeenth century 
 
Public Libraries. 315 
 
 there were 1,000 or 1,200 private libraries in Paris, numbering 
 1,700,000 volumes. 
 
 In the provinces there were few public libraries. The com- 
 munities and learned Societies, the Jesuits and other religious 
 houses, and the universities had collections. At Orleans a 
 library was opened for Germans, and the students of that 
 country were able to work at their ease under the supervision 
 of two librarians. 
 
 At the end of the eighteenth century the number of libraries 
 had increased in large proportions ; the amateurs had made 
 their influence felt. The Book was not sought only for what 
 it contained, but also for its exterior clothing. Only the great 
 libraries open to everybody remained eclectic, and provided a 
 little of everything. Besides the royal library, there were in 
 Paris a great number of other collections, many of which the 
 revolutionary storm upset or destroyed. That of St. Germain 
 des Pres was burnt in 1794. That of St. Genevieve, founded 
 in 1625, had benefited by celebrated donations, among others 
 those of the cardinals De Berulle and de la Rochefoucauld ; the 
 Arsenal, created by the Marquis de Paulmy, was successively 
 enriched by important acquisitions, among which was the collec- 
 tion of the Due de la Valliere. These collections still exist, 
 and are open to the public, as also are the National Library, 
 the Mazarine, the Sorbonne, the Museum, the School of Fine 
 Arts, the City of Paris, the Institute, the Louvre, and the 
 several scientific faculties. 
 
 The provinces have not been behind in the movement. 
 Many of the great cities contain a considerable number of 
 books easily accessible, among them the libraries of Bordeaux 
 and Rouen, amounting to 150,000 volumes ; Troyes and 
 Besangon, 100,000, etc. Few important centres have less than 
 
3i6 The Book. 
 
 20,000. These collections have been generally founded by the 
 acquisition of the books of those of the religious establishments 
 closed by the Revolution. 
 
 In our time public libraries are augmented by the legal 
 deposit, gifts of the State, legacies of private persons, and 
 purchases. The legal deposit in France relates almost exclu- 
 sively to the National Library, and proceeds from the measures 
 taken by Henry II. in 1556. Each French printer has now 
 to deposit a certain number of copies of the works that he 
 issues, and these volumes go to swell the number of books 
 in the Rue de Richelieu. At the rate of 30,000 a year, the 
 time is easily anticipated and very near when the space will 
 be found insufficient. Some measures will have to be taken. 
 
 Germany, the cradle of printing, was not favoured in the 
 beginning. There was, however, at the close of the sixteenth 
 ■century, in Wolfenblittel, a little town in the duchy of Bruns- 
 wick, a curious collection of books, in a detached building. 
 The engraver Merian has preserved for us the physiognomy 
 of this library, which in his time contained nearly 200,000 
 volumes. The rather low rooms were shelved all round ; in 
 the middle were cases of the height of a man, also filled with 
 books ; the readers helped themselves, and were seated for 
 working. The exterior of the building, without being sump- 
 tuous, was isolated and detached. This collection now possesses 
 the Bible, glass, and inkstand of Luther and his portrait by 
 Lucas Cranach. 
 
 Another curious library, dating from 1575, is that of the 
 university of Leyden. An engraving by Woudan shows its 
 state in 16 10, with its classifications and divisions. The books 
 were ranged in cases provided with breast-high desks. The 
 books were placed with the edges in front, and not as 
 
The British Museum. 317 
 
 now, and were so attached that they could only be consulted 
 in their place. Each body of shelving contained a series of 
 authors : Theology, philosophy, mathematics, history, medicine, 
 law, and literature. The room, of square shape, w-as lighted 
 by windows right and left. Between the bays were portraits, 
 views of cities, and maps. On the right, in a shrine, was 
 enclosed the legacy of Joseph Scaliger. Communication was 
 less liberal than at Wolfenbiittel ; the readers were obliged 
 to take the books from the shelves themselves and read them 
 standing before the desks. 
 
 In England the opportunity of forming a great national 
 collection at the period of the dissolution of the monasteries 
 was neglected. Even later, when much literary treasure might 
 easily have been secured, the suggestions of Dee were unheeded, 
 and it was not until the closing years of Elizabeth that the 
 first great English library arose through the generosity of Sir 
 Thomas Bodley, who in 1597 offered to the library of the 
 university the volumes collected by him during his travels on 
 the Continent, whose value exceeded ^io,ooo. The first stone 
 of a new building was laid in 16 10, but from 1602 the 
 collection was open to readers in a provisional locality. David 
 Loggan, the engraver, has preserved for us interior views of the 
 Bodleian of the seventeenth century. The rooms are disposed 
 in the form of the letter H, with pavilions to east and west, 
 united by a gallery. The books were and are still in the 
 body of the library, placed against the walls, with tables and 
 immovable seats. The volumes were not displaced ; they were 
 consulted in their own place. Each room had two floors, with 
 access to the second by stairs. 
 
 In London it was Sir Hans Sloane who had the idea of 
 founding a great collection by offering to the State for ;^20,ooo 
 
3i8 The Book. 
 
 his collection of books, which was valued at ^50,000. Created 
 in 1753 by an Act of Parliament, the British Museum, as it 
 was named, was quickly augmented by many private libraries, 
 among which was the library of printed books and manu- 
 scripts collected by the kings of England from Henry VII. to 
 William III., which was added in the reign of George II. The 
 very extensive and valuable library formed by George III., 
 and amounting to 250,000 volumes, was added by George IV. 
 The Harleian collection added 7,500 volumes, and Sir Robert 
 Cotton's manuscripts, which had been purchased by the nation 
 in 1700, served to add to the importance of the new institution. 
 To-day the printed books amount to 1,300,000, and are only 
 surpassed by the National Library of France as well in number 
 of books as in number of readers. This Immense collection 
 increases at a great rate, one source being the compulsory 
 deposit of a copy of every new book in order to secure 
 copyright. Donations and legacies are constantly being made, 
 and an annual sum for purchases is voted by Parliament. The 
 arrangements of the British Museum are on a most liberal 
 scale for the convenience of the readers. The general catalogue, 
 extending to more than 7,000 MS. volumes, is now in process 
 of printing. The British Museum is the only one of the 
 libraries of the first class that has undertaken such a gigantic 
 task. 
 
 Besides the copy deposited by publishers in the British 
 Museum, the law of copyright compels the deposit of four other 
 copies, which go to augment the collections of the Bodleian 
 Library of Oxford, the University Library of Cambridge, and 
 the libraries of Edinburgh and Dublin. 
 
 For the Fine Arts the National Art Library, founded in 
 1852 at the South Kensington Museum, ought to be mentioned. 
 
FOREIGN Libraries. 319 
 
 which contains now the most important collection of Fine Art 
 books in the world. 
 
 If we search among the cities of Europe where establish- 
 ments of this kind are most honoured, Berlin will take the third 
 place with 900,000 printed books and 20,000 manuscripts, pre- 
 served in the Royal Library. The building, constructed 
 between 1775 and 1780, owes its special form to Frederick II., 
 who desired that it should take the form of a chest of drawers. 
 On the facade an inscription in the Latin tongue, suggested to 
 the king from the Abbe Terrasson's Romance Sdthos (1731), 
 indicates that here is a spiritual refectory — nutrimentum spirihts. 
 Following come Munich, with 800,000 printed books ; Vienna, 
 400,000 ; Dresden, 300,000 ; then the universities : Leipzig, 
 whose library, founded in 1409 and reorganised in 1830, contains 
 1 50,000 books and 2,000 manuscripts ; Heidelberg ; Gottingen, etc. 
 
 In Italy, Florence has, in the National Library, 400,000 
 volumes, which was formed in 1861 by the union of the famous 
 Magliabecchi and the equally celebrated Laurentian, created by 
 Cosmo de' Medici in the middle of the fifteenth century, and 
 containing more than 8,000 manuscripts of an incalculable value. 
 Milan has at the Brera a collection of 162,000 books and 50,000 
 medals, and at the Ambrosian, due to Cardinal Frederick 
 Borromeo, 164,000 printed books and 8,000 manuscripts. 
 
 Rome possesses a dozen collections and celebrated deposits. 
 The Vatican, not numerous, is most choice ; the importance of 
 its manuscripts is known to the entire world, but only a part 
 of the 220,000 printed books are catalogued. The Library of 
 Victor Emmanuel, formerly of the Jesuits, amounts to about 
 360,000 volumes. At Venice the Biblioteca Marciana has 
 260,000 volumes of printed books and some thousands of 
 MSS. and documents. 
 
320 The Book. 
 
 The magnificent educational establisliments in the form of 
 public libraries provided in the United States deserve special 
 mention. Nearly every city has its public library, supported by 
 a small tax ; and many large libraries are wholly supported 
 by private munificence. The first to be established was founded 
 in 1732 by Benjamin FrankHn in Philadelphia, and still exists 
 as the Library Company ; many important bequests have been 
 made to it, the latest being ^200,000 by Dr. Richard Rush. 
 The library now numbers 150,000 volumes. The Congressional 
 Library of Washington, besides its annual income from Govern- 
 ment, receives by deposit for copyright a copy of every work 
 published in the United States ; it now has 565,000 volumes. 
 There are next in importance the Boston Library with 450,000 
 and the Boston Athenaeum with 220,000 volumes. 
 
 The Astor Library and the Lenox Library of New York 
 were both founded and endowed by the famiHes whose name 
 they bear ; the former has 223,284 volumes, the latter 25,000. 
 The city of Chicago recently fell heir to the magnificent sum 
 of over one million sterling, bequeathed by Mr. Newberry for 
 the establishment of a library of reference, and New York was 
 benefited by the late Mr. Tilden to the extent of ^800,000 for 
 a public library. 
 
 When we have named the libraries of St. Petersburg and 
 Moscow for Russia, Stockholm for Sweden, and the Escurial for 
 Spain, we shall have mentioned very hastily the most important 
 establishments in the world. For more than four centuries the 
 love of books has preserved and fortified itself, and increases 
 each day. If we were to endeavour to approximately imagine 
 the number of printed books diffused, we should be frightened 
 at it. It is by miles that to-day are counted the shelves of 
 the National Library or of the British Museum; and each 
 
Free Public Libraries. 321 
 
 year the production is accelerated, as is also the number of 
 readers. 
 
 In conclusion we ought to mention the modern development 
 of Free Public Libraries in England, and the popularisation of 
 learning resulting from the introduction of the Public Libraries 
 Act. The Free Libraries generally consist of a lending depart- 
 ment with a reference library, which latter, in the case of the 
 wealthier institutions, such as those in the great towns of 
 Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, is very important 
 indeed, and lends a special interest to the collection. 
 
 There are also Subscription, Collegiate and Learned Society 
 Libraries, all of which, in addition to those which we have 
 mentioned, have made the treasures of literature accessible to 
 the many, which formerly were reserved for the few. 
 
 ^V 
 
 21 
 
The Art of Describing and Cataloguing Incunabula. 323 
 
 such first impressions, but also a thorough acquaintance with 
 the history of mediaeval printing in general. Doubtless this 
 latter branch already forms the subject of a comprehensive 
 literature ; but it is precisely this very literature, teeming as 
 it does with all kinds of errors, that causes the greatest 
 embarrassment to the bibliographer, not unfrequently leading 
 to absolutely false conclusions. An experience spread over 
 many years is a fundamental condition of any really solid 
 performance in this department. 
 
 Antiquarian lore of a scientific character and instinct must 
 of course work in all directions, and can only incidentally expect 
 to light upon incunabula, if only because of their greater rarity. 
 Still certain definite rules and principles should be observed 
 in the bibliographical descriptions which have to be made 
 in trade or library catalogues of such first impressions as may 
 occasionally come to light. 
 
 The object of the present chapter is to establish some 
 norma or standard, which may be capable of general application, 
 and of throwing as full a light even on apparently minute 
 points, as is required for really important features in the descrip- 
 tion of incunabula. The whole subject is here treated entirely 
 from the practical standpoint, and in such a way as to prove a 
 welcome aid both to librarian and collector. 
 
 In descriptive catalogues of early books two points above all 
 others should be attended to and kept carefully distinct. These 
 are the statements that will have to be made : — 
 
 {a) Regarding the printed work as such, that is, as repre- 
 senting its class, as a copy of the edition ; and 
 {b') Regarding the book in question specially and individually. 
 
 It is evident that the properties characteristic of the 
 printed work as such, {a), will be equally characteristic of 
 
324 The Book. 
 
 each and every copy of the same work. These are the points 
 more fully detailed in the following enumeration. 
 
 On the other hand, the special qualities possessed by the 
 particular copy of the work to be catalogued, are peculiar to 
 the said copy alone, occurring in no other, or only in a very 
 few still extant specimens of the same issue. 
 
 Before proceeding to describe an early impression, it will 
 be well under all circumstances to consult the subjoined biblio- 
 graphical works, and first ascertain whether the work in question 
 has been previously described. Nor should a mere casual agree- 
 ment of authorities be always accepted as conclusive, unless 
 they are found to be fully applicable to the copy in question. 
 Slight differences may of course occur, but only such as 
 regard the number of sheets, or trifling variations in the text. 
 Should all statements accord, we may then rest satisfied with 
 a brief summary, of which more further on. 
 
 The most valuable bibliographical aids for preparing cata- 
 logues of incunabula are the following : — 
 
 Hain, L., Repertorium Bibliographicum, in quo libri omnes ab arte typo- 
 
 graphica inventa usque ad annum MD. typis expressi . . . recensentur. 
 
 2 vols, in 4 torn., 8vo. Stuttgartiae, 1826-38. 
 Panzer, G. W., Annales Typographici ab artis inventse origine ad annum 
 
 MD. Vols, i.-v., 4to. (Vols, vi.-xi. only contain works printed since 
 
 1501, hence need not here be considered.) Nurembergse 1793-97. 
 Panzer, G. W., Annalen der alteren deutschen Literatur. With supplts. 
 
 Nurnberg and Leipzig, 1788 — 1802 
 Campbell, F. A. G., Annales de la typographic nderlandaise au xv'= siecle 
 
 With 2 suppls. 8vo. The Hague; 1874-84. 
 Brunei, J. Ch., Manuel du libraire et de I'amateur de livres. 6 vols., 
 
 8vo. Paris, 1860-65. 
 Craesse, J. G. Th., Trdsor de livres rares et pr^cieux ou nouveau diction- 
 
 naire bibliographique. 6 vols, and suppl., 410. Dresden, 1859-69. 
 Hollrop, Jolt, Gust. Monuments typogr. des Pays-Bas au XV""* siecle. 
 
 Collection de facsimile d'aprfes les originaux conserve's k la Bibl. Rov. 
 
The Art of Describing and Cataloguing Incunabula. 325 
 
 de la Haye et ailleur?. Avec 130 planches et i carte. XIII et 138 pp. 
 Fol. La Haye, 1868. 
 
 Ebert, F. A. AUgem. bibliograph. Lexikon, 2 vols., 4to. Lpz., 1821-30. 
 
 Lowndes, W. Th. The Bibliographer's Manual of Enghsh Literature, contain- 
 ing an account of books published in Great Britain and Ireland since 
 the invention of printing, with notes and prices. New edition, revised 
 and enlarged by H. G. Bohn. 4 vols., 8vo. London, 1864. 
 
 And numerous special Bibliographies, which need not here be mentioned. 
 
 Foremost stands Hain's Repertorium, but for which, all biblio- 
 graphical research in this domain would be seriously hampered. 
 Those articles which in this work are marked by an * preced- 
 ing the consecutive numbers, were seen and described by Hain 
 himself. With extremely few exceptions these descriptions are 
 made with minute accuracy, and may be regarded as the most 
 trustworthy of their kind. The other articles are quotations 
 from other sources, which however are not mentioned. The work 
 itself, however, is no library catalogue, but should rather be 
 described as a theoretical catalogue ; hence all particulars bearing 
 on other copies than those under examination are omitted. 
 
 Next in importance comes Panzer's Annates, which also 
 offers valuable and welcome aids, but which should be consulted 
 with some caution. It is especially defective in not giving 
 perfectly accurate copies of titles, the linear divisions not being 
 retained, and the abbreviations being given in full. On the 
 other hand, the alphabetical arrangement according to the place 
 of printing presents many advantages. 
 
 Brunet's and Graesse's large bibliographical works are very 
 incomplete as regards early books, although still valuable as 
 supplements to Hain and Panzer. 
 
 Campbell's Annates comprises Netherlandish works alone, 
 but for this group it may be described as an excellent work of 
 reference, fulfilling all reasonable requirements. 
 
326 The Book. 
 
 The present essay is intended not only to guide professional 
 librarians and booksellers in preparing systematic catalogues 
 of incunabula on a uniform plan, but also to indicate the 
 right road to tyros -in this field. Hence divers matters will 
 have to be touched upon with which many must be familiar, 
 while other points will be dealt with in detail which may in 
 themselves seem trivial. In studies needing minute accuracy, 
 things apparently insignificant are often of great importance. 
 
 We will now discuss more fully each separate point in those 
 researches which have to be made with a view to correct and 
 complete descriptions of incunabula. Here the student will find 
 many practical hints which will enable him the more easily to 
 grapple with certain technical and other difficulties. 
 
 I. The Author's Name. 
 
 Titles, or title pages as now understood, do not, strictly 
 speaking, occur in early printed books, although there are some 
 fifteenth-century books with title pages, but they are the 
 minority. The typographers of the fifteenth century began 
 their works just as in mediaeval manuscripts, which start at 
 once with the text proper, the first words alone indicating the 
 contents of the book. We often meet with such expressions 
 as " Incipit liber ..." or " Here begins . . . ." A preface, 
 an episde, a register, or the like, very frequently precedes the 
 text itself, and here as a rule will be found the name of the 
 author. Frequently it is to be found in the summary at the 
 beginning of the text. 
 
 But should the beginning of the book be searched in vain, 
 then the concluding page must be consulted for title and author. 
 It was in fact a universal practice to introduce at the end 
 tide, author, printing place, printer, and date ; and such con- 
 
Title of the Work. 327 
 
 eluding paragraphs were known by the name of "Colophon" 
 or " Rubrum." The latter term was due to the fact that in 
 manuscripts such endings were sometimes written- in red ink. 
 They were also, especially during the first period, impressed 
 in red in printed works, after the work was finished. These 
 concluding paragraphs, however, are frequently absent, or else 
 are limited to a few words, such as ''Finis" "Explicit liber" 
 ''Hie est Finis" " Here ends," and so on. 
 
 When a name has at last been discovered, no time should 
 be lost in consulting Hain's Repertorium. Then the title 
 of the work will soon be found, even though the same 
 incunabulum may not be indicated. The name of the author 
 (always in the nominative case and independently of the form 
 in the text) must then be entered in such a way that the 
 by-name or surname, by which the author is actually known, 
 &hall always stand first. Then should follow the Christian 
 name, which it will be best to give in full, without abbreviation. 
 Owing to the numerous homonymous names current in 
 mediaeval times, it will be further necessary to add in brackets 
 the author's position or distinctive title. For instance : 
 Antoninus [Archiep. Florent.J ; Antonio S. de Padova ; 
 Antonio Bettini de Siena [Vescovo di Fuligno], etc. 
 
 2. Title of the Work. 
 
 The title of the work will also for the most part be found 
 simultaneously with the name of the author. 
 
 Where any of the above-mentioned bibliographical works, 
 and especially Hain and Panzer, give a full description of the 
 incunabulum, including an accurate reproduction of the initial 
 and final lines with all abbreviations and linear divisions, it 
 will suffice to give in full those words alone that constitute 
 
328 The Book. 
 
 the title of the work, according to modern usage and ortho- 
 graphy. For instance : Augustinus, S. Aurel, De Civitate 
 Dei libri xxii. ; or, Breydenbach, Bern, de, Heihge Reisen, 
 etc. In this case we may dispense with a complete copy of 
 the initial and final lines, and for all the rest refer the reader 
 to Hain or Panzer. 
 
 But where the work has not yet been accurately described, 
 it must here be at once dealt with more fully, without 
 prejudice to the reproduction of the title, which has to be 
 given later on. For instance : Ailliaco, Petrus de, Tractatus 
 de anima. editus a dno petro de Ailliaco, 
 
 3. The Dating. 
 
 By the dating of an incunabulum is understood the indication, 
 mostly contained in the colophon, of the place, printer and 
 year of issue. The dating may be : 
 
 [a) Complete, when all three of these points are in 
 evidence ; or, 
 
 {S) Incomplete, when one or two of these statements are 
 missing ; or, 
 
 (c) The dating may be absent altogether. 
 
 In the first case these data (place, printer, and year) must 
 be briefly mentioned. Thus : Breydenbach, Bern, de, Heilige 
 Reisen. Augsburg, Anton Sorg, 1488. In the second case 
 the absence of one or other of these particulars must be 
 specified, for which purpose the following abbreviations are 
 employed : — 
 
 1. If the place alone be missing, s. /. (sine loco). 
 
 2. If the printer alone be missing, s. /. (sine typographo). 
 
 3. If the year alone be missing, s. a. (sine anno). 
 
 4. If both place and printer, s. a. et t. (sine anno et typographo). 
 
The Size. 329 
 
 5. If both place and year, s. /. et. a. (sine loco et anno). 
 
 6. If printer and year, s. /. et a. (sine typographo et anno). 
 
 7. If all, s. H. (sine nota, or absque ulla nota). 
 
 Now it is the business of bibliographers to supply these 
 missing data. In many cases the bibliographical works of 
 reference give the required information ; but in many cases 
 they fail to do so. 
 
 When the data in question have been determined, the names 
 of place, printer and year are to be added in brackets. For 
 more easy reference round brackets ( ) are recommended to be 
 used in the first instance, square [ ] in the second. Thus : 
 Biblia latina ( ) [Strassburg, Joh. Mentel, 
 
 circa 1463]. 
 
 4. The Size. 
 
 The determination of the size may present difficulties, inas- 
 much as small folio and quarto, or small quarto and octavo, 
 may be confounded. But a sure means of distinguishing 
 between these several forms is afforded by the position of the 
 wire-lines of the paper. When held to the light the paper 
 shows the thin narrow laid wires which are divided by a 
 number of straight lines standing wider apart, called chain 
 wires; when the chain wires run horizontally the book is a- 
 quarto, vertically a folio or an octavo. This principle is simply 
 explained from the fact that the mould used by the old paper 
 makers was a wire sieve, in which the vertical and thicker chain 
 wires reappear in the paper. The chain wires always running 
 from top to bottom, the sheet when folded makes a folio 
 with straight lines, and when the folio is folded again it makes 
 a quarto with horizontal lines. 
 
330 The Book. 
 
 5. Detailed Reproduction of Title. 
 
 Should the particulars given in Hain or Panzer not fully 
 accord with the printed work in hand, or should the said work 
 not be mentioned at all, then, besides the above-described 
 short statement of the title to be alv/ays given for the 
 synoptic arrangement, a complete copy must be made both of 
 the initial lines and of the colophon. Attention must be paid 
 to the orthography, the abbreviations, the disposition of the 
 lines (these being indicated by a vertical stroke | ), the over 
 and under-lined letters, the marks of abbreviation (for instance a 
 reversed C for COU^ a 9 for US, the sign 1+, resembling the 
 figure 4, for TUfU, I for et, 3 for 'Ue, and so on), and all must 
 be faithfully copied. When the catalogue has to be printed, 
 these signs must be specially cast, as they are not often 
 found in our modern printing offices. 
 
 To spell out the abbreviations, as French bibliographers 
 are especially fond of doing, is the one sure means of making 
 " confusion worse confounded." Let this practice be there- 
 fore carefully avoided. Those who have much to do with 
 early books will soon learn to decipher the abbreviations, 
 which in fact present not the slightest difficulty. On the 
 other hand, the restoration of the abbreviations from the 
 reduced texts is often impossible, because they are frequently 
 used in a perfectly arbitrary way. For instance, domini may 
 be shortened dni, or doini, or domii, and such trivial dis- 
 crepancies may easily lead to mistakes. 
 
 Obvious misprints in the text as well as in the date must 
 of course be also accurately reproduced ; attention however 
 may as a rule be drawn to such errors by appending a 
 [sic!), or at least (!). The misprints are often so incredibly 
 
Detailed Reproduction of Title. 331 
 
 naive, that one feels inclined to suspect a mistake in the 
 rendering rather than in the original. Here it will suffice to 
 mention the glaring instance of the colophon in the Mayence 
 Breviary of 1457, vi^here " spalmorum (!) codex" occurs instead 
 of " psalmorum codex." 
 
 Between initial lines and colophon should be inserted : At 
 the end, which in manuscript are underlined, and in print 
 italicised. When title and final paragraph are very lengthy, 
 words or clauses not needed for the understanding of the 
 context may be omitted and indicated by dots, without how- 
 ever changing aught in the construction. It is also well to 
 avoid substituting dots for the last words of lines, so that 
 the linear division may remain perfectly clear. 
 
 To illustrate the foregoing with an example, we give here 
 the description of SchedeTs N^l,remberg Chronicle. This well- 
 known and widely-dispersed early book, which still frequently 
 turns up, at once presents certain difficulties to the tyro. 
 No author's name is to be found either at the beginning or 
 in the colophon, and this is true both of the Latin and the 
 German edition. The original Latin edition, printed in 1493 by 
 Koberger in Nuremberg, begins with an alphabetical register ; 
 but no author's name can be discovered either in it or in 
 the initial lines of the Chronicle itself, while the concluding 
 paragraph is also silent on the point. Nevertheless the author 
 gives his name, which occurs on p. 266^'. Now the descrip- 
 tion of the work is to be made as follows : — 
 
 Schedel, Dr. Hartman, Liber chronicarum. Nuremberg, Ant. Koberger, 1493. 
 
 Large FoL 
 
 Leaf \r. (woodcut title) (R)Egiftrum | huius ope- | ris libri cro- | nicarum 
 
 I cu figuris et ymagi- | bus ab inicio mundi : | L. i — 20, Register . L. 21;- (with 
 
 Nr. I) : Epitoma operu fex dieru de mudi fabrica Prologus | L. 2661^, line 23 : 
 
332 THE Book. 
 
 Complete in famofiffima Nurembergenfi vrbe Operi | de hyftorijs etatum mundi. 
 ac defcriptione vrbium fe- | lix imponitur finis. Collectum breui tempore Auxilio 
 docto I ris hartmani Schedel. qua fieri potuit diligentia. Anno xpi | Millefimo 
 quadringentefimo nonagefimotercio. die quarto | menfis lunij. | At the end, L. 3202/: 
 (A) Deft nunc ftudiofe lector finis libri Cronicarum per | viam epithomatis j bre-' 
 viarij compilati opus qdem | preclarum 2 a doctiffimo quoqz comparandum. 
 Continet | . . • Ad in | tuitu autem ^ preces prouidoru ciuiu Sebaldi Schreyer | 2 
 Sebaftiani kamermaider hunc librum dominus Antho | nius koberger Nuremberge 
 impreffit. Adhibitis tame vi | ris. . . . Michaele | wolgemut et wilhelmo Pleyden- 
 wurff. quaru folerti acu- | ratiffimaqz animadverfione tum ciuitatum turn illuftrium 
 I virorum figure inferte funt. Confummatii autem duodeci | ma menfis lulij. 
 Anno falutis nre. 1493. | L. 32 ir: De Sarmacia regione Europe. L. 325P, last 
 line : Laus deo. 
 
 6. The Collation and the Number of Leaves. 
 
 It will not suffice simply to count the leaves of the book 
 as it stands, which would in fact be quite useless. We must 
 also ascertain whether the work is complete. For this purpose 
 a careful examination must be made of the collation of the 
 sheets. Even in the case of bound books this can be quite 
 easily done by slightly bending them somewhat further back 
 at the places corresponding with the several sections ; it can 
 then be quite clearly seen at the upper or lower edge of 
 the back whether all the leaves of each sheet are perfect. 
 These sheets naturally consist always of a number of leaves 
 divisible by two. There are sections of three, four, five or 
 six sheets, making six, eight, ten or twelve leaves ; but less 
 than three or more than six sheets very seldom occur in a 
 section. In one and the same book, the number of sheets to 
 the section is usually the same. Very frequently there occurs 
 at the beginning or end a blank leaf, which when forming 
 part of the section is reckoned in, but must be indicated as 
 
Signatures, Catch-words, and Paginatioa. 333 
 
 such. Thus : 316 leaves [of which one blank]. If the number 
 of leaves in the collation is odd, we may be sure that a leaf 
 is missing. 
 
 But to ascertain whether any leaf is missing it will 
 be necessary to see that the text is consecutive at the end 
 of one and the beginning of the next page. This plan 
 is available in the case of incunabula which bear neither 
 signatures, catch-words nor pagination. After ascertaining that 
 the sheets are complete, the leaves must be separately counted, 
 in doing which the pages must always be completely turned 
 over. This will also afford an opportunity of noticing whether 
 any leaves happen to be torn, soiled or imperfect. It will 
 be well to number each leaf with a pencil in one corner, by 
 which it will also be possible in the description to refer to any 
 particular leaf or leaves. The front is indicated with r {recto), 
 the reverse with v (verso), as for instance on L. 176^ woodcut. 
 
 If the book is perfect it will suffice to give the number 
 of leaves; thus, (128 LI., the last blank). If any leaves 
 be missing, the fact should be indicated in this same place ; 
 thus, 125 instead of 127 LI., of which 11 and the last 
 [blank] L. missing. Should the number of leaves not corre- 
 spond with that given for instance by Hain, this fact must 
 also be stated. Thus: 130 [not 128] LI.; or 174 [not 175 
 as stated by Hain], and so on. Here also a fixed form of 
 expression should be adhered to throughout. 
 
 The test of completeness will be greatly facilitated when the 
 work has 
 
 7. Signatures, Catch-words, and Pagination. 
 
 The sheets are signed, that is to say, below the text at 
 the foot of the page there occurs a letter which is repeated 
 
334 THE Book. 
 
 on each consecutive sheet with a continuously increasing index 
 number : A^, A„ A3, and so on. Should a section consist, for 
 instance, of three sheets, the signature on the first half of the first 
 sheet will be A ; on the first half of the second sheet. A, ; on 
 the first half of the third sheet, A^ ; on the second half of the 
 third sheet, A^ ; on the second half of the second and first sheet 
 there will be no signature. With sections consisting of four 
 sheets the signatures run to A^ ; of five sheets to Ag ; of six sheets 
 to A . But it should be noticed at once that the signature is not 
 always present on the second half of sheets 3, 4, 5, or 6, but 
 that the sheets are frequently signed on their first half alone. 
 Many incunabula give at the end (often on a separate leaf) a 
 register containing the first words of each page (of the first 
 halves of the sections), as well as their signatures. 
 
 From the foregoing it will be easy to collate a book with 
 signed sheets. The signatures run through the alphabet, U and 
 W always omitted, and begin again with A (usually Aa or AA). 
 Even should the leaves be numbered, it is still desirable to 
 verify the signatures, as the numbering is very often wrong, 
 whereas in the signatures misprints are scarcely ever found. 
 It may happen, however, that the signatures are placed so far 
 below the text that they have been cut away by the binder, 
 in which case the book may appear to be without signatures. 
 We may give as a case in point Duns Joh. Scotus, Qmtlibeta 
 qucestiomim : Venice, Alb. de Stendal, 1474. Hain, 6,433, says 
 expressly without signatures ; Panzer, III., p. 104, cum sign. 
 
 In some incunabula we also occasionally come upon an 
 apparently different kind of signature. Instead of letters 
 numbers are used, so that, for instance, the first half of the 
 section is numbered with i, 2, 3, 4 ; the first half of the 
 second, with 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. Or else instead of the ciphers 
 
The Spacing. 335 
 
 continuous letters, as, for instance, on the first section A, B, C, D ; 
 on the second, E, F, G, H, etc. ; and at times other combina- 
 tions. As an interesting example, we may mention the following 
 Viennese work : — 
 
 Gerson, Joh., De confessione et absolutione. At the end: 
 Impressum wienne anno domini Mcccclxxxii. 4to. This 
 work consists altogether of fourteen sheets, of which the first 
 eight form a section. Leaves i, 2, 3, and 4 bear the signatures 
 A, B, C, D ; the second section consists of six sheets, of which 
 the first halves are signed E, F, G. All such deviations from 
 the usual system of signing must be expressly specified. 
 
 When pagination occurs, it must of course be verified ; when 
 folio numbers are partly present, partly absent, both must be 
 accurately stated, as must also be the presence or absence of 
 catch-words, that is, the first word of the next page below the 
 text. Thus : 212 LI. sigt. without catch-word and pagination ; 
 or, 172 LI. without sigt. catch-word and pagination; or, when 
 pagination alone is given, 1 1 2 nos. LI. no sigt. and catch- 
 word, etc. 
 
 8. The Spacing. 
 
 By spacing is understood the manner of dividing the com- 
 position. The lines may run across the whole page (continuous 
 lines), or they may be disposed in 2, 3 or 4 columns. In theo- 
 logical and legal works it very frequently happens that the 
 matter is so arranged that the text proper appears enclosed by 
 the commentary, the latter in smaller type, but both arranged 
 in columns. Thus : 315 Ls. sigt. no catch-word and pagination 
 2 col. text enclosed by the comment. Moreover there not 
 seldom occur side-notes, which run down the outer edge of 
 
336 . The Book. 
 
 the leaf, and which indicate the substance of the text. The 
 presence of these marginal notes, as they are called, must be 
 indicated in all cases. 
 
 Lastly, it must be ascertained whether the width of the 
 columns (length of the lines) is uniform on all the pages. Here 
 also there often occur remarkable discrepancies. The above- 
 mentioned Gerson, De Confessione, presents an interesting example 
 of this point also. On the first sheet the width of the composition 
 is 91 mm; on sheets 2 to 7 from loi to 102 mm; on sheet 8 
 again 91 mm; on sheet 9, 107; sheet 10, 112; sheets 11 and 
 12, 121 ; sheet 13, 112; and sheet 14, 106 mm. 
 
 9. The Number of Lines. 
 Special importance attaches to the number of lines in a 
 full page of text. We start from the assumption that the 
 lines are not interrupted by the heading of chapters, sections 
 or remarks (commentaries, interlinear versions, etc.). In 
 the case of type varying in size, that of the text proper, 
 and not that of the commentary is alone considered. Turn 
 over the pages until you have found a full clear page of 
 text, and then count the lines. It may happen that a work 
 with running commentary may present not a single page of 
 uninterrupted text. In this case the lines of the commentary 
 running down the edge (not the marginal notes) are to be 
 counted, and then it must be expressly stated that the given 
 number is that of the commentary, not of the text. Thus : 
 315 Ls. sigt. no catch-v/ord and pagination; 2 cols. .54 lines 
 [of the commentary]. Nor should you rest satisfied with 
 counting one page, but test several in different parts of 
 the book. The number of lines even in one and the same 
 work is not always alike, and many discrepancies occur. 
 
THE Forms of Type. 337 
 
 especially in the earlier issues. The number of lines as 
 determined must be recorded. Thus: 315 Ls. no sigt. catch- 
 word and pagination ; 2 cols. 27 and 28 lines. The larger 
 or smaller number of lines on a full page of type often deter- 
 mines the age of a printed work. It is a curious fact, highly 
 interesting in the history of printing, that the number of lines 
 increases with the development of the typographic art. It will 
 suffice here to refer, for instance, to the first Bibles. Pfister's 
 Bible has 36 lines ; the Gutenberg Bible 42 ; that of Fust and 
 Schoeffer (1462) 48 lines. This remark applies also to the 
 number of lines in the old Donatus editions. Altogether 
 it is evident that the number of lines plays an important part 
 in determining or identifying imperfect incunabula. 
 
 10. The Forms of Type. 
 
 The types of incunabula have either a Gothic or a Roman 
 form, or else are a combination of both ; in which case they 
 are called half or semi-Gothic. From the form of the Black- 
 letter or Gothic has been derived the later " Swabian," and 
 the modern German character, the " Fracturschrift," as it is 
 called from its angular, jagged, pointed-, broken forms. The 
 semi-Gothic consists of Roman capitals and small letters of 
 Gothic shape. ' The type used by Peter Schoeffer in his Cronik 
 der Sassen, Cuba, Hortus sanitatis, Breydenbach's Reisen, 
 has lost the black-letter or Gothic character, and should be 
 called "Swabian." 
 
 II. Majuscules, Minuscules, Abbreviations, Punctuation. 
 
 Connected with the form of the types are the questions, 
 whether different kinds of type are used, and if so how many 
 
 22 
 
338 The Book. 
 
 kinds ; whether the initial letters (at the beginning of the 
 sentence) appear printed off with the rest, or whether the space 
 was reserved to be afterwards filled in by the " rubric-writer ; " 
 to what extent abbreviations are employed ; whether several kinds 
 of orthographic stops occur ; whether the spacing or general 
 arrangement of the composition presents any peculiar features. 
 
 Should a printed work begin with a wood-cut initial, or with 
 any ornamental majuscule distinct from the type in the text, 
 but printed with the rest, and not painted or sketched in 
 afterwards, in -the copy of the title the fact must be at once 
 recorded by bracketing all such initials. Thus, as already 
 indicated in Schedel^s Chronicle : (R)Egistrum ... or (A)D 
 est . . . ). But when the space has been left free for 
 the initial to be afterwards painted in, in the place of this 
 initial we simply put an empty bracket, for instance, ( )Egistrum; 
 ( )Dest; and this is done even when the initial in question 
 has been de facto painted in the copy of the work to be 
 catalogued. 
 
 Instead of the full stop Linhard Holl of Ulm, for instance, 
 used little crosses, as did also Joh. Medemblick of Cologne 
 and the Brothers of Common Life in Bruxelles ; and Goetz of 
 Cologne substituted for the dot a letter z, taken from a 
 smaller fount, while John Zainer of Ulm used in his first 
 issues a full stop in the form of a little star, introducing it 
 according to his own " sweet will." 
 
 Frequently the punctuation is omitted altogether, as in the 
 first Viennese work: Meyger, Tractatus distinctionum 1482. 
 Frequently also the lines are not quite straight, but uneven, 
 and of unequal length, or else the register is crooked, the first 
 and second forms do not coincide, and so on. Features such 
 as these often give a clue to the age of the printed work. 
 
Majuscules, Minuscules, Abbreviations, Punctuation 339 
 
 Many letters have unusual forms, which point to particular 
 printing offices. We may refer to John Mentelin of Strasburg 
 with his " eccentric R ; " to Nic. Goetz of Cologne with his 
 Gothic V always set up awry ; to Peter Friedberg of Mayence 
 with his thick antique S introduced into the Gothic text ; 
 to George Huszner of Strasburg, who used a Roman H 
 with a boss on the lower side of the cross stroke ; to Michael 
 Reyser of Eichstadt and later of Wiirzburg, who used an 
 identical H, but with the boss on the upper side of the 
 cross-stroke ; lastly to Glinther Zainer of Augsburg, who applied 
 similar bosses to his Roman H, I, L, M, N, and T. A remark- 
 able Gothic S with two oblique cross-strokes distinguishes the 
 types of the Strasburg printer, Joh. Prys, while Johann 
 Schaffler of Ulm employs a reversed Gothic S when he runs 
 short of D. Heinr. Quentel of Cologne scatters a thick half- 
 Roman D over his Gothic printed matter. In the Latin and 
 Greek works printed by Ch. Beyamus and J. Glim of Savigliano, 
 the d has invariably a Gothic character. The dotted i is 
 absent in Gering, Krantz and Freyburger's first Paris issues, as 
 well as in those printed by Berth. Guldinbeck in Rome. We 
 find this dot replaced by a half-crescent like a hood in the works 
 issued by Alb. Pfister of Bamberg, and B. Gothan of Liibeck, 
 as well as in the first Mayence publications. John of Spire, the 
 first Venetian printer, uses the stroke for the hyphen and =, & 
 for the final syllable et, as in tac&., Iic8i, for /acel, licet. 
 
 In many printed works we are struck by the variety of 
 forms for one and the same letter, which would seem to point 
 to a limited stock of type. Many offices, such as those of 
 Conr. Zeninger of Nurnberg and Joh. Griininger of Stras- 
 burg, were noted for the exceptional number of misprints in 
 the works issued by them. All this makes it abundantly 
 
340 THE Book. 
 
 evident how important is the accurate observation of seem- 
 ingly trivial points in identifying incunabula. 
 
 12. The Printer's Inks and Printer's Marks. 
 
 Fust and Schoeffer already began to print in two colours, 
 using even four in the Psalterium of 1457. The device was 
 employed for emphasizing certain passages of the text, chapter 
 headings, initial and final paragraphs and the like. As has 
 already been explained, a large number of scribes and manu- 
 script writers were thrown out of employment by the dis- 
 covery of typography, and it may well be imagined that those 
 early printers were exposed to serious agitation on the part 
 of the writers' guilds. It is highly probable that some kind of 
 compromise was arranged, the typographers, for instance, 
 consenting to secure the writers some source of income by 
 leaving the rubrics to be filled in by them ; still we can 
 readily understand that not all printers would be induced to 
 yield even this point. Hence many printed works are found 
 provided by the rubric writers with initial and final paragraphs, 
 chapter headings, initial letters and stops, while others were 
 simply printed off in red and black. 
 
 In others again there occur at the end, after the colophon, 
 emblematic or symbolic representations, which were chosen by 
 the respective offices as trade or printers' marks. The book- 
 sellers or publishers on their part adopted certain corresponding 
 marks. Even so early as the fifteenth century the printer of 
 a work was not always, as we mentioned before, its publisher. 
 We often meet with the intimation that such-and-such a work 
 has been printed by So-and-so at the charge of So-and-so. 
 These circumstances may be mentioned in the general remarks 
 whenever they are not implied in the detailed copy of the 
 
The Artistic Get-up. 341 
 
 title-page. But from our standpoint the first consideration 
 must always be for the printer. The points in question may 
 be specified in the following way: 127 Ls. sigt. no catch-word 
 and pagination, 2 cols. 30 lines Goth., with woodcut initials, red 
 and black print; on L. 127^' the printer's mark. 
 
 A special embellishment much affected by the Italian printers 
 were the so-called " literse florentes " ("flourishes"), which were 
 first employed by the Augsburg typographer Erhard Ratdolt 
 (at work in Venice from 1476 till i486). These are initial 
 letters elegantly formed of floral scrolls and ornaments, which 
 Ratdolt borrowed from the Italian manuscripts and had carved 
 in wood. They appear both in red and black print. As many 
 incunabula owe their value to these "literae florentes," prominence 
 should be given to them in descriptive catalogues. 
 
 13. The Artistic Get-up. 
 
 Pictorial decoration still plays the same part as in mediaeval 
 times. Illustrated works always found more admirers and 
 purchasers than others, apart even from those for the under- 
 standing of which illustrations were absolutely indispensable. 
 Hence it is incumbent on the compiler of catalogues not only to 
 indicate the kind of artistic embellishment, but also the number 
 of woodcuts, initials (printed), borderings, etc. Where the re- 
 spective wood engravers or draughtsmen are known, their names 
 and monograms must of course also be mentioned. Should the 
 work present no special interest as regards its general get-up 
 (initials, borderings, etc.), it will be unnecessary to enumerate 
 all the ornamental letters occurring in the text, the mere 
 mention of the fact being in this case quite sufficient. 
 
 With many incunabula ornamented with woodcuts the interest 
 
342 THE BOOK. 
 
 in the printed text falls into the background, the essential value 
 of the work consisting in the illustrations. In this department 
 protracted experience alone, combined with a taste for such 
 things and a natural appreciation of the beautiful, can develop 
 the genuine connoisseur. Hence special attention must be 
 given to those incunabula which are adorned with wood or 
 metal engravings. Let monograms and other marks be studied, 
 the literature of the subject explored, or more experienced 
 persons consulted. R. Mather's Deuische Biicherilluslration 
 der Gothik und Frilkrenaissance, 1460 to 1530, fol. (Leipzig, 
 1884), may be recommended as a very valuable recent publica- 
 tion calculated to afford useful aid, especially to the young 
 student. Care, however, should be taken to avoid basing on 
 mere conjectures and the like, positive statements or conclusions, 
 which may afterwards prove to be groundless. 
 
 14. Bibliographical Directions. 
 
 The beginner would create many difficulties for himself by 
 seeking for incunabula in the bibliographical works of refer- 
 ence above mentioned. In these works the arrangement of the 
 tide shows great diversity, and each system has its own justifica- 
 tion. Thus Hain and Campbell give the authors in alphabetical 
 order ; Panzer in the Annales the arrangement according to 
 localities, but in the German Aimalen the. chronological order ; 
 while some catalogues of antiquarians adopt that of the typo- 
 graphers and the period of their activity. Research would be 
 greatly facilitated by a work comprising all four of these systems. 
 
 When the title in question has been determined and found to 
 be in complete agreement with the work to be catalogued, the 
 reference is made in the following way. In the case of Hain 
 
Quality of the Paper— Printing on Vellum. 343 
 
 and Campbell, quote the number, taking care not to omit the 
 above-mentioned*. Thus: Hain 3756; or, Hain *537o. In 
 the case of Panzer quote the number of volume and page, thus: 
 Panzer, iii., p. 560 ; or, Panzer, Deutsche Ann., p. 73 ; Panzer, 
 Supple^nent, p. 15, etc., etc. But references will also have to be 
 made to other bibliographical works, Hain and Panzer being in 
 many respects defective. Recent investigation has given rise to 
 numerous monographs on particular printing places, printers, etc. 
 These monographs contain much useful material, and conse- 
 quently should be consulted in descriptions of incunabula laying 
 claim to scientific value. 
 
 15. Quality of the Paper — Editions on Vellum. 
 
 At all times the bitterest enemies, while on the other hand 
 the greatest embellishers, of the book have been the binders ! 
 They must be reproached with incredible sins against good 
 taste, as well- as pitiless inroads on the artistic equipment. 
 With Vandalic barbarism they have cut away the most lovely 
 miniatures, initials, borders, woodcuts, and not seldom even a 
 slice of the text itself. But they were not the only criminals, 
 and many "collectors" of the choicest typographical treasures 
 have also deserved to be impaled. Who has not heard of the 
 abbot with "symmetry" on the brain, who ruthlessly caused the 
 incunabula of the convent library to be all bound of one size, 
 so that the book-shelves might present a symmetrical appear- 
 ance ? Those that were found to be too big had to be cut 
 down ! Next to these foes the greatest havoc has been made 
 by " the tooth of time." Hence it is always to be regarded as 
 a rare chance when an otherwise well-preserved incunabulum 
 has also retained its wide paper margin and rough edges, and 
 this point should always be mentioned. But most precious of 
 
344 The Book. 
 
 all are those incunabula that have remained uncut, though such 
 cases are doubtless excessively rare. The sheets seldom pre- 
 serve their natural edge, which, in the case of hand-made paper, 
 is of course never a straight line, and which, owing to its 
 scrubby appearance, is said to be with rough edges or "bearded" 
 {cum barbis). All such specimens are highly prized. 
 
 Besides the paper edition, at most a few copies were 
 struck off on vellum, and these, owing to the small number 
 printed and the high price of the material, were always very 
 costly. 
 
 In this connection a few words may be devoted to the water- 
 marks, which have also not unfrequently considerable weight in 
 determining a printed work of the fifteenth century. The paper 
 mills made use of certain signs as marks for the various descrip; 
 tions of paper produced by them, and these marks were 
 impressed on each sheet while being manufactured. The 
 number of such marks is legion. Unfortunately no systematic 
 work has yet appeared on the water-marks ("filigree") peculiar 
 to German papers. For France, an excellent work is the Etude 
 sur les Filigrans des Papiers Efnployes en France aux \\' et 1 5^ 
 Siecles, by Midou and Matton (Paris: 1868), and La Legende 
 Paleographique du Papier de Coton, par C. M. Briquet 
 (Geneve : 1884). The subject of watermarks has, however, been 
 incidentally discussed by B. Hausmann {Albert Durer's Copper- 
 plates) ; by Dr. Fr. Wibiral {Anthony van Dyck) ; by Weigel 
 and Zestermann {Anfdnge der Druckerkunst) ; by C. M. Briquet 
 {Papiers et Filigranes des Archives de Genes 1 1 54 — 1 700. Basle : 
 1888) ; and in many earlier works, such as B. G. Fischer's I'^ersuch 
 die Papierzeichen als Kennzeichen der Alterthwnskzmde anzu- 
 wenden (Niirnberg : 1084), as well as sporadically in monographs 
 and periodicals {Gazette des Beaux Arts, vols, ii.-iv., viii. and ix.), 
 
Rubrics, Colouring, Miniatures. 345 
 
 and in cyclopedias, as, for instance, the article on U^asscrmarke 
 in Eberfs Bibliograph. Lexicon. 
 
 Meanwhile it will be advisable to specify the kind of 
 watermark or watermarks in the case of all undated and 
 hitherto undescribed incunabula. There is, however, amongst 
 bibliographers a temptation to exaggerate the use and import- 
 ance of watermarks as evidence of the date of undated docu- 
 ments, as the manufacture of paper was sometimes post-dated or 
 represents the makes of many mills through many years. 
 
 16. Rubrics, Colouring, Miniatures. 
 
 As already stated, the printer often left a part of his work 
 to be completed by the scribe. In the first years of the new 
 invention, the typographers were fain to make their products 
 resemble as closely as possible the manuscripts hitherto in 
 vogue. Every invention has always been and is still looked 
 upon with a certain degree of suspicion ; so difficult is it to 
 break with long-standing usages to which people have become 
 endeared. With all the more hostility must an invention have 
 been regarded, which was calculated to direct intellectual life 
 and work into new channels. The view, as mentioned before, 
 that the first typographers issued their printed works as 
 manuscripts, although questioned by many, may nevertheless 
 be accepted as prevalent. The Psaltermm of 1457, one of the 
 masterpieces of the Fust-Schoeffer press, can in fact at the first 
 glance scarcely be distinguished from a manuscript. 
 
 Hence before being exposed for sale, the first books were 
 handed over to the scribe (Clericus, Rubricator), who filled in 
 the spaces reserved in the printing with the required letters, 
 sentences, headings, signatures, etc., in coloured ink. This work 
 we call rubricking, because usually executed in a red {ruber) 
 
346 The Book. 
 
 colour. Many printing offices kept their own rubricators, and 
 the work was also carried on in the monasteries. But it 
 absorbed much time, and could not always be got through 
 rapidly enough to meet the demand for the new work, and thus 
 it happened that non-rubricated copies got into circulation. Nor 
 is it improbable that the price of rubricated and non-rubricated 
 books varied ; many buyers, especially monasteries which pos- 
 sessed every facility for supplying the rubrics themselves, 
 would in fact prefer the non-rubricated copies, owing to their 
 lower price. At the end of many rubricated incunabula, we 
 often find notices introduced by the scribe giving information 
 on the date, the owner, the place, the price, and so on. Such 
 notes are also called hand rubrics ; nor is it necessary specially 
 to dwell on the great value these notes must often have had, 
 and still have, in determining or identifying undated incunabula. 
 
 The process was executed in divers ways. Doubtless as a 
 rule the scribe was satisfied with filling in the missing initial 
 letters, stops, beginning of chapter, sentence or verse, after 
 numbering of the pages and so on. But we frequently come 
 upon old printed works with initials, borderings, and lastly, whole 
 pictures, in fact miniatures, all beautifully ornamented in gold 
 and various colours. In these incunabula veritable works of 
 art have often been preserved, which, thanks to their execution 
 and state of preservation, represent a considerable value. It 
 will be the duty of the compiler of the catalogue to describe the 
 manner and style of these artistic embellishments, to determine 
 the school of art to which the painting belongs, and where 
 needed to explain the composition. 
 
 In the case of incunabula ornamented with woodcuts, it 
 should be specified whether the woodcuts are coloured, and if 
 so, to what period the colouring should be assigned. 
 
The Hand Rubrics. 347 
 
 17. The Hand Rubrics. 
 
 It has already been stated In dealing with the rubrics, that 
 the notices made by the rubricators are deserving of attention. 
 But we occasionally meet with notes by another contemporary 
 or later hand, the intrinsic value of which as bearing on the 
 subject under discussion will have to be tested. Hand rubrics 
 of this class often give useful information regarding the former 
 owner of the work, its price, date and place. 
 
 18. Detailed Description of the Binding. 
 
 Bindings remarkable for their artistic execution, or other- 
 wise presenting features of historical interest, will require a 
 more detailed description. Many bear, as we have seen in the 
 chapter on Bindings, on the outside fine impressions of family 
 arms, portraits, dates, mottoes, etc., all of which are to be 
 mentioned according to their importance. Extant book plates 
 [ex libris), occurring mostly on the inside of the front cover, 
 library stamps and similar indications, should be noted. For 
 bindings of French origin, most valuable informatron is given 
 in J. Guigard's excellent work, Ainnorial dti Bibliophile, 2 torn. 
 (Paris : 1870-73). 
 
 But our attention should not be exclusively devoted to the 
 beauty of the binding, for there are other standpoints from 
 which old bindings have to be considered. And first and fore- 
 most there is the age, the approximate determination of which 
 is, however, a question of experience. In the case of undated 
 works, the source and origin of the binding often present 
 numerous clues for their identification. In general it must be 
 
348 THE Book. 
 
 assumed that during the fifteenth century scarcely any except 
 bound books were exposed for sale. The modern intermediate 
 process of stitching in wrappers was scarcely convenient, if only 
 because of the very bulk of the incunabula. Smaller issues 
 alone in 4to or 8vo, and then only when limited in size to a 
 single sheet, can have been disposed of in the stitched form, 
 and even these were doubtless protected by stout wrappers. 
 But here also the monastic establishments may have made an 
 exception to the general rule. To these places the books were 
 presumably consigned in crudo, that is, in the rough state, or 
 in sheets, for one or more of the inmates would doubtless, be 
 skilled in the bookbinder's art. 
 
 It may accordingly be assumed that the original bindings of 
 incunabula date from the time of their issue. In the case of 
 collective volumes v/hose contents date from the period, we may 
 without risk of error take it for granted that the dated and 
 undated printed works forming part of the volume all belong to 
 about the same period. In such cases we have often at hand 
 the means of forming an estimate of the date of a work. In 
 the same way the character (style) of the binding will often 
 afford a clue to the country, and even to the very town, where 
 the work has been printed. 
 
 Besides its age, we are also interested in the material of the 
 binding. Incunabula were mostly bound in wood, which was 
 entirely or half covered with leather, hogskin, or parchment. To 
 attach the cover to the book itself, strips of parchment were used, 
 and for this purpose were generally utilized useless or superfluous 
 manuscripts, Donatus, Almanacks, letters of indulgence, stock 
 inventories, etc. This explains how it happens that in taking 
 old bindings to pieces, many a valuable find has been and may 
 still be made. But in saying this, we do not of course recom- 
 
Condition and State of the Copy. 349 
 
 mend the wholesale destruction of old bindings with the probable 
 result of finding nothing after all. 
 
 But on this point a few remarks may be found useful. 
 Slips pasted to the insides of the covers, or even used as 
 ifly-leaves, have already yielded many treasures, such as leaflets, 
 woodcuts, enamels, presentations, almanacks, playing-cards. 
 We may refer to the first dated woodcut, " The St. 
 Christopher" of 1423, mentioned in the first part of this 
 work, which was discovered by the bibliographer Heinecken 
 on the inside of a cover (the Lmis Virginis, a manuscript 
 of 141 7) in the library of the Carthusian monastery at 
 Buxheim. Unfortunately the days of such discoveries are 
 well-nigh over ; there are already too many vigilant eyes 
 about. Still we would recommend bindings in boards to be 
 always carefully examined, even when more recent than the 
 fifteenth century. The old boards were mostly prepared by 
 pasting together damaged sheets, many materials being thus 
 used up which would at present possess some historic value. 
 
 Lastly, attention should be directed to the clasps, corner- 
 pieces, hasps, fragments of chains, etc., as valuable specimens 
 of the mediaeval mechanical arts have often been preserved in 
 such objects. It may be mentioned that in many libraries 
 of the Middle Ages the books were secured with chains, a 
 practice which naturally disappeared with the spread of typo- 
 graphy and the consequent increased facilities for procuring 
 books. 
 
 19. Condition and State of the Copy. 
 
 What is understood by the good condition of an early 
 printed work will scarcely need any detailed explanation. In 
 the preparation especially of sale catalogues it should be 
 
350 1'HE BOOK. 
 
 conscientiously stated whether and to what extent there may 
 be damp or water stains ; how far the state of the book may 
 have been affected by any other outward influences ; whether 
 there are any leaves either torn or partly or altogether 
 abstracted, or whether the book has suffered injury of any 
 other kind. In the case of incunabula with woodcuts, the 
 condition of the impression should be stated, — whether, for 
 instance, any colouring has been attempted by an unskilled 
 hand, etc. 
 
 20. Rark Copies ; Edttio Princeps ; Price. 
 
 The rareness or frequent occurrence of an incunabulum will 
 naturally depend in general on its actual supply and demand. 
 Statements of this sort should be made with caution. In 
 many countries certain incunabula are frequent, which elsewhere 
 are considered rare. Here, again, long years of experience, 
 with an accurate knowledge of the markets of the world, can 
 alone secure correct information. 
 
 The case is somewhat different when we have to ascertain 
 whether a given incunabulum is the first edition or not of 
 the work in question. This is a fact which must be decided 
 by consulting the literature bearing on the subject. 
 
 Regarding the price which the bookseller expects for his 
 copies of incunabula, no definite rules can be laid down. 
 Here it is impossible to give trade prices in the modern 
 sense of the term, nor even approxim.ate current prices. 
 Apparently the only course open to the beginner is to glean 
 all the information he can by sedulous consultation of English 
 and Foreign sale catalogues, the catalogues of the leading 
 dealers, or by referring to the Book Prices Current, published 
 by Elliot Stock. One and the same book may bring totally 
 
Historical and Literary Notices. 351 
 
 different prices according to the general appearance and condition 
 of the copies offered for sale, and the library it comes from. In 
 Brunet's and Graesse's large bibliographical works the prices 
 realized at famous sales or demanded by antiquarians of repute 
 are quoted ; but such figures are nowadays quite illusory. 
 
 21. Historical and Literary Notices. 
 
 A catalogue of incunabula, whether prepared by antiquarians 
 or for sale purposes, will acquire the greater permanent value 
 the richer it is on the one hand in descriptions of the printed 
 works, on the other in notices bearing on such works. We 
 will here refer only to the catalogues of Bernhard Quaritch, 
 London, and Albert Cohn, Berlin, which are at present eagerly 
 collected by all book-lovers and librarians, precisely because 
 they present such varied bibliographical explanations. 
 
 Everything known to the compiler himself of the catalogue 
 regarding the contents, the author, the printer, the work, or 
 the given specimen, should be faithfully recorded. The cul- 
 tured antiquarian should not shirk the slight extra expense 
 which may be entailed by the somewhat richer contents of the 
 catalogue, for which a permanent value may be thus secured 
 ■even long after the stock has been disposed of. But in all 
 •cases let the fundamental principle be scrupulously adhered to 
 of stating only what is certainly known and true, and can 
 at any time be verified. Let all vagueness and ambiguity be 
 avoided, and let truth alone be still your watchword. 
 
THE METHOD OF COLLECTING. 
 
 O early as the seventeenth century the posses- 
 sion of incunabula, that is, of works dating 
 j from the decades immediately following the 
 invention of the typographic art, was highly 
 valued by all important libraries and amateurs. 
 The fact is explained on the one hand by the comparative 
 scarcity of such works, by far the greater portion of which have 
 perished during the wars and civil strife ; on the other by 
 the consideration that these venerable monuments from the 
 first years of an invention affecting the whole world possess 
 a high historical and antiquarian interest and fascination which 
 cannot but be more and more recognised with the increasing 
 importance of the art itself. 
 
 Nevertheless it was long before any steps were taken to 
 systematically arrange these treasures, to determine undated 
 issues by all the resources of comparative bibliography, — in a 
 word, to critically study the still extant incunabula. 
 
 At first sight it might seem incumbent on us first of all 
 to come to a clear understanding on the temporal limitation 
 of this term " incunabulum." But the following inquiry appears 
 so intimately bound up with the essence of the subject, that 
 for the present purpose it becomes a matter of indifference 
 whether we regard as incunabula the works of the fifteenth 
 century alone, or with former bibliographers include those 
 
The Method of Collecting. 353 
 
 issued before. 1520, or even before 1535. But in any case 
 both extrinsic and intrinsic reasons suggest that the term be 
 limited to the year 1500, with which both the century of the 
 invention and the infancy of the art itself were brought to a 
 close. 
 
 The collecting of incunabula may from the very nature of 
 the case be viewed from the most diverse standpoints. 
 
 But even an absolutely unsystematic collection, that is, the 
 acquisition of the greatest possible number of incunabula, 
 without regard to all the other points to be mentioned further 
 on, need by no means exclude a systematic arrangement and 
 cataloguing of all the works thus brought together. At the 
 same time, such a method of collecting cannot be recommended 
 even in the case of the exceptional pecuniary resources at 
 the command of the great public libraries and amateur 
 millionaires. For with such a method it becomes a pure matter 
 of chance whether the collection acquire any considerable 
 completeness in any given direction, or whether the whole 
 shall ever possess any great bibliographical value. It cannot 
 however be denied that this plan, however irrational it may 
 otherwise appear, is so far the most economical that by its 
 means a large collection of incunabula may be most rapidly 
 and cheaply brought together. 
 
 But this method, if it at all deserves to be so described, 
 must be absolutely set aside in the case of small and average 
 collections. Whoever with rather limited means sets about 
 scraping together the largest possible number of incunabula 
 at random, without troubling himself about their origin, rarity, 
 contents and so forth, will not acquire a real library of early 
 works, but merely a wilderness of musty old scholastic books 
 mainly of no bibliographical value. This at least will be the 
 
 23 
 
354 THE BOOK. 
 
 result, unless he should happen to be favoured by such a run 
 of lucky hits as are daily becoming more improbable. The 
 reason is because by pursuing such a course pretty well every- 
 thing turns on the question of cheapness, which by no means 
 excludes relative excessive prices. 
 
 As in other domains, here also is applicable the maxim : 
 Quality, not quantity. 
 
 It follows that a certain limit must be absolutely assigned 
 to the extent of the collection. 
 
 In connection with such a limitation there must at the same 
 time be adopted for the several cases a corresponding system 
 of fitting up, arranging, enlarging, and cataloguing a really 
 genuine library of incunabula. 
 
 In the following remarks it will be our endeavour to 
 establish the principles which seem to us applicable in all such 
 cases. Our treatise naturally makes no claim to completeness, 
 as here the broad features of the subject can alone be touched 
 upon, without however excluding the subdivisions of particular 
 classes, which may form the material of numerous special 
 collections. Nor do we pretend to give any opinion as to 
 the most desirable standpoints to be kept ,in view in making 
 collections. This must depend on the one hand on the 
 preferences and previous culture of the individual collector, on 
 the other on the extent of his available means, points on which 
 it would be absurd to lay down any general laws. In these 
 things there can be no common standard applicable to all ! 
 Only we would venture to point out that the various methods 
 of collecting give occasion to all sorts of combinations, and 
 that in fact for many of these methods it seems scarcely 
 advisable absolutely to exclude some such combination. 
 
 It might also be pointed out that the features to be 
 
Dated or Undated Works. 355 
 
 developed in special cases should also be kept in view in the 
 arrangement, cataloguing and completing of general libraries of 
 incunabula, nay, that some of these principles cannot be at 
 all overlooked in any rational method of cataloguing. 
 
 The collection of incunabula may be divided into the 
 following classes, and based upon the collection of : 
 
 I. Dated or Undated Works. 
 
 Till about the year 1480 works either not at all or only 
 imperfectly dated were far more numerous than those which 
 gave the printing-place, printer and year of issue. Especially 
 during the first years after the invention the names of place 
 and printer were frequently omitted. 
 
 Absolutely undated works we call those which give neither 
 place, printer nor year ; imperfectly dated, those which give 
 at least one of these particulars. Here occur the most diverse 
 combinations, as mentioned in the previous chapter, some very 
 frequently. Such are : {a) works giving printer and year, but 
 no place ; {b) works with printer's name, but without place or 
 year ; {c) works without year, but with place and printer ; {d) 
 works with place alone ; {e) printer alone ; (/) year alone. Of 
 most frequent occurrence are the forms under h, c, and f. 
 
 Works fully dated so far as in general to leave no doubt 
 regarding their origin (exceptions however occur even here, 
 as in pirated editions) take on the whole a higher place as 
 bibliographical documents than those altogether or partly un- 
 dated. But here if anywhere is applicable the saying, " No 
 rule without an exception." The very finest treasures of this 
 sort are undated, whereas hundreds of very inferior worth 
 display a full date. 
 
 Of many printers we possess scarcely any dated, or at 
 
356 THE Book. 
 
 least any fully dated works. Hence a library excluding un- 
 dated, or at all events incompletely dated works, easily 
 acquires a certain one-sided character, without thereby neces- 
 sarily gaining in material value. 
 
 Aparc from this point, modern science presents so many 
 aids for the absolute identification of undated or imperfectly 
 dated works, that there is no intrinsic justification for a 
 systematic under-estimation of such works. 
 
 The further question arises, how should the collector act in 
 the case of such undated works as cannot be identified, 
 or identified beyond all doubt? In principle such works should 
 be f excluded by those bibliophiles who from the character of 
 their collection must attach importance to the undoubted 
 determination of the origin of each printed work, and who 
 have neither time nor means themselves to remove all doubts on 
 these heads. But for large libraries such a limitation would be 
 altogether misplaced ; for the accurate investigation of undated 
 incunabula has already led to the most unexpected results. 
 
 2. Works in Particular Languages. 
 
 By far the greater number of all incunabula are in the 
 Latin language. From this fact alone it at once follows that 
 early printed works in all modern languages must be more 
 or less rare. Hence collectors excluding Latin incunabula will 
 obviously be restricted to those in their own mother-tongue, 
 or else in such other modern languages as take a prominent 
 position in a geographical, historical or linguistic sense. As 
 a rule English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish incunabula 
 are only to be procured with such difficulty, and on such 
 unfavourable conditions, that with relatively limited means it 
 would be beside the purpose to think of acquiring them. 
 
Works from Particular Countries. 357 
 
 3. Works from Particular Countries. 
 
 As already pointed out, in all civilised lands far more was 
 printed in Latin than in the vernacular, a fact that can cause 
 no surprise considering the state of science and letters, as well 
 as the slight development of the modern European languages 
 at that time. Thus German, for instance, is represented by 
 scarcely one -eighth of the books printed in Germany before 
 1500. On the other hand it not unfrequently happened that 
 German books were printed abroad by German printers, by 
 whom the young art was rapidly spread throughout other 
 lands. 
 
 Hence collections of incunabula from any particular countries 
 can by no means consist exclusively of works in the respective 
 languages. They should in fact rather exclude such works, as 
 even so the restriction to the Latin language will still leave a 
 very wide field to the collector's activity. 
 
 By far the relatively largest portion of all incunabula 
 belong to Italy, where the art was early developed, and more 
 particularly to Rome and Venice, whose incunabula alone would 
 form a large library. The result is a comparative cheapness 
 of most incunabula printed in Italy, and especially in Venice, the 
 more so that during the last twenty years many of them have 
 been thrown on the market by the sequestration of the 
 Italian monastic estates and the dispersion of private collections. 
 
 Hence those who may not have previously limited their 
 operations to some other particular region, will as a rule find 
 themselves the owners of a preponderating number of Italian 
 incunabula. 
 
 But rational collectors, especially when not guided by the 
 question of quality as is usually the case in this domain, will 
 
358 The Book. 
 
 probably soon discover that it is better to secure a relatively 
 rich collection from a more or less restricted field, than to 
 possess a correspondingly smaller number of specimens from 
 several different countries. All alike aim at the greatest 
 possible completeness within the region to which they have 
 chosen to confine themselves. 
 
 In the case of such restricted collections the first con- 
 sideration will naturally be for the collector's native land, 
 whether this expression be taken in a narrower or a wider 
 sense, as for instance according to the political frontiers of the 
 fifteenth century, or of the present time. For such lands how- 
 ever as can show but few incunabula, such a voluntary limitation 
 will not always be found convenient. In this case specimens 
 from richer fields will doubtless be also admitted. For the 
 rest incunabula from Germany, as the home of the invention 
 of printing, will always possess a paramount interest even for 
 foreigners, especially if they are anxious to secure copies from 
 the oldest places where the art was practised. 
 
 4. Works from Particular Periods. 
 
 We have already pointed out that from the material stand- 
 point it is difficult to assign definite temporal limits to the 
 term "incunabula." Hence it must be left to each individual 
 collector to decide on the period to which he will extend its 
 use, and also whether he will limit his collection to any and 
 what particular year within that period. There is undoubtedly 
 a certain justification for including on principle those works 
 alone that fall within a given period not far removed from 
 the date of the invention. 
 
 Other temporal limitations might also be suggested; these 
 however would presuppose an arrangement of the collection 
 
Works belonging to a particular Branch of Literature. 359 
 
 according to place. Such a combination of territorial and 
 temporal standpoints leads, for instance, to a collection limited 
 to places where the art was introduced before a given year, 
 or, say, to the ten, fifteen, twenty, etc., earliest places, or else 
 to the oldest places of a given country, but within each of 
 these places down to the year 1500. Such combinations are 
 historically so far justified that those places form in a measure 
 the landmarks in the victorious career of this far-reaching 
 invention. 
 
 Considerations of space and economy may under certain 
 circumstances render it advisable to restrict the collection 
 from more important places to works comprised within a 
 certain date. 
 
 5. Works belonging to a Particular Branch of 
 
 Literature. 
 
 The great majority of all incunabula are devoted to theology, 
 and all other branches of letters taken together are not half so 
 numerously represented as this one subject. Hence, owing to 
 their relative rareness, incunabula dealing with worldly matters 
 possess a certain outward interest, apart altogether from the 
 contents of each individual work. 
 
 But on the other hand, within this general category every 
 branch is more or less fully represented according to the stan- 
 dard of contemporary knowledge. Classical subjects naturally 
 take the foremost position. But we also meet with numerous 
 chronicles, fugitive pieces, polemical writings, popular treatises 
 on natural history, descriptions of travels, almanacks, occasional 
 verses and other poetical effusions of later mediaeval times, 
 grammars, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, musical works, etc. In short, 
 for the history of every science, as well as of literature in 
 
36o The Book. 
 
 its narrower sense, the printed works of the fifteenth century 
 present rich stores of information that have hitherto been httle 
 utilized. 
 
 It is obvious that the use of such treasures would be im- 
 mensely facilitated by bringing together special collections of 
 incunabula for the several branches, or at least by thoroughly 
 cataloguing from this standpoint the already existing general 
 libraries of early printed works. 
 
 6. Works whose Contents present Special Curious 
 
 Interest. 
 
 Besides these special libraries, for which the greatest possible 
 completeness will naturally be aimed at within the respective 
 branches, others might be suggested, which, whether limited or 
 not to special branches, would consist only of those incunabula 
 whose contents are specially remarkable on account of their 
 curious contents, in fact " curios " of literary or historic interest. 
 
 Such early works which apart from their age and scarcity 
 as early isr.ues, are in themselves of peculiar interest, and 
 would accordingly deserve to be re-issued either wholly or in 
 part do occur sometimes. The acquisition, however, of these 
 works, being for the most part very scarce, would involve a 
 considerable outlay. 
 
 7. Works of Special Importance for the History of 
 
 Typography. 
 Apart from the "incunabula" there are here to be considered: 
 {a) Works in which, absolutely or within a given region, 
 there occur for the first time place, printer and year, or one 
 alone or any two of these data ; works in which catch-words, 
 pagination, title page occur for the first time ; works which are 
 the oldest specimens of a particular form of type ; works in 
 
Works Illustrated with Woodcuts. 361 
 
 which initial letters or marginal embellishments were printed 
 for the first time. 
 
 (p) Works which are of importance for the development of 
 contractions or abbreviations. 
 
 {c) Works containing particular flaws calculated to throw 
 light on the contemporary technical processes. 
 
 {d) Works in which are for the first time noticed certain 
 technical improvements, etc., etc. 
 
 8. Works Illustrated with Woodcuts. 
 
 A few years after the issue of the first book printed with 
 movable types, we meet the first rude beginnings of book 
 illustration by means of woodcuts, an art which later acquired 
 such importance. Gradually the draughtsmanship becomes 
 more artistic, the technique freer and surer, until towards the 
 close of the fifteenth century we find in the Italian School 
 and in Schedel's Chronik woodcuts which recall the first 
 masters of the following century. 
 
 Hence a special collection of incunabula with woodcuts 
 presents great interest for the history of art, and to a less 
 extent for the aesthetic side of art. At the same time such 
 illustrated incunabula are very numerous, some seven hundred 
 being known from Germany alone. In recent years, however, 
 these, like all other wood-engravings, have risen in price to 
 such an extent that a special collection of this sort is about 
 one of the most costly things in the world. 
 
 9. Perfectly Preserved Copies. 
 
 Such specimens naturally command all the higher price, in- 
 asmuch as the condition of most extant incunabula leaves 
 much to be desired. Besides the frequent absence of particular 
 
362 The Book. 
 
 leaves, they are largely damaged by worms, or disfigured by 
 the gnawings of mice, by damp stains, reckless cutting down 
 in binding, etc. 
 
 Each collector will best know how far he should go in 
 respect of the condition of a given incunabulum. Anyhow, 
 wealthy bibliophiles are perfectly justified in seeing on principle 
 that the book is as flawless as possible. 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to ride this hobby too far. 
 An imperfect and worm-eaten unictim is far more valuable than 
 a spotless perfect specimen of an issue, of which some sixty 
 copies are known to exist. Hence, when it is a question of 
 securing specially rare copies, we cannot always insist upon 
 their perfect and flawless state., 
 
 The foregoing remark leads to the consideration of 
 
 lo. Extremely Rare Works. 
 Certainly the terms rare or scarce are somewhat vague: 
 There are incunabula of which formerly only a few copies were 
 known, but of which in recent years several others were offered 
 for sale in rapid succession. Has the book on that account 
 ceased to be rare ? Anyhow there are several degrees of 
 rareness to be distinguished. Apart from other considerations, 
 it will be judicious to include in the collection only such in- 
 cunabula as are at least to a certain extent scarce, even though 
 it be impracticable to confine ourselves to rarities of the first 
 order, all of these being, of course, already bought up. 
 
 II. Impressions on Vellum — Works Exceptionally Rich 
 IN Artistic Embellishments, Initial Letters and 
 THE Like. 
 
 What has been said respecting scarce specimens in general, 
 naturally applies also to particular groups of the same category 
 
Collections according to Place, Printer, etc. 363 
 
 consequently also for works with an unusual wealth of artistic 
 ornamentation in initials, borderings, miniature painting, etc. 
 But it applies still more especially to works printed on vellum, 
 all the more that but few of these are extant, while some are 
 absolutely unique. In fact, works on vellum were issued only 
 by a very small number of early printing offices. 
 
 12. Collections according to Place, Printer and 
 Varieties or Types. 
 
 Those confining their purchases to incunabula of some 
 particular country, but who are at the same time anxious to 
 have as complete a representation as possible of the earliest 
 development of the typographic art in that region, should make 
 every effort to secure incunabula from all the printing establish- 
 ments of the countries in question. Among the productions 
 issued by each of these places such a collection will pay 
 attention to the several printers, as well as to the varieties of 
 types employed by each of them. Owing to the extreme 
 scarcity of the specimens from certain offices absolute complete- 
 ness in this respect is of course practically out of the question. 
 But it may not be so difficult to form a relatively complete 
 collection, that is, one in which shall be represented the 
 majority of the printing places and printers of a given country. 
 At least this may be possible, provided other considerations 
 be kept mainly in abeyance, and the collector be satisfied with 
 one specimen of each printer, as well as of each kind of type. 
 For collectors of limited means this method is perhaps to be 
 preferred before all others. In this way each distinct book 
 becomes in fact an illustration in the history of the development 
 of the typographic art. 
 
 At the same time this method is also the best for every 
 
364 THE BOOK. 
 
 collection that has to be made from the typographical stand- 
 point, whether such a collection is to embrace the productions 
 of one country only, or those of all the regions with which 
 we are here concerned. The same method also facilitates 
 more than any other the identification of undated works. 
 
 Collecting according to typographical specialities, as this 
 method might be called, may of course be brought into 
 harmony with all others hitherto touched upon, although in 
 such cases the fundamental principle cannot always be strictly 
 adhered to. It would lead us too far to enter in detail on all 
 the combinations that are here possible. 
 
 It will suffice to state that a collection made from this 
 point of view will acquire a fair completeness all the more 
 easily the less it aims at securing dated works, and especially 
 such as bear the printer's mark. The creation of an ideal 
 library of incunabula, in which every place, printer and form 
 of type shall be represented by both dated and undated 
 copies, will always present extreme difficulties. Still more 
 difficult must be a collection of " incunabula " of every place 
 and every printer, especially as these belong for the most 
 part to the category of rarities. As a rule it will be found 
 impossible to procure the first issue of each particular form 
 of type. 
 
 13. Concluding Remarks. 
 
 The foregoing remarks may suffice to give the reader 
 some idea of the numerous points to be considered in making 
 collections of incunabula. Much that has here been stated 
 may look like so many truisms. Nevertheless the points 
 touched upon may not seem quite superfluous in the absence 
 of a thoroughly systematic bibliographical treatment of the 
 
Collections according to Place, Printer, etc. 365 
 
 subject. Nor can this essay pretend to supply the place of 
 such a work, especially when we consider how often both 
 public libraries and private collectors have gone blindly to 
 work in forming their collections. 
 
 We have already mentioned that the principles or guiding 
 rules here severally developed are also applicable for the 
 systematic cataloguing of already existing general libraries of 
 incunabula. 
 

LATIN ENGLISH. 
 
 Aarhusum, Aarhus 15 19. 
 Abbatis Villa, Abbeville 14.86. 
 Abredonia, Aberdeen 15 19. 
 Alatum Castrum, Edinburgh 1509. 
 Alba Bulgarica, Belgrade 1552. 
 Aldenarda, Audenarde 1480. 
 Aldenburgum, Altenburg 1523. 
 Alepum, Aleppo 1706. 
 Alostum (Alost), Aaht 1473. 
 Alta Villa, Eltwyl 1462. 
 Aquae Bonae, Bonn 1543. 
 Aquincum, Buda {0/en) 14'; 2. 
 Araugia, Aarau 1511- 
 Argentoratum, Strasburg 1466. 
 Arosia, Westerds 1621. 
 Asculum Picenum, ^jco/;' 1477. 
 Augusta Bracara, ^ra^a 1494. 
 Augusta Nemotum, Spire {Speier) 1477. 
 Augusta Tiberii, Ratisbon {Regensburg) 
 
 1490. 
 Augusta Vindelicorum, Augsburg 1472. 
 Aurelia, Orleans 1490. 
 Avenio, Avignon 1497. 
 
 Bacodurum, Passau 1482. 
 
 Bamberga, Bamberg 1450. 
 
 Baucona, Oppenheim 1494. 
 
 Barcino, Barcelona 1478. 
 
 Basilea, ^a/« or ^aj/^ 1470. 
 
 Batavia, Batavia 1668. 
 
 Berna, ^*r«« 1525. 
 
 Berolinum, Berlin 1540. 
 
 Berona (in Ergovia), Beromiinster 1470. 
 
 Bonna, ^om« 1543. 
 
 Bononia, Bologna i47r. 
 
 Brangonia, P^rfw/tr 1548. 
 
 Brixia, Brescia i^-js- 
 
 Brugse -Bearniae, Bruges {Briigge) 
 
 1475- 
 Bruna, Brilnn 1491- 
 Brunsviga, Brunswick 1509. 
 Bruxella, Brussels {Bruxelles) 1476. 
 j Burdigala, Bordeaux i486. 
 Burgdorfium, Burgdorfii^is- 
 Burgi, Burgos 1485. 
 Buscoduca, Bois-le-Duc {Hertogenbusch) 
 
 1484. 
 
 Cabelia, Chablis 1478. 
 
 Cadomum, Cae« 1480. 
 
 Caesaraugusta, Saragassa {Zaragoza) 1475 
 
 Cale, Oporto 1622. 
 
 Galium (ad Calem), Ca^/z' 1475. 
 
 Camboricum, Cambridge 1556; United 
 
 States 1638. 
 Cantuaria, Canterbury 1549. 
 Capitabriga, Cambridge 1556 ; United 
 
 States 1638. 
 Caroli Hesychium, Karlsruhe 1545. 
 Cassella (or Casseletum), Cawi?/ 1 6 1 1 . 
 Casulae, Cajo/« 1475. 
 Chalybon, Aleppo 1706. 
 Chxistiania, Ckristiania 1643. 
 Chrysii Auraria, Altenburg (Hungar)) 
 
 Cibinium, Hermaimstadt 1575. 
 Cliniacum, C/z/«j/ 1493. 
 Golonia, Cologne 1470. 
 Complutum, Alcald de Henares, 1499. 
 Comum, CoOTo 1474. 
 
Topographical Index. 
 
 369 
 
 Conimbrica, Coimhra 1536. 
 Corduba, Cordova 1495. 
 Cracovia, Cracow 1491. 
 Cremona, Cremona 1473. 
 Culemburgum, Culemborg 1483. 
 Cutna, Kuttenherg 1489. 
 
 Damascus, Damascus 1605. 
 Darmstadium, Darmstadt 1 6 1 1 . 
 Daventria, Deventer i^i"]. 
 Debrecinum, Debreczin 1565. 
 Delfi, Z»f//"/ 1477. 
 Derbatum, Dorpat 1642. 
 Divio, Dijon 1491. 
 Dresda, Dresden 1524. 
 Dublinum, Dublin 1551. 
 
 Eboracum, Jor-^ 1509. 
 
 Edinum, Edinburgh 1509. 
 
 Eiusilda, Einsiedeln ibiiA^. 
 
 Emmerani Coenob., Ratisbon {Regensburg) 
 
 1490. 
 Engolisma, AngouUme 1491. 
 Erfordia, Erfurt 1494. 
 Ezelinga, EssUngen i\ii. 
 
 Fanum Fortunse, /a«o 1475 
 
 Fanum St. Galli, St. Gall 1577 
 
 Ferrara, Fetrara 1471 
 
 Fivizanum, Fivizzano 1472 
 
 Formosa, Formosa 1661. 
 
 Francofurtum ad Msenum, Frankfort-on- 
 
 t he-Main 1531. 
 Francofurtum ad Oderam, Frankfort-on- 
 
 the-Oder 1567. 
 Freiberga in Misnia, Freiberg {Freyberg), 
 
 1495- 
 Friburgum, Freiburg i. Br. 1493. 
 Friburgum Helv., Fribourg {Freiburg) in 
 
 Switzerland 1585. 
 Frisinga, Freysingen 1494. 
 
 Galgocinum, Galgocz 1584. 
 Galli Fanum, 6"/. (?a// 1577. 
 
 Ganda, Ghent 1483. 
 Geneva, G^^^m 1478. 
 Genua, Genoa 1472. 
 Gerunda, Gerona 1483. 
 Gippesvicum, Ipswich 1538. 
 Goslaria, Goj/ar 1604. 
 Gothoburgum, Gothenburg 1650. 
 Gouda, (?oa(fa 1477. 
 Gronaicum, Greenwich 1564. 
 
 Hadrianopolis, Adrianople 1554. 
 Hafnia, Copenhagen 1490. 
 Haga Comitis, The Hague 1516. 
 Hagenoa, Hagenau 1500. 
 Halebum, Aleppo 1706. 
 Hamburgum, Hamburg 1491. 
 Hasseletum, Hasselt 1480. 
 Heidelberga, Heidelberg 1485. 
 Herbipolis, WUrzburg 1479. 
 Hesychia Carolina, Karlsruhe 1545. 
 Hispalis, Seville 1480. 
 Holmia, Stockholm 1474. 
 Hyctopolis ad Istrum, Ratisbon {Regens- 
 burg) 1490. 
 
 Ilerda, Lerida 1479. 
 Ingolstadium, Ingolstadt 1490. 
 
 Kralia, Kralitz (Moravia) 1579. 
 Kuttenberga, Kuttenherg 1489. 
 
 Lauginga, Laugingen 1473. 
 Lausanna, Lausanne 1556. 
 Leiria, Leiria 1484. 
 Lemovicum, Limoges 1495. 
 Leopolis, Lemberg 1593. 
 Leovardia, Leuwarden 1485. 
 Lethes fl., Zzwa 1585. 
 Leuphana, Lunebuig 1493. 
 Limonum, Poitiers 1479. 
 Lipsia, Leipzig 1479. 
 Lsbavia, Ldbau 171 8. 
 Londinium, London i^-jj. 
 Londinium Gothorum, Zk«(/ 1663. 
 
 24 
 
370 
 
 TOPOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 
 
 Loudeacum, Loudeac 1484. 
 Lovania, Louvain {Lcewen) 1473- 
 Lubeca, Lilbeck 1498. 
 Lucerna Helvetiorum, Lucerne 1524. 
 Lugdunum, Lyons {Lyon) 1473. 
 Lugdunum Batavorum, Ley den 1483. 
 Luneburgum, Lunehurg 1493. 
 
 Madritum, Madrid 1500. 
 Magdeburgum, Magdeburg 1488. 
 Manilla, Manila 1590. 
 Mantua, Mantua 1472. 
 Marionis, Hamburg 1491. 
 Marionis Altera, Lilbeck 1498. 
 Marsiburgum, Merseburg 1473. 
 Mediolanum, Milan 1469. 
 Memminga, Memmingen 1482. 
 Messina, Messina 1473. 
 Mesuium, Brunswick 1509. 
 Misna, Meissen 1508. 
 Mogontiacum, Mayence {Mainz) 1448. 
 Mohilavia, Mohileff 1617. 
 MonacMum, Munich 1482. 
 Monasterium, MUnster 1485. 
 Monasterium B. Marise de Monserrato, 
 
 Nuestra Senora de Monserrate 1499. 
 Monasterium Tavistock, Tavistock 1525. 
 Monasterium Wadstenense, Wadstenia 
 
 I49S- 
 Mons Regalis, Monte Reale 1^1%. 
 Mons Regalis, Monterey 1494. 
 Mons Serratus, Monserrate 1499. 
 Monyorokerekinum, Eberau (Hungary) 
 
 1589- 
 Moscovia, Moscow 1553. 
 Murcia, Murcia 1487. 
 Mutina, Modena 1480. 
 
 Namnetus Portus, Nantes 1493. 
 Neapolis, Naples 1472. 
 Neoburgum, Neufchdtel 1530. 
 Norimberga, Nurenberg 1470. 
 Noviomagus, Nimeguen 1479. 
 Novum Eboracum, Afeo 2^or^ 1693. 
 
 Novum Londinium, iVkw London 1709. 
 
 Ocellodurum, Zamora 1482. 
 Offenburgum, Offenburg 1494. 
 Olisipo, Lisboa 1495. 
 Othania, Odense 1482. 
 
 Pampalona, Pampelona 1489. 
 Panormus, Palermo 1477. 
 Parisius, Jfem 1470. 
 Parma, Parma i\'ii. 
 Perusia, Perugia 1475. 
 Petropolis, >$■/. Petersburg 17 10. 
 Philadelphia, Philadelphia 1686. 
 Piaeentia, Piacenza 1475. 
 Pintia, ValladoUd 1493- 
 Pons Nevise, Puebla de Navia 1612. 
 Posnania, Pot^w iS77- 
 Prsetorium, Kingston 1720. 
 Probatopolis, Schaffhausen 1577. 
 Provinum, Provins 1496. 
 
 Redones, Rennes 1484. 
 Regiomontium Borussise, Konigsberg 
 
 Pr. 1523. 
 Regiopolis, Kingston 1720. 
 Rhegium, P«^^w 1498. 
 Ripa, i?zi5« 1508. 
 Roe Pontes, Roskyld 1 5 34. 
 Roma, i?oOT^ 1467-68. 
 Romanovia, Romanoff i6ig. 
 Rostochium, Rostock 1496. 
 Rotomagus, 7?o««ra 1487. 
 Ruotlinga, ReutUngen 1500. 
 
 Salmantica, Salamanca 1485. 
 Sarvarinum, Uj-Szigeth-Sdrvdr 1539. 
 Schiedamum, Schiedam 1483. 
 Schoonhovia, Schoenhooven 1495. 
 Sedinum, Stettin 1577. 
 Sentice, Zamora 1482. 
 Singidunum, Belgrade 1552. 
 Slesvicum, Schleswig 1485. 
 Smyrna, Smyrna 1658, 
 Stutgardia, Stuttgart 1486. 
 
Topographical Index. 
 
 371 
 
 Sublacense Coenob., SuUaco 1464. 
 Szegedinum, Szegedm 1567. 
 
 Ternobum, Tymau 1578. 
 Ticinum, Pavia 1476. 
 Tigurum, Ziirich 1504. 
 Timalinum, Puehla de Navia 161 2. 
 Toletum, Toledo i486. 
 Tolosa, Tolosa 1480. 
 Tolosa Tectosagum, Toulouse 1479. 
 Trajectum Inferius, Utrecht 1473. 
 Trecse, Tro;/ {Troyes) 1483. 
 Tridentum, Trent {Trient) 1475. 
 Tubinga, Tubingen 1498. 
 Tzernigovia, Tschernigoiv [Czernigow), 
 193- 
 
 Ulma, CTw 1470. 
 
 j TJpsalia, C/^ja/a 15 10. 
 
 1 
 
 j Valentia, Valencia 1474. 
 
 Varadinum, Grosswardein 1585. 
 ! Varsavia, W^armw 1580. 
 j Venetia, Venice 1469. 
 j Venta, Winchester 1545. 
 j Verona, Vei-ona 1470. 
 
 Vesontio, Besan^on 1487. 
 
 Viburgus, Fzfor^ 1528. 
 
 Vigornia, J%r(r«/«r 1548. 
 
 Vilna, Wilna 1525. 
 
 Vindabona, Vienna {Wien) 1482. 
 
 Vinterberga, Winterberg 1484. 
 
 Vratislavia, Breslau 1538. 
 
 Zamoscium, Zamosc 1557. 
 ZwoUa, Zwolle 1479. 
 
 ENGLISH-LATIN. 
 
 Aalst, Alostum 1473. 
 Aarau, Araugia 1511. 
 Aarhus, Aarhusum 15 19. 
 Abbeville, Abbatis Villa i486. 
 Aberdeen, Abredonia 15 19. 
 Adrianople, Hadrianopolis 1554. 
 Alcala de Henares, Complutum 1499. 
 Aleppo, Alepum, Chalyhon, Halebicm 
 
 1706. 
 Alost, Alostum 1473- 
 
 Altenburg (Germany), Aldenburgim 1523. 
 Altenburg (Hungary), Chrysii Auraria 
 
 1 55^8- 
 Angonleme, Engolisma 1491. 
 Ascoli, Asculum Picenum 1477. 
 Audenarde, Aldenarda 1480. 
 Augsburg, Augusta Vindelicorum 1472. 
 Avignon, Avenio 1497. 
 
 Bale (Basle), Basilea 1470. 
 Bamberg, Bamberga 1450. 
 Barcelona, Barcino 1478. 
 
 Batavia, Batavia 1668. 
 
 Belgrade, ^/i^a Bulgarica, Singidunum 
 
 1552- 
 Berlin, Berolinum 1540. 
 Berne, Bema 1525. 
 Beromunster, Berona 1470. 
 Bois-le-Duc, Buscoduca 1484. 
 Bologna, Bononia 147 1. 
 Bonn, AqucB Bonce, Bonna 1543. 
 Bordeaux, Burdigala i486. 
 Eraga, Augusta Bracara 1494. 
 Brescia, Brixia 1473. 
 Breslau. l^t^islavia 1538. W .&f-. . 
 Bruges (Briigge), BrugcE Bear-nice 147 5 
 Briinn, Bruna 1491. 
 Brunswick, Brunsviga, Mesnium 1509. 
 Brussels, Bmxella 1476. 
 Buda (Ofen), Aquincum 1472. 
 Burgdorf, Bwgdorfium 1475. 
 Burgos, ^z/r^z' 1485. 
 
 Caen, Cadomum 1480. 
 
372 
 
 TOPOGRAPHICAL INDEX. 
 
 Cagli, Calium {ad Calem) 1475. 
 Cambridge, Camhorkum, Capitabriga 
 
 1556- 
 Canterbury, Cantuaria 1549. 
 Casole, CasiilcE 1475. 
 Cassel, Cassella, Casseletum 1 6 1 1 . 
 Chablis, Cabelia 1478. 
 Christiana, Christiana 1643. 
 Cluny, Cliniacum 1493. 
 Coimbra, Conimbrica 1536. 
 Cologne, Colonia 1470. 
 Come, Comum 1474. 
 Copenhagen, Hafnia 1490. 
 Cordova, Corduba 1495. 
 Cracow, Cracmia 1491. 
 Cremona, Cremona 1473. 
 Culemborg, Cuknburgum 1483. 
 Czernigow, Tzemogavia 1493. 
 
 Damascus, Damascus 1605. 
 Darmstadt, Darmstadium 1 6 1 1 . 
 Debreczin, Debrecinum 1565. 
 Delft, 2?^^ 1477. 
 Deventer, Daventria 1477. 
 Dijon, /J/i^zb 1491. 
 Dorpat, Derbatum 1642. 
 Dresden, Dresda 1524. 
 Dublin, Dublinum 1551- 
 
 Eberau (^Hungary), Monyorokerekinum 
 
 _ 1589. 
 Edinburgh, Alatum Castrum, Edinum 
 
 1509- 
 Einsiedeln, Einsilda 1664. 
 Eltwyl, ^//a Fi7/a 1462. 
 Erfurt, Erfordia 1494. 
 Esslingen, Ezelinga 1473. 
 
 Fano, Fanum ForluncE 1475. 
 Ferrara, Ferrara 1471. 
 Fivizzano, Fivizanum 1472. 
 Formosa, Formosa 1661. 
 Frankfort-on-the-Main, Francofuriuvi ad 
 Mcenum 1 5 3 1 . 
 
 Frankfort-on-the-Oder, Francofurtum ad 
 
 Oderam 1567. 
 Freiberg (Freyburg), Freiberga in Misnia 
 
 1495- 
 Freiburg i. Br., Friburgum 1493. 
 Freysingen, Frisinga 1494. 
 Fribourg (Freiburg) in Switzerland, 
 
 Friburgum Helv. 1585. 
 
 Galgocz, Galgocinum 1584. 
 Geneva, Geneva 1478. 
 Genoa, Genua 1472. 
 Gerona, Gerunda 1483. 
 Ghent, Ganda 1483. 
 Goslar, Goslaria 1604. 
 Gothenburg, Gothoburgum 1650. 
 Gouda, Gouda 1477. 
 Greenwich, Gronaicum 1564. 
 Gross wardein, Varadinum 1585. 
 
 Hagenau, Hagenoa 1500. 
 Hague, The, Z^a^a Comiiis 1516. 
 Hamburg, Hamburgum, Marionis 1491. 
 Hasselt, .^(ZM«/«/?^/;z 1480. 
 Hermannstadt, Cibinium 1575. 
 
 Ingolstadt, Ingolstadium 1490. 
 Ipswich, Gippesvicum 1538. 
 
 Karlsruhe, Caroli Hesychium, Hesychia 
 
 Carolina 1545. 
 Kingston, Pratorium, Regiopolis 1720. 
 Konigsberg i. Pr., Regiomontium Borussia 
 
 1523- 
 Kralitz (Moravia), Kralia li^i^. 
 Kuttenberg, Cutna, Kuttenberga 1489. 
 
 Laugingen, Lauginga 1473. 
 Lausanne, Lausanna 1556. 
 Leipzig, Lipsia 1479. 
 Leiria, Leiria 1484. 
 Lemberg, Leopolis 1593. 
 Lerida, Ilerda 1479. 
 Leuwarden, Leovardia 1485. 
 
Topographical Index. 
 
 373 
 
 Leyden, Lugdunum Batavorum 1483. 
 
 Lima, Lethesfl. 1585. 
 
 Limoges, Lemovicum 1495. 
 
 Lisboa, Olisipo 1495. 
 
 Lobau, Lohavia 171 8. 
 
 Loewen (Louvain), Lovania 1473. 
 
 London, Londinium 1477. 
 
 Loudeac, Loudeacum 1484, 
 
 Louvain, Lovania 1473. 
 
 Llibeck, Lubeca, Marionis Altera 1498. 
 
 Lund, Londinium Gothorum 1663. 
 
 Luneburg, Lunehurgum 1493. 
 
 Lyons (Lyon), Lugdunum 1473. 
 
 Madrid, Madritum 1500. 
 
 Magdeburg, Magdehurgum 1488. 
 
 Mainz. See Mayence. 
 
 Manila, Manilla 1590. 
 
 Mayence, Mogonliacum 1448. 
 
 Meissen, Misna 1508. 
 
 Memmingen, Memminga 1482. 
 
 Merseburg, Marsiburgum 1473. 
 
 Messina, Messina 1473- 
 
 Milan, Mediolanum 1469. 
 
 Modena, Mutina 1480. 
 
 MoMleff, Mohilavia 1617. 
 
 Monserrate (Nuestra Seiiora de), Monas- 
 
 terium B. Maria de Monserrate, Mens 
 
 Serratus 1499. 
 Monte Reale, tI/owj Regalis 1472 
 Monterey, yl/b«j Regalis 1494. 
 Moscow, Moscovia iSS3- 
 Munchen. See Munich. 
 Munich (Munchen), Monachium 1482. 
 MUnster, Monasterium 1485. 
 Murcia, Murcia 1487. 
 
 Nantes, Namnetus Partus 1493. 
 
 Naples, Neapolis 1472. 
 
 Xeufchatel, Neoburgum 1530- 
 
 New London, Novum Londinium 1709. 
 
 New York, Novum Ehoracum 1693. 
 
 Nimeguen, Noviomagus 1479. 
 
 Nurenberg (Niirnberg), Norimberga 1470. 
 
 Odense, Othania 1482. 
 Offenburg, Offenburgum 1494. 
 Oppenheim, Bancona 1494. 
 Orleans, Am-elia 1490. 
 
 .Palermo, Panormu i^tj. 
 Pampelona, Pampalona 1489. 
 Paris, Pamzwj' 1470. 
 Parma, Parma 1473. 
 Passau, Bacodurum 1482. 
 Pavia, Ticinum 1476. 
 Perugia, Perusia 1475. 
 Philadelphia, Philadelphia 1686. 
 Piacenza, Piacentia 1475. 
 Poitiers, Limonum 1479. 
 Posen, Posnania 1577. 
 Provins, Pri/vinum 1496. 
 Puebla de Navia, /fewj Nevia, Timalinum 
 1612. 
 
 Ratisbon, Augusta Tiberii, Emmerani Coe- 
 
 nob., Hyctopolis ad Istrum 1490. 
 Regensburg. See Ratisbon. 
 Reggio, Rhegium 1498. 
 Rennes, Redones 1484. 
 Reutlingen, Ruotlinga 1500. 
 Ribe, 7^z)>a 1508. 
 Romanoff, Romanovia 16 19. 
 Rome, /^tfwa 1467-8. 
 Rbskyld, i2o« Pontes 1 5 34. 
 Rostock, Rostochium 1496. 
 Rouen, Rotomagus 1487. 
 
 Salamanca, Salmantica 1485. 
 Saragossa(Zaragoza), Casaraugusta 1475. 
 Schaffhausen, Probaiopolis 1577. 
 Schiedam, Schiedamum 1483. 
 Schleswig, Slesvicum 1485. 
 Schoenhooven, Schoonhovia 1495. 
 Seville, Hispalis 1480. 
 Smyrna, Smyrna 1658. 
 Speier. See 6)>zr«. 
 Spire, Augusta Nemetum i^l"]. 
 
374 
 
 Topographical Index. 
 
 St. Gall, Fanum St. Galli, Galli Fanwn 
 
 '577- 
 St. Petersburg, PettvpoHs i-]io. 
 
 Stockholm, Holmia 1474. 
 
 Strasburg, Argentoratum 1466. 
 
 Stuttgart, Stutgardia i486. 
 
 Subiaco, Sublacense Ccenoh. 1464. 
 
 Szegedin, Szegedinum 1567. 
 
 Szigetb (TJj-Szigeth-Sarvar), Sarvarinum 
 
 '539- 
 
 Tavistock, Monasterium Tavistock 1525. 
 Toledo, Toletum i486. 
 Tolosa, Tolas a 1480. 
 Toulouse, Tolosa Tectosagum 1479. 
 Trent (Trient), Tridentum 1475.' 
 Troy (Troyes), Treca 1483. 
 Tschernigow, Tzernigovia 1493. 
 Tubingen, TuUnga 1498. 
 Tyrnau, Termbum 1578. 
 
 trim, CTwa 1470. 
 
 TJpsala, Upsalia 15 10. 
 
 Utrecht, Trajedum. Inferius i\'J},- 
 
 Valencia, Valentia 1474. 
 Valladolid, /'zVz/m 1493 
 Venice, Venetia 1469. 
 Verona, Verona 1470. 
 Viborg, Viburgus 1528. 
 Vienna, Vmdabona 1482. 
 
 Wadstenia, Monasterium Wadstenense 1495. 
 Warsaw, Varsavia 1580. 
 Westeras, ^;TCza 1621. 
 Wilna, Fz7;za 1525. 
 Winchester, F««/a 1545. 
 Winterberg, Vinterberga 1484. 
 Worcester, Brangonia, Vigornia 1548. 
 Wlirzburg, Herbipolis 1479. 
 
 York, Eboracuni. 
 
 Zamora, Ocellodurum, Sentice 1482. 
 Zamose, Zamoscium 1557. 
 Zurich, Tigurum 1504. 
 Zwolle, Zwolla 1479. 
 
GENERAL INDEX. 
 
 Abbreviations, 330, 337. 
 
 Adolph of Nassau, 36. 
 
 iElius Donatus, 8. 
 
 iEsop's Fables, first Dutch translation, 1485, 
 
 82. 
 Alciati's Emblems, 143. 
 Aiding, Henry, printer in Sicily, 44. 
 Aldus Manutius, 66, 108, 113, 252, 271. 
 America, North, printing in, 228. 
 Ames' Typograph. Antiqtiities, 50. 
 Amman, J est, 251. 
 Andrea, John, 112, 113. 
 Angouleme, Jean d', 309. 
 Anne de Bretagne, 268. 
 Anopistographs, printed on one side only, 18. 
 Antwerp, early printing at, 155. 
 Apuleius' L Amour de Cupidon etde Psyche, 
 
 140. 
 Ars Memorandi, block book, 13, 
 Ars Moriendi, block book, 10. 
 Art au Morier, block book, 12. 
 Artistic get-up, 341. 
 Asola, Andrew (A. Torresani), 66. 
 Astor Library, 320. 
 Audran, C, engraver, 166. 
 Author's name, 326. 
 
 Bacon's Advancement of Learning, 153. 
 
 Badier, Florimond, binder, 295. 
 
 Badius, Josse, of Asch, printer in Paris, 138, 
 257. 
 
 Balbus', John, Catholicon, printed by Guten- 
 berg, 33. 
 
 Baldini, Baccio, designs for early Italian 
 books, 67. 
 
 Ballard, Robert, printer for music, 152, 196. 
 
 Barbier, Jean, printer, 53. 
 
 Barbin, Claude, publisher, 187. 
 
 Barbou, bookseller of Paris, 196, 208. 
 Barker, Robert, binder, 304. 
 
 „ Robert, first authorized version of 
 the Bible, 192. 
 Barnes, Dame Juliana, Treatyses perteyn- 
 
 ynge to Fyshing, 52. 
 Bartolozzi, engraver, 219. 
 Baskerville, John, printer of Birmingham, 
 
 218, 254. 
 Batarde la Grosse, 47. 
 Bechtermunze, Henry, pupil of Gutenberg, 
 
 34 ; his Vocabularium, 44. 
 Bedford, Francis, binder, 303. 
 Belfort, Andrew, 44. 
 Bergman de Olpe, printer of Seb. Brandt's 
 
 Ship of Fools, 79. 
 Bernard, Le Petit, or Bernard Solomon, 
 
 designer, 145. 
 Berthelet, Thomas, binder, 303. 
 Bewick, Thomas, engraver, 224. 
 Beyamus, C., of Savigliano, 339. 
 Beza, Theodore, 136. 
 
 Bible, the first English in Roman type, 117. 
 „ the Gutenberg, 23. 
 „ the Mayence of 1462, 35. 
 ,, the thirty-six line, by A. Pfister, 34. 
 Biblia Pauperum., block book, lo. 
 Bibliographical directions, 342. 
 Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, 319. 
 Bignon, Abbe, 312. 
 Bill of type, 255. 
 
 Bindings, descriptions of, 262, 347. 
 Biziaux, binder, 302. 
 Blades, W., 48- 
 Blake, William, 221. 
 Blanc, Charles, 241. 
 Block books, the, 10. 
 Boccaccio's Decameron, lo\., 1620, 191. 
 
376 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Bodley, Sir Thomas, 317. 
 
 Bodoni, printer, 254. 
 
 Boner's, Ulrich,i='a5/«j, by A. Pfister, 1461,62. 
 
 Bonhomme, printer at Lyons, 145. 
 
 Book trade of the fifteenth century, 42. 
 
 Books of Hours, 85. 
 
 Bookworms, 268. 
 
 Borel, Petrus, 238. 
 
 Borromeo, Cardinal, 319. 
 
 Bosse, Abraham, engraver, 177. 
 
 Bostgaard, Fred, 312. 
 
 Boston Library, 320. 
 
 Botticelh, Sandro, plates to Dante, 67. 
 
 Boucher, Francois, designer, 198. 
 
 Bourdichon, Jean, designer, 83. 
 
 Boydell's, Alderman, Shakespeare, 219. 
 
 Boyet, binder, 302. 
 
 Bradstreet, binder, 303. 
 
 Brandt's, Seb., Shyp of Folys, by Pynson, 118. 
 
 Brandt's, Sebastian, Skip of Fools, by Berg- 
 man de OIpe, 79. 
 
 Breydenbach's Peregrinations en Terre 
 Sainte, printed by Topie de Pymont, 150. 
 
 British Museum, 314, 317. 
 
 Brocard, Andrew, bookseller, 103. 
 
 Brothers, The, of Common Life, 45, 338. 
 
 Brown, H. K., designer, 245. 
 
 Brunei's Manual, 325. 
 
 Bucking, Arnold, printer at Rome, 70. 
 Bude, Guillaume, 309. 
 Buon, Nicholas, bookseller, 165, 169. 
 Butler's Hudibras, 1663, 193. 
 
 Csesaris, Peter, Paris printer, 82. 
 
 Caldecott, Randolph, designer, 246. 
 
 Callot, Jacques, engraver, 175. 
 
 Campbell's Annales, 325. 
 
 Cape, binder, 303. 
 
 Cardon, Horace, publisher, 166. 
 
 Caron, Antoine, engraver, 164. 
 
 Cars, Laurent, engraver, 198. 
 
 Caslon, William, type-founder, 218, 254. 
 
 Catch-words, 333. 
 
 Catherine de Medici, 286. 
 
 Catholicon, The, printed by Gutenberg, 33. 
 
 Cawood, John, printer, 118. 
 
 Caxton, William, first English printer, 47-50, 
 
 253- 
 Cazin, publisher, 209. 
 
 Chaillot, Robin, publisher, 99. 
 
 Chamfleury, by G. Tory, 131. 
 
 Chamot, binder, 302. 
 
 Champavert, Contes Immoreaux, 238. 
 
 Chapman's //(7»z^r, 161 1, 191. 
 
 Chappuis, Claude, bookseller to Francis L, 
 
 136. 
 Charies V., 308. 
 Charles VIL, 53. 
 Charles VIII., 123, 308. 
 Charles IX., 288, 310. 
 
 Chaucer, printed by T. Godfray, 1532, 118. 
 Chauveau, Francois, engraver, 188. 
 Chevalier, Peter, publisher of the Metanea- 
 
 logie, 164. 
 Chicago Library, 320. 
 
 Chodowiecki, D. N., designer; 216. 
 
 Choffard, engraver, 190, 207. 
 
 Chronicle of Aragoti, The, 1523, 116. 
 
 Cicero, De Offlciis, 4to, by Fust and 
 Schoeffer, 1465, 38. 
 
 Claude's Liber Veritatis, 1777, 219. 
 
 Clement, Nicolas, 312. 
 
 Clennell, Luke, engraver, 224, 244. 
 
 Clouet, Francois, 147, 153. 
 
 Clousier, royal printer, 227. 
 
 Cochin, vignettist, 200. 
 
 Cohn, Albert, bookseller of Berhn, 29, 351. 
 
 Coignard, bookseller, 196. 
 
 Colard Mansion, printer at Bruges, 46, 81. 
 
 Colbert, 288, 312. 
 
 Colines, Simon de, printer at Paris, 1527, 
 139, 131. 
 
 Cologne Chronicle, The, 1499, 24, 26, 73. 
 
 Common Prayer Book (the first), known as 
 Edward VI.'s, 119. 
 
 Colonna's, Francesco, Poliphili's Hypnero- 
 tomachia, 70. 
 
 Colophon, the, 327. 
 
 Collation, the, 332. 
 
 Collections according to place and printer, 
 
 363- 
 Combe's Dr. Syntax's Three Tours, 245. 
 Commin, Vincent, bookseller in Paris, 98. 
 Condition of the copy, 349. 
 Congress Library of Washington, 320. 
 Constitutiones of Pope Clement V., 35. 
 Cornelis de la Haye, 147. 
 Coster, Laurent, 9. 
 
General Index. 
 
 377 
 
 Cotton, Sir Robert, 318. 
 
 Cousin, Jean, designer, 145, 148, 151. 
 
 Coverdale's English Bible, 118. 
 
 Cramoisy, Sebastien, printer of Paris, 164, 
 
 174, 296. 
 Cranach, Lucas, 116, 316, 
 Cranmer's Bible, 119. 
 
 ,, Catechism, 119. 
 
 Cruikshank, George, 245. 
 Curmer, publisher of Paris, 240. 
 
 Dances of Death, The, 73, 100. 
 
 Dante, by Bonino de Boni..i, 1487, 71. 
 
 Dated and Undated Works, 355. 
 
 Dating, the, 528. 
 
 Daumier, designer, 242. 
 
 David, J. L., designer, 212, 214. 
 
 Day, John, printer, 116, 253. 
 
 De Bry, 192. 
 
 De Lormel, 211. 
 
 De Norvins, Hist, de Napoleon, illustrated 
 
 by Raffet, 242. 
 Decameron, illustrated by Gravelot, 204. 
 Delia Bella, engraver, 177. 
 De la Marche, Olivier, 82. 
 Denis de la Noue, 166. 
 Derome, binder, 301. 
 Desarques, La Manure Universelle, 177. 
 Desenne, 230. 
 Desportes, Philippe, 287. 
 Devferia, designer, 237. 
 D'Houry, 196. 
 Diana of Poitiers, 286, 309. 
 Dickens, Charles, 245. 
 Didot, Ambroise Firmin, 233. 
 
 „ family, the, 231, 254. 
 
 „ Francois, 202. 
 
 ,, Pierre Franfois, 227. 
 Diodorus Siculus, by Geoffroy Tory, 134. 
 Dolet, Etienne, 159. 
 Donatus, the, 8, 10. 
 Dorat, Les Baisers, 1770, 207. 
 Dor6, Gustave, designer, 243. 
 Doyle, Richard, 246. 
 Dritzehen, Andrew, 16. 
 ,, Nicolas, 17. 
 
 Dubochet, publisher of Paris, 239. 
 Du Cerceau, Les Plus Beaux Bastiments de 
 
 France, 151. 
 
 Dubois, Gilles, binder, 296. 
 
 Dubuisson, Pierre Paul, binder, 301. 
 
 Due d'Orleans, 195. 
 
 Duchesne, 236. 
 
 Dumesnil, Robert, 148. 
 
 Diinne, goldsmith, 17. 
 
 Duplat's relief engraving on stone, 223. 
 
 Duplessi-Bertaux, 214. 
 
 Duplessis, George, 141. 
 
 Du Pre, Galliot, 142. 
 
 ,, „ Jean, printer, 96, 105. 
 Dupuy Brothers, librarians, 311. 
 Durandus' Rationale, 34. 
 Diirer's, Albert, Apocalypse, 75, 77, 113. 
 
 ,, „ Life of the Virgin, 78. 
 
 ,, ,, Passion, 78. 
 
 Duru, binder, 303. 
 Duseuil, binder, 302. 
 Dutuit, E., Manuel de Estampes, 39. 
 
 Earlom, Richard, 219. 
 
 East India Company, 120. 
 
 Eisen, 204, 302. 
 
 Elizabeth's, Queen, Prayer Book, 116. 
 
 Elzevir, Abraham, 170. 
 
 ,, Bonaventure, 170. 
 
 „ Daniel, 172. 
 
 ,, Louis, 170. 
 Engerrand, Pierre, binder, 302. 
 Ensched6 family, the, 173. 
 Entree, I', du Roi Henri II. a Lyon, 146. 
 Erasmus' Eloge de la Folic, 142. 
 Etienne, Robert, 134, 137, 138, 253. 
 Euclid, Elements of, 1482, 65. 
 Eustace, Guillaume, 97, 125. 
 Eve, Clovis, 293. 
 
 ,, Nicholas, 290. 
 Eyck, Van, 9. 
 
 Faithorne, W., 192. 
 
 Fanti's, Sigismond, Trionfo di Fortuna, 112. 
 Fasciculus Temporum, by John Veldener, 81, 
 Fasciculus Temporum, printed by Arnold 
 
 Tlier Hoernen, 72. 
 Fermiers Gencraux, Les, 207, 209. 
 Fichet, Guillaume, 39, 56, 58, 61. 
 
 ,, Pierre, 25. 
 Finiguerra, Maso, 66. 
 Flaxman, 230. 
 
378 
 
 GENERAL Index. 
 
 Formschneiders, the, 142. 
 
 Fornazeris, J de, 166. 
 
 Foster, Birket, 246. 
 
 Foucquet, Jean, 83, 288. 
 
 Fouet, Robert, 170. 
 
 Foulis Press, Glasgow, the, 218. 
 
 Fount of type, 255. 
 
 Fournier, 254. 
 
 Fra Angelico, 64. 
 
 Francesco da Bologna, 108. 
 
 Francis I., 123, 136, 268, 281, 283, 309. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 228, 320. 
 
 Frederick II., 319. 
 
 Free Public Libraries, 321. 
 
 Frelon, 141. 
 
 Freyburger, Michael, 57, 59. 
 
 Friedberg, Peter, Mayence, 339. 
 
 Froben, Johannes, 74, 140, 253. 
 
 Froissart's Chronicles, 118. 
 
 Fuller's Worthies of England, 193. 
 
 Furne, publisher of Paris, 241. 
 
 Kuseli, 230. 
 
 Fust, John, 15, 18, 39, 260. 
 
 Gaguin, Robert, 39. 
 
 Gaguin's Compendium, 122. 
 
 Galen's De Temperamentis, 1521, 120. 
 
 Galliot du Pre, 142. 
 
 Garamond, Claude, 137, 173, 253. 
 
 Gasparin of Bergamo, Letters, 59. 
 
 Gaston de Foix, 2. 
 
 Gaultier, Leonard, 157, 164. 
 
 Gavarni, designer, 243. 
 
 Gensfleisch, John, 15. 
 
 Gerard, 230. 
 
 Gerard de Leeu, 82. 
 
 Gering, Krantz, and Freyburger, 339. 
 
 Gering, Ulrich, printer in Paris, 57, 59, 62. 
 
 GesCl, Nicholas and Dominic Dal, 112. 
 
 Gibson, John, binder, 303. 
 
 Gigoux, Jean, the younger, 238, 239. 
 
 Gilbert, Sir John, 246. 
 
 Gilles Remade, 97. 
 
 Gillot, Claude, 190, 196, 198. 
 
 Girodet, 230, 234. 
 
 Giunta, Lucantonio, iii, 113. 
 
 Glim, J., of Savigliano, 339. 
 
 Goetz, Nicholas, of Cologne, 338. 
 
 Gombauld, 169. 
 
 Gothan, B., of Lubeck, 339. 
 Gourmont, Gilles de, 127. 
 
 Jeande, 153. 
 Graesse's Tresor, 325. 
 Grafton, Richard, 119. 
 Grandes Chroniques, Les, 96. 
 Grandes Heures, Les, by V^rard, 95. 
 Grandjean, 254. 
 Grand Navire Publishing Company, the, 
 
 174- 
 Grandville, designer, 243. 
 Gravelot, H. F., engraver, 203, 219. 
 Greuter, Fred, 169. 
 Grolier, Jehan, 131, 271, 276, 308. 
 Grosse la Batarde, 47. 
 Griinenberg, John, 116. 
 Gruninger, John, of Strasburg, 339. 
 Gruuthuise, Louis de la, 283. 
 Guadagnino, John Andrea, 112. 
 Guiffrey, J. J., 296. 
 Guise, Henri de, 288. 
 Guldinbeck, Berth., of Rome, 339. 
 Gutenberg, John, 2, 15, 17, 54, 255. 
 Gutenberg's Bible, 22, 23. 
 Guy Jouvenal, 106. 
 
 Hachette, L., publisher at Paris, 243. 
 
 Hagenbach, Peter, 44. 
 
 Hahn, Ulrich, 44, 63. 
 
 Hain's Repertorium, 325. 
 
 Hakluyt's Principall , Navigations, 120. 
 
 Halle's Chronicle, 119. 
 
 Harding, S. and E., 220. 
 
 Hardouin, Gilles, 97. 
 
 Harleian Collection, 318. 
 
 Heilmann, Andrew, 16. 
 
 Heinecken, bibliographer, ,349. 
 
 Heinlein, John, 56, 58, 61. 
 
 Henri II., 280, 286, 309. 
 
 Henri III., 158, 288, 290. 
 
 Henri IV., 162, 163, 292, 310, 314. 
 
 Heures a /' Usage de Rome, 8vo, 1488, 86. 
 
 Hi6rat, Antoine, 168. 
 
 Higden's Polychronicon, 1527, i'2i. 
 
 Histoire du Costume, by Moreau, 211. 
 
 Historical notices, 351. 
 
 Hoernen, Arnold Ther, 44, 73. 
 
 Hogarth, William, 219. 
 
 Holbein's Dance of Death, 140. 
 
General Index. 
 
 379 
 
 Holbein, Hans, 75, 100. 
 
 Holinshed's Chronicles, 118. 
 
 Holl, Linhard, of Ulm, 338. 
 
 Hollar, W., 192. 
 
 Hortics Deliciarum, 169. 
 
 Houbraken, 219. 
 
 Houdard de la Motte, 196. 
 
 Hulsius, 192. 
 
 Hussner, George, of Strasburg, 339. 
 
 Hyginus' Poeticbn Astronomiciem, 65. 
 
 lamblichus, the, of the Libri collection, 276. 
 
 Illustrated Londoti News, 236. 
 
 Image makers, 5. 
 
 Imposition of pages, 255. 
 
 hnprtmerie Nationale, 138. 
 
 Incunabula, 8, 321. 
 
 Isaac, Jasper, 164, 166. 
 
 Isenburg, Diether von, 36. 
 
 Jackson, J., engraver, 244. 
 
 Jacob, bibliophile, 238. 
 
 Jenson, Nicolas, 54, 65, 66, 113, 252, 261. 
 
 Johannot, the brothers, 237. 
 
 Johannot, Tony, 225. 
 
 Joly, Marc Antoine, 199. 
 
 Jombert, printer, 201. 
 
 Juda, Leon de, 139. 
 
 Juif, Gerard, 150. 
 
 Junius, Hadrian, 8, 9, 15. 
 
 Juste, Frangois, 125. 
 
 Kalthoeber, C, binder, 304. 
 
 Kaulbach, W. von, 248. 
 
 Kempis, Thomas a, De Imitatione, by J. and 
 
 D. Elzevir, 172. 
 Kerver, Jacques, 139. 
 
 ,, Thielman, 96, 122. 
 Koberger, Antony, 44, 74. 
 Koelhof, first printer to use signatures, 44. 
 Koenig, Fr., inventor of steam press, 257. 
 Krantz, Martin, 57, 60. 
 Kyngston, John, 119. 
 
 Labarre, Jean de, 308. 
 Lacroix, Paul, 238. 
 Laferte, binder, 302. 
 Lafontaine, Les Conies, 207. 
 Lahnre, printer, Paris, 244. 
 
 Lallemant, Jean, 272, 280. 
 
 l^3.n^a.nd!s Pierce Plowmati, 1550, 118. 
 
 Langlois, Francois, 176. 
 
 Lanweryn, Mark, 273. 
 
 Lascaris' Greek Grammar, 1494, 109. 
 
 La Tour, binder, 296. 
 
 Le Bon, Jean, 308. 
 
 Le Brun, painter, 184. 
 
 Le Challeux, Jacques, 153. 
 
 Le Fevre, Malheurs de Troye, 81. 
 
 Le Gascon, binder, 292, 294. 
 
 Le Maire's, Jean, Illustrations de la Gaule, 
 
 122. 
 Le Rouge's La Mer des Histoires, 84. 
 Le Roy, Adrien, 152. 
 Le Royer, Jean, 149. 
 Leb6, Guillaume, 156, 254. 
 Leclerc, Sebastien, 185. 
 Leech, John, 246. 
 Lemonnier, binder, 302. , 
 Lenoir, Philippe, 284. 
 Lenox Library, 320. 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 113. 
 ■ LSonord, 196. 
 Lepautre, engraver, 187. 
 Leroy, Guillaume, 106. 
 Lesne, binder, 303. 
 Letters of indulgence, 20. 
 Lettou, John, 51. 
 Levasseur, binder, 296. 
 Leu, Thomas de, 157, 163. 
 Lewis, Charles, binder, 304. 
 Leyden Library, 316. 
 Libraries, 307. 
 Linschoten, 192. 
 Lipsius, Justus, 155. 
 
 Liv7-e de Perspective, by Jean Cousin, 148. 
 Livre de Portraitu7-e, by Jean Cousin, 149,. 
 
 151. 
 Loggan, David, 317. 
 Lorenzo, Nicholas di, 67. 
 Lorris, Guillaume de, 106. 
 Lortic, binder, 303. 
 Loslein, Peter, 44. 
 Louis XL, 54, 123- 
 Louis XII., 108, 123, 268, 282. 
 Louis XIII., 169, 175, 163, 165, 292. 
 Louis XIV., 162, 182, 296, 298. 
 Louis XV., 209, 226, 314- 
 
380 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Louis XVI., 209, 227. 
 Louis XVIIL, 227. 
 Louisa of Lorraine, 290. 
 Louvre editions, 231. 
 Luther, Martin, 21. 
 Lutzelburger, Hans, 141. 
 
 Macault, Antoine, 134. 
 
 Mace at Caen, 155. 
 
 Machliuia, William, 51. 
 
 Magasin Pittoresque, 236. 
 
 Mainyal, George, 62. 
 
 Maioli, Thomas, 272, 308. 
 
 Majuscules, 337. 
 
 Manipulus Curatorum, 61. 
 
 Mansfeldt, Count, 288. 
 
 Mansion, Colard, printer at Bruges, 46, 81, 
 
 253- 
 Manutius, Aldus, 66, 108, 113, 252, 271. 
 Marchant's, Guyot, Dance of Death, 1485, 
 
 loi, 284. 
 Marius-Michell, binder, 303. 
 Marnef, Geoffroy de, 122. 
 
 ,, Jeanne de, 140. 
 Martyr's, Peter, Decades of the New World, 
 
 120. 
 Master, the, a la Navette, 81. 
 Matthews, binder, 303. 
 Matthias van der Goes, 82. 
 Mayer, Henry, 62. 
 Mazarin, Due de, 311. 
 Mazarine Library, 311. 
 Mearne, Samuel, binder, 304. 
 Medemblick, John, of Cologne, 338. 
 Medici, Marie de, 162. 
 „ Catherine de, 310. 
 ,, Cosmo de, 319. 
 Meissonier, 240. 
 Mellan, Claude, 166. 
 Mentelin, John, of Strasburg, 339. 
 Menzel, Adolph, 248. 
 Mer, la, des Histoires, 1488, 84, 122. 
 Merian, engraver, 316. 
 Merius, binder, 296. 
 Meslier, Denis, 98. 
 Meteren, Van, 118. 
 Method of collecting books, the, 352. 
 Metlinger at Dijon, 62. 
 Miegen, 168. 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, 193. 
 
 Miniatures, 345. 
 
 Minuscules, 337. 
 
 Mirror makers, 16. 
 
 Misprints, 330. 
 
 Missale Herbipolense, 1479, 81 
 
 Moliere CEuvres, by Prault, 199. 
 
 Montenay's, Georgette de, Emblemes, 
 
 151. 
 Monteregio, John de, Calendario, 65. 
 Montmorency, Anne de, 287. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 118. 
 Moreau, the younger, 204, 209. 
 Moretus, Jean, 157. 
 Mosaic binding, 299. 
 Mospach, Josse Ott von, 20. 
 Movable type, 9. 
 Moxon, publisher, 254. 
 M.xi.sx\is' Hero and Leander, 1494, 108. 
 Muther's Deutsche Bilcherillustration, ^42. 
 Mystere de la Passion, 96. 
 
 Napoleonic era, 234. 
 
 National Library, Florence, 319. 
 
 „ „ Paris, 316. 
 
 Nautonnier, Guillaume de, 167. 
 Necker, Jost, 114. 
 Nemeitz, 312. 
 Nesle, Marquis de, 288. 
 Neumeister, John, 44, 62. 
 Nevers, Due de, 153, 311. 
 Nicholas V., Pope, 20. 
 Nivelle, Michel, 169, 174. 
 Norton, John, binder, 304. 
 Notary, Julian, 53. 
 Number of lines in a page, 336. 
 Nuremberg Chronicle, 77, 331. 
 
 Olivier de la Marche, 82. 
 Os, Peter van, 81. 
 Oswen, John, 121. 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses, 
 Leclerc, 187. 
 
 by Sebastien 
 
 Pacioli, Fra Luca, De Divina Proporiione, 
 
 II3- 
 Pagination, 333. 
 Palmart, Lambert, 46. 
 Panel-stamps, 265. 
 
General Index. 
 
 381 
 
 Pannartz and Sweynheim, printers at Rome, 
 
 44. 
 Panzer, Annalen, yit^. 
 Paper-making, 259. 
 Papillon, Jean, 222. 
 
 ,, Jean Baptiste, 222. 
 
 Paris, Jean de, 83. 
 
 ,, Libraries, 315. 
 
 ,, Missal, the, 97. 
 Pasdeloup, binder, 300. 
 Pasquier-Bonhomme, 83. 
 Pass, Crispin, 169. 
 Passe-Partout, the, 158. 
 Passionate Christi, of Lucas Cranach, 115. 
 Pasti, Matteo, 64. 
 
 Pastissier Frangois, by the Elzevirs, 172. 
 Patisson, Mamert, 151. 
 Paulin, publisher, 238. 
 Payne, Roger, binder, 304. 
 Perr^al, Jean, 83, 133. 
 Perrissin, Jean, 152. 
 Peter of Cremona's Dante, 1491, 70. 
 Peter van Os, 81. 
 Petit, Jean, 122, 127. 
 Petrarch's Works, 1501, 109. 
 Pfennigthurm, the, of Strasburg, 16. 
 Pfinzing, Melchior, 114. 
 Pfister, Albert, 34, 37, 62, 339. 
 Pbihppe II., 155. 
 PhiUppe, Laurent, 99. 
 Philippe le Noir, 122. 
 " Phiz" (H. K. Browne), 245. 
 Photography as means of illustration, 
 
 243. 
 Picart, Bernard, 190. 
 
 „ Jean, 168. 
 Piccini, J., 168. 
 Pico de la Mirandola, loS. 
 Pictor, Bernard, 44. 
 
 „ Loslein and Ratdolt, 65. 
 Pigorreau, gilder, 292. 
 Pigouchet, Philippe, 83, 85. 
 Plantin, Christopher, 116, 154, 253- 
 Platen, the, of the press, 257. 
 Playing cards, 5. 
 Pleydenwurff, William, 75. 
 V\w\'a.€^s Manege Royat, 169. 
 Poliphilis Hypnerotomachia, 70. 
 PoUajuolo, 68. 
 
 Polyglot Bible by C. Plantin, 156. 
 
 „ byVitr6, 181. 
 Pompadour, M. de, 202, 288. 
 Ponte, Gotardo de, 113. 
 Portese, Agostino da, 112. 
 Portrait, the, in the book, 104. 
 Powell, Humphrey, 119. 
 Pratt, binder, 303. 
 Preller, Fried, 246, 248. 
 Price of rare books, 350. 
 Primaticcio, 143. 
 Printer's ink, 340. 
 
 marks, 103, 340. 
 Promptuaire des Medaitles, 146. 
 Prud'hon, 230. 
 Prynne, William, 192. 
 Prys, John, of Strasburg, 339. 
 Psalter, second edition of i459i 3i- 
 
 the, of 1457, 340, 345- 
 Ptolemy's Cosmographia, 1478, 70. 
 Punctuation, 337. 
 Purchas : his Pilgrimes, 192. 
 Pymont, Topie de, 150. 
 Pynson, Richard, 52, 116, 118, 253. 
 
 Quaritch, Bernard, bookseller of London, 24, 
 
 351- 
 Quentel, Henry, of Cologne, 339. 
 
 Racine, Louvre edition, 231. 
 
 Raffet, designer, 241. 
 
 Rahmenschneiders, the, 82. 
 
 Raoul le Fevre, Histoires de Troyes, 56. 
 
 Rare books, 362. 
 
 Ratdolt, Erhard, 44, 65, 113, 341- 
 
 Rationarium Evangclistarum, 14. 
 
 Ravenna, Peter of, 112. 
 
 Remade, Gilles, 97. 
 
 Rembold, Berthold, 62. 
 
 Reneeof Ferrara, 137. 
 
 Retzsch, Moritz, designer, 246. 
 
 Reyser, Michael, of Eichstadt, 339. 
 
 Richter, Ludwig, designer, 247. 
 
 Riviere, binder, 303. 
 
 Roffet, Pierre, 284- 
 
 Rogers' Poems, 244. 
 
 Roman, Le, de la Rose, 105. 
 
 Rood, Theodoricus, first printer at Oxford, 
 
 52. 
 
382 
 
 General Index. 
 
 Rossi, Lorenzo, St. Jerome, 1497, 102. 
 Rosso, 143. 
 
 Roville, printer at Lyons, 145, 146. 
 Rowlandson, Thomas, 244. 
 Royal Library, Berlin, 319. 
 Paris, 309. 
 Royal Printing House, Paris, 165, 175, 225. 
 Rubens, Peter Paul, 158. 
 Rubrics, 345, 347- 
 Ruette, binder, 297. 
 Ruppel, Berthold, 44. 
 
 Sadeler, Jean, 158. 
 
 Saint-Aubin, designer, 200, 209. 
 
 Saint-Pierre, Bernardin da, 234. 
 
 St. Albans, Boke of, <,2. 
 
 St. Christopher, 1423, xylographic block, 4, 
 
 349- 
 St.Gelais, Octavian Ae,Le Vergier d' Honneur, 
 
 121. 
 St. Jerome, Letters, 1488, 66. 
 Salisbury Primer, 119. 
 Salomon, Bernard, 145. 
 Sanlecques, Jacques, 173, 254. 
 Sauval, 294. 
 Savary de Breves, 181. 
 Saxton's Atlas, 1579, 121. 
 Scaliger, Joseph, 317. 
 Scarron's Works, 177. 
 Schaffler, John, of Ulm, 339. 
 Schatzbehalter, the, 1491, 75. 
 Schaufelin, Hans Leonard, 114. 
 Schedel's, Dr. Hartmann, Nuremberg 
 
 Chronicle, Jj. 
 Schnorr von Carolsfeld, designer, 247. 
 Schoeffer, Peter, 19, 39, 56. 
 
 „ Ivo, 168. 
 Schoepflin, 16. 
 Schongauer, Martin, 14. 
 Schonsperger, Hans, 114. 
 Schwind, Moritz von, designer, 246. 
 Seguier, Chancellor, 297. 
 Semblancay, 272, 280. 
 Seneca of Toledo, 15, 10, 116. 
 Servetus, 160. 
 Sessa, Melchior, 112. 
 Seyssel, Claude de, 122. 
 Sforza, 144, 308. 
 Shakespeare, Boydell's edition, 1791, 219. 
 
 Shakespeare, quarto edition, 119. 
 
 Shakespeare's Works, by Jaggard and 
 Blount, 1623, 191. 
 
 Ship of Fools, 79. 
 
 Siberch, John, printer at Cambridge, 121. 
 
 SiAxiey's Arcadia, 1590, 118. 
 
 Signatures, 333. 
 
 Signs-manual, 3. 
 
 Singleton, Hugh, 119. 
 
 Size, the, 329. 
 I Sloane, Sir Hans.founder of British Museum, 
 
 50. 
 j Smirke, Robert, 220, 317. 
 
 Songe de Poliphile, Le, 140. 
 
 South Kensington Museum Art Library, 318. 
 
 Spacing, the, 335. 
 
 Speculum Hutn. Salvationis, 7, 9. 
 
 Spenser's Faerie Queene, 1590, 118. 
 
 Spiegelmachers, 16. 
 
 Spiess, Weigand, 34. 
 
 Spindeler, Nicolas, 44. 
 
 Spira, Johannes de, 44, 339. 
 ,, Vendelin de, 44. 
 
 Stanhope Press, the, 257. 
 
 Stationers' Company, the, 119. 
 
 Stol, John, 82. 
 
 Stothard, Thomas, 220, 244. 
 
 Strange, Sir Robert, 219. 
 
 Sturt's Common Prayer Book, 219. 
 
 Sublet des Noyers, 175. 
 
 Sutton, Henry, 119. 
 
 Sweynheim, Conrad, printer at Rome, 44. 
 
 Tailleurs d'images, 4. 
 
 Tallemant des Reaux, 294. 
 
 Tessier, binder, 302. 
 
 Ther Hoernen, Arnold, first printer using 
 
 Arabic numerals, 103. 
 Theiierdanck, The, 114, 115. 
 Thevet, Cosmographie Universelle, 151. 
 Thompson, John, engraver, 235, 244. 
 Thou, Christophe de, 281. 
 
 „ Jacques de, 289, 310. 
 Times, The, 227. 
 Title, the, 327, 330. 
 Todtentantz, The, 73. 
 Tooling, gold, 270. 
 Topographical index, 366. 
 Tornes, Hans de, 145. 
 
General Index. 
 
 383 
 
 Torquemada, Cardinal, 42, 63. 
 
 Torresani, Andrea, 66, 108. 
 
 Tortorel, Jacques, 152. 
 
 Tory, Geoffroy, 126, 253, 276, 278, 282. 
 
 Trautz-Bauzonnet, binder, 303. 
 
 Travies, designer, 242. 
 
 Treschel, Jean, 103, 140. 
 
 Treves, Peter of, 121. 
 
 Tritenheim, John of, 19. 
 
 Tyndall's English New Testament, 118. 
 
 Type casting, 251. 
 
 Type, forms of, 337. 
 
 Types, presses, paper, 250. 
 
 University Library, Cambridge, 318. 
 
 Valadel's editions, Petits Formats, 209. 
 
 Valdarfer, Christopher, 44. 
 
 Valla, Ehgantia Latina LingiicE, 61. 
 
 Valladier, Andre, 164. 
 
 Valturius, De Re Militari, 64. 
 
 Van der Goes, Matthias, 82. 
 
 Van Dyck, Christopher, 254. 
 
 Van Meteren, 118. 
 
 Vatican Library, 319. 
 
 Veldener, John, 81. 
 
 Vellum, editions on, 343, 362. 
 
 V6rard, Antoine, 82, 92, 284. 
 
 Vergece, Ange, 137. 
 
 Verona, John of, 64. 
 
 •Viator, Perspective, 284. 
 
 Virgil's Wo^y^j, by Aldus Manutius, 1501, 109. 
 
 Vitre, Antoine, 166, 180. 
 
 Vitritvius, by Cesariano, 113. 
 
 Vocabularium ex quo, the, 32. 
 
 VoUehoe, John of, 82. 
 
 Voragine's Golden Legend, 96, 112. 
 
 Vos, Martin de, 158. 
 
 Vostre, Simon, 82, 85, 86, 87, 284. 
 
 Vriedman, John, 150. 
 
 Vyel, Andrew, 44. 
 
 Walchius' Decas Fabulartini Generis 
 
 Walter, John, 227. 
 
 Walton's Complete Angler, 193. 
 
 Water-marks, 259, 344. 
 
 Watteau, 196. 
 
 Wechel, printer at. Paris, 145. 
 
 Wencker, 16. 
 
 Wensler, Michael, printer, 62. 
 
 Werner, Anton von, designer, 246. 
 I West, Benjamin, designer, 236. 
 I Westall, Richard, designer, 220. 
 j Westphalia, Conrad of, 46. 
 ! ,, John of, printer at Louvain, 46, 
 
 81. 
 
 Whitchurche, Edward, 119. 
 
 Wierix, engraver, 157, 164. 
 
 Winterberger, J., printer of Vienna, 63. 
 
 Woeriot, P., engraver, 128, 151. 
 
 Wohlgemuth, Michael, 75, 76. 
 
 Wolfenbiillel Library,- 316. 
 
 Worlas belonging to a particular branch of 
 literature, 3;.9. 
 
 Works illustrated with wood-cuts, 361. 
 
 Works in particular languages, 356. 
 
 Works of importance for the history of 
 printing, 360. 
 
 Works of particular countries, 357. 
 
 Works of particular periods, 358. 
 
 Works whose contents present special 
 interest, 360. 
 
 Wynkyn de Worde, 51, 52, 119. 
 
 Xylographs, 4, 10. 
 
 Zaehnsdorf, J., binder, 303. 
 
 Zainer, Gunther, of Augsburg, 72, 339. 
 
 ,, 's Book on Chess by Jacopo da 
 Cessole, 72. 
 
 „ , John, of Ulm, 338. 
 Zell, Ulrich, 25, 34, 44. 
 Zeninger, Conr., of Nurnberg, 339. 
 Zenoi, Domenic, 1 68. 
 Zonta, L. (Giunta), in. 
 Zuckermann, binder, 304. 
 Ztim Jungen at Mayence, 18. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbur