Chapter IV (2)

Panzer, alluding to Pfister as the printer only of the Fables and of the tracts contained in the volume described by Camus, says that he can scarcely believe that he had a fixed residence at Bamberg; and that those tracts most likely proceeded from the press of a travelling printer.[IV-25] Several of the early printers, who commenced on their own account, on the dispersion of Faust and Scheffer’s workmen in 1462, were accustomed to travel with their small stock of materials from one place to another; sometimes finding employment in a monastery, and sometimes taking up their temporary abode in a small town; removing to another as soon as public curiosity was satisfied, and the demand for the productions of their press began to decline. As they seldom put their names, or that of the place, to the works which they printed, it is extremely difficult to decide on the locality or the date of many old books printed in Germany. It is very likely that they were their own letter-founders, and that they themselves engraved such wood-cuts as they might require. As their object was to gain money, it is not unlikely that they might occasionally sell a portion of their types to each other;[IV-26] or to a novice who wished to begin the business, or to a learned abbot who might be desirous of establishing an amateur press within the precinct of his monastery, where copies of the Facetiæ of Poggius might be multiplied as well as the works of St. Augustine. Although it has been asserted the monks regarded with jealousy the progress of printing, as if it were likely to make knowledge too cheap, and to interfere with a part of their business as transcribers of books, such does not appear to have been the fact. In every country in Europe we find them to have been the first to encourage and promote the new art; and the annals of typography most clearly show that the greater part of the books printed within the first thirty years from the time of Gutemberg and Faust’s partnership were chiefly for the use of the monks and the secular clergy.

[Footnote IV-25: “Opuscula quæ typis mandavit typographus hic,
hactenus ignotus, ad litteraturam Teutonicam pertinent. Imprimis
Pfisterum hunc Bambergæ fixam habuisse sedem vix crediderim.
Videntur potius hi libri Teutonici monumenta transeuntis
typographi.”--Annal. Typogr. tom. i. p. 142, cited by Camus.]

[Footnote IV-26: Breitkopf, Ueber Bibliographie, S. 25. 4to.
Leipzig, 1793.]

From 1462 to 1467 there appears to have been no book printed containing wood-cuts. In the latter year Ulric Hahn, a German, printed at Rome a book entitled “Meditationes Johannis de Turrecremata,”[IV-27] which contains wood-cuts engraved in simple outline in a coarse manner. The work is in folio, and consists of thirty-four leaves of stout paper, on which the water-mark is a hunter’s horn. The number of cuts is also thirty-four; and the following--the creation of animals--is a reduced copy of the first.

[Footnote IV-27: The following is the title at length as it is
printed, in red letters, underneath the first cut: “Meditationes
Reverē dissimi patris dñi Johannis de turre cremata sacros͞ce
Romane eccl’ie cardinalis posite & depicte de ipsius mādato ī
eccl’ie ambitu Marie de Minerva. Rome.” The book is described in
Von Murr’s Memorabilia Bibliothecar. Publicar. Norimbergensium and
in Dibdin’s Ædes Althorpianæ, vol. ii. p. 273, with specimens of
the cuts.]

The remainder of the cuts are executed in a similar style; and though designed with more spirit than those contained in Pfister’s tracts, yet it can scarcely be said that they are better engraved. The following is an enumeration of the subjects. 1. The Creation, as above represented. 2. The Almighty speaking to Adam. 3. Eve taking the apple. (From No. 3 the rest of the cuts are illustrative of the New Testament or of Ecclesiastical History.) 4. The Annunciation. 5. The Nativity. 6. Circumcision of Christ. 7. Adoration of the Magi. 8. Simeon’s Benediction. 9. The Flight into Egypt. 10. Christ disputing with the Doctors in the Temple. 11. Christ baptized. 12. The Temptation in the Wilderness. 13. The keys given to Peter. 14. The Transfiguration. 15. Christ washing the Apostles’ feet. 16. The Last Supper. 17. Christ betrayed by Judas. 18. Christ led before the High Priest. 19. The Crucifixion. 20. Mater Dolorosa. 21. The Descent into Hell. 22. The Resurrection. 23. Christ appearing to his Disciples. 24. The Ascension. 25. The feast of Pentecost 26. The Host borne by a bishop. 27. The mystery of the Trinity; Abraham sees three and adores one. 28. St. Dominic extended like the “_Stam-Herr_” or first ancestor in a pedigree, and sending forth numerous branches as Popes, Cardinals, and Saints. 29. Christ appearing to St. Sixtus. 30. The Assumption of the Virgin. 31. Christ seated amidst a choir of Angels. 32. Christ seated at the Virgin’s right hand in the assembly of Saints. 33. The Office of Mass for the Dead. 34. The Last Judgment.

Zani says that those cuts were engraved by an Italian artist, but beyond his assertion there is no authority for the fact. It is most likely that they were cut by one of Hahn’s workmen, who could occasionally “turn his hand” to wood-engraving and type-founding, as well as compose and work at press; and it is most probable that Hahn’s workmen when he first established a press in Rome were Germans, and not Italians.

The second book printed in Italy with wood-cuts is the “Editio Princeps” of the treatise of R. Valturius de Re Militari, which appeared at Verona from the press of “Johannes de Verona,” son of Nicholas the surgeon, and master of the art of printing.[IV-28] This work is dedicated by the author to Sigismund Malatesta, lord of Rimini, who is styled in pompous phrase, “Splendidissimum Arminensium Regem ac Imperatorem semper invictum.” The work, however, must have been written several years before it was printed, for Baluze transcribed from a MS. dated 1463 a letter written in the name of Malatesta, and sent by the author with a copy of his work to the Sultan Mahomet II. The bearer of this letter was the painter Matteo Pasti, a friend of the author, who visited Constantinople at the Sultan’s request in order that he might paint his portrait. It is said that the cuts in this work were designed by Pasti; and it is very probable that he might make the drawings in Malatesta’s own copy, from which it is likely that the book was printed. As Valturius has mentioned Pasti as being eminently skilful in the arts of Painting, Sculpture, and _Engraving_,[IV-29] Maffei has conjectured,--and Mr. Ottley adds, “with some appearance of probability,”--that the cuts in question were executed by his hand. If such were the fact, it only could be regretted that an artist so eminent should have mis-spent his time in a manner so unworthy of his reputation; for, allowing that a considerable degree of talent is displayed in many of the designs, there is nothing in the engraving, as they are mere outlines, but what might be cut by a novice. There is not, however, the slightest reasonable ground to suppose that those engravings were cut by Matteo Pasti, for I believe that he died before printing was introduced into Italy; and it surely would be presuming beyond the verge of probability to assert that they might be engraved in anticipation of the art being introduced, and of the book being printed at some time or other, when the blocks would be all ready engraved, in a simple style of art indeed, but with a master’s hand. A master-sculptor’s hand, however, is not very easily distinguished in the mere rough-dressing of a block of sandstone, which any country mason’s apprentice might do as well. It is very questionable if Matteo Pasti was an engraver in the present sense of the word; the engraving meant by Valturius was probably that of gold and silver vessels and ornaments; but not the engraving of plates of copper or other metal for the purpose of being printed.

[Footnote IV-28: The following is a copy of the colophon:
“Johannes ex verona oriundus: Nicolai cyrurgie medici filius:
Artis impressorie magister: hunc de re militari librum
elegantissimum: litteris et figuratis signis sua in patria primus
impressit. An. MCCCCLXXII.”]

[Footnote IV-29: “Valturius speaks of Pasti in one of his letters
as being eminently skilful in the arts of Painting, Sculpture, and
Engraving.”--Ottley, Inquiry, p. 257.]

Several of those cuts occupy an entire folio page, though the greater number are of smaller size. They chiefly represent warlike engines, which display considerable mechanical skill on the part of the contriver; modes of attack and defence both by land and water, with various contrivances for passing a river which is not fordable, by means of rafts, inflated bladders, and floating bridges. In some of them inventions may be noticed which are generally ascribed to a later period: such as a boat with paddle-wheels, which are put in motion by a kind of crank; a gun with a stock, fired from the shoulder; and a bomb-shell. It has frequently been asserted that hand-guns were first introduced about the beginning of the sixteenth century, yet the figure of one in the work of Valturius makes it evident that they were known some time before. It is also likely that the drawing was made and the description written at least ten years before the book was printed. It has also been generally asserted that bomb-shells were first used by Charles VIII. of France when besieging Naples in 1495. Valturius, however, in treating of cannon, ascribes the invention to Malatesta.[IV-30] Gibbon, in chapter lxviii. of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, notices this cut of a bomb-shell. His reference is to the second edition of the work, in Italian, printed also at Verona by Bonin de Bononis in 1483, with the same cuts as the first edition in Latin.[IV-31] The two following cuts are fac-similes of the bomb-shell and the hand-gun, as represented in the edition of 1472. The figure armed with the gun,--a portion of a large cut,--is firing from a kind of floating battery; and in the original two figures armed with similar weapons are stationed immediately above him.

[Footnote IV-30: “Inventum est quoque alterum machinæ hujusce tuum
Sigismonde Panpulfe [Malatesta]: qua pilæ æneæ tormentarii
pulveris plenæ cum fungi aridi fomite urientis emittuntur.”--We
hence learn that the first bomb-shells were made of copper, and
that the fuzee was a piece of a dried fungus. As the first edition
has neither numerals nor signatures, I cannot refer to the page in
which the above passage is to be found. It is, however, opposite
to the cut in which the bomb-shell appears, and that is about the
middle of the volume.]

[Footnote IV-31: “Robert Valturio published at Verona, in 1483,
his twelve books de Re Militari, in which he first mentions the
use of bombs. By his patron Sigismond Malatesti, Prince of Rimini,
it had been addressed with a Latin epistle to Mahomet
II.”--Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. lxviii., note.]

The following fac-simile of a cut representing a man shooting with a cross-bow is the best in the book. The drawing of the figure is good, and the attitude graceful and natural. The figure, indeed, is not only the best in the work of Valturius, but is one of the best, so far as respects the drawing, that is to be met with in any book printed in the fifteenth century.

The practice of introducing wood-cuts into printed books seems to have been first generally adopted at Augsburg, where Gunther Zainer, in 1471, printed a German translation of the “Legenda Sanctorum” with figures of the saints coarsely engraved on wood. This, I believe, is the first book, after Pfister’s tracts, printed in Germany with wood-cuts and containing a date. In 1472 he printed a second volume of the same work, and an edition of the book entitled “Belial,”[IV-32] both containing wood-cuts. Several other works printed by him between 1471 and 1475 are illustrated in a similar manner. Zainer’s example was followed at Augsburg by his contemporaries John Bämler and John Schussler; and by them, and Anthony Sorg, who first began to print there about 1475, more books with wood-cuts were printed in that city previous to 1480 than at any other place within the same period. In 1477 the first German Bible with wood-cuts was printed by Sorg, who printed another edition with the same cuts and initial letters in 1480. In 1483 he printed an account of the Council of Constance held in 1431, with upwards of a thousand wood-cuts of figures and of the arms of the principal persons both lay and spiritual who attended the council. Upon this work Gebhard, in his Genealogical History of the Heritable States of the German Empire, makes the following observations:--“The first printed collection of arms is that of 1483 in the History of the Council of Constance written by Ulrich Reichenthal. To this council we are indebted accidentally for the collection. From the thirteenth century it was customary to hang up the shields of noble and honourable persons deceased in churches; and subsequently the practice was introduced of painting them upon the walls, or of placing them in the windows in stained glass. A similar custom prevailed at the Council of Constance; for every person of consideration who attended had his arms painted on the wall in front of his chamber; and thus Reichenthal, who caused those arms to be copied and engraved on wood, was enabled to give in his history the first general collection of coat-armour which had appeared; as eminent persons from all the Catholic states of Europe attended this council.”[IV-33]

[Footnote IV-32: Von Murr says that the person who engraved the
cuts for this book also engraved the cuts in a German edition of
the Speculum without date, but printed at Augsburg, and dedicated
to John [von Giltingen] abbot of the monastery of St. Ulric and
St. Afra, who was chosen to that office in 1482. Heineken supposed
that the person to whom the book was dedicated was John von
Hohenstein, but he resigned the office of abbot in 1459; and the
book was certainly not printed at that period.--See Heineken, Idée
Gén. p. 466; and Von Murr, Journal, 2 Theil, S. 145.]

[Footnote IV-33: L. A. Gebhard, Genealogische Geschichte, 1 Theil,
Vorrede, S. 11. Cited by Veith in his “Diatribe,” prefixed to
Zapf’s “Annales Typographiæ Augustanæ.”]

The practice of introducing wood-cuts became in a few years general throughout Germany. In 1473, John Zainer of Reutlingen, who is said to have been the brother of Gunther, printed an edition of Boccacio’s work “De mulieribus claris,” with wood-cuts, at Ulm. In 1474 the first edition of Werner Rolewinck de Laer’s chronicle, entitled “Fasciculus Temporum,” was printed with wood-cuts by Arnold Ther-Hoernen at Cologne; and in 1476 an edition of the same work, also with wood-cuts, was printed at Louvain by John Veldener, who previously had been a printer at Cologne. In another edition of the same work printed by Veldener at Utrecht in 1480, the first page is surrounded with a border of foliage and flowers cut on wood; and another page, about the middle of the volume, is ornamented in a similar manner. These are the earliest instances of ornamental borders from wood-blocks which I have observed. About the beginning of the sixteenth century title-pages surrounded with ornamental borders are frequent. From the name of those borders, _Rahmen_, the German wood engravers of that period are sometimes called _Rahmenschneiders_. Prosper Marchand, in his “Dictionnaire Historique,” tom. ii. p. 156, has stated that Erhard Ratdolt, a native of Augsburg, who began to print at Venice about 1475, was the first printer who introduced flowered initial letters, and vignettes--meaning by the latter term wood-cuts; but his information is scarcely correct. Wood-cuts--without reference to Pfister’s tracts, which were not known when Marchand wrote--were introduced at Augsburg six years before Ratdolt and his partners[IV-34] printed at Venice in 1476 the “Calendarium Joannis Regiomontani,” the work to which Marchand alludes. It may be true that he introduced a new kind of initial letters ornamented with flowers in this work, but much more beautiful initial letters had appeared long before in the Psalter, in the “Durandi Rationale,” and the “Donatus” printed by Faust and Scheffer. The first person who mentions Ratdolt as the inventor of “florentes litteræ,” so named from the flowers with which they are intermixed, is Maittaire, in his Annales Typographici, tom. i. part i. p. 53.

[Footnote IV-34: The following colophon to an edition of Appian
informs us that his partners were Bernard the painter and Peter
Loslein, who also acted as corrector of the press: “Impressum est
hoc opus Venetiis per Bernardū pictorem & Erhardum ratdolt de
Augusta una cum Petro Loslein de Langenzen correctore ac socio.
Laus Deo. MCCCCLXXVII.”]

In 1483 Veldener,[IV-35] as has been previously observed at page 106, printed at Culemburg an edition in small quarto of the Speculum Salvationis, with the same blocks as had been used in the earlier folio editions, which are so confidently ascribed to Lawrence Coster. In Veldener’s edition each of the large blocks, consisting of two compartments, is sawn in two in order to adapt them to a smaller page. A German translation of the Speculum, with wood-cuts, was printed at Basle, in folio, in 1476; and Jansen says that the first book printed in France with wood-cuts was an edition of the Speculum, at Lyons, in 1478; and that the second was a translation of the book named “Belial,” printed at the same place in 1482.

[Footnote IV-35: Veldener at the conclusion of a book printed by
him in 1476, containing “_Epistolares quasdam formulas_,” thus
informs the reader of his name and qualifications: “Accipito huic
artifici nomen esse magistro Johanni Veldener, cui quidem certa
manu insculpendi, celandi, intorculandi, caracterandi adsit
industria; adde et figurandi et effigiendi.” That is, his name was
John Veldener; he could engrave, could work both at press and
case, and moreover he knew something of sculpture, and could paint
a little.]

The first printed book in the English language that contains wood-cuts is the second edition of Caxton’s “Game and Playe of the Chesse,” a small folio, without date or place, but generally supposed to have been printed about 1476.[IV-36] The first edition of the same work, without cuts, was printed in 1474. On the blank leaves at the end of a copy of the first edition in the King’s Library, at the British Museum, there is written in a contemporary hand a list of the bannerets and knights[IV-37] made at the battle of “Stooke by syde newerke apon trent the xvi day of june the ii^de yer of harry the vii.” that is, in 1487. In this battle Martin Swart was killed. He commanded the Flemings, who were sent by the Duchess of Burgundy to assist Lambert Simnel. It was at the request of the duchess, who was Edward the Fourth’s sister, that Caxton translated the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,” the first book printed in the English language, and which appeared at Cologne in 1471 or 1472.

[Footnote IV-36: Heineken, Idée Gén. p. 207, erroneously states
that the first book with wood-cuts printed in England was the
Golden Legend, by Caxton, in 1483. It is probable that the second
edition of the Game of Chess preceded it by seven years, and it
certainly was printed after the Mirror of the World.]

[Footnote IV-37: The following are some of the names as they are
written: “S gilbert talbott . S John cheiny . S williā stoner .
Theis iij wer made byfore the bataile, and after the bataile were
made the same day : S^r. John of Arundell . Thomas Cooksey . John
forteskew . Edmond benyngfeld . james blount . ric . of Croffte .
Geofrey Stanley . ric . delaber . John mortymer . williā
troutbeke.” The above appear to have been created _Bannerets_, for
after them follows a list of “_Knyghtes_ made at the same
bataile.” It is likely that the owner of the volume was at the
battle, and that the names were written immediately after.]

In Dr. Dibdin’s edition of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities there is a “Description of the Pieces and Pawns” in the second edition of Caxton’s Chess; which description is said to be illustrated with facsimile wood-cuts. There are indeed fac-similes of some of the figures given, but not of the wood-cuts generally; for in almost every cut given by Dr. Dibdin the back-ground of the original is omitted. In the description of the first fac-simile there is also an error: it is said to be “the _first_ cut in the work,” while in fact it is the _second_. The following I believe to be a correct list of these first fruits of English wood-engraving.

1. An executioner with an axe cutting to pieces, on a block, the limbs of a man. On the head, which is lying on the ground, there is a crown. Birds are seen seizing and flying away with portions of the limbs. There are buildings in the distance, and three figures, one of whom is a king with a crown and sceptre, appear looking on. 2. A figure sitting at a table, with a chess-board before him, and holding one of the chess-men in his hand. This is the cut which Dr. Dibdin says is the first in the book. 3. A king and another person playing at chess. 4. The king at chess, seated on a throne. 5. The king and queen. 6. The “alphyns,” now called “bishops” in the game of chess, “in the maner of judges sittyng.” 7. The knight. 8. The “rook,” or castle, a figure on horseback wearing a hood and holding a staff in his hand. From No. 9 to No. 15 inclusive, the pawns are thus represented. 9. Labourers and workmen, the principal figure representing the first pawn, with a spade in his right hand and a cart-whip in his left. 10. The second pawn, a smith with his buttriss in the string of his apron, and a hammer in his right hand. 11. The third pawn, represented as a _clerk_, that is a writer or transcriber, in the same sense as Peter Scheffer and Ulric Zell are styled _clerici_, with his case of writing materials at his girdle, a pair of shears in one hand, and a large knife in the other. The knife, which has a large curved blade, appears more fit for a butcher’s chopper than to make or mend pens. 12. The fourth pawn, a man with a pair of scales, and having a purse at his girdle, representing “marchauntes or chaungers.” 13. The fifth pawn, a figure seated on a chair, having in his right hand a book, and in his left a sort of casket or box of ointments, representing a physician, spicer, or apothecary. 14. The sixth pawn, an innkeeper, receiving a guest. 15. The seventh pawn, a figure with a yard measure in his right hand, a bunch of keys in his left, and an open purse at his girdle, representing “customers and tolle gaderers.” 16. The eighth pawn, a figure with a sort of badge on his breast near to his right shoulder, after the manner of a nobleman’s retainer, and holding a pair of dice in his left hand, representing dice-players, messengers, and “currours,” that is “couriers.” In old authors the numerous idle retainers of the nobility are frequently represented as gamblers, swash-bucklers, and tavern-haunters.

Although there are twenty-four impressions in the volume, yet there are only sixteen subjects, as described above; the remaining eight being repetitions of the cuts numbered 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10, with two impressions of the cut No. 2, besides that towards the commencement.

The above cut is a reduced copy of the knight, No. 7; and his character is thus described: “The knyght ought to be maad al armed upon an hors in suche wise that he have 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 gauntelettes . hys hors wel broken and taught and apte to bataylle and coveryd with hys armes. When the Knyghtes been maad they ben bayned or bathed . That is the signe that they sholde lede a newe lyf and newe maners . also they wake alle the nyght in prayers and orisons unto god that he wil geve hem grace that they may gete that thyng that they may not gete by nature. The kyng or prynce gyrdeth a boute them a swerde in signe that they shold abyde and kepen hym of whom they taken their dispences and dignyte.”

The following cut of the sixth or bishop’s pawn, No. 14, “whiche is lykened to taverners and vytayllers,” is thus described in Caxton’s own words: “The sixte pawn whiche stondeth before the alphyn on the lyfte syde is made in this forme . ffor hit is a man that hath the right hond stretched out for to calle men, and holdeth in his left honde a loof of breed and a cuppe of wyn . and on his gurdel hangyng a bondel of keyes, and this resemblith the taverners hostelers and sellars of vytayl . and these ought properly to be sette to fore the alphyn as to fore a juge, for there sourdeth oft tymes amonge hem contencion noyse and stryf, which behoveth to be determyned and trayted by the alphyn which is juge of the kynge.”

The next book containing wood-cuts printed by Caxton is the “Mirrour of the World, or thymage of the same,” as he entitles it at the head of the table of contents. It is a thin folio consisting of one hundred leaves; and, in the Prologue, Caxton informs the reader that it “conteyneth in all lxvii chapitres and xxvii figures, without which it may not lightly be understāde.” He also says that he translated it from the French at the “request, desire, coste, and dispense of the honourable and worshipful man Hugh Bryce, alderman cytezeyn of London,” who intended to present the same to William, Lord Hastings, chamberlain to Edward IV, and lieutenant of the same for the town of Calais and the marches there. On the last page he again mentions Hugh Bryce and Lord Hastings, and says of his translation: “Whiche book I begun first to trāslate the second day of Janyuer the yere of our lord M.cccc.lxxx. And fynysshed the viii day of Marche the same yere, and the xxi yere of the reign of the most crysten kynge, Kynge Edward the fourthe.”[IV-38]

[Footnote IV-38: Edward IV. began to reign 4th March 1461; the
twenty-first year of his reign would consequently commence on 4th
March 1481; Caxton’s dates therefore do not agree, unless we
suppose that he reckoned the commencement of the year from 21st
March. If so, his date viii March 1480, and the xxi year of the
reign of Edward IV. would agree; and the year of Christ, according
to our present mode of reckoning, would be 1481. Dr. Dibdin
assigns to the Mirror the date 1481.--Typ. Ant. i. p. 100.]

The “xxvii figures” mentioned by Caxton, without which the work might not be easily understood, are chiefly diagrams explanatory of the principles of astronomy and dialling; but besides those twenty-seven cuts the book contains eleven more, which may be considered as illustrative rather than explanatory. The following is a list of those eleven cuts in the order in which they occur. They are less than the cuts in the “Game of Chess;” the most of them not exceeding three inches and a half by three.[IV-39]

[Footnote IV-39: Fac-similes of six of those cuts are given in Dr.
Dibdin’s edition of Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, vol.
i. p. 110-112.]

1. A school-master or “doctor,” gowned, and seated on a high-backed chair, teaching four youths who are on their knees. 2. A person seated on a low-backed chair, holding in his hand a kind of globe; astronomical instruments on a table before him. 3. Christ, or the Godhead, holding in his hand a ball and cross. 4. The creation of Eve, who appears coming out of Adam’s side.--The next cuts are figurative of the “seven arts liberal.” 5. Grammar. A teacher with a large birch-rod seated on a chair, his four pupils before him on their knees. 6. Logic. Figure bare-headed seated on a chair, and having before him a book on a kind of reading-stand, which he appears expounding to his pupils who are kneeling. 7. Rhetoric. An upright figure in a gown, to whom another, kneeling, presents a paper, from which a seal is seen depending. 8. Arithmetic. A figure seated, and having before him a tablet inscribed with numerical characters. 9. Geometry. A figure standing, with a pair of compasses in his hand, with which he seems to be drawing diagrams on a table. 10. Music. A female figure with a sheet of music in her hand, singing, and a man playing on the English flute. 11. Astronomy. Figure with a kind of quadrant in his hand, who seems to be taking an observation.--An idea may be formed of the manner in which those cuts are engraved from the fac-simile on the next page of No. 10, “Music.”

There are wood-cuts in the Golden Legend, 1483; the Fables of Esop, 1484; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and other books printed by Caxton; but it is unnecessary either to enumerate them or to give specimens, as they are all executed in the same rude manner as the cuts in the Book of Chess and the Mirror of the World. In the Book of Hunting and Hawking printed at St. Albans, 1486, there are rude wood-cuts; as also in a second and enlarged edition of the same book printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton’s successor, at Westminster in 1496. The most considerable wood-cut printed in England previous to 1500 is, so far as regards the design, a representation of the Crucifixion at the end of the Golden Legend printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1493.[IV-40] In this cut, neither of the thieves on each side of Christ appears to be nailed to the cross. The arms of the thief on the right of Christ hang behind, and are bound to the transverse piece of the cross, which passes underneath his shoulders. His feet are neither bound nor nailed to the cross. The feet of the thief to the left of Christ are tied to the upright piece of the cross, to which his hands are also bound, his shoulders resting upon the top, and his face turned upward towards the sky. To the left is seen the Virgin,--who has fallen down,--supported by St. John. In the back-ground to the right, the artist, like several others of that period, has represented Christ bearing his cross.

Dr. Dibdin, at page 8 of the “Disquisition on the Early State of Engraving and Ornamental Printing in Great Britain,” prefixed to Ames’s and Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities, makes the following observations on this cut: “The ‘Crucifixion’ at the end of the ‘Golden Legend’ of 1493, which Wynkyn de Worde has so frequently subjoined to his religious pieces, is, unquestionably, the effort of some ingenious foreign artist. It is not very improbable that Rubens had a recollection of one of the thieves, twisted, from convulsive agony, round the top of the cross, when he executed his celebrated picture of the same subject.”[IV-41] In De Worde’s cut, however, it is to be remarked that the contorted attitude of both the thieves results rather from the manner in which they are bound to the cross, than from the convulsions of agony.

[Footnote IV-40: A large flowered letter, a T, cut on wood, occurs
on the same page as the Crucifixion.]

[Footnote IV-41: In a note upon this passage Dr. Dibdin gives the
following extract from Sir Joshua Reynolds. “To give animation to
this subject, Rubens has chosen the point of time when an
executioner is piercing the side of Christ, while another with a
bar of iron is breaking the limbs of one of the malefactors, who
in his convulsive agony, which his body admirably expresses, has
torn one of his feet from the tree to which it was nailed. The
expression in the action of the figure is wonderful.”]

At page 7 of the same Disquisition it is said that the figures in the Game of Chess, the Mirror of the World, and other works printed by Caxton “are, in all probability, not the genuine productions of this country; and may be traced to books of an earlier date printed abroad, from which they were often borrowed without acknowledgment or the least regard to the work in which they again appeared. Caxton, however, has judiciously taken one of the prints from the ‘Biblia Pauperum’ to introduce in his ‘Life of Christ.’ The cuts for his second edition of ‘Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’ may perhaps safely be considered as the genuine invention and execution of a British artist.”

Although I am well aware that the printers of the fifteenth century were accustomed to copy without acknowledgment the cuts which appeared in each other’s books, and though I think it likely that Caxton might occasionally resort to the same practice, yet I am decidedly of opinion that the cuts in the “Game of Chess” and the “Mirror of the World” were designed and engraved in this country. Caxton’s Game of Chess is certainly the first book of the kind which appeared with wood-cuts in any country; and I am further of opinion that in no book printed previous to 1481 will the presumed originals of the eleven principal cuts in the Mirror of the World be found. Before we are required to believe that the cuts in those two books were copied from similar designs by some foreign artist, we ought to be informed in what work such originals are to be found. If there be any merit in a first design, however rude, it is but just to assign it to him who first employs the unknown artist and makes his productions known. Caxton’s claims to the merit of “illustrating” the Game of Chess and the Mirror of the World with wood-cuts from original designs, I conceive to be indisputable.

Dr. Dibdin, in a long note at pages 33, 34, and 35 of the Typographical Antiquities, gives a confused account of the earliest editions of books on chess. He mentions as the first, a Latin edition--supposed by Santander to be the work of Jacobus de Cessolis--in folio, printed about the year 1473, by Ketelaer and Leempt. In this edition, however, there are no cuts, and the date is only conjectural. He says that two editions of the work of Jacobus de Cessolis on the Morality of Chess, in German and Italian, with wood-cuts, were printed, without date, in the fifteenth century, and he adds: “Whether Caxton borrowed the cuts in his second edition from those in the 8vo. German edition without date, or from this latter Italian one, I am not able to ascertain, having seen neither.” He seems satisfied that Caxton had _borrowed_ the cuts in his book of chess, though he is at a loss to discover the party who might have them to _lend_. Had he even seen the two editions which he mentions, he could not have known whether Caxton had borrowed his cuts from them or not until he had ascertained that they were printed previously to the English edition. There is a German edition of Jacobus de Cessolis, in folio, with wood-cuts supposed to be printed in 1477, at Augsburg, by Gunther Zainer, but both date and printer’s name are conjectural. The first German edition of this work with wood-cuts, and having a positive date, I believe to be that printed at Strasburg by Henry Knoblochzer in 1483. Until a work on chess shall be produced of an earlier date than that ascribed to Caxton’s, and containing similar wood-cuts, I shall continue to believe that the wood-cuts in the second English edition of the “Game and Playe of the Chesse” were both designed and executed by an English artist; and I protest against bibliographers going a-begging with wood-cuts found in old English books, and ascribing them to foreign artists, before they have taken the slightest pains to ascertain whether such cuts were executed in England or not.

The wood-cuts in the Game of Chess and the Mirror of the World are equally as good as the wood-cuts which are to be found in books printed abroad about the same period. They are even decidedly better than those in Anthony Sorg’s German Bible, Augsburg, 1480, or those in Veldener’s edition of the Fasciculus Temporum, printed at Utrecht in the same year.

It has been supposed that most of the wood-cuts which appear in books printed by Caxton and De Worde were executed abroad; on the presumption that there were at that period no professed wood engravers in England. Although I am inclined to believe that within the fifteenth century there were no persons in this country who practised wood engraving as a distinct profession, yet it by no means follows from such an admission that Caxton’s and De Worde’s cuts must have been engraved by foreign artists. The manner in which they are executed is so coarse that they might be cut by any person who could handle a graver. Looking at them merely as specimens of wood engraving, they are not generally superior to the practice-blocks cut by a modern wood-engraver’s apprentice within the first month of his noviciate. I conceive that there would be no greater difficulty in finding a person capable of engraving them than there would be in finding the pieces of wood on which they were to be executed. Persons who have noticed the embellishments in manuscripts, the carving, the monuments, and the stained glass in churches, executed in England about the time of Caxton, will scarcely suppose that there were no artists in this country capable of making the designs for those cuts. There is in fact reason to believe that in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the walls of apartments, more especially in taverns and hostelries, frequently contained paintings, most probably in distemper, of subjects both from sacred and general history. That paintings of sacred subjects were not unusual in churches at those periods is well known.

In most of the cuts which are to be found in books printed by Caxton, the effect is produced by the simplest means. The outline of the figures is coarse and hard, and the shades and folds of the draperies are indicated by short parallel lines. Cross-hatchings occur in none of them, though in one or two I have noticed a few angular dots picked out of the black part of a cut in order that it might not appear like a mere blot. The foliage of the trees is generally represented in a manner similar to those in the background of the cut of the knight, of which a copy is given at page 193. The oak leaves in a wood-cut[IV-42] at the commencement of the preface to the Golden Legend, 1483, are an exception to the general style of Caxton’s foliage; and represent what they are intended for with tolerable accuracy. Having thus noticed some of the earliest books with wood-engravings printed in England, I shall now resume my account of the progress of the art on the Continent.

[Footnote IV-42: A copy of this cut is given at p. 186, vol. i. of
Dr. Dibdin’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities.]

In an edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmography, printed at Ulm in 1482 by Leonard Holl, we have the first instance of maps engraved on wood. The work is in folio, and the number of the maps is twenty-seven. In a general map of the world the engraver has thus inserted his name at the top: “Insculptum est per Johannē Schnitzer de Armssheim.”[IV-43] At the corners of this map the winds are represented by heads with puffed-out cheeks, very indifferently engraved. The work also contains ornamental initial letters engraved on wood. In a large one, the letter at the beginning of the volume, the translator is represented offering his book to Pope Paul II. who occupied the see of Rome from 1464 to 1471.

[Footnote IV-43: Arnsheim, which is probably the place intended,
is about twenty miles to the south-west of Mentz.]

Each map occupies two folio pages, and is printed on the verso of one page and the recto of the next, in such a manner that when the book is open the adjacent pages seem as if printed from one block. What may be considered as the skeleton of each map,--such as indications of rivers and mountains,--is coarsely cut; but as the names of the places are also engraved on wood, the execution of those thirty-seven maps must have been a work of considerable labour. In 1486 another edition with the same cuts was printed at Ulm by John Regen at the cost of Justus de Albano of Venice.

The idea of Leonard Holl’s Ptolemy was most likely suggested by an edition of the same work printed at Rome in 1478 by Arnold Bukinck, the successor of Conrad Sweinheim. In this edition the maps are printed from plates of copper; and from the perfect similarity of the letters, as may be observed in the names of places, there can be no doubt of their having been stamped upon the plate by means of a punch in a manner similar to that in which a bookbinder impresses the titles at the back of a volume. It is absolutely impossible that such perfect uniformity in the form of the letters could have been obtained, had they been separately engraved on the plate by hand. Each single letter is as perfectly like another of the same character,--the capital M for instance,--as types cast by a letter-founder from the same mould. The names of the places are all in capitals, but different sizes are used for the names of countries and cities. The capitals at the margins referring to the degrees of latitude are of very beautiful shape, and as delicate as the capitals in modern hair-type.

At the back of some of the maps in the copy in the King’s Library at the British Museum, the paper appears as if it had received, when in a damp state, an impression from linen cloth. As this appearance of threads crossing each other does not proceed from the texture of the paper, but is evidently the result of pressure, I am inclined to think that it has been occasioned by a piece of linen being placed between the paper and the roller when the impressions were taken.

In the dedication of the work to the Pope it is stated that this edition was prepared by Domitius Calderinus of Verona, who promised to collate the Latin version with an ancient Greek manuscript; and that Conrad Sweinheim, who was one of the first who introduced the art of printing at Rome, undertook, with the assistance of “certain mathematical men,” whom he taught, to “impress” the maps upon plates of copper. Sweinheim, after having spent three years in preparing these plates, died before they were finished; and Arnold Bukinck, a learned German printer, completed the work, “that the emendations of Calderinus,--who also died before the book was printed,--and the results of Sweinheim’s most ingenious mechanical contrivances might not be lost to the learned world.”[IV-44]

[Footnote IV-44: “Magister vero Conradus Suueynheyn, Germanus,
a quo formandorum Romæ librorum ars primum profecta est, occasione
hinc sumpta posteritati consulens animum ad hanc doctrinam
capessendam applicuit. Subinde mathematicis adhibitis viris
quemadmodum tabulis eneis imprimerentur edocuit, triennioque in
hac cura consumpto diem obiit. In cujus vigilarum laborumque
partem non inferiori ingenio ac studio Arnoldus Buckinck e
Germania vir apprime eruditus ad imperfectum opus succedens, ne
Domitii Conradique obitu eorum vigiliæ emendationesque sine
testimonio perirent neve virorum eruditorum censuram fugerent
immensæ subtilitatis machinimenta, examussim ad unum
perfecit.”--Dedication to the Pope, of Ptolemy’s Cosmography,
Rome, 1478.]

An edition of Ptolemy in folio, with the maps engraved on copper, was printed at Bologna by Dominico de Lapis with the erroneous date M.CCCC.LXII. This date is certainly wrong, for no work from the press of this printer is known of an earlier date than 1477; and the editor of this edition, Philip Beroaldus the elder, was only born in 1450, if not in 1453. Supposing him to have been born in the former year, he would only be twelve years old in 1462. Raidel, who in 1737 published a dissertation on this edition, thinks that two numerals--XX--had accidentally been omitted, and that the date ought to be 1482. Breitkopf thinks that one X might be accidentally omitted in a date and pass uncorrected, but not two. He rather thinks that the compositor had placed an I instead of an L, and that the correct date ought to stand thus: M CCCC L XLI--1491. I am however of opinion that no instance of the Roman numerals, L XLI, being thus combined to express 91, can be produced. It seems most probable that the date 1482 assigned by Raidel is correct; although his opinion respecting the numerals--XX--being accidentally omitted may be wrong. It is extremely difficult to account for the erroneous dates of many books printed previous to 1500. Several of those dates may have been accidentally wrong set by the compositor, and overlooked by the corrector; but others are so obvious that it is likely they were designedly introduced. The bibliographer who should undertake to enquire what the printers’ reasons might be for falsifying the dates of their books, would be as likely to arrive at the truth, as he would be in an enquiry into the reason of their sometimes adding their name, and sometimes omitting it. The execution of the maps in the edition of De Lapis is much inferior to that of the maps begun by Sweinheim, and finished by Bukinck in 1478.

Bukinck’s edition of Ptolemy, 1478, is the second book which contains impressions from copper-plates. Heineken, at page 233, refers to the “Missale Herbipolense,” folio, 1481, as the first book printed in Germany containing a specimen of copper-plate engraving. Dr. Dibdin, however, in the 3rd volume of his Tour, page 306, mentions the same work as having the date of 1479 in the prefatory admonition, and says that the plate of a shield of arms--the only one in the volume--is noticed by Bartsch in his “Peintre-Graveur,” vol. x. p. 57. The printer of the edition of 1481 appears from Heineken to have been George Reyser. In the “Modus Orandi secundum chorum Herbipolensem,” folio, printed by George Reyser, “Herbipoli,” [at Wurtzburg,] 1485, there is on folio II. a copper-plate engraving of the arms of Rudolph de Scherenberg, bishop of that see. This plate is also described by Bartsch in his “Peintre-Graveur,” vol. x. p. 156. The first book which appeared with copper-plate engravings is intitled “Il Monte Sancto di Dio,” written by Antonio Bettini, and printed at Florence in 1477 by Nicolo di Lorenzo della Magna. As this book is of extreme rarity, I shall here give an account of the plates from Mercier, who first called the attention of bibliographers to it as being of an earlier date than the folio edition of Dante, with copper-plate engravings, printed also by Nicolo Lorenzo in 1481. This edition of Dante was generally supposed to be the first book containing copper-plate engravings until Bettini’s work was described by Mercier.

The work called “Il Monte Sancto di Dio” is in quarto, and according to Mercier there ought to be a quire or gathering of four leaves at the commencement, containing a summary of the work, which is divided into three parts, with a table of the chapters. On the reverse of the last of those four leaves is the first plate, which occupies the whole page, and “measures nine inches and seven-eighths in height, by seven inches in width.”[IV-45] This plate represents the Holy Mountain, on the top of which Christ is seen standing in the midst of adoring angels. A ladder is placed against this mountain, to which it is fastened with iron chains, and on each step is engraved the name of a virtue, for instance, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and others. A figure clothed in a long robe, and who appears to be a monk, is seen mounting the ladder. His eyes are directed towards a huge crucifix placed half way up the hill to the right of the ladder, and from his mouth there proceeds a label inscribed with these words: “_Tirami doppo ti_,”--“Draw me up after thee.” Another figure is seen standing at the foot of the mountain, looking towards the top, and uttering these words: “_Levavi oculos meos in montes_,” &c. The second plate occurs at signature Iv[IV-46] after the 115th chapter. It also represents Christ in his glory, surrounded by angels. It is only four inches and five lines high, by six inches wide, French measure. The third plate, which is the same size as the second, occurs at signature Pvij, and represents a view of Hell according to the description of Dante. Those plates, which for the period are well enough designed and executed, especially the second, were most likely engraved on copper; and they seem to be by the same hand as those in the edition of Dante of 1481, from the press of Nicolo di Lorenzo, who also printed the work of Bettini.[IV-47] A copy of “Il Monte Sancto di Dio” is in Earl Spencer’s Library; and a description and specimens of the cuts are given by Dr. Dibdin in the Bibliotheca Spenceriana, vol. iv. p. 30; and by Mr. Ottley in the Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. i. pp. 375-377.

[Footnote IV-45: This is Mr. Ottley’s measurement, taken within
the black line which bounds the subject. The width as given by
Mercier does not accord with the above. He says that the plate
“a neuf pouces et demi de haut sur six de large.”]

[Footnote IV-46: Mr. Ottley says, “on the reverse of signature N
viij.”]

[Footnote IV-47: “Lettres de M. l’Abbé de St. L***, [St. Léger,
autrefois le pere Le Mercier, ancien Bibliothecaire de St.
Genevieve] à M. le Baron de H*** sur différentes Editions rares du
XV^e. Siécle,” p. 4-5. 8vo. Paris, 1783. A short biographic sketch
of the Abbé Mercier St. Léger, one of the most eminent French
Bibliographers of the last century, will be found in Dr. Dibdin’s
Tour, vol. ii. p. 180.]

In the execution of the maps, the copper-plate engraver possesses a decided advantage over the engraver on wood, owing to the greater facility and clearness with which letters can be cut _in_ copper than _on_ wood. In the engraving of letters on copper, the artist cuts the form of the letter _into_ the plate, the character being thus in _intaglio_; while in engraving on a block, the wood surrounding has to be cut away, and the letter left in _relief_. On copper, using only the graver,--for etching was not known in the fifteenth century,--as many letters might be cut in one day as could be cut on wood in three. Notwithstanding the disadvantage under which the ancient wood engravers laboured in the execution of maps, they for many years contended with the copper-plate printers for a share of this branch of business; and the printers, at whose presses maps engraved on wood only could be printed, were well inclined to support the wood engravers. In a folio edition of Ptolemy, printed at Venice in 1511, by Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, the outlines of the maps, with the indications of the mountains and rivers, are cut on wood, and the names of the places are printed in type, of different sizes, and with red and black ink. For instance, in the map of Britain, which is more correct than any which had previously appeared, the word “ALBION” is printed in large capitals, and the word “GADINI” in small capitals, and both with red ink. The words “Curia” and “Bremenium” are printed in small Roman characters, and with black ink. The names of the rivers are also in small Roman, and in black ink. Such of those maps as contain many names, are almost full of type. The double borders surrounding them, within which the degrees of latitude are marked, appear to have been formed of separate pieces of metal, in the manner of wide double rules. At the head of several of the maps there are figures of animals emblematic of the country. In the first map of Africa there are two parrots; in the second an animal like a jackal, and a non-descript; in the third, containing Egypt, a crocodile, and a monstrous kind of fish like a dragon; and in the fourth, two parrots. In the last, the “curious observer” will note a specimen of decorative printing from two blocks of wood; for the beak, wing, and tail of one of the parrots is printed in red.