Chapter II: Part 2

Turning now to the 'Anima Mia' edition of 1493, three copies of which have recently come to light after its existence had remained unsuspected for generations, we have only to place it side by side with one of the Giunta texts to find that it is a not too scrupulous attempt to cut into the profits of the firm which was first in the field. The worst evil of the publishing trade at the present day is that if one publisher strikes out a new line, whether in the form of his books, or the prices at which they are issued, or by bringing into notice some hitherto neglected author or subject, one or more of his competitors immediately tries to put similar editions on the market, and to offer purchasers a little more for their money. The result is that the first publisher finds his profits sensibly diminished, while the second very probably burns his fingers. Few modern publishers, however, would plagiarise quite as freely as did 'Anima Mia' in his new Bible. Not only did he copy Giunta closely in the form and size of his book, the arrangement of the page and the size of the illustrations; but in a great number of cases he allowed his artists to take precisely the same subjects for illustration, and even to copy the designs themselves quite closely, sometimes by the lazy method which, by imitating the model on the block of wood, without first reversing it, caused the printed picture itself to appear in reverse.

A curious question now arises as to which of the Giunta editions 'Anima Mia' elected to copy from. That of 1490 was clearly not the one chosen, since among 'Anima Mia's' pictures we find illustrations to Genesis xiii., xv., xvii., xx., xxiv., and xxvi., none of which were illustrated in the 1490 edition, while pictures on the same subjects are found in that of 1492. Again, in the four books of Kings the 1493 edition agrees with the 1492 in having forty-nine cuts as against forty-three in the original edition of 1490. More conclusive still is the evidence of a mistake in Joshua ix., where it is impossible that the artist can have had before him the pretty little cut of the Gibeonites as hewers of wood and drawers of water, which is one of our illustrations. By 1492 the block for this had apparently been damaged and is replaced by a larger cut (56 mm. in height), representing a king and two councillors, apparently taken from some other book. The 1493 illustrator was clearly puzzled by this, and for lack of anything better repeated a cut of Moses and Miriam from Exodus. Clearly he had not in this case the 1490 edition before him. But neither am I at all sure that he had that of 1492. While he copies six of the new pictures in Genesis he omits six others; in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy he agrees with the 1490 edition against that of 1492; in Judges, Ruth, and Kings, with 1492 as against 1490; in Genesis, Leviticus, and Joshua, partly with one, partly with the other. In two other cases he steers a middle course. The 1490 artist had illustrated far too realistically both the temptation of Joseph and the sin which called forth the zeal of Phineas. In the 1492 edition these subjects are very wisely omitted. In that of 1493 they appear, but in a modified form. My own theory to account for these discrepancies is that between 1490 and 1492--presumably in 1491--Giunta published yet another issue of the Bible, adding a few illustrations, but not so many as in 1492, and substituting two new cuts of the subjects unpleasantly illustrated in 1490, which he subsequently thought well to pass over altogether. Such an intermediate edition would supply a model which would explain all the early illustrations in the edition of 1493, and would also allow a more reasonable time to 'Anima Mia' to get them made, and his book printed, than the nine months which separate the editions of July 1492, and April 1493. 'Anima Mia,' however, was by no means wholly a plagiarist, as is proved by the fact that while in his first volume the 236 illustrations stand midways numerically between the 215 and the 252 of the two Giunta editions of 1490 and 1492; for his second volume he provided no fewer than 208 against the 176 and 187 of his predecessors, the new cuts being fairly evenly distributed through the different books, while their artistic merit is of average quality.

It is by this touchstone of artistic merit, and not by considerations of quantity that the comparative claims of the two rival editions must be decided; and on the whole there can be no doubt that both for originality of design and for the highest merit in execution the palm must be given to the artists and craftsmen employed by Giunta. Unfortunately in both editions large numbers of the woodcuts were intrusted to cutters quite incompetent to deal with such delicate work. Giunta's illustrations to the Gospels are quite painfully bad, while those of 'Anima Mia' are here only mediocre, his worst craftsman having been employed on some of the middle books of the Old Testament. His worst work is almost as bad as the worst of Giunta's, though less painful, as not introducing the figure of Christ. The proportion of mediocre cuts is far greater, and of these we give (p. 46) a generously chosen example in that prefixed to Psalm lii. It should really be an illustration, it may be imagined, to the text, 'Except the Lord build the house their labour is but vain that build it,' but in any case it is strikingly inferior to the brilliant cut in the 1490 edition, which illustrates the heading 'Dixit insipiens' with all possible cogency.

Lastly, his best work, though really good, is not so good as that of his predecessor. One reason for this is, no doubt, that part of the space available in the column was occupied by the little border-pieces which, though offering a pleasing setting to the pictures, diminish the space available for illustration by nearly a quarter. The effect of this is especially noticeable when the 1493 artist is copying his predecessor, the necessity for 'selection' sometimes leading to the omission of important parts of the composition. But at the outset of both volumes, before the work began to be hurried, there is plenty of originality, and excellent use is made of the space at the designer's disposal. The cut of the animals entering the ark here shown is delightful, and in that of Jacob deceiving Isaac we seem to feel instinctively the blindness of the old man, who stretches out his hand to feel for the dish his false son is bringing him. As the 1493 edition is so little known compared with that of 1490, both our remaining illustrations are taken from it. The first, the frontispiece to the second volume, shown at the beginning of this article, compares very favourably with the similar design in the earlier edition. The second, the picture of S. Jerome in the Desert, is one of the best things in the book, both in design and cutting; but it differs from everything else in it, and may possibly belong to some other set.

It may have been noted that in writing of the edition of 1490 I have not thought it necessary to write of the various theories which have been built on the little letter 'b' with which many of the cuts are signed, _e.g._, that of 'an author at work' reproduced on p. 42. It is now generally acknowledged that it is the mark, not of any designer, nor even perhaps of any individual woodcutter, but merely of the workshop in which the little blocks were cut.

A BOOK OF HOURS[3]

Some years ago a copy of an edition of the 'Hours of the Blessed Virgin,' according to the use of Sarum, came into my possession, and I have since been surprised to learn that it is probably unique. On the fly-leaf of the little volume is the note: 'This Book I picked up on a Stall at Venice, in 1741, and had it bound there. It was probably printed in England (as there are some few English directions in it) some time before Henry VIII.' The second half of this note has been crossed through, and the more correct information substituted: 'rather at Paris for the use of English booksellers, about the year 1500.' A later note shows that the original purchaser was Mr. Joseph Smith, for many years British Consul at Venice, most of whose many bargains in early printed books passed into the library of George III., and thence to the British Museum. Of this little 'Book of Hours' many of the pages are stained with damp, so that it probably belonged to the consignment of his purchases which was wrecked on its way home. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps because the most esteemed Horae are on vellum and this is on paper and moreover lacks its first leaf, perhaps because the good king did not care to collect works of prae-Reformation devotion, this particular purchase of the energetic consul never found a royal owner. It possesses, however, not a little interest of its own, and if my readers will consent to turn over its pages with me, they will disclose to us a great deal of information as to the compilation and printing of these books of devotion in the fifteenth century, and their supply for the use of devout persons in England.

[3] Reprinted from 'The Newberry House Magazine' by leave of
Messrs. Griffith, Farren, Okeden and Welsh.

It is rather surprising that Consul Smith was deceived, even for a moment, as to the foreign origin of his purchase. The illustrations, as to which we shall have a great deal to say later on, are unmistakably French, and appear in many French 'Books of Hours,' both of earlier and later date. The type also is of a character very common in French books, and never found out of France. These points, however, require just a smattering of knowledge about early printing for their appreciation, while only a little common sense is needed in the present case to determine the origin of the book. The general printing is excellent, but the mistakes made in the half-dozen directions in English could have been made by no Englishman. Thus the words _into the chirche_ appear as _in thothe chir che_; _hous_ is misprinted _bous_; _begynne_ as _hegynne_; and the like. Moreover, we note that the printer possessed no letter _k_ in his fount, but was obliged to represent it by a combination of _l_ and the old sign for _and_, [sign]. The book, therefore, was printed neither in England, Germany, nor the Low Countries, but in a country where the letter _k_ forms no part of the alphabet, and a good guess might easily have suggested France as its most likely place of imprint.

A clause in one of the Acts passed by the Parliament of 1483, while Richard III. was still anxious to pose as a constitutional monarch, expressly provided for the free importation of books printed abroad, and for the exemption of foreign printers and booksellers settling in England from the restrictions usually imposed upon alien traders. The clause was no doubt prompted by a genuine desire to promote education and learning, but it is probable that a little protection of a young industry might have quickened its development without imposing too serious a tax upon reading. Lettou and Machlinia were already at work in London when the Act was passed, and Theodoric Rood at Oxford, but no other printers were attracted from abroad for several years, while the influx of foreign books made home competition so hazardous that after Rood disappears Oxford was for many years without a printer, and at Cambridge no press was set up till 1521. Not only were almost all classical books imported, but English works were printed in English by several Dutch firms, the much greater similarity of the two languages in those days rendering the task easier than it would be at present. English books were also printed occasionally in France, for Antoine Vérard among others, not always, however, very intelligently, as indeed the misprints at which we have just been looking would lead us to expect.

In addition to the works of poetry and romance, which are now the best known among the productions of his press, William Caxton issued also many books of devotion. In the show-case devoted to his publications in the King's Library at the British Museum, among other unique books are shown the Latin Psalter, printed by him between 1480 and 1483, and a volume containing the 'Fifteen Oes,' and other prayers, 'emprented bi the commaundementes of the most hye and vertuous pryncesse our liege ladi Elizabeth by the grace of God Quene of Englonde,' and of Margaret Tudor, the king's mother. Caxton also printed at least four editions of the Horae, fragments of which survive at the Museum and at Oxford, though no copy even approaching completeness is now known to exist. As a rule, however, English liturgical works were printed abroad, for the most part in France (at Paris or Rouen), but also at Venice, at Antwerp, at Basel, and elsewhere. Thus of the Sarum Breviary there are at the Museum six early Paris editions, and one from Antwerp, but no London edition before 1541. The solitary editions of the Sarum Gradual and Antiphonal are both from Paris, while of the thirty editions of the Sarum Missal, five and twenty were printed abroad and only five at home. It need not, therefore, surprise us to find that of thirty-nine Sarum Horae in the Museum library, while two were printed at Antwerp, and two at Rouen, the Paris presses produced twenty-seven, those of London only eight, and these with some help from France.

It is time now to turn to the contents of our book. These are as follows:--

i. A Kalendar.

ii. Passages from the Gospels on the Birth, Ascension, and Death
of Christ, viz., S. John i. 1-14; S. Luke i. 20-38; S.
Matt. ii. 1-12; S. Mark xvi. 14-20; S. John xviii. 1-42.

iii. Prayers: On the Trinity: 'Whan thou goest first out of thy
hous'; 'Whan thou entrest into the chirch'; 'Whan thou
beginnest to praye.'

iv. The Hours of the Blessed Virgin--'Horae intemeratae beatae
Mariae Virginis secundum usum Sarum.'

v. The Hours of the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin.

vi. The Seven Penitential Psalms.

vii. The Litany of the Saints.

viii. The Vigils of the Dead.

ix. Seven Psalms on the Lord's Passion.

x. Prayers: Before the Image of the Body of Christ; To the
Blessed Mary and to S. John the Evangelist.

There is thus, as in all editions, a great deal in the volume besides the Horae, from which the book takes its name. But of the hundred and sixty pages to which (in addition to the twelve leaves of Kalendar) the volume extends, upwards of sixty are occupied by the Hours, which are thus much the most important item in the contents. The antiquity of these Hours was very great, for they are mentioned as an office as early as the sixth century. They fell, however, into disuse, but were revived, and probably rearranged, by Peter Damian just ten years before our battle of Hastings. Forty years later, in 1096, at the Council of Claremont, the saying of them, in addition to the canonical hours, was made compulsory upon all the clergy, and this compulsion continued until 1568, when Pope Pius V., in issuing his revision of the Breviary, released the clergy from the obligation to say this office, at the same time that he forbade the use of the vernacular translations of it, which for at least two centuries had been permitted to the laity. In England, as we all know, these vernacular versions were called Primers, and their rendering of the Psalms and Prayers of which the Hours were made up, and of the additional matter which was joined with them, has formed the basis of our present English Prayer Book.

Thee God we preise: Thee Lord we knowleche:
Thee endless Fader everi erthe worschipeth:
To Thee alle angels, to Thee hevenes and alle manere powers:
To thee cherubim and seraphim crieth with vois withouten cessinge:
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Ostis:
Hevenes and erthe ben ful of mageste of thi glorie:
Thee the glorious compainie of apostles:
Thee the preisable noumbre of prophetes:
Thee preiseth the white ost of martires.

So began the English version of the _Te Deum_ in a Primer written at the end of the fourteenth century (British Museum, Add. MS. 27, 592),[4] and if the beauty of some of these lines has caused us to give them a preference over other versions a little closer to our own, they serve none the less well to show whence it was that our Prayer Book obtained its magnificent rhythms. But who would know more of our old English Primers must be referred to the third volume of the late Mr. Maskell's 'Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae' (Clarendon Press, 1882). Here we are concerned with Horae, and that in their bibliographical and pictorial, rather than their liturgical aspect.

[4] Partially reproduced in photographic facsimile by Mr. Henry
Littlehales. (Rivingtons, 1890.)

Each of the Hours, we are told, had its mystical reference to some event in the Lives of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord, and these references are explained in some of the Primers in some rude verses, which, with correction of some obvious misprints, and modernising the spelling, I proceed to quote:--

_Ad Laudes_:

How Mary, the mother and virgin,
Visited Elizabeth, wife of Zachary,
Which said, 'Blessed be thou cousin,
And blessed be the fruit of thy body.'

_Ad Primam_:

How Jesu Christ right poorly born was,
In an old crib laid all in poverty,
At Bethleem, by an ox and an ass,
Where Mary blessed His nativity.

_Ad Tertiam_:

How an Angel appeared in the morn,
Singing, 'Gloria in Excelsis Deo';
Saying, 'The very Son of God is born,
Ye Shepherds of Bethleem, ye may go.'

_Ad Sextam_:

How three kings of strange nations,
Of Christ's birth having intelligence,
Unto Bethleem brought their oblations,
Of gold, of myrrh, and frankincense.

_Ad Nonam_:

Simeon, at Christ's circumcision,
These words unto the Jews did tell,
'My eyen beholdeth your redemption,
The light and glory of Israel.'

_Ad Vesperas_:

How Mary and Joseph with Jesus were fain
Into Egypt, for succour, to flee,
Whan the Innocents for His sake were slain,
By commission of Herod's cruelty.

_Ad Completorium_:

How Mary assumpted was above the skies,
By her Son as sovereign lady,
Received there among the hierarchies,
And crowned her the queen of glory.

I have quoted these verses in full, rude though they are, because they form the keynote to the scheme of illustrations of all Horae and Primers. The Hours were intended as devotional comments on the subjects of these verses, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was thus the most natural thing in the world that each Hour should be accompanied by an illumination, or, failing that, a woodcut, to illustrate its special theme. Accustomed as we nowadays are to gain our information exclusively by reading letterpress, it is only by a visit to our nurseries that we can recall to ourselves how deeply the need of pictures was felt in the ages before the printing press made the art of reading a common acquirement. Of this need the Miracle Plays, with all their rudeness, all their unconscious profanity, were at once the living witness and the living fulfilment. In the great cycles, such as those of York, Wakefield, and Chester, which have come down to us, the history of the world in its sacred aspects is unrolled from the creation of the angels to the day of judgment; and the presentment of these plays probably brought the Bible stories nearer to the people than could have been possible in any other way. Certainly these plays left a deep mark upon current ideas of art, and helped to render impossible any attempt at antiquarian correctness. In the scene of the Adoration of the Shepherds in some of the finest books of Hours (P. Pigouchet: Paris, 1498, 1502, etc.), underneath the figures of the shepherds and their wives (by whom they are mostly represented as being accompanied) are written the names Gobin le gai, le beau Roger, Aloris, Alison, Mahault, Ysambre, by which they were known in the French plays on the Nativity, and the shepherds are French Shepherds of the fifteenth century. But however great their anachronisms, the tableaux in the Miracle Plays and the pictures in books of devotion were found abundantly helpful, and for more than a century and a half, first in manuscript and afterwards in print, the Horae or Primers, the prayer-books of the laity, hold the first place among illuminated books.

A few years ago Mr. Quaritch possessed a charming 'Book of Hours,' which at one time belonged to Elizabeth Poyntz, a relative of the Thomas Poyntz at whose book we were looking a little while back. To this manuscript Mr. Quaritch in his catalogue assigned the date 'about 1360,' which, if correct, gives it considerable antiquity among illuminated Horae. The end of the fourteenth century is the date at which these first become at all common, and it was during the fifteenth century that they obtained their greatest popularity, and that the greatest artists were employed in their production. Numerous and very beautiful examples of the manuscripts produced during this period form part of the permanent exhibition in the Grenville Library at the British Museum, and I hope that many of my readers will go to look at them there. All fine examples of manuscript Horae possess (i.) beautiful initial letters, (ii.) borders surrounding every page, formed of leaves, flowers, birds, grotesques, and the like, (iii.) a number of beautiful miniatures, filling the whole or the greater part of a page, and representing the scenes from the life of Christ and His Mother mentioned in the lines quoted above, with additional illustrations from the Passion, and from the lives of the saints. Beyond saying this, it is impossible to give any general description of these manuscript Hours, each one of which possesses its own delightful individuality. Two or three special examples, however, may be mentioned to show the estimation in which they were held and the care which was spent on their decoration. Thus the late Mr. Charles Elton possessed a charming little 'Book of Hours' which once belonged to Queen Jeanne II. of Naples (1370-1435). It measures only 2 5/8 × 1 7/8 inches, and contains one hundred and sixty leaves and twenty miniatures, nine of which occupy the whole of their page. The initial letters throughout are in gold and colours, and the borders are of the ivy-leaf pattern, the scrolls often terminating in grotesques. Mr. Quaritch, again, when this paper was written, had for disposal (for the sum of one thousand pounds) a Horae of slightly later date, a wedding present from the Regent, John, Duke of Bedford, to Lord Talbot on his second marriage in 1424, when he allied himself to Margaret Beauchamp, daughter of Richard, Earl of Warwick. The first leaf contains a miniature showing Talbot and his wife at prayer under the protection of their patron saints, and many other miniatures are scattered through the rest of the volume. In 1429 Talbot was captured at the battle of Patay and remained a prisoner in France till 1433. During this time he made many entries in the blank leaves of his Hours. Here is a snatch from one in verse:

Saynt George the gode knyght
Over your Fomen geve you myght,
And holy Saynt Katheryne
To youre begynnyng send gode fyne,
Saynt Christofre botefull (helpful) on see and lond,
Joyfully make you see Engelond.

Twenty years after his release from imprisonment, Talbot was slain (July 20, 1453), fighting against a Breton force at Chatillon. It is possible that he may have carried his Hours on his person, for it was in the cottage of a Breton peasant that it was discovered a few years ago, and it seems likely that a Breton soldier may have found it on the battle-field, and transmitted it to his descendants as an heirloom. As an example of another kind of interest, we may instance a Horae at the Bodleian, on four of whose leaves are drawn most delicate and beautiful representations of religious processions. The best of these has been reproduced in the Proceedings of the Palæographical Society, and it is impossible to overrate the charm of the drawing.

In 1473 Nicholas Jenson printed a Horae at Venice; three years later, Matthias Moravus followed his example at Naples, and the earliest of Caxton's four editions was probably printed not much later than 1478. But these were all ordinary books, with no special beauty about them except what they might receive from the 'rubrisher,' or illuminator, after the printer had done his work. It was not till 1487, just a third of a century after the issue from the press of the first printed document bearing a date, that any serious attempt was made to supplant the manuscript Horae by printed editions. The first essay was made by Anthoine Vérard, of Paris, and is said--I have never seen a copy of it--to have been a poor production, 'without frontispieces' (whatever that may mean), or borders to the text. The success, however, with which it met was apparently sufficient to encourage Vérard to renew his attempt, and in 1488 or thereabouts he issued his 'Grandes Heures,' a fine quarto, with fourteen large engravings, and borders in four compartments to every page. In 1489, he reprinted the book in much cheaper form, using most of the large engravings which now occupied a whole page apiece, and devising for the borders smaller figures, in which scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord were set forth with their Old Testament types. Meanwhile other publishers had not been idle, for, in 1488, Jean du Pré, or Johannes de Prato, as he called himself on his Latin title-pages, issued the first of the few Horae which proceeded from his press; and in 1491 Philippe Pigouchet printed his first known edition, and not long afterwards entered into relations with Simon Vostre, an enterprising bookseller, which resulted in the publication of at least a score of editions, all extraordinarily rare, during the next twenty years. Towards the end of this century, and in the early part of the next, other Paris firms of printers and publishers joined in the trade. Of these, Thielman Kerver, Gilles and Germain Hardouyn, Guillaume Eustace, Francois Regnault, and Geoffroy Tory were the most important, but Horae are extant bearing the imprint of more than thirty other firms besides these. The demand must have been very great, for Paris supplied not only the rest of France--and in the British Museum there are examples of Horae for the use of no fewer than thirty different French dioceses--but also England. Hence there was abundance of work for all, and the different publishers copied each other's editions with a freedom which is not a little embarrassing to the humble bibliographer.

The subjects of the fourteen full-page illustrations in the little 'Horae secundum usum Sarum,' which we have taken as our text, are as follows:--

i. The Betrayal of Christ (repeated after xiv.).

ii. The root of Jesse, from whose slumbering body a tree is
springing, its branches being the Jewish kings, and the
Virgin and Holy Child its summit (see page 54).

iii. The Holy Trinity adored by the Saints in heaven and by the
Pope and Emperor and their followers upon earth.

iv. The Annunciation.

v. The Visitation.

vi. The Crucifixion.

vii. The Adoration by the Shepherds.

viii. The Annunciation to the Shepherds.

ix. The Adoration by the Magi.

x. The Presentation in the Temple.

xi. The Flight into Egypt.

xii. The Death of the Virgin.

xiii. S. John before the Latin Gate.

xiv. Dives and Lazarus.

These, with the exception of the last, which is not quite so common, occur in most Horae. Other illustrations, which are frequently found, especially in earlier editions, represent scenes from the life of David in connection with the Penitential Psalms, his gazing at Bathsheba, the consummation of his plan for the murder of Uriah, and his punishment. His victory over Goliath is also occasionally represented. We also find in several early editions 'Les Trois Vifs' placed over against 'Les Trois Morts,' three gay knights on one page and three grinning skeletons on another, and in Tory's 'Heures à l'usage de Paris' of 1527 we have a striking picture of Death, on his black horse, riding over the corpses of his victims to deliver yet another summons. The Calendar, again, is usually prefaced by a figure of a man, with all the organs of his body exposed, and lines drawn from them to the celestial bodies, which, in the popular beliefs, were supposed to influence their health and sickness. Of all these illustrations five or six different varieties are found; but from 1495 to the end of the century, the set of designs which was used for our little Sarum Horae was by far the most popular, and influenced the editions of all the leading publishers.

To trace the history of these border-pieces would require a separate article. Jean du Pré, Vérard, and Pigouchet, made several experiments in smaller Horae with designs of flowers and birds for borders; but the popular taste decided in favour of allegorical and historical figures, and these were soon multiplied to such an extent that their original order and significance were lost sight of. In the editions published by Jean du Pré in 1488, and by Vérard in 1489, several pages are occupied with an explanation of the small figures in the border. Jesse and Balaam are shown as types of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the betrothal of Isaac and Rebecca as a type of her Espousal, Eve tempted by the Serpent shows the Fall to which the Annunciation preluded the remedy, the Burning Bush and Aaron's rod foreshadowed the Nativity. Here all is clear, but as the demand for variety increased, there were added, in addition to the 'Dance of Death,' figures of the Saints, Prophets, Angels, and Virtues, representations of the Sibyls, emblems of the Fifteen Signs of Coming Judgment, and scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord, and from the Old Testament.

Partly for convenience of printing, but more, we may imagine, for the sake of producing an appearance of endless variety, these border-pieces were not cut in a single block, but were detachable, so that they could be used in different combinations. In several editions, even in one of that very scholarly and artistic printer Geoffroy Tory, this is effected at the cost of suggesting that the block had been accidentally broken, as in the page already shown from his edition of 1527, where at the foot the pieces do not even fit together. The more general plan, however, was that exemplified in Tory's edition of 1525, where it is carried out with unusual precision, the borders being built up by the repetition of exactly sixteen blocks of each size, fitting respectively into the inner and outer margin and the head and foot of the page. In earlier editions the border-pieces are more numerous and not so mathematically apportioned, the reason being that while Tory's are purely decorative, and their number therefore fixed at will, in the earlier editions the cuts are pictorial, and their number decided by the exigencies of the subjects. Thus in Pigouchet's Paris 'Hours' of 1491 there are in all 147 border-pieces, of which 78 are outer side-pieces, 15 inner side-pieces, 16 cornices, 8 head-pieces, and 30 foot-pieces. The numbers illustrate the greater importance of the outer side-pieces and foot-pieces, which have a depth or breadth of twenty-one millimetres against the nine of the inner side-piece and head-piece. The subjects illustrated in them are the Creation, the Gospel history from the birth of the Blessed Virgin to the Last Judgment, and special sets of the Nativity and Passion with Old Testament types. All these were extensively imitated by other publishers, and the same honour was paid to the famous set of the Dance of Death, which Pigouchet began to introduce early in 1496, and gradually increased in successive editions till in that of 8th August 1497 we find the full number of ten triple blocks of male victims and twelve of women. A similar succession may be traced in the gradual changes in the full-page cuts, so that we can often tell within two or three months the time at which an undated edition was sent to press. In my own little book there are no large border-pieces, only ledges round the text, but from its containing the picture of the stem of Jesse (shown as one of our illustrations) and the Church Militant and Triumphant, it must be assigned to the year 1498 or a little later.

THE TRANSFERENCE OF WOODCUTS IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES[5]

Despite some efforts to prove the contrary, there can be little doubt that the art of taking clichés of woodcuts, or of cuts engraved on soft metal treated in the same way as wood, was quite unknown during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If one printer or publisher desired the use of a set of cuts in possession of another, it was open to him to try to borrow or buy them, and failing this to have them copied as best he could, on the theory of artistic copyright having as yet been broached. In the present paper, after a few words on the simpler processes of borrowing and buying, I propose to bring together some typical instances of the different methods in which cuts designed in one country or district were copied in another, and incidentally, perhaps, to throw a little new light on the relations of designers and woodcutters in these early days of book-illustration.

[5] Reprinted by leave of Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and
Co., from 'Bibliographica,' vol. ii. (1895).

As to borrowing, there is not much to be said. I believe a few instances of it may be found, _e.g._ Matthaeus Cerdonis tells us distinctly that he printed an edition of a 'Cheiromantia' (Padua, 1484) 'Erhardi Ratdolt instrumentis.' But it was undoubtedly, and for obvious reasons, very rare, and where it existed mostly indicates some specially close relations between the two firms. Thus Jacob Bellaert at Haarlem appears to have borrowed some of Leeu's cuts for a 'Lijden ons Heeren,' printed in December 1483, but on Bellaert's disappearance in 1486 most of his cuts and types are found in the possession of Leeu, and it is doubtful if we should not look on his press rather as a branch establishment of Leeu's than as altogether independent. We have also to be very careful in our examination of cuts before building any theories of borrowing, or special relations between different firms, as in some cases, notably in many of Vérard's 'Horae,' in which we seem at first sight to find cuts from the editions of Philippe Pigouchet, we are really confronted with copies so closely imitated that it requires a minute comparison to show that they are printed from different blocks.

When we pass from borrowing to buying we open up an endless field for investigation, and one rich in small surprises.

Mr. Falconer Madan showed me some years ago, in a Civil War Tract in the Thomason Collection at the British Museum, a very worn cut, French in appearance, representing S. John the Evangelist and the eagle by which he is symbolised. It puzzled me at the time, but I soon afterwards identified it with the printer's device of Robert Wyer, in use by him more than a hundred years earlier. Almost as great an age was probably attained by a head-piece of terminal archers, with rabbits, etc., which I first noticed in the 1598 edition of Sidney's 'Arcadia,' and found still retained in the fourteenth edition, dated 1670. The interval between these two editions of itself exceeds the threescore and ten years which ought to suffice for the life of a wood-block as of a man, but I have since found the same head-piece in a prayer book, printed about 1585, and as it is in no way appropriate to this, have no doubt that its original appearance was even earlier.

In another rather amusing series of migrations my pride as a discoverer has been tempered by the verdict of a lynx-eyed friend that the blocks in question at one period of their career have been recut, but their history is still curious. If any one will turn to the 1575 edition of 'A Ryght pithy pleasaunt and merie Comédie. Intytuled Gammer Gurton's Needle. Played on stage, not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge,' he will see that the title-page of this our second printed comedy, 'made by Mr. S---- Mr. of Art,' and 'imprinted at London in Fleete streat beneth the Conduit at the sign of S. John Evangelist by Thomas Colwel,' is surrounded by a kind of garland supported by two fat little boys; and if we turn next to the last leaf of the 'Champfleury,' that most pedantical treatise, written and published by the French artist-printer, Geoffroy Tory in 1529, there the same not very beautiful design will confront us. The concatenation of the 'Champfluery' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' is of itself delightful, but chance has enabled me to add two additional incongruities, for I have found it again in a copy of the 'Christiani Hominis Institutio,' by Stephanus Paris, printed in 1552 by Michael Fezandat for Vivantius Gaulterot, who had published the second edition of the 'Champfleury' three years earlier, and once more in William Copland's edition, dated 1553, of Bishop Douglas's 'XII. Bukes of Eneados.' Thus we know within a few months the date at which this block, which had previously been recut, crossed the Channel, and there is some reason to believe that some more of Tory's old designs came over with it, for I have lately noticed three fragments of borders used in Tory's 'Horae' of 1525 reappearing in a 'Letter to Reginald Pole,' by Tunstall and Stokesley, printed by Wolfe in 1560. Like the larger design, these fragments have been recut, but with considerable skill, so that we may be sure that the recutting was done in France, and at no very long interval after 1525, the lines in the original blocks being so fine that they would soon need replacing.

As an appendix to this section of my paper, it occurred to me to look at the cuts in some of the Roxburghe Ballads, and a glance through the first volume yielded some curious results. Thus a ballad entitled 'Friendly Counsaile,' by C. R. [Charles Records?], printed for J. W[right], the younger, about 1630, has two cuts, the first of Christ teaching the twelve Apostles, which can be traced back through the 'Kalender of Sheppards' to Vérard's 'Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir' of 1492; the second of two of the three gay cavaliers, who met their own corpses as they hunted (les trois vifs et les trois morts), which occurs in French Horae of about the same date. Another ballad entitled 'Christmas' Lamentation for the losse of his Acquaintance, showing how he is forst to leave the country and come to London,' is headed by a little figure of a man, which I first saw in the verso of the title of Wynkyn de Worde's edition of 'Hycke Scorner,'[6] where it is labelled 'Pyte.' This also is ultimately French, and was also originally first cut for Vérard's French Terence. 'Doctor Dogood's directions to cure many diseases' has in the first part half of a cut from the 'Art de bien vivre,' representing Aaron and the Israelites going to meet, not, as in the original, Moses, who bears the Tables of the Law, but two English gentlemen, who are joined on in a block of much smaller size. The second part has also an old cut, which appears to be imitated from the Dutch. Another Dutch fifteenth-century design is used in the second part of 'The Discontented Married Man,' and there are two more fifteenth-century blocks (recut) in the 'Jovial Broom-man,' a cut from a French 'Æsop' in 'A New Medley, or a Messe altogether,' and a piece of an Augsburg block in 'The praise of our country Barley Brake.' Besides these we may note the presence at the head of a ballad called 'Solomon's Sacrifice,' printed for Henry Gosson, of the cut of a printing-press which occurs in 'The Ordinarie of Christians,' printed by Scoloker about 1548. Of other cuts I only suspect the history, and the instances I have quoted are sufficient to show the long life these designs enjoyed in England.

[6] One of those on the recto has a common original with that of an
elephant with a howdah in Doesborgh's 'Van Pape Jans landendes.'

Like some other branches of natural history, 'bibliology,' to use an absurd word, would be very dull if it could all be mapped out and tabulated ready to our hand, but in cut-hunting, as in fox-hunting, there is pleasure to be gained from pursuit, if not from attainment, and especially in English books of the sixteenth century there is never any difficulty in finding a promising cut to hunt. It may be said, indeed, that whoever attempts to write the history of wood-engraving in England during this period will need to be quite as well acquainted with the productions of the French press as of the English. Unfortunately this is no easy matter, for except for a magnificent collection of Vérards mostly from the old Royal Library, and a goodly number of Horae, the British Museum is by no means rich in early French books, and I know of no other English library which can do much to supply its deficiencies. But the fact remains that between the large importation of French blocks, the direct imitation of many others, and the probable presence of French woodcutters working in England, the field for any one desirous of tracing a native school of wood-engraving, if such a school can be said to have existed, is full of pitfalls, from which only a very wide knowledge of the cuts in contemporary French books (and to a less extent also of Dutch and German ones) can offer deliverance.

The backwardness of England in the pictorial arts made it possible for old wood blocks to enjoy here an unusually long life. In other countries their career was cut short by decisive changes of taste. Thus the sudden inroad of the Renaissance into Germany at the close of the fifteenth century swept away almost the whole of the delightfully simple work produced between 1470 and 1490. One curious case of survival is perhaps worth mentioning. In an edition of Wyle's 'Translation oder Deutschungen etlicher Bücher,' printed at Augsburg in 1536, the cuts to all the stories but one show contemporary work of the usual kind. The exception is the tale of Guiscard and Sigismund, the illustrations to which must be quite half a century earlier, and exhibit all the simplicity of feeling and workmanship of the artists of Augsburg, in their best days.

In France we have the same tale, for it is impossible to conceive not merely of the Estiennes, but of a popular publisher like Jean de Tournes, decorating his books with the simple cuts we find in books by Vérard or Trepperel. In the Horae the publisher's needs were sometimes too imperative to be resisted, and amid the coarse and realistic engravings which, to the destruction of the charm of these books, came into vogue about 1505, the old designs from the editions of Pigouchet and Vérard are often found for some ten years longer. Italy is in somewhat a different position, for there, in the fifteenth century, the distinction between the books of the people and the books of the rich had been unusually clearly marked, and while the tastes of the rich changed the popular literature was far more conservative. The little Florentine cuts, of which examples are given in another article, are by far the most striking example of this stability of the popular taste. It is probable that no new ones were designed after 1520 at the latest, but the old designs continued in use for more than sixty years after this date, battered by successive editions till their borders were knocked to pieces, but still retaining much of their old beauty, and occasionally, by some lucky chance, finding a printer who did them justice. When the old blocks became unusable, the designs were recut, and it is sometimes possible to trace them through as many as three different stages of successive deterioration. In Venice the little vignettes, so popular between 1490 and 1500, enjoyed a similar, but much shorter, extension of life, the preference for the heavier style of engraving which came in with the turn of the century driving them down into the chap-books, where their original delicacy of line soon procured their destruction at the hands of hasty printers.

Though the vagaries of fashion were thus slightly tempered at the great centres of printing in Italy, fashion interfered with the borrowing of blocks in another way in this country. Germany and France were each fairly homogeneous in art matters. We may trace different schools, but their differences are not very strongly marked, and their followers were probably not very keenly conscious of them. In Italy the artistic individuality of every district was clearly defined, and though, as we shall see, the printers of one town made free use of the illustrations in the books of those of another, there was scarcely any interchange of blocks. In the 'De Structura compositionis' of Ferrettus, printed at Forli in 1495, both of the two illustrations are of Venetian origin, that of Theseus and the Minotaur being taken from the 'Plutarch' of 1491, and that of the lecture-hall from the 'Epigrammata Cantalycii' of 1493. But this is an almost unique instance of direct borrowing, the rule being that while designs were freely imitated, they were, almost invariably, recast in the style of art of the district in which they were to appear.

Passing now from the purchase of woodcuts to their imitation, we may look, first of all, at the simplest and easiest form in which a design could be reproduced. The impression from a woodcut is, of course, a reversal of the design as it appears on the block, and an artist not very confident of his own skill would naturally shrink from the rather difficult task of copying the printed cut in reverse in order that his own sketch might print in the same way as its original. He preferred to copy the printed cut as he saw it before him, with the result that in the impressions from his copy everything is reversed, the right becoming left, and the left right. Thus simplified his task was easy, and it was even possible to avoid altogether the need of copying, by merely pasting the illustration on the block, and cutting the wood through the paper. When Antoine Vérard desired to bring out a French edition of the 'Metamorphoses,' his wood-cutters treated the designs in the edition by Colard Mansion in this way, and as the originals were but poor work the injury to them was not very great. It was the first of these designs, that of Saturn devouring his children, which Vérard, a year or two later, printed in his edition on vellum of the 'Miroir Historial' of Vincent de Beauvais, to serve as a ground-plan to his illuminator, who, by painting out Saturn's scythe, and the child in his mouth, and some other objectionable details, turned it into a very moderately edifying picture of the Holy Family. But this after-use is beside our point, nor are the cuts in either Mansion's edition, or that of Vérard, worth reproducing here. As an instance of this practice we will rather show the original and a copy in reverse of the frontispiece of the 'Nobilissima Arte de Astrologia,' by Granollachs, an astronomer of Barcelona, printed at Naples, with the calculations made for the year 1485, when it was presumably intended to be issued. That this is really its date we have strong confirmatory evidence in the style, both of the design and the cutting, which corresponds very closely to that of the cuts to the life of Æsop prefixed to the Italian edition brought out at Naples in the same year, 1485, by the jurist-publisher, Francisco de Tuppo, and probably printed for him by Matthias Moravus. The designer was a man of skill and imagination, and we may notice in this picture the Saracenic type which he has given to the man whom we see at the window, to suit with the presumably Moorish descent of its author.

The 'Arte de Astrologia' of Granollachs became popular, and in 1493 Plannck, a great printer of cheap books at Rome, brought out an edition of it there under the altered title 'Lunare.' That it might not go unillustrated, he seems to have commissioned his office-boy to reproduce the Naples woodcut, and the result was the remarkable work of art which is here set face to face with its original. By and by we shall see how a Florentine artist fared when the same task was set him.

Reproduction in reverse was undoubtedly the refuge of the incompetent, but we must remember that it was also the restoration of the design as originally drawn on the wood, and the most skilful artists did not disdain to save themselves trouble in this way. They had no objection to copying another man's work, but their aim was not to see how closely they could copy, but to make a pretty picture with the least expenditure of pains, and if it looked as well when the rights and lefts were reversed there was no fault to be found. Hence we shall find this method employed in many cases where the second artist was no whit inferior to the first. Examples of the servile reproduction of woodcuts by other printers, without reversal, are hardly as numerous as we should expect, and are naturally not very interesting. They group themselves chiefly round a few popular books, such as the 'Fasciculus Temporum' of Rolewinck, Steinhowel's 'Æsop' and Brant's 'Ship of Fools.' The home of the 'Fasciculus Temporum' seems to have been Cologne, but the cuts in the editions which we find printed in other towns of Germany, at Venice by Walch and Ratdolt, and in Spain, all follow the same lines very closely. Of the 'Æsop,' which started either from Sorg's press at Augsburg, or from that of Knoblochzer at Strasburg, no less than eleven editions were printed in different towns in Germany during the fifteenth century, the cuts in all of which are on the same model, while the actual blocks used by Sorg afterwards passed into the possession of Gerard Leeu at Antwerp, and were again imitated by Christian Snellaert at Delft. The cuts in the 'Narrenschiff' enjoyed no less widespread a popularity.