■ The issue of The Masters of Wood-Engraving is limited to one hundred copies of this size, signed and numbered, and Jive hundred smaller. The work will not be reproduced. THE MASTERS OF WOOD-ENGRAYING By W. J. LINTON “ Me list not of the chaf ne of the stre Maken so long a tale, as of die com." ISSUED TO SUBSCRIBERS ONLY: AT THE RESIDENCE OF THE AUTHOR, NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, UNITED STATES; AND LONDON: B. F. STEVENS, 4 TRAFALGAR SQUARE, CHARING CROSS. 1889 PREFACE NT of any treatment of Wood-Engraving in a manner satisfactory to an engraver is the reason and may be sufficient occasion for my book. It is as an engraver, not as a bibliographer, that I write. My purpose is not so much to give account of the books in which engravings in wood have appeared as to collect together the finest examples of the Art and to give its history through the exhibition of its Master-Works. This as yet has not been done or attempted to any good purpose. Chatto, to whom I owe a large indebtedness, for without him my work had been hardly possible, was only a most consciencious and excellent bibliographer, not by any means qualified, even with such help as he had from Jackson, to criticize and judge the works which he chronicled and described. And, as furnishing examples of Wood-Engraving, his Treatise only misleads. Jackson was perfectly right in illustrating the history with copies of wood-cuts: but these copies, by his assistants or by himself, as examples of the original engraver's work , even when of the same size, are worthless. When copied on a reduced scale, a fourth of the original size, or less, they give no idea of the engraving. We need the engravings themselves: the best of counterfeits will not avail us. Not copies, but reproductions, by one or other process, have been given by Sotheby, Humphreys, and others; nevertheless I am bold to say that in no work on engraving in wood have I yet found any signs of choice or sufficient judgment. Good cuts and bad have been confounded together; and exaCt reproductions made from foul impressions, the ink over the sides of the lines too often supposed to be a portion of the engraving. II Neither the most careful copies of Holbein’s Dance of Death, edited by Douce, nor the photo-lithographic reproductions from the originals, issued by the Holbein Society, give any idea of the cutting of Lutzelburger. These two imitations are types of all. With an engraver’s technical knowledge I hope to remedy this; and toward such end I have not only closely examined all the cuts needed for my history, but have compared edition with edition, and chosen for photographic reproduction the purest impressions. For these I have searched through the Library and Print Room of the British Museum, and had also considerable private advantages, especially as to proofs of modern works. Though nearly all reproductions fall short, I think those here executed by Messrs. Dawson, Mr. W. L. Colls, and Messrs. Walker and Boutall, are sufficiently close to satisfy an engraver. Where, in some few cases, they may be unsatisfactory, it is because I have been unable to obtain good impressions of the originals; and any imperfection can only be repeated in the photograph. Sometimes I have been fortunate enough to obtain electrotypes from the original blocks; and with few exceptions (noted in the list) every cut I give is closely to the size of the original. Farther, in the course of inquiry I have found numerous errors in most writers, based mainly on their want of technical knowledge; such as the attribution of early engravings to painters who were not engravers, undue praise of cuts on account only of the designs, and the mistaking of metal for wood. Indebted as I am glad to acknowledge myself to Dr. Willshire, for his Introduction to the Study and Collection of Ancient Prints (to which, with some note also of Modern Prints, my book may, I hope, be deemed a not unworthy supplement), I have still to objeCt to him upon certain occasions, venturing where as an engraver I may be allowed to speak with authority. So far as regards Engraving in Wood I claim the right of an expert: my title earned by more than fifty years’ practice and study of the art. I do not pretend to so much of bibliographical research as would warrant me in criticising work in that department, nor do I assert general authority as an artist; but in my own province I have qualifying know¬ ledge, and on this ground hope to show sufficient reason for my book, and reason for a belief that it will be found of value to the general print-colleClor, to the professional engraver, and to all real lovers and earnest students of Art. Briefly, my objeCt is to correCl a number of misconceptions, to furnish some data for accurate judgments, and to give samples of the best work in Wood-Engraving: samples hitherto beyond the reach, many beyond the cognisance, of those most interested: so to make my book a trusty guide (there is none yet) to the study and right understanding of Wood-Engraving, the least understood, not the least important, of the Graphic Arts. If successful in this, it will surely be because an engraver best knows what engraving is. If not successful to my full desire, I may fall back on the apologetic words of Michelet: Un livre est toujours un moyen de faire un meillcur Imre .” Ill On disputable points I have tried to fairly state the opposite opinions. And if by too positive assertion or rudeness of language, by seemingly too hard criticism, by what may be thought unjust depreciation, or negleCt, I have laid myself open to rebuke,— I plead in advance that I have written always free from personal feeling, with conscience as my prime motor; and that the “ tender heart,” which should accompany that, has not been altogether an unknown quantity. I have kept in view one single purpose: a fair and a sufficient exposition of Engraving in Wood with honour to the Masters of the Art. Modern German and French works are but lightly treated. Each is a subject in itself. Any considerable account of either would have too much increased the bulk of my book, and other reasons will appear for the narrower course I have had to adopt. For some omissions else want of space may be excuse enough. Many literary and artistic friends deserve my thanks for suggestions and corrections. That I do not name them is because I could not always point to the special help, and I would not have them charged with errors possibly my own. Not supposing myself to be a “ faultless monster,” I prefer to bear the whole responsibility for the work which goes under my name. I may not however omit my most grateful public acknowledgments to Mr. Bond and Mr. Thompson, Principal Librarians of the British Museum, for unstinted facilities granted me for obtaining photographs, and to Dr. Bullen and Dr. Garnett, of the Library, to Mr. Reid and Professor Colvin, of the Print Room, and all authorities or officials of the Museum (without exception), for unvarying courtesy and very valuable and ever ready assistance during many months in which I was preparing for my work. Some special thanks are also due to the Highland Society, to Messrs. George Bell and Sons, Messrs. Seeley, and Messrs. Cassell, for the loan of blocks and eleClrotypes, and more than thanks to my good friend Mr. B. F. Stevens, of Trafalgar Square, London, without whose generous aid and counsel my book had hardly made its present appearance. W. J. LINTON. New-Haven, Connecticut, U. S. A. CONTENTS PART I —KNIFE-WORK CHAPTER I— The Beginnings of Engraving:—/^ i, Wood-Cuts in early times,— 2, in Babylon and Egypt,—4, India and Rome,—5, Greece,—metal plates and stamps,—Dr. Willshire’s difference of ancient from modern engraving,— 6, Prints not engravings,— 7, ancient engraving identical with modern,— 9, Varro’s invention,— stenciling,—Roman books,—10, 11,—monograms, ciphers, coins, notaries’ and merchants’ marks, signs, and seals,—13, progress from rudest engraving to sculpture,—14, engraving and printing shown to have been practised in old days,—15, and upon various fabrics, unfit material,—16, invention of moveable types and manufacture of linen paper. CHAPTER II— Saints and Playing-Cards:—/^ 17, The history of Wood-Engraving in Europe,—the Helgen, or Saint-PiCtures,—borrowing from China,—18, Papillon’s story of the Cunios,—Books in the Middle Ages,—19, Illuminators, stenciling and engraving,— 20, on Playing-Cards, Singer, Passavant, and, a 1, other writers,—cards from the East,—first cards in Europe, in Italy, Germany,— 22, Spain, France,— method of production,— 23, Chatto’s mistake of stencil,—24, the Craftsmen,— 25, Paul of Prague, his “Tiripagus,”—26, Prints altogether in stencil, difficulty of knowing stencil,—27, the Helgen, earlier than engraved cards, Dominotiers, what stampide implies,—28, the Brussels Virgin of 1418,—30, St Christopher of 1423,—33, indications of date-uncertain, the frotton ,—34, the Annunciation,—35, St. Bridget,—36, the Virgin of Berlin,—objeCt of these Helgen ,— 37, colours employed on them, supposed technical differences,— 38, by whom produced. CHAPTER III—The Block-Books :— Page 39, Pictures with engraved text,—40, the Apocalypsis,—41, the Canticum Canticorum,—44, the Biblia Pauperum,—47, the various editions,—49, Sotheby’s mistakes,—50, copies compared,—52, additional cuts,—53, the Ars Moriendi. CHAPTER IV— Wood or Metal :— Page 59, Some later block-books, Fust and Schaeffer’s Psalter,—60, Pfister’s books,— 61, the Alphabet of 1464,—the Speculum Humans Salvationis, printed from moveable types,—64, its origin, its description,—66, comparison with Biblia Pauperum,—67, Books in Germany, and VI Italy,—69, Meditations of John of Turrecremata, Valturius’ De Re Militari, works of Caxton, Breydenbach’s Travels,—70, the Numberg Chronicle,—71, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili73. Metal cuts m intaglio and relief, difficulty of distinguishing metal cuts from wood,-74, Weigel's means for deciding,-75, various works instanced,— 76, French Books of Hours, cribU work. CHAPTER V— Jerome of Nurnberg :—Page 79. Jerome Andres,—80, Numberg and Germany in the time of Durer,—81, Durer’s Apocalypse,—83, Durer not engraving in wood,—84, Engraving no more needing to be coloured,—85, Durer’s other books, the Life of the Virgin, the Greater Passion of Christ, the Lesser Passion,—87, the Triumph of Maximilian, the Arch, the Procession, the Car,—90, the Engravers of the Procession, Dienecker,— 9 r, Sir Theurdank, the White King,—92, Jerome Andres, his work and, 93, character,—94, Durer's single wood-cuts,—Cranach’s St. Jerome. CHAPTER VI— Lutzelburger -.—Page 95, Hanns Lutzelburger, his life and, 96, work,— 97, Holbein’s Dance of Death, several editions,—98, many copies and reproduaions,—99, subjeas of the fifty-eight designs,— 103, delays in using the cuts, who engraved the last,—104, evidence insufficient of Lutzelburger’s death,— Ottley’s probabilities,—105, it is properly the Masque of Death, meaning of Macabre, books repeating the subjea, and wall-paintings,—106, Lutzelburger’s work depreciated by Hamerton, Hamerton contradiaed,— 107, Holbein’s Bible,—108, Initial Letters. CHAPTER VII— Altdorfer to Papillon :— Page 109, Large wood-cuts,—no, Andrea Andreani,—nr, Artists wrongly credited with engraving in wood, Boldrini’s work in metal, Vico and Altdorfer exceptions, 112, Sebald Beham’s Apocalypse, by whom engraved,— 113, Beham’s larger works, and his New Testament and Bible, Cranmer’s Catechism, Jackson’s copies,—114, Wood-cuts given by Humphreys, Holtrop, Ames, Dibdin, and Becker,—Artists of the sixteenth century after Holbein and Beham,—Virgil Solis,—115, Bernard Salomon,—116, Jost Amman, Tobias Stimmer,—117, who were the engravers,—Van Sichem, Frig, and Feyerabendt,—initials and monograms unsatisfactory,—118, German and Italian work compared,—two Decamerons and a Dante,—suspicion of metal in Italian cuts,— St. Elizabeth giving alms,—French and English work,—119, Jegher, a younger Van Sichem, Switzer,—120, Art in a low state at the close of the six¬ teenth century,—Le Sueurs and Papillons,—Jean Michel Papillon, his Almanac, the Recueil des Papillon,— i2i, Papillon’s Treatise of Wood-Engraving,—the two Ungers,—122, Unzelmann,—late knife-work in Germany, France, and England,—Watts, Deacon,—123, Knife-work of three classes, tools used for it, the kinds of wood, laboriousness of the process,—124, its limitation. PART II —GRAVER-WORK CHAPTER I— Before Bewick :—Page 125, The graver and the scrive,—engraving on the butt of the wood,— 126, Papillon’s denial of the possibility,—127, J. B. Jackson, Kirkall,—128, doubt of Kirkall engraving in wood,—129, Jackson again, his title-page to Suetonius,—the Kirkall ticket in metal,—130, Croxall’s Fables of iEsop probably metal also, praise and, 131, description of these Fable cuts,—132, unequaled until the time of Bewick. CHAPTER II— Bewick: —Page 133, General ignorant worship of Bewick, Hugo’s Bewick-ColleCtor,—134, Stephens’ Notes, Croal Thomson’s Life and Works, Dobson’s Bewick and his Pupils, Jackson’s and Chatto’s Treatise, Bewick’s youth,—135, apprenticeship,—136, book-work, the “Old Hound,”—137, cuts for Saint and Angus, Hieroglyphick Bible, Fables of 1776, of 1779, Seledt Fables of 1784,-138, Charnley’s edition, Pearson’s edition,—139, charadter of Selea Fables of 1784,-140, Bewick’s Quadrupeds,—141, Land and VII Water Birds,—143, the Tail-pieces, Bewick’s limitation as an engraver, the Chillingham Bull,—144, Bewick’s large cuts, Waiting for death, work in copper,—145, Parnell’s Hermit, Somervile’s Chase,—146, Goldsmith’s Traveler and Deserted Village, best of engravings in the Quadrupeds and, 147, Birds,—149, tail-pieces done by Pupils, Chatto’s list of Bewick’s own, the Fables of 1818, current criticisms, 150, disputed,—151, examples given of the best,—153, who drew and engraved them,—154, Bewick’s work appraised, his apprentice-list,—155, Indiscriminate Heaps for sale, the Daughters’ Collection in the British Museum, Bewick’s real claims,—156, printing, his original drawings,—157, summing up,—John Bewick,—Robert Bewick,—158, his Fishes. CHAPTER III— Clennell and Nesbit: — Page 159, Clennell, his early work,—160, his Tail-pieces to Bewick’s Birds, Chatto’s list,—161, the Hive, Craig’s Scripture Illustrated, History of England,—162, Hermit of Warkworth, Pilgrim’s Progress, Vicar of Wakefield, Religious Emblems,—164, the Diploma of the Highland Society, 165, compared with knife-work, Clennell preeminent, Thompson’s copy, Rogers’ Poems,—166, pure Stothard, Clennell as a painter,—167, cuts falsely called his. Nesbit, 167, his early work, St. Nicholas’ Church, Scripture Illustrated,—168, History of England, Thomson’s Seasons, Religious Emblems,—169, Quillinan’s Wood-cuts and Verses, Somervile’s Rural Sports, Fables of 1818,—170, Savage’s Hints on Decorative Printing, Rinaldo and Armida, Chatto’s criticism,— 171, Puckle’s Club, Northcote’s Fables, Blind Beggar of Bethnal-Green, Natural History of Selbome, Harvey’s influence,—172, Latrobe’s Scripture Illustrations,— Hole. CHAPTER IV— Branston and Thompson :— Page 173, Branston, first work in Bath, Lottery Bills, Scripture Illustrated,—174, History of England, Religious Emblems, Puckle’s Club,—175, Chorley’s Metrical Index, the Cave of Despair, Savage’s Decorative Printing, Chatto’s comparison with Nesbit, the Two Schools, the white line of Bewick and the black line of Thurston,—176, Butler’s Remains, Hudibras, Walton’s Angler, Fables to rival Bewick,—177, Lee Priory books, Northcote’s Fables. Thompson, 177, his general work characterised,—178, apprenticed to Branston, day of Thurston, Dibdin’s London Theatre,—179, Puckle’s Club, Fairfax’s Jerusalem Delivered,—180, Hudibras,—best wood-engrav¬ ing (under Bewick and Thurston) in the first quarter of the nineteenth century,—181, Thompson’s cuts for Whittingham, his other important works,—184, engraving in gun-metal and steel. CHAPTER V— Aftermath: —Page 185, Decadence begun, Harvey great as an engraver, Fables of 1818, Assassination of Dentatus,—186, Henderson’s History of Wines,—187, Harvey as designer,— William Hughes, Puckle’s Club, Butler’s Remains, and other works,— Hugh Hughes, Beauties of Cambria,—188, Samuel Williams, peculiarity of his work,—189, the Olio, Hone’s Political TraCts, London Stage, Thomson’s Seasons, Wiffen’s Tasso, and other,—190, Thomas Williams, Northcote’s Fables,—191, Bible Illustrations, Paul and Virginia,— Bonner, Northcote’s Fables,—192, title-pages, animals,— Jackson, Penny Magazine, Arabian Nights, Pictorial Prayer-Book, Shakspere, Northcote’s Fables,—193, Powis, Dance of Death, engravings with Jackson’s name,—194, Scripture Illustrations, Martin and Westall’s Bible, Gray’s Elegy,— Smith, most excelling in animals,—195, Solace of Song, Arabian Nights, Paul and Virginia, Meadows’ Shakspere, Heads of the People, Gilbert’s Cowper,—196, Harvey’s Milton, Harral,— Anderson, his copies from Bewick, two large cuts in white line,—197, Adams, his Bible and other works. CHAPTER VI—In the Winter: — Page 199, Decadence, the law of line, early graver-work incised,— 200, the Kirkall ticket, Bewick’s line following, and carried out by Nesbit and by Clennell, Clennell’s potentiality, — 201, the separation of draftsman and engraver, characteristics of different engravers,— 202, monotony of LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The St. Christopher of 1433 ........ Frontispiece Initial W ( Branston) ......... Preface Graver and Pen .......... Page vm PART I —KNIFE-WORK CHAPTER I —THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING Initial F ( reduction from the Alphabet of 1464) .... Brick-Inscription from Babylon ...... Egyptian Stamp ........ Roman Brass Stamp ....... Stamps of Theodoric and Charlemagne ..... Gothic Monograms, Runic Cipher and Notary’s Stamp Merchants’ Marks ........ Roller-Printing ( Papillon) ...... CHAPTER II —SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Initial 0 ............ 17 Early Playing-Cards • • 2 3 The Draftsman and the Engraver, Jost Amman ...... 25 The Colourer, Amman . .26 The Brussels Virgin, of “1418” ( reduction ) ....... 28 The St. Christopher of 1423 ( reduction) . . • 3 1 The Annunciation ( reduction) ....••■•■ 34 St. Bridget (reduction) - - - 35 The Virgin of Berlin ( reduflion) 3 6 A Wood-Engraver’s Knife 3 8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PART I — KNIFE-WORK —continued CHAPTER III —THE BLOCK-BOOKS tam. . 39 From the Apocalypsis ( redunion ) 40 A Page of the Apocalypsis ...•••■• facing 40 From the Canticum Canticorum ( redunion ) 41 A Page of the Canticum Canticorum ..-•••• facing 42 From the Biblia Pauperum ( redunion ) 44 - 48 Ornaments and Tiaras • From the Biblia Pauperum 5° A Page of the Biblia Pauperum ..••••■• facing 50 Part of another Page . ' ' • S 1 From the Ars Moriendi S 3 A Page of the Ars Moriendi ....•••• facing 57 Tail-piece from the same . • • • • • ’ 5® CHAPTER IV—WOOD OR METAL Initial P from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ■ • • • 59 Letter L, Alphabet of 1464 61 The Rebus From the Speculum Humana Salvationis ( redunion ) ...... — Part of Page of the Biblia Pauperum .••••■•• 66 Two Page-Headings from the Speculum Hum anas Salvationis . . ■ facing 66 The Flight into Egypt, Meditations of John of Turrecremata . . . .68 Frontispiece to Breydenbach’s Travels ...•■•■ facing 70 From the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili . . . • • • • 7 1 From the same 7 2 Initial N. 1552 (criblk work ) .•••••■■■ 73 From a Dante of 1491 75 Title-page of Hours, Simon Vostre ....... facing 76 Initial T.78 Feather — CHAPTER V—JEROME OF NURNBERG Initial SO, on part of Durer’s Arch of Maximilian . . . . .79 A Page of the Apocalypse ........ facing 82 A Page of the Life of the Virgin ....... facing 86 A Page of the Greater Passion — A Page of the Lesser Passion ......... — Part of the Arch of Maximilian ....... facing 88 Another Part ........... — LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PART I — KNIFE-WORK — continued The Triumphal Car, Durer . From the Procession, Burgkmair .... From the same ....... St. Jerome in penitence, Cranach. . . . . XI facing page 90 facing 94 CHAPTER VI — LUTZELBURGER Initial W, Holbein’s Larger Alphabet ..... Adam and Eve in Paradise, Holbein’s Dance of Death, 1538 Adam tilling the earth ....... The Judge ......... The Bishop ......... The Old man ........ The Duchess ........ Boy Bacchanals, 1545-7 ....... The Young Husband, 1562 ...... The Temptation of Eve, Holbein's Bible ..... Initials, Holbein’s Smaller Alphabet ..... Initial H (Hanns Luitelburger ) ...... CHAPTER VII —ALTDORFER TO PAPILLON Initial T, about 1500 ....... Death of the Virgin ( Altdorfer ) ...... Part of Cut (sEneas Vico ) ....... From Beham’s Apocalypse {Jerome Andrea ) .... From the same ........ A Page of Cranmer’s Catechism ...... From the same ........ From Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil Solis ..... From A?sop’s Fables, Solis ....... From Quadrins Historiques, Salomon ..... From Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Salomon ..... The Temptation in Paradise, Jost Amman .... Title-Page to Livy, Amman ...... Hagar and Sarah, Stimmer ...... From a Decameron ........ From Holinshed’s Chronicles ...... St. Elizabeth giving alms, Caccia ..... From Paradisus Terrestris ( Switzer ) ..... Title-page of Papillon’s Almanac ( Papillon ) .... A Peasant { Unger ) ........ Rope-dancing { Papillon ) ....... 95 103 113 . 116 facing 116 ”9 124 XII LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PART II —GRAVER-WORK CHAPTER I —BEFORE BEWICK Mask of Shakspere ( scrive - work ) . Initial I { Branston ) ..■■■■ Graver and Scrive ...•••• The Cut with EK Page-heading from Dryden’s Plays • Title-page to Suetonius {/■ B . Jackson ) . . • ■ The Kirkall Ticket { Kirkalli ) . The Lion and Four Bulls, Croxall’s jEsop, 1722 The Old Man and Death The Two Frogs The Young Man and the Swallow . Part of a Frontispiece { Hodgson ) . The Lion and Four Bulls { Bewick ) .... CHAPTER II —BEWICK Initial M { Branston ) .... “A Bewick” ..... An earlier Old Hound .... The Miller, his Son, and their Ass,—F ables, 1784 The Old Man and Death .... The Two Frogs ..... The Young Man and the Swallow The Sheep and the Bramble The Cur Fox, Quadrupeds, 1790 . The Spanish Pointer .... The Heath Ram, 1798 .... The Peacock, Land Birds, 1797 The Night-Jar ..... The Common Gull, Water Birds, 1804 The Scaup Duck ..... The Tame Duck ..... The Farm Yard, Land Birds The Snow Man ..... The Dog with a kettle at his tail, Water Birds Cows and Magpie, Land Birds Old Man breaking stones Waiting for death, Fables, 1818 . Waiting for death, Bewick’s last work LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XIII PART II — GRAVER-WORK —continued The Hermit and the Angel, Parnell’s Hermit, 1795 ..... page 145 Huntsman and dogs, Somervile’s Chase, 1796 . . . . . . — The Cheviot Ram, Quadrupeds, 1798 ........ 146 Pulling the Colt’s Tail, Quadrupeds, 1791 ....... 147 The Yellow Bunting, Land Birds, 1797 .........— Poachers tracking a hare . . . . . . .148 Night—mist and rain .......... — Sportsman with dogs .......... — Boys flying a kite, Water Birds, 1804 ........ — The Lion and Four Bulls, Fables of 1818 ...... 150 The Fighting Cocks .......... — The Two Bitches ........... — The Eagle, the Cat, and the Sow ...... 151 The Cat and the Fox The Fox and the Bramble ..........— Sow and Pigs ........... 152 A Windy Day . . . . . • .156 The Little Stint ........... — Sandpiper’s Feathers .......... 157 From the Looking Glass for the Mind (John Bewick ) . — The Lumpsucker (Robert Bewick ) . . . . . . . .158 CHAPTER III — CLENNELL AND NESBIT Initial E ( Harvey ) ........... *59 Angler, Water Birds, 1804 ( Clennell ) . . . . . .160 River Scene ............ — Stranded Ship ........... 161 Coast Scene ............ — Rocks and foam ........... — Two Cuts from the Hermit of Warkworth .163 The Soul encaged, Religious Emblems ........ 164 Diploma of the Highland Society ........ 164-5 From Rogers’ Pleasures of Memory ........ 165 Two Cuts from the same .......... 166 From the same ( Thompson ) ......... — Cranmer’s Martyrdom, History of England ( Nesbit ) ...... 168 Wounded in the mental eye, Religious Emblems .169 From Somervile’s Rural Sports ......... — Rinaldo and Armida, Savage’s Decorative Printing ..... facing 170 Zany, Puckle’s Club ........... 171 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PART II — GRAVER-WORK —continued The Redbreast and the Sparrow, Northcote’s Fables ( Nesbit ) . P a S e '7 1 Tail-piece to the Ermine and Polecat . ' - Seed sown, Religious Emblems ( Hole ) • • ! 7- CHAPTER IV— BRANSTON AND THOMPSON Initial J ( Evanston ) • ! 73 Rescued from the floods, Religious Emblems ■ 1 74 The Lawyer, Puckle’s Club . *75 Title to Chorley’s Metrical Index ..■■■■■■ Philosophers and Mouse, Butler’s Remains .176 In the Stocks, Hudibras • ••••••'' The Cave of Despair, Savage’s Decorative Printing facing 176 Pike, Walton’s Angler • • r 77 The Fight with the Soldan, Wiffen’s Tasso ( Thompson ) 178 Moroso, Puckle’s Club • ■ J 79 Youth, Puckle’s Club Sophronia AND Olindo, Fairfax’s Tasso Title-page to Puckle’s Club f ac ‘"S 180 Title-page to Hudibras . Portrait of Butler, Butler’s Remains .181 The Boudoir, Young Lady’s Book Lion and Lioness ..-••••• l8z Trout, Walton’s Angler ■ •■••••*' From Mornings at Bow Street Diploma of the Highland Society -••■•••• i8z "3 A Dinner at Versailles • i8 3 The Hay-field, Mulready’s Vicar of Wakefield The Witches in Macbeth . .184 Griselda, Northcote’s Fables .■■•■••• — CHAPTER V—AFTERMATH Initial A ( Harvey ) ..■•••••••• 185 From the History of Wines ......... 186 The Assassination of Dentatus ...... facing 186 Gamester, Puckle’s Club ( W . Hughes ) . . . . .187 Falls of Park Mawr, Beauties of Cambria (H Hughes ) ...... 188 The Arch of Titus, Solace of Song ( S . Williams ) .189 Fogarty’s State Cabin, Three Courses and a Dessert ...... 190 Habakkuk Bullwrinkle, Three Courses and a Dessert ( T . Williams ) — Prudence and her Advisers, Northcote’s Fables . .191 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PART 11 — GRAVE R-WORK —continued The Parrot, Northcote’s Fables ( Bonner ) . Jaguar, Tower Menagerie ..... The Beacon and the Chandelier, Northcote’s Fables ( Jackson ) The Peacock and the Owl, Northcote’s Fables ( Powis ) . Nineveh ....... A House in Oonalaska ..... Rhinoceros ....... Thibet Dog (Smith) ..... The Bay of Pozzuoli, Solace of Song Water Fowl ( Anderson ) ..... The Massacre of the Innocents ( Adams ) page facifig facing CHAPTER VI —IN THE WINTER Initial I (Branston) ..... Title-page to Fontaine (Breviers ).... The Court of the Lion, Reineke Fuchs (Allgaier and Sicgle) The Peacock at home (Linton) .... Dead Birds ....... An Old Mill ...... Landscape ....... General Zieten, Heroes of War and Peace (Kretzschmar) La Vie Humaine, Magasin Pittoresque (Bertrand) Satan resting (Ligtiy) ..... Pilot Boat ( Clennell) ..... Ludwig Richter (Klinkicht) .... Delacroix (Seriakoff) ..... Narcissus (Linton) ...... Booth as Don Cesar de Bazan .... Infant Bacchus facing facing Initial O (Design by Holbein) Adam and Eve, H. Baldung Grun CHIAROSCURO facing MASTERS OF WOOD-ENGRAVING K N I FE-WO RK CHAPTER I THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING I RST OF THE ARTS,—of the origin and a<5lual beginning of Engraving-in-wood there is no record attainable. Some antediluvian patriarch, Enoch, or another, who shall say that he might not have cut two simply-linked initials, his own with that of his Chaldean Lady, in the bark of a fair-spreading tree under whose young boughs had been his first and happiest trysting-place ? Or one yet elder, as Evelyn will tell us,— Adam himself, taught our art by the angel Razael: or not so taught, may not he have set his mark upon the apple-tree of Paradise, scratching with a sharp stone an earlier name than Eve ? Used they not axes, felling timbers for the Ark? Noah "hewed him kipples and hewed him bawks : ” were they engraved in single line or cross, axe-cut, to indicate their fitting-place ? Who shall answer the presumption, confirming it or contraditting ? This at least may be allowed In prehistoric time, haply before the days of Tubal, men may have cut notches The unknown beginnings. The earliest of Engravers in THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING The Inventor of Engraving Early engraving in Babylon and Egypt. Inscription on a brick-stamp from Babylon. Early Egyptian wooden stamp. in sticks or on unfelled trees, to guide them through primeval forests or noting something to be remembered ; the first of these Notch-Cutters may be considered, in default of other claimant, Noah, Adam, or the angel Razael, as the Father of our Art, the Inventor (need one be had) of Engraving-in-wood. Leaving these dark and unprofitable surmises, and approaching the dawn (must we say —the misty twilight ?) of History, we do get sight of the praftice of Engraving in ancient Babylon and Egypt. And we are upon stable ground amid these ruins of undated or not surely-dated time. Babylonish bricks and Egyptian stamps are to be seen by whoso will in the British Museum. Some bricks there exhibited (brought from the site of Babylon), about twelve inches square, and three inches in thickness, have their one broader side indented with cuneiform — arrow-headed — wedge-shaped characters, such as are here represented at about a third of the aCtual size. On close examination I judge these indentations to have been made by wooden stamps in which the characters were on the surface, in relief, the interstices having been cut away, precisely as would be done in a stamp or rude wood-engraving of to-day. The bricks, stamped before they were hardened by the sun, appear to be of clay, mixed with straw or stubble to hold the clay together : reminding one of the brick-making in Egypt ( Exodus , chap, v), when the Israelites complained of the taskmasters who aggravated their labour, no more giving straw to them, scattering them abroad through all the land to gather the necessary stubble, yet never diminishing the ordered tale of bricks. The characters upon these Babylonish bricks, I have said, are indented, the stamp having them in relief. A print from one would appear like our engraving. A reversed treatment will be observed in the annexed representation of the print of an Egyptian stamp, one of several in the British Museum, found by Edward William Lane in a tomb at Thebes. This stamp, cut in intaglio (like a modern butter-stamp) in wood, five inches long, over two in width, and having at the back a handle of the same piece, is a veritable wood-engraving : supposed to be of the time of Moses, the hieroglyph on it deciphered to read “ A monop A, Beloved of Truth ” (approved of Ammon, according to Champollion), Amonoph the First, second king of the eighteenth THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING 3 dynasty, the Pharoah of the Israelitish Exodus. Two ancient Egyptian bricks, (also in the British Museum), bear impressions from similar stamps. So that we have here unmistakable evidence of engraving in wood in the far-off days of Egyptian Thebes,—engraving, it matters not how rude, cut in the white-line (white in black) manner of Bewick; and we have moreover proofs of engraving in relief done at Babylon of the same nature and description as the wood-cuts from Durer’s drawings, and other wood-cuts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Less satisfactory, but not absolutely to be discarded, is the plea for ancient knowledge of our art in China : certain writers having asserted that it was practised in the reign of We-wung, eleven centuries before Christ. We may pass this as “ not proven.” Stamps for bricks may suggest the use of stamps for other purposes. Baldwin, in his Prehistoric Nations, accepts the following, from Rawlinson’s Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World: —“We are informed by Simplicius, that Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander to Babylon, sent to Aristotle from that capital a series, which he had found there, of astronomical observations extending back through a period of 1900 years from Alexander’s taking the city.” These were on tablets of baked clay. Brass stamps (not for bricks), stamps in relief, and reversed so as to be right when printed, are exhibited among the Roman Antiquities in the British Museum; and Lambinet, in his Rechierches sur 1 Origine de l'Imprimerie, gives account of two stone stamps with hollowed reversed letters (a Roman inscription) found in 1818, in France, near the village of Nais, in the department of the Meuse. Whether such stamps are of stone or brass or wood matters not; a single stamp, of whatever material, proves a knowledge of engraving. We need not look for the preservation of many of wood : the perishable wood is lost; the harder material remains. And without one wooden stamp to assure us, it would be impossible to suppose that engraving in wood was not concurrent with engraving in metal. Metal plates engraved have been found in Egyptian mummy-cases; and we may read in Exodus of Aholiab, son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, an engraver and cunning workman, who “ wrought onyx stones inclosed in ouches of gold, graven, as signets are graven, with the names of the Children of Israel,” and made the plate of the holy crown (for Aaron) of pure gold, and “wrote on it a writing like to the engraving of a signet.” Homer and Aischylus tell of engraving ; the shields of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes, as well as the more celebrated shield of Achilles, are described as ornamented with rich engravings, heraldic and historical. A plate of brass, on which was engraved a map of the then known world, is mentioned by Herodotus. Strutt’s Biographical Dictionary has a representation of an Etruscan patera, the workmanship upon it “ consisting of carving and engraving.” In the same book is figured a sheath (of a sword or dagger) brought from Italy by Sir W. Hamilton, with rude engraving on a flat surface, needing “ only to be filled with ink” to yield a fair and perfe< 5 l impression. And in the Imperial Library Wood-cuts in intaglio, white upon black. Wood-cuts in relief, or black upon white. Engraving in Ancient tablets from Babylon. Roman stamps And in stone. Mummy-cases. Mosaic record. yEschylus and A brass map. Patera and sword-sheath. 4 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING Roman metal Indian plates in copper. Metal work of the Greek and Romans. Roman mirrors. Bronze plates for slaves. at Vienna is a metal plate, bearing on it some Roman police ordinance, of two hundred years before the Christian era. In India, long before our era, transfers of land were recorded upon plates of copper. Our great engraver, John Landseer, in his Leisures on the Art of Engraving , speaks of a plate (then, r8o6, in the possession of the Earl of Mansfield) on which was engraved a Sanscrit inscription recording a grant of land. It is dated twenty years before the birth of Christ. Another such grant he mentions, of nearly the same age, likewise engraved on copper, and having a seal appendant, which seal is impressed into a ponderous lump of copper attached to the deed by a massy ring of the same metal. “It appears to me, he observes,—“ on a careful inspection, that this seal is not cast, but struck as coins are struck; whether cast or struck, the matrix must have been an intaglio engraving, of no mean workmanship. It exhibits a style of art similar and not inferior to the best of the present productions of the art of Hindostan. It is in high relief and, being imbedded in the metal, in good preservation. It is about ten inches in circumference, and contains, besides human figures and animals, a Sanscrit legend—* The Illustrious Kama Deva.’ “ That the ancient Greeks and Romans were accustomed to engrave metal ”—writes Dr. Willshire, in his Introduction to the Study and ColleElion of Ancient Prints, “ is proved by a particular ornamentation of certain patera and like utensils which have come down to us. In the cabinet of Roman Antiquities in the British Museum the case of the Mirrors contains some very beautiful examples of engraving on metal.” He notes particularly, among several, a mirror which has the Birth of Minerva engraved upon it; and another, a “rich engraving” of Menelaus seizing Helen. The Roman metal-workers, engravers of these mirrors, engraved vases, characters, ornaments, figures, which they afterwards filled in with gold, silver, or enamel. Jansen names two of these workmen, whom Pliny praised ; and gives account of several noted works. By a law of Constantine, Roman slaves instead of being branded (by a stamp) had a metal plate fastened to the collar. Fabretti gives us the following inscription, engraved on one of these plates, of bronze. TENE ME §UIA F^G-ET REBOCA ME VICTORI- ACOLITO^ A DOMINICV CLEMENTIS, Brands used for slaves, captives, and criminals. Hold me because I am a runaway, and return me to ViCtor the Acolyte, to the lordship of Clement. His master probably a Christian. Before Constantine it was usual for the ancients to brand slaves, captives, and criminals, as they branded their cattle, with heated stamps, burning in the letters or figures denoting ownership. The Athenians, according to Suidas, marked their Samian captives with the figure of an owl, the bird of Pallas, the THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING 5 guardian deity of Athens ; Athenians captured by the Samians were marked with a figure of a galley; and those captured by the Syracusans with the figure of a horse. Here was engraving of a kind. Even the cattle-brands spoken of by Virgil were engraved. I have said such brands, for slaves and criminals, to prevent escape, were in use before the time of Constantine ; they were used afterwards, during the Middle Ages ; they were used also in England so late as James I, in accordance with a statute passed in whose reign “ rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars,” convi&ed at the sessions, and found to be incorrigible, were to be branded on the left shoulder with a hot iron, of the breadth of a shilling, with a great R, for Rogue— such branding to be so thoroughly burned and set upon the skin and flesh that said letter R should be seen and remain, a perpetual mark on such Rogue during the remainder of his life. To go back to ancient times :—Stamps for bricks or branding, or (as also employed by the Romans) for marking cloth,—metal plates used in Egypt and India, used also by the Greeks and Romans, though the graven figures or letters were never so slightly scratched (gravers such as we employ not yet invented),—letters impressed on tiles, lamps, pottery and domestic utensils of many kinds (all of these, again referring to the British Museum, having been found with the lettering in relief—perhaps the potters’ names, or indicating only the contents of the vessels), evidently stamped upon the moist unbaked clay from a hollowed or incised mould—all these things point to a general knowledge in very ancient times of engraving in both methods, that of intaglio and that of relief, the method of the ordinary engraver in copper and the method (in order to print or impress the surface) of engraving in wood. Singer ( Researches into the History of Playing-Cards) may persuade us farther : on the track of printing from engraving. The custom of sealing or stamping with coloured inks appears, he says, to be of the highest antiquity in the East. A similar art, writes Heller, was found by captain Cook to exist among the Sandwich Islanders. " Their clothes had printed borders.” In one of the Leeward Islands he obtained ” a stamp with which they printed their clothes.” And again (Singer), the metal stamps, of monograms, marks of goods, etc., in use among the Romans afford examples of a » near approach to the art of printing.” Von Murr, in his Journal, deems there is distinft proof that the Romans had nearly arrived at both wood-engraving (as afterward praftised in Germany) and printing. « Letters cut on wood they certainly had, and very likely grotesques and figures also, the hint of which their artists might readily obtain from the coloured stuffs which frequently were presented by Indian ambassadors to the Emperors." While M. d'Ankerville remarks that the ancients “ only wanted the idea of multiplying representations.” Commenting on which remark of M. d’Ankerville, Dr. Willshire has the following. » But in this lies the point—here is the essential difference between what we now term engraving and a process often praltised by the ancients. They made the first step ; but there Cattle-brands. Rogues’ brands in England. Afl of James I. Proofs of early practice of both methods of engraving. Coloured inks in the East. Prints made by the South-Sea Islanders. Roman letters and grotesques 6 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING Dr. Wiltshire: the difference of ancient from modem Engraving, he says, implies intention of printing. Ancient work meaned merely change of form by indentation. His argument fallacious. engravings. they halted. They were arrested by an obstacle, which was not surmounted until many centuries after their time, and hence engraving in the present acceptation of the term is not known to have been practised by them. “ The word engraving ’’ (he goes on) “ now very generally implies something beyond its simple denotation. It connotes in addition, in the greater number of cases, that such ‘ scratching or cutting into tablets,’ blocks, or plates, be done for, or be capable of being readily applied to, the purpose of yielding upon a more delicate texture, or upon fabrics like parchment or paper, fac-simile impressions in some ink or colour of the original de¬ sign worked out on the tablet. It is true that we speak of having our names * engraved’ on silver spoons, door-plates, etc.; of ' engraving ’ complimentary addresses and dedica¬ tions on presentation ornaments; and we 'engrave ’ monumental brasses. These we do without intending or expecting that such engravings will be used for the purpose of pro¬ ducing impressions on any other surfaces. For such purposes, no doubt, they could be employed under certain conditions, but it was not intended that they should be so used when the metal was incised. “ Should it be asked how long engraving has been practised for the purpose of giving off an impression in black or colour to another and a more yielding substance than that which has been engraved, the answer must be guarded. That the ancients engraved in the one sense of the word, we are certain ; whether they ever engraved in its other and modern meaning is perhaps scarcely doubtful. They did not, most persons would answer —and they used such of their engraved tablets as were in the guise of either intaglio or relief stamps to produce solely a change of form by indentation in another object, and not as charged with ink or colour, for the purpose of stamping parchment, such kind of paper as then existed, and other like substances little or not at all capable of marked and per¬ manent indentation.” ( Study of Ancient Prints , p. 5.) I of course perceive Dr. Willshire’s drift in the distinction he would make. None the less an engraving is an engraving, albeit not intended to be inked. Because we miscall prints by the name of engravings, what we yet continue to call engraving is not therefore a different process from that practised by the ancients. The different purpose for which an engraving is intended can not make the process other than engraving. An engraved tablet, in whatever guise, is an engraving : the “cutting” and “scratching” is engraving. If not “ done for ” it may be “ capable of being readily applied to the purpose of yielding . . fac-simile impressions in some ink,” etc. The present acceptation of the mere word, engravings , is simply incorrect. A print is not an engraving. The universal use of the term beyond its simple denotation does not destroy the real and precise meaning of the word ; and since, as Dr. Willshire allows, “ we are certain the ancients engraved in the one sense of the word” (the only sense in which it should be used by an exact writer), is not it merely confusion of speech to talk of essential difference because we are not certain of THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING 7 their having “engraved in its other and modern meaning: ” that is to say—not certain of their having printed in ink or colour upon parchment or paper, so producing what is now improperly called “an engraving.” It is not impossible that they did this too, taking the second step as well as the first. Dr. Willshire’s view, previously advanced by Ottley, of some distinction of importance between an engraving, in intaglio or relief, which produces by indentation only a change of form and one (may it not be the same ?) which produces a print by ink or colour may be sufficiently answered by Chatto :—“ It certainly would be difficult if not impossible to produce a piece of paper, parchment, or cloth, of the age of the Romans, impressed with letters in ink or other colouring matter; but the existence of such stamps as [one given, a brass stamp, in the British Museum, with the word LAR in relief, reversed] renders it very probable that they were used for the purpose of marking cloth, paper, and similar substances, with ink as well as for being impressed in wax or clay.” Engraving as now executed (the term also yet accepted), meaning striftly the process of cutting in metal or wood or any material whatever with or without reference to taking prints from the incisions, the process also by cutting of leaving surfaces for stamping, or printing, is not essentially different from, but is precisely identical with the process often practised by the ancients. Our Egyptian bricks are all-sufficient evidence. Varieties of method in metal (“mezzotint,” “aquatint,” “stipple," etc.) were, it may be said, unknown to them : but in ordinary engraving they did what we do, and as we do, if they had not the same tools, and though they were not so expert. They may not have bitten in their plates : but a line cut by them in copper or brass was an engraved line, whether the tool called graver was used by them or not. Nor does it matter with what sort of scratching instrument their dry-pointing was effected. An engraved plate can not be other than an engraving. There is no essential difference between what is now termed engraving and the process practised by the ancients. And so far as regards engraving in wood, I can see no difference whatever between that Egyptian wood-cut with a handle now shown in our Museum and the wood-cut I have printed at page 2. Each is an engraving in wood of the same hieroglyphs. To be quite exadl, I must own that I cut mine with a graver, and probably the Egyptian whittled out his with a knife. Well, the best wood-cuts from drawings by Durer and Holbein are also knife-work; and had my block been engraved by a German, he too might have used a knife, excellently fine engraving being yet done with knives in Germany. Or, if a block of box-wood fit for use of a graver had not been at hand, I myself had possibly accepted the softer wood, and done my engraving with a knife, precisely in the manner of my Egyptian predecessor. But although the ancients made the first step, engraving, “ they halted, arrested by an obstacle which was not surmounted until many centuries after their time.” Could this be the want of the printing-press, without which it is supposed they were not able to print Probability of printing by the Romans. LAR Roman stamp, one third of Engraving the in olden days Knife-work yet in Germany. 8 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING Printing upon cylinders at Babylon. and to multiply prints ? Yet taking an impression is printing, even without a “printing press,” and without or ink or colour. And those brick-prints must have been multiplied at Babylon. It is not likely that a separate stamp was cut for every brick. Also, in an extensive empire laws or edids might require publishing : such as are seen inscribed on some cylinders of baked clay, found by Layard at Babylon, stamped or engraved with characters so minute as to be read only by help of a magnifying glass. Layard indeed, though agreeing that the bricks were stamped, thinks these inscriptions were engraved ; but De Vinne assures us that many of them show the clearest indications of impression. In his Invention of Printing he gives a figure of a cylinder, seven inches wide at the ends and somewhat wider in the middle, on which is a ragged and bulging line about a quarter of an inch wide, which seems to have been made by the imperfect joining of the moulds. If the inscription had been cut in the clay, this defect would not be : the vertical lines in which it is arranged would have been connected and the ragged gap not seen. “ We do not know by what considerations Assyrian rulers were governed when about Many copies needing dies. to choose between engraving or writing on clay; but it is not unreasonable to assume that the inscription was written or cut on the clay when one copy only of a record was wanted,—if numerous copies were wanted a die or an engraving on wood was manufac¬ tured, from which these copies were moulded. No surer method of securing exaCt copies of an original could have been devised by a people that did not use ink or paper. These cylinders are examples of printing in its most elementary form.” Referring again to the characters on these Babylonish bricks, De Vinne confirms my own observation; “ they were not cut on the brick, . they were made on the plastic clay by sudden pressure of a xylographic block.” Proof of this is seen “ in the nicety of the engraving and its uniform depth; in the bulging up of the clay on the sides where it was forced outward and upward by the impression.” Evidences of purposed use for printing. Of our brass LAR (at page 7) De Vinne writes :—“ The letters are cut in relief, with a rough counter or field,” proving it could not have been used as a seal. And of another similar brass stamp, Roman also, his words are :—“ If this stamp should be impressed in wax, the impression would produce letters sunk below the surface of the wax in a manner unlike the impressions of seals. The raised surface of the wax would be rough where it should be flat and smooth. This peculiarity is significant. As this rough field unfitted it for a neat impression upon any plastic surface, the stamp should have been used for printing with ink." M. d’Ankerville’s remark is just if restricted to “ prints ” and books. The ancients had there for obstacle the lack of any idea of multiplying impressions of the same engraving : popular editions not thought of because there was no public to create a demand. Roman books. Not that the Romans were without books, and some scant multiplying so occasioned. They had even a daily newspaper, the Alla Dinrna. But there was no call for a larger THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING 9 supply than could be met by the labour of the scribes, educated slaves, whose work also would not be so costly as to call for the competition of mechanical cheapness. Martial says that his first book of Epigrams was sold in plain binding for six sesterces, or about one English shilling; and he complained that the thirteenth went for only four. The elder Pliny tells us of an invention by Varro, by which portraits were multiplied, and which Varro used in his book of Imagines, containing some seven hundred portraits ; but it does not appear that the book was multiplied [Enough for an idea if, as not unusual in much later days, one portrait was repeated for several persons], nor have we any sure account of what these portraits were. Firmin Didot admits the possibility of engravings in relief; Delaborde thinks they may have been stenciled. In either case would they be more than such portraits as were cut out with scissors in our grandmothers’ days, profiles in one colour ? Even this may be giving too much weight to the few uncertain words of Pliny. His words are—“ utpreesentes esse ubiqne et claudipossent.” May it mean nothing more than that they might be kept together in one book, or roll ? * Whether from wood or stencil these Varro portraits, it is certain that stenciling was in use in the time of Pliny : that is, in our first century. On the general subject of stencils I may here borrow sufficient for my purpose from Chatto’s Treatise on Wood-Engraving, to which I shall have often to refer on historical or bibliographical questions. “From a passage in Quintilian ” (Pliny’s contemporary), writes Chatto, “we learn that the Romans were acquainted with the method of tracing letters by means of a thin piece of wood, in which the characters were pierced, or cut through, on a principle similar to [identical with] that on which the present art of stenciling is founded.t He is speaking of teaching boys to write, and the passage referred to may be thus translated:—‘ When the boy shall have entered on joining-hand, it will be useful for him to have a copy-head of wood in which the letters are well cut, so that through the furrows, as it were, he may trace the characters with his style. He will not thus be liable to make slips on the wax [writing on waxed tablets with a style, or point], for he will be confined by the boundary of the letters, and neither will he be able to deviate from his text. By thus more rapidly and frequently following a definite outline, his hand will become set without his requiring any assistance from the master’s to guide it.’ ” Sparing the teacher and learning to swim with corks. Well ordered, master Quintilian! if one could but stencil a joining hand. Roman Scribes. Portraits by The book of the ancients. Stenciling in first century. * The Roman book was a roll, or volume (volumen), a succession of pages on a length of papyrus, to be unwound by the hand of the reader as he went on. The period which may be assigned for the general use of the squared form (the libri quadrati, a series of pages bound together at the back, and tied with a cord) is, according to Noel Humphreys, probably not an earlier one than that of the fourth century. t A stencil is a piece of card, or thin metal or wood or any other material, which has been pierced with lines or figures, so that, when it is laid upon paper, parchment, or cloth, or held against a wall, a brush charged with colour passing over it will colour the uncovered lines or figures below. The stencil-plate must of course be one piece, connected everywhere. The process of stenciling can so be easily detected. The nature of IO THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING Imperial signatures. Monogram of Theodoric. A stencil book. Monogram of Charlemagne. Stampillte. Impossible by “ In the sixth century, as appears from Procopius, the Emperor Justin I made use of a tablet of wood pierced or cut in a similar manner, through which he traced in red ink, the imperial colour, his signature, consisting of the first four letters of his name. It is stated also that Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, the contemporary of Justin, used in the same manner to sign the first four letters of his name through a plate of gold,” it being impossible, if we may trust Cochlceus, to teach His Majesty to sign without this assistance. Prosper Marchand, in his Histoire de l'Imprinterie, gives the following title of a book wholly produced by the stencil, “percdau jour" (pierced through) —Liber Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi cumfiguris et cha- raileribus ex nulld materid compositis. True stencil-work, figures and characters formed out of nothing. One would like only to inspect the title. “ It has been asserted, by Mabillon, that Charlemagne first introduced the practice of signing documents with a monogram, either traced with a pen by means of a thm tablet [or stencil-plate], of gold, ivory, or wood, or impressed with an inked stamp having the characters in relief, in a manner similar to that in which letters are stamped at the Post-Office. Ducange however states that this mode of signing documents is of greater antiquity; and he gives a copy of the monogram of Pope Adrian I. who was elefted to the see of Rome in 774 and died in 795.” * Continuing from Chatto—The monogram, stencil or stamp, consisted of the letters of a person’s name, a fanciful character, or the figure of a cross accompanied with a peculiar kind of flourish called by French writers parafe or ruche (a simple flourish or one complicated). This mode of signing seems to have been common to most nations of Europe during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries; and was practised by nobles and the higher orders of the clergy as well as by kings. It continued to be used by the kings of France to the time of Philip III (1270-1285 ), and by the Spanish monarchs to a much later period. We have a recent instance of the stampilla [diplomatists so call it] in affixing the royal signature. During the last sickness of George IV, in 1830, a silver stamp, counterfeiting the king’s sign-manual, was printed on the documents requiring his signature by commissioners in the royal presence. A similar stamp, it is asserted, served during the last days of Henry VIII to authenticate the iniquitous warrant which sent the poet Surrey to the scaffold. In Sempere’s History of the Cortes of Spain several examples may be seen of the use of * The monograms of Theodoric and Charlemagne, stencil, as my readers themselves may easily prove, if corredtly given ( here copied from Chatto), must The whole of the first figure would be solid, owing have been done with stamps. The parts figured in to the dropping out of the unconneaed square, and the centres could not have been preserved with the the second also would be lost for the same reason. Imperial signatures. Monogram of Theodoric. A stencil book. Monogram of Charlemagne. Stampillte. Impossible by THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING fanciful monograms in that country at an early period, probably introduced by its Gothic invaders. Two maybe sufficient here. No. i is the monogram of a certain Gundisalvo Tellez, affixed to a charter of the date of 840; the same “sign” also used by his widow Q_s Flamula, who granted some property to the abbey of Cardena, for the good of her deceased husband’s soul. No. 2 was used |f /x by the four children of one Ordono as their mark to a charter 1 2 of donation executed in 1018. No. 3 is a Runic cipher, copied from an ancient Icelandic manuscript, given (by Chatto) not as being from a stencil or a stamp, but for the sake of comparison with the Gothic monogram used in Spain. Mr. Chatto seems not quite sure that the examples here given are stamps. They unmistakably are. Not one of the three, if the fac-simile 3 be correct (and there is no reason to doubt that), could by any possibility be produced by stencil. I continue to borrow, with occasional abridgment, from the Treatise. In their inscriptions, and in the rubrics of their books (says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, No. lxi, p. 108) the Spanish Goths, like the Romans of the Lower Empire, were fond of using combined capitals, “ monograms,” a mode of writing still common in Spain upon sign-boards and shop-fronts. The Spanish Goth sometimes subscribed his name; sometimes, like the Roman Emperors, he drew a monogram; sometimes, like the Saxon, he drew a cross; and not infrequently to deed or charter he affixed fanciful signs having close resemblance to the Runic or magical knots of which so many have been engraved by Peringskiold and other northern antiquaries. To the tenth or the eleventh century are also to be referred certain small silver coins, between counters and money (as observed by Pinkerton), which are impressed, on one side only, with a kind of Runic monogram; and which are commonly found in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. The notaries of a later date, on their admission to practice required to use a distinctive sign in witnessing a deed or instrument, continued occasionally to employ stencil, though the use of a stamp for that purpose appears to have been more general. The annexed monogram was the official mark of an Italian notary, Nicolaus Ferenterius, who lived in the first half of the thirteenth century. It is plainly a stamp. Many of the merchants’ marks of our own country, which are to be seen so often on stained-glass windows, monumental brasses, and tomb-stones, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, bear considerable likeness to the ancient Runic monograms. The English trader was accustomed to place his mark as his “ sign” on his shop-front, in the same way as the Spaniard did his monogram; the wool-stapler stamped or stenciled it on his packs ; the fish-curer branded it on the ends of his casks. When the successful merchant built himself a house, his mark would be placed, between his initials, over the principal doorway or over the fireplace in the hall; if he made a gift Gothic stamps. Runic cipher. Monograms on Spanish shops. Notary’s stamp. used by English merchants. 12 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING The signs on windows and or a bequest to his church, his mark was emblazoned on the windows, by the side of the knight’s or nobleman’s shield; and at his death his mark was carved in stone or engraved in brass upon his tomb. Of the merchants’ marks given below (from Mackerel’s History of Kings Lynn, 1737, where more than thirty such marks are shown) the first is from the tomb of Adam de Walsokne, who died in 1349; the second from the tomb of Edmund Pepyr, who died in 1483 : two tombs in the church of St. Margaret, at Lynn. In Piers the Plowman's Crede, written about 1394, merchants’ marks are mentioned, in a description of the windows in a Dominican convent:— Piers Plowman. “ Wide windows ywrought, ywritten full thick. Shining with shapen shields, to shewen about, With marks of merchants ymeddled between, Mo than twenty and two twice ynumbered.” Stamping coins. Gem-engraving. English Mints. And French and German. Roman casting. Seals for wax. Concerning the first invention of stamping letters and figures upon coins, it is fruitless to inquire, as the origin of the art is lost in the remoteness of antiquity. [ Chatto still.] More than eight hundred years before Christ gem-engraving had attained to a perfection which is not yet surpassed, if even it is equalled. The art of coining (and ornamental art generally) declined with the decline of the Roman Empire, but continued to be practised: from the twelfth to the sixteenth century very extensively,—many of the more powerful bishops and nobles assuming the right of coining money, even as the king. In England the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishop of Durham, exercised the right of coinage until the Reformation ; and local Mints for coining the king’s money were also occasionally fixed at Norwich, Chester, York, St. Edmund’s-bury, Newcastle-on-Tyne, or other convenient places. Independently of these royal Mints, almost every abbey struck its own jettons, or counters, thin pieces of copper, used in casting up accounts, commonly impressed with some pious legend. Such Mints were at least as numerous in France and Germany as in England. The art of impressing legends upon coins is nothing else than the art of printing. That the art of casting letters in relief, though not separately, was known to the Romans is proved by the names of the Emperors Domitian and Hadrian on some pigs of lead to be seen in the British Museum; and that it was practised during the Middle Ages we have ample testimony in the inscriptions upon church bells. In the fourteenth century, a hundred years before our earliest dated wood-cuts (1418, -23) the use of seals impressed in wax for the purpose of authenticating documents was general throughout Europe : kings, nobles, bishops, abbots, and all who came of “ gentle blood,” corporations also, clerical and lay,—all had seals. Most were of brass, with the device or legend sunk, cut or cast in intaglio, in order that the impression might appear raised, in low or often high relief. The workmanship of many of these seals (especially of some of the conventual, in which figures of patron saints or a view of the abbey could THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING 13 be introduced) displays no mean degree of skill. Looking on such specimens of the art of the engraver, we need not be surprised that the cuts of the early “ Block-Books” are so well executed. So far chiefly from Chatto. Farther detail and instances of the practice of engraving in both earlier and later time will be found in his well-considered Treatise , in Landseer’s Lectures on Engraving, and elsewhere; but I have perhaps brought together sufficient to prove the assumption, that, through the ages, among all civilized peoples with whom we have acquaintance, Chaldean and Assyrian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian, Greek, and Roman, Gothic, Scandinavian, Italian, Spanish, French, German, and English, the art of engraving, by incision and in relief (figures sunken or hollowed and figures prominent), has been both known and practised. Can we suppose that the sculptors of Athens, or of Persepolis, Nineveh, and Egyptian Thebes, were ignorant of that simpler art which is but the beginning of sculpture ? Look again at our Babylonish brick, that rudest print of a relief-engraving ! The first step in engraving is the cutting of a single line. When the engraver, following the figure drawn for him, had outlined with his knife the simplest of his hieroglyphs, , he might have stopped, leaving the outlines V ''V p ' c =C] to stand in slight relief upon the impressed brick, the print of his engraving. But these would have too faintly shown, and been too soon obliterated from the face of the clay; and the hieroglyphs were wanted to be conspicuous, and to last. For the same reason of preservation they must be indented in the brick. So, dissatisfied with only outlines, he proceeded to cut away the wood between the characters to a sufficient depth to obtain a clear and durable stamp. Were it the first stamp ever cut, what special teaching would be needed to tell this first engraver how to complete his work ? He knew all when he had cut out a single piece of wood,—at his first notch. Put a knife in a child’s hand, he will not stop to question you, how to use it. Has he not already scraped—scratched— engraved a line with stick or finger, in the soft ground, or in some other softness ? The whole process of engraving, in metal or in wood, intaglio or relief, is apparent in this one brick. How could the Sculptor of the Parthenon be ignorant of a process so simple and direct ? Has not all sculpture grown out of this ? What is a brick-stamp, with its flat¬ surfaced straight-sided prominent characters, but a bas-relief ? The next step from this simplest, easiest form, would be to one less simple From a figure perfectly flat on the face and straight-sided the next progress is to rounded extremities, readily suggested by the roundness of the objeCt, bird, beast, or man, attempted to be represented. Rounding extremities may lead to caring for inner inequalities of surface. After the bas-relief the statue. By-and-bye we have the grandeur and majestic beauty of the Phidian marbles. It is a mistake to call all this invention. It is evolution. New tools can be invented, to expedite or facilitate our work; the ambition of succeeding generations, each striving to excel those gone before, reaches on to greater and undreamed-of triumphs; but, as from Summary of argument for the ancient knowledge of engraving, and its continual practice. Engraving the beginning of Sculpture. The wood-cut a bas-relief. Art-progress not invention, but evolution. H THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING Differences not essential but of growth, degree, and in kind. Printing known and practised in old days. Printing from engravings. And before the invention of typography. a single minutest plant the many-aisled and myriad-columned banyan forest has had its growth ; so from that simple outline, the beginning of a stamp for bricks, or other rudest purpose, has proceeded all the achievement of sculpture, of which engraving is a branch. The difference between the work of Bewick and that of the Babylonian is not essential. it is only a difference of growth, of degree, and in kind. And concurrently with the art of engraving the process of printing, by whatever rude or imperfedl means, must have been known and practised by the ancients. One cylinder from Babylon, a single brick, as already argued, brings proof; and proof, although books were not, of some idea of “ multiplying representations of the same engraving. It could not but be so. As the first line, never so accidentally cut, in wood or stone, was lesson enough for the engraver, so the first bare-foot-print in the sand or mud of earliest time revealed to the first man, Adamite or pre-Adamite, the meaning of an impression. The use of the stencil was not printing; yet the piercing of the plate was engraving. When the Babylonian brick-maker stamped his brick, he printed—from an engraving: can we guess how large an edition ? When the Egyptian for the same purpose used our handled stamp of the Museum, he printed from an engraving in wood. Engraving and printing, both were in practice in those early Egyptian and Assyrian days ; for how long before it is impossible to learn. How general the continual practice since is sufficiently recorded. Bas-reliefs on Assyrian and Peruvian temples, and Greek gems of yet unrivaled beauty, and the sunken moulds for coins and for later seals authenticating royal charters,—these perhaps we would distinguish as Sculpture ; * but in what do the stamps of antique kings and notaries, the marks of tradesmen, or the monumental brasses in our churches, differ from that which we call engraving now ? And for printing, need we summon the myriad ghosts of slaves, criminals, captives, to count their scars, those multiplied representations of the same engraving, while to-day we repeat their process, the brand of ownership (not indeed burned in) on the cattle of a thousand hills ? Engraving and printing,—in brass, in copper, in silver, in gold, in stone, in clay, and in wood,—our museums are full of the proofs of the early knowledge and perpetual exercise of the cognate processes: nothing indeed wanted by our forefathers of all possessed by us to-day (allowing for growth and improvement from continual endeavour) except our increased and readier power, through the printing-press, for multiplying impressions,—only increased and readier, for prints of the Block-Books were multiplied, and possibly by use of some kind of press, before the advent of Gutenberg. Only, comparing modern with ancient times, the Arts “become more varied, growing out of richer bases of civilization, and extend over a wider field.” A great and important step indeed was the printing of books from moveable types; * Sculpture is a generic term, proper to engraving as well as to statuary, “ comprehending both: just as the term Art comprehends, in addition to these, painting, poetry, music,—every mode of pradlically exhibiting refined mental operation, and is therefore applicable to either or all of them.” (Landseer.) THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING 5 (a great step also has been printing by steam-power). That does not alter the process of engraving, nor denote essential difference therein. The advantage of a linen paper,* then coming into use, still farther helped the progress of the printer, not occasioning the rapidly increasing demand for his work which marks the close of that fifteenth century, but only meeting the demand. The great occasion seems to have been the need of new exertion by the Church, to counteract the dangerous tendencies of the time: for the days of the first religious prints, to be so soon succeeded by printed books, were of the period between Huss and Luther,—between the martyrdom of Huss, in 1415, and the birth of Luther, in 1483. “ According to Weigel and Passavant there can not be any doubt that engraved blocks were employed toward the close of the twelfth century for giving off impressions in colour on to the smooth surfaces of silks and like fabrics. In Weigel’s work \_Die Auftinge der Drucker-Kunst in Bild und Sckrift~\ is figured a portion of a band of taffetas, of a reddish brown colour, having impressed on it a flowing ornament, the shape of an S, with flower buds attached, the blackish contour of which ornament has evidently been printed, and not painted. This is the earliest specimen known to Weigel and Passavant, and they believe it had its origin in Saracenic Sicily, toward the close of the twelfth century, and from its appearance not to have been the first of its kind. . There appears no sufficient reason for doubting either the genuineness, age, or mode of production of the several examples which are given in Weigel’s treatise. No less than ten illustrations are afforded of printing from wooden blocks, on coverlets and garment fabrics, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Such imprints on analogous textures increased considerably during the thirteenth century, when liturgical vestments and choice draperies were often elabor¬ ately adorned. Linen, silk, satin, and in the fourteenth century leather, received such impressions in red or dark blue or black colours, and sometimes in gold. For such work we are indebted, in earlier periods at least, to Italy; though in Weigel’s collection were two specimens of German imprints in black on a strong linen ground. They are thought to have belonged to antependii of the middle of the fifteenth century. One represented a Crucifixion, with Mary and John, on an ornamental ground, the whole requiring three Typography is made available by the use of linen paper. Printing from Linen, leather, satin, and silk. * Typography, writes De Vinne,—“ had to wait for the invention of paper, the only material that is me¬ chanically adapted for printing. Paper was known in civilized Europe for at least two centuries before typography was invented ; but it was not produced in sufficient quantity, nor of a proper quality, until the beginning of the fifteenth century. The elder Romans had no substitute for paper that could have been devoted to printing or book-making. Papyrus was so brittle that it could not be folded, creased, and sewed, like modern rag paper. . The Scribes of later Rome and the book-copyists of the Middle Ages preferred vellum. It was preferred by illumi¬ nators after printing had been invented.” (Invention of Printing.) Vellum was never liked by printers. Dry, it is too harsh; moistened, it is unmanageable. And the cost would be too great. Three hundred sheep-skins, it is said, were used in a single copy of the first Bible. Typography must have failed with only sheep-skins. There were not sheep enough. Papyrus unfit for book-work. Vellum not so good as paper, and costlier. i6 THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGRAVING Engravings in the tenth and the eleventh century. A joiner’s press or hand-roller. Moveable type and linen paper. blocks for its perfection. The other was the Blessed Virgin holding the infant Jesus in her arms under a rich Gothic tabernacle flanked by two columns, each column supporting a Prophet. Below is the name Maria. All is on a dark ground. Besides referring to these examples brought forward by Weigel, we may direft attention to the fragments of tapestry described by Dr. Keller and belonging to the avocat Odet of Sion, in the Valais. These tapestries are formed of a raw hempen cloth now become of the colour of leather. They are divided into compartments, with ornamental borders, within which are subjects from the Odyssey, the figures being detached light, off a dark ground. Early as some of these imprints may be, they serve to show only that blocks were engraved for the purpose of stamping woven fabrics as early as the tenth or eleventh centuries.” (Introduction to the Study of Ancient Prints, pp. 26-28.) Is not the “ only ” showing enough ? Dr. Wiltshire adds :—“ The great desideratum is to know when they were first engraved and used for the purpose of giving off their designs to parchment or paper.” This does not appear to me to be of so much importance in the history of Engraving. The blocks engraved for woven fabrics could also have been printed on parchment, and on paper so soon as paper was to be had. The exaCt date at which an engraving was done for the purpose of being printed on paper is of little consequence, and surely will never be obtained. Preceding the printing-press, Weigel considers the probability of “ a joiner’s press, or screw, and that such could be readily employed for the pressure of books. But we may assume too that where books, particularly those of parchment, were bound as in our still existing form, a book-binder’s press could not have been wanting,” available for printing also, as indeed any ordinary screw-press would have been. And though there were no press, the use of a hand-roller, such as is shown in the cut below (taken from Papillon) might have been sufficient. After long-time knowledge of engraving and printing the altogether new requirement of extensive publication for popular needs is answered by the invention of moveable type (the letters made by Gutenberg in brass moulds and matrices) and by the manufacture of linen paper. CHAPTER II SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS the beginnings of Engraving in ancient times I have said perhaps enough. I may now proceed to the consideration of the actual progress of engraving in wood as known and practised in modern days: engraving in wood (or, having regard to the process rather than the mere material, relief engraving) for the purpose of producing upon paper what we now call Prints. Early in the fifteenth century (we have a certain date of 1423), at least a quarter of a century earlier than what is called the “ invention of printing” (more properly to be called the invention of moveable letters), and so before anything like editions of books, we find, first current in Southern Germany, single-leaf rudest wood-cuts, of various sizes, with and without text or legend, known by the name of Helgen, or Saint-PiCtures. Mere outlines for colouring, printed on paper, a manufacture but recently introduced, they were the immediate result of the first opportunity afforded by fit material for multiplying impressions of engraving. They appear to be the earliest of modern “ Prints.” With them we fairly begin the history of Wood-Engraving. The history of wood-engraving in Europe, whether it were true or not that the art had been brought from China, introduced into Europe through the commerce of Venice with the East: a view which Ottley takes, but for acceptance of which Chatto sees no reason. Certainly this importation lacks proof, and is not more worthy of implicit belief than the before-noticed attribution of wood-engraving to the reign of We-wung. Engraving and printing may have been practised in China, and in Japan likewise, from time immemorial. In that I find no difficulty; but in the way of farther assertion is the little dependence we can place on Oriental annals. Our best accounts and indications of European borrowing are very indistinct and unsatisfactory. Also, I do not see the need of Chinese teaching. The History of wood-engraving in Europe. Saint-Pictures, or Helgen, of the fifteenth century. The supposed introduflion of wood-engraving from China. i8 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Papillon’s tale of the Cunio Mr. Humphreys’ correspondent. Boohs in the Middle Ages. With this claim for China we may also put away, in this case not only as “ not proven but as outside of serious consideration, the story told by the French engraver, Papillon, in the first volume of his Trail/! de la Gravure en Bois, 1766, of certain engravings by two young Italian nobles, so early as 1284-7, illustrating the “ Chivalrous Deeds of the great and magnanimous Macedonian King, the brave and valiant Alexander: imagined, and executed in relief with a little knife upon tablets of wood,” by Alexander Alberic Cunio, knight, and Isabella Cunio, twin brother and sister, and printed by them for gifts to their friends, their age being only sixteen years. The story can be read in Chatto’s Treatise, by him faithfully reported from Papillon, and as carefully shown to be unworthy of belief. Briefer and less particular refutation might have sufficed, depending only on these fa£ls : that no one but Papillon could give evidence of these wonderful prints ; that he had for a time lost all recolle&ion of them, having mislaid for thirty-five years his memorandum (as much as eight closely printed oCtavo pages, written, he tells us, “on three sheets of letter-paper ” ) ; that, having recovered this, he could not produce it, after the publication of his book, when called upon by inquiring Heinecken ; and that, subjeCt from an early age to hallucinations, he was, a year after he told this story, placed in a mad-house. Yet Noel Humphreys writes, in his History of the Art of Printing, — “ I have, since the first issue of this work, seen a letter from a well-known bibliophile of Moscow, in which he states that, on reading in my work the account of the wood-cuts described by Papillon, he referred to a memorandum-book kept during a tour, in 1861, and found that, on the 9th of September in that year, he had seen in Nurnberg, in possession of the antiquary Herdegen, seven pages of the eight described by Papillon, for which Mr. Herdegen asked a very high price. The same letter contains an interesting account of a xylographic block discovered in Spain, and from which some impressions had been recently taken,—the execution of the block being assigned, on pretty sure grounds, to the year 1232.” (Noel Humphreys, History, etc., 1868, Appendix, pp. 209, 210.) Evidence in the memorandum-book of an unnamed correspondent: of what worth is such a statement ? In Dr. Willshire’s words — “ The story of the Cunios has received its death-blow at the hands of Mr. Chatto,” Mr. Humphreys’ correspondent notwithstanding, and independently of M. Firmin Didot’s word that paper was not manufactured in Italy at the pretended Cunio date,—something to be weighed in consideration of likelihood, if not proving impossibility. During the Middle Ages books were expensive luxuries. Their production, down to about 1350, writes W. Bell Scott ( History and PraMice of the Fine and Ornamental Arts), “ was the work of those who wanted them. The clergy, lawyers, and public schools, had retainers employed in transcribing : the scriptorium in the larger monasteries a principal scene of their labour. But a public trade in books had begun to a small extent, and the caligrapher and the miniature-painter were independent artists and craftsmen long before SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS J 9 1400, when the Middle Ages give place to what are called modern times. In Italy the ‘ Renaissance ’ was initiated and ready to develop itself for the delight of the world. The illuminator of the day has left us many portraits of himself. He sits on a chair, or stool, before a solid desk with sloping top, having two receptacles for ink, red and black, sunk into it; the reed pen which the early writers used has given place to the quill; and in his left hand he holds a knife, or bone instrument, wherewith he keeps the page flat under his writing. The space to be filled is circumscribed by a red line, and he leaves room for the vignette or picture : the artist being now quite distinct from the scribe. The labour of this individual was soon to be set aside by printing; and oil-painting introducing small pictures about the same time, both the manuscripts and their splendid illustrations were gradually discontinued, and at last laid by as antiquated curiosities. . . “ In the latest age of manuscript-painting the men thus employed were the greatest artists of that period out of Italy. Their veracity and study of Nature express a perfeCl freedom and mastery. The Hours of Anne of Brittany is a collection of the most lovely pictures of flowers, fruit, and inseCts; and so true to nature that M. Denis calls the artist, Poyet, the greatest naturalist of the age. The historical subjeCts too, then executed by the miniaturists, are quite equal to the best works of the Italian contemporary painters. As examples may be mentioned (because some of their pictures have been repeatedly engraved, and the originals themselves may be seen in the British Museum), Froissart’s Chronicles and the Romance of the Rose, both largely and elaborately illustrated. These bring us to the period of the invention of engraving. “The earliest discovered impression from a wood-cut is dated 1418;* early specimens may yet be discovered, for the invention of stamping pictures made no way, nor touched the painter till it was combined with types. The stamps from rude wood blocks which first circulated in Holland and Germany were coarse, and gaudily coloured, and were the people’s pictures of the day, bought only to adorn the humble homes of artisan or trader [or freely distributed among them with pious intent]. No one suspeCted that the farther development of the process would sweep before it the Scriptorium and the Scribe, and revolutionize the whole structure of modern mind and manners.” Of these illuminated books, so many as I have had the opportunity of examining (and I have examined many), while some, and perhaps all the earlier, are altogether painted, others, later, appear to have been partly done with the aid of a stencil, and some look as if they had stamped, that is engraved letters. I am inclined to think that many of later works, generally taken for illuminated manuscripts, have been done, not wholly with pen and brush, but with an admixture of stencil and stamp, the printing concealed by colour. The Illuminator at his work. The beauty of the illuminated The earliest wood-cuts. “ Illuminated books produced with stenciling and print. * 1423 : 1418 is doubtful. But Passavant speaks of prints of wood-cuts in the Munich Cabinet, brought from Tegemsee in Bavaria, which he supposes to be of a date perhaps as early as the fourteenth century. 20 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Outlines not showing upon vellum. Difficulty of distinguishing. Stencils used for Initials. Initials also engraved. So suggesting more important Playing-Cards. Passavant. Renouvier {Des Types et Manures des Maitres-Graveurs ) notices the use of outlines for after-colouring, the outlines showing through on paper, but not on vellum : the vellum copies so mistaken for illuminated manuscripts. The absence of any hint of the praftice by contemporary writers may readily be accounted for by the want of observation of men who were not experts, to whom these works were sold as veritable manuscripts, and who had no doubt in their minds, nor reason for doubt. When good and inquiring critics of our own sceptical time, such as Mr. Chatto, fail after careful examination (as I will have occasion to prove) to distinguish stenciling from the print of a wood-cut, there need be no wonder that such differences escaped the notice of unprepared contemporaries. The illuminator would find use for the stencil when, in a long work, he had many repetitions of the same initial letter. It would not only save much labour, but it would also insure a desirable regularity in his work. And the use of the stencil would naturally lead to the use of the stamp (already known and employed on other occasions) for letters and forms more complicated than those within the scope of stencil. Not that it is at all likely that whole books should be so produced : the supposition of a modern Italian, Sig. Requeno, based on the test of measurement with a fine pair of compasses. A fallible test at best: the same steady and accustomed hand plodding through a whole book might well arrive at sufficient similarity of forms to deceive one looking for likeness and not for difference. However, both stencil and stamps (stamps of wood or metal) were surely used at times, though we can not tell to what extent. Passavant thinks that so early as in the twelfth century stamps were used for initials in manuscripts. It seems likely that such use, however limited, might have suggested to illuminating monks the availability of wood-engraving for the production of prints on a larger scale, those piCtorial religious traCts, the Helgen ; though whether this was the first extensive employment of wood-engraving, or its earliest employment was in the manufacture of Playing-Cards, is a question yet undecided. Singer writes:—“ Whatever may have been the origin of cards, it seems probable that they were in use in Europe previous to the invention or adoption of the xylographic art. . . At what time the application of xylography to the purpose of multiplying cards took place, it is not now possible to ascertain with certainty; but there can be no doubt that they were among the first objefts it produced, and we have every reason to conclude that they were printed from engraved blocks of wood at least as early as the commencement of the fourteenth century, if they were not derived together with this art [here agreeing with Ottley] from the East at an earlier period, a supposition which is not entirely devoid of probability.” (Singer, On Playing Cards.) Passavant writes :—“ It has been supposed that the first application of wood-engraving in Europe was made in the fabrication of playing-cards. It were better to say that it has been believed that this fabrication gave occasion for the invention of wood-engraving : SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS since it is to be presumed that the use of cards passed soon from the palace to the hut of the poor man, who instead of cards magnificently painted and ornamented had to content himself with cards cheapened by means of stenciling or engraving in wood or metal." * Becker thinks the Pictures of Saints preceded Playing-Cards. Chatto ( Treatise, 1839) thought it “not unlikely” that wood-engraving was employed first in the manufacture of cards ; and that the monkish use was an afterthought. Later, (Falls and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing-Cards, 1848), he oppositely concludes that “ wood-engraving was employed in the execution of the Helgen before it was applied to cards,” but “ there were stenciled cards before engravings of Saints.” Von Muar, again, will tell us that both card-painters and card-makers were in Germany eighty years before the invention of typography, that is to say in the third quarter of the fourteenth century; and that the card-makers were engravers in wood. Of the earliest actual use of Playing-Cards we have few trustworthy dates. Not to be trusted is Papillon’s discovery of an edicfl of Louis of France (in 1254, on his return from the Holy Land), forbidding games with cards. From a passage in a manuscript copy of the old romance of Reinart le Co 7 itrefait we might be led to date the time of their use in France so early as 1341 ; but this passage, Passavant assures us, is an interpolation, as it does not appear in earlier copies of the same manuscript. Bullet claims their invention, or first use, for the French, at about 1376. Passavant, who thinks their first use in Italy sufficiently proved by their Italian name— Carte, would have them known there “about 1350, thence spreading in all directions, and passing quickly into Germany, where they became the object of a very considerable commerce,” which however “ scarcely took place before the end of the fourteenth century.” The earliest known German cards he takes to be stencil-work ; and would have them belong to the first half of the fifteenth century, before which “ we find no playing-cards, neither printed from wood nor done by stencil.” * He considers the Helgen to have been preceded by Cards, and wood-engraving a consequence of the introduction of cards, brought from Arabia to Sicily by the Saracens about the middle of the fourteenth century [yet he speaks of stamps, surely likely to be not only of metal, so early as the twelfth] : an Arab origin, he thinks, clearly indicated by the very name first had in Italy— Naibi, and that they still keep in Spain— Naipes. Nevertheless he says:—“There is nowhere mention of the manner in which the Arabs arrived at a knowledge of playing-cards : their cards could not have human figures as in Europe, for the Koran prohibits the reproduction; and yet the first packs we know in Europe represent not only human figures but objects which belonged to the circle of ideas and beliefs of the time, to that of the legends (sagas) above all, and in particular to such as were current in Italy about the fourteenth century.” It is plain, he says, that, if they came from the Arabs, they must have received at the outset “ a complete modification, not only of their governing rules, but also of outward appearance.” (le Peintre-Graveur, pp. 6, 7.) Is the objection met by our borrowing the cards, as Chatto seems inclined, direCtly from India, where (at the present time) these same anti-Koran figure-cards appear to be used by Mahometans and Hindoos alike ? Or may Passavant’s mention of the Sagas lead us to suspeCt some possible interference of Norsemen, homeward-bound Varangians leaving Constantinople, at the close of the Eastern Empire ? Becker. Chatto. Von Murr. Dates of their In France. In Italy. Of cards first brought from the East. 22 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Heinecken’s claim for Germany. Cards id Spain. The Cards for Charles VI. Cards common before 1400. But not earlier than H eigen. The methods of production not But the earliest positive date which Passavant can give for Italy is found in the Chronicle of Niccolb di Coveluzzo da Viterbo, who writes:—“ In 1379 was brought to Viterbo the game of cards, which came from the Saracens.” Heinecken claims, if not their first use, their first manufacture for the Germans. Von Murr, in his Journal , refers to a book of Nurnberg bye-laws, between 1380 and 1384, in which cards are included among games allowed to be played for small stakes. They were in such general use in Spain as to be prohibited by John of Castile, in 1387. Passing some probably ante-dated interpolations or mistaken references, we find the first notice to be trusted of their usage, in France, in 1392, in an account-book of Charles Poupart, treasurer to Charles VI., wherein is found an entry of fifty-six sols Parisis (about one hundred and fifty francs), a fair sum in those times, “given to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards in gold and diverse colours, ornamented with many devices,” for the king's diversion. On this entry, taken by MenCtrier to denote the first use of cards, was built the story of their invention for Charles, for the solace of his madness. In the registers of the city of Ulm for 1402 may be seen the earliest record of a German card-painter; and in the books of Augsburg for 1418 we obtain a card-maker’s name. All these dates, Italian, Spanish, French, and German, are so close together, 1379 the earliest of certainty, that we can only take them as indications that the use of cards had become very general at the end of the fourteenth century, their manufacture probably beginning in Italy, but soon carried on in Germany to a much larger extent. I see nothing in these dates to warrant us in a conclusion that card-making was antecedent to the production of Helgen , or in supposing (with Prosper Marchand, Heinecken, Von Murr, Jansen, Singer, and De Vinne,*) that the introduction of cards may have preceded or could have caused the adoption [as Singer would have it] of the xylographic art. Neither in the records is there any certain account of the method of production. The mention of Gringonneur as painter (not as card-painter) may lead us to infer the hand¬ work of the higher artist. No doubt the more extensive cards were painted. It was, as we have seen, an age of miniaturists. But various processes may have been employed : first prints coloured by hand, then prints coloured with a stencil for yet cheaper copies. Artistic hand-work is not likely to have sufficed to meet a demand so universal as must be implied in the necessity for ordinances to regulate or restrict or prohibit too popular a pastime. How much may have been done by stencil and how much by engraving we can not know. Even examination of ancient cards will not inform us. Where the pips —or numerals, or other parts of the cards, are without outline, the forms defined only by * De Vinne argues that cards were the only kind of printed work which promised to pay for the labour of engraving. Surely he over-estimates the cost of that. In those days also were other motives than a trader’s profit. I take it that the Helgen were done with pious intent rather than for a pecuniary result. SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 23 colour, we may be sure of stencil: hardly else. Mr. Chatto’s proof of the use of stencil [“ from the feebleness and irregularity of the lines, as well as from the numerous breaks in them which in many instances show where a white isolated space was connefted with other blank parts of the stencil,”] is of no worth.* Feeble and irregular lines, and breaks, are common enough in wood-cuts: the faults of the engraver, or consequent on damage or from wear. Breaks in many instances, never so numerous, are not proof. They need be omnipresent. A single absence of this connecting link overthrows the stencil-proof. Referring my readers back to the monograms and cipher at pages 10, 11, (given also in Chatto’s Treatise ), I repeat that not one of them could have been done by stencil; and the cards I print, here below, from a photograph of the originals in the British Museum (the very uncoloured cards upon which Mr. Chatto makes the remarks I have just cited, and copies of which he has entitled “ Old Stenciled Cards”), are not by stencil, but most surely are prints, from an engraving in relief,— I have no doubt whatever, an engraving in wood. They want the breaks to which Mr. Chatto appeals as evidences of stenciling, want them, most remarkably, even in the inexa< 5 t copies given in his book. There is not a single card of the seven he has printed which has not parts impossible to be stenciled. * “ From a repeated examination of them I am con- blocks.” . . “ That these cards were depidled by vinced that they have been depifted by means of a means of a stencil is evident from the feebleness and stencil, and not printed or rubbed off from wood- irregularity” etc. (Falls and Speculations, pp. 88-9.) Chatto’s proof of stenciling. Early Cards in the British Museum. Mistaken by Chatto for stencil-work. 24 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Engraving used for cards, but first employed in production of the Heigen. The Craftsmen: —their names. Wood-engraver. Card-maker. Print-colourer. Card-colourer. All belonging A broad white gap, across an upper row of cards on the same sheet, which he supposes to be occasioned by the slipping or breaking of the stencil-plate, should have made him pause. Had the plate slipped or been broken, the paper would have been smeared with colour. It is possible that the paper might have been doubled ; but I think the break is of the plank, from the splitting of the wood or the disjoining of glued pieces. We may accept it then as certain that wood-engraving was very early employed in the making of cards ; and I have no doubt (agreeing with Breitkoph) at a yet earlier date in the production of the Saint-piClures, the Helgen , though never a writer of the fourteenth century informs us of it. Let us now search the records to learn something of the card- makers and engravers themselves! I pass the French painter Gringonneur, 1392, and a certain card-painter ( kartenmaler, I suppose,— pcintre de cartes Passavant calls him,) whose name appears in 1402, in the Ulm registers. Neither of them perhaps had anything to do with engraving. The first mention of a card-maker ( karteii-macher ) is in the burgess-book of Augsburg, in 1418 ; and the first indubitable formschneider (wood-engraver, the term still used in Germany), is in the town-books of Nurnberg, of 1449.* But at the outset we are embarrassed by a confusion of terms. What distinctly was the profession or practice of the Formschneider, the Kartenmacher, the Briefmaler, or the Kartenmaler ? Ottley writes, after Heinecken, that the formschneider was so called as being a “ cutter of moulds.” Chatto corrects this to cutter of figures ; and thinks the term “ more specifically applied ” to distinguish him from the card-engraver : though “ till toward the year 1500 the terms formschneider and briefmaler appear to have been frequently used as synonymous.” Yet he says that the word kartenmaler, displaced by briefmaler by 1473, is frequently found on the same page as formschneider, expressive of some distinction between the professions, or occupations. Heinecken, and Breitkoph with him, is of opinion that the term Briefe ( meaning prints) is older than that of Karten (cards); and he makes the briefmaler the colourer of prints of all kinds, not only of cards. Breitkoph also speaks of a separation of the Bildermaler (pidture-colourer) from the card-maker so early as 1430. Then, Chatto again, we have the briefmaler who “ not only engraved figures occasionally, but who also printed books.” I suppose much of this confusion of times, and of terms proper to several occupations, to have arisen from the different artists or craftsmen, belonging to one guild or fellowship, not being exclusively devoted to a special objeft, but, perhaps for a long period, aiding each other as occasion offered. And taking an opposite view to Von Murr, in so much as I believe that the wood-engraver was employed upon the Saint-PiClures before he was * The first trust-worthy. A Hans Formansneider is found in the books of Nurnberg so early as 1397 ; but Von Murr will have that to mean Hans Forman, schneider (tailor’s cutter). Passavant also speaks of an indication of a formschneider in 1398, one Ulrich. “It is doubtful that he prepared blocks for cards.” SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 25 employed on Cards, I find in that sufficient reason for his designation, at whatever date acquired. He may have been a card-maker also, probably was, though not distinctively so called except when he confined himself to that special branch of his business. The distinguishing terms for engravers, or makers, and colourers, and printers, would follow naturally the separated employments, the first engravers, whether of Saints or of Cards, printing and colouring their own engravings. Of the stencil-cutter I find nothing except this following description in an old Latin manuscript of the date of 1459, said to be preserved at Cracow, written by one Paul of Prague, a do&or of medicine and philosophy. He defines the term Tiripagus as “ an artificer who cleverly cuts figures and letters, or whatever it pleaseth him to cut, on plates of copper or iron, on solid blocks of wood ( ligneis solidi ligni), and other materials, that he may print upon paper or a wall, or on a clean board. He cuts everything he likes, and afts in the same manner with pictures. In my time some one at Bamberg cut a whole book on plates ” \_integram bib liam super lame/las, —which is read by Chatto as a whole Bible]. If, as I suppose, the cutting in ligneis solidi ligni means engraving in wood, it makes the fornischneidcr a stencil-cutter too. Stencil-cutting would have been no difficulty to him. The cuts here annexed [designs by Jost Amman for. Hans Sachs’ Self-likeDesci'iplion of all i-anks on earth, all Arts and Trades , etc., 1568,—a first copy in 1564 noted by Heinecken] show the Designer, the Wood- Engraver, and the Colourer, at their different tasks : the engraver with his knife,* the colourer with brush and stencil-plate and saucers of colour. I suppose the methods unaltered from earlier days. We shall find no stencil-cutter among “ all the arts ”: an indication, it may be, that he and the engraver were the same. Yet some words before I quit the consideration of stenciling. The following paragraph from Chatto, Their business divided later. A stencil-cutter. The Designer, or Draftsman, (Der Reisser). The Engraver {Der Form- schneuter). * Chatto, translating Sachs’ verses under this cut of The Formschneider, gives him a graver, and writes also that the wood-engravers of that period used a “tool with a handle rounded at the top, similar to the graver used in the present day.” I know not of the handle, but a graver can not be used on a plank. 26 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Chatto on cuts he supposes to be all stencil. A COLOURER, 1564 {Der Brieftna/er). Difficulty of proving where stencil has been employed. Coarse colour (Treatise , p. 57), may not be passed without comment on the conclusion. He writes :— “ A great many wood-cuts of devotional subjefts, of a period probably anterior to the invention of book-printing by Gutenberg, have been discovered in Germany. They are all [he is writing of the Helgen ] executed in a rude style, and many are coloured. . . The figures are not generally impressions from wood blocks, but are for the most part wholly executed by means of stencils." And elsewhere he writes :—“ Although the earliest of professional card-makers might generally impress the outlines of the figures from engraved blocks, it is certain that they also were accustomed to form them by means of a stencil.” {History of Wood-Engraving, in the Illustrated London News, April 20, 1844.) Mr. Chatto’s meaning is not clear to me. If I take the “wholly executed” literally, I can but say I have seen no such figures; if he only means the outlines by stencil, as he thought was the case with the cards at page 23, I dispute his judgment. Such work would be very unlikely, and quite incapable of proof. That outlines are not by stencil may be proved ; I do not know by what examination of prints we can be sure that they are not printed by either wood or metal. Not stencil is plain whenever the requisite connections of the plate do not exist- Breaks, though showing all needful links, would still leave the question undecided. As said before, there may be breaks in the engraving. In masses of only colour I have found it difficult to determine what was coloured without and what coloured with a stencil-plate, observing excesses of colour, and departures from outlines as if done by a careless or unequal hand, even where I was most confident of the use of a stencil.* Nor do I think the stencil-use can be quite satisfactorily ascertained without comparison of the edges of colour in several copies. This would throw all unique copies out of the possibility of proof. Little more need be said of stenciling. Useless also is it to pursue farther the question of priority between Cards and Saints. 1 nteresting to us here as a part of the history of wood-engraving, it yet matters little, if even we could surely learn, whether a Knave of Hearts (or Acorns) or a St. Christopher was first produced ; whether the Devil-serving trader or the pious conventual craftsman has right of precedence. Taking into consideration all the materials for judgment I have * I find Dr. Willshire remarking that “some of the earliest coloured cuts appear to have been tinted by hand alone, and more or less carefully, while those of somewhat later date have been often very clumsily and coarsely coloured with the aid of stencil.” But here again, if there are outlines, why do we assume the stencil ? Even in the days of illuminators some unaided colourer might do coarse or careless work. SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 27 been able to collect together, I subscribe to Chatto’s conclusion, and can not but believe that monastic leisure and ability first found opportunity for employment of wood-cuts, in the service of religion, and that the wage or profit to be had for an article of commerce in growing demand would be the later temptation of the card-maker. Those rude wood cuts of sacred subjedts, common in Suabia, known there as Helgen or Helglein (corrupted from Heiligen —Saints or Little Saints), a word which in course of time came to merely signify Prints,* were at least contemporaneous with, if they did not precede the engraved pi< 5 ture-cards. In 1418 we find the first record of a card-maker; and our first sure-dated wood-cut, certainly not the first done, is but five years later, f By 1440 the card-makers of Augsburg, Nurnberg, and Ulm, are exporters of cards and coloured prints to Italy; J and 1440 also may be safely assumed as an approximate date for the appearance of the “ Block-Books,” which mark a considerable advance and very notable improvement in the art of engraving in wood. Previous to 1844 the undisputed earliest dated print from a wood-cut was known as the St. Christopher of 1423, in the possession of Earl Spenser, a coloured print found by Heinecken in 1769, pasted inside the cover of a manuscript volume, in the Library of the Chartreuse convent at Buxheim, near Memmingen, in Suabia. In 1844 an architect of Malines, M. de Noter, examining an old coffer which had been used to contain some * In France cuts of the same kind had the name of Dominos, the affinity of which with the German one is obvious. The term was subsequently applied to coloured or marbled paper; and the makers of such paper, as well as the engravers who were colourers also of wood-cuts, were called Dominotiers. t I take no account of the term incisor lignorum, said by Ducange to have been found in a charter of 1233 : agreeing with Dr. Willshire that it has first to be proved to mean an engraver in wood, and not a carver. Or was he haply a cutter of stencil-plates, a Tiripagus 1 Who can tell ? I “ It was probably [ writes Chatto ] against these foreign manufacturers that the fellowship of painters at Venice, in 1441, obtained from the magistracy an order, declaring that no foreign manufactured cards or printed coloured figures should be brought into the City, under a penalty of forfeiting such articles and of being fined xxx liv., xii soldi. This order was made in consequence of a petition presented by Venetian painters, wherein they set forth that ‘the art and mystery of card-making and printing figures, which were practised in Venice, had fallen into total decay through the great quantity of foreign playing cards and coloured printed figures (carte e figure depente stampide) brought into the City.’ ” Cards and coloured prints:—Does that old word stampide imply, asks Dr. Willshire, “printed with a press, or merely—printed, stamped, or stenciled?” And he refers to PlanchC, who thinks that, in 1441, “it might simply mean formed, figured, or shaped by means of the stencil,” he having observed that, according to Florio, stampere signifies to print, to presse, to stampe, to form, to figure, and stampe in like manner, besides a print or impression, is said to be a marke, a shape, a figure .” I have before me Florio’s DiHionary, revised by Torriano, edition of 1659; and I find no stampere. Stampare is given as to stamp, to imprint; stampato as stamped, printed ; stampatore, a printer; and stampa (plural stampe), a stamp, a print, an impression, a mark, a brand, a pressing,— by metonym [only so] the quality, kind, making, or form of any thing. But without need of dictionary, a figure formed by a stencil is certainly not stamped, that is printed. The printing “ with a press” is beside the question. Stampide is simply printed, no matter how. An engraver’s proof, taken with a burnisher, without a press, is no less printed. Helgen earlier than Cards. Our first Prints. Dominos. A wood-carver ? Prints forbidden to be imported from Germany 28 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS M. de NotePs discovery. The Virgin of “ 1418" in the Royal Library at Brussels. The Date. of the city archives, and which had become the property of a tavern-keeper of Malines, discovered a “scarcely visible” coarsely coloured print, a wood-cut, pasted within the lid. He detached the fragments, reunited them, and found thereon, “ clearly expressed, the date of 1418.”* This print, the Brussels Virgin, bought at first by M. de Noter, was bought of him for the Royal Library at Brussels by the Baron Reiffenberg, on whose authority the above account of discovery is given by M. Ruelens. The print is described as taken in a pale, yellowish distemper, “unimpeachable evidence of antiquity,” the paper appearing to have been laid upon the block and rubbed at the back, “such proceeding and the depth of the lines indicating a novice.” The print is fourteen inches and a half high by nine, taking no note of border lines. Sitting in a fenced garden, the Virgin-Mother, draped and crowned, holds in her arms the naked child Jesus. Over her hover three angels bearing wreaths ; two birds are in the air, why a third on the fence ? Their labels name the attendant saints : St. Katerina with the fatal sword, while her right hand is held up to receive her Lord’s betrothal ring; St. Barbara with her three-windowed tower; Theorithea (St. Dorothy) with her heaven-sent fruit and flowers; and St. Margoreta with a Cross and book. The rabbit outside the garden M. de Reiffenberg deems important. Seeing that there is a rabbit also in the St. Christopher of 1423 (as indeed there is in many of these old prints), he thinks it possibly may have some punning allusion to the name of the unknown engraver of both engravings. And now we may notice, at the entrance to the garden, a three-barred gate, with a diagonal cross-bar, latch, and hinge. On the top bar appears conspicuously the date M'CCCC o XVIII. The lowest part of the print, * II “ en detacha les fragments, les rtunit ensuite avec adresse, el comprit, d finspeilion de la date de 1418, qui y est clairement exprimie, que celte feuille pouvait intiresser I'histoire- de Fart.” (La Vierge de 1418. —Documents Iconographiqucs et Typographies de la Bibliothlque Royale de Belgique : facsimile photo¬ lithographies, etc., etc. Avec autorisation de M. le Ministre de Plntericur: par M. Ch. Ruelens, 1865.) SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 29 all across, has been tom of? so that we can not know what, of inscription or else, may originally have been there. Of course so early a date is not to be accepted without inquiry. Discussion has been rife, as to evidence of style as well as to veracity of date. M. de Reiffenberg supposes it to be by Van Eyck or of his school ; and attaches more value to it as supplying some proof that wood-engraving was of earlier date in the Low Countries than in Germany. M. de Brou contends that the style of drawing is manifestly of a much later period, 1460 to 1480. The style of the engraving also, showing “a very sensible progress,” he thinks induces the same conclusion. Agreeing with M. de Brou as to the drawing, I must yet remark of the cutting, that in work so purely mechanical the most apparent superiority (I see none here) would only show some difference of care or hand-deftness, and could give no indication whatever of the date of production. For the dates veracity the Baron’s words, as quoted by M. Ruelens, are as follows:_ “ Falsification was impossible, since the print came to us direCtly from the coffer turned out of the archives of Malines. It was only for some days in the possession, first of a tavern-keeper who had no idea of either art or engraving, afterwards of the architect M. de Noter, whose probity precludes all suspicion of fraud and deceit, whose character does not admit the supposition of a pleasantry which, without being incompatible with probity, ought to be banished from good society, particularly from the scientific world, where it could throw trouble and disorder.” Pleasant considerations and protestations, (not saying that “the gentleman protests too much”), not quite proving impossibility of falsification! “ Le compte moral de 1 'acquisition,” rendered by M. Ruelens, gives the print to De Noter for three weeks after the Belgian Minister had been notified of the finding and informed that it was for sale for five hundred francs. But without imputing fraud, we may be allowed to ask for more than the mere words—“ Falsification is impossible.” M. de Brou, who at first made no question of its genuineness, came, after examination, to the conclusion that it was “ no longer in its primitive state, and might very well have been altered.” Indeed he thought all the ciphers “ had been gone over ( repassts ) with a pencil, the M'CCCC lightly, so as hardly to be distinguished, but in the ciphers XVIII the X and the V marked with such force that it is impossible to say what ciphers they at first were. Only the units are probably as first printed.” (Quelques Mots sur la Gravure de 1418. Brussels, 1846.) To this the only reply of Baron Reiffenberg is :—“ I declare that when I saw the print and bought it there was not on the date a trace of lead-pencil; if, to throw suspicion on this monument, or through imprudence, some one to whom it has been confided, or who has traced it [M. de Reiffenberg had been permitted to have copies taken, for which the print was traced], has allowed himself to apply the pencil, I am ignorant of it. All I maintain is that I have seen the date perfedlly intaft both with the naked eye and with the glass." This is as inconclusive as impossibility of falsifying. The style of drawing and engraving. Testimony as to the veracity of the Date. Opinions for and against. De Brou. De Reiffenberg. 3 ° SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Renouvier. Firmin-Didot The alteration supposed by Pas savant. Style of design, insufficiency of evidence, and appearance of Date, against its veracity. St. Christopher excepted to, but the date true. It must be added that M. Jules Renouvier, who examined the print in 1858, could find no alteration. “ At the first inspection I refused to admit what appeared to be indicated by the ciphers. Having seen it again, and very scrupulously examined it, I should say (jedois dire) that the place where they are is intaCt, and I no longer find any reason not to accept them.” ( Histoire de I'Origine et des Progres de la Gravure dans les Pays-Bas.) M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot likewise believes that he may place full confidence in the recital of M. de Reiffenberg. There the discussion rests, so far as I have been able to ascertain. I have not seen the original in the Brussels Library; and I have before me only the two copies (of the same size as the original) which are given in M. Ruelens’ authorized work, from which alone I have taken the foregone particulars. My judgment goes against the veracity of the date. I do not therefore agree with M. Passavant who, examining the print in 1850, thought that between the fourth C and the XVIII there had been rubbing out, and an L (of which he believed he could deteCt the traces) replaced by a circular sign. I believe that circular sign may be the nail fastening the transverse bar, and if the alteration of a cipher be suspeCted would rather look for it in the V the first stroke of which is nearly upright, as might be if altered from an original L. So, avoiding the nail, we may jump at once to a likely M-CCCC o XLIII. I could almost persuade myself to this, looking at the chromo-lithograph given with M. Ruelens’ Documents. Nothing is ascertainable from the badly traced and inexaCt outline also given: it merely shows the design. But my doubt of the date is for no mere tampering with a cipher. The style of the design, the insufficiency of evidence as to the aCtual condition of the print when first found, and the too noticeable prominence of the date,—these things weigh more with me. In the coloured copy with the Documents, while the names on the scroll-labels are so faint that they can scarcely be made out (it may be my copy that is in fault), the date is distinct, as if later printed. There is nothing to surely prevent affixing a date at any time after the printing of the wood-cut. I would maintain, then, that the St. Christopher holds its place of precedence; that we may still consider 1423 as the earliest date we possess for the print of an engraving in wood. Some doubt may also attach to this date : not of authenticity, but based upon the presumption that it was intended to mark some event rather than to fix the time of production. There is reason in the presumption ; but, failing the discovery of an event to which it might be assigned, we may fairly deem the date to belong to the engraving. There is nothing in the print to lead us to suspeCt a later period; and the earliest-dated does not imply the earliest ever done. Indeed there is nothing in the cutlmg of these early prints to stamp priority on any. Minuteness and intricacies of line not attempted, the first wood-cuts are without distinction. The St. Christopher is fairly cut. But when Mr. Chatto remarks that “ the engraving, though coarse, is executed in a bold and free SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 31 manner," his words are not applicable to the engraving, the actual cutting. How should the engraver make it other than coarse ? And what of boldness or freedom is manifest in this quite unintelligent cutting with a knife on each side of a black line drawn on the wood for the cutter’s guidance ? This sort of inaccurate talk, confounding the drawing with the engraving (common among art-critics, Mr. Chatto not preeminent), has done more than perhaps anything else could do to lead inquiry astray and to prevent a clear understanding or correCl appreciation of engraving. In what I shall write of engraving let me be understood as writing always (unless I plainly except) of engraving only , kept distinct from the draftsman's part. Mr. Chatto is correct in writing—“ If mere rudeness of design and simplicity were to be considered as the sole tests of antiquity, upwards of a hundred engravings positively known to have been executed between 1470 and 1500 might be produced as affording intrinsic evidence of having been executed at a period antecedent to the date of the St. Christopher .” Quite true ! since though the advance of years may be marked by degrees of excellence, the rude and bad are found in all ages. In Art also, the poor shall be always with you ! I am well content however, albeit not concerning the engraver, to give some words of unstinted praise to our St. Christopher for the design. I mind not the “disproportionate” space he occupies in the picture. Is not he famous as a giant ? and are not all the incidents outside of his personality mere minor adjuncts ? The perspective also is good enough for me, as doubtless it was for those in whose interest the print was issued. It is certain that he is crossing a stream : we see a fish beneath the waves. He supports his colossal frame and helps his steady course with a full-grown fruit¬ bearing palm-tree, fit staff for saintly son of Anak. No heathen he : the nimbus is round his head. As on his shoulders he bears the Lord of the World, can we fail to remark his upturned glance, inquiring why he is so bowed down by a little child ? The blessing hand of the Blessed plainly gives reply. Look again, and see on one side of the stream the merely secular life, with its daily bread and poorest daily occupations : is not all expressed by the mill, and miller, and his ass, and far up the steep road [what need for diminishing distance ?] the Chatto's praise not applicable to the cutting. mistake. The St. Christopher Description of the Print. 3 2 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Description continued. By stencil or by hand ? Wood-cuts before 1450. A print of the Annunciation. peasant with his sack of flour, toiling toward his humble home ? while on the other side is the life of the spirit,— the hermit by his windowless hut, the warning bell above, he in front kneeling with the lantern of faith in his hand lifted high, a beacon for whatever wayfarer the ferryman may bring. Rank grasses and the fearless rabbit mark the quiet solitude in which the hermit dwells. I can forgive all short-comings or faults a modern Critic would point out. I have no care for criticism, grateful for a design so expressive, a story so well told. These old artists were in earnest. I could praise the engraver too (only a mechanic) for that he has used his knife with so much of careful fidelity to keep the lines of drawing, although some shapelinesses of finger-joints, and else, be wanting. It does well enough as he has left it for the colourer’s completing. The not too subtle, yet not outrageous,— if we call it “gaudy,” not undelightful, colouring will gladden the eyes of an uncritical multitude; and the pious myth of St. Christopher [the ferryman of an unknown river,—how once he carried across it a little child and, much marveling at its weight, was told he carried the Lord of All] will be remembered through the picture often looked on, not without faith in the cheerful if too superstitious words beneath :— That day thou Christopher’s face shalt see No evil death shall happen thee! The St. Christopher , writes Chatto, “ affords a specimen of the combined talents of the formschneider and the briefnialer. [Truly it is a coloured print.] The engraved portions have been taken off in a dark colouring matter similar to printing-ink; after which the impression appears to have been coloured with a stencil.” Stenciling would occupy not much less time than colouring by hand, beside the labour and cost of cutting the several plates; and farther, some overrunnings of colour, the undefined and softened edges of the blue, and the various shades of green, should rather point to hand-work. Why this constant insisting on stencil, used certainly, but, I think, less in those days than since? Surely the illuminator, or any practised colourer, could have had no difficulty in keeping to given outlines, and so need no guidance but the pattern before him. Only one other wood-print bears a date earlier than 1450: a St. Sebastian with a date of 1437, found in 1779 at the monastery of St. Blaise, in the Black Forest: now in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Two others, supposed to be before 1450, may be noticed: one in the Kalendar of Johannes de Gamundia, a thirty-years’ Almanac begun in 1439; and one found by Mr. Ottley in a manuscript of 1445. In the same book in which the St. Christopher was found by Heinecken [a manuscript in praise of the Virgin, a gift from Anna, canoness of Buchaw, to the Buxheim convent] he also found, pasted in the opposite cover, a print of about the same dimensions, of the Annunciation, or Salutation of the Virgin, printed on the same coarse kind of paper, and with the same dark ink, also coloured : coloured by stencil, Chatto says; and Willshire SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 33 agrees with him. It may be stencil, but I find no proof. It has been made a question too (and, I think, undue importance attached to it) whether these particular impressions have been taken by rubbing or with a press. Regarding also the colour of ink, the use of certain (rather uncertain) kinds of ink, perception of this or that water-mark on the paper, questions which have been the ground for considerable debate,—these likewise, though they help to fix the status of a print, may not touch the engraving. Proved the press or rubber, the ink, the water-mark, of this print before me, what does that say of the time at which it was engraved ? Though the date upon it be 1423, a print might be taken in 1823, not contradidling the possibility of earlier printing, nor accusing the date of the engraving of the block. The date of the engraving of Durer’s Smaller Passion is not affedled by any number of prints from the yet existing blocks. I give the following passage from Ottley, not for the value of his conclusions, but to show the chara&er of inquiries, no doubt interesting to Dryasdust, the eminent bibliophile, but which seem to me (only an unlearned engraver) of no great comparative importance in the history of engraving. The history of prints, as that of books, is another matter. Mr. Ottley writes : —“ I formerly observed, in speaking of these two wood-cuts [the St. Christopher and the Annunciation ] that they show no signs of having been taken off by friction, but were evidently printed with a press; but now I find in saying this I went farther than I could be justified in doing without examining the backs of them, which, as they are pasted within the covers of the MS. above-mentioned, it was impossible for me to do. For I have since met with early wood-engravings of Germany and the Low Countries taken off in a black ink by friftion as well as in the brownish tint which was commonly employed in the ancient block-books ; others again I have found taken off in black printing ink with a press,—and indeed I am in possession of a specimen of wood¬ engraving printed in black oil-colour on both sides of the paper by downright pressure, which I consider to have been printed in or before the year 1445.” (. Inquiry concerning the Invention of Printing?) It appears therefore, he concludes, that both methods were used and both kinds of ink. What guide then is there to the date of printing ? A reason for the light ink, if originally light, may be that the prints were intended for colouring. The much vexed question of the methods of printing may be set forth very briefly. Passavant is sure of a frotton , or rubber, the printing-press not being invented, Noel Humphreys, press or not, is also satisfied of the frotton, so judging from the gloss, caused by rubbing, on the backs of prints. Chatto has the same notion, but sees much difficulty in the operation. Willshire doubts the decisive charadler of the gloss, and is not sure that the use of a press or roller of some kind was unknown before Gutenberg’s appearance. The practical printer, De Vinne, may sum up. “ Almost every author who has written on printing has said that [the Helgen, and Block-Books later] were printed by fri< 5 lion, with a tool known as the frotton, which has been described as a small cushion Uncertain indications. Inks of both oil and water in use in the early days. Printing with the “ frotton." 34 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS Printing with the “ frotton.” Papillon's use of a roller. Print of the Annunciation. of cloth stuffed with wool. It is said that when the block had been inked, and the sheet of paper had been laid on the block, the frotton was rubbed over the back of the sheet until the ink was transferred to the paper. We are also told, that the paper was not dampened, but was used in its dry state. The shining appearance on the back of the paper is offered as an evidence of friClion. This explanation of the method used by the printers of engraved blocks has been accepted, not as conjecture, but as the description of a known fact. I know of no good authority for it. I know no author who professes to have seen the process. I doubt the feasibility of the method.” And again :—“ It is begging the question to assume they were not printed by a press.” {Invention of Printing.) The discussion has been whether press or frotton was employed; but yet a third method may be worth consideration. In Papillon’s comprehensive Treatise, published so late as 1766, I find no mention of a frotton; but he gives, with cuts, a description of the making and the use of a roller * in his time, and I see no reason to doubt its use in earlier days. It may farther be observed that, while the roller would give a face-impression not to be distinguished from one taken by the press, it might also produce a gloss on the back to seem an effect of rubbing. Surely consideration enough for the backs of prints! In this Annunciation print we see the Virgin at her devotions, kneeling in an arched room of curious perspective. She turns toward Gabriel who, kneeling too, appears to be addressing her. Twined round a pillar between them a scroll has these words—• Hail ■full of grace the Lord thee — The Holy Ghost in the form of a dove descends on a ray of light from God the Father (a corner torn off Lord Spencer’s print). Respecting this cut, M. Krismer, the librarian of the convent at Buxheim, writes to Von Murr :—“ It will not be superfluous to point out a mark by which, in my opinion, old wood-engravings can with certainty be distinguished from those of later date. It is this. In the oldest wood-cuts only we perceive that the engraver has frequently omitted certain Printing with the roller. * His diredtions are precise. After inking, a sheet of damp paper is to be laid on the engraved board, or plank (planche ), taking care to make no crease. Then we pass over it the roller (rouleau), lightly at first, afterwards with increasing force When lines of the engraving appear everywhere on the back of the paper, the proof or stamp will without doubt be well printed. Then it may be lifted from the plank, taking hold of one corner of the paper. According to its appearance, whether too much or not enough charged with ink, it will be a guide for after prints. ( Traill Pratique de la Gravure en Bois. pp. 358-9.) SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 35 parts, leaving them to be afterwards filled up by the colourer. In the Annunciation the upper part of the Virgin appears naked except where it is covered by her mantle. Her inner dress had been left to be added by the brush of the colourer.” He refers also to another print, a St. Jerome in penance, in which we may see the Saint, the instruments of suffering, and a whole forest besides, hanging in the air, waiting for the ground to be put in with colour. “ Nothing of this kind,” he says, “is in more recent cuts [so proved more recent ? ] when greater progress was made in the art. What the early wood-engravers could not readily effedt with the graver they performed with the brush, as they were both wood-engravers and colourers.” If they coloured with a stencil-plate, the loss of a few lines would have no importance. Against M. Krismer’s view, I suspedl in the print of the Annunciation a possible line of the drawing accidentally or carelessly cut out by the engraver. In the St. Jerome, or others, if the drawing on the wood were from a tracing, what then more likely, whatever the progress of the art, than that a line, or even lines of the tracing should be overlooked ? As to “ what the early engravers could not readily effedl with the graver,” it has only to be said that one line was as readily effected as another.* A third wood-cut of the same helgen period (this print also in the possession of Lord Spencer) is a St. Bridget, —of Sweden, but no less a favourite saint in Germany. She is sitting at a desk, writing. Over her head are the words— O Bridget , bid God for us! The emblems around her speak her story: the half-length of the Virgin with the Child intimating that the pious widow is perhaps writing of those visions in which the Virgin was in the habit of appearing to her; the Swedish lion, on the shield, and the crown at her feet signifying that she was of the blood-royal of Sweden; the pilgrim’s scrip and hat and staff referring to her pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; and the shield with SP QR for Rome, where she died. This cut has been printed in a lighter ink, more like distemper or water-colour, than that used for the St. Christopher. It is coarsely coloured: Chatto says—“apparently by the hand unassisted by the stencil.” The face and hands are of a flesh colour; her gown and pilgrim’s hat and scrip are of a dark grey; her veil, worn * According to Berjeau, the pradtice of the earlier wood-engravers was as follows:—The plank being prepared, either the drawing was made diredtly on it, every line exadtly as it was to be cut, or else, the drawing first done on paper was glued, with its face downward, on the wood, and rendered transparent, perhaps by oiling. Of course when this mode was adopted the engraver had to cut through the paper. M. Krismer’s test of early engravings. St. Bridget. Drawings glued on the wood. 36 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS The Virgin of Berlin. The objedl of the Helgen. And by whom they were produced. hood-wise, is in part black, in part white ; and the wimple she wears round her throat is also white. The bench and desk, the staff, the letters SPQR, the lion, the crown, and the nimbus surrounding her head and the Virgin’s, are yellow; and the ground is green. The whole picture is framed in a border of mulberry or lake colour. Another of these prints, unknown to Chatto, deserves notice : the Virgin of Berlin, in the Berlin Cabinet, of apparently the same time as the Brussels Virgin, if the style of drawing may inform us. The print is nine inches and three quarters wide and thirteen and three quarters high, as now measured, a strip seeming to be lost from the bottom. Draped and crowned, and standing on the crescent moon, she holds on her right arm the Holy Child, also draped, and in her left hand is an apple. The flamboyant aureole against which she stands is borne by boys; and, at the corners, four birds have each a scroll, with a rhyming couplet, in Flemish. Who is this Queen that standeth here? ’ Tis She who saves the world from fear. How shall Her name be named to us? Mary, mother, maid glorious. How did She reach that height above ? Humbly, by charity and love. Who shall be lifted next to Her? Whoso is most Her follower. These prints may be taken as samples of a numerous series of pidlures popular in the early part of the fifteenth century, perhaps yet earlier : all of the same character, little varying in quality, altogether unvarying so far as the engraving is concerned. At first only pi&ures of saints and martyrs (illustrations of Bible story came later) they served as pious reminders and, carrying out a precept of St. Gregory, filled the place of tradls, or books, for the illiterate multitude; coloured to attract attention, to please, and also to induce more careful preservation. Though probably at first the work of the Monks, coloured in imitation of monastic illuminations, they were likewise prepared by order of Town-Councils, as is proved from the public registers of Ulm, Nurnberg, Nordlingen, and Augsburg. They have also been attributed, at least in part, to the “ Brotherhood of the Common Lot,” a pious fraternity which had for objedl the copying of manuscripts and otherwise helping to spread religious knowledge. From M. Michiels’ Histoire de la Peinture en Flandre, we learn that the Lazarists and other religious brethren, who were SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS 37 accustomed to nurse the sick, carried, on fast days, through the streets, large candles of wax, richly ornamented, and. distributed to the children these coloured prints. Whether so given gratuitously, by religious or secular corporations, or sold for the benefit of the monasteries, they were widely strown. They were the home-pictures of the poor. The colours employed on the cuts varied with the schools of different places, as shown in the following abridgment of Dr. Willshire’s account, taken from Weigel. Suabia Ulm and Augsburg. Bright red, amber, yellow, umber, slate grey, green, and black. The red “juicy,” from bluish carmine to cinnabar, often almost violet. No blue in drapery, as a rule. Colours frequently overlaid with varnish. Franconia —Nurnberg and Nordlingen. Colours not so bright as the Suabian : the red deeper, more brown than carmine ; red lead often employed. The yellow usually a pale ochre. Blue used occasionally. Bavaria — Friesing, Tegernsee, Kaisersheim. Colours not lively, mostly pale, except in certain coats of arms : a deep and pure carmine ; yellow ochre, often turbid; ochrish green, passing into a moss-green. Blue to be met with. The most lively-coloured are from Tegernsee : cinnabar red and “ may-green,” yet keeping the Bavarian pure carmine and ochre. The Bavarian the most artistic of the schools. Lower Rhine — Cologne and towns of Burgundy. Pure but not strong colour; tints generally pale. Dr. Willshire considers that “ the style of engraving, or ‘ technic,’ varies in goodness and character,” . . and elsewhere, “the technic evinces care and better drawing.” And Mr. Conway, in his Woodcutters of the Netherlands , writes copiously of “the first Louvain wood-cutter,” “ the first Gouda wood-cutter,” “ the second Gouda wood-cutter,” and the “ same workman or his School at Antwerp,” as if there were grounds for discrimination in the various styles and treatment of the works assumed to be by the different cutters. I confess I can find no such distinction in the mass of early wood-cuts, nor any varying whatever except in the more or less careful attention to a work so entirely mechanical. I am speaking here of the Heigen, but the same judgment holds good for all engravings in wood up to quite the close of the fifteenth century: three or four books excepted, to be spoken of farther on. All else is one monotonous level. How could it be otherwise ? Consider what kind of work it was ! On a plank, planed smooth, of pear or other fair-fibred wood, not too hard, unmistakable black lines were drawn with brush or pen. The only engraving-tool required, or available, was a knife, such a blade as one might have for a pen-knife, two-edged sometimes, fixed in a handle for easy holding. So little of difficulty is in the process of cutting, that any boy or girl, not so aged as those Cunio twins, might be trusted to do it. All distinction would be owing to the drawing. The sole difference in the cutting would be between the sound or clean work and the unclean or broken. Distinguishing merit else or character in it The colours of the Helgen. Supposed differences of technic. The process of wood-cutting with a knife. A beginner’s success. By whom the Heigen cut? 38 SAINTS AND PLAYING-CARDS there was not. Papillon tells of his wife succeeding on a first attempt: a perfect work, “sans avoir jamais manid le point auparavant” In a question of dates, of the production of this or that , by what inspection shall we know that this was the decent performance of Yesterday’s lad and that the master-work of A-century-before ? Speculations of critics and bibliographers seem to an engraver sometimes vain, their comments uninstruCtive. By whom were these earliest Helgen cuts engraved ? The supposition of Cards being earlier would make engraving to have been taken up as an independent craft for merely trading purposes with the very smallest incentive of hope for gain. I do not believe it. I am convinced that the knowledge of the use of wood and of metal, for stamps, during a time long anterior to any indication we have of card-making implies a different outset. Who had this knowledge but the old scribes and illuminators, of the monasteries ? And what easier employment than engraving should we invent for monastic leisure ? If so, what then more likely than the purpose of some artist monk to multiply his drawing by cutting it on a plank ? I imagine some such beginning of holy prints as more probable than only speculation on the sale of a cheaper pack of cards. So, I think, the first designers of wood-prints may have cut their own designs. Once done, the thing known, as any body could do it, the praCtice, for helgen or cards, might quickly become general. Soon would be no need for the draftsman to waste his labour with the knife ; and occasion would be found for the formschneider , a mechanic, who had no need to be an artist. The first professional wood-engraver was but a mechanic. I see no ground of reason for attributing to him anything like style or character; and certainly he had no controul over the treatment of his work. J udgment, or any thought of purpose or effe£t, was not expe6ted of him ; he had to cut whatever was drawn for him. At most there may have been some rare exceptions when artist and wood-cutter were one. CHAPTER III THE BLOCK-BOOKS later date than the Helgen is the first sign of excellence in Wood-Engraving. Quitting these undated Saint-Pictures, [the date of a particular print indeed of small importance, since there is one general sameness of the engravers’ work through all, and we know at what period they were done,] we reach the “ Block-Books,” an advance beyond the Saints in as much as the drawings are more elaborate: there is an approach to shading and no longer any stint of the amount of text, the engravers by this time more expert at least in letter-cutting. These books are not exactly what we ought to term “ illustrated books,” the prints (mostly coloured as the Helgen were), and not the text, being the primary objeft. By bibliographers they have been called Block-Books, because piClure and text are both cut on the same “block.” StriCHy, as it was on planks, wood sawn lengthwise with the grain, that knife-work was done, and not on blocks, the name is wrong. These block, or plank books immediately preceded the invention of movable types; and were perhaps the direclest cause of that invention, wanted as means of escape from the labour of engraving so great an amount of lettering. The noteworthy block-books are the Apocalypsis, the Canticum Canticorum, the Biblia Pauperum , and the A rs Moriendi. With them is usually classed the Speculum Humana Salvalionis, in one edition of that some pages having the text engraved. The production of the first three Mr. Chatto would assign to a date between 1430 and 1450; and he takes the Apocalypsis to have been the earliest. That the Speculum should have been printed before 1460 he deems to be “in the highest degree improbable,” on account of the employment of movable types for the earlier editions. For the same reason I will not count it among the genuine Block-Books, but reserve it for later consideration. Block-Books. The Speculum not one of the block-books. 40 THE BLOCK-BOOKS The time of the Ars Moriendi I would imagine to be close upon that of the Biblia; but there is no possibility of any certainty: better cutting, as already said, not surely telling us of date. Of this book, it would seem, Mr. Chatto had not any knowledge: he names it as a block-book, but with neither description nor remark concerning it. The Apocalypsis. Our first block-book. Description of a page. The Apocalypsis, or Historia Santti Johannis Evangelista: ejusque Visionis Apocalyptica: (the Story of Saint John the Evangelist and his Apocalyptic Vision), as it is termed by bibliographers, for the book itself is without title, consists of fifty wood-cut pages varying slightly in size, from ten inches and two-eighths to ten inches and five-eighths in height, and from seven and three-eighths to seven and six-eighths in width, printed on stout paper, on one side only, with ink of thin body, distemper or water-colour, and of a greyish brown,—the lines much indented in the paper. The cuts, placed in the book, face each other: two pages probably engraved on the same plank, and printed together. Each page always contains two equal-sized subjects. The following explanation is of the page before us. The upper subject is from the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation: “ I beheld another Beast, coming up out of the earth ; and he had two horns like a lamb; and he spake like a dragon.” The legend is from verses 16-18 : “And he maketh all, small and great, and rich and poor, and free and bond, to have a mark in their right hand, or on their forehead, that no man may buy or sell save he who has the character and name of the Beast or the number of his name, . and his number is six hundred, three-score and six.” The under subject is from the fourteenth chapter: the Vision of the Lamb. John himself holds the descriptive text: “ And I looked, and behold a Lamb stood upon Mount Sion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand bearing his name and the name of his Father on their foreheads.” As it were in a separate vision to the right, we see the Lord on his throne with the elders and the four beasts (the first like a lion, the second like a calf, the third with the face of a man, and the fourth like a flying eagle); and below the Lamb, as shown by the text in front, are those who follow whithersoever he goeth, who “ sang a new song before the throne and the beasts and the elders.” The page here given shows the general treatment of the book, the archaic character of the designs, and the rude simplicity of the cutting. The drawings perhaps were rude, but I should judge them to have had more expression and to have been better than the cuts. Some differential touch there surely was, if only in the heads, which the unartistic knife has pared away. The copy in the British Museum (Case 9. d. 1), from which my photograph was taken, is the copy described by Chatto, who also has reductions of two pages, sufficient to show the nature of the designs, but not to represent the engraving. tuiB^aiK£>m«irtRema^tRftmim!ft5&i5fw6tii?m«64D!rttfta? autmi^putaqxa ijEUpfrtmactemn «-iMmmfcto?