Early Illustrated Books / A History of the Decoration and Illustration of Books in the 15th and 16th Centuries

In 1493, Vérard's activity was still on the increase, and we have at least eight illustrated books of his bearing the date of this year. In the romance of Le Jouvencel and Bonnor's Arbre des Batailles, both in 4to, the cuts, all of them small, are nearly identical, and are repeated again and again in each book. Much more important than these are the editions of the Chronicques de France (printed for Vérard by Jehan Maurand), and a translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, issued under the very taking title of La Bible des Poetes. This is another of Vérard's great folios, with profuse illustrations, large and small, and in its vellum edition is a very gaudy and magnificent book. In 1494 Vérard published his Lancelot; and in 1495, a Légende Dorée and S. Jerome's Vie des Pères en françois. This last book was finished on October 15, but its appearance was preceded by that of the first volume of the publisher's most ambitious undertaking, an edition of the Miroir Historial of Vincent de Beauvais. This enormous chronicle is in thirty-two books, which Vérard divided between five great folio volumes, averaging about three hundred and twenty leaves, printed in long double columns. The whole work thus contains about the same amount of matter as some fifty volumes of the present series, yet it was faultlessly printed on the finest vellum, and with innumerable woodcuts, subsequently coloured, in considerably less than a year. The first volume was finished on September 29, 1495, and the colophon which announces the completion of the last, 'à l'honneur et louenge de nostre seigneur iesucrist et de sa glorieuse et sacrée mere et de la court celeste de paradis,' bears date May 7th, 1496. In the face of such activity and enterprise, I feel ashamed of having girded at the good man for having used some of the Ovid cuts as a basis to his illuminations in this gigantic work.

After 1496 to the end of the century, Vérard's dated books are very few. The only one I have met with myself is a Merlin of 1498. It is possible that he produced less (the Miroir may not have proved a financial success), but it is quite as likely that he merely discontinued his wholesome practice of dating his books, and that the Boethius, the Roman de la Rose, the Gestes Romaines, the romances of Tristram and Gyron, and other undated works, whose colophons show that they were printed while the Pont Notre Dame was still standing, i.e. before October 25th, 1499, belong to these years. After 1500 Vérard's enterprise certainly seems less. He continued to issue editions of poets and romances, but they are much less sumptuous than of yore, and in place of his great folios we have a series of small octavos, mostly of works of devotion, with no other ornament than the strange twists of the initial L, which adorns their title-pages. The example here given is from an undated and unsigned edition of the Livre du Faulcon, but the letter itself frequently occurs in Vérard's undoubted books. The first hint for this grotesque form of ornament may have been found in the small initials of Du Pré's 1486 edition of S. Jerome's Vie des anciens saintz Pères, and variants of the L were used by other publishers besides Vérard, e.g. by Jacques Maillet at Lyons, and Pierre Le Rouge and Michel Le Noir at Paris. The most noticeable examples of the L, besides the one here given, are the man-at-arms L of the 1488 edition of the Mer des Histoires (P. Lerouge), the monkey-and-bagpipes L, here shown, from Maillet's 1494 edition of the Recueil des Histoires Troyennes, a St. George-and-the-Dragon L in a Lyons reprint of the Mer des Histoires, and the January-and-May L which, I believe, was first used by Vérard for a 1492 edition of the Matheolus, or 'quinze joies du mariage,' but of which a counterpart existed at Lyons.

It seems probable that the attention which Vérard paid to his vellum editions, in which the woodcuts were only useful as guides to the illustrator, made him less careful than he would otherwise have been to secure the best possible work in his ordinary books. Certainly I think his most interesting cuts are to be found not in his later books but in the collection of six treatises which he had printed by Gillet Cousteau and Jehan Menard in 1492, and republished, somewhat less sumptuously, the next year, under the collective title L'art de bien vivre et de bien mourir, the reprint coming from the press of Pierre Le Rouge. The cuts in this collection have a special interest for us, because some of them were afterwards used in English books, and we may therefore be allowed to examine them at some length.

In the 1492 edition the first title-page Le liure intitule lart de bien mourir heralds only the first work, an adaptation of the old Ars Moriendi showing the struggle between good and bad angels for the possession of the dying soul. The devils tempt the sufferer to hasten his end ('interficias teipsum' one of them is saying, the words being printed on a label), they remind him of his sins ('periuratus es'), tempt him to worldly thoughts ('intende thesauro'), persuade his physicians to over-commiseration ('Ecce quantam penam patitur'), or flatter him with undeserved praise ('coronam meruisti'). To each of these assaults his good angels have a 'bonne inspiracion' by way of answer, and the devils have to confess 'spes nobis nulla' and to see the little figure of the soul received into heaven. The second treatise is called at the beginning L'eguyllon de crainte divine pour bien mourir, but on the title-page placed on the back of the last leaf 'les paines denfer et les paines de purgatoire.' Its illustrations consist of large cuts in which devils are inflicting excruciating and revolting tortures on their victims. Its colophon gives the printers' names and the date July 18, 1492. The next three parts of the book are Le Traité de l'avenement de l'Antechrist, Les Quinze Signes, or Fifteen Tokens of Judgment, and Les Joies du Paradis. The printing of these was finished on October 28. Only the middle treatise is much illustrated, but here the artist had full play for his powers in representing the fish swimming on the hills, the seas falling into the abyss, the sea-monsters covering the earth, the flames of the sea, the trees wet with blood, the crumbling of cities, the stones fighting among themselves, and the other signs of the Last Day. Perhaps the best of this set of cuts is that representing the 'esbahissement' or astonishment of the men and women who had hidden themselves in holes in the earth, when at last they ventured forth. But in the last treatise, the Art de bien vivre, quaintness and horror are replaced by really beautiful work. The cuts here are intended to illustrate the Ave Maria, Lord's Prayer, Creed, Ten Commandments, and Seven Sacraments. Those in the last series are the largest in the book, each of them occupying a full page. The Creed has a series of smaller cuts of inferior work. But the picture which precedes this, representing the twelve apostles, and the pictures of the Angelic Salutation, of the Pope invoking the Blessed Virgin (here shown), and of Christ teaching the Apostles, show the finest work, outside the Horae, in any French books during the fifteenth century. These blocks appear also in two English books printed at Paris, in 1503, The Traytte of god lyuyng and good deyng, and The Kalendayr of Shyppars, and in many of the English editions of the latter work from Pynson's in 1506 onward.

Pierre Lerouge, one of Vérard's printers, produced at least one fine book quite independently of him. This is the first illustrated edition of La Mer des Hystoires, the French version of the Rudimentum Noviciorum (see p. 50), the general plan of which it follows, though not slavishly. Pierre Lerouge printed his edition for a publisher named Vincent Commin. It is in two tall folios, with the man-at-arms L to decorate its title-pages, and splendid initials P, I, and S, the first having within it a figure of a scribe at work, the S being twisted into the form of a scaly snake, and the body of the I containing a figure of Christ. The cuts and borders of the book are not very remarkable. In 1498 Vérard published a new edition of it, having obtained the use of the old blocks. A Lyons reprint was issued about 1500, and other editions during the sixteenth century. Two other printers who cannot be said to have learnt anything from Vérard are Jean Bonhomme, who as early as 1486 printed an illustrated edition of a very popular book, Le livre des profits champêtres, translated from the Latin of Petrus Crescentius, and Germain Bineaut, who in 1490 printed a Pathelin le grant et le petit which is said to have woodcuts. Guyot Marchant's series of editions of the Danse Macabre or 'danse des Morts,' has been already mentioned. An edition of the same work, printed at Lyons, February 18, 1499 (no printer's name), a copy of which is among the books which entered the British Museum under the bequest of Mr. Alfred Huth, is especially interesting as containing cuts of the shops of a printer and a bookseller, at both of which Death is at work.

Another edition of the Danse was printed by Nicole de la Barre at Paris in 1500, and others of the same character in the early years of the next century. We shall have to recur to the book again both with reference to the Horae and for the later Lyons editions, the cuts in which followed designs by Holbein.

The only other Paris printer whom we have space here to mention is Jean Trepperel, whose career began in 1492, in which year, according to Hain, he issued a Histoire de Pierre de Provence et de la belle Maguelonne, probably illustrated. In 1493 he published an edition of the Chroniques de France, with four cuts, one of the founding of a town, another of an assault, and two battle scenes. They are good of their kind, especially that which serves for all the founders of cities from Æneas and Romulus to S. Louis, but their repetition becomes a little wearisome. In an undated issue of Jehan Quentin's Orologe de Devotion the cuts are all different, but fall into two series, one badly drawn and infamously engraved, the other showing really fine work, and having all the appearance of having been originally designed for a Book of Hours.

The only other fifteenth century book of Trepperel's with which I am acquainted is a charming quarto edition of the romance of Paris et Vienne, a copy of which is in the Morgan collection. It is undated, but was printed while the Pont Notre Dame was still standing. The title-cut shows signs of breakage, and may possibly have been designed for the earlier edition by Denis Meslier mentioned by Brunet as having a single cut. The rest of the large cuts in the book have all the appearance of having been specially designed for the new edition, and are equal to the best work in the Horae. Meanwhile at Lyons the rude cuts of the books which heralded illustrated work in France had been replaced by far more artistic productions. In 1488 Michelet Topie de Pymont and Jacques Herrnberg produced a French version (by Nicole Le Huen) of Breydenbach's Peregrinatio (see p. 57) with copies of some of the original cuts, the smaller ones cut on wood, the large maps engraved on copper. The next year Jacques Maillet brought out a rival version (by Frere Jehan de Hersin) for which he acquired the original Mainz woodblocks themselves. To Maillet, also, we owe passable imitations of some of the less sumptuous books of Vérard's. Lastly, Jean Trechsel struck out a new line in a profusely illustrated Terence of 1493. At Rouen the Missal and Breviary printed by Martin Morin were adorned with a curious initial M and B in the same style as some of the more frequent Ls, and Pierre Regnault did work which Vérard found worthy of his vellum. Paris, however, having once gained the predominance in illustrated work, had as yet no difficulty in maintaining her position.

It remains for us to notice briefly the printers' devices in early French books. These are so numerous that it is possible to divide them into rough classes. The largest of these is formed by the marks which have as their central ornament a tree with a shield or label hung on the trunk, with supporters varied according to the owner's fancy, and which are not always easy to assign to their right place in the animal creation. Durand Gerlier preferred rams, Michel Tholoze wild men, Denys Janot a creature which looks like a kangaroo, Hemon Le Fevre dancing bears duly muzzled and chained, Simon Vostre leopards, Thielmann Kerver unicorns, Felix Baligault rabbits, Robert Gourmont winged stags, Jehan Guyart of Bordeaux dolphins. Most of these devices have a dotted background, and they are sometimes found printed in red ink, which adds greatly to their decorative effect. Another class, to which Vérard's well-known device belongs, showed in their upper part the French lilies crowned and supported by angels. Jean Le Forestier combined this with the tree of knowledge, choosing lions as its supporters, but adding also the sacred lamb (for his name 'Jean'), and similar variations were adopted by other printers. In another large class the French printers, especially those of Lyons, followed the simple cross and circle so common in Italy. This was mostly printed in white on a black ground, as by Pierre Levet, Matthieu Vivian of Orleans, and Le Tailleur. Less often, as in the marks of Berthold Rembolt and Georges Wolf, the ground is white and the design black. Guillaume Balsarin who, as was very common, had two devices, had one of each kind. Outside these classes the special designs are too many to be enumerated. The successive Le Noirs punned on their names in at least six different devices of black heads, and Deny de Harsy with less obvious appropriateness selected two black men with white waistbands to uphold his shields. Guyot Marchant's shoemakers, with the bar of music to complete his pious motto Sola fides sufficit, form one of the earliest and best known of French marks. Pierre Regnault showed excellent taste in his flower-surrounded P, in which the letters of his surname may also be deciphered. The scholar-printer Badius Ascensius chose a useful, if not very pretty, design of printers at work, the two variants of which first appear respectively in 1507 and 1521. All these devices and countless others will be found roughly figured in Silvestre's Marques Typographiques, many of them appear also in Brunet's Manuel du Libraire, and those of the chief fifteenth century printers have been reproduced with absolute fidelity in M. Thierry-Poux's Monuments de l'imprimerie française. Only the mark of Du Pré and one of those used by Caillaut are therefore given here, the first (on p. 141) in honour of a pioneer in French illustration, the second, as perhaps the most beautiful of any which the present writer has seen.

The first Greek book printed in France appeared in 1507, and the awakening of classical feeling was accompanied, as in other countries, by the putting away of the last remnants of mediæval art and literature as childish things. The old romances continued to be published, chiefly by the Lenoirs, but in a smaller and cheaper form, and for the most part with old cuts. Vérard diminished his output, and the publishers of the Horae turned in despair to German designs in place of the now despised native work. Soon only some little octavos remained to show that there was still an unclassical public to be catered for. These were chiefly printed by Galliot du Pré, with titles in red and black, and sometimes with little architectural borders in imitation of the more ambitious German ones. When they disappear we say farewell to the richness and colour which distinguishes the best French books of the end of the fifteenth century. Instead of the black letter and quaint cuts we have graceful but cold Roman types, or pretty but thin italics, with good initial letters, sometimes with good head-and tail-pieces, but with few pictures, and with only a neat allegoric device on the title-page instead of the rich designs used by the earlier printers.

Geoffroy Tory of Bourges was the first important printer of the new school. His earliest connection with publishing was as the editor of various classical works, but he returned from a visit to Italy full of artistic theories as to book-making, which he proceeded to carry out, partly in alliance with Simon Colines, for whom he designed a new device representing Time with his scythe. Tory's own device of the 'pot cassé,' a broken vase pierced by a toret or auger, is said to refer to his desolation on the death of his only daughter. Devices of other printers have been ascribed to him on the ground of the appearance in them of the little cross of Lorraine, which is found in some of Tory's undoubted works. It is certain, however, that the cross was not his individual signature, but only that of his studio.

After the Horae, which we shall notice in our next chapter, Tory's most famous book was his own Champfleury, 'auquel est contenu l'art et science de la vraie proportion des lettres antiques,' printed in 1529. This is a fantastic work, interesting for the prelude in which he speaks of his connection with the famous Grolier, and for the few illustrations scattered about the text. The best of these are the vignettes of 'Hercules Gallicus,' leading in chains the captives of his eloquence, and of the Triumphs of Apollo and the Muses. The specimen alphabets at the end of the book also deserve notice. They show that Tory was better than his theories, for his attempt to prove, by far-fetched analogies and derivations, that there is an ideal shape for every letter, is as bad in art as it is false in history.

Tory was succeeded in his office of royal printer by Robert Estienne, and during the rest of the century the classical editions of this family of great printers form the chief glories of the French press. Their books, both large and small, are admirably printed, and in excellent taste, though with no other ornaments than their printer's device, and good initials and head-pieces. But it must be owned that from the reign of Francis I. onwards, the decoration of the text of most French books is far less interesting than the superb bindings on which the kings and their favourites began to lavish so much expense.

Only two more Paris books need here be mentioned, both of them printed in 1546, and both with cuts imitated from the Italian—Jacques Gohary's translation of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Amour de Cupido et de Psiché translated from Apuleius. The first of these was published by Jacques Kerver, the second by Jeanne de Marnef. Of original Paris work of any eminence we have no record after the death of Tory.

Meanwhile at Lyons a new school of book-illustration was springing up. From the beginning of the century the Lyons printers had imitated, or pirated, the delicate italic books printed by Aldus. The luckless Étienne Dolet added something to the classical reputation of the town, and by the middle of the century the printers there were turning out numerous pocket editions of the classics, which they sold to their customers in 'trade bindings' of calf stamped with gold, and often painted over with many-coloured interlacements. The fashion for small books was set, and when illustrations were fitted to them the result was singularly dainty.

Before considering the editions of Jean de Tournes and his rivals we must stop to notice the appearance at Lyons in 1538 of the belated first edition of Holbein's Dance of Death, the woodcuts for which, the work of H. L., whose identity with Hans Lützelburger has been sufficiently established, are known to have been in existence as early as 1527, and were probably executed two or three years before that date. Several sets of proofs from the woodcuts are in existence, with lettering said to be in the types of Froben of Basel, who may have abandoned the idea of publishing them because of the vigour of their satire on the nobles and well-to-do. The Trechsels, the printers of the French edition, are known to have had dealings with a Basel woodcutter with initials H. L., who died before June 1526, and may have purchased the blocks directly from him, or at a later date from Froben. In 1538 they issued forty-one woodcuts with a dedication by Jean de Vauzelles, and a French quatrain to each cut either by him or by Gilles Corrozet, giving to the book the title Les Simulachres et historiees faces de la mort. Its success was as great as it deserved, and ten more cuts were added in subsequent editions.

In the same year as the Dance of Death the Trechsels issued another series of upwards of a hundred cuts after designs by Holbein, the Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones, with explanatory verses by Gilles Corrozet. These, though scarcely less beautiful, and at the time almost as successful as those in the Dance of Death, are not quite so well known, and I therefore select one of them, taken from the reprint of the following year, as an illustration.

The success of these two books invited imitation, and during the next twenty years many dainty illustrated books were issued by Franciscus Gryphius, Macé Bonhomme, Guillaume Roville, and Jean de Tournes. In 1540 Gryphius issued a little Latin Testament, with thirty-four lines of dainty Roman type to a page, which only measures 3½ in. × 2, and in which are set charming cuts. Bonhomme's chief success was an edition, printed in 1556, of the first three books of the Metamorphoses translated into French verse by Clément Marot and Barthélemy Aneau. This has borders to every page, and numerous vignettes measuring only 1½ in. × 2. In the following year this was capped by Jean de Tournes with another version of the Metamorphoses, with borders and vignettes attributed to Bernard Salomon, usually called 'le petit Bernard,' and the success of the book caused it to be re-issued in Dutch and Italian. The borders are wonderfully varied, some of them containing little grotesque figures worthy of our own Doyle, others dainty lacework, and others less pleasing architectural essays. This, like most of the best books of its kind, was printed throughout in italics, and the attempt about this time of Robert Granjon, another Lyons printer, to supersede the italic by a type modelled on the French cursive hand, the 'caractères de civilité,' was only partially successful. In 1563, and possibly in other years, Jean de Tournes published an almanack and engagement-book, a Calendrier historial, with tiny vignettes representing the occupations appropriate to the seasons, and alternate pages for the entry of notes by any purchasers barbarous enough to deface so charming a book with their hasty handwriting. When the brief blaze of pretty books at Lyons died out, French printing fast sinks into dulness, and the attempt of a Frenchman at Antwerp to revive its glories was only partially successful, though he has left behind him a great name. Jean Plantin was born at Tours in 1514, and after trying to earn a living first at Paris and then at Caen, set up a bookseller's shop at Antwerp in 1549, and six years later printed his first book, the Institution d'une fille de noble maison. He was soon in a position to give commissions to good artists, Luc de Heere, Pierre Huys, Godefroid Ballain, and others, and issued the Devises Héroiques of Claude Paradin (1562), and the Emblems of Sambucus (1564), of Hadrianus Junius (1565), and Alciati (1566), with illustrations from their designs. His Horae, printed in 1566 and 1575, with florid borders, and his Psalter of 1571, attempted to revive a class of book then going out of fashion. Besides the great Antwerp Polyglott, whose printing occupied him from 1568 to 1573, and nearly brought him to ruin, Plantin printed some other Bibles, one in Flemish in 1566, and a 'Bible royale' in 1570, being noticeable for their ambitious decoration. He published also some great folio missals, more imposing than elegant. He had numerous sets of large initials, one specially designed for music books being really graceful, and a long array of variations on the device of the hand and compass which he adopted as his mark. The title-pages of his larger books are surrounded with heavy architectural borders, some of which were engraved on copper. At his death, in 1589, he had attained labore et constantia, as his motto phrased it, to a foremost position among the printers of his day, but his florid illustrated books have very little real beauty, and mark the beginning of a century and a half of bad taste from which only the microscopic editions of the Elzevirs are wholly free.

CHAPTER VIII

Each of the Hours, we are told, had its mystical reference to some event in the lives of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord. Lauds referred to the visit of Mary to Elizabeth, Prime to the Nativity, Terce to the Angels' Message to the Shepherds, Sext to the Adoration by the Magi, Nones to the Circumcision, Vespers to the Flight into Egypt, Compline to the Assumption of the Virgin. The subsidiary Hours of the Passion naturally suggested the Crucifixion or, less frequently, the Invention or finding of the Cross by the Emperor Constantine, and those of the Holy Spirit the Day of Pentecost. We have here the subjects for nine pictures, which were almost invariably heralded by one of the Annunciation, and might easily be increased by a representation of the Adoration by the Shepherds, of the Murder of the Innocents, and the Death of the Virgin. Moreover, the contents of Books of Hours were gradually enlarged till they deserved the title, which has been given them, of the Lay-Folk's Prayer-Book. A typical Book of Hours would contain—

(i.) A Kalendar (one picture).

(ii.) Passages from the Gospels on the Passion of Christ. (One to three pictures.)

(iii.) Private Prayers.

(iv.) The Hours themselves—Horae intemeratae beatae Mariae Virginis—with the subsidiary Hours of the Passion and of the Holy Ghost. (Nine to thirteen pictures.)

(v.) The Seven Penitential Psalms. (One or two pictures.)

(vi.) The Litany of the Saints.

(vii.) The Vigils of the Dead. (One to four pictures.)

(viii.) Seven Psalms on Christ's Passion.

The Kalendar usually contained poetical directions for the preservation of health, and was therefore preluded by a rather ghastly anatomical picture of a man. The passages from the Gospel, which began with the first chapter of S. John, were illustrated by a picture of the evangelist's martyrdom, and the Passion by one of the Kiss of Judas, or of the Crucifixion. To the Penitential Psalms were sometimes prefixed pictures of Bathsheba bathing on her housetop, and of the death of Uriah, or, more rarely, of an angel appearing to David with weapons in his hand, signifying the three punishments between which he must choose for his sin in numbering the people. The Litany of the Saints offered too wide a field for full-page cuts to be assigned it, but was often illustrated by smaller ones set in the text. To the Vigils of the Dead the commonest illustrations at first were those of 'Les Trois Vifs et Les Trois Morts,' three gay cavaliers meeting their own grinning corpses. 'Dives and Lazarus' was first joined with these and afterwards superseded them. We also find pictures of the Day of Judgment, the Entombment, and in one instance of a funeral. Two illustrations in honour of the Eucharist are also of common occurrence—one of angels upholding a chalice,[19] the other of the Vision of S. Gregory, when he saw the crucified Christ appearing on the altar. If we add to these a picture of the Tree of Jesse, and another of the Church in heaven and on earth, we shall have exhausted the list of subjects which appear with any frequency, though pictures of the Creation and Fall, of David and Goliath, of the Descent from the Cross, and perhaps one or two others may occasionally be found. It should be mentioned that the illustrations to the Psalms on the Passion are usually repeated from others previously used, but putting these on one side, it will be found that we have accounted for the subjects of some five-and-twenty pictures, and this is in excess of the number found in any one book, which varies from six to twenty-two.

In some of the earlier Horae, as we shall see, the printers contented themselves with these large illustrations, and in others surrounded the text with purely decorative borders of flowers and birds. But in a typical edition the borders consist of a number of small blocks or plates, the figures in which reinforced the teaching of the main illustrations. In an edition printed by Jean Du Pré in February 1488-9, five pages are devoted to an explanation of these vignettes, and it will not be a waste of space to quote a few lines:

¶Cest le repertoire des histoires & figures de la bible tant du vieilz testament que du nouueau contenues dedens les vignettes de ces presentes heures imprimees en cuyure. En chascune desquelles vignettes sont contenues deux figures du vieilz testament signifians une vraye histoire du nouueau. Comme il appert par les chapitres cottez et alleguez au propos tant en latin que francoys en chascune desdits figures et histoires. ¶Et premierement en la pagee [sic] ensuyuante listoire de lannunciation est prefiguree la natiuite nostre dame. comme il appert par les deux figures de iesse et balaan. prouue par le liure de isaye, xi chapitre et des nombres xxiiii. chap. ¶Item en lautre pagee ensuyuante par Rebecca et Sara est entendu comme nostre dame fut espousee a ioseph. ainsi qu'on lit en genese xxiiii. c. & tho. vi.

Thus we see that, as first planned, the border vignettes formed a continuous series illustrating historically the teaching of the Horae by reference to Old Testament types, with chapter and verse for their significance. It will be noticed also that it is distinctly stated that the vignettes in this edition were 'imprimées en cuyvre,' printed on copper. Two months later, in an edition published by Antoine Vérard (April 5, 1489), the same table was reproduced with very slight alterations. The words 'en cuyvre' were then omitted, but 'imprimées' was left in, awkwardly enough. There can be no doubt that the omission was deliberate, and we have thus two statements which reinforce the opinion of the best experts, that both wood and copper were employed in engraving different editions of these designs.

These Old Testament types do not appear to have long retained their popularity, and were soon superseded by a less continuous form of illustration. The Calendar offered an excuse for introducing one series of vignettes of the sports and occupations of each month, another of the signs of the zodiac, and a third giving pictures of the saints in connection with the days on which they were commemorated. The Gospels of the Passion were illustrated by vignettes on the same subject; the Hours themselves by a long series on the lives of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin. The Dance of Death was brought in to illustrate the Vigils of the Dead, and relief was given by some charming scenes of hunting and rural life, which formed the border to the Private Prayers and the Litany of the Saints. In addition to these, we have representations of the Prophets and Sibyls, of the Cardinal Virtues, and the Lives of the Saints, and an admixture of purely decorative or grotesque designs. Between the vignettes spaces were often left, which were filled in, sometimes with illustrative texts, sometimes with a continuous prayer or exhortation, either in French or Latin. Thus in the preliminary leaves of some of the Horae the text read:

Tout bon loyal et vaillant catholique qui commencer aucune euure ymagine doit inuoquer en toute sa pratique premierement la puissance diuine par ce beau nom iesus qui illumine tout cueur humain & tout entendement. Cest en tout fait ung beau commencement:

and when we turn to the Gospels of the Passion we find a prayer beginning 'Protecteur des bons catholiques donne nous croire tellement les paroles euangeliques,' &c. In Vérard's earlier editions the book would have to be turned round to read the words on the lower border, but in Pigouchet's this defect was remedied, so that we are left free to imagine that the prayer was meant for devotional use, and not merely as a decoration.

The chief firms employed in the production of these beautiful prayer-books during the fifteenth century were (i.) Jean du Pré; (ii.) Antoine Vérard; (iii.) Philippe Pigouchet, working chiefly for Simon Vostre, a publisher, but also for De Marnef, Laurens Philippe, and occasionally on his own account; (iv.) Thielman Kerver. The proportion of dated and undated editions is about equal, and with careful study it ought to be possible to trace the career of each of the important firms, noting when each new illustration or vignette makes its first appearance. Unfortunately great confusion has been introduced into the bibliography of Horae by the presence in them of calendars, mostly for twenty years, giving the dates of the moveable feasts. All that these calendars show is that the edition in which they occur must have been printed before, probably at least five or six years before, the last year for which they are reckoned. The fact that, e.g., the editions printed by Pigouchet in August and September 1498 have the 1488 to 1508 calendar is by itself sufficient to prove that they cannot do more than this. Unluckily a connection has often been assumed between the first year of the calendar and the year of publication—e.g. undated Horae with the calendar for 1488-1508 are frequently ascribed on that ground only to 1488, or with perverse ingenuity to 1487; as if a calendar of the moveable feasts were like an annual almanac, and must necessarily be printed in readiness for the new year. Great confusion has thus been caused, so that it is impossible to trust any conjectural date for an Horae unless we know the grounds on which it is based.

The earliest dated French Horae was finished by Antoine Vérard on August 21, 1486, and followed by another the next year dated July 7, 1487; but the cuts in both of these are small and rude, mere guides to an illuminator, and as Vérard's later editions bring him into connection with other publishers, it will be convenient to consider first three editions by Jean Du Pré, all of which are of great interest. The one which we must rank as the earliest is an undated Hore ad vsum Romanum, signed 'Jo. de Prato' (i.e. J. Du Pré) which can be shown to have been issued some little time before Feb. 19, 1488-9, the date of a Psalter printed by Antoine Cayllaut in which one of the cuts appears in a more worn condition. The text measures 4½ in. by 3¼. This is the only one of the three which was known to Brunet, whose list of Horae in the fifth volume of his Manuel du Libraire, long as it is, is very incomplete. Its text, including the borders, measures 5-5/8 in. by 3-5/8, and in addition to Du Pré's mark and the anatomical man is illustrated by nineteen engravings. Nine of these are the usual illustrations to the Hours themselves, and the subsidiary Hours of the Passion and of the Holy Ghost. The Penitential Psalms are illustrated by David's Bathsheba and the Death of Uriah, and the Vigils of the Dead by a figure of Death. In addition to these we have the Fall of Lucifer, Descent from the Cross, with emblems of the four evangelists, a figure of the Trinity, the Virgin and Child in glory, S. Christopher, S. Mary Magdalen, and the Vision of S. Gregory, with small pictures from the life of Christ and figures of the Saints. The borders carry out the plan of the table of vignettes, containing three scenes from the Bible and three heads, with explanatory text, on each page throughout the greater part of the book. Towards the end these are replaced by figures of saints and angels. The artist's designs have been rather spoilt by the engraver, whose strokes are frequently much too black.

The second of Du Pré's editions is a very interesting book, for the illustrations are printed in three colours—blue, red, and green. It is dated 1490, but without the mention of any month. It has some unusual illustrations—e.g. the three Maries with the body of Christ, David and Goliath, Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and Dives in torment, and S. Christopher. Many of the pages are without vignettes, and where these occur they are not joined neatly together to form a continuous border, but set, rather at haphazard, about the margin. Pictures and vignettes are printed sometimes in the same, sometimes in different colours. The page of text measures 5½ in. by 4, or without borders, 4 by 2½.

The last edition known to me by Du Pré is undated, and has a Latin title-page, Hore ad usum Romanum. Jo. de Prato. The text with borders measures 4½ in. by 3½. Its borders are similar to those of the large folios of the period, having a floral groundwork, into which birds, figures of men and women, angels and grotesques are introduced. To make up for the lack of vignettes there are seven small illustrations of the Passion set in the text. For the larger illustrations, which appear to be woodcuts, Du Pré again varied his subjects, introducing for the only time in these three editions Les Trois Vifs et Les Trois Morts, reduced reproductions of which are here given.

It was not to be expected that so enterprising a publisher as Vérard would rest content with the very unpretentious Horae he produced in 1486 and 1487, but the precise date at which he first made a more ambitious essay is not easy to fix. The undated edition of his Grandes Heures for the use of Rome is constantly assigned to 1488, for no other reason than that it contains the 1488-1508 Almanac, though the breaks in the borders suffice to show that this was not the first appearance of the blocks. At the library at Toulouse there is said to be a Vérard Horae ad usum Romanum dated April 3, 1488, that is, as the French year at this time began, at Easter, 1489, and this may be the first of Vérard's new editions. This was followed the next year by the first edition of his Grandes Heures, with thirteen woodcuts and a frontispiece. I have not been fortunate enough to see a copy of either of these editions, but three undated Horae in the British Museum, printed by Vérard, seem to belong to the same type as the Grandes Heures. In addition to a poorly cut Vision of Heaven, the Anatomical Man, and the Chalice, they contain, in varying order, fourteen large woodcuts—(i.) The Fall of Lucifer; (ii.) the history of Adam and Eve; (iii.) a double picture, the upper half showing the strife between Mercy, Justice, Peace, and Reason in the presence of God, and the lower half the Annunciation, which followed the triumph of Mercy; (iv.) the Marriage of Joseph and Mary; (v.) the Invention of the Cross; (vi.) the Gift of the Spirit; (vii.) a double picture of the Nativity and the Adoration by the Shepherds; (viii.) the Adoration by the Magi; (ix.) a double picture of the Annunciation to the Shepherds and of peasants dancing round a tree; (x.) the Circumcision; (xi.) the Killing of the Innocents; (xii.) the Crowning of the Virgin; (xiii.) David entering a castle, with the words 'Tibi soli peccavi,'—against Thee only have I sinned,—issuing from his mouth; (xiv.) a funeral service, the hearse standing before the altar. The cut of the Message to the Shepherds here shown will give a fair idea of the characteristics of this series, as well as of the borders by which they were accompanied.[20] A full list of the larger subjects has been given because some of them often occur in later editions joined with other pictures of the school of Pigouchet, and it is useful to be able to fix their origin at a glance.[21] Six of them form the only large illustrations in the little Horae, printed for Vérard, April 5, 1489, in which, as we have already noted, the words 'on copper' appear to have been deliberately omitted from the table of the vignettes. The size of the Grandes Heures is 8 in. by 5, that of the edition of April 1489, 6 in. by 4. Brunet enumerates altogether thirty editions of Horae printed by Vérard, the last of which bearing a date belongs to the year 1510. So far as I am acquainted with them these later editions have few distinguishing characteristics, but are mostly made up with illustrations designed for other firms.