Chapter 36

And (thus) to these to stand still open wide,He neither wrings with Wrongs nor racks his Rents;But saves the charge of wanton Waste & Pride:For, Thrift’s right Fuel of Magnificence:As Protean Fashions of new ProdigalitieHave quight worn out all ancient Hospitalitie.The flowers at each side of the verses are, in the original, very coarsely executed. They are merely printers’ ornaments, engraved437on separate pieces of wood, and not on the same block as the cut above them.From one or two worm-holes, which have been in the block when it was printed in 1607, and which are apparent in the impression, it seems probable that this cut had been engraved some time previous to the date which appears at the bottom. As it is, however, very likely that the block was of pear-tree, which is extremely liable to the attacks of the worm, it is possible that it might have been injured in this manner within a year or two of its being finished. The bold,cleanly cutlines of the original are very much like the work of Christopher Jegher, one of the best wood engravers of that period. He resided at Antwerp, but he is said to have been born in Germany in 1578. His best works are several large cuts which he engraved for Rubens from drawings made on the block by Rubens himself, who appears to have originally438published them on his own account. From the manner in which the great painter’s name is introduced at the bottom of each—“P. P. Rub. delin. & excud.”—it would appear that they were both designed and printed by him. Impressions of those cuts sometimes occur with a tint printed over them, in sepia, from a second block, in the manner of chiaro-scuros. We here give a reduced copy of one of the largest.VI.120see textAs profit could not have been Rubens’s motive for having these cuts engraved, it is not unlikely that his object was to compare his designs when executed in this manner with those of the older German masters—Durer, Burgmair, and Cranach. The best, however, differ considerably in the manner of their execution from the best old German wood-cuts, for the lines are too uniform and display too much of art; in looking at those which consist chiefly of figures, attention is first called to themeansby which an effect is produced, rather than to the effect itself in connexion with the entire subject. This objection applies most forcibly to the cut which represents the Virgin crowned by the Almighty and Jesus Christ. The design displays much of Rubens’s grandeur, with not less of his extravagance in the attitude of the figures; but he seems to have studied less the effect of the whole, than to have endeavoured to express certain parts by a peculiar arrangement of lines und hatchings. The subject does not produce that feeling, which it is the great object of art to excite, in consequence of the attention being diverted from the contemplation of the whole to the means by which it is executed. In such impressions, however, as have439a tint of sepia printed over them from a second block, the hardness of the lines and heaviness in the hatchings are less apparent. The following is a reduced copy of another of those cuts, which, for the beautiful simplicity of the design, is perhaps the most pleasing of the whole. The execution of the original is, however, coarse, a defect which is not so apparent in the copy in consequence of the small scale on which it is engraved.VI.121see textCornelius van Sichem,VI.122a contemporary of Christopher Jegher, appears to have been one of the most industrious wood engravers of his time. He was a native of Holland, and is supposed to have resided at Amsterdam. One of his best cuts is a large head, engraved from a drawing by Henry Goltzius, with the date 1607. This and several other large cuts, which he probably engraved about the same time, are so much superior to the smaller cuts, with his mark, which appear in books, that I am inclined to think that most of the latter must have been engraved by his pupils; they are indeed so numerous that it seems almost impossible that he should have engraved them all himself. He seems at first to have worked for fame, and afterwards to have turned a manufacturer of wood-cuts for money. The cuts with his mark contained in a quarto book entitled “Bibels Tresoor,” printed at Amsterdam440in 1646, by no means afford an idea of his ability as a wood-engraver; many of them are wretched copies of old wood-cuts designed by Albert Durer and other old masters, discreditable alike to the engraver and to the originals. The following is a slightly reduced copy of a cut, engraved by Van Sichem, from a design by Henry Goltzius. The original, which was probably engraved about 1607, may be considered as an average specimen of the engraver’s talents; it is not so well executed as some of his best large cuts, while it is much superior to the greater number of the small cuts which contain his mark. The subject is Judith with the head of Holofernes.see textAbout 1625 a French wood engraver of the name of Businck executed several chiaro-scuros chiefly from designs by Lalleman and Bloemart; and between 1630 and 1647, Bartolomeo Coriolano, who sometimes styles himself “Romanus Eques,” practised the same art441at Bologna with great reputation.VI.123In an edition of Hubert Goltzius’s Lives of the Roman Emperors, enlarged by Casper Gevartius, folio, printed at Antwerp in 1645, the portraits, in the manner of chiaro-scuros, from two blocks, are executed with great spirit. The name of the engraver is not mentioned, but from the mark I. C. I. on a tail-piece at the end of the work, I am inclined to think that he was the same person who engraved the cuts in a little book of devotion, first printed in Latin, French, Spanish, and Flemish, at Antwerp, about 1646.VI.124The number of cuts in this little work is forty, and most of them contain the mark of the designer,AS, as well as that of the engraver. From the drawing of these cuts it would seem that the designer was either a pupil of Rubens, or had closely copied his manner. In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms the markASis ascribed to Andrea Salmincio, “an engraver and pupil of Valesius.” Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 274, adopting Professor Christ’s explanation of the mark, mentions “Andrea Salmincio” as the designer of those cuts; but in page 461 of the same volume, he says, referring to his former statement, that he had since been informed by M. Eisen, a painter, and a native of Valenciennes, that they were designed by “a famous Flemish painter and engraver on wood, named Sallarte, a contemporary of Rubens, and who is supposed to have assisted the latter in some of his great works.” Those cuts may perhaps be considered as the last series that were expressly designed by an artist of talent in the seventeenth century, for the purpose of being engraved on wood. The style in which they are executed is not worthy of the designs, though, considering the period, they are not without merit. The engraver appears to have been extremely partial to a kind of cross-hatching, in which the interstices are more like squares than acute-angled lozenges, thus giving to the figures and draperies a hard and unpliable appearance.Though several English wood engravings of the reigns of James I. and Charles I. have evidently been executed by professed wood engravers, yet a great proportion of those contained in English books and pamphlets printed in this country during the seventeenth century appear to have been the work of persons who had not learnt and did not regularly practise the art. The cuts of those occasional wood engravers, who were442most likely printers, are as rude in design as they are coarse in execution, frequently displaying something like the fac-simile of a boy’s drawing in his first attempts to sketch “the humanformdivine.” Such cuts, evidently executed on the spur of the moment, are of frequent occurrence in tracts and pamphlets published during the time of the war between Charles I. and the Parliament. Evelyn, in the first edition of his Sculptura, published in 1662, thus mentions Switzer as a wood engraver of that period: “We have likewise Switzer for cutting in wood, the son of a fatherVI.125who sufficiently discovered his dexterity in theHerbalsset forth by Mr. Parkinson, Lobel, and divers other works.” The cuts of plants in the work, usually called Lobel’s Botany, were most certainly not engraved by the elder Switzer; they are much superior to the cuts of the same kind which are undoubtedly of his engraving, and the work in which they first appeared was printed in London in 1571. He engraved the cuts in Speed’s History of Britain, folio, 1611; and, though the author calls him “the most exquisite and curious hand of that age,” they abundantly testify that he was a very ordinary workman. They are executed in a meagre, spiritless manner; the best are those which represent the portraitures of the ancient Britons. The cuts in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, folio, 1629, were also undoubtedly engraved by him; his name, “A. Switzer,” with a graver underneath, occurs at the bottom of the very indifferent cut which forms the title-page. The portrait of the author is scarcely superior to the title-page; and the cuts of plants are the most worthless that are to be found in any work of the kind. It is not unlikely that the cuts in Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts, 1607, and in Moffet’s Theatre of Insects, 1634, were also engraved by the elder Switzer. The taste for wood-cuts must have been low indeed when such an engraver was considered one of the best of his age. Of the younger Switzer’s abilities I have had no means of judging, never having seen a single cut which was known to be of his engraving.Between 1650 and 1700 wood engraving, as a means of multiplying443the designs of eminent artists, either as illustrations of books or as separate cuts, may be considered as having reached its lowest ebb. A few tolerably well executed cuts of ornaments are occasionally to be found in Italian, French, and Dutch books of this period; but though they sufficiently attest that the raceof workmenwas not wholly extinct, they also afford ample proof thatartistslike those of former times had ceased to furnish designs for the wood engraver. The art of design was then, however, in a languishing condition throughout Europe; and even supposing that wood engraving had been as much in fashion as copper-plate printing then was for the purpose of illustrating books, it would be vain to expect in wood-cuts that excellence of composition and drawing which is not to be found in the works of the best painters of the time. Wood engravings to please must possesssomemerit in the design—must show some trait of feeling for his subject on the part of the designer. Deficiency in this respect can never be compensated by dexterity of execution: in anything that approaches to fine art, mere workmanship, the result of laborious application, can never atone for want of mind. The man who drew a portrait of Queen Anne with a pen, and wrote the Psalms in the lines of the face, and in the curls of the hair, in characters so small that it required a glass to read them, does not rank with a Vandyke or a Reynolds, nor even with a Lely or a Kneller. At the period of the greatest decline of wood engraving, the want that was felt was not of working engravers to execute cuts, but of talented artists to design them.The principal French wood engravers about the end of the seventeenth century were: Peter Le Sueur,—born in 1636, died 1716; his two sons, Peter and Vincent; John Papillon the elder—who died in 1710; and his son, of the same name, who was born in 1661, and died in 1723. Though John Michael Papillon, son of John Papillon the younger, and author of the Traité de la Gravure en Bois, speaks highly of the talents of the aforesaid members of the families of Le Sueur and Papillon as wood engravers, yet, from his account of their productions, it would seem that they were chiefly employed in engraving subjects which scarcely allowed of any display of excellence either in design or execution. Their fine works were ornamental letters, flowered vignettes, and tail-pieces for the booksellers; while their staple productions appear to have been blocks for card-makers and paper-stainers, with patterns for embroiderers, lace-workers, and ribbon-manufacturers. In the succeeding century, J. M. Papillon, grandson of the first John Papillon, and Nicholas le Sueur, grandson of the elder Peter Le Sueur, fully supported the character of their respective families as wood engravers. Some account of their works will be given in the proper place.444The tail-piece at the conclusion of this chapter will afford some idea of the primitive style of the wood-cuts previously mentioned as occurring in tracts and pamphlets printed in England during the civil war. It is a fac-simile of a cut which originally appeared on the title-page to the first known edition of Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1670.VI.126The original block is now in the possession of Mr. William Garret of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and was frequently used by the late Mr. George Angus of that town, as it had also been by his predecessors in the same business, to decorate the title-pages of the penny histories and garlands, which they supplied in such abundance for the winter-evenings’ entertainment of the good folks of Northumberland and the “Bishoprick.” Mr. Douce, in the second volume of his Illustrations of Shakspeare, also gives a fac-simile of this cut; and the following is his explanation of the subject.“Mr. Ritson has taken notice of an old wooden cut ‘preserved on the title-page of a penny history (Adam Bell, &c.), printed at Newcastle in 1772,’ and which represents, in his opinion, a morris dance, consisting of the following personages: 1. A bishop. 2. Robin Hood. 3. The potter or beggar. 4. Little John. 5. Friar Tuck. 6. Maid Marian. He remarks that the whole is too rude to merit a copy, a position that is not meant to be controverted; but it is necessary to introduce the cut in this place for the purpose of correcting an error into which the above ingenious writer has fallen. It is proper to mention that it originally appeared on the title-page to the first known edition of Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1670, 18mo. Now, this cut is certainly not the representation of a morris dance, but merely of the principal characters belonging to the Garland. These are Robin Hood, Little John,Queen Catherine, the bishop, thecurtal frier, (not Tuck,) and the beggar. Even though it were admitted that Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were intended to be given, it could not be maintained that either the bishop or the beggar made part of a morris.”To give more specimens of wood engraving when in its lowest state of declension has not been thought necessary; for even at this period it would not be difficult to produce cuts which in point of mere execution are superior to many which appeared when the art was at its height. It is sufficient to have stated that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, wood engraving for the higher purposes of the art had sunk into utter neglect; that the best productions of the445regular wood engravers of the period mostly consist of unmeaning ornaments which neither excite feeling nor suggest a thought; and that the wood-cuts which appear to have been engraved by persons not instructed in the business partake generally of the character of the following tail-piece. Having now brought down the history of the art of wood engraving to the end of the seventeenth century, its revival in the eighteenth, with some account of the works of Thomas Bewick and the principal English wood engravers of his time, will form the subject of the next chapter.see textVI.1Besides those above mentioned, there is said to have been a “Death’s Dance” at the following places: in Hungerford’s Chapel, Salisbury Cathedral; Hexham Church; at Fescamp in Normandy, carved in stone; at Dresden; Leipsic; Annaberg; and Berne in Switzerland. The last, painted on the walls of the cloisters of the Dominican friars, was the work of Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch, previously mentioned at page 314. So early as 1560 this painting was destroyed in consequence of the cloisters being pulled down to widen a street. There are two copies of it in water-colours preserved at Berne. From one of them a series of lithographic engravings has been made. An ample list of old paintings of this subject will be found in Mr. Douce’s Dance of Death, chapters iii. and iv, published by Pickering, 1833, and republished, with additions, by H. G. Bohn, 1858.VI.2Mr. Douce says, “Macaber was not a German or any other poet, but a nonentity.” He supposes that the nameMacaberis only a slight and obvious corruption ofMacarius, a Saint who lived as a hermit in Egypt, and of whom there is a story of his showing to three kings or noblemen an emblem of mortality in the shape of three skeletons. “The wordMacabre,” observes Mr. Douce, “is found only in French authorities; and the Saint’s name, which in the modern orthography isMacaire, would in many ancient manuscripts be writtenMacabreinstead ofMacaure, the letterbbeing substituted for that ofufrom the caprice, ignorance, or carelessness of transcribers.” Mr. Douce’s conjecture would have been more feasible had he produced a single instance from any ancient manuscript of the name having been writtenMacabreinstead ofMacaureorMacarius. By a similar process of reasoning, it would not be difficult to prove a hundred old writers and poets non-entities. In the earliest French editions, the work is intitled “La Danse Macabre;” and in a Parisian edition, “Per Magistrum Guidonem Mercatorem pro Godefrido de Marnef,” folio, 1490, the title is as follows: “Chorea ab eximio Macabro versibus Alemanicis edita, et à Petro Desrey emendata.” This seems to prove that Peter Desrey knew something of a person named Macaber who had written a description of the Dance in German.VI.3Hans Holbein der Jüngere. Von Ulrich Hegner, S. 309. Berlin, 1827.VI.4All the persons introduced were of the size of life. Death, in only one instance, was represented as a perfect skeleton, and that was in the subject of the Doctor, whom he was supposed to address as follows:“Herr Doctor b’schaw die AnatomeyAn mir, ob sie recht g’macht sey.”that is:“Doctor, take of me a sight,Say if the skeleton be right.”It has been said that the Pope, the Emperor, and the King, were intended respectively for portraits of Pope Felix V, the Emperor Sigismund, and Albert II, his successor, as King of the Romans. This, however, is merely a conjecture, and not a very probable one. Sigismund died before the commencement of the plague which is said to have been the occasion of the painting.VI.5Those verses, as they appeared in later times, are as follows:“Heilig war ich auff Erd genanOhn Gott der höchst führt ich mein stand.Der Ablass that mir gar wol lohnenDoch will der tod mein nicht verschonen.”Their meaning may be thus expressed in English:“His Holiness, on earth my name;From God my power never came;Although by pardons wealth I got,Death, alas, will pardon not!”VI.6Several characters are to be found in those Dances of Death which do not occur in the Simulachres et Historiées Faces de la Mort of Lyons, 1538. In the preface to the Emblems of Mortality,—with wood-cuts by John Bewick, 1789,—written by John Sidney Hawkins, Esq., the following list is given of the cuts in an edition of “La grande Danse de Macabre des Hommes et Femmes,” 4to. printed at Troyes for John Garnier, but without a date. “The Pope, Emperor, Cardinal, King, Legate, Duke, Patriarch, Constable, Archbishop, Knight, Bishop, Squire, Abbot, Bailiff, Astrologer, Burgess, Canon, Merchant, Schoolmaster, Man of Arms, Chartreux, Serjeant, Monk, Usurer, Physician, Lover, Advocate, Minstrel, Curate, Labourer, Proctor, Gaoler, Pilgrim, Shepherd, Cordelier, Child, Clerk, Hermit, Adventurer, Fool. The women are the Queen, Duchess, Regent’s Wife, Knight’s Wife, Abbess, Squire’s Wife, Shepherdess, Cripple, Burgess’s Wife, Widow, Merchant’s Wife, Bailiff’s Wife, Young Wife, Dainty Dame, Female Philosopher, New-married Wife, Woman with Child, Old Maid, Female Cordelier, Chambermaid, Intelligence-Woman, Hostess, Nurse, Prioress, Damsel, Country Girl, Old Chambermaid, Huckstress, Strumpet, Nurse for Lying-in-Woman, Young Girl, Religious, Sorceress, Bigot, Fool.” Nearly the same characters occur in borders of the old Dutch Prayer Book mentioned at page 318, though in the latter they are yet more numerous; among the men there is a fowler—vogelaer—and among the women, the beauty—scone—and the old woman—alde vrou—which do not occur in the preceding list.VI.7It has been thought necessary to be thus particular in describing the title-page of this rare edition, as it is incorrectly described by Mr. Douce. In the copy in the British Museum the title-page is wanting.VI.8This “vray Zele” having said in the first page of the preface that the name and surname of the revered abbess had the same sound as his own, with the exception of the letter T, the editor of the Emblems conjectures “that his name wasJean, or, as it was anciently written,Jehan de Ouszell, orOzellas it is now usually spelt.”VI.9In the original, “avancantes autāt les patronées jusques ici.” The wordpatronées, I conceive to refer to cuts printed from wood-blocks. The editor of the Emblems, 1688, who is followed by Mr. Ottley, translated the passage, “exceeding all theexampleshitherto.” Works executed by means of a stencil were in old French said to bepatronées, and the word also appears to have been applied to impressions printed from wood-blocks. The verbpatroneris thus explained in Noel and Chapsal’s Nouveau Dictionnaire de la Langue Française, Paris, 1828: “Terme de cartier: enduire de couleur, au moyen du patron évidé, les endroits où cette couleur doit paraître.”VI.10Mr. Douce supposes that the rainbow here alluded to was that which appears in the cut of the Last Judgment, the last but one in the first edition. The writer evidently means the natural rainbow which is mostly seen imperfect.VI.11Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 168. Papillon in a preceding page had observed: “These cuts must have been engraved about 1530, for we find the four first among the little figures of the Old Testament printed in 1539, from which it is easy to perceive that many thousand impressions had already been taken from the blocks.”—Those four cuts in the first edition of the Dance of Death, have not the slightest appearance of having been from blocks that had already furnished many thousand impressions. In the copy now before me, I cannot perceive a break or an imperfection in the most delicate lines. The first edition of the “Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones,” to which Papillon alludes, first appeared in the same year as the Simulachres, 1538, and from the office of the same publishers, the brothers Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel.VI.12Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. ii. p. 762.VI.13Those cuts, with that of the astrologer and five others, supplied from a later edition, were bought, at the sale of Mr. Ottley’s prints, in 1837, for the British Museum, for £37 10s.In the catalogue, which, I understand, was chiefly drawn up from his own memoranda, they are thus described, under the head “Hans Holbein,” No. 458: “The celebrated Dance of Death, first impressions, printed (probably at Basle, about 1530,) upon one side only, with German titles at the top in type; supposed to beUNIQUE.” That they were printed in 1530 is highlyimprobable, and they certainly areNOTunique.VI.14The French verses were translated into Latin by George Æmylius, “an eminent German divine of Mansfelt,” says Mr. Douce, “and the author of many pious works.”VI.15Some copies have the title “Icones Mortis;” and though they correspond in every other respect with those of the same year, intitled Imagines Mortis, Mr. Douce seems to consider that this trifling variation is a sufficient ground for describing them as different editions.VI.16Dance of Death, p. 107, edit. 1833 (Bohn’s edition, p. 95). It is stated in the Italian piracy that it was printed “Con gratia e privilegio de l’Illustriss. Senato Vinitiano, per anni dieci. Appresso Vincenzo Vaugris, al Segno d’Erasmo.MDXLV.”VI.17Author of the work intitled, “Recherches sur les Danses des Morts.” Dijon et Paris, 1826.VI.18Dance of Death, p. 118. Edit. 1833.VI.19Mr. Douce gives another amusing instance of Papillon’s sagacity in assigning marks and names to their proper owners. “He (Papillon) had seen an edition of the Emblems of Sambucus with cuts, bearing the markSA, in which there is a fine portrait of the author with his favourite dog, and under the latter the wordBombo, which Papillon gravely states to be the name of the engraver; and finding the same word on another of the emblems, which has also the dog, he concludes that all the cuts which have not theSAwere engraved by the sameBombo.”—Dance of Death, p. 114, 1833. Those blunders of Papillon are to be found in his Traité Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 238 et 525.VI.20Mr. Douce himself says, “about 1794.” A copy in the British Museum, formerly belonging to the late Reverend C. M. Cracherode, has, however, that gentleman’s usual mark, and the date 1793.VI.21Mr. Douce, when correcting the mistake of the writer of the address, commits an error himself. He says that “Death is in the act of untwisting thefastening to one of the hoops.” Now, it is very evident that he is undoing the rope or chain that steadies the cask and confines it to the waggon. He has hold of the stake or piece of wood, which serves as atwitchto tighten the rope or chain, in the manner in which large timber is secured to the waggon in the present day.VI.22Dance of Death, p. 88. Edit. 1833 (Bohn’s edit. 1858, p. 77.)VI.23The words “jà par luy trassées” will apply more properly to drawings already made on the block, but unengraved, than to unfinished drawings on paper. It is indeed almost certain that the writer meant the former, for their “audacieux traicts, perspectives, et umbrages” are mentioned; they were moreover “gracieusement deliniées.” These expressions will apply correctly to a finished, though unengraved design on the block, but scarcely to an unfinished drawing on paper.VI.24I am very much inclined to think that Madame Jehanne de Touszele is a fictitious character. I have had no opportunities of learning if such a person were really abbess of the Convent of St. Peter at Lyons in 1538, and must therefore leave this point to be decided by some other enquirer.VI.25Mechel’s work is in folio, with four subjects on each full page, and is entitled “Oeuvre de Jean Holbein, ou Receuil de Gravures d’après ses plus beaux ouvrages, &c. Première Partie. La Triomphe de Mort.” It is dedicated to George III, and the presentation copy is in the King’s Library at the British Museum. The first part contains, besides forty-five subjects of the Dance of Death, the design for the sheath of a dagger from a drawing ascribed to Holbein, which has been re-engraved in the work of Mr. Douce. It is extremely doubtful if the drawings of the Dance, from which Mechel’s engravings are copied, be really by Holbein. They were purchased by M. Fleischmann of Strasburg, at Crozat’s sale at Paris in 1741. It was stated in the catalogue that they had formed part of the Arundelian collection, and that they had afterwards come into the possession of Jan Bockhorst, commonly called Lang Jan, a contemporary of Vandyke. This piece of information, however, can only be received as an auctioneer’s puff. M. Mechel himself, according to Mr. Douce, had not been able to trace those drawings previously to their falling into the hands of Monsieur Crozat. They were purchased of M. Fleischmann by Prince Gallitzin, a Russian nobleman, by whom they were lent to M. Mechel. They are now in the Imperial Library at Petersburg. According to Mr. Coxe, who saw them when in M. Mechel’s possession, they were drawn with a pen, and slightly shaded with Indian ink. Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, speaks slightingly of Mechel’s engravings, which he says were executed by one of his workmen from copies of the pretended original drawings made by an artist named Rudolph Schellenburg of Winterthur. Those copper-plates certainly appear feeble when compared with the wood-cut in the Lyons work, and Hegner’s criticism on the figure of Eve seems just, though Mr. Douce does not approve of it. Hegner says, “Let any one compare the figure of Eve under the tree in Mechel’s second plate with the second wood-cut; in the former she is sitting in as elegant an attitude as if she belonged to a French family by Boucher.”—Boucher, a French painter, who died in 1770, was famous in his time for the pretty women introduced into his landscapes.VI.26Mr. Douce in every instance spells the name thus. In the proofs of the alphabet of the Dance of Death it isLützelburger, and below the cut with the date 1522,Leuczellburger.VI.27There are proofs of this alphabet in the Royal Collection at Dresden, as well as in the Public Library at Basle.VI.28Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 332.VI.29Hans Ladenspelder was a native of Essen, a frontier town in the duchy of Berg. The following mark is to be found on his engravingssymbol, which Bartsch thinks may be intended for the single letters I. L. V. E. S.,—representing the wordsJoannes Ladenspelder Von Essen Sculpsit.VI.30Of this George Reperdius, or his works, nothing, I believe, is known beyond the brief mention of his name in conjunction with that of Holbein in the verses of Bourbon.VI.31Neither these verses, nor those previously cited, occur in the first edition of the Nugæ, Paris, 1533.VI.32At that period a wood-cut, as well as a painting, was termedpictura.—On the title-page of an edition of the New Testament, with wood-cuts, Zurich, 1554, by Froschover, we find the following: “Novi Testamenti Editio postrema per Des. Erasmum Roterodamum. Omniapicturisillustrata.”VI.33Douce’s Dance of Death, pp. 80, 100, and 101.VI.34Mr. Douce here seems to lay some weight on the wordpicta, which, as has been previously observed, was applied equally to wood engravings and paintings.VI.35Douce, Dance of Death, p. 141.VI.36“The identification of William Benting,” says Mr. Douce with exquisite bon-hommie, “must be left to the sagacity of others. Hecould not have beenthe Earl of Portland created in 1689, or he would have been addressed accordingly. He is, moreover, described as a youth born at Whitehall, and then residing there, and whose dwelling consisted of nearly the whole of the palace that remained after the fire.”—Dance of Death, p. 244. It appears that these addresses of Piccard were written in a foreign language, though, whether Dutch, French, German, or Latin, Mr. Douce most unaccountably neglects to say: he merely mentions that his extracts are translated.VI.37Douce’s Dance of Death, pp. 144, 145.VI.38That the reader may judge for himself of the similarity of thought in the passages referred to, they are here given in juxta-position.“Car ses histoires funebres, avec leurs descriptions severement rithmées, aux advisans donnent telle admiration, qu’ilz enjugent les mortz y apparoistre tresvivement, et les vifs tresmortement representer. Qui me faict penser, que la Mort craignant que ce excellent painctre ne la paignist tant vifve qu’elle ne fut plus crainte pour Mort,et que pour cela luy mesme n’en devint immortel, que a ceste cause,” &c.—Epistre des Faces de la Mort.“Dum mortis Hansus pictor imaginem exprimit,Tanta arte mortem retulit, ut mors vivereVideatur ipsa: et ipse se immortalibusParem Diis fecerit, operis hujus gloria.”Borbonius.VI.39Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, speaking of the Nieuhoff discovery, says: “Of this fable no notice would have been taken here had not Mr. Douce ascribed undeserved authority to it, and had not his superficial investigations found undeserved credit with English and other compilers.” Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 338.Mr. Douce, at page 240 of his Dance of Death, complains of Hegner’s want of urbanity and politeness; and in return calls his account of Holbein’s workssuperficial, and moreover says that “his arguments, if worthy of the name, are, generally speaking, of a most weak and flimsy texture.” He also gives him a sharp rebuff by alluding to him as the “abovegentleman,” the last word, to give it point, being printed in Italics. Mr. Douce, when he was thus pelting Hegner, does not seem to have been aware that his own anti-Holbenian superstructure was a house of glass.“Cedimus, inque vicem dedimus crura sagittis.”VI.40Evelyn is only referred to here on account of hissilencewith respect to the pretended painting at Whitehall. What he says of Holbein cannot be relied on, as will be seen from the following passage, which is a fair specimen of his general knowledge and accuracy. “We have seen some few things cut in wood by the incomparable Hans Holbein the Dane, but they are rare and exceedingly difficult to come by; as hisLicentiousness of the Friars and Nuns;Erasmus;The Dance Macchabre; theMortis Imago, which he painted in great in the Church of Basil, and afterwards graved with no less art.”—Evelyn’s Sculpture, p. 69. Edition 1769.VI.41“Imagines Mortis expressæ ab optimo pictore Johanne Holbein cum epigrammatibus Georgii Æmylii, excusæ Francofurti et Lugduni apud Frellonios, quorum editio plures habet picturas. Vidi etiam cum metris Gallicis et Germanicis, si bene memini.” Mr. Douce cites this passage from Gesner’s Pandectæ, “a supplemental volume of great rarity to his well-known Bibliotheca.” The correct title of the volume in which it occurs is “Partitiones Theologicæ, Pandectarum Universalium Conradi Gesneri Liber Ultimus.” Folio, printed by Christopher Froschover, Zurich (Tiguri) 1549. The notice of the Dance of Death is in folio 86,a.VI.42Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 165. Van Mander asserts that Holbein painted with his left hand; but Horace Walpole, however, in opposition to this, refers to a portrait of Holbein, formerly in the Arundelian collection, where he appears holding the pencil in hisrighthand.VI.43A copy of this edition is preserved in the Public Library at Basle, and there is another copy in the Royal Collection at Dresden. Another edition, in every respect similar to the first, was also printed by the brothers Trechsel in 1539. Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, does not seem to have known of this edition; speaking of that of 1538, he says, “It is probably the same as that to which Papillon gives the date 1539.” There is a copy of the edition of 1539 in the British Museum.VI.44“A comparison of the 8th subject of the Simulachres,” says Mr. Douce, “with that of the Bible for EstherI,II, where the canopy ornamented with fleurs-de-lis is the same in both, will contribute to strengthen the above conjecture, as will both the cuts to demonstrate their Gallic origin. It is most certain that the King sitting at table in the Simulachres is intended for Francis I, which if any one should doubt, let him look upon the miniature of that king, copied at p. 214, in Clarke’s ‘Repertorium Bibliographicum.’” The “above conjecture” referred to in this extract is that previously cited at page 367, where Mr. Douce conjectures that Holbeinmight have beenemployed to complete the Bible cuts whichmight have beenleft unfinished in consequence of the death of Mr. Douce’s “great unknown” designer of the Dance of Death.—Dance of Death, p. 96. Mr. Douce, not being able to deny the similarity of many of the cuts, says it is highly probable that Holbein was merely employed to finish the Bible cuts, without ever considering that it isprimâ faciemuch more probable that Holbein was the designer of the cuts in both works.VI.45Dance of Death, p. 82.VI.46“Venit nuper Basileam ex Anglia Ioannes Holbein, adeo felicem ejus regni statum prædicans, qui aliquot septimanis exactis rursum eo migraturus est.” From a letter written by Rudolph Gualter to Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, about the middle of September 1538.—Quoted by Hegner, S. 246.VI.47Dr. Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Tour vol. iii. pp. 80, 81, Edit. 1829, mentions two paintings at Augsburg by the elder Holbein, one dated 1499 and the other 1501. The elder Holbein had a brother named Sigismund, who was also a painter, and who appears to have established himself at Berne. Papillon, in his usual manner, makes Sigismund Holbein a wood engraver. By his will, dated 1540, he appoints his nephew Hans the heir of all his property in Berne.VI.48Patin’s edition of this work was published in octavo, at Basle, in 1676. It contains eighty-three copper-plate engravings, from pen-and-ink sketches, drawn by Holbein, in the margin of a copy of an edition printed by Frobenius, in 1514, and still preserved (1860) in the Public Library at Basle. It is said that Erasmus, when looking over those sketches, exclaimed, when he came to that intended for himself, “Oho, if Erasmus were now as he appears here, he would certainly take a wife.” Above another of the sketches, representing a man with one of his arms about a woman’s neck, and at the same time drinking out of a bottle, Erasmus is said to have written the name “Holbein.” In an edition of the Laus Stultitiæ, edited by G. G. Becker, Basle, 1780, 8vo. those sketches are engraved (very indifferently) on wood.VI.49Hegner, Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 110.VI.50It is conjectured by Walpole that this might be Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel.VI.51It is impossible to exceed the beauty and skill that are manifested in this fine piece of art. The figures are, a king, queen, and a warrior; a young woman, a monk, and an infant; all of whom most unwillingly accompany Death in the Dance. The despair of the king, the dejection of the queen, accompanied by her little dog, the terror of the soldier who hears the drum of Death, the struggling of the female, the reluctance of the monk, and the sorrow of the poor infant, are depicted with equal spirit and veracity. The original drawing is in the public library at Basle, and ascribed to Holbein.VI.52The verses underneath the impressions which are supposed to be the earliest, are as follows:“Corporis effigiem si quis non vidit Erasmi,Hunc scite ad vivum picta tabella dabit.”The others:“Pallas Apellæam nuper mirata tabellam,Hanc, ait, æternum Bibliotheca colat.Dædaleam monstrat musis Holbeinnius artem,Et summi ingenii Magnus Erasmus opes.”VI.53Erasmus, writing to Bilibald Pirkheimer, in 1524, says, “Rursus nuper misi in Angliam Erasmum bis pictum ab artifice satis eleganti.” Hegner thinks that this artist was Holbein. In 1517 a portrait of Erasmus, with that of his friend Petrus Aegidius, was painted at Antwerp by Quintin Matsys. It was intended by Erasmus as a present to Sir Thomas More. This painting came subsequently into the possession of Dr. Mead, at whose sale it was purchased, as the production of Holbein, by Lord Radnor, for £110.VI.54“Pictor tuus, Erasme carissime, mirus est artifex, sed vereor ne non sensurus sit Angliam tam fœcundam ac fertilem quam sperarat. Quanquam ne reperiat omnino sterilem, quoad per me fieri potest, efficiam. Ex aula Grenwici. 18 Dec. 1525.”VI.55“Qui has reddit, est is qui me pinxit. Ejus commendatione te non gravabo, quanquam est insignis artifex. Si cupiet visere Quintinum, nec tibi vacabit hominem adducere, poteris per famulum commonstrare domum. Hic frigent artes: petit Angliam ut corradat aliquot angelatos: per eum poteris quæ voles scribere.”—Erasmi Epist.VI.56Erasmus, in a letter to Sir Thomas More, written from Freyburg in Brisgau, 5th September, 1529, alludes to a picture of More and his family which had been brought over by Holbein; and Margaret Roper, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, writing to Erasmus in the following November, says, that she is pleased to hear of the painter’s arrival with the family picture,—“utriusque mei parentis nostrumque omnium effigiem depictam.” Hegner thinks that those portraits of Sir Thomas More and his family was only a drawing in pen-and-ink, which is now in the Public Library at Basle. The figures in this drawing are: Sir Thomas and his wife, his father, his son, and a young lady, three daughters, a servant, and Sir Thomas’s jester. Over and under the figures are written the name and age of each. The drawing is free and light; and the faces and hands are very distinctly expressed.—Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 202-235-237. The drawing in the Public Library at Basle was probably a sketch of Holbein’s large picture of the family of Sir Thomas More.VI.57Holbein’s wife andchildonly, not children, are mentioned in this licence. It is not known what became of Holbein’s children, as there are no traces of his descendants to be found at Basle. Merian, a clergyman of Basle, in a letter to Mechel on this subject, in 1779, writes to this effect: “According to a pedigree of the Merian family, printed at Regensburg in 1727, Christina Syf, daughter of Rodolph Syf and Judith Weissin, and grand-daughter of Hans Holbein the unequalled painter, (born 1597,) was married on the 17th of November 1616 to Frederick Merian.” Perhaps it is meant that Judith Weissin was Holbein’s grand-daughter: there is evidently an error in the pedigree; and if it be wrong in this respect, it is not entitled to much credit in another.VI.58Hegner, S. 242.VI.59See Dallaway’s edition, revised by R. N. Wornum. London, Bohn, 1849, 3 vols. 8vo. Vol. i. pp. 66 et seq.VI.60Those designs were engraved on sixteen small plates by Hollar, but without his name. The enemies of Christ are represented in the dress of monks and friars, and instead of weapons they bear croziers, large candlesticks, and other church ornaments; Judas appears as a capucin, Annas as a cardinal, and Caiaphas as a bishop. In the subject of Christ’s Descent to Hades, the gates are hung with papal bulls and dispensations; above them are the Pope’s arms, and the devil as keeper of the gate wears a triple crown. Underneath this engraving are the following verses, which are certainly not of the period of Holbein:“Lo! the Pope’s kitchin, where his soles are fried,Called Purgatorie; see his pardons tiedOn strings; his triple crown the Divell weares,And o’er the door the Pope’s own arms he beares.”In the subject of Christ before Caiaphas is the following inscription in German: “Wer wider die Römischen, der soll sterben,”—that is, “He who is against the Romans shall die.”VI.61The following is the title of this scarce little volume. “Catechismus, that is to say, a shorte instruction into Christian religion for the singuler commoditie and profyte of childrē and yong people. Set forth by the mooste reverende father in God, Thomas Archbyshop of Canterbury, primate of all Englande and Metropolitane.—Gualterus Lynne excudebat, 1548.” At the end of the book, under a cut of Christ with a child before him, is the colophon: “Imprynted at London, in S. Jhones Streete, by Nycolas Hyll, for Gwalter Lynne dwellyng on Somers kaye, by Byllynges gate.” Mr. Douce, at page 96, mentions a cut with the nameHans Holbeinat the bottom, as occurring in the title-page of “A lytle treatise after the manner of an Epystle wryten by the famous clerk Doctor Urbanus Regius,” &c. also published by Walter Lynne, 1548.VI.62Mr. Douce, in his observations prefixed to Hollar’s etchings of the Dance of Death, published by Edwards in 1794, says, “Asetof cuts with the latter mark [Hans Holben] occurs in Archbishop Cranmer’s Catechism, printed by Walter Lyne, in 1548;” and in the same page he commits another mistake by describing the mark on the cut of the Duchess in the Lyons Dance of Death asHB, instead ofHL. It has been considered necessary to notice these errors, as it is probable that many persons who possess the work in which they occur, but who never may have seen a copy of the Lyons Dance of Death, nor of Cranmer’s Catechism, may have been misled in those matters by implicitly relying on Mr. Douce’s authority. A certain class of compilers are also extremely liable to transmit such mistakes, and, to borrow an expression of Hegner’s, to give currency to them, as if they stood ready for use “instereotype.”VI.63The title-page of this book—which has previously been referred to at page 357, in illustration of the wordpicta—is as follows: “Novi Testamenti Editio postrema per Des. Erasmum Roterodamum. Omnia picturis illustrata. Accesserunt Capitum argumenta Elegiaco carmine, Rudolpho Gualtero authore, conscripta. Tiguri, in Officina Froschoviana. AnnoM.D.LIIII.” 8vo.VI.64The volume is of octavo size, and the title is as follows: “The Newe Testament. Imprinted at Antwerp by Marten Emperour. AnnoM.D.XXXIIII.” The letters on the wood-cut of the printer’s device, seen in the copies on paper, areM. K.The first edition of Tindale’s Translation was printed in 1526. William Tindale, otherwise Hitchins, was born on the borders of Wales, but was of a Northumberland family, being descended from Adam de Tindale of Langley, near Haydon Bridge, in that county. He was strangled, and his body was afterwards burnt as that of a heretic by the popish party, at Vilvorde, near Brussels, in 1536.VI.65The title of this edition is as follows: “Biblia.The Bible, that is, the holy Scripture of the Olde and Newe Testaments, faithfully translated out of Douche and Latyn in to Englishe.M.D.XXXV.” This title is surrounded with an ornamental wood-cut border of ten compartments: 1. Adam and Eve. 2. The name of Jehovah in Hebrew characters in the centre at the top. 3. Christ with the banner of the cross trampling on the serpent, sin, and death. 4. Moses receiving the tables of the law. 5. Jewish High Priest,—Esdras. 6. Christ sending his disciples to preach the Gospel. 7. Paul preaching. 8. David playing on the harp. 9. In the centre at the bottom, King Henry VIII. on his throne giving a book—probably intended for the Bible—to certain abbots and bishops. 10. St. Paul with a sword. The day of the month mentioned in the colophon was probably the date of the last sheet being sent to press: “Prynted in the yeare of our LordeM.D.XXXV, and fynished the fourth daye of October.” Copies of this edition with the title-page are extremely rare. Some copies have a modern lithographed title prefixed, which is not exactly correct, though professedly a fac-simile: in one of the scrolls it has “telius meus” for “filius meus.” In the corresponding scroll in a copy in the British Museum the words are in English: “This is my deare Son in whom I delyte, heare him,”—above the figure of Christ with the banner of the cross. I have not the least doubt of this title-page having been designed by Holbein.VI.66The following is the title of this curious and scarce work: “Le Sorti di Francesco Marcolini da Forli, intitolate Giardino di Pensieri.” Dedicated, “Allo Illustrissimo Signore Hercole Estense, Duca di Ferrara.” At the conclusion is the colophon: “In Venetia per Francesco Marcolini da Forli, ne gli anni del SignoreMDXXXX.Del mese di Ottobre.” In aproemio, or preface, the author explains the manner of applying his “piacevole inventione,” which is nothing more than a mode of resolving questions by cards, and was probably suggested by Fanti’s Triompho di Fortuna, of which some account is given at page 315.VI.67Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 137.VI.68This catalogue is printed in the second volume of Heineken’s Nachrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-Sachen, 8vo. Leipzig, 1768-1769. This work, which appeared two years before his Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes, contains much information on the early history of art, which is not to be found in the latter. All the fac-similes of old engravings in the Idée Générale originally appeared in the Nachrichten. Heineken, in the first volume of this work, p. 340, mentions Porta’s cut, but says nothing of its being copied from a design by Raffaele.VI.69Heineken, in his Nachrichten, 1er. Theil, S. 340, says that Joseph Porta “was a pupil ofCecchinoSalviati, who is not to be confounded withFrancescoSalviati;” and yet in his Idée Générale, published subsequently, page 134, we find “Francesco del Salviati, autrement Rossi, de Florence, et son disciple Giuseppe Porta, appellé communément Giuseppe Salviati.” Heineken, in his first work, committed the mistake of supposing that Francesco Salviati’s to-name was the Christian name of another person. In Huber’s Notice Générale des Graveurs et Peintres, Francis Salviati appears as “François Cecchini, dit Salviati.”VI.70The first forty-six cuts are the best, generally, both in design and execution. The others, commencing at page 108, are illustrative of the sayings and doctrines of ancient philosophers and moralists, and one or two of the cuts are repeated. In this portion of the work, each page, except what is occupied by the cut, is filled with explanatory or illustrative verses arranged in triplets.VI.71The first hundred and seven pages of the work are chiefly filled with similar figures of cards variously combined, with short references. How Marcolini’s pleasant invention is to be applied to discover the secrets of Fate, I have not been able to comprehend.VI.72The following is a literal copy of the title: “Libro di M. Giovam Battista Palatino, Cittadino Romano, Nelqual s’insegna à Scriver ogni sorte lettera, Antica & Moderna, di qualunque natione, con le sue regole, & misure, & essempi: Et con un breve, et util Discorso de le Cifre: Riveduto novamente, & corretto dal proprio Autore. Con la giunta di quindici tavole bellissime.” At the end of the work is the imprint: “In Roma per Valerio Dorico alla Chiavica de Santa Lucia. Ad Instantia de M. Giovan della Gatta. L’AnnoM.D.LXI.” 4to. Papillon says that the work first appeared in 1540, and was reprinted in 1545, 1547, 1548, 1550, 1553, and 1556. An edition was also published at Venice in 1588.VI.73There is a curious allusion to aRebusin Horace, Satyr. Lib. I. Sat. V., Vers. 88, which has escaped the notice of all his commentators:“Quatuor hinc rapimur viginti et millia rhedis,Mansuri oppidulo, quod versu dicere non est,Signis perfacile est.”The place which he did not think proper to name was undoubtedly Asculum, whose situation exactly corresponds with the distance fromTrivicum, where he rested the preceding night. From the manner in which Horace alludes to thesigna—asandculum—of which the name is composed, it seems likely that a certain vulgar benison was not unknown at Rome in the age of Augustus.VI.74Remaines concerning Britaine, with additions by John Philpot, Somerset Herald, p. 164. Edit. 1636.VI.75Papillon, who speaks highly of the execution of the cuts ascribed to Bernard Solomon, admits that they want effect. “La gravure,” says he, speaking of the cuts contained in ‘Quadrins Historiques de la Bible,’ “est fort belle, excepté qu’elle manque de clair obscur, parce que les tailles sont presque toutes de la même teinte, ce qui fait que les lointains ne fuyent pas assez. C’est le seul defaut des gravures de Bernard Salomon; ce qui lui a été commun avec plus de quarante autres graveurs en bois de son temps.”—Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 209.VI.76Several editions of Alciat’s Emblems and Claude Paradin’s Devises Heroïques were published at Lyons in the sixteenth century. The first edition of the latter work was printed there by Jean de Tournes, in 1557, 8vo.VI.77The following explanatory title occurs on the first cut: “Ces moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz avecq’ les Regions y appartenantes, ont este au vif contrefactez par Pierre Coeck d’Alost, luy estant en Turquie, l’an de Jesu ChristM.D.33. Lequel assy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes à l’impression d’ycelles.” From another of the cuts we thus learn the time of his death: “Marie Verhulst vefue du dict Pierre d’Alost, trespasse en l’anneMDL, a faict imprimer les dicts figures soubz Grace et Privilege de l’Imperialle Maiestie. En l’AnnMCCCCCLIII.”VI.78This interesting specimen of the combined arts of wood engraving and printing formerly belonged to the late Mr. Robert Branston, wood engraver, who executed several of the chiaro-scuros, and imitations of coloured drawings, in Savage’s work on Decorative Printing. It is now in the possession of his son, Mr. Frederick Branston, who is of the same profession as his father.VI.79The title-page of this work is printed in three colours,—black, sepia, and green. The black ornamental outlines are from an etched plate; the sepia and green colours are printed from wood-blocks. An edition of this work, enlarged by Gevartius, with portraits in two colours, and entirely engraved on wood, was printed at Antwerp in 1645.VI.80Tom. i. p. 129. Paris, 1753.VI.81The following is a copy of the title: “Underweisung der Proportzion und Stellung der Possen, liegent und stehent; abgestochen wie man das vor augen sieht, in dem puchlein, durch Erhart Schon von Norrenberg; für die Jungen gesellen und Jungen zu unterrichtung die zu der Kunst lieb tragen. In den druck gepracht, 1538.”VI.82This last letter contains the markSA, which is to be found on some of the cuts in the editions of the Dance of Death printed at Cologne, 1555-1572.VI.83The title is as follows: “Johan. Posthii Germershemii Tetrasticha in Ovidii Metam. Lib. xv. Quibus accesserunt Vergilii Solis figuræ elegantissimæ, primum in lucem editæ.—Schöne Figuren, auss dem fürtrefflichen Poeten Ovidio, allen Malern, Goldtschmiden, und Bildthauern, zu nutz und gutem mit fleiss gerissen durch Vergilium Solis, und mit Teutschen Reimen kürtzlich erkläret, dergleichein vormals im Druck nie aussgangen, Durch Johan. Posthium von Germerssheim.M.D.LXIX.”VI.84Hans Sachs, whose poetical works might vie in quantity with those of Lope Vega, was born at Nuremberg in 1494. Notwithstanding the immense number of verses which he composed, he did not trust to his profession of Meistersänger for the means of living, but continued to carry on his business as a shoemaker till his death, which happened in 1576. His verses were much admired by his contemporaries; and between 1570 and 1579, a collection of his works was published in five volumes folio. Several short pieces by him were originally printed as “broadsides,” with an ornamental or illustrative cut at the top.VI.85Papillon, who appears to have been extremely wishful to swell his catalogue of wood engravers, describes Jost Amman of Zurich and Jost Amman of Nuremberg as two different persons.VI.86Heineken, Idée Générale, p. 244.VI.87The following is the title of the edition of 1568;—that of 1574 is somewhat different. “ΠΑΝΟΠΛΙΑomnium Illiberalium mechanicarum aut sedentariarum artium, continens quotquot unquam vel a veteribus, aut nostri etiam seculi celebritate excogitari potuerunt, breviter et dilucide confecta: carminum liber primus, tum mira varietate rerum vocabulorumque novo more excogitatorum copia perquam utilis, lectuque jucundus. Accesserunt etiam venustissimæ Imagines omnes omnium artificum negociantes ad vivum lectori representantes, antehac nec visæ nec unquam æditæ: per Hartman Schopperum, Novoforens. Noricum.—Frankofurti ad Moenum, cum privelegio Cæsario,M.D.LXVIII.”VI.88TheBriefmalers, though at that time evidently distinct from theFormschneiders, still continued toprintwood-cuts. On several large wood-cuts with the dates 1553 and 1554 we find the words, “Gedrukt zu Nürnberg durch Hanns Glaser,Brieffmaler.”VI.89See the mark C. S. at page 413.VI.90This work is entitled “Kunstbüchlein,” and consists entirely of cuts without any explanatory letter-press. The first cut consists of a group of heads, drawn and engraved with great spirit. On what appears something like a slab of stone or wood—most unmeaningly and awkwardly introduced—are Jost Amman’s initials, I.A., towards the top, and lower down the mark,MFwhich is doubtless that of the engraver. This mark, with a figure of a graver underneath, occurs on several of the other cuts. The three following marks, with a graver underneath each, also occur: L. F. C.S. G. H. These facts are sufficient to prove that Jost Amman was not the engraver of the cuts which he designed. In the edition of 1599 the cuts are said to have beendrawnby “the late most excellent and celebrated artist, Jost Amman of Nuremberg.”VI.91It is uncertain if James I. or James II. be meant. According to Sir Walter Scott, Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II, visited Scotland in 1448, when James II.—if Chalmers be correct, Caledonia, vol. i. p. 831,—was scarcely nineteen, and when his appearance was not likely to correspond with the learned prelate’s description,—“hominem quadratum et multa pinguedine gravem.”VI.92“Avium præcipuarum, quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, brevis et succincta historia. Per Dn. Gulielmum Turnerum, artium et medicinæ doctorem,” 8vo. Coloniæ,M.D.XLIIII, fol. 9b.VI.93In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms this mark is ascribed, though doubtfully, to “Manuel Deutsch.” It is certainly not the mark of Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch of Bern, for he died several years before 1548, the date on several of the cuts with the mark H.R. M.D. in Munster’s Cosmography, and which date evidently relates to the year in which the artist made the drawing. There can be no doubt that those four letters belong to a single name, for some of the cuts in which they occur also contain the mark of an engraver.VI.94A map of Russia, engraved wholly on wood, in a work entitled “Commentari della Moscovia e parimente della Russia,” &c. translated from the Latin of Sigmund, Baron von Herberstein, printed at Venice, 4to. 1550, is much superior in point of appearance to the best in the work of Munster. This map, which is of folio size, appears to have been constructed by “Giacomo Gastaldo, Piamontese, Cosmographo in Venetia.” The work also contains six wood-cuts, which afford some curious specimens of Russian and Tartar arms and costume.VI.95Philologicarum Epistolarum Centuria una, ex Bibliotheca M. H. Goldasti, p. 165. 8vo. Francofurti, 1610.VI.96According to this method, certain words, together with radices and terminations of frequent occurrence, were cast entire, and not in separate letters, and placed in cases in such an order that the compositor could as “readily possess himself of the Type of a word as of the Type of a single letter.” This method, for which a patent was obtained, is explained in a pamphlet entitled “An Introduction to Logography: or the Art of Arranging and Composing for Printing with Words entire, their Radices and Terminations, instead of single Letters. By Henry Johnson: London, printed Logographically, and sold by J. Walter, bookseller, Charing Cross, and J. Sewell, Cornhill,M.DCC.LXXXIII.” Several works were printed in this manner, and among others an edition of Anderson’s History of Commerce, 4 vols. 4to. 1787-1789, by John Walter, at the Logographic Press, Printing-House-Square, Blackfriars. Logography has long been abandoned. The following account of this art is given in H. G. Bohn’s Lecture on Printing, pp. 88, 89. “Something akin to stereotyping is another mode of printing called Logography, invented by the late Mr. Walter, of theTimes, in 1783, and for which he took out a patent. This means a system of printing from type cast in words instead of single letters, which it was thought would save time and corrections when applied to newspapers, but it was not found to answer. A joke of the time was a supposed order to the typefounder for some words of frequent occurrence, which ran thus:—‘Please send me a hundred-weight, sorted, of murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, alarming explosion, melancholy accident; an assortment of honourable member, whig, tory, hot, cold, wet, dry; half-a-hundred weight, made up in pounds, of butter, cheese, beef, mutton, tripe, mustard, soap, rain, &c.; and a few devils, angels, women, groans, hisses, &c.’ This method of printing did not succeed: for if twenty-four letters will give six hundred sextillions of combinations, no printing office could keep a sufficient assortment of even popular words.”VI.97See an edition of Ptolemy, printed at Venice by Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, in 1511, previously noticed at page 203.VI.98Some account of this work is given at page 200.VI.99At page 204 it is stated, on the authority of Breitkopf, that those maps were engraved by Ægidius Diest. Ortelius himself says in the preface that they were engraved by “Francis Hogenberg, Ferdinand and Ambrose Arsens, and others.”VI.100The portrait of Queen Elizabeth appears on the title; the Earl of Leicester’s is prefixed to the Book of Joshua; and Lord Burleigh’s is given, with a large initial B, at the beginning of the first psalm. In the second edition, 1572, the portrait of Lord Burleigh is omitted, and the impressions of the other two are much inferior to those in the first edition in consequence of the plates being worn. Many of the cuts in the second edition are quite different from those in the first, and generally inferior to the cuts for which they are substituted.VI.101“Humphrey Cole, as he says himself, was born in the North of England, andpertayned to the mint in the Tower, 1572. I suppose he was one of the engravers thatpertaynedto Archbishop Parker, for this edition was called Matthew Parker’s Bible. I hope the flattery of the favourites was the incense of the engraver!” Catalogue of Engravers, p. 16. Edit. 1794.—Walpole does not appear to have paid the least attention to the engraver’s merits—supposing, as he does, the portraits to have been executed by him:—he sneers at him because he had engraved certain portraits for aBible, and because he was supposed to have been patronised by abishop. A more liberal writer on art would have praised Parker, although he were anarchbishop, for his patronage of a native engraver.VI.102“Augustinus Ryther,Anglus,” occurs on the maps of Cumberland and Westmorland, Gloucester, and Yorkshire. Ryther afterwards kept a bookseller’s shop in Leadenhall-street. He engraved some maps and charts, which were published about 1588. On the map of the county of Hertford, Reynolds’s name occurs thus: “Nicholas Reynoldus, Londinensis, sculpsit.” Several of those maps were engraved by Remigius Hogenberg, one of the engravers who are said to have been employed by Archbishop Parker in his palace at Lambeth.VI.103This little work, entitled “Commentarioli Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum,” was sent by the author to Ortelius, and the prefatory address is dated Denbigh, in North Wales, 30th August 1568. A translation of it, under the title of a “Breviary of Britain,” was printed at London in 1573.—Lhuyd had only furnished Ortelius with materials for the construction of the map of England.VI.104The name of “Thomas Raynalde, Physition,” is not to be found in the edition of 1540. The title of the work is, “The byrth of Mankynd, newly translated out of Latin into Englysshe. In the which is entreated of all suche thynges the which chaunce to women in theyr labor,” &c. At folio vi. there is an address from Richard Jonas, “Unto the most gracious, and in all goodnesse most excellent vertuous Lady Quene Katheryne, wyfe and most derely belovyd spouse unto the moste myghty sapient Christen prynce, Kynge Henry the VIII.”—This “most excellent vertuous lady” wasCatherine Howard. The imprint at the end of the work is as follows: “Imprynted at London, by T. R, Anno Domini,M.CCCCC.XL.” Raynalde’s name first appears in the second edition, 1545. Between 1540 and 1600 there were at least eight editions of this work printed in London.VI.105At the end of the dedication to Henry VIII. he signs himself “Thomas Geminus, Lysiensis.”VI.106In the edition of 1559 there is a large wood-cut—“Interiorum corporis humani partium viva delineatio”—with the mark R. S. and a graver underneath. In this cut the interior parts of the body are impressed on separate slips, which are pasted, by one edge, at the side of the figure. Those slips on being raised show the different parts as they occur on dissection.VI.107In Herbert’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 1681, both parts of this work are said to have engraved titles, and the arms of Sir C. Hatton are said to occur at the back of the title to the first part. The work contains twenty-two maps and charts, probably copied from the original Dutch edition of Wagenar, who was a native of Enchuysen. There is no printer’s name in the English edition.VI.108Walpole erroneously states that “Broughton’s book was not printed till 1600,” and he says that “thecutswere probably engraved by an English artist named William Rogers.” The markWRis to be found on some of the plates of the edition of 1600, but it is to be observed that they are not the same as those in the edition of 1591. Thefirstedition of the work was printed in 1588.VI.109The following is the title of this work: “The Cosmographical Glasse, conteinyng the pleasant Principles of Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie or Navigation. Compiled by William Cuningham, Doctor in Physicke. Excussum Londini in officina Joan. Daii, Anno 1559.In this Glasse, if you will beholdeThe starry skie and yearth so wide,The seas also, with the windes so colde,Yea, and thy selfe all these to guide:What this Type mean first learne a right,So shall the gayne thy travaill quight.”The “Type” mentioned in these verses relates to the various allegorical and other figures in the engraved title-page.VI.110This mark, which occurs in two other cuts of large letters in the Cosmographical Glasse, is also to be found on a large ornamented letter in Robert Record’s Castle of Knowledge, folio, printed at London, by Reginald Wolfe, 1556. This work, like that of Cuningham, is a treatise on Geography. A mark, I. C., with a graver between the letters, occurs frequently in cuts which ornament the margins of a work entitled “A Book of Christian Prayers,” &c. 4to. first printed by John Day in 1569. It is usually called “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book.” In Herbert’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities it is erroneously stated that such of the cuts as relate to the History of Christ are “after Albert Durer and his wife,Agnes Frey.” They arenotcopied from any cuts designed by Albert Durer, and his wife most certainly neither drew nor engraved on wood. It is also incorrectly stated “that a Dance of Death, in the same work, is after Hans Holbein.”—The cuts in this work are very unequal in point of execution. The best are those of the Senses—without any mark—Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smelling, and Touch. A mark not unlike that in the letter A, from Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glass, occurs on several of the smaller cuts.VI.111This work contains a considerable number of wood-cuts, all undoubtedly designed and engraved in England. Two of the best are Henry VIII, attended by his council, giving his sanction to the publication of the Bible in English, with the mark I. F.; and a view of Windsor Castle, with the mark M. D. Both these cuts are in the second volume of the edition of 1576.VI.112Dr. Dibdin, in his Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, in his edition of Ames and Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities, has given several curious specimens of large ornamented capitals.VI.113Bibliographical Decameron, vol. i. p. 289.VI.114“The pavement of this cathedral is the work of a succession of artists from Duccio down to Meccarino, who have produced the effect of the richest mosaic, merely by inserting grey marble into white, and hatching both with black mastic. The grandest composition is the History of Abraham, a figure which is unfortunately multiplied in the same compartments; but, when grasping the knife, the patriarch is truly sublime. These works lay exposed at least for a hundred years to the general tread, and have been rather improved than defaced by the attrition; for one female figure which had never been trodden looks harsher than the rest. Those of the choir were opportunely covered two centuries ago.”—Forsyth’s Italy, p. 102, 2nd Edit.VI.115The following is the title of this work, which is a large octavo: “De gli Habiti Antichi et Moderni di diverse Parti del Mondo Libri due, fatti da Caesare Vecellio, & con Discorsi da lui dichiriati. In Venetia,MD.XC.” This work is thus mentioned in the notes to Rogers’s Italy: “Among the Habiti Antichi, in that admirable book of wood-cuts ascribed to Titian, (A. D. 1590,) there is one entitled Sposa Venetiana à Castello. It was taken from an old painting in the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, and by the writer is believed to represent one of the brides here described.”—Italy, p. 257, note. Edit. 1830.VI.116A dog performing the same act occurs as a tail-piece in the first edition of Bewick’s Quadrupeds, 1790, page 310.VI.117I have seen a large head, which at first sight might be mistaken for an impression from a wood-block, executed by means of a stencil after a design of Correggio. It was unquestionably old, and was about three feet high by two and a half wide.VI.118The following is Papillon’s description of this cut: “Une Estampe que je possede, et que l’on regarde assez indifférement, est le Laocoon gravé en bois par le Titien, représenté sous la figure d’un singe et ses deux petits entourés de serpens. Il fit ce morceau pour railler les Peintres de son temps qui étudoient cette figure et les Statues antiques; et il prétendit démontrer par cette Estampe qu’ils ressembloient aux singes, lesquels ne font qu’imiter ce qu’ils voyent, sans rien inventer d’eux mêmes.”—Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 160.VI.119There is also in the Print Room of the British Museum a curious wood-cut, of large size, engraved on several blocks, apparently of the time of James I. The title at the top, in Latin and English, is as follows: “Humanæ vitæ imago olim ab Apelle in tabula quadam depicta. The image of the lyfe of man that was painted in a table by Apelles.” The subject, however, is not so much a general representation of the life of man in its several stages, as an allegorical representation of the evils attendant on sensual indulgence. Several of the figures are designed with great spirit, and the explanations underneath the principal are engraved on the same block, in Latin and English. It seems likely that this cut was engraved for the purpose of being pasted or hung against a wall. It is about five feet four inches wide by about three feet high. Some of the figures are engraved with considerable spirit, but the groups want that well-contrasted light and shade which give such effect to the large cuts of Durer and Burgmair. It is likely that large cuts of this kind were intended to be pasted on the walls of rooms, to serve at once for instruction and ornament, like “King Charles’s Golden Rules and the Royal Game of Goose” in later times.—To this note Mr. Jackson adds in his annotated copy: “The drawing appears to have been executed by an artist who was rather partial to cross-hatching, and the engraving by one who knew how to render every line before him with a degree of sharpness and delicacy by no means common at that period.”VI.120The original cut is twenty-three inches and a half wide by eighteen inches high.VI.121The original is eighteen inches wide by thirteen inches and a half high, including the margin with the inscription “Cum privilegiis,” which is engraved on the same block.VI.122Papillon, tom. i. p. 274-276, calls this engraverC. S. Vichem; and charges Professor Christ with confounding threeSichemswith threeVichems. The name at the bottom of the cut, in the following page, is most certainly intended forC. V. Sichem.VI.123The twelfth volume of Bartsch’s Peintre-Graveur contains an ample list of Italian chiaro-scuros, together with the names of the painters and engravers.VI.124The only perfect copy which I have seen of this little work is in Spanish. The title is as follows: “La Perpetua Cruz, o Passion de Jesu Christo Nuestro Señor, desde el principio de su encarnacion hasta su muerte. Representada en quarenta estampas que se reparten de balde, y explicada con differentes razones y oraciones de devocion. En Amberes, en la emprenta de Cornelio Woons, 1650.” The cuts were engraved at the instance of the Archbishop of Malines. Before the Spanish edition appeared, thirty thousand copies of the work in Flemish and Latin had already been circulated.VI.125In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers there is the following notice of the elder Switzer: “In the Harleian Library was a set of wooden cuts, representing the broad seals of England from the conquest to James I. inclusive, neatly executed. Vertue says this was the sole impression he had seen, and believed that they were cut by Chr. Switzer, and that these plates were copied by Hollar for Sandford. Switzer also cut the coins and seals in Speed’s History of Britain, 1614 [1611], from the originals in the Cottonian Collection. Speed calls himthe most exquisite and curious hand of that age. He probably engraved the botanic figures for Lobel’s Observations, and the plates [cuts] for Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, 1629. Chr. Switzer’s works have sometimes been confounded with his son’s, who was of both his names.”—Catalogue of Engravers, p. 18 note, Edit. 1794. It is doubtful if the elder Switzer’s Christian name were Christopher. The initial in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris is an A. It is, however, possible that this letter may be intended for a Latin preposition, and not for the first letter of the engraver’s Christian name.VI.126The cuts in an edition of “The most Delightful History of Reynard the Fox,” 4to. London, printed for Thomas Passinger, 1681, are scarcely superior to this cut in point of execution, though it must be confessed that the figures are generally in better “keeping.”

And (thus) to these to stand still open wide,He neither wrings with Wrongs nor racks his Rents;But saves the charge of wanton Waste & Pride:For, Thrift’s right Fuel of Magnificence:As Protean Fashions of new ProdigalitieHave quight worn out all ancient Hospitalitie.

And (thus) to these to stand still open wide,

He neither wrings with Wrongs nor racks his Rents;

But saves the charge of wanton Waste & Pride:

For, Thrift’s right Fuel of Magnificence:

As Protean Fashions of new Prodigalitie

Have quight worn out all ancient Hospitalitie.

The flowers at each side of the verses are, in the original, very coarsely executed. They are merely printers’ ornaments, engraved437on separate pieces of wood, and not on the same block as the cut above them.

From one or two worm-holes, which have been in the block when it was printed in 1607, and which are apparent in the impression, it seems probable that this cut had been engraved some time previous to the date which appears at the bottom. As it is, however, very likely that the block was of pear-tree, which is extremely liable to the attacks of the worm, it is possible that it might have been injured in this manner within a year or two of its being finished. The bold,cleanly cutlines of the original are very much like the work of Christopher Jegher, one of the best wood engravers of that period. He resided at Antwerp, but he is said to have been born in Germany in 1578. His best works are several large cuts which he engraved for Rubens from drawings made on the block by Rubens himself, who appears to have originally438published them on his own account. From the manner in which the great painter’s name is introduced at the bottom of each—“P. P. Rub. delin. & excud.”—it would appear that they were both designed and printed by him. Impressions of those cuts sometimes occur with a tint printed over them, in sepia, from a second block, in the manner of chiaro-scuros. We here give a reduced copy of one of the largest.VI.120

see text

As profit could not have been Rubens’s motive for having these cuts engraved, it is not unlikely that his object was to compare his designs when executed in this manner with those of the older German masters—Durer, Burgmair, and Cranach. The best, however, differ considerably in the manner of their execution from the best old German wood-cuts, for the lines are too uniform and display too much of art; in looking at those which consist chiefly of figures, attention is first called to themeansby which an effect is produced, rather than to the effect itself in connexion with the entire subject. This objection applies most forcibly to the cut which represents the Virgin crowned by the Almighty and Jesus Christ. The design displays much of Rubens’s grandeur, with not less of his extravagance in the attitude of the figures; but he seems to have studied less the effect of the whole, than to have endeavoured to express certain parts by a peculiar arrangement of lines und hatchings. The subject does not produce that feeling, which it is the great object of art to excite, in consequence of the attention being diverted from the contemplation of the whole to the means by which it is executed. In such impressions, however, as have439a tint of sepia printed over them from a second block, the hardness of the lines and heaviness in the hatchings are less apparent. The following is a reduced copy of another of those cuts, which, for the beautiful simplicity of the design, is perhaps the most pleasing of the whole. The execution of the original is, however, coarse, a defect which is not so apparent in the copy in consequence of the small scale on which it is engraved.VI.121

see text

Cornelius van Sichem,VI.122a contemporary of Christopher Jegher, appears to have been one of the most industrious wood engravers of his time. He was a native of Holland, and is supposed to have resided at Amsterdam. One of his best cuts is a large head, engraved from a drawing by Henry Goltzius, with the date 1607. This and several other large cuts, which he probably engraved about the same time, are so much superior to the smaller cuts, with his mark, which appear in books, that I am inclined to think that most of the latter must have been engraved by his pupils; they are indeed so numerous that it seems almost impossible that he should have engraved them all himself. He seems at first to have worked for fame, and afterwards to have turned a manufacturer of wood-cuts for money. The cuts with his mark contained in a quarto book entitled “Bibels Tresoor,” printed at Amsterdam440in 1646, by no means afford an idea of his ability as a wood-engraver; many of them are wretched copies of old wood-cuts designed by Albert Durer and other old masters, discreditable alike to the engraver and to the originals. The following is a slightly reduced copy of a cut, engraved by Van Sichem, from a design by Henry Goltzius. The original, which was probably engraved about 1607, may be considered as an average specimen of the engraver’s talents; it is not so well executed as some of his best large cuts, while it is much superior to the greater number of the small cuts which contain his mark. The subject is Judith with the head of Holofernes.

see text

About 1625 a French wood engraver of the name of Businck executed several chiaro-scuros chiefly from designs by Lalleman and Bloemart; and between 1630 and 1647, Bartolomeo Coriolano, who sometimes styles himself “Romanus Eques,” practised the same art441at Bologna with great reputation.VI.123In an edition of Hubert Goltzius’s Lives of the Roman Emperors, enlarged by Casper Gevartius, folio, printed at Antwerp in 1645, the portraits, in the manner of chiaro-scuros, from two blocks, are executed with great spirit. The name of the engraver is not mentioned, but from the mark I. C. I. on a tail-piece at the end of the work, I am inclined to think that he was the same person who engraved the cuts in a little book of devotion, first printed in Latin, French, Spanish, and Flemish, at Antwerp, about 1646.VI.124The number of cuts in this little work is forty, and most of them contain the mark of the designer,AS, as well as that of the engraver. From the drawing of these cuts it would seem that the designer was either a pupil of Rubens, or had closely copied his manner. In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms the markASis ascribed to Andrea Salmincio, “an engraver and pupil of Valesius.” Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 274, adopting Professor Christ’s explanation of the mark, mentions “Andrea Salmincio” as the designer of those cuts; but in page 461 of the same volume, he says, referring to his former statement, that he had since been informed by M. Eisen, a painter, and a native of Valenciennes, that they were designed by “a famous Flemish painter and engraver on wood, named Sallarte, a contemporary of Rubens, and who is supposed to have assisted the latter in some of his great works.” Those cuts may perhaps be considered as the last series that were expressly designed by an artist of talent in the seventeenth century, for the purpose of being engraved on wood. The style in which they are executed is not worthy of the designs, though, considering the period, they are not without merit. The engraver appears to have been extremely partial to a kind of cross-hatching, in which the interstices are more like squares than acute-angled lozenges, thus giving to the figures and draperies a hard and unpliable appearance.

Though several English wood engravings of the reigns of James I. and Charles I. have evidently been executed by professed wood engravers, yet a great proportion of those contained in English books and pamphlets printed in this country during the seventeenth century appear to have been the work of persons who had not learnt and did not regularly practise the art. The cuts of those occasional wood engravers, who were442most likely printers, are as rude in design as they are coarse in execution, frequently displaying something like the fac-simile of a boy’s drawing in his first attempts to sketch “the humanformdivine.” Such cuts, evidently executed on the spur of the moment, are of frequent occurrence in tracts and pamphlets published during the time of the war between Charles I. and the Parliament. Evelyn, in the first edition of his Sculptura, published in 1662, thus mentions Switzer as a wood engraver of that period: “We have likewise Switzer for cutting in wood, the son of a fatherVI.125who sufficiently discovered his dexterity in theHerbalsset forth by Mr. Parkinson, Lobel, and divers other works.” The cuts of plants in the work, usually called Lobel’s Botany, were most certainly not engraved by the elder Switzer; they are much superior to the cuts of the same kind which are undoubtedly of his engraving, and the work in which they first appeared was printed in London in 1571. He engraved the cuts in Speed’s History of Britain, folio, 1611; and, though the author calls him “the most exquisite and curious hand of that age,” they abundantly testify that he was a very ordinary workman. They are executed in a meagre, spiritless manner; the best are those which represent the portraitures of the ancient Britons. The cuts in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, folio, 1629, were also undoubtedly engraved by him; his name, “A. Switzer,” with a graver underneath, occurs at the bottom of the very indifferent cut which forms the title-page. The portrait of the author is scarcely superior to the title-page; and the cuts of plants are the most worthless that are to be found in any work of the kind. It is not unlikely that the cuts in Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts, 1607, and in Moffet’s Theatre of Insects, 1634, were also engraved by the elder Switzer. The taste for wood-cuts must have been low indeed when such an engraver was considered one of the best of his age. Of the younger Switzer’s abilities I have had no means of judging, never having seen a single cut which was known to be of his engraving.

Between 1650 and 1700 wood engraving, as a means of multiplying443the designs of eminent artists, either as illustrations of books or as separate cuts, may be considered as having reached its lowest ebb. A few tolerably well executed cuts of ornaments are occasionally to be found in Italian, French, and Dutch books of this period; but though they sufficiently attest that the raceof workmenwas not wholly extinct, they also afford ample proof thatartistslike those of former times had ceased to furnish designs for the wood engraver. The art of design was then, however, in a languishing condition throughout Europe; and even supposing that wood engraving had been as much in fashion as copper-plate printing then was for the purpose of illustrating books, it would be vain to expect in wood-cuts that excellence of composition and drawing which is not to be found in the works of the best painters of the time. Wood engravings to please must possesssomemerit in the design—must show some trait of feeling for his subject on the part of the designer. Deficiency in this respect can never be compensated by dexterity of execution: in anything that approaches to fine art, mere workmanship, the result of laborious application, can never atone for want of mind. The man who drew a portrait of Queen Anne with a pen, and wrote the Psalms in the lines of the face, and in the curls of the hair, in characters so small that it required a glass to read them, does not rank with a Vandyke or a Reynolds, nor even with a Lely or a Kneller. At the period of the greatest decline of wood engraving, the want that was felt was not of working engravers to execute cuts, but of talented artists to design them.

The principal French wood engravers about the end of the seventeenth century were: Peter Le Sueur,—born in 1636, died 1716; his two sons, Peter and Vincent; John Papillon the elder—who died in 1710; and his son, of the same name, who was born in 1661, and died in 1723. Though John Michael Papillon, son of John Papillon the younger, and author of the Traité de la Gravure en Bois, speaks highly of the talents of the aforesaid members of the families of Le Sueur and Papillon as wood engravers, yet, from his account of their productions, it would seem that they were chiefly employed in engraving subjects which scarcely allowed of any display of excellence either in design or execution. Their fine works were ornamental letters, flowered vignettes, and tail-pieces for the booksellers; while their staple productions appear to have been blocks for card-makers and paper-stainers, with patterns for embroiderers, lace-workers, and ribbon-manufacturers. In the succeeding century, J. M. Papillon, grandson of the first John Papillon, and Nicholas le Sueur, grandson of the elder Peter Le Sueur, fully supported the character of their respective families as wood engravers. Some account of their works will be given in the proper place.

The tail-piece at the conclusion of this chapter will afford some idea of the primitive style of the wood-cuts previously mentioned as occurring in tracts and pamphlets printed in England during the civil war. It is a fac-simile of a cut which originally appeared on the title-page to the first known edition of Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1670.VI.126The original block is now in the possession of Mr. William Garret of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and was frequently used by the late Mr. George Angus of that town, as it had also been by his predecessors in the same business, to decorate the title-pages of the penny histories and garlands, which they supplied in such abundance for the winter-evenings’ entertainment of the good folks of Northumberland and the “Bishoprick.” Mr. Douce, in the second volume of his Illustrations of Shakspeare, also gives a fac-simile of this cut; and the following is his explanation of the subject.

“Mr. Ritson has taken notice of an old wooden cut ‘preserved on the title-page of a penny history (Adam Bell, &c.), printed at Newcastle in 1772,’ and which represents, in his opinion, a morris dance, consisting of the following personages: 1. A bishop. 2. Robin Hood. 3. The potter or beggar. 4. Little John. 5. Friar Tuck. 6. Maid Marian. He remarks that the whole is too rude to merit a copy, a position that is not meant to be controverted; but it is necessary to introduce the cut in this place for the purpose of correcting an error into which the above ingenious writer has fallen. It is proper to mention that it originally appeared on the title-page to the first known edition of Robin Hood’s Garland, printed in 1670, 18mo. Now, this cut is certainly not the representation of a morris dance, but merely of the principal characters belonging to the Garland. These are Robin Hood, Little John,Queen Catherine, the bishop, thecurtal frier, (not Tuck,) and the beggar. Even though it were admitted that Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were intended to be given, it could not be maintained that either the bishop or the beggar made part of a morris.”

To give more specimens of wood engraving when in its lowest state of declension has not been thought necessary; for even at this period it would not be difficult to produce cuts which in point of mere execution are superior to many which appeared when the art was at its height. It is sufficient to have stated that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, wood engraving for the higher purposes of the art had sunk into utter neglect; that the best productions of the445regular wood engravers of the period mostly consist of unmeaning ornaments which neither excite feeling nor suggest a thought; and that the wood-cuts which appear to have been engraved by persons not instructed in the business partake generally of the character of the following tail-piece. Having now brought down the history of the art of wood engraving to the end of the seventeenth century, its revival in the eighteenth, with some account of the works of Thomas Bewick and the principal English wood engravers of his time, will form the subject of the next chapter.

see text

VI.1Besides those above mentioned, there is said to have been a “Death’s Dance” at the following places: in Hungerford’s Chapel, Salisbury Cathedral; Hexham Church; at Fescamp in Normandy, carved in stone; at Dresden; Leipsic; Annaberg; and Berne in Switzerland. The last, painted on the walls of the cloisters of the Dominican friars, was the work of Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch, previously mentioned at page 314. So early as 1560 this painting was destroyed in consequence of the cloisters being pulled down to widen a street. There are two copies of it in water-colours preserved at Berne. From one of them a series of lithographic engravings has been made. An ample list of old paintings of this subject will be found in Mr. Douce’s Dance of Death, chapters iii. and iv, published by Pickering, 1833, and republished, with additions, by H. G. Bohn, 1858.VI.2Mr. Douce says, “Macaber was not a German or any other poet, but a nonentity.” He supposes that the nameMacaberis only a slight and obvious corruption ofMacarius, a Saint who lived as a hermit in Egypt, and of whom there is a story of his showing to three kings or noblemen an emblem of mortality in the shape of three skeletons. “The wordMacabre,” observes Mr. Douce, “is found only in French authorities; and the Saint’s name, which in the modern orthography isMacaire, would in many ancient manuscripts be writtenMacabreinstead ofMacaure, the letterbbeing substituted for that ofufrom the caprice, ignorance, or carelessness of transcribers.” Mr. Douce’s conjecture would have been more feasible had he produced a single instance from any ancient manuscript of the name having been writtenMacabreinstead ofMacaureorMacarius. By a similar process of reasoning, it would not be difficult to prove a hundred old writers and poets non-entities. In the earliest French editions, the work is intitled “La Danse Macabre;” and in a Parisian edition, “Per Magistrum Guidonem Mercatorem pro Godefrido de Marnef,” folio, 1490, the title is as follows: “Chorea ab eximio Macabro versibus Alemanicis edita, et à Petro Desrey emendata.” This seems to prove that Peter Desrey knew something of a person named Macaber who had written a description of the Dance in German.VI.3Hans Holbein der Jüngere. Von Ulrich Hegner, S. 309. Berlin, 1827.VI.4All the persons introduced were of the size of life. Death, in only one instance, was represented as a perfect skeleton, and that was in the subject of the Doctor, whom he was supposed to address as follows:“Herr Doctor b’schaw die AnatomeyAn mir, ob sie recht g’macht sey.”that is:“Doctor, take of me a sight,Say if the skeleton be right.”It has been said that the Pope, the Emperor, and the King, were intended respectively for portraits of Pope Felix V, the Emperor Sigismund, and Albert II, his successor, as King of the Romans. This, however, is merely a conjecture, and not a very probable one. Sigismund died before the commencement of the plague which is said to have been the occasion of the painting.VI.5Those verses, as they appeared in later times, are as follows:“Heilig war ich auff Erd genanOhn Gott der höchst führt ich mein stand.Der Ablass that mir gar wol lohnenDoch will der tod mein nicht verschonen.”Their meaning may be thus expressed in English:“His Holiness, on earth my name;From God my power never came;Although by pardons wealth I got,Death, alas, will pardon not!”VI.6Several characters are to be found in those Dances of Death which do not occur in the Simulachres et Historiées Faces de la Mort of Lyons, 1538. In the preface to the Emblems of Mortality,—with wood-cuts by John Bewick, 1789,—written by John Sidney Hawkins, Esq., the following list is given of the cuts in an edition of “La grande Danse de Macabre des Hommes et Femmes,” 4to. printed at Troyes for John Garnier, but without a date. “The Pope, Emperor, Cardinal, King, Legate, Duke, Patriarch, Constable, Archbishop, Knight, Bishop, Squire, Abbot, Bailiff, Astrologer, Burgess, Canon, Merchant, Schoolmaster, Man of Arms, Chartreux, Serjeant, Monk, Usurer, Physician, Lover, Advocate, Minstrel, Curate, Labourer, Proctor, Gaoler, Pilgrim, Shepherd, Cordelier, Child, Clerk, Hermit, Adventurer, Fool. The women are the Queen, Duchess, Regent’s Wife, Knight’s Wife, Abbess, Squire’s Wife, Shepherdess, Cripple, Burgess’s Wife, Widow, Merchant’s Wife, Bailiff’s Wife, Young Wife, Dainty Dame, Female Philosopher, New-married Wife, Woman with Child, Old Maid, Female Cordelier, Chambermaid, Intelligence-Woman, Hostess, Nurse, Prioress, Damsel, Country Girl, Old Chambermaid, Huckstress, Strumpet, Nurse for Lying-in-Woman, Young Girl, Religious, Sorceress, Bigot, Fool.” Nearly the same characters occur in borders of the old Dutch Prayer Book mentioned at page 318, though in the latter they are yet more numerous; among the men there is a fowler—vogelaer—and among the women, the beauty—scone—and the old woman—alde vrou—which do not occur in the preceding list.VI.7It has been thought necessary to be thus particular in describing the title-page of this rare edition, as it is incorrectly described by Mr. Douce. In the copy in the British Museum the title-page is wanting.VI.8This “vray Zele” having said in the first page of the preface that the name and surname of the revered abbess had the same sound as his own, with the exception of the letter T, the editor of the Emblems conjectures “that his name wasJean, or, as it was anciently written,Jehan de Ouszell, orOzellas it is now usually spelt.”VI.9In the original, “avancantes autāt les patronées jusques ici.” The wordpatronées, I conceive to refer to cuts printed from wood-blocks. The editor of the Emblems, 1688, who is followed by Mr. Ottley, translated the passage, “exceeding all theexampleshitherto.” Works executed by means of a stencil were in old French said to bepatronées, and the word also appears to have been applied to impressions printed from wood-blocks. The verbpatroneris thus explained in Noel and Chapsal’s Nouveau Dictionnaire de la Langue Française, Paris, 1828: “Terme de cartier: enduire de couleur, au moyen du patron évidé, les endroits où cette couleur doit paraître.”VI.10Mr. Douce supposes that the rainbow here alluded to was that which appears in the cut of the Last Judgment, the last but one in the first edition. The writer evidently means the natural rainbow which is mostly seen imperfect.VI.11Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 168. Papillon in a preceding page had observed: “These cuts must have been engraved about 1530, for we find the four first among the little figures of the Old Testament printed in 1539, from which it is easy to perceive that many thousand impressions had already been taken from the blocks.”—Those four cuts in the first edition of the Dance of Death, have not the slightest appearance of having been from blocks that had already furnished many thousand impressions. In the copy now before me, I cannot perceive a break or an imperfection in the most delicate lines. The first edition of the “Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones,” to which Papillon alludes, first appeared in the same year as the Simulachres, 1538, and from the office of the same publishers, the brothers Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel.VI.12Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. ii. p. 762.VI.13Those cuts, with that of the astrologer and five others, supplied from a later edition, were bought, at the sale of Mr. Ottley’s prints, in 1837, for the British Museum, for £37 10s.In the catalogue, which, I understand, was chiefly drawn up from his own memoranda, they are thus described, under the head “Hans Holbein,” No. 458: “The celebrated Dance of Death, first impressions, printed (probably at Basle, about 1530,) upon one side only, with German titles at the top in type; supposed to beUNIQUE.” That they were printed in 1530 is highlyimprobable, and they certainly areNOTunique.VI.14The French verses were translated into Latin by George Æmylius, “an eminent German divine of Mansfelt,” says Mr. Douce, “and the author of many pious works.”VI.15Some copies have the title “Icones Mortis;” and though they correspond in every other respect with those of the same year, intitled Imagines Mortis, Mr. Douce seems to consider that this trifling variation is a sufficient ground for describing them as different editions.VI.16Dance of Death, p. 107, edit. 1833 (Bohn’s edition, p. 95). It is stated in the Italian piracy that it was printed “Con gratia e privilegio de l’Illustriss. Senato Vinitiano, per anni dieci. Appresso Vincenzo Vaugris, al Segno d’Erasmo.MDXLV.”VI.17Author of the work intitled, “Recherches sur les Danses des Morts.” Dijon et Paris, 1826.VI.18Dance of Death, p. 118. Edit. 1833.VI.19Mr. Douce gives another amusing instance of Papillon’s sagacity in assigning marks and names to their proper owners. “He (Papillon) had seen an edition of the Emblems of Sambucus with cuts, bearing the markSA, in which there is a fine portrait of the author with his favourite dog, and under the latter the wordBombo, which Papillon gravely states to be the name of the engraver; and finding the same word on another of the emblems, which has also the dog, he concludes that all the cuts which have not theSAwere engraved by the sameBombo.”—Dance of Death, p. 114, 1833. Those blunders of Papillon are to be found in his Traité Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 238 et 525.VI.20Mr. Douce himself says, “about 1794.” A copy in the British Museum, formerly belonging to the late Reverend C. M. Cracherode, has, however, that gentleman’s usual mark, and the date 1793.VI.21Mr. Douce, when correcting the mistake of the writer of the address, commits an error himself. He says that “Death is in the act of untwisting thefastening to one of the hoops.” Now, it is very evident that he is undoing the rope or chain that steadies the cask and confines it to the waggon. He has hold of the stake or piece of wood, which serves as atwitchto tighten the rope or chain, in the manner in which large timber is secured to the waggon in the present day.VI.22Dance of Death, p. 88. Edit. 1833 (Bohn’s edit. 1858, p. 77.)VI.23The words “jà par luy trassées” will apply more properly to drawings already made on the block, but unengraved, than to unfinished drawings on paper. It is indeed almost certain that the writer meant the former, for their “audacieux traicts, perspectives, et umbrages” are mentioned; they were moreover “gracieusement deliniées.” These expressions will apply correctly to a finished, though unengraved design on the block, but scarcely to an unfinished drawing on paper.VI.24I am very much inclined to think that Madame Jehanne de Touszele is a fictitious character. I have had no opportunities of learning if such a person were really abbess of the Convent of St. Peter at Lyons in 1538, and must therefore leave this point to be decided by some other enquirer.VI.25Mechel’s work is in folio, with four subjects on each full page, and is entitled “Oeuvre de Jean Holbein, ou Receuil de Gravures d’après ses plus beaux ouvrages, &c. Première Partie. La Triomphe de Mort.” It is dedicated to George III, and the presentation copy is in the King’s Library at the British Museum. The first part contains, besides forty-five subjects of the Dance of Death, the design for the sheath of a dagger from a drawing ascribed to Holbein, which has been re-engraved in the work of Mr. Douce. It is extremely doubtful if the drawings of the Dance, from which Mechel’s engravings are copied, be really by Holbein. They were purchased by M. Fleischmann of Strasburg, at Crozat’s sale at Paris in 1741. It was stated in the catalogue that they had formed part of the Arundelian collection, and that they had afterwards come into the possession of Jan Bockhorst, commonly called Lang Jan, a contemporary of Vandyke. This piece of information, however, can only be received as an auctioneer’s puff. M. Mechel himself, according to Mr. Douce, had not been able to trace those drawings previously to their falling into the hands of Monsieur Crozat. They were purchased of M. Fleischmann by Prince Gallitzin, a Russian nobleman, by whom they were lent to M. Mechel. They are now in the Imperial Library at Petersburg. According to Mr. Coxe, who saw them when in M. Mechel’s possession, they were drawn with a pen, and slightly shaded with Indian ink. Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, speaks slightingly of Mechel’s engravings, which he says were executed by one of his workmen from copies of the pretended original drawings made by an artist named Rudolph Schellenburg of Winterthur. Those copper-plates certainly appear feeble when compared with the wood-cut in the Lyons work, and Hegner’s criticism on the figure of Eve seems just, though Mr. Douce does not approve of it. Hegner says, “Let any one compare the figure of Eve under the tree in Mechel’s second plate with the second wood-cut; in the former she is sitting in as elegant an attitude as if she belonged to a French family by Boucher.”—Boucher, a French painter, who died in 1770, was famous in his time for the pretty women introduced into his landscapes.VI.26Mr. Douce in every instance spells the name thus. In the proofs of the alphabet of the Dance of Death it isLützelburger, and below the cut with the date 1522,Leuczellburger.VI.27There are proofs of this alphabet in the Royal Collection at Dresden, as well as in the Public Library at Basle.VI.28Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 332.VI.29Hans Ladenspelder was a native of Essen, a frontier town in the duchy of Berg. The following mark is to be found on his engravingssymbol, which Bartsch thinks may be intended for the single letters I. L. V. E. S.,—representing the wordsJoannes Ladenspelder Von Essen Sculpsit.VI.30Of this George Reperdius, or his works, nothing, I believe, is known beyond the brief mention of his name in conjunction with that of Holbein in the verses of Bourbon.VI.31Neither these verses, nor those previously cited, occur in the first edition of the Nugæ, Paris, 1533.VI.32At that period a wood-cut, as well as a painting, was termedpictura.—On the title-page of an edition of the New Testament, with wood-cuts, Zurich, 1554, by Froschover, we find the following: “Novi Testamenti Editio postrema per Des. Erasmum Roterodamum. Omniapicturisillustrata.”VI.33Douce’s Dance of Death, pp. 80, 100, and 101.VI.34Mr. Douce here seems to lay some weight on the wordpicta, which, as has been previously observed, was applied equally to wood engravings and paintings.VI.35Douce, Dance of Death, p. 141.VI.36“The identification of William Benting,” says Mr. Douce with exquisite bon-hommie, “must be left to the sagacity of others. Hecould not have beenthe Earl of Portland created in 1689, or he would have been addressed accordingly. He is, moreover, described as a youth born at Whitehall, and then residing there, and whose dwelling consisted of nearly the whole of the palace that remained after the fire.”—Dance of Death, p. 244. It appears that these addresses of Piccard were written in a foreign language, though, whether Dutch, French, German, or Latin, Mr. Douce most unaccountably neglects to say: he merely mentions that his extracts are translated.VI.37Douce’s Dance of Death, pp. 144, 145.VI.38That the reader may judge for himself of the similarity of thought in the passages referred to, they are here given in juxta-position.“Car ses histoires funebres, avec leurs descriptions severement rithmées, aux advisans donnent telle admiration, qu’ilz enjugent les mortz y apparoistre tresvivement, et les vifs tresmortement representer. Qui me faict penser, que la Mort craignant que ce excellent painctre ne la paignist tant vifve qu’elle ne fut plus crainte pour Mort,et que pour cela luy mesme n’en devint immortel, que a ceste cause,” &c.—Epistre des Faces de la Mort.“Dum mortis Hansus pictor imaginem exprimit,Tanta arte mortem retulit, ut mors vivereVideatur ipsa: et ipse se immortalibusParem Diis fecerit, operis hujus gloria.”Borbonius.VI.39Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, speaking of the Nieuhoff discovery, says: “Of this fable no notice would have been taken here had not Mr. Douce ascribed undeserved authority to it, and had not his superficial investigations found undeserved credit with English and other compilers.” Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 338.Mr. Douce, at page 240 of his Dance of Death, complains of Hegner’s want of urbanity and politeness; and in return calls his account of Holbein’s workssuperficial, and moreover says that “his arguments, if worthy of the name, are, generally speaking, of a most weak and flimsy texture.” He also gives him a sharp rebuff by alluding to him as the “abovegentleman,” the last word, to give it point, being printed in Italics. Mr. Douce, when he was thus pelting Hegner, does not seem to have been aware that his own anti-Holbenian superstructure was a house of glass.“Cedimus, inque vicem dedimus crura sagittis.”VI.40Evelyn is only referred to here on account of hissilencewith respect to the pretended painting at Whitehall. What he says of Holbein cannot be relied on, as will be seen from the following passage, which is a fair specimen of his general knowledge and accuracy. “We have seen some few things cut in wood by the incomparable Hans Holbein the Dane, but they are rare and exceedingly difficult to come by; as hisLicentiousness of the Friars and Nuns;Erasmus;The Dance Macchabre; theMortis Imago, which he painted in great in the Church of Basil, and afterwards graved with no less art.”—Evelyn’s Sculpture, p. 69. Edition 1769.VI.41“Imagines Mortis expressæ ab optimo pictore Johanne Holbein cum epigrammatibus Georgii Æmylii, excusæ Francofurti et Lugduni apud Frellonios, quorum editio plures habet picturas. Vidi etiam cum metris Gallicis et Germanicis, si bene memini.” Mr. Douce cites this passage from Gesner’s Pandectæ, “a supplemental volume of great rarity to his well-known Bibliotheca.” The correct title of the volume in which it occurs is “Partitiones Theologicæ, Pandectarum Universalium Conradi Gesneri Liber Ultimus.” Folio, printed by Christopher Froschover, Zurich (Tiguri) 1549. The notice of the Dance of Death is in folio 86,a.VI.42Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 165. Van Mander asserts that Holbein painted with his left hand; but Horace Walpole, however, in opposition to this, refers to a portrait of Holbein, formerly in the Arundelian collection, where he appears holding the pencil in hisrighthand.VI.43A copy of this edition is preserved in the Public Library at Basle, and there is another copy in the Royal Collection at Dresden. Another edition, in every respect similar to the first, was also printed by the brothers Trechsel in 1539. Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, does not seem to have known of this edition; speaking of that of 1538, he says, “It is probably the same as that to which Papillon gives the date 1539.” There is a copy of the edition of 1539 in the British Museum.VI.44“A comparison of the 8th subject of the Simulachres,” says Mr. Douce, “with that of the Bible for EstherI,II, where the canopy ornamented with fleurs-de-lis is the same in both, will contribute to strengthen the above conjecture, as will both the cuts to demonstrate their Gallic origin. It is most certain that the King sitting at table in the Simulachres is intended for Francis I, which if any one should doubt, let him look upon the miniature of that king, copied at p. 214, in Clarke’s ‘Repertorium Bibliographicum.’” The “above conjecture” referred to in this extract is that previously cited at page 367, where Mr. Douce conjectures that Holbeinmight have beenemployed to complete the Bible cuts whichmight have beenleft unfinished in consequence of the death of Mr. Douce’s “great unknown” designer of the Dance of Death.—Dance of Death, p. 96. Mr. Douce, not being able to deny the similarity of many of the cuts, says it is highly probable that Holbein was merely employed to finish the Bible cuts, without ever considering that it isprimâ faciemuch more probable that Holbein was the designer of the cuts in both works.VI.45Dance of Death, p. 82.VI.46“Venit nuper Basileam ex Anglia Ioannes Holbein, adeo felicem ejus regni statum prædicans, qui aliquot septimanis exactis rursum eo migraturus est.” From a letter written by Rudolph Gualter to Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, about the middle of September 1538.—Quoted by Hegner, S. 246.VI.47Dr. Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Tour vol. iii. pp. 80, 81, Edit. 1829, mentions two paintings at Augsburg by the elder Holbein, one dated 1499 and the other 1501. The elder Holbein had a brother named Sigismund, who was also a painter, and who appears to have established himself at Berne. Papillon, in his usual manner, makes Sigismund Holbein a wood engraver. By his will, dated 1540, he appoints his nephew Hans the heir of all his property in Berne.VI.48Patin’s edition of this work was published in octavo, at Basle, in 1676. It contains eighty-three copper-plate engravings, from pen-and-ink sketches, drawn by Holbein, in the margin of a copy of an edition printed by Frobenius, in 1514, and still preserved (1860) in the Public Library at Basle. It is said that Erasmus, when looking over those sketches, exclaimed, when he came to that intended for himself, “Oho, if Erasmus were now as he appears here, he would certainly take a wife.” Above another of the sketches, representing a man with one of his arms about a woman’s neck, and at the same time drinking out of a bottle, Erasmus is said to have written the name “Holbein.” In an edition of the Laus Stultitiæ, edited by G. G. Becker, Basle, 1780, 8vo. those sketches are engraved (very indifferently) on wood.VI.49Hegner, Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 110.VI.50It is conjectured by Walpole that this might be Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel.VI.51It is impossible to exceed the beauty and skill that are manifested in this fine piece of art. The figures are, a king, queen, and a warrior; a young woman, a monk, and an infant; all of whom most unwillingly accompany Death in the Dance. The despair of the king, the dejection of the queen, accompanied by her little dog, the terror of the soldier who hears the drum of Death, the struggling of the female, the reluctance of the monk, and the sorrow of the poor infant, are depicted with equal spirit and veracity. The original drawing is in the public library at Basle, and ascribed to Holbein.VI.52The verses underneath the impressions which are supposed to be the earliest, are as follows:“Corporis effigiem si quis non vidit Erasmi,Hunc scite ad vivum picta tabella dabit.”The others:“Pallas Apellæam nuper mirata tabellam,Hanc, ait, æternum Bibliotheca colat.Dædaleam monstrat musis Holbeinnius artem,Et summi ingenii Magnus Erasmus opes.”VI.53Erasmus, writing to Bilibald Pirkheimer, in 1524, says, “Rursus nuper misi in Angliam Erasmum bis pictum ab artifice satis eleganti.” Hegner thinks that this artist was Holbein. In 1517 a portrait of Erasmus, with that of his friend Petrus Aegidius, was painted at Antwerp by Quintin Matsys. It was intended by Erasmus as a present to Sir Thomas More. This painting came subsequently into the possession of Dr. Mead, at whose sale it was purchased, as the production of Holbein, by Lord Radnor, for £110.VI.54“Pictor tuus, Erasme carissime, mirus est artifex, sed vereor ne non sensurus sit Angliam tam fœcundam ac fertilem quam sperarat. Quanquam ne reperiat omnino sterilem, quoad per me fieri potest, efficiam. Ex aula Grenwici. 18 Dec. 1525.”VI.55“Qui has reddit, est is qui me pinxit. Ejus commendatione te non gravabo, quanquam est insignis artifex. Si cupiet visere Quintinum, nec tibi vacabit hominem adducere, poteris per famulum commonstrare domum. Hic frigent artes: petit Angliam ut corradat aliquot angelatos: per eum poteris quæ voles scribere.”—Erasmi Epist.VI.56Erasmus, in a letter to Sir Thomas More, written from Freyburg in Brisgau, 5th September, 1529, alludes to a picture of More and his family which had been brought over by Holbein; and Margaret Roper, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, writing to Erasmus in the following November, says, that she is pleased to hear of the painter’s arrival with the family picture,—“utriusque mei parentis nostrumque omnium effigiem depictam.” Hegner thinks that those portraits of Sir Thomas More and his family was only a drawing in pen-and-ink, which is now in the Public Library at Basle. The figures in this drawing are: Sir Thomas and his wife, his father, his son, and a young lady, three daughters, a servant, and Sir Thomas’s jester. Over and under the figures are written the name and age of each. The drawing is free and light; and the faces and hands are very distinctly expressed.—Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 202-235-237. The drawing in the Public Library at Basle was probably a sketch of Holbein’s large picture of the family of Sir Thomas More.VI.57Holbein’s wife andchildonly, not children, are mentioned in this licence. It is not known what became of Holbein’s children, as there are no traces of his descendants to be found at Basle. Merian, a clergyman of Basle, in a letter to Mechel on this subject, in 1779, writes to this effect: “According to a pedigree of the Merian family, printed at Regensburg in 1727, Christina Syf, daughter of Rodolph Syf and Judith Weissin, and grand-daughter of Hans Holbein the unequalled painter, (born 1597,) was married on the 17th of November 1616 to Frederick Merian.” Perhaps it is meant that Judith Weissin was Holbein’s grand-daughter: there is evidently an error in the pedigree; and if it be wrong in this respect, it is not entitled to much credit in another.VI.58Hegner, S. 242.VI.59See Dallaway’s edition, revised by R. N. Wornum. London, Bohn, 1849, 3 vols. 8vo. Vol. i. pp. 66 et seq.VI.60Those designs were engraved on sixteen small plates by Hollar, but without his name. The enemies of Christ are represented in the dress of monks and friars, and instead of weapons they bear croziers, large candlesticks, and other church ornaments; Judas appears as a capucin, Annas as a cardinal, and Caiaphas as a bishop. In the subject of Christ’s Descent to Hades, the gates are hung with papal bulls and dispensations; above them are the Pope’s arms, and the devil as keeper of the gate wears a triple crown. Underneath this engraving are the following verses, which are certainly not of the period of Holbein:“Lo! the Pope’s kitchin, where his soles are fried,Called Purgatorie; see his pardons tiedOn strings; his triple crown the Divell weares,And o’er the door the Pope’s own arms he beares.”In the subject of Christ before Caiaphas is the following inscription in German: “Wer wider die Römischen, der soll sterben,”—that is, “He who is against the Romans shall die.”VI.61The following is the title of this scarce little volume. “Catechismus, that is to say, a shorte instruction into Christian religion for the singuler commoditie and profyte of childrē and yong people. Set forth by the mooste reverende father in God, Thomas Archbyshop of Canterbury, primate of all Englande and Metropolitane.—Gualterus Lynne excudebat, 1548.” At the end of the book, under a cut of Christ with a child before him, is the colophon: “Imprynted at London, in S. Jhones Streete, by Nycolas Hyll, for Gwalter Lynne dwellyng on Somers kaye, by Byllynges gate.” Mr. Douce, at page 96, mentions a cut with the nameHans Holbeinat the bottom, as occurring in the title-page of “A lytle treatise after the manner of an Epystle wryten by the famous clerk Doctor Urbanus Regius,” &c. also published by Walter Lynne, 1548.VI.62Mr. Douce, in his observations prefixed to Hollar’s etchings of the Dance of Death, published by Edwards in 1794, says, “Asetof cuts with the latter mark [Hans Holben] occurs in Archbishop Cranmer’s Catechism, printed by Walter Lyne, in 1548;” and in the same page he commits another mistake by describing the mark on the cut of the Duchess in the Lyons Dance of Death asHB, instead ofHL. It has been considered necessary to notice these errors, as it is probable that many persons who possess the work in which they occur, but who never may have seen a copy of the Lyons Dance of Death, nor of Cranmer’s Catechism, may have been misled in those matters by implicitly relying on Mr. Douce’s authority. A certain class of compilers are also extremely liable to transmit such mistakes, and, to borrow an expression of Hegner’s, to give currency to them, as if they stood ready for use “instereotype.”VI.63The title-page of this book—which has previously been referred to at page 357, in illustration of the wordpicta—is as follows: “Novi Testamenti Editio postrema per Des. Erasmum Roterodamum. Omnia picturis illustrata. Accesserunt Capitum argumenta Elegiaco carmine, Rudolpho Gualtero authore, conscripta. Tiguri, in Officina Froschoviana. AnnoM.D.LIIII.” 8vo.VI.64The volume is of octavo size, and the title is as follows: “The Newe Testament. Imprinted at Antwerp by Marten Emperour. AnnoM.D.XXXIIII.” The letters on the wood-cut of the printer’s device, seen in the copies on paper, areM. K.The first edition of Tindale’s Translation was printed in 1526. William Tindale, otherwise Hitchins, was born on the borders of Wales, but was of a Northumberland family, being descended from Adam de Tindale of Langley, near Haydon Bridge, in that county. He was strangled, and his body was afterwards burnt as that of a heretic by the popish party, at Vilvorde, near Brussels, in 1536.VI.65The title of this edition is as follows: “Biblia.The Bible, that is, the holy Scripture of the Olde and Newe Testaments, faithfully translated out of Douche and Latyn in to Englishe.M.D.XXXV.” This title is surrounded with an ornamental wood-cut border of ten compartments: 1. Adam and Eve. 2. The name of Jehovah in Hebrew characters in the centre at the top. 3. Christ with the banner of the cross trampling on the serpent, sin, and death. 4. Moses receiving the tables of the law. 5. Jewish High Priest,—Esdras. 6. Christ sending his disciples to preach the Gospel. 7. Paul preaching. 8. David playing on the harp. 9. In the centre at the bottom, King Henry VIII. on his throne giving a book—probably intended for the Bible—to certain abbots and bishops. 10. St. Paul with a sword. The day of the month mentioned in the colophon was probably the date of the last sheet being sent to press: “Prynted in the yeare of our LordeM.D.XXXV, and fynished the fourth daye of October.” Copies of this edition with the title-page are extremely rare. Some copies have a modern lithographed title prefixed, which is not exactly correct, though professedly a fac-simile: in one of the scrolls it has “telius meus” for “filius meus.” In the corresponding scroll in a copy in the British Museum the words are in English: “This is my deare Son in whom I delyte, heare him,”—above the figure of Christ with the banner of the cross. I have not the least doubt of this title-page having been designed by Holbein.VI.66The following is the title of this curious and scarce work: “Le Sorti di Francesco Marcolini da Forli, intitolate Giardino di Pensieri.” Dedicated, “Allo Illustrissimo Signore Hercole Estense, Duca di Ferrara.” At the conclusion is the colophon: “In Venetia per Francesco Marcolini da Forli, ne gli anni del SignoreMDXXXX.Del mese di Ottobre.” In aproemio, or preface, the author explains the manner of applying his “piacevole inventione,” which is nothing more than a mode of resolving questions by cards, and was probably suggested by Fanti’s Triompho di Fortuna, of which some account is given at page 315.VI.67Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 137.VI.68This catalogue is printed in the second volume of Heineken’s Nachrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-Sachen, 8vo. Leipzig, 1768-1769. This work, which appeared two years before his Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes, contains much information on the early history of art, which is not to be found in the latter. All the fac-similes of old engravings in the Idée Générale originally appeared in the Nachrichten. Heineken, in the first volume of this work, p. 340, mentions Porta’s cut, but says nothing of its being copied from a design by Raffaele.VI.69Heineken, in his Nachrichten, 1er. Theil, S. 340, says that Joseph Porta “was a pupil ofCecchinoSalviati, who is not to be confounded withFrancescoSalviati;” and yet in his Idée Générale, published subsequently, page 134, we find “Francesco del Salviati, autrement Rossi, de Florence, et son disciple Giuseppe Porta, appellé communément Giuseppe Salviati.” Heineken, in his first work, committed the mistake of supposing that Francesco Salviati’s to-name was the Christian name of another person. In Huber’s Notice Générale des Graveurs et Peintres, Francis Salviati appears as “François Cecchini, dit Salviati.”VI.70The first forty-six cuts are the best, generally, both in design and execution. The others, commencing at page 108, are illustrative of the sayings and doctrines of ancient philosophers and moralists, and one or two of the cuts are repeated. In this portion of the work, each page, except what is occupied by the cut, is filled with explanatory or illustrative verses arranged in triplets.VI.71The first hundred and seven pages of the work are chiefly filled with similar figures of cards variously combined, with short references. How Marcolini’s pleasant invention is to be applied to discover the secrets of Fate, I have not been able to comprehend.VI.72The following is a literal copy of the title: “Libro di M. Giovam Battista Palatino, Cittadino Romano, Nelqual s’insegna à Scriver ogni sorte lettera, Antica & Moderna, di qualunque natione, con le sue regole, & misure, & essempi: Et con un breve, et util Discorso de le Cifre: Riveduto novamente, & corretto dal proprio Autore. Con la giunta di quindici tavole bellissime.” At the end of the work is the imprint: “In Roma per Valerio Dorico alla Chiavica de Santa Lucia. Ad Instantia de M. Giovan della Gatta. L’AnnoM.D.LXI.” 4to. Papillon says that the work first appeared in 1540, and was reprinted in 1545, 1547, 1548, 1550, 1553, and 1556. An edition was also published at Venice in 1588.VI.73There is a curious allusion to aRebusin Horace, Satyr. Lib. I. Sat. V., Vers. 88, which has escaped the notice of all his commentators:“Quatuor hinc rapimur viginti et millia rhedis,Mansuri oppidulo, quod versu dicere non est,Signis perfacile est.”The place which he did not think proper to name was undoubtedly Asculum, whose situation exactly corresponds with the distance fromTrivicum, where he rested the preceding night. From the manner in which Horace alludes to thesigna—asandculum—of which the name is composed, it seems likely that a certain vulgar benison was not unknown at Rome in the age of Augustus.VI.74Remaines concerning Britaine, with additions by John Philpot, Somerset Herald, p. 164. Edit. 1636.VI.75Papillon, who speaks highly of the execution of the cuts ascribed to Bernard Solomon, admits that they want effect. “La gravure,” says he, speaking of the cuts contained in ‘Quadrins Historiques de la Bible,’ “est fort belle, excepté qu’elle manque de clair obscur, parce que les tailles sont presque toutes de la même teinte, ce qui fait que les lointains ne fuyent pas assez. C’est le seul defaut des gravures de Bernard Salomon; ce qui lui a été commun avec plus de quarante autres graveurs en bois de son temps.”—Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 209.VI.76Several editions of Alciat’s Emblems and Claude Paradin’s Devises Heroïques were published at Lyons in the sixteenth century. The first edition of the latter work was printed there by Jean de Tournes, in 1557, 8vo.VI.77The following explanatory title occurs on the first cut: “Ces moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz avecq’ les Regions y appartenantes, ont este au vif contrefactez par Pierre Coeck d’Alost, luy estant en Turquie, l’an de Jesu ChristM.D.33. Lequel assy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes à l’impression d’ycelles.” From another of the cuts we thus learn the time of his death: “Marie Verhulst vefue du dict Pierre d’Alost, trespasse en l’anneMDL, a faict imprimer les dicts figures soubz Grace et Privilege de l’Imperialle Maiestie. En l’AnnMCCCCCLIII.”VI.78This interesting specimen of the combined arts of wood engraving and printing formerly belonged to the late Mr. Robert Branston, wood engraver, who executed several of the chiaro-scuros, and imitations of coloured drawings, in Savage’s work on Decorative Printing. It is now in the possession of his son, Mr. Frederick Branston, who is of the same profession as his father.VI.79The title-page of this work is printed in three colours,—black, sepia, and green. The black ornamental outlines are from an etched plate; the sepia and green colours are printed from wood-blocks. An edition of this work, enlarged by Gevartius, with portraits in two colours, and entirely engraved on wood, was printed at Antwerp in 1645.VI.80Tom. i. p. 129. Paris, 1753.VI.81The following is a copy of the title: “Underweisung der Proportzion und Stellung der Possen, liegent und stehent; abgestochen wie man das vor augen sieht, in dem puchlein, durch Erhart Schon von Norrenberg; für die Jungen gesellen und Jungen zu unterrichtung die zu der Kunst lieb tragen. In den druck gepracht, 1538.”VI.82This last letter contains the markSA, which is to be found on some of the cuts in the editions of the Dance of Death printed at Cologne, 1555-1572.VI.83The title is as follows: “Johan. Posthii Germershemii Tetrasticha in Ovidii Metam. Lib. xv. Quibus accesserunt Vergilii Solis figuræ elegantissimæ, primum in lucem editæ.—Schöne Figuren, auss dem fürtrefflichen Poeten Ovidio, allen Malern, Goldtschmiden, und Bildthauern, zu nutz und gutem mit fleiss gerissen durch Vergilium Solis, und mit Teutschen Reimen kürtzlich erkläret, dergleichein vormals im Druck nie aussgangen, Durch Johan. Posthium von Germerssheim.M.D.LXIX.”VI.84Hans Sachs, whose poetical works might vie in quantity with those of Lope Vega, was born at Nuremberg in 1494. Notwithstanding the immense number of verses which he composed, he did not trust to his profession of Meistersänger for the means of living, but continued to carry on his business as a shoemaker till his death, which happened in 1576. His verses were much admired by his contemporaries; and between 1570 and 1579, a collection of his works was published in five volumes folio. Several short pieces by him were originally printed as “broadsides,” with an ornamental or illustrative cut at the top.VI.85Papillon, who appears to have been extremely wishful to swell his catalogue of wood engravers, describes Jost Amman of Zurich and Jost Amman of Nuremberg as two different persons.VI.86Heineken, Idée Générale, p. 244.VI.87The following is the title of the edition of 1568;—that of 1574 is somewhat different. “ΠΑΝΟΠΛΙΑomnium Illiberalium mechanicarum aut sedentariarum artium, continens quotquot unquam vel a veteribus, aut nostri etiam seculi celebritate excogitari potuerunt, breviter et dilucide confecta: carminum liber primus, tum mira varietate rerum vocabulorumque novo more excogitatorum copia perquam utilis, lectuque jucundus. Accesserunt etiam venustissimæ Imagines omnes omnium artificum negociantes ad vivum lectori representantes, antehac nec visæ nec unquam æditæ: per Hartman Schopperum, Novoforens. Noricum.—Frankofurti ad Moenum, cum privelegio Cæsario,M.D.LXVIII.”VI.88TheBriefmalers, though at that time evidently distinct from theFormschneiders, still continued toprintwood-cuts. On several large wood-cuts with the dates 1553 and 1554 we find the words, “Gedrukt zu Nürnberg durch Hanns Glaser,Brieffmaler.”VI.89See the mark C. S. at page 413.VI.90This work is entitled “Kunstbüchlein,” and consists entirely of cuts without any explanatory letter-press. The first cut consists of a group of heads, drawn and engraved with great spirit. On what appears something like a slab of stone or wood—most unmeaningly and awkwardly introduced—are Jost Amman’s initials, I.A., towards the top, and lower down the mark,MFwhich is doubtless that of the engraver. This mark, with a figure of a graver underneath, occurs on several of the other cuts. The three following marks, with a graver underneath each, also occur: L. F. C.S. G. H. These facts are sufficient to prove that Jost Amman was not the engraver of the cuts which he designed. In the edition of 1599 the cuts are said to have beendrawnby “the late most excellent and celebrated artist, Jost Amman of Nuremberg.”VI.91It is uncertain if James I. or James II. be meant. According to Sir Walter Scott, Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II, visited Scotland in 1448, when James II.—if Chalmers be correct, Caledonia, vol. i. p. 831,—was scarcely nineteen, and when his appearance was not likely to correspond with the learned prelate’s description,—“hominem quadratum et multa pinguedine gravem.”VI.92“Avium præcipuarum, quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, brevis et succincta historia. Per Dn. Gulielmum Turnerum, artium et medicinæ doctorem,” 8vo. Coloniæ,M.D.XLIIII, fol. 9b.VI.93In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms this mark is ascribed, though doubtfully, to “Manuel Deutsch.” It is certainly not the mark of Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch of Bern, for he died several years before 1548, the date on several of the cuts with the mark H.R. M.D. in Munster’s Cosmography, and which date evidently relates to the year in which the artist made the drawing. There can be no doubt that those four letters belong to a single name, for some of the cuts in which they occur also contain the mark of an engraver.VI.94A map of Russia, engraved wholly on wood, in a work entitled “Commentari della Moscovia e parimente della Russia,” &c. translated from the Latin of Sigmund, Baron von Herberstein, printed at Venice, 4to. 1550, is much superior in point of appearance to the best in the work of Munster. This map, which is of folio size, appears to have been constructed by “Giacomo Gastaldo, Piamontese, Cosmographo in Venetia.” The work also contains six wood-cuts, which afford some curious specimens of Russian and Tartar arms and costume.VI.95Philologicarum Epistolarum Centuria una, ex Bibliotheca M. H. Goldasti, p. 165. 8vo. Francofurti, 1610.VI.96According to this method, certain words, together with radices and terminations of frequent occurrence, were cast entire, and not in separate letters, and placed in cases in such an order that the compositor could as “readily possess himself of the Type of a word as of the Type of a single letter.” This method, for which a patent was obtained, is explained in a pamphlet entitled “An Introduction to Logography: or the Art of Arranging and Composing for Printing with Words entire, their Radices and Terminations, instead of single Letters. By Henry Johnson: London, printed Logographically, and sold by J. Walter, bookseller, Charing Cross, and J. Sewell, Cornhill,M.DCC.LXXXIII.” Several works were printed in this manner, and among others an edition of Anderson’s History of Commerce, 4 vols. 4to. 1787-1789, by John Walter, at the Logographic Press, Printing-House-Square, Blackfriars. Logography has long been abandoned. The following account of this art is given in H. G. Bohn’s Lecture on Printing, pp. 88, 89. “Something akin to stereotyping is another mode of printing called Logography, invented by the late Mr. Walter, of theTimes, in 1783, and for which he took out a patent. This means a system of printing from type cast in words instead of single letters, which it was thought would save time and corrections when applied to newspapers, but it was not found to answer. A joke of the time was a supposed order to the typefounder for some words of frequent occurrence, which ran thus:—‘Please send me a hundred-weight, sorted, of murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, alarming explosion, melancholy accident; an assortment of honourable member, whig, tory, hot, cold, wet, dry; half-a-hundred weight, made up in pounds, of butter, cheese, beef, mutton, tripe, mustard, soap, rain, &c.; and a few devils, angels, women, groans, hisses, &c.’ This method of printing did not succeed: for if twenty-four letters will give six hundred sextillions of combinations, no printing office could keep a sufficient assortment of even popular words.”VI.97See an edition of Ptolemy, printed at Venice by Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, in 1511, previously noticed at page 203.VI.98Some account of this work is given at page 200.VI.99At page 204 it is stated, on the authority of Breitkopf, that those maps were engraved by Ægidius Diest. Ortelius himself says in the preface that they were engraved by “Francis Hogenberg, Ferdinand and Ambrose Arsens, and others.”VI.100The portrait of Queen Elizabeth appears on the title; the Earl of Leicester’s is prefixed to the Book of Joshua; and Lord Burleigh’s is given, with a large initial B, at the beginning of the first psalm. In the second edition, 1572, the portrait of Lord Burleigh is omitted, and the impressions of the other two are much inferior to those in the first edition in consequence of the plates being worn. Many of the cuts in the second edition are quite different from those in the first, and generally inferior to the cuts for which they are substituted.VI.101“Humphrey Cole, as he says himself, was born in the North of England, andpertayned to the mint in the Tower, 1572. I suppose he was one of the engravers thatpertaynedto Archbishop Parker, for this edition was called Matthew Parker’s Bible. I hope the flattery of the favourites was the incense of the engraver!” Catalogue of Engravers, p. 16. Edit. 1794.—Walpole does not appear to have paid the least attention to the engraver’s merits—supposing, as he does, the portraits to have been executed by him:—he sneers at him because he had engraved certain portraits for aBible, and because he was supposed to have been patronised by abishop. A more liberal writer on art would have praised Parker, although he were anarchbishop, for his patronage of a native engraver.VI.102“Augustinus Ryther,Anglus,” occurs on the maps of Cumberland and Westmorland, Gloucester, and Yorkshire. Ryther afterwards kept a bookseller’s shop in Leadenhall-street. He engraved some maps and charts, which were published about 1588. On the map of the county of Hertford, Reynolds’s name occurs thus: “Nicholas Reynoldus, Londinensis, sculpsit.” Several of those maps were engraved by Remigius Hogenberg, one of the engravers who are said to have been employed by Archbishop Parker in his palace at Lambeth.VI.103This little work, entitled “Commentarioli Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum,” was sent by the author to Ortelius, and the prefatory address is dated Denbigh, in North Wales, 30th August 1568. A translation of it, under the title of a “Breviary of Britain,” was printed at London in 1573.—Lhuyd had only furnished Ortelius with materials for the construction of the map of England.VI.104The name of “Thomas Raynalde, Physition,” is not to be found in the edition of 1540. The title of the work is, “The byrth of Mankynd, newly translated out of Latin into Englysshe. In the which is entreated of all suche thynges the which chaunce to women in theyr labor,” &c. At folio vi. there is an address from Richard Jonas, “Unto the most gracious, and in all goodnesse most excellent vertuous Lady Quene Katheryne, wyfe and most derely belovyd spouse unto the moste myghty sapient Christen prynce, Kynge Henry the VIII.”—This “most excellent vertuous lady” wasCatherine Howard. The imprint at the end of the work is as follows: “Imprynted at London, by T. R, Anno Domini,M.CCCCC.XL.” Raynalde’s name first appears in the second edition, 1545. Between 1540 and 1600 there were at least eight editions of this work printed in London.VI.105At the end of the dedication to Henry VIII. he signs himself “Thomas Geminus, Lysiensis.”VI.106In the edition of 1559 there is a large wood-cut—“Interiorum corporis humani partium viva delineatio”—with the mark R. S. and a graver underneath. In this cut the interior parts of the body are impressed on separate slips, which are pasted, by one edge, at the side of the figure. Those slips on being raised show the different parts as they occur on dissection.VI.107In Herbert’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 1681, both parts of this work are said to have engraved titles, and the arms of Sir C. Hatton are said to occur at the back of the title to the first part. The work contains twenty-two maps and charts, probably copied from the original Dutch edition of Wagenar, who was a native of Enchuysen. There is no printer’s name in the English edition.VI.108Walpole erroneously states that “Broughton’s book was not printed till 1600,” and he says that “thecutswere probably engraved by an English artist named William Rogers.” The markWRis to be found on some of the plates of the edition of 1600, but it is to be observed that they are not the same as those in the edition of 1591. Thefirstedition of the work was printed in 1588.VI.109The following is the title of this work: “The Cosmographical Glasse, conteinyng the pleasant Principles of Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie or Navigation. Compiled by William Cuningham, Doctor in Physicke. Excussum Londini in officina Joan. Daii, Anno 1559.In this Glasse, if you will beholdeThe starry skie and yearth so wide,The seas also, with the windes so colde,Yea, and thy selfe all these to guide:What this Type mean first learne a right,So shall the gayne thy travaill quight.”The “Type” mentioned in these verses relates to the various allegorical and other figures in the engraved title-page.VI.110This mark, which occurs in two other cuts of large letters in the Cosmographical Glasse, is also to be found on a large ornamented letter in Robert Record’s Castle of Knowledge, folio, printed at London, by Reginald Wolfe, 1556. This work, like that of Cuningham, is a treatise on Geography. A mark, I. C., with a graver between the letters, occurs frequently in cuts which ornament the margins of a work entitled “A Book of Christian Prayers,” &c. 4to. first printed by John Day in 1569. It is usually called “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book.” In Herbert’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities it is erroneously stated that such of the cuts as relate to the History of Christ are “after Albert Durer and his wife,Agnes Frey.” They arenotcopied from any cuts designed by Albert Durer, and his wife most certainly neither drew nor engraved on wood. It is also incorrectly stated “that a Dance of Death, in the same work, is after Hans Holbein.”—The cuts in this work are very unequal in point of execution. The best are those of the Senses—without any mark—Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smelling, and Touch. A mark not unlike that in the letter A, from Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glass, occurs on several of the smaller cuts.VI.111This work contains a considerable number of wood-cuts, all undoubtedly designed and engraved in England. Two of the best are Henry VIII, attended by his council, giving his sanction to the publication of the Bible in English, with the mark I. F.; and a view of Windsor Castle, with the mark M. D. Both these cuts are in the second volume of the edition of 1576.VI.112Dr. Dibdin, in his Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, in his edition of Ames and Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities, has given several curious specimens of large ornamented capitals.VI.113Bibliographical Decameron, vol. i. p. 289.VI.114“The pavement of this cathedral is the work of a succession of artists from Duccio down to Meccarino, who have produced the effect of the richest mosaic, merely by inserting grey marble into white, and hatching both with black mastic. The grandest composition is the History of Abraham, a figure which is unfortunately multiplied in the same compartments; but, when grasping the knife, the patriarch is truly sublime. These works lay exposed at least for a hundred years to the general tread, and have been rather improved than defaced by the attrition; for one female figure which had never been trodden looks harsher than the rest. Those of the choir were opportunely covered two centuries ago.”—Forsyth’s Italy, p. 102, 2nd Edit.VI.115The following is the title of this work, which is a large octavo: “De gli Habiti Antichi et Moderni di diverse Parti del Mondo Libri due, fatti da Caesare Vecellio, & con Discorsi da lui dichiriati. In Venetia,MD.XC.” This work is thus mentioned in the notes to Rogers’s Italy: “Among the Habiti Antichi, in that admirable book of wood-cuts ascribed to Titian, (A. D. 1590,) there is one entitled Sposa Venetiana à Castello. It was taken from an old painting in the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, and by the writer is believed to represent one of the brides here described.”—Italy, p. 257, note. Edit. 1830.VI.116A dog performing the same act occurs as a tail-piece in the first edition of Bewick’s Quadrupeds, 1790, page 310.VI.117I have seen a large head, which at first sight might be mistaken for an impression from a wood-block, executed by means of a stencil after a design of Correggio. It was unquestionably old, and was about three feet high by two and a half wide.VI.118The following is Papillon’s description of this cut: “Une Estampe que je possede, et que l’on regarde assez indifférement, est le Laocoon gravé en bois par le Titien, représenté sous la figure d’un singe et ses deux petits entourés de serpens. Il fit ce morceau pour railler les Peintres de son temps qui étudoient cette figure et les Statues antiques; et il prétendit démontrer par cette Estampe qu’ils ressembloient aux singes, lesquels ne font qu’imiter ce qu’ils voyent, sans rien inventer d’eux mêmes.”—Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 160.VI.119There is also in the Print Room of the British Museum a curious wood-cut, of large size, engraved on several blocks, apparently of the time of James I. The title at the top, in Latin and English, is as follows: “Humanæ vitæ imago olim ab Apelle in tabula quadam depicta. The image of the lyfe of man that was painted in a table by Apelles.” The subject, however, is not so much a general representation of the life of man in its several stages, as an allegorical representation of the evils attendant on sensual indulgence. Several of the figures are designed with great spirit, and the explanations underneath the principal are engraved on the same block, in Latin and English. It seems likely that this cut was engraved for the purpose of being pasted or hung against a wall. It is about five feet four inches wide by about three feet high. Some of the figures are engraved with considerable spirit, but the groups want that well-contrasted light and shade which give such effect to the large cuts of Durer and Burgmair. It is likely that large cuts of this kind were intended to be pasted on the walls of rooms, to serve at once for instruction and ornament, like “King Charles’s Golden Rules and the Royal Game of Goose” in later times.—To this note Mr. Jackson adds in his annotated copy: “The drawing appears to have been executed by an artist who was rather partial to cross-hatching, and the engraving by one who knew how to render every line before him with a degree of sharpness and delicacy by no means common at that period.”VI.120The original cut is twenty-three inches and a half wide by eighteen inches high.VI.121The original is eighteen inches wide by thirteen inches and a half high, including the margin with the inscription “Cum privilegiis,” which is engraved on the same block.VI.122Papillon, tom. i. p. 274-276, calls this engraverC. S. Vichem; and charges Professor Christ with confounding threeSichemswith threeVichems. The name at the bottom of the cut, in the following page, is most certainly intended forC. V. Sichem.VI.123The twelfth volume of Bartsch’s Peintre-Graveur contains an ample list of Italian chiaro-scuros, together with the names of the painters and engravers.VI.124The only perfect copy which I have seen of this little work is in Spanish. The title is as follows: “La Perpetua Cruz, o Passion de Jesu Christo Nuestro Señor, desde el principio de su encarnacion hasta su muerte. Representada en quarenta estampas que se reparten de balde, y explicada con differentes razones y oraciones de devocion. En Amberes, en la emprenta de Cornelio Woons, 1650.” The cuts were engraved at the instance of the Archbishop of Malines. Before the Spanish edition appeared, thirty thousand copies of the work in Flemish and Latin had already been circulated.VI.125In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers there is the following notice of the elder Switzer: “In the Harleian Library was a set of wooden cuts, representing the broad seals of England from the conquest to James I. inclusive, neatly executed. Vertue says this was the sole impression he had seen, and believed that they were cut by Chr. Switzer, and that these plates were copied by Hollar for Sandford. Switzer also cut the coins and seals in Speed’s History of Britain, 1614 [1611], from the originals in the Cottonian Collection. Speed calls himthe most exquisite and curious hand of that age. He probably engraved the botanic figures for Lobel’s Observations, and the plates [cuts] for Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, 1629. Chr. Switzer’s works have sometimes been confounded with his son’s, who was of both his names.”—Catalogue of Engravers, p. 18 note, Edit. 1794. It is doubtful if the elder Switzer’s Christian name were Christopher. The initial in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris is an A. It is, however, possible that this letter may be intended for a Latin preposition, and not for the first letter of the engraver’s Christian name.VI.126The cuts in an edition of “The most Delightful History of Reynard the Fox,” 4to. London, printed for Thomas Passinger, 1681, are scarcely superior to this cut in point of execution, though it must be confessed that the figures are generally in better “keeping.”

VI.1Besides those above mentioned, there is said to have been a “Death’s Dance” at the following places: in Hungerford’s Chapel, Salisbury Cathedral; Hexham Church; at Fescamp in Normandy, carved in stone; at Dresden; Leipsic; Annaberg; and Berne in Switzerland. The last, painted on the walls of the cloisters of the Dominican friars, was the work of Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch, previously mentioned at page 314. So early as 1560 this painting was destroyed in consequence of the cloisters being pulled down to widen a street. There are two copies of it in water-colours preserved at Berne. From one of them a series of lithographic engravings has been made. An ample list of old paintings of this subject will be found in Mr. Douce’s Dance of Death, chapters iii. and iv, published by Pickering, 1833, and republished, with additions, by H. G. Bohn, 1858.

VI.2Mr. Douce says, “Macaber was not a German or any other poet, but a nonentity.” He supposes that the nameMacaberis only a slight and obvious corruption ofMacarius, a Saint who lived as a hermit in Egypt, and of whom there is a story of his showing to three kings or noblemen an emblem of mortality in the shape of three skeletons. “The wordMacabre,” observes Mr. Douce, “is found only in French authorities; and the Saint’s name, which in the modern orthography isMacaire, would in many ancient manuscripts be writtenMacabreinstead ofMacaure, the letterbbeing substituted for that ofufrom the caprice, ignorance, or carelessness of transcribers.” Mr. Douce’s conjecture would have been more feasible had he produced a single instance from any ancient manuscript of the name having been writtenMacabreinstead ofMacaureorMacarius. By a similar process of reasoning, it would not be difficult to prove a hundred old writers and poets non-entities. In the earliest French editions, the work is intitled “La Danse Macabre;” and in a Parisian edition, “Per Magistrum Guidonem Mercatorem pro Godefrido de Marnef,” folio, 1490, the title is as follows: “Chorea ab eximio Macabro versibus Alemanicis edita, et à Petro Desrey emendata.” This seems to prove that Peter Desrey knew something of a person named Macaber who had written a description of the Dance in German.

VI.3Hans Holbein der Jüngere. Von Ulrich Hegner, S. 309. Berlin, 1827.

VI.4All the persons introduced were of the size of life. Death, in only one instance, was represented as a perfect skeleton, and that was in the subject of the Doctor, whom he was supposed to address as follows:

“Herr Doctor b’schaw die AnatomeyAn mir, ob sie recht g’macht sey.”

“Herr Doctor b’schaw die Anatomey

An mir, ob sie recht g’macht sey.”

that is:

“Doctor, take of me a sight,Say if the skeleton be right.”

“Doctor, take of me a sight,

Say if the skeleton be right.”

It has been said that the Pope, the Emperor, and the King, were intended respectively for portraits of Pope Felix V, the Emperor Sigismund, and Albert II, his successor, as King of the Romans. This, however, is merely a conjecture, and not a very probable one. Sigismund died before the commencement of the plague which is said to have been the occasion of the painting.

VI.5Those verses, as they appeared in later times, are as follows:

“Heilig war ich auff Erd genanOhn Gott der höchst führt ich mein stand.Der Ablass that mir gar wol lohnenDoch will der tod mein nicht verschonen.”

“Heilig war ich auff Erd genan

Ohn Gott der höchst führt ich mein stand.

Der Ablass that mir gar wol lohnen

Doch will der tod mein nicht verschonen.”

Their meaning may be thus expressed in English:

“His Holiness, on earth my name;From God my power never came;Although by pardons wealth I got,Death, alas, will pardon not!”

“His Holiness, on earth my name;

From God my power never came;

Although by pardons wealth I got,

Death, alas, will pardon not!”

VI.6Several characters are to be found in those Dances of Death which do not occur in the Simulachres et Historiées Faces de la Mort of Lyons, 1538. In the preface to the Emblems of Mortality,—with wood-cuts by John Bewick, 1789,—written by John Sidney Hawkins, Esq., the following list is given of the cuts in an edition of “La grande Danse de Macabre des Hommes et Femmes,” 4to. printed at Troyes for John Garnier, but without a date. “The Pope, Emperor, Cardinal, King, Legate, Duke, Patriarch, Constable, Archbishop, Knight, Bishop, Squire, Abbot, Bailiff, Astrologer, Burgess, Canon, Merchant, Schoolmaster, Man of Arms, Chartreux, Serjeant, Monk, Usurer, Physician, Lover, Advocate, Minstrel, Curate, Labourer, Proctor, Gaoler, Pilgrim, Shepherd, Cordelier, Child, Clerk, Hermit, Adventurer, Fool. The women are the Queen, Duchess, Regent’s Wife, Knight’s Wife, Abbess, Squire’s Wife, Shepherdess, Cripple, Burgess’s Wife, Widow, Merchant’s Wife, Bailiff’s Wife, Young Wife, Dainty Dame, Female Philosopher, New-married Wife, Woman with Child, Old Maid, Female Cordelier, Chambermaid, Intelligence-Woman, Hostess, Nurse, Prioress, Damsel, Country Girl, Old Chambermaid, Huckstress, Strumpet, Nurse for Lying-in-Woman, Young Girl, Religious, Sorceress, Bigot, Fool.” Nearly the same characters occur in borders of the old Dutch Prayer Book mentioned at page 318, though in the latter they are yet more numerous; among the men there is a fowler—vogelaer—and among the women, the beauty—scone—and the old woman—alde vrou—which do not occur in the preceding list.

VI.7It has been thought necessary to be thus particular in describing the title-page of this rare edition, as it is incorrectly described by Mr. Douce. In the copy in the British Museum the title-page is wanting.

VI.8This “vray Zele” having said in the first page of the preface that the name and surname of the revered abbess had the same sound as his own, with the exception of the letter T, the editor of the Emblems conjectures “that his name wasJean, or, as it was anciently written,Jehan de Ouszell, orOzellas it is now usually spelt.”

VI.9In the original, “avancantes autāt les patronées jusques ici.” The wordpatronées, I conceive to refer to cuts printed from wood-blocks. The editor of the Emblems, 1688, who is followed by Mr. Ottley, translated the passage, “exceeding all theexampleshitherto.” Works executed by means of a stencil were in old French said to bepatronées, and the word also appears to have been applied to impressions printed from wood-blocks. The verbpatroneris thus explained in Noel and Chapsal’s Nouveau Dictionnaire de la Langue Française, Paris, 1828: “Terme de cartier: enduire de couleur, au moyen du patron évidé, les endroits où cette couleur doit paraître.”

VI.10Mr. Douce supposes that the rainbow here alluded to was that which appears in the cut of the Last Judgment, the last but one in the first edition. The writer evidently means the natural rainbow which is mostly seen imperfect.

VI.11Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 168. Papillon in a preceding page had observed: “These cuts must have been engraved about 1530, for we find the four first among the little figures of the Old Testament printed in 1539, from which it is easy to perceive that many thousand impressions had already been taken from the blocks.”—Those four cuts in the first edition of the Dance of Death, have not the slightest appearance of having been from blocks that had already furnished many thousand impressions. In the copy now before me, I cannot perceive a break or an imperfection in the most delicate lines. The first edition of the “Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones,” to which Papillon alludes, first appeared in the same year as the Simulachres, 1538, and from the office of the same publishers, the brothers Melchior and Gaspar Trechsel.

VI.12Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. ii. p. 762.

VI.13Those cuts, with that of the astrologer and five others, supplied from a later edition, were bought, at the sale of Mr. Ottley’s prints, in 1837, for the British Museum, for £37 10s.In the catalogue, which, I understand, was chiefly drawn up from his own memoranda, they are thus described, under the head “Hans Holbein,” No. 458: “The celebrated Dance of Death, first impressions, printed (probably at Basle, about 1530,) upon one side only, with German titles at the top in type; supposed to beUNIQUE.” That they were printed in 1530 is highlyimprobable, and they certainly areNOTunique.

VI.14The French verses were translated into Latin by George Æmylius, “an eminent German divine of Mansfelt,” says Mr. Douce, “and the author of many pious works.”

VI.15Some copies have the title “Icones Mortis;” and though they correspond in every other respect with those of the same year, intitled Imagines Mortis, Mr. Douce seems to consider that this trifling variation is a sufficient ground for describing them as different editions.

VI.16Dance of Death, p. 107, edit. 1833 (Bohn’s edition, p. 95). It is stated in the Italian piracy that it was printed “Con gratia e privilegio de l’Illustriss. Senato Vinitiano, per anni dieci. Appresso Vincenzo Vaugris, al Segno d’Erasmo.MDXLV.”

VI.17Author of the work intitled, “Recherches sur les Danses des Morts.” Dijon et Paris, 1826.

VI.18Dance of Death, p. 118. Edit. 1833.

VI.19Mr. Douce gives another amusing instance of Papillon’s sagacity in assigning marks and names to their proper owners. “He (Papillon) had seen an edition of the Emblems of Sambucus with cuts, bearing the markSA, in which there is a fine portrait of the author with his favourite dog, and under the latter the wordBombo, which Papillon gravely states to be the name of the engraver; and finding the same word on another of the emblems, which has also the dog, he concludes that all the cuts which have not theSAwere engraved by the sameBombo.”—Dance of Death, p. 114, 1833. Those blunders of Papillon are to be found in his Traité Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. pp. 238 et 525.

VI.20Mr. Douce himself says, “about 1794.” A copy in the British Museum, formerly belonging to the late Reverend C. M. Cracherode, has, however, that gentleman’s usual mark, and the date 1793.

VI.21Mr. Douce, when correcting the mistake of the writer of the address, commits an error himself. He says that “Death is in the act of untwisting thefastening to one of the hoops.” Now, it is very evident that he is undoing the rope or chain that steadies the cask and confines it to the waggon. He has hold of the stake or piece of wood, which serves as atwitchto tighten the rope or chain, in the manner in which large timber is secured to the waggon in the present day.

VI.22Dance of Death, p. 88. Edit. 1833 (Bohn’s edit. 1858, p. 77.)

VI.23The words “jà par luy trassées” will apply more properly to drawings already made on the block, but unengraved, than to unfinished drawings on paper. It is indeed almost certain that the writer meant the former, for their “audacieux traicts, perspectives, et umbrages” are mentioned; they were moreover “gracieusement deliniées.” These expressions will apply correctly to a finished, though unengraved design on the block, but scarcely to an unfinished drawing on paper.

VI.24I am very much inclined to think that Madame Jehanne de Touszele is a fictitious character. I have had no opportunities of learning if such a person were really abbess of the Convent of St. Peter at Lyons in 1538, and must therefore leave this point to be decided by some other enquirer.

VI.25Mechel’s work is in folio, with four subjects on each full page, and is entitled “Oeuvre de Jean Holbein, ou Receuil de Gravures d’après ses plus beaux ouvrages, &c. Première Partie. La Triomphe de Mort.” It is dedicated to George III, and the presentation copy is in the King’s Library at the British Museum. The first part contains, besides forty-five subjects of the Dance of Death, the design for the sheath of a dagger from a drawing ascribed to Holbein, which has been re-engraved in the work of Mr. Douce. It is extremely doubtful if the drawings of the Dance, from which Mechel’s engravings are copied, be really by Holbein. They were purchased by M. Fleischmann of Strasburg, at Crozat’s sale at Paris in 1741. It was stated in the catalogue that they had formed part of the Arundelian collection, and that they had afterwards come into the possession of Jan Bockhorst, commonly called Lang Jan, a contemporary of Vandyke. This piece of information, however, can only be received as an auctioneer’s puff. M. Mechel himself, according to Mr. Douce, had not been able to trace those drawings previously to their falling into the hands of Monsieur Crozat. They were purchased of M. Fleischmann by Prince Gallitzin, a Russian nobleman, by whom they were lent to M. Mechel. They are now in the Imperial Library at Petersburg. According to Mr. Coxe, who saw them when in M. Mechel’s possession, they were drawn with a pen, and slightly shaded with Indian ink. Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, speaks slightingly of Mechel’s engravings, which he says were executed by one of his workmen from copies of the pretended original drawings made by an artist named Rudolph Schellenburg of Winterthur. Those copper-plates certainly appear feeble when compared with the wood-cut in the Lyons work, and Hegner’s criticism on the figure of Eve seems just, though Mr. Douce does not approve of it. Hegner says, “Let any one compare the figure of Eve under the tree in Mechel’s second plate with the second wood-cut; in the former she is sitting in as elegant an attitude as if she belonged to a French family by Boucher.”—Boucher, a French painter, who died in 1770, was famous in his time for the pretty women introduced into his landscapes.

VI.26Mr. Douce in every instance spells the name thus. In the proofs of the alphabet of the Dance of Death it isLützelburger, and below the cut with the date 1522,Leuczellburger.

VI.27There are proofs of this alphabet in the Royal Collection at Dresden, as well as in the Public Library at Basle.

VI.28Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 332.

VI.29Hans Ladenspelder was a native of Essen, a frontier town in the duchy of Berg. The following mark is to be found on his engravingssymbol, which Bartsch thinks may be intended for the single letters I. L. V. E. S.,—representing the wordsJoannes Ladenspelder Von Essen Sculpsit.

VI.30Of this George Reperdius, or his works, nothing, I believe, is known beyond the brief mention of his name in conjunction with that of Holbein in the verses of Bourbon.

VI.31Neither these verses, nor those previously cited, occur in the first edition of the Nugæ, Paris, 1533.

VI.32At that period a wood-cut, as well as a painting, was termedpictura.—On the title-page of an edition of the New Testament, with wood-cuts, Zurich, 1554, by Froschover, we find the following: “Novi Testamenti Editio postrema per Des. Erasmum Roterodamum. Omniapicturisillustrata.”

VI.33Douce’s Dance of Death, pp. 80, 100, and 101.

VI.34Mr. Douce here seems to lay some weight on the wordpicta, which, as has been previously observed, was applied equally to wood engravings and paintings.

VI.35Douce, Dance of Death, p. 141.

VI.36“The identification of William Benting,” says Mr. Douce with exquisite bon-hommie, “must be left to the sagacity of others. Hecould not have beenthe Earl of Portland created in 1689, or he would have been addressed accordingly. He is, moreover, described as a youth born at Whitehall, and then residing there, and whose dwelling consisted of nearly the whole of the palace that remained after the fire.”—Dance of Death, p. 244. It appears that these addresses of Piccard were written in a foreign language, though, whether Dutch, French, German, or Latin, Mr. Douce most unaccountably neglects to say: he merely mentions that his extracts are translated.

VI.37Douce’s Dance of Death, pp. 144, 145.

VI.38That the reader may judge for himself of the similarity of thought in the passages referred to, they are here given in juxta-position.

“Car ses histoires funebres, avec leurs descriptions severement rithmées, aux advisans donnent telle admiration, qu’ilz enjugent les mortz y apparoistre tresvivement, et les vifs tresmortement representer. Qui me faict penser, que la Mort craignant que ce excellent painctre ne la paignist tant vifve qu’elle ne fut plus crainte pour Mort,et que pour cela luy mesme n’en devint immortel, que a ceste cause,” &c.—Epistre des Faces de la Mort.

“Dum mortis Hansus pictor imaginem exprimit,Tanta arte mortem retulit, ut mors vivereVideatur ipsa: et ipse se immortalibusParem Diis fecerit, operis hujus gloria.”Borbonius.

“Dum mortis Hansus pictor imaginem exprimit,

Tanta arte mortem retulit, ut mors vivere

Videatur ipsa: et ipse se immortalibus

Parem Diis fecerit, operis hujus gloria.”

Borbonius.

VI.39Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, speaking of the Nieuhoff discovery, says: “Of this fable no notice would have been taken here had not Mr. Douce ascribed undeserved authority to it, and had not his superficial investigations found undeserved credit with English and other compilers.” Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 338.

Mr. Douce, at page 240 of his Dance of Death, complains of Hegner’s want of urbanity and politeness; and in return calls his account of Holbein’s workssuperficial, and moreover says that “his arguments, if worthy of the name, are, generally speaking, of a most weak and flimsy texture.” He also gives him a sharp rebuff by alluding to him as the “abovegentleman,” the last word, to give it point, being printed in Italics. Mr. Douce, when he was thus pelting Hegner, does not seem to have been aware that his own anti-Holbenian superstructure was a house of glass.

“Cedimus, inque vicem dedimus crura sagittis.”

VI.40Evelyn is only referred to here on account of hissilencewith respect to the pretended painting at Whitehall. What he says of Holbein cannot be relied on, as will be seen from the following passage, which is a fair specimen of his general knowledge and accuracy. “We have seen some few things cut in wood by the incomparable Hans Holbein the Dane, but they are rare and exceedingly difficult to come by; as hisLicentiousness of the Friars and Nuns;Erasmus;The Dance Macchabre; theMortis Imago, which he painted in great in the Church of Basil, and afterwards graved with no less art.”—Evelyn’s Sculpture, p. 69. Edition 1769.

VI.41“Imagines Mortis expressæ ab optimo pictore Johanne Holbein cum epigrammatibus Georgii Æmylii, excusæ Francofurti et Lugduni apud Frellonios, quorum editio plures habet picturas. Vidi etiam cum metris Gallicis et Germanicis, si bene memini.” Mr. Douce cites this passage from Gesner’s Pandectæ, “a supplemental volume of great rarity to his well-known Bibliotheca.” The correct title of the volume in which it occurs is “Partitiones Theologicæ, Pandectarum Universalium Conradi Gesneri Liber Ultimus.” Folio, printed by Christopher Froschover, Zurich (Tiguri) 1549. The notice of the Dance of Death is in folio 86,a.

VI.42Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 165. Van Mander asserts that Holbein painted with his left hand; but Horace Walpole, however, in opposition to this, refers to a portrait of Holbein, formerly in the Arundelian collection, where he appears holding the pencil in hisrighthand.

VI.43A copy of this edition is preserved in the Public Library at Basle, and there is another copy in the Royal Collection at Dresden. Another edition, in every respect similar to the first, was also printed by the brothers Trechsel in 1539. Hegner, in his Life of Holbein, does not seem to have known of this edition; speaking of that of 1538, he says, “It is probably the same as that to which Papillon gives the date 1539.” There is a copy of the edition of 1539 in the British Museum.

VI.44“A comparison of the 8th subject of the Simulachres,” says Mr. Douce, “with that of the Bible for EstherI,II, where the canopy ornamented with fleurs-de-lis is the same in both, will contribute to strengthen the above conjecture, as will both the cuts to demonstrate their Gallic origin. It is most certain that the King sitting at table in the Simulachres is intended for Francis I, which if any one should doubt, let him look upon the miniature of that king, copied at p. 214, in Clarke’s ‘Repertorium Bibliographicum.’” The “above conjecture” referred to in this extract is that previously cited at page 367, where Mr. Douce conjectures that Holbeinmight have beenemployed to complete the Bible cuts whichmight have beenleft unfinished in consequence of the death of Mr. Douce’s “great unknown” designer of the Dance of Death.—Dance of Death, p. 96. Mr. Douce, not being able to deny the similarity of many of the cuts, says it is highly probable that Holbein was merely employed to finish the Bible cuts, without ever considering that it isprimâ faciemuch more probable that Holbein was the designer of the cuts in both works.

VI.45Dance of Death, p. 82.

VI.46“Venit nuper Basileam ex Anglia Ioannes Holbein, adeo felicem ejus regni statum prædicans, qui aliquot septimanis exactis rursum eo migraturus est.” From a letter written by Rudolph Gualter to Henry Bullinger, of Zurich, about the middle of September 1538.—Quoted by Hegner, S. 246.

VI.47Dr. Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Tour vol. iii. pp. 80, 81, Edit. 1829, mentions two paintings at Augsburg by the elder Holbein, one dated 1499 and the other 1501. The elder Holbein had a brother named Sigismund, who was also a painter, and who appears to have established himself at Berne. Papillon, in his usual manner, makes Sigismund Holbein a wood engraver. By his will, dated 1540, he appoints his nephew Hans the heir of all his property in Berne.

VI.48Patin’s edition of this work was published in octavo, at Basle, in 1676. It contains eighty-three copper-plate engravings, from pen-and-ink sketches, drawn by Holbein, in the margin of a copy of an edition printed by Frobenius, in 1514, and still preserved (1860) in the Public Library at Basle. It is said that Erasmus, when looking over those sketches, exclaimed, when he came to that intended for himself, “Oho, if Erasmus were now as he appears here, he would certainly take a wife.” Above another of the sketches, representing a man with one of his arms about a woman’s neck, and at the same time drinking out of a bottle, Erasmus is said to have written the name “Holbein.” In an edition of the Laus Stultitiæ, edited by G. G. Becker, Basle, 1780, 8vo. those sketches are engraved (very indifferently) on wood.

VI.49Hegner, Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 110.

VI.50It is conjectured by Walpole that this might be Henry Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel.

VI.51It is impossible to exceed the beauty and skill that are manifested in this fine piece of art. The figures are, a king, queen, and a warrior; a young woman, a monk, and an infant; all of whom most unwillingly accompany Death in the Dance. The despair of the king, the dejection of the queen, accompanied by her little dog, the terror of the soldier who hears the drum of Death, the struggling of the female, the reluctance of the monk, and the sorrow of the poor infant, are depicted with equal spirit and veracity. The original drawing is in the public library at Basle, and ascribed to Holbein.

VI.52The verses underneath the impressions which are supposed to be the earliest, are as follows:

“Corporis effigiem si quis non vidit Erasmi,Hunc scite ad vivum picta tabella dabit.”

“Corporis effigiem si quis non vidit Erasmi,

Hunc scite ad vivum picta tabella dabit.”

The others:

“Pallas Apellæam nuper mirata tabellam,Hanc, ait, æternum Bibliotheca colat.Dædaleam monstrat musis Holbeinnius artem,Et summi ingenii Magnus Erasmus opes.”

“Pallas Apellæam nuper mirata tabellam,

Hanc, ait, æternum Bibliotheca colat.

Dædaleam monstrat musis Holbeinnius artem,

Et summi ingenii Magnus Erasmus opes.”

VI.53Erasmus, writing to Bilibald Pirkheimer, in 1524, says, “Rursus nuper misi in Angliam Erasmum bis pictum ab artifice satis eleganti.” Hegner thinks that this artist was Holbein. In 1517 a portrait of Erasmus, with that of his friend Petrus Aegidius, was painted at Antwerp by Quintin Matsys. It was intended by Erasmus as a present to Sir Thomas More. This painting came subsequently into the possession of Dr. Mead, at whose sale it was purchased, as the production of Holbein, by Lord Radnor, for £110.

VI.54“Pictor tuus, Erasme carissime, mirus est artifex, sed vereor ne non sensurus sit Angliam tam fœcundam ac fertilem quam sperarat. Quanquam ne reperiat omnino sterilem, quoad per me fieri potest, efficiam. Ex aula Grenwici. 18 Dec. 1525.”

VI.55“Qui has reddit, est is qui me pinxit. Ejus commendatione te non gravabo, quanquam est insignis artifex. Si cupiet visere Quintinum, nec tibi vacabit hominem adducere, poteris per famulum commonstrare domum. Hic frigent artes: petit Angliam ut corradat aliquot angelatos: per eum poteris quæ voles scribere.”—Erasmi Epist.

VI.56Erasmus, in a letter to Sir Thomas More, written from Freyburg in Brisgau, 5th September, 1529, alludes to a picture of More and his family which had been brought over by Holbein; and Margaret Roper, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, writing to Erasmus in the following November, says, that she is pleased to hear of the painter’s arrival with the family picture,—“utriusque mei parentis nostrumque omnium effigiem depictam.” Hegner thinks that those portraits of Sir Thomas More and his family was only a drawing in pen-and-ink, which is now in the Public Library at Basle. The figures in this drawing are: Sir Thomas and his wife, his father, his son, and a young lady, three daughters, a servant, and Sir Thomas’s jester. Over and under the figures are written the name and age of each. The drawing is free and light; and the faces and hands are very distinctly expressed.—Hans Holbein der Jüngere, S. 202-235-237. The drawing in the Public Library at Basle was probably a sketch of Holbein’s large picture of the family of Sir Thomas More.

VI.57Holbein’s wife andchildonly, not children, are mentioned in this licence. It is not known what became of Holbein’s children, as there are no traces of his descendants to be found at Basle. Merian, a clergyman of Basle, in a letter to Mechel on this subject, in 1779, writes to this effect: “According to a pedigree of the Merian family, printed at Regensburg in 1727, Christina Syf, daughter of Rodolph Syf and Judith Weissin, and grand-daughter of Hans Holbein the unequalled painter, (born 1597,) was married on the 17th of November 1616 to Frederick Merian.” Perhaps it is meant that Judith Weissin was Holbein’s grand-daughter: there is evidently an error in the pedigree; and if it be wrong in this respect, it is not entitled to much credit in another.

VI.58Hegner, S. 242.

VI.59See Dallaway’s edition, revised by R. N. Wornum. London, Bohn, 1849, 3 vols. 8vo. Vol. i. pp. 66 et seq.

VI.60Those designs were engraved on sixteen small plates by Hollar, but without his name. The enemies of Christ are represented in the dress of monks and friars, and instead of weapons they bear croziers, large candlesticks, and other church ornaments; Judas appears as a capucin, Annas as a cardinal, and Caiaphas as a bishop. In the subject of Christ’s Descent to Hades, the gates are hung with papal bulls and dispensations; above them are the Pope’s arms, and the devil as keeper of the gate wears a triple crown. Underneath this engraving are the following verses, which are certainly not of the period of Holbein:

“Lo! the Pope’s kitchin, where his soles are fried,Called Purgatorie; see his pardons tiedOn strings; his triple crown the Divell weares,And o’er the door the Pope’s own arms he beares.”

“Lo! the Pope’s kitchin, where his soles are fried,

Called Purgatorie; see his pardons tied

On strings; his triple crown the Divell weares,

And o’er the door the Pope’s own arms he beares.”

In the subject of Christ before Caiaphas is the following inscription in German: “Wer wider die Römischen, der soll sterben,”—that is, “He who is against the Romans shall die.”

VI.61The following is the title of this scarce little volume. “Catechismus, that is to say, a shorte instruction into Christian religion for the singuler commoditie and profyte of childrē and yong people. Set forth by the mooste reverende father in God, Thomas Archbyshop of Canterbury, primate of all Englande and Metropolitane.—Gualterus Lynne excudebat, 1548.” At the end of the book, under a cut of Christ with a child before him, is the colophon: “Imprynted at London, in S. Jhones Streete, by Nycolas Hyll, for Gwalter Lynne dwellyng on Somers kaye, by Byllynges gate.” Mr. Douce, at page 96, mentions a cut with the nameHans Holbeinat the bottom, as occurring in the title-page of “A lytle treatise after the manner of an Epystle wryten by the famous clerk Doctor Urbanus Regius,” &c. also published by Walter Lynne, 1548.

VI.62Mr. Douce, in his observations prefixed to Hollar’s etchings of the Dance of Death, published by Edwards in 1794, says, “Asetof cuts with the latter mark [Hans Holben] occurs in Archbishop Cranmer’s Catechism, printed by Walter Lyne, in 1548;” and in the same page he commits another mistake by describing the mark on the cut of the Duchess in the Lyons Dance of Death asHB, instead ofHL. It has been considered necessary to notice these errors, as it is probable that many persons who possess the work in which they occur, but who never may have seen a copy of the Lyons Dance of Death, nor of Cranmer’s Catechism, may have been misled in those matters by implicitly relying on Mr. Douce’s authority. A certain class of compilers are also extremely liable to transmit such mistakes, and, to borrow an expression of Hegner’s, to give currency to them, as if they stood ready for use “instereotype.”

VI.63The title-page of this book—which has previously been referred to at page 357, in illustration of the wordpicta—is as follows: “Novi Testamenti Editio postrema per Des. Erasmum Roterodamum. Omnia picturis illustrata. Accesserunt Capitum argumenta Elegiaco carmine, Rudolpho Gualtero authore, conscripta. Tiguri, in Officina Froschoviana. AnnoM.D.LIIII.” 8vo.

VI.64The volume is of octavo size, and the title is as follows: “The Newe Testament. Imprinted at Antwerp by Marten Emperour. AnnoM.D.XXXIIII.” The letters on the wood-cut of the printer’s device, seen in the copies on paper, areM. K.The first edition of Tindale’s Translation was printed in 1526. William Tindale, otherwise Hitchins, was born on the borders of Wales, but was of a Northumberland family, being descended from Adam de Tindale of Langley, near Haydon Bridge, in that county. He was strangled, and his body was afterwards burnt as that of a heretic by the popish party, at Vilvorde, near Brussels, in 1536.

VI.65The title of this edition is as follows: “Biblia.The Bible, that is, the holy Scripture of the Olde and Newe Testaments, faithfully translated out of Douche and Latyn in to Englishe.M.D.XXXV.” This title is surrounded with an ornamental wood-cut border of ten compartments: 1. Adam and Eve. 2. The name of Jehovah in Hebrew characters in the centre at the top. 3. Christ with the banner of the cross trampling on the serpent, sin, and death. 4. Moses receiving the tables of the law. 5. Jewish High Priest,—Esdras. 6. Christ sending his disciples to preach the Gospel. 7. Paul preaching. 8. David playing on the harp. 9. In the centre at the bottom, King Henry VIII. on his throne giving a book—probably intended for the Bible—to certain abbots and bishops. 10. St. Paul with a sword. The day of the month mentioned in the colophon was probably the date of the last sheet being sent to press: “Prynted in the yeare of our LordeM.D.XXXV, and fynished the fourth daye of October.” Copies of this edition with the title-page are extremely rare. Some copies have a modern lithographed title prefixed, which is not exactly correct, though professedly a fac-simile: in one of the scrolls it has “telius meus” for “filius meus.” In the corresponding scroll in a copy in the British Museum the words are in English: “This is my deare Son in whom I delyte, heare him,”—above the figure of Christ with the banner of the cross. I have not the least doubt of this title-page having been designed by Holbein.

VI.66The following is the title of this curious and scarce work: “Le Sorti di Francesco Marcolini da Forli, intitolate Giardino di Pensieri.” Dedicated, “Allo Illustrissimo Signore Hercole Estense, Duca di Ferrara.” At the conclusion is the colophon: “In Venetia per Francesco Marcolini da Forli, ne gli anni del SignoreMDXXXX.Del mese di Ottobre.” In aproemio, or preface, the author explains the manner of applying his “piacevole inventione,” which is nothing more than a mode of resolving questions by cards, and was probably suggested by Fanti’s Triompho di Fortuna, of which some account is given at page 315.

VI.67Papillon, Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 137.

VI.68This catalogue is printed in the second volume of Heineken’s Nachrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-Sachen, 8vo. Leipzig, 1768-1769. This work, which appeared two years before his Idée Générale d’une Collection complette d’Estampes, contains much information on the early history of art, which is not to be found in the latter. All the fac-similes of old engravings in the Idée Générale originally appeared in the Nachrichten. Heineken, in the first volume of this work, p. 340, mentions Porta’s cut, but says nothing of its being copied from a design by Raffaele.

VI.69Heineken, in his Nachrichten, 1er. Theil, S. 340, says that Joseph Porta “was a pupil ofCecchinoSalviati, who is not to be confounded withFrancescoSalviati;” and yet in his Idée Générale, published subsequently, page 134, we find “Francesco del Salviati, autrement Rossi, de Florence, et son disciple Giuseppe Porta, appellé communément Giuseppe Salviati.” Heineken, in his first work, committed the mistake of supposing that Francesco Salviati’s to-name was the Christian name of another person. In Huber’s Notice Générale des Graveurs et Peintres, Francis Salviati appears as “François Cecchini, dit Salviati.”

VI.70The first forty-six cuts are the best, generally, both in design and execution. The others, commencing at page 108, are illustrative of the sayings and doctrines of ancient philosophers and moralists, and one or two of the cuts are repeated. In this portion of the work, each page, except what is occupied by the cut, is filled with explanatory or illustrative verses arranged in triplets.

VI.71The first hundred and seven pages of the work are chiefly filled with similar figures of cards variously combined, with short references. How Marcolini’s pleasant invention is to be applied to discover the secrets of Fate, I have not been able to comprehend.

VI.72The following is a literal copy of the title: “Libro di M. Giovam Battista Palatino, Cittadino Romano, Nelqual s’insegna à Scriver ogni sorte lettera, Antica & Moderna, di qualunque natione, con le sue regole, & misure, & essempi: Et con un breve, et util Discorso de le Cifre: Riveduto novamente, & corretto dal proprio Autore. Con la giunta di quindici tavole bellissime.” At the end of the work is the imprint: “In Roma per Valerio Dorico alla Chiavica de Santa Lucia. Ad Instantia de M. Giovan della Gatta. L’AnnoM.D.LXI.” 4to. Papillon says that the work first appeared in 1540, and was reprinted in 1545, 1547, 1548, 1550, 1553, and 1556. An edition was also published at Venice in 1588.

VI.73There is a curious allusion to aRebusin Horace, Satyr. Lib. I. Sat. V., Vers. 88, which has escaped the notice of all his commentators:

“Quatuor hinc rapimur viginti et millia rhedis,Mansuri oppidulo, quod versu dicere non est,Signis perfacile est.”

“Quatuor hinc rapimur viginti et millia rhedis,

Mansuri oppidulo, quod versu dicere non est,

Signis perfacile est.”

The place which he did not think proper to name was undoubtedly Asculum, whose situation exactly corresponds with the distance fromTrivicum, where he rested the preceding night. From the manner in which Horace alludes to thesigna—asandculum—of which the name is composed, it seems likely that a certain vulgar benison was not unknown at Rome in the age of Augustus.

VI.74Remaines concerning Britaine, with additions by John Philpot, Somerset Herald, p. 164. Edit. 1636.

VI.75Papillon, who speaks highly of the execution of the cuts ascribed to Bernard Solomon, admits that they want effect. “La gravure,” says he, speaking of the cuts contained in ‘Quadrins Historiques de la Bible,’ “est fort belle, excepté qu’elle manque de clair obscur, parce que les tailles sont presque toutes de la même teinte, ce qui fait que les lointains ne fuyent pas assez. C’est le seul defaut des gravures de Bernard Salomon; ce qui lui a été commun avec plus de quarante autres graveurs en bois de son temps.”—Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 209.

VI.76Several editions of Alciat’s Emblems and Claude Paradin’s Devises Heroïques were published at Lyons in the sixteenth century. The first edition of the latter work was printed there by Jean de Tournes, in 1557, 8vo.

VI.77The following explanatory title occurs on the first cut: “Ces moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz avecq’ les Regions y appartenantes, ont este au vif contrefactez par Pierre Coeck d’Alost, luy estant en Turquie, l’an de Jesu ChristM.D.33. Lequel assy de sa main propre a pourtraict ces figures duysantes à l’impression d’ycelles.” From another of the cuts we thus learn the time of his death: “Marie Verhulst vefue du dict Pierre d’Alost, trespasse en l’anneMDL, a faict imprimer les dicts figures soubz Grace et Privilege de l’Imperialle Maiestie. En l’AnnMCCCCCLIII.”

VI.78This interesting specimen of the combined arts of wood engraving and printing formerly belonged to the late Mr. Robert Branston, wood engraver, who executed several of the chiaro-scuros, and imitations of coloured drawings, in Savage’s work on Decorative Printing. It is now in the possession of his son, Mr. Frederick Branston, who is of the same profession as his father.

VI.79The title-page of this work is printed in three colours,—black, sepia, and green. The black ornamental outlines are from an etched plate; the sepia and green colours are printed from wood-blocks. An edition of this work, enlarged by Gevartius, with portraits in two colours, and entirely engraved on wood, was printed at Antwerp in 1645.

VI.80Tom. i. p. 129. Paris, 1753.

VI.81The following is a copy of the title: “Underweisung der Proportzion und Stellung der Possen, liegent und stehent; abgestochen wie man das vor augen sieht, in dem puchlein, durch Erhart Schon von Norrenberg; für die Jungen gesellen und Jungen zu unterrichtung die zu der Kunst lieb tragen. In den druck gepracht, 1538.”

VI.82This last letter contains the markSA, which is to be found on some of the cuts in the editions of the Dance of Death printed at Cologne, 1555-1572.

VI.83The title is as follows: “Johan. Posthii Germershemii Tetrasticha in Ovidii Metam. Lib. xv. Quibus accesserunt Vergilii Solis figuræ elegantissimæ, primum in lucem editæ.—Schöne Figuren, auss dem fürtrefflichen Poeten Ovidio, allen Malern, Goldtschmiden, und Bildthauern, zu nutz und gutem mit fleiss gerissen durch Vergilium Solis, und mit Teutschen Reimen kürtzlich erkläret, dergleichein vormals im Druck nie aussgangen, Durch Johan. Posthium von Germerssheim.M.D.LXIX.”

VI.84Hans Sachs, whose poetical works might vie in quantity with those of Lope Vega, was born at Nuremberg in 1494. Notwithstanding the immense number of verses which he composed, he did not trust to his profession of Meistersänger for the means of living, but continued to carry on his business as a shoemaker till his death, which happened in 1576. His verses were much admired by his contemporaries; and between 1570 and 1579, a collection of his works was published in five volumes folio. Several short pieces by him were originally printed as “broadsides,” with an ornamental or illustrative cut at the top.

VI.85Papillon, who appears to have been extremely wishful to swell his catalogue of wood engravers, describes Jost Amman of Zurich and Jost Amman of Nuremberg as two different persons.

VI.86Heineken, Idée Générale, p. 244.

VI.87The following is the title of the edition of 1568;—that of 1574 is somewhat different. “ΠΑΝΟΠΛΙΑomnium Illiberalium mechanicarum aut sedentariarum artium, continens quotquot unquam vel a veteribus, aut nostri etiam seculi celebritate excogitari potuerunt, breviter et dilucide confecta: carminum liber primus, tum mira varietate rerum vocabulorumque novo more excogitatorum copia perquam utilis, lectuque jucundus. Accesserunt etiam venustissimæ Imagines omnes omnium artificum negociantes ad vivum lectori representantes, antehac nec visæ nec unquam æditæ: per Hartman Schopperum, Novoforens. Noricum.—Frankofurti ad Moenum, cum privelegio Cæsario,M.D.LXVIII.”

VI.88TheBriefmalers, though at that time evidently distinct from theFormschneiders, still continued toprintwood-cuts. On several large wood-cuts with the dates 1553 and 1554 we find the words, “Gedrukt zu Nürnberg durch Hanns Glaser,Brieffmaler.”

VI.89See the mark C. S. at page 413.

VI.90This work is entitled “Kunstbüchlein,” and consists entirely of cuts without any explanatory letter-press. The first cut consists of a group of heads, drawn and engraved with great spirit. On what appears something like a slab of stone or wood—most unmeaningly and awkwardly introduced—are Jost Amman’s initials, I.A., towards the top, and lower down the mark,MFwhich is doubtless that of the engraver. This mark, with a figure of a graver underneath, occurs on several of the other cuts. The three following marks, with a graver underneath each, also occur: L. F. C.S. G. H. These facts are sufficient to prove that Jost Amman was not the engraver of the cuts which he designed. In the edition of 1599 the cuts are said to have beendrawnby “the late most excellent and celebrated artist, Jost Amman of Nuremberg.”

VI.91It is uncertain if James I. or James II. be meant. According to Sir Walter Scott, Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II, visited Scotland in 1448, when James II.—if Chalmers be correct, Caledonia, vol. i. p. 831,—was scarcely nineteen, and when his appearance was not likely to correspond with the learned prelate’s description,—“hominem quadratum et multa pinguedine gravem.”

VI.92“Avium præcipuarum, quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, brevis et succincta historia. Per Dn. Gulielmum Turnerum, artium et medicinæ doctorem,” 8vo. Coloniæ,M.D.XLIIII, fol. 9b.

VI.93In Professor Christ’s Dictionary of Monograms this mark is ascribed, though doubtfully, to “Manuel Deutsch.” It is certainly not the mark of Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch of Bern, for he died several years before 1548, the date on several of the cuts with the mark H.R. M.D. in Munster’s Cosmography, and which date evidently relates to the year in which the artist made the drawing. There can be no doubt that those four letters belong to a single name, for some of the cuts in which they occur also contain the mark of an engraver.

VI.94A map of Russia, engraved wholly on wood, in a work entitled “Commentari della Moscovia e parimente della Russia,” &c. translated from the Latin of Sigmund, Baron von Herberstein, printed at Venice, 4to. 1550, is much superior in point of appearance to the best in the work of Munster. This map, which is of folio size, appears to have been constructed by “Giacomo Gastaldo, Piamontese, Cosmographo in Venetia.” The work also contains six wood-cuts, which afford some curious specimens of Russian and Tartar arms and costume.

VI.95Philologicarum Epistolarum Centuria una, ex Bibliotheca M. H. Goldasti, p. 165. 8vo. Francofurti, 1610.

VI.96According to this method, certain words, together with radices and terminations of frequent occurrence, were cast entire, and not in separate letters, and placed in cases in such an order that the compositor could as “readily possess himself of the Type of a word as of the Type of a single letter.” This method, for which a patent was obtained, is explained in a pamphlet entitled “An Introduction to Logography: or the Art of Arranging and Composing for Printing with Words entire, their Radices and Terminations, instead of single Letters. By Henry Johnson: London, printed Logographically, and sold by J. Walter, bookseller, Charing Cross, and J. Sewell, Cornhill,M.DCC.LXXXIII.” Several works were printed in this manner, and among others an edition of Anderson’s History of Commerce, 4 vols. 4to. 1787-1789, by John Walter, at the Logographic Press, Printing-House-Square, Blackfriars. Logography has long been abandoned. The following account of this art is given in H. G. Bohn’s Lecture on Printing, pp. 88, 89. “Something akin to stereotyping is another mode of printing called Logography, invented by the late Mr. Walter, of theTimes, in 1783, and for which he took out a patent. This means a system of printing from type cast in words instead of single letters, which it was thought would save time and corrections when applied to newspapers, but it was not found to answer. A joke of the time was a supposed order to the typefounder for some words of frequent occurrence, which ran thus:—‘Please send me a hundred-weight, sorted, of murder, fire, dreadful robbery, atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, alarming explosion, melancholy accident; an assortment of honourable member, whig, tory, hot, cold, wet, dry; half-a-hundred weight, made up in pounds, of butter, cheese, beef, mutton, tripe, mustard, soap, rain, &c.; and a few devils, angels, women, groans, hisses, &c.’ This method of printing did not succeed: for if twenty-four letters will give six hundred sextillions of combinations, no printing office could keep a sufficient assortment of even popular words.”

VI.97See an edition of Ptolemy, printed at Venice by Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, in 1511, previously noticed at page 203.

VI.98Some account of this work is given at page 200.

VI.99At page 204 it is stated, on the authority of Breitkopf, that those maps were engraved by Ægidius Diest. Ortelius himself says in the preface that they were engraved by “Francis Hogenberg, Ferdinand and Ambrose Arsens, and others.”

VI.100The portrait of Queen Elizabeth appears on the title; the Earl of Leicester’s is prefixed to the Book of Joshua; and Lord Burleigh’s is given, with a large initial B, at the beginning of the first psalm. In the second edition, 1572, the portrait of Lord Burleigh is omitted, and the impressions of the other two are much inferior to those in the first edition in consequence of the plates being worn. Many of the cuts in the second edition are quite different from those in the first, and generally inferior to the cuts for which they are substituted.

VI.101“Humphrey Cole, as he says himself, was born in the North of England, andpertayned to the mint in the Tower, 1572. I suppose he was one of the engravers thatpertaynedto Archbishop Parker, for this edition was called Matthew Parker’s Bible. I hope the flattery of the favourites was the incense of the engraver!” Catalogue of Engravers, p. 16. Edit. 1794.—Walpole does not appear to have paid the least attention to the engraver’s merits—supposing, as he does, the portraits to have been executed by him:—he sneers at him because he had engraved certain portraits for aBible, and because he was supposed to have been patronised by abishop. A more liberal writer on art would have praised Parker, although he were anarchbishop, for his patronage of a native engraver.

VI.102“Augustinus Ryther,Anglus,” occurs on the maps of Cumberland and Westmorland, Gloucester, and Yorkshire. Ryther afterwards kept a bookseller’s shop in Leadenhall-street. He engraved some maps and charts, which were published about 1588. On the map of the county of Hertford, Reynolds’s name occurs thus: “Nicholas Reynoldus, Londinensis, sculpsit.” Several of those maps were engraved by Remigius Hogenberg, one of the engravers who are said to have been employed by Archbishop Parker in his palace at Lambeth.

VI.103This little work, entitled “Commentarioli Britannicæ Descriptionis Fragmentum,” was sent by the author to Ortelius, and the prefatory address is dated Denbigh, in North Wales, 30th August 1568. A translation of it, under the title of a “Breviary of Britain,” was printed at London in 1573.—Lhuyd had only furnished Ortelius with materials for the construction of the map of England.

VI.104The name of “Thomas Raynalde, Physition,” is not to be found in the edition of 1540. The title of the work is, “The byrth of Mankynd, newly translated out of Latin into Englysshe. In the which is entreated of all suche thynges the which chaunce to women in theyr labor,” &c. At folio vi. there is an address from Richard Jonas, “Unto the most gracious, and in all goodnesse most excellent vertuous Lady Quene Katheryne, wyfe and most derely belovyd spouse unto the moste myghty sapient Christen prynce, Kynge Henry the VIII.”—This “most excellent vertuous lady” wasCatherine Howard. The imprint at the end of the work is as follows: “Imprynted at London, by T. R, Anno Domini,M.CCCCC.XL.” Raynalde’s name first appears in the second edition, 1545. Between 1540 and 1600 there were at least eight editions of this work printed in London.

VI.105At the end of the dedication to Henry VIII. he signs himself “Thomas Geminus, Lysiensis.”

VI.106In the edition of 1559 there is a large wood-cut—“Interiorum corporis humani partium viva delineatio”—with the mark R. S. and a graver underneath. In this cut the interior parts of the body are impressed on separate slips, which are pasted, by one edge, at the side of the figure. Those slips on being raised show the different parts as they occur on dissection.

VI.107In Herbert’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities, vol. iii. p. 1681, both parts of this work are said to have engraved titles, and the arms of Sir C. Hatton are said to occur at the back of the title to the first part. The work contains twenty-two maps and charts, probably copied from the original Dutch edition of Wagenar, who was a native of Enchuysen. There is no printer’s name in the English edition.

VI.108Walpole erroneously states that “Broughton’s book was not printed till 1600,” and he says that “thecutswere probably engraved by an English artist named William Rogers.” The markWRis to be found on some of the plates of the edition of 1600, but it is to be observed that they are not the same as those in the edition of 1591. Thefirstedition of the work was printed in 1588.

VI.109The following is the title of this work: “The Cosmographical Glasse, conteinyng the pleasant Principles of Cosmographie, Geographie, Hydrographie or Navigation. Compiled by William Cuningham, Doctor in Physicke. Excussum Londini in officina Joan. Daii, Anno 1559.

In this Glasse, if you will beholdeThe starry skie and yearth so wide,The seas also, with the windes so colde,Yea, and thy selfe all these to guide:What this Type mean first learne a right,So shall the gayne thy travaill quight.”

In this Glasse, if you will beholde

The starry skie and yearth so wide,

The seas also, with the windes so colde,

Yea, and thy selfe all these to guide:

What this Type mean first learne a right,

So shall the gayne thy travaill quight.”

The “Type” mentioned in these verses relates to the various allegorical and other figures in the engraved title-page.

VI.110This mark, which occurs in two other cuts of large letters in the Cosmographical Glasse, is also to be found on a large ornamented letter in Robert Record’s Castle of Knowledge, folio, printed at London, by Reginald Wolfe, 1556. This work, like that of Cuningham, is a treatise on Geography. A mark, I. C., with a graver between the letters, occurs frequently in cuts which ornament the margins of a work entitled “A Book of Christian Prayers,” &c. 4to. first printed by John Day in 1569. It is usually called “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book.” In Herbert’s edition of the Typographical Antiquities it is erroneously stated that such of the cuts as relate to the History of Christ are “after Albert Durer and his wife,Agnes Frey.” They arenotcopied from any cuts designed by Albert Durer, and his wife most certainly neither drew nor engraved on wood. It is also incorrectly stated “that a Dance of Death, in the same work, is after Hans Holbein.”—The cuts in this work are very unequal in point of execution. The best are those of the Senses—without any mark—Sight, Hearing, Taste, Smelling, and Touch. A mark not unlike that in the letter A, from Cuningham’s Cosmographical Glass, occurs on several of the smaller cuts.

VI.111This work contains a considerable number of wood-cuts, all undoubtedly designed and engraved in England. Two of the best are Henry VIII, attended by his council, giving his sanction to the publication of the Bible in English, with the mark I. F.; and a view of Windsor Castle, with the mark M. D. Both these cuts are in the second volume of the edition of 1576.

VI.112Dr. Dibdin, in his Preliminary Disquisition on Early Engraving and Ornamental Printing, in his edition of Ames and Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities, has given several curious specimens of large ornamented capitals.

VI.113Bibliographical Decameron, vol. i. p. 289.

VI.114“The pavement of this cathedral is the work of a succession of artists from Duccio down to Meccarino, who have produced the effect of the richest mosaic, merely by inserting grey marble into white, and hatching both with black mastic. The grandest composition is the History of Abraham, a figure which is unfortunately multiplied in the same compartments; but, when grasping the knife, the patriarch is truly sublime. These works lay exposed at least for a hundred years to the general tread, and have been rather improved than defaced by the attrition; for one female figure which had never been trodden looks harsher than the rest. Those of the choir were opportunely covered two centuries ago.”—Forsyth’s Italy, p. 102, 2nd Edit.

VI.115The following is the title of this work, which is a large octavo: “De gli Habiti Antichi et Moderni di diverse Parti del Mondo Libri due, fatti da Caesare Vecellio, & con Discorsi da lui dichiriati. In Venetia,MD.XC.” This work is thus mentioned in the notes to Rogers’s Italy: “Among the Habiti Antichi, in that admirable book of wood-cuts ascribed to Titian, (A. D. 1590,) there is one entitled Sposa Venetiana à Castello. It was taken from an old painting in the Scuola di S. Giovanni Evangelista, and by the writer is believed to represent one of the brides here described.”—Italy, p. 257, note. Edit. 1830.

VI.116A dog performing the same act occurs as a tail-piece in the first edition of Bewick’s Quadrupeds, 1790, page 310.

VI.117I have seen a large head, which at first sight might be mistaken for an impression from a wood-block, executed by means of a stencil after a design of Correggio. It was unquestionably old, and was about three feet high by two and a half wide.

VI.118The following is Papillon’s description of this cut: “Une Estampe que je possede, et que l’on regarde assez indifférement, est le Laocoon gravé en bois par le Titien, représenté sous la figure d’un singe et ses deux petits entourés de serpens. Il fit ce morceau pour railler les Peintres de son temps qui étudoient cette figure et les Statues antiques; et il prétendit démontrer par cette Estampe qu’ils ressembloient aux singes, lesquels ne font qu’imiter ce qu’ils voyent, sans rien inventer d’eux mêmes.”—Traité de la Gravure en Bois, tom. i. p. 160.

VI.119There is also in the Print Room of the British Museum a curious wood-cut, of large size, engraved on several blocks, apparently of the time of James I. The title at the top, in Latin and English, is as follows: “Humanæ vitæ imago olim ab Apelle in tabula quadam depicta. The image of the lyfe of man that was painted in a table by Apelles.” The subject, however, is not so much a general representation of the life of man in its several stages, as an allegorical representation of the evils attendant on sensual indulgence. Several of the figures are designed with great spirit, and the explanations underneath the principal are engraved on the same block, in Latin and English. It seems likely that this cut was engraved for the purpose of being pasted or hung against a wall. It is about five feet four inches wide by about three feet high. Some of the figures are engraved with considerable spirit, but the groups want that well-contrasted light and shade which give such effect to the large cuts of Durer and Burgmair. It is likely that large cuts of this kind were intended to be pasted on the walls of rooms, to serve at once for instruction and ornament, like “King Charles’s Golden Rules and the Royal Game of Goose” in later times.—To this note Mr. Jackson adds in his annotated copy: “The drawing appears to have been executed by an artist who was rather partial to cross-hatching, and the engraving by one who knew how to render every line before him with a degree of sharpness and delicacy by no means common at that period.”

VI.120The original cut is twenty-three inches and a half wide by eighteen inches high.

VI.121The original is eighteen inches wide by thirteen inches and a half high, including the margin with the inscription “Cum privilegiis,” which is engraved on the same block.

VI.122Papillon, tom. i. p. 274-276, calls this engraverC. S. Vichem; and charges Professor Christ with confounding threeSichemswith threeVichems. The name at the bottom of the cut, in the following page, is most certainly intended forC. V. Sichem.

VI.123The twelfth volume of Bartsch’s Peintre-Graveur contains an ample list of Italian chiaro-scuros, together with the names of the painters and engravers.

VI.124The only perfect copy which I have seen of this little work is in Spanish. The title is as follows: “La Perpetua Cruz, o Passion de Jesu Christo Nuestro Señor, desde el principio de su encarnacion hasta su muerte. Representada en quarenta estampas que se reparten de balde, y explicada con differentes razones y oraciones de devocion. En Amberes, en la emprenta de Cornelio Woons, 1650.” The cuts were engraved at the instance of the Archbishop of Malines. Before the Spanish edition appeared, thirty thousand copies of the work in Flemish and Latin had already been circulated.

VI.125In Walpole’s Catalogue of Engravers there is the following notice of the elder Switzer: “In the Harleian Library was a set of wooden cuts, representing the broad seals of England from the conquest to James I. inclusive, neatly executed. Vertue says this was the sole impression he had seen, and believed that they were cut by Chr. Switzer, and that these plates were copied by Hollar for Sandford. Switzer also cut the coins and seals in Speed’s History of Britain, 1614 [1611], from the originals in the Cottonian Collection. Speed calls himthe most exquisite and curious hand of that age. He probably engraved the botanic figures for Lobel’s Observations, and the plates [cuts] for Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris, 1629. Chr. Switzer’s works have sometimes been confounded with his son’s, who was of both his names.”—Catalogue of Engravers, p. 18 note, Edit. 1794. It is doubtful if the elder Switzer’s Christian name were Christopher. The initial in Parkinson’s Paradisus Terrestris is an A. It is, however, possible that this letter may be intended for a Latin preposition, and not for the first letter of the engraver’s Christian name.

VI.126The cuts in an edition of “The most Delightful History of Reynard the Fox,” 4to. London, printed for Thomas Passinger, 1681, are scarcely superior to this cut in point of execution, though it must be confessed that the figures are generally in better “keeping.”

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