Chapter 4

What constitutes a true incunable cannot be defined in a sentence. We must consider the country or city as well as the book, the individual man as well as the art of which he was perhaps a belated exponent. The same piece of printing may have much more value and interest if we can prove that it was produced in one place rather than another. After the publication of hisIndex, Mr. Proctor satisfied himself that some anonymous books in roman type which he had classed as the work of an unidentified press at Naples were really among the earliest specimens of Palmart’s typography in Spain, and one does not need to be a Spaniard to appreciate the distinction thus added to them. If sentiment is to count for anything we must admit the interest of the first books printed in any country which possesses an important history and literature—if only because we may legitimately be curious to know on what books a printer, with all the extant literature to choose from, ventured his capital as likely in that particular country and time to bring him the quickest and most profitable return. That the first large book in Germany was a Bible, the first books in Italy Latin classics, the first produced for the English market one that we must call an historical romance, cannot be regarded as merely insignificant. Nor are the differences in the types and appearance of the page unimportant, for these also help to illustrate national characteristics.

If this is true of the early books printed in any country, it is also true in only slightly less degree of those which first appeared in any great city which afterwards became a centre of printing. Strassburg, Cologne, and Nuremberg, Rome, Venice, and Florence, Paris and Lyon, Antwerp and London (if we may be permitted for once to ignore the separate existence of Westminster), each has its own individuality, and in each case it is interesting to see with what wares, and in what form, the first printers endeavoured to open its purse-strings. But when we come to towns and townlets some distinction seems needed. I may be misled by secret sympathy with that often scholarly, too often impecunious figure, the local antiquary. To him the first book printed in his native townlet, though by a printer merely stopping on his way between one great city and another, must needs be of interest, and it is hard that its price should be forced beyond his reach by the competition between dealers keen to do business with a rich collector to whom the book will have none of the fragrance it would possess for him. Typographical itinerancy, this printing by the roadside, as we may almost call it, must needs be illustrated in great collections, like any other habit of the early printers. But the ordinary private collector can surely dispense with buying books because they have been printed in places which have no associations for him, of which perhaps he has never heard.

As for the individual man, if we would keep any oases green in what may easily become a sandy desert, we must surely treasure every trace of his personality. One large element in the charm of incunabula is the human interest of difficulties overcome, and wherever a craftsman began work by cutting a distinctive type to suit the calligraphic fashion of the neighbourhood, at whatever date he started, his books will still have some interest. When he becomes articulate and tells us of his difficulties, or boasts of how they have been overcome, we may value his work still higher. As the first book printed at Florence, the Commentaryof Servius on Virgil needs no added attraction, and yet how much its charm is enhanced by its printers’ addresses to the reader. Here is the second of them roughly Englished:

To the Reader. Bernardino Cennini, by universal allowance a most excellent goldsmith, and Domenico his son, a youth of very good ability, have been the printers. Pietro, son of the aforesaid Bernardo, has acted as corrector, and has made a collation with many very ancient copies. His first anxiety was that nothing by another hand should be ascribed to Servius, that nothing which very old copies showed to be the work of Honoratus should be cut down or omitted. Since it pleases many readers to insert Greek words with their own hand, and in their own fashion, and these in ancient codices are very few, and the accents are very difficult to mark in printing he determined that spaces should be left for the purpose. But since nothing of man’s making is perfect, it must needs be accounted enough if these books (as we earnestly hope) are found exceptionally correct. The work was finished at Florence on October 5, 1472.

It is impossible to read a colophon such as this without feeling ourselves in the very atmosphere of the printing house, with the various members of the printer’s family at work around us. Blank spaces are found in many early books where Greek quotations occurred in the manuscripts from which they were printed. But it was not every printer who took so much trouble as Cennini to justify the omission.

As many as twenty-one years later, when printing in the great towns was becoming merely mechanical, we find the same personal note in a little grammar-book printed at Acqui. Here the colophon tells us:

The Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu (God be praised!) comes to a happy end. It has been printed amid enough inconveniences, since of several things belonging to this art the printer, in making a beginning with it, could obtain no proper supply, owing to the plague raging at Genoa, Asti and elsewhere. Now this same work has been corrected by the prior Venturinus, a distinguishedgrammarian, and that so diligently that whereas previously the Doctrinale in many places seemed by the fault of booksellers too little corrected, now by the application of his care and diligence it will reach men’s hands in the most correct form possible. After this date books will be printed in type of another kind, and elegantly, I trow; for both artificers and a sufficiency of other things of which hitherto the putter forth has been in need he now possesses by the gift of God, Who disposes all things according to the judgement of His will.

Late as he appeared and small as was the town at which he produced his one book—his hopes and promises as to others seem to have come to naught—this man had the true pioneer spirit, and deserves to be remembered for it.

Of a different kind, but no less, is the interest in what is perhaps my own favourite colophon, that recording the death of Gerard Leeu at Antwerp, while engaged in printing an edition ofThe Chronicles of Englandfor the English market.

Here ben endyd the Cronycles of the Reame of Englond, with their apperteignaunces. Enprentyd in the Duchy of Braband in the towne of Andewarpe In the yere of our Lord M.cccc.xciij. By maistir Gerard de leew a man of grete wysedom in all maner of kunnyng: whych nowe is come from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete harme for many [a] poure man. On whos sowle God almyghty for hys hygh grace haue mercy. Amen.

Leeu had been killed accidentally by one of his workmen in the course of a dispute, and this testimonial to him in the colophon, which reads as if the compositor had slipped it in of his own accord, is very gracious and touching in its simplicity.

Just as the possession of a personal colophon brings a book within a circle of interest to which it otherwise would not have approached, so we may justly value a piece of printing all the more if it chances, through any accident, to throw light on the printer’s methods. I have felt a peculiar affection for an edition of Valerius Maximus, printed by Schoeffer in 1471, ever since I discovered thata change in the form of the punctuation at certain points of the book makes it possible to work out the number of presses on which it was being printed, the order in which the sheets were being set up, and how quickly the type of the worked pages was distributed. The slowness of the presswork in the simple form of press at first used obliged the printers to keep several presses, sometimes as many as six, occupied with different sections of the same book, and the trouble they were given to make the end of one section join neatly to the beginning of the next has left many traces. Any book which thus lets us into the secrets of the early printing offices possesses in a very high degree the charm which should attach to an incunable, if that hardly used word is to retain, as it should, any reference to the infancy of printing. But more will be said as to this aspect of early books in our next chapter.

25Two editions of Boner’sEdelstein, both illustrated with over a hundred woodcuts, one dated 14th February, 1461 (copy at Wolfenbüttel), the other undated (Royal Library, Berlin);Die Historij von Joseph, Danielis, Judith, Hester,dated in rhyming verse 1462 “nat lang nach Sand Walpurgentag” (Rylands Library and Bibliothèque Nationale); theBelial seu Consolatio peccatorumof Jacobus de Theramo (Rylands and Germanisches Museum, Nuremberg); two issues of a GermanBiblia Pauperumwith thirty-four woodcuts (both at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the first also at Rylands and Wolfenbüttel); the same work in Latin (Rylands); lastly two editions of a poem calledRechtstreit des Menschen mit dem Tode(both at Wolfenbüttel, the second also at the Bibliothèque Nationale).26In its colophon the book is said to have been “a docto viro Bertolommeo Mates conditus et per P. Johannem Matoses Christi ministrum presbiterumque castigatus et emendatus sub impensis Guillermi ros et mira arte impressa per Johannem Gherlinc alamanum.” Gherlinc is only heard of again in 1494, and then not at Barcelona.

26In its colophon the book is said to have been “a docto viro Bertolommeo Mates conditus et per P. Johannem Matoses Christi ministrum presbiterumque castigatus et emendatus sub impensis Guillermi ros et mira arte impressa per Johannem Gherlinc alamanum.” Gherlinc is only heard of again in 1494, and then not at Barcelona.

CHAPTER VI

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING

Onegreat cause of changes of fashion in book-collecting is that after any particular class of book has been hotly competed for by one generation of book-lovers, all the best prizes gradually get locked up in great public or private collections, and come so seldom into the market that new collectors prefer to take up some other department rather than one in which it is impossible for them to attain any striking success. The first-fruits of printing, if reckoned strictly chronologically, are probably as nearly exhausted as any class of book which can be named. No matter how rich a man may be, the chances of his ever obtaining a copy of the Thirty-six Line Bible, the 1457 Psalter, or the first book printed at Venice, are infinitesimally small. Other incunabula, if not hopelessly out of reach even of the very rich, are only likely to be acquired after many years of waiting and a heavy expenditure when the moment of possible acquisition arrives. Many of the books hitherto here mentioned belong to this class. And yet, from what may be called the logical as opposed to the chronological standpoint, incunabula little, if at all, less interesting are still to be obtained at quite small prices by any one who knows for what to look. Any collector who sets himself to illustrate the evolution of the printed book from its manuscript predecessors, and the ways of the early printers, will find that he has undertaken no impossible task, though one which will need considerable pursuit and good taste and judgment in the selection of appropriate specimens.

Roughly speaking, it took about a century for printedbooks to shake off the influence of manuscript and establish their own traditions. The earliest books had no titlepage, no head-title, no running title, no pagination, and no printed chapter-headings, also no printed initials or illustrations, blank spaces being left often for the one and occasionally for the other to be supplied by hand. At the time when printing was invented the book trade in many large cities had attained a high degree of organization, so that the work of the calligrapher or scribe was clearly distinguished from that of the luminer or illuminator, and even from that of the rubricator (rubrisher). Take, for instance, this Bury St. Edmunds bill of 1467 for a Psalter, preserved among the Paston Letters:

It is possible that the work in this case was all done by one man, though it is equally possible that several were engaged on it, under the direction of a master-scrivener, but in either case the fact that vignettes and demi-vignettes, psalter letters (i.e. the small red letters at the beginning of each verse of a psalm, sometimes called versals), the mysterious “p’ms letters” (possibly the dabs of colour bestowed on small initials), the writingof the text, the writing of the calendar, the musical notation, and the drawing and flourishing the capitals, were all charged separately, at so much a piece or so much a hundred, shows how distinct each operation was kept. Partly, no doubt, from policy, so as not to rouse the wrath of more than one industry at a time, partly to save themselves trouble and expense, the earliest printers, with few exceptions, set themselves to supplant only the calligrapher, and sold their books with all the blanks and spaces, which the most modest or perfunctory scribe could have left to be filled by his kindred craftsmen.

No better starting-point for a typographical collection could be desired than fine copies of two well-printed books in which the printer has confined himself severely to reproducing the text, leaving all headings, capitals, and ornaments to be supplied by hand. In one (as in the page from a book of Jenson’s, which forms the illustration to this chapter, Plate VII) the blanks should remain blanks (as more especially in early books printed in Italy they often did remain), in the other they should have been filled in with red ink or colours by a rubricator. The owner of two such volumes is really as much at the fountain-head as the possessor of the Mainz Indulgences of 1454, or any still earlier document that may yet be found.27This is the logical beginning, and the logic of history is quite as interesting as the chronology.

From the starting-point of the book of which the printer printed nothing but the text the collector can advance in many different directions. There was no regular and unbroken progress in the development of the modern form of book, nor does it matter greatly that the examples of any particular improvement should be either absolutely or nearly the earliest. The main thing is that they should be good illustrations of the special featurefor which they are acquired. The problem how to dispense with the aid of a rubricator had to be faced by countless printers in many different towns, for rubricating by hand must have added very considerably to the cost of a book. The obvious thing to do was to print in red all the headings, chapter-numbers, etc., which the rubricator used to add in that colour. But this was both expensive and troublesome, as it involved two printings and the placing of the paper in exactly the same position in the press in each. Caxton and one or two other early printers tried to avoid this double printing and difficulty of registration by putting on both red and black ink at the same time—very probably, where they came close together, they were rubbed on with a finger—but this so often resulted in smudges and lines half of one colour, half of another, that it was soon abandoned. Double printing was mostly soon abandoned also, except by the most expert men. It was tried and abandoned by the printer of the Forty-two Line Bible, though subsequently Fust and Schoeffer completely mastered it. Between 1472 and 1474 it was tried and abandoned by almost every printer in Strassburg. The difficulty was generally28overcome by substituting, for red ink used with type of the same size or face as the text, type of a larger size or heavier face, which could be printed in black ink with the text and yet stand out sufficiently clearly from it to catch the eye.

The need for this differentiation accelerated the tendency to reduce the size of types, which was doubtless in the first place dictated by a desire for economy. The earlier German text-types for ordinary books very commonly measure about 6 mm. a line. To enable small differences to be shown they are quoted in the British Museum Catalogue of Incunabula by the measurementsof twenty lines, and many of the early Mainz and Strassburg types range closely round the number 120. These large text-types are often the only ones used in a book, notes or other accompaniments of the text being clumsily indicated by brackets or spaces. The better printers, however, gradually imitated Fust and Schoeffer, and along with their 120 text-types used smaller commentary types measuring about 4 to 4½ mm. a line, or from 80 to 90 mm. for twenty lines. In the great folio commentaries on the Canon and Civil Law a very fine effect is produced by two short columns of text in large type being placed two-thirds way up the page and then completely surrounded by the commentary in smaller type, also in double columns. But the economy of using the smaller type for the text of books without commentary was quickly perceived, and along with 4 to 4½ mm. small text-types, heavy and often rather fantastic types of just twice this size (8 to 9 mm. a line, 160 to 180 mm. to twenty lines) came into use for headings, and the opening words of books and chapters. The same course was followed with respect to headlines, when it was desired to add these to a book without the aid of a scribe. Eggestein printed one book with headlines in red, but the same heavy type which was used for chapter headings was soon used for headlines, and also, with very ugly effect, for numbering the leaves.

In considering what specimens of printing to collect Englishmen who have been accustomed for more than two centuries to nothing but roman types may well be bewildered, as they look through any volume of facsimiles, by the extraordinary variety of the founts. The main reasons for this variety may be sought (1) in the dependence of the first printers on the styles of writing which they found in vogue at the time, and in the countries and towns where they made their ventures; and (2) in the different styles considered appropriate to different classes of books—Latin and vernacular, liturgical and secular, etc. Even now, when bookhands canhardly be said to exist, the varieties of handwriting are endless, and there are strongly marked differences between those of one country and another. In the fifteenth century, when there was less intercommunication between distant countries, the differences were even greater. As to this, however, it is possible to make some distinctions. The unifying effect of the Church is seen in the smaller range of variations in the books for liturgical use, and the fellowship of scholars exercised at least some influence in the same direction. In Italy, the home of ancient learning, the aristocratic bookhand was the fine round minuscules which had been evolved, by a conscious antiquarian revival, from the bookhand of the twelfth century, itself a revival of the Carlovingian bookhand of the eighth and ninth. Sweynheym and Pannartz, being Germans, failed in the first instance to realize the hopelessness of seeking scholarly favour with any other kind of character, and their Subiaco books are printed in a light and pleasing gothic much admired by William Morris, and used by Mr. St. John Hornby for his splendid Ashendene Dante. When they started afresh at Rome in 1467 they gave up their gothic fount and used instead a fine roman character noticeable for its use of the longʃat the end of words, a peculiarity often found in Italian manuscripts of this period. The early printers at Venice made no false start, but all used roman characters from the outset, Venetian gothic type making its first appearance in 1472. That gothic type was used at all in Italy was due partly to the difficulty found in cutting very small roman type, so that gothic was used for economy, partly to the advantages of the heavy gothic face when a contrast was needed between text and commentary.

In Germany roman types were tried by Adolf Rusch (the R-printer) at Strassburg about 1464, and by both Günther Zainer at Augsburg and Johann Zainer at Ulm, but met with no favour until in the last years of the century they were reintroduced for the books written oredited by Brant, Locher, Wimpheling, Peter Schott, and the other harbingers of the new learning. In the Netherlands John of Westphalia started with a round but rather thin roman type brought from Italy. In France the scholarly ideals of the patrons of the first Paris press were reflected in the use for the books printed at the Sorbonne of a beautiful roman type, only injured by the excessive prominence of the serifs. In Spain also the first books, those printed at Valentia by Lambert Palmart, were in roman; but in both countries gothic types long commanded the favour of the general reader, while in England their supremacy was unchallenged for a third of a century, no book entirely in roman type appearing until 1508.

As regards the æsthetic value of the different roman types in use during the fifteenth century, the superiority of the Italian is so marked that, with the exception of the first French type, the rest, from this point of view, may be neglected. Almost all the roman types used in Italy until late in the ’seventies are either beautiful or at least interesting, and it is remarkable that some of the most beautiful are found in small places like Cagli, Mondovi, Viterbo, and Aquila, or in the hands of obscure printers, such as the self-taught priest Clemente of Padua, who worked at Venice in 1471. The pre-eminence of Jenson’s fount is indisputable, though he often did it injustice by his poor presswork. But those used by John and Wendelin of Speier, and at a later date by Antonio Miscomini, were also good, as also were several of the founts used at Rome and Milan. At Naples and Bologna, on the other hand, some quite early roman founts are curiously hard and heavy.

After about 1480 roman types in Italy enter on a second stage. They no longer have the appearance of being founded directly on handwriting. Doubtless the typecutters were so used to their work that they no longer needed models, but designed new types according to their own ideas. Naturally the letters are more uniformand regular than in the earlier founts, but naturally also they have less charm, and the ordinary close-set Venetian type of the end of the century is singularly dull. Even the large roman type used by Aldus to print theHypnerotomachia Poliphiliis no real exception, as the letters are narrow for their height. A far finer fount is the large text type used by the Silbers at Rome, on both sides of 1500. This is well proportioned and beautifully round, and it is surprising that it has not yet been imitated by any modern typecutter.

When we pass from roman to gothic types there is a bewildering field from which to choose. Here again dull commercialism gained the upper hand about 1480, and towards the end of the century an ugly upright text-type of 80 mm. to twenty lines, with a fantastic headline type of twice its size, or a little more, found its way all over Germany. But types with a twenty-line measurement ranging round 120 mm., such as those of Peter Schoeffer or the Printer of Henricus Ariminensis, are often extraordinarily handsome. Both of Schoeffer’s earlier small types and the small type of Ulrich Zell at Cologne are engagingly neat, and at the opposite end there is the magnificently round gothic used by Ulrich Han at Rome.

Most of the finest gothic types were used for Latin books of law and theology, the peculiar appropriateness of roman type being considered to be confined to works appealing to classical scholars. In Germany, for some time, not much distinction was observed, but there was a tendency in classical books to use an f and long ſ starting from the level of the line, whereas in most vernacular books the tails of these letters came below the line, giving a strangely different appearance to the type. In the ’nineties a distinctively cursive type called Schwabacher, usually measuring 93 mm. to twenty lines, makes its appearance all over Germany. In Italy, both at Naples and by Ulrich Han at Rome, a very small text type, which is certainly cursive in its affinities, was used at the very outset, but found no favour. The typicalvernacular French types are also very often on a slope. The small cursive type cut for Aldus in 1501 by Francesco da Bologna was thus not quite so great a revolution as is sometimes represented. Its clearness in proportion to its size, its extreme compactness, and the handiness of the small octavos with which it was at first specially connected, gained for it a great success, and it gradually, though only gradually, usurped the name of italic, the upright Italian bookhand being distinguished from it as roman. Few treatises on printing or the development of books give any idea of the immense popularity of italics during the sixteenth century. About 1570 they seemed to have established themselves as the fashionable vernacular type both in Italy and France, and even in England whole books were printed in them. In Switzerland also and Germany they gained some hold; but gradually the tide turned, the upright bookhand regained its predominance, and italics now survive chiefly for emphasis and quotations—in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were often used for proper names—giving to the page on which they occur an unpleasantly spotty appearance. Their occasional use in prefaces and dedicatory letters is much more appropriate.

The completion of books at first by a colophon, afterwards by a titlepage, may be illustrated in the same way as that by which we have traced the evolution of the text from incompleteness to completeness and the development of different classes of types. At least one printer, Johann Mentelin of Strassburg, seems to have considered the addition of colophons as the proper business of the rubricator. While printed colophons in his books are exceptionally rare, several copies have come down to us in which full colophons have been added by hand, e.g. in a vellum copy of theSpeculum Moralein the Bibliothèque Nationale, after praise of the book, we read:

Impressumque in inclyta vrbe Argentinensium ac nitide terse emendateque resertum per honorandum dominum DominumIohannem Mentelin artis impressorie magistrum famosissimum. Anno a partu virginis salutifero millesimo quadringentesimo septuagesimo sexto. die mensis nouembris sexta.

Despite a few instances of this kind, however, it is certain that the majority of printers who omitted to print colophons to their books did so, not in the expectation that they would be supplied by hand, but in imitation of the manuscript books to which they were accustomed, in which it is distinctly exceptional to find any mention of the name of the scribe. But the men who took a pride in their new art, and who thought that their work was good enough to bring more custom to their press if their name were associated with it, took the opposite course, and so colophons from 1457 onwards are common in the best books, and may perhaps be found in about 40 per cent of the incunables that have come down to us. By the men who were skilful in using red ink they were often thus printed, and whether in red or in black, they frequently had appended to them the printer’s mark or device, which gave a very decorative finish to the book.

Nowadays, when we have been accustomed all our lives to the luxury of titlepages, it may well seem to us merely perverse to hide the title of a book, the name of the author, and information as to where, when, and by whom it was printed in a closely set paragraph at the end of the book. But if we think for a moment of how the manuscript books to which the early printers were accustomed had been produced we shall see that it was the most natural thing in the world. A scribe would take his quire of paper or vellum, and if he were a high-class scribe, mindful of the need of keeping his text clean, he would leave his first leaf blank and begin at the top of his second. But here he would begin to write straight away, sometimes with the first words of his text, sometimes with a preliminary paragraph, which may be called theIncipit, from the important word in it. In this paragraph he would give either the name of his bookor, almost as commonly, the name of the first section of it, introducing the title only incidentally.

Incipit Racionale diuinorum officiorum.Incipiunt Constitutiones Clementis pape V una cum apparatu Ioannis Andree.Marci Tullii Ciceronis Arpinatis consulisque Romani ac oratorum maximi Ad M. Tullium Ciceronem filium suum Officiorum liber incipit.Incipit epistola sancti Hieronimi ad Paulinum presbiterum de omnibus diuine historie libris.

Incipit Racionale diuinorum officiorum.

Incipiunt Constitutiones Clementis pape V una cum apparatu Ioannis Andree.

Marci Tullii Ciceronis Arpinatis consulisque Romani ac oratorum maximi Ad M. Tullium Ciceronem filium suum Officiorum liber incipit.

Incipit epistola sancti Hieronimi ad Paulinum presbiterum de omnibus diuine historie libris.

That it did not occur to him to devote his blank page to a displayed title of the book he was copying was due to the fact that every medieval manuscript was the direct descendant, through many or few stages, of the author’s own original draft, and that this was the most pretentious way and least natural in which any author could begin to write a book. So the scribes imitated the author in his normal beginning, and the early printers imitated the scribes, and because an author was more inclined to relieve his feelings at the end of a book than to express them volubly at the beginning, it was only when books multiplied so greatly that purchasers wanted to see at a glance what was the name of the book at which they were looking that titlepages superseded colophons. The proof of this explanation being the true one is that titlepages become common just about the time (1480 to 1490) that book-production was beginning to be divided up between publishers and printers, and that the publisher very quickly claimed them for his own.

The earliest titlepages, those of the MainzBul zu deutsch des bapst Pius II(1463), Rolewinck’s Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation (Cologne: Arnold ther Hoernen, 1470), theFlores Sancti Augustini(Cologne, 1473), and theKalendariumof Joannes de Monteregio and its Italian translation (Venice: Ratdolt and partners, 1476), were all more or less of the nature of “sports.” When titlepages came to stay, a year or two later thanthe last of these precursors, they everywhere took the form of labels, a single sentence containing the short title of the book, printed sometimes in large, sometimes in small type, but with no other information. The label title, being usually printed high up on the page, left two-thirds, or thereabouts, blank beneath it, and this space was soon filled, sometimes by a pictorial woodcut, sometimes by a mark or device, which at first might be either that of the printer or publisher, but gradually came to be much more often the publisher’s. The short title and device taken together filled the page sufficiently for decorative purposes, but they left room for a further paragraph of type to be added if desired, and the advantage of filling this with the name and address of the firm from whom the book might be obtained was so obvious that the “imprint,” as it is rather loosely called, soon made its appearance and gradually became recognized as an essential part of the titlepage. When printers and publishers lost pride in their work and ceased to care to decorate their titlepages with pictures or devices, the title was displayed in a series of single lines and made to straggle down the page till it came nearly low enough to meet the imprint.

If we go back to the habits of the scribes it is easy to understand another point in the early history of books, their make-up into quires and the marking of these quires by signatures and catchwords. The wordquaireorquireis a shortened form of the Latinquaternio, the name devised for four sheets of paper folded down the middle so as to form eight leaves. A gathering of five sheets making ten leaves was called aquinternion, and this, though it has yielded no modern word, was for generations such a popular form thatquinternioneswas sometimes used as a general expression for manuscripts. Gatherings of three sheets, making six leaves, were calledterniones; gatherings of two sheets, making four leaves,duerniones. A few, but only a few, books exist—nearly all of those which I have seen are either block-books orthin folios of poetry of the reign of Charles II—which are made up in single sheets not placed one within the other, but following consecutively. But the system of gathering from two to five or more sheets together into quires was practically universal both before and after the invention of printing, and this for the excellent reason that it reduced the quantity of sewing necessary in binding a book, and reduced also the risk of the sewing cutting through the paper or vellum, as it would be very likely to do if there were only a single thickness to resist it.

When the scribe had arranged his quire or gathering he wrote first page by page on all the leaves on the left hand until he came to the middle of the quire, when he proceeded to write page by page on all the leaves on the right hand. Thus in a quire of four sheets the left half of the first sheet would be leaf 1, pages 1 and 2, and the right half would be leaf 8, pages 15 and 16, so that the same sheet formed the beginning and end of the quire. In the earliest printed books the quires were printed page by page exactly as the quires of a manuscript had been written. But early in the ’seventies (Peter Schoeffer can be proved to have adopted the practice between 1471 and September, 1474) the advantage was perceived of printing both the pages on the upper or lower side of a sheet at the same time, i.e. in a quaternion, page 16 together with page 1. As soon as a printer had learnt to print two folio pages together, it became easy to print four quarto pages, or eight octavo pages, or sixteen sextodecimo pages. In each case the amount of type to be printed at a pull would be approximately the same. It thus ceased to be disadvantageous to print small books, whereas so long as each page had to be pulled separately it was obviously wasteful to make that page a very small one.

Even when the printers had learnt how to print two folio pages at the same time the presswork remained very laborious. The earliest presses were worked with onlya single screw, and when the pressman had pulled the lever one way to bring the platen down on the type, he had to push the lever back again in order to raise the platen and release the paper. Thus in order to print a large book quickly four or six sets of pressmen had to work on it at once, each at a different press. To avoid mistakes, therefore, the practice was to allot one section of the book to each press. Thus if a book were calculated to run to 288 leaves, six presses might begin simultaneously at leaves 1, 49, 97, 145, 193, and 241. What more often happened was that either to follow the natural sections of the book, or because some of the printers were engaged on other tasks and not ready to begin at once, the sections were of much less regular lengths, and we can sometimes prove that the first press was far advanced in its section before the fifth and sixth had begun. Now in all these cases, unless they were reprinting an earlier book, page for page, it is obvious that some nice calculations would be needed to make each section end with the end of a quire so as to be able to join on with the beginning of the quire containing the next section without any gap or crowding. Hence the striking irregularities in the make-up of many early books. Instead of a book being printed in a succession of quinternions or a succession of quaternions we have many a make-up which can only be expressed by a cruelly mathematical formula, such as this, which represents the quiring of the Forty-two Line Bible.

a-i10; k10+1lm10n6+1; o-z101010+1; A-F10G4: aa-nn10; oo pp10qq10+1; rr-zz AA-CC10; DD12EE10+1; FF GG10HH4+1II10.

In this the index-letter shows the number of leaves in the quire, a-i10being a short way of stating that each of the nine quires a b c d e f g h i has ten leaves in it. In the tenth quire (k) there is an extra leaf, and again in the thirteenth (n) the printer found that he had too much copy for six leaves and not enough for eight, andwas therefore obliged to put in an odd one, because another press had already printed off the beginning of the next quire (o). Not infrequently it would happen that the odd amount of copy for a section was very difficult to fit exactly into a leaf even when the printer had compressed it by using as many contractions as possible, or eked it out by using no contractions at all. This accounts for the occurrence of a blank space, large or small, at the end of some sections without any break in the text, as the printer was sometimes careful to explain by the printed notice “Hic nihil deficit,” or as in our page from Ulrich Zell, “Vacat.”

As has been already noted, in a moment of enthusiasm Mr. Proctor once said to the present writer that it was impossible to find a fifteenth century book that was really ugly. This was certainly putting the case for his beloved incunables a peg too high, for there were plenty of bad printers before 1500, and even such a master as Jenson was by no means uniformly careful as to the quality of his presswork. But one of the legacies which the early printers received from the scribes was the art of putting their text handsomely on the page, and the difference which this makes in the appearance of a book is very marked, little as many modern printers and publishers attend to it. But in the books of the best printers of our own day, as well as in those of the best of the fifteenth century, from 65 per cent to 72 per cent of the height of the page is devoted to the text, from 28 per cent to 35 per cent being reserved for the upper and lower margins, of which at least two-thirds is for the lower and not more than one-third for the upper. As compared with the height of a page of type the breadth is usually in the proportion of about 45 to 70 (a trifle more in a quarto), and here again the outer margin is at least twice as great as the inner. Thus in a book with a page measuring 10 by 7¼ inches, the type-page should measure about 7 by 4¾ inches, with a lower margin of about 2 inches, an upper of 1 inch, an outer of 1¾ inches, and an inner of ¾ inch.

It will be greatly to the advantage of book-buyers to bear these proportions in mind, in order to measure how much a book offered to them has been cut down, and also to be able to instruct their binders as to how to reduce the absurd margins of some modern “Large Paper” copies to more artistic dimensions. Whether it is legitimate further to reduce the margins of an old book which has already been mangled by a binder in order to get the proportions better balanced is a nice question of taste. If a two-inch lower margin has been halved and a one-inch upper margin left intact, if the upper margin is reduced, the book will become a pleasant “working copy” instead of an obviously mangled large one, and the collector must settle in his own conscience whether this be a sufficient justification for snipping off a centimetre of old paper.

Exactly why the proportions here laid down, with their limits of variation, are right for books cannot easily be set forth. It is easiest to see in the case of the relation between the inner and outer margins. As William Morris was never tired of insisting, the unit in a book is, not a single page, but the two pages which can be seen at the same time. The two inner margins separate the two type-pages by a single band of white, which, if each inner margin were as large as the outer, would become insufferably conspicuous. As for the proportions between the lower and upper margins, the explanation may lie in the angle at which we habitually read books, or by the need for leaving room for the reader to hold the book in his hands. But whether it be a matter of inherent rightness or merely of long-established convention, the pleasure of handling a book with correct margins is very great, and a collector who secures an uncut copy of even a poorly printed book of the period when margins were understood, will find that it presents quite a pleasing and dignified appearance. And so in regard to other points, any book which illustrates the relations of the early printers to the scribes, the difficulties which they experiencedin their work and the expedients by which they were surmounted deserves, whatever its date or present price, to be reckoned as a real incunable, and the collector who gets together a few dozen books of this kind will have far better sport for his outlay than he who is tied down too rigorously by chronology.

27It will be so much the better if the collector can add to them a copy of one of the early books printed at Rome (the German ones are too rare) in which there still survives the text of the rubrics, printed not in their appropriate places, but on a separate leaf or quire for the guidance of the rubricator.28By Jenson and many early printers in Italy, and by Husner and a few others in Germany, the majuscules of the founts used in the text were massed together in headings with admirable effect. But for a time the heavy heading types carried all before them.

28By Jenson and many early printers in Italy, and by Husner and a few others in Germany, the majuscules of the founts used in the text were massed together in headings with admirable effect. But for a time the heavy heading types carried all before them.

CHAPTER VII

EARLY GERMAN AND DUTCH ILLUSTRATED BOOKS

Thenatural method of illustrating a book printed with type is by means of designs cut in relief, which can be locked up in the forme with the type, so that text and illustrations are printed together by a single impression29without any special preparation of the paper. So long as the design to be printed stands out clearly on the block it matters nothing whether it be cut on wood or on soft metal. Even as between the design cut by hand and the process line-block which has as its basis a photograph taken direct from a pen drawing, the difference can hardly be said to be one of better and worse. We lose the individuality of the wood-cutter or wood-engraver, but we are brought into closer touch with the individuality of the artist, and whether we gain or lose depends on the ability of the artist to dispense with a skilled interpreter. The one requisite for success is that either the artist, or an interpreter for him, should recognize the limits within which his work can be effective. The reproductions of the artist’s designs will be looked at, not in isolation, but as part of anensemblemade up of two pages printed in a type which, perhaps with a little trouble, can be ascertained beforehand, and they will be printed not as proofs on a special press by a special workman on paper chosen solely to suit them, but with average skilland care in an ordinary press and on paper the choice of which will be dictated by several considerations. Whenever relief blocks have been used for any length of time as a method of book-illustration the rivalry of artists has tended to cause these restrictions to be forgotten. In our own day line-blocks have been almost driven out of the field by “half-tones,” which cannot be printed without the aid of paper specially coated, or at least rolled or “calendared.” Shortly before the process line-block was perfected the extreme fineness of the American school of wood-engraving had induced a nearly similar result. The successors of Bewick worked with equal disregard of the need for clearly defined lines, and when we travel back to the first half of the sixteenth century we find the Holbeins, Burgkmair, Weiditz, and other artists producing designs far too delicate for the conditions under which they were to be reproduced. Thus the charm of the woodcuts in books of the fifteenth century is by no means confined to that “quaintness” which is usually the first thing on which the casual observer comments. The “quaintness” is usually there, but along with it is a harmony between print, paper, and woodcut which has very rarely since been attained.

The claim made in the last paragraph must be understood as applying only to books honestly illustrated with blocks specially made for them. Books decorated with a job lot of cuts, as was often the case, especially after about 1495, may accidentally be delightful and often possess some of the charm of a scrapbook. It is good sport, for instance, to take one of Vérard’s later books and trace the origin of the cuts with which that cheaply liberal publisher made his wares attractive. But the incongruity is mostly manifest, and collectors might well be more fastidious than they show themselves and refuse to waste the price of a good book with homogeneous illustrations in buying half a dozen dull little volumes with an old Horae cut at the beginning and the end of each.

A second exception must be recognized in the booksillustrated by untrained wood-cutters. In Germany and the Low Countries few, if any, quite untrained wood-cutters were employed, and this is true also of Paris and Florence. But at Lyon and other provincial towns in France (the Abbeville cutters, who probably came from Paris, are strikingly good), in a few books printed at Rome and Venice, here and there in Spain, and in one or two of Caxton’s and several of Wynkyn de Worde’s books in England, the cutting is so bad that, though it is possible sometimes to see that excellent designs underlie it, the effect is either ludicrous or repellent. Only fanatics could admire such pictures as we find in the early LyonneseQuatre fils d’Aymon(s.n., but about 1480), in theOpusculaof Philippus de Barberiis printed by Joannes de Lignamine (Rome, 1481), in a large number of the cuts of the Malermi Bible of 1490 (Venice, G. Ragazzo for L. A. Giunta, 1490), inLos doze trabajos de Ercules(Zamora, 1483), in Caxton’sAesopor in Wynkyn de Worde’sMorte d’Arthur(1527). Books such as these (the Malermi Bible is on a different footing from the rest owing to the wonderful excellence of the good cuts) may be bought as curiosities, or for the light they throw on the state of the book trade when such work could be put on the market, but no artistic merit can be claimed for them.

In Germany good work began early, because, to supply the demand for playing-cards and pictures of saints, schools of wood-cutters had grown up, more especially at Augsburg and at Ulm. Block-books also had come into existence in the district of the lower Rhine, and these, which in their earliest forms can hardly be later than 1460, must be divided between the Low Countries and Germany and prove the existence of competent workmen. The earliest type-printed books which possess illustrations are the little handful printed by Albrecht Pfister at Bamberg in and about 1461, described in Chapter V, but it was at Augsburg in the early seventies that book-illustration first flourished. As has been mentioned in Chapter V, trade difficulties at first stood in the way, but by thearbitration of Melchior Stanheim, abbot of the local monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra, these were settled on the sensible basis that printers might have as many illustrations in their books as they chose to provide, but that they must be designed and cut by Augsburg craftsmen. The series seems to have begun with some tolerably good column-cuts to an edition of the Lives of the Saints in German, of which the first part was issued in October, 1471, and the second in April, 1472. InDas guldin spielof a Dominican writer, Ingold, finished on 1 August of the latter year, we find for the first time real power of characterization. Lovers of woodcuts owe some gratitude to the medieval trick of attaching edifying discourses to matters of everyday interest and amusement, for whereas the edifying discourses themselves could hardly carry illustrations, hunting, chess, or, as here, seven games which could be likened to the seven deadly sins, gave opportunities for showing pictures by which the natural man would be attracted. Another important book of this year, only known to me in Bämler’s plagiarism of it, was the first edition of theBelial, the amazing book which tells the story of Christ being summoned for the trespass committed in harrowing Hell.

In 1473 the heavy gothic type which Zainer used in these illustrated books was put at the disposal of the Abbot of SS. Ulrich and Afra and used to print aSpeculum Humanae Saluationis, to which was added a summary in verse by Frater Johannes, an inmate of his monastery. This book was illustrated by 176 different cuts of Biblical subjects, of varying degrees of merit. In the same year, and again in 1474, Zainer printed an illustratedPlenarium, i.e. the Epistles and Gospels for the round of the Church’s year. In or shortly after 1475 he printed and illustrated a narrative of great contemporary interest, the story, written by one Tuberinus, of a child named Simon, who was supposed to have been slain by the Jews out of hatred of the Christian faith and desire to taste Christian flesh. The tale appears to containinternal evidence of its untruth, and the unhappy Jews who were cruelly executed had much better claims to be regarded as martyrs than “das susses Kind” Simon. But some of the pictures are quite animated, especially one (see Plate VIII) of the hired kidnapper beguiling the child through the streets and then deftly hurrying him into the house of doom with a touch of his knee.

In 1475 or 1476, and again with the date 1477, Zainer produced editions of the German Bible in large folio, illustrated with great pictorial capitals at the beginning of each book. But his greatest achievement was in an undated book of this period, theSpeculum Humanae Vitaeof Rodericus Bishop of Zamora, in the German translation of Heinrich Steinhowel. If this Mirror of Man’s Life had been written by a man with his eyes open instead of by a vapid rhetorician it should have been one of the most valuable documents for the social life of the fifteenth century, since it professes to contrast the advantages and evils of every rank and occupation of life, from the Pope and the Emperor down to craftsmen and labourers. There is but little joy to be gained from its text, but the Augsburg artist has atoned for many literary shortcomings by his vivid and charming pictures of scenes from the social life of his day, though it is not to be supposed that German judges took bribes quite so openly as he is pleased to represent. In addition to fifty-four woodcuts of this kind, there is a large genealogical tree of the House of Hapsburg, which is a triumph of decorative arrangement.

Two other early Augsburg printers devoted themselves to illustrated work, Johann Bämler and Anton Sorg. The former at first contented himself with prefixing a full-page frontispiece to his books, as in theSummaof Johannes Friburgensis andDie vier und zwanzig goldenen Harfen, both of 1472, and again in the picture of S. Gregory and Peter the Deacon in the Dialogues of the former printed for the monastery of SS. Ulrich and Afra, and that of the dying Empress in theHistorie von den sieben weisen Meisternof the following year. In theBelialof 1473 andPlenariumof 1474 Bämler was content for most of the cuts to borrow or copy from the editions of Zainer, but in theAlexander der Grosseof the former year andMelusineandSieben Todsündenof the latter he himself led the way with some excellent sets of woodcuts, which were copied by others. Again, inDas Buch der Naturof 1475 we find a dozen specially designed full-page cuts, one to each book, illustrating man, the spheres, beasts, birds, mermaids, serpents, insects, etc.; in theChronica von allen Kaisern and Königenof 1476 there are four large cuts, showing Christ in glory, the dream of the Emperor Sigismund, the vision of S. Gregory at Mass, and S. Veronica holding before her the cloth with the imprint of Christ’s face. It was perhaps in this same year that Bämler issued, without dating it, Jacob Sprenger’sDie Rosenkranz Bruderschaft, with two very striking cuts, one of the offering of garlands to Our Lady, the other of Christ’s scourgers looking back mockingly as they leave Him. A dated edition appeared in 1477. Another book of 1476 with a good set of cuts was the romance of Apollonius, King of Tyre. In 1477 Bämler issued aBuch der Kunst, which, like theBuch der Natur, went through several editions; it must be noted, however, that there is no such contrast between Art and Nature as the short title of this book might suggest, the full title beingBuch der Kunst geistlich zu werden. The illustrations for the most part represent a soul in different situations, but there are also many of Biblical subjects. The last book of Bämler’s which need be mentioned is theTurken-Kreuzzügeof Rupertus de Sancto Remigio, which has an effective frontispiece of the Pope preaching to the Crusaders and some vigorous smaller cuts.

Anton Sorg began printing in 1475 and issued his first illustrated book the next year. He was a prolific printer, and issued many close imitations of books originated by Günther Zainer and others. The most famous work specially connected with his name is Ulrich von Reichenthal’sDas Conciliumbuch geschehen zu Costencz(1483), illustrated with forty-four larger cuts, all in the first ninety leaves, and 1158 coats of arms of the various dignitaries present at the Council. The larger cuts show the knighting of the Burgermeister of Constance, processions, a tournament, and the martyrdom of Huss (despite his safe conduct) and the scattering of his ashes over a field. The later Augsburg illustrated books, issued by the elder Schoensperger, Johann Schobsser, Peter Berger, and Hans Schauer, though they maintain a respectable level of craftsmanship, have less interest and individuality than these earlier ones. One Augsburg printer, Erhard Ratdolt, who had made himself a reputation by ten years’ work at Venice (1476-86), shortly after his return issued a notable illustrated book, theChronica Hungarorumof Thwrocz. His main business was the production of missals and other service books, in some of which he made experiments in colour-printing.

At the neighbouring city of Ulm, where also the wood-cutters had long been at work, illustrated books began to be issued in 1473 by Johann Zainer, no doubt a kinsman of Günther Zainer of Augsburg. His chief books are (1) Latin and German editions of Boccaccio’sDe claris mulieribus(1473), with a fine borderpiece of Adam and Eve and numerous spirited little pictures which, though primitive both in conception and execution, are full of life, and (2) anAesopwhich was reprinted at Augsburg and copied elsewhere in Germany, and also in France, the Netherlands, and England. From 1478 onwards he seems to have been in continual financial trouble. He was apparently able, however, to find funds to issue two rather notable books about 1490, thePrognosticatioof Lichtenberger, and a Totentanz. The blocks of both of these passed to Meidenbach at Mainz.

Most of the forty books of a later printer, Conrad Dinckmut (1482-96), have illustrations. HisSeelenwurzgarten(1483) appears at first sight to be a most liberally decorated book, crowded with full-page cuts, but of its 133illustrations only seventeen are different, one, representing the tortures of the damned, being used as many as thirty-seven times, a deplorable waste of good paper, which the printer had the good sense to reduce in a later edition. Dinckmut’s most famous book is a German edition of theEunuchusof Terence “ain maisterliche vnd wolgesetzte Comedia zelesen vnd zehören lüstig und kurtzwylig, die der Hochgelert vnd gross Maister und Poet Therencius gar subtill mit grosser Kunnst und hochem Flyss gesetzt hat.” This has twenty-eight nearly full-page cuts in which the characters are well drawn, the setting for the most part showing the streets of a medieval town. AChronik, by Thomas Lirer, issued about the same time, was begun to be illustrated on a generous scale with eighteen full-page cuts in the first twenty-eight leaves, but was hastily finished off with only three more cuts in the remaining thirty-six. They are less carefully executed than those of theEunuchus, but show more variety, and are on the whole very pleasing.

Another Ulm printer, who began work in 1482, Leonhard Holl, printed in that year a magnificent edition of Ptolemy’sCosmographia, with woodcut maps (one signed “Insculptum est per Iohannē Schnitzer de Armszheim”) and fine capitals. The first of these, a pictorial N, shows the editor, Nicolaus Germanus, presenting his book to the Pope.

Of later Ulm books by far the most important are two by Gulielmus Caoursin, published by Johann Reger in 1496, and both concerned with the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem at Rhodes. One volume gives theirStabilimentaor Constitution, the otherObsidionis urbis Rhodiae descriptio, an illustrated history of their defence of their island against the Turks and their subsequent dealings with the infidel, who at one time were so complaisant as to present them with no less valuable a relic than the arm of their patron, which was duly honoured with processions and sermons. Altogether the two books contain fifty-six full-page pictures, rather roughly cut, but full of vigourand bringing the course of the siege and the character of the wild Turkish horsemen very vividly before the reader. William Morris was even tempted to conjecture that the designs may have been made by Erhard Reuwich, the illustrator of the MainzBreidenbach, of which we shall soon have to speak.

At Nuremberg book-illustration begins with theArs et modus contemplatiuae vitae, six leaves of which partake of the nature of a block-book. In or about 1474 Johann Müller of Königsberg (whose variant names, Johannes Regiomontanus, Johannes de Monteregio, have trapped more bibliographers into inconsistencies than those of any other fifteenth century author) issued calendars and other works with astronomical diagrams, and prefixed to his edition of thePhilalethesof Maffeus Vegius a woodcut (for which Dr. Schreiber suspects an Italian origin) showing Philalethes in rags and Truth with no other clothing than a pair of very small wings. In June, 1475, Sensenschmidt and Frisner illustrated their folio edition of Justinian’sCodex, with ten charming little column-cuts; the following month Sensenschmidt produced aHeiligenleben, with more than 250 illustrations, which, according to Dr. Schreiber, are very noteworthy as they stand, and would have been more so had not the wood-cutter been hurried into omitting the backgrounds in the later cuts, those to the “Pars aestiualis.” Sensenschmidt also printed an undated German Bible with pictorial capitals.

In 1477 Creussner issued the travels of Marco Polo with a woodcut of the traveller, and about the same time Latin and German editions of the tract of Tuberinus on the supposed fate suffered by “Das Kind Simon” at the hand of the Jews.

In 1481 Anton Koberger published his first illustrated book,Postilla super Bibliamof Nicolaus de Lyra, with forty-three woodcuts, which were imitated not only at Cologne, but at Venice, though their interest is not very great. In his German Bible of 1483 he himself wascontent to acquire blocks previously used at Cologne. The next year he prefixed to his edition of theReformation der Stadt Nuremberga notable woodcut of S. Sebald and S. Laurence in the style of Michael Wolgemut. The 252 cuts in hisHeiligenlebenof 1488 are mainly improved rehandlings of previous versions; of hisSchatzbehalterand Schedel’s Chronicle we speak later on.

At Basel Martin Flach was the first printer of illustrated books, ornamenting his 1473 edition of the Ackermann von Böhmen with a woodcut of Death, the labourer, and the dead woman, hisCatowith the usual picture of a master and scholar, hisRosenkranzwith a cut of a traveller beseeching the Virgin’s protection from robbers, and another of a scene in heaven, and hisStreit der Seele mit dem Korper(these and the two preceding are undated) with eight illustrations of various moments in the dispute. More important than these are three profusely illustrated books from the press of Bernhard Richel. The first of these, his 1476Spiegel Menschlicher Behaltnis, has 278 woodcuts, the work of two different hands, the earlier of the two showing less technical skill, but much more vigour and originality.30The other two books are undated editions of the romance ofMelusina, with sixty-seven cuts, in which suggestions from the first Augsburg edition have been improved on by an abler workman, and aMandevillewith 147 cuts, most of which passed into the hands of M. Hupfuff at Strassburg, who used them in 1501. After this Richel turned his attention to liturgies, and is credited by Dr. Schreiber with being the first printer to insert in his Missals the woodcut of the Crucifixion, which thenceforth is so frequently found facing the first page of the Canon.

After the publication of these works illustration seems to have languished for some years at Basel, but wastaken up again about 1489 by Johann von Amerbach, Lienhart Ysenhut, and Michael Furter, the work of the two latter being mainly imitative. Johann Froben, who began work about this time, was too learned a publisher to concern himself with woodcuts, catering chiefly for students of the University. One of the professors, however, at the University was far from sharing this indifference to pictures. Born at Strassburg, Sebastian Brant was educated at Basel, and it was while holding there the Professorship of Laws that he ensured the popularity of hisNarrenschiff(1494) by equipping it with 115 admirable illustrations. The original edition from the press of Johann Bergmann von Olpe was published in February, and before the end of the year Peter Wagner at Nuremberg, Greyff at Reutlingen, Schoensperger at Augsburg had all pirated it with copies of the Basel cuts. When the Latin translation by Brant’s friend, Jakob Locher, was published by Bergmann in 1497, the success of the book became European, and probably no other illustrated work of the fifteenth century is so well known.

Probably in the same year as theNarrenschiffwas first issued, Bergmann printed for Brant hisIn laudem gloriosae virginis Mariae, with sixteen woodcuts by the same hand. In 1495 Brant supplied him with two works in honour of the Emperor Maximilian, one celebrating the alliance with Pope Alexander VI, illustrated with coats of arms, the other theOrigo bonorum regum, with two woodcuts, in which the Emperor is shown receiving a sword from heaven. Brant was now in high favour with Maximilian, and his appointment as a Syndic and Imperial Chancellor at Strassburg led to his return and a consequent notable quickening of book-illustration in his native city.

At Strassburg Johann Mentelin had used woodcuts for diagrams in an undated edition of theEtymologiaeof S. Isidore, printed about 1473, but the first producer of books pictorially illustrated was HeinrichKnoblochtzer, who worked from 1476 to 1484, and issued over thirty books with woodcuts. Most of these were copies from other men’s work, e.g. hisBelialandMelusinafrom Bämler’s, hisPhilalethesfrom the Nuremberg edition of Johann Müller, hisAesopandHistorie der Sigismundafrom Johann Zainer’s, hisLeben der heiligen drei Königenprobably from an anonymous edition by Johann Prüss. Early in his career in 1477 he issued two books on the great subject of the hour, the death of Charles the Bold,Peter Hagenbach und der Burgundische Kriegand theBurgunderkriegof Erhard Tusch, in both of which he used eight woodcuts, most of them devoted to incidents of the Duke’s ill-fated campaign. An anonymous edition of theEuryalus und Lucretiaof Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II) has nineteen cuts, which were apparently commissioned by Knoblochtzer, but he did not secure the services of a sufficiently skilled wood-cutter. It should be said, however, that his “historiated” or pictorial capitals are apparently original and mostly good.

To Johann Prüss at Strassburg are now assigned editions in High and Low German of the Lives of the Fathers and of Antichrist, which Mr. Proctor, though he had a shrewd suspicion of their origin, left floating about among the German “adespota.” The cuts to the former reach the average of early work; those to theAntichristvary greatly, that of Antichrist preaching before a queen being extraordinarily successful as a presentation of a type of coarse spiritual effrontery. The acknowledged work of Prüss includes editions of the travels ofMandeville, of theDirectorium Humanae Vitae, and of theFlores Musicaeof Hugo Reutlingensis, with a rather famous cut showing how musical notes are produced by the wind, by a water wheel, by tapping stones, and hammering on an anvil. Prüss also printed several illustrated editions of theHortus Sanitatis.

Far more prolific than either of the foregoing Strassburg printers was Johann Reinhard of Grüningen, usuallycalled Grüninger after his birthplace. Setting up his press in 1483, he began book-illustration two years later with a German Bible with woodcuts copied from those in the Low German Bibles printed at Cologne and used in 1483 at Nuremberg by Koberger. Some minor books followed, and in 1491 he issued theAntidotarius Animaeof Nicolaus de Saliceto, with rather rude borders to each page and a woodcut of the Assumption. This, however, like some of his earlier illustrated books, appears to have been a commission, and in a reprint of 1493 the decorations disappear. It was not until 1496, under the influence of Sebastian Brant, that he undertook any important original illustrated work on his own account. In that year he produced his first illustrated classic, the comedies of Terence (Terentius cum directorio), with a large woodcut of a theatre and eighty-seven narrow cuts of the dramatis personae, or of scenery, used five at a time in 150 different combinations. Critically examined, the cuts are rather unpleasing, and were regarded at the time as likely to provoke mirth otherwise than by expressing the humorous intent of the playwright, but another edition and a German translation similarly decorated appeared in 1499, and Grüninger issued on the same plan aHorace(edited by Locher) in 1498, and theDe consolatione philosophiaeof Boethius in 1501. His full strength was reserved for theVirgilof the following year, which was superintended by Brant, and is crowded with wonderful pictures, in which on the very eve of the Renaissance Virgil is thoroughly medievalized. Besides these classics, Grüninger printed many other illustrated editions, minor works by Brant, medical treatises by Brunschwig, anEvangelienbuch, aLegenda S. Katherinaein Latin and also in German, editions of theHortulus Animae, the romance of Hug Schapler, etc., in the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth a sufficient number of illustrated books to bring his total up to about 150 editions. These may be said to form a school by themselves, distinguished by acertain richness of effect partly due to heavy cutting, but with less power of characterization and fewer gleams of beauty than are to be found in the best work of other towns, the figures being often unpleasing and notably lean in the legs. Martin Scott, Hupfuff, and Kistler were other Strassburg printers of the fifteenth century who also used illustrations.

At Cologne book-illustration began in 1474 with editions of theFasciculus Temporumof Werner Rolewinck, from the presses of ther Hoernen and Nicolaus Götz. But with the notable exception of two great Bibles issued by Heinrich Quentell, illustrated books before 1490 are neither important nor numerous. Even in 1490 the edition of theHistoria Septem Sapientumof Johannes de Hauteselve, issued by the elder Koelhoff, was adorned with cuts obtained from Gerard Leeu at Antwerp. Quentell issued a few stock cuts in one book after another, and Johann Landen, Martin von Werden (if he be rightly identified with the printer “Retro Minores”), and Cornelis von Zierickzee all used a few cuts, some of the latter’s having a curiously Italian appearance. But the only important illustrated book, other than the Bibles, is the Cologne Chronicle, issued (not to his profit, since he was imprisoned for it) by the younger Koelhoff in 1499, with armorial cuts and a few pictures of kings and queens somewhat too frequently repeated. Quentell’s Bibles in High and Low German are in curious contrast to all this work. They are illustrated with 125 large oblong pictures, firmly if rather coarsely cut, and full of story-telling power, several successive incidents being sometimes brought into the same picture in true medieval fashion. The book was imitated at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and the illustrators of the Venetian Malermi Bible of 1490, and even Hans Holbein himself, did not disdain to take ideas from it.

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