ES TU SCHOLARIS?[9]

GRANOLLACHS' 'LUNARE.' FLORENCE: L. MORGIANI FOR P. PACINI, 1496. IMITATED FROM THE NAPLES EDITION OF 1485

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

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

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

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

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

FROM GEOFFROY TORY'S 'CHAMPFLEURY,' 1529.

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

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

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

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

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

FROM THE NAPLES EDITION OF THE 'ARTE DE ASTROLOGIA' OR 'LUNARE' OF GRANOLLACHS, FOR THE YEAR 1485. (REDUCED.)

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

FROM THE 'LUNARE' OF GRANOLLACHS FOR 1493. PRINTED AT ROME BY PLANNCK. REVERSED FROM THE NAPLES EDITION. (REDUCED.)

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

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

A few single cuts, which from their subjects might be used as title-cuts to a great variety of books, also attracted the attention of the more pedestrian copyists. Thus in educational books printed in Germany towards the close of the fifteenth century there are a bewildering number of variants of a woodcut of a master and scholars with the legend 'Accipies tanti doctoris dogmata sancti,' and while a good many French cuts found their way into England on their original blocks others were copied for English use with the servility we should expect. Among the few instances of direct copying in Italy, one of the most noteworthy is the reproduction at the beginning of the 'Supplementum Chronicorum' of Foresti, printed by Bernardino de Benaliis at Venice in 1486, of the pictures of the Creation, the Fall, and the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel, from the large Bible printed by Quentel at Cologne about six years earlier. On the other hand, in my monograph on 'Italian Book-Illustrations' (Portfolio, No. xii. Dec. 1894), I have already alluded to a curious instance of the direct copying of Italian ornamental initials by a German. In 1484, in a 'Boethius' printed by Oliverius Servius at Rome, we find three very fine initials, and we can trace back the set to which they belong to Sixtus Riessinger, who used some of them in his edition of a 'Tractatus Solemnis,' by Philippus de Barberiis in 1480. This is simple enough. But, when we find what looks like the same set in the possession of Johann Müller at Nuremberg about 1473, we ask in some surprise how initials distinctively Italian should appear first at Nuremberg and afterwards find their way back to Rome? The answer to the puzzle is arrived at by tracing both the Nuremberg and the Roman initials to a set cut for Sweynheym and Pannartz, but used by them only in certain copies of a few books (e.g.the Rylands copy of the 'Suetonius' of 1472) whose purchasers preferred them to be ornamented thus rather than by illumination. One of these copies must have fallen into the hands of Müller, who imitated the designs remarkably closely, but with some minute differences, notably the addition of a thick line to the left of the initials, which in the originals are left unfinished on this side, so that they might be attached at pleasure to an ornamental border running down the margin. Thus the initials used by Müller are copies, while those of Riessinger and Servius are from the original blocks, which must have passed to them from Sweynheym and Pannartz. The difficulty in clearing up the little mystery lay in the fact that it is possible to possess a copy of every book Sweynheym and Pannartz ever printed without finding a single volume in which the initials occur.

A well-known example of the close copying of a decorative border is the conveyance by Joannes Paulus Brissensis of a border used by Edward Whitchurch for the first prayer book of EdwardVI., published in 1549. Five years later a close imitation of this, even to the retention of the initials E. W., appears on the title-page of a commentary on Aristotle ('Dialectica Resolutio cum textu'), published by Brissensis in Mexico.

We come now to the last and most interesting section of our subject, the cuts in which one artist has borrowed the design of another, but whether imitating it freely or closely has introduced modifications in technical treatment which make it his own, harmonising it so closely with the work of his own city or country that it easily takes its place with purely native designs until by some chance its real origin is discovered. For various reasons these transformations are almost, though not entirely, confined to Italy. Thus it would be idle to expect them in England because there was no English school of design or engraving of sufficient individuality to modify the style of the cuts it borrowed. In Germany, on the other hand, the native school was immensely productive, and had a long start of France and Italy in point of time. Very shortly after 1470 we find illustrated books at Augsburg and Ulm of a simple excellence which could not be bettered. In France and Italy we get a few good books about 1480, but woodcuts do not become common till ten years later. One of the few very early illustrated books of Italy, the 'Valturius,' printed at Verona in 1472, was indeed copied in Germany, the cuts being reproduced in reverse in an undated 'Vegetius,' probably printed at Augsburg about 1475 by Johann Wiener, though it should be mentioned that Dr. Muther, like a true Teuton, tries to claim priority for his countrymen by bringing back the 'Vegetius' to about 1470. But this is a solitary instance, which belongs, moreover, to an earlier section of our subject, and, until Mr. Redgrave communicated to the Bibliographical Society his paper on the early illustrated books of Oppenheim, I knew of nothing more apposite. In that paper, however, Mr. Redgrave showed how both the border of the 'Calendar,' printed by Ratdolt at Venice in 1476, and some of Ratdolt's ornamental initials, were closely imitated by Johann Köbel, in an undated 'Passio Domini.' The two books were separated by an interval of quite thirty years, and Köbel in imitating Ratdolt was not content with his delicate outline, but put in a heavy background which does not improve it. Some late German prayer-books show traces of the influence of the French 'Horae,' but beyond these I know of nothing.

The case of Holland is somewhat similar to that of Germany. In the last decade of the fifteenth century, the Dutch woodcutters imitated closely, or directly borrowed, from the French 'Horae,' but the best work, which is also the earliest, was entirely original.

In the sixteenth century the popular printers, like John of Doesborgh, no doubt obtained their haphazard illustrations whence and how they could. In the editions of 'Le Chevalier Délibéré,' by Olivier de la Marche, printed at Antwerp in French and Spanish, in 1547, etc., I thought, at first, that I had found an instance of artistic copying of a very interesting nature, for there is a close connection in design between these highly-finished cuts and the rude yet striking work in the edition printed at Gouda, by Gottfried van Os, shortly after 1486. Inasmuch, however, as La Marche had given elaborate directions for the illumination of his poem, it is obvious that by following these directions any two designers would obtain fairly similar results, without any direct imitation of one by the other.

As far as my own information goes, the French wood-cutters trusted almost entirely to their own imagination during the fifteenth century, and, when they took to borrowing for their 'Horae,' borrowed outright without any attempt at adaptation. One famous example of copying of a later date deserves mention. In 1545 the younger Aldus printed at Venice a second edition of the famous 'Hypnerotomachia,' and either this or the original of 1499 attracted the attention of Gohorry, who made a translation which was revised by Jean Martin and printed by Jacques Kerver in 1546. The cuts to this translation have been variously attributed to Jean Goujon and Jean Cousin, but a moment's glance at the book will show that they are not all by the same hand. The majority of the illustrations show wretched work, and are very clumsily cut, but those at the beginning and a few in the latter part of the volume are fine examples of artistic translation into a different manner. I give here the scene of Poliphilo by the river bank from both the original and the copy, and old favourite as the Venetian cut justly is, I think that the French cut attains almost equal excellence in another style. No finer example of free adaptation could easily be found.

CUT FROM THE 'POLIPHILO' OF VENICE, 1499. (REDUCED)

When we come to Italy we find a wholly different set of conditions. Here book-illustration started late, but during the twenty years from 1490 to 1510 its vogue was enormous, and great as was the fertility of the Italian designers it was natural that in face of the demands made upon them by the publishers they should seek help whereever they could find it. But in Italy at this period every craftsman was an artist, and whether he sought his inspiration in the paintings which he saw around him, in the engravings on copper which had flourished long before book-illustration became popular, in the cuts in foreign books, or in those published in other districts of his own country, the Italian woodcutter always put his own individuality into his work and made the design he was copying his own. I am unfortunately unacquainted with the pictures to which Dr. Lippmann and Dr. Kristeller have traced three or four of the Venetian and Florentine woodcuts,[7]but the examples of translation from engravings on copper to woodcuts in the Venetian 'Petrarch' of 1490, in the second Florentine edition of Bettini's 'Monte Sancto di Dio' (1491), and in the illustration of the works of mercy in the 'Libro delli Comandamente di Dio' of Fra Marco del Monte Sancta Maria (Florence, 1496), are extremely interesting, and show how well the workmen, especially those of Florence, understood the principle of artistic selection.

THE SAME CUT AS REDRAWN IN THE FRENCH EDITION OF THE 'POLIPHILO,' 1546. (RATHER MORE REDUCED)

No more characteristic example of free imitation can be found than in the use made of the cuts in the Latin and German Bibles, printed by Quentell at Cologne about 1480, by the illustrator of the Malermi Bible ten years later. The German cuts are large and clumsy (measuring about 7½ x 5 in.), overcrowded with figures, and with the rudest ideas of perspective and arrangement. The little Italian vignettes, on the other hand, are gracefully and delicately designed, and it is only from the presence of some purely fanciful accessory, such as the pond and the swan swimming in it in the examples here given, that we are compelled to recognise the debt of the Venetian artist to his German predecessor.

CUT FROM THE QUENTELL BIBLE. (COLOGNE,C.1480. MUCH REDUCED)

ADAPTATION OF THE COLOGNE CUT FOR THE MALERMI BIBLE. (VENICE, 1490)

Another, though a less interesting example of the adaptation of large and rather clumsy cuts to the scale of the little Venetian vignettes is the imitation in the 'Terence,' published by Simon de Luere at Venice in 1497, of the illustrations in Trechsel's edition which had appeared at Lyons four years earlier. Again, if, as I believe, we should attribute the first illustrated Italian edition of the 'Ars Moriendi,' printed in 1490, 'co li figure accomodati per Johanne clein & Piero himel de alamanis,' to Venice rather than to Lyons, we may claim the majority of the cuts in this as additional examples of intelligent, if not very original, adaptation by Venetian artists, the originals, in this case, being the designs first used in the German block-books, imitated again two years later, by Vérard at Paris.

It is true that after 1496 Cleyn was printing at Lyons, and that there is a Lyonnese book with the probably erroneous date 1478 by him, but we have no evidence, I believe, of his whereabouts in 1490, and there is one cut in the book, for which, as far as I know, the artist drew entirely on his own imagination, and this appears to me to be much more Venetian in its character than Lyonnese.[8]I give this cut from a copy in the British Museum which has unluckily been heavily coloured, so that the reproduction was no easy matter. It comes within our subject, not only as evidence for the Venetian origin of the edition, but as the original of the little cut on the title of the 'Omnis Mortalium Cura' of S. Antonino, printed for Pacini in 1507; the differences between the copy and the original being characteristic of the alteration in tone always introduced by Florentine artists when dealing with foreign work. The border has been simplified and at the same time given the usual black background. The recesses of the church are in unrelieved black instead of merely shaded. The figures are slighter and more graceful, and good taste is shown in the removal of the whispering devils, one of whom bears a scroll with the words 'nolo dire,' while the other inscription contains the word 'vergogna' (shame), preceded by some other letters which I cannot decipher in the Museum copy. It will be noticed that the Florentine artist has reversed the positions of the figures, but not the little altar-piece. The other cuts in the 1490 'Arte del Morire' also found Florentine imitators, as I cannot doubt that it was through them that the illustrator of the Florentine editions ofc.1495 and 1513 obtained his knowledge of the German designs which he followed in ten of his cuts. Some of the designs are copied in reverse, others directly, but in nearly every instance we find that by a number of small touches the cut has been made to assume a distinctly Florentine appearance.

ILLUSTRATION ON THE BACK OF THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE 'ARTE DEL BEN MORIRE,' PRINTED IN 1490 BY JOHANN CLEYN AND PIERO HIMEL, PROBABLY AT VENICE

FLORENTINE ADAPTATION OF THE SAME CUT USED ON THE TITLE-PAGE OF THE SOMMA 'OMNIS MORTALIUM CURA' OF S. ANTONINO. PACINI, 1507

Among other books in which Florence followed the lead of Venice the 'Meditazioni' of San Bonaventura and the 'Fior di Virtù' are perhaps the most important. For my frontispiece to this article, however, I have preferred to hark back to the 'Lunare' of Granollachs, the Florentine edition of which (1496) is as good an instance of artistic imitation of that of Naples, as is the Roman (see page 83) of incompetent servility.

I have already written at greater length than I intended, and am conscious that all I have said is dry, fragmentary, and disjointed. There is, however, still one point which I should like to put forward in connection with these different styles of copying. In 'The Masters of Wood-Engraving' Mr. Linton has endeavoured to limit our idea of the work of the early woodcutters to the mere faithful cutting on the wood the lines marked down for them by the designer. In this theory Mr. Linton stands at the opposite extreme to Sir W. M. Conway, who, in 'The Woodcutters of the Netherlands,' hardly made sufficient allowance for the differences in cutting which might be produced by different designs. Of the two, however, Sir W. M. Conway seems to me to be the nearer to the truth, and I think these instances in which we have both the design and the woodcutter's copy before us help us to understand the method of work. No one can believe that the hand of any artist intervened between the Naples 'Granollachs' and its Roman interpreter, and I feel tolerably sure myself that in the two Florentine cuts I have given, the differences of treatment are also due to the craftsman. In the Venetian translation from the cuts in the Cologne Bible and in the French adaptation of the 'Hypnerotomachia' we have, of course, a different set of conditions, and we must not try to ignore them. But until positive evidence to the contrary is produced, it is reasonable to believe that the craftsman often supplied his own designs, and the artist was often his own woodcutter, and the examples of imitation at which we have been looking seem to me to strengthen this theory.

IN the following pages I propose to offer a little picture of school-life four hundred years ago, culled from an old Latin dialogue book which was published anonymously in the fifteenth century under the title 'Es tu scholaris?' and went through many editions in different countries. All through the Middle Ages boys were supposed to speak Latin in school, and this with some reason, since if they meant to be scholars when they grew up, to be able to speak and write Latin fluently would be far more useful to them than the acquisition of any single modern language. But no doubt it did not come easily to them, and our anonymous author seems to have thought that it might not come quite easily to their masters to show them how to do it, since, as we shall see, he wrote his book for use in the humbler kind of schools, where the master himself might be a man of no great learning. In fact he begins by pointing out the inconvenience of a master not being able to answer his boys' questions, and to obviate this offers some ready-made dialogues on what he considered suitable topics.

All the earlier dialogues begin with the words from which the book takes its title—Are you a scholar? 'Es tu scholaris?' says the master. 'Sum,' says the boy, ('knowing the language'), and then begin the variations.

FROM THE FLORES POETARUM, S.A.

The cruellest of these is a kind of 'fool's mate' (to borrow a term from chess), in which the master asks, 'What gender is sum?' and it is to be hoped used his victory mercifully if his victim fell into the trap. When the first variations are exhausted we come to a 'Where are you a scholar?' to which the correct answer is 'Here and everywhere, and in all honest places,' honest places being subsequently defined as of four kinds, that is to say, at church, at school, at home with one's parents and in the company of able men (ecclesia, scola, domus propria circa parentes et convivium peritorum virorum). Of a sudden the master waxes humorous and demands 'Es tu scutellavarius,' a portentous word which apparently means a 'washer-up,' since the boy emphasises his denial by explaining that he doesnotwash plates in the kitchen (quod non lavo scutellas in coquina). On this there follows some talk about religion, and we then approach scholastic topics with the question, 'Do you know Latin?' 'I do,' answers the boy, with happy confidence, and then in reply to the further question, 'What is Latin?' is made to return the remarkable answer, that Latin is a very noble idiom taking its origin from the fountains of the Greeks (nobilissimum ideoma ex fontibus Graecorum ortum habens). Comparative philology was in its infancy in those days, and as even now there are worthy people who believe that English is derived from German, we need not throw stones.

The next pages contain some interesting talk on the four chief books in use in grammar schools, the 'Tabula' or horn-book on which was written the Lord's Prayer, the moral sayings of 'Cato,' the accidence of Donatus, and the syntax and prosody of Alexander Gallus; but we must hurry on to the more human side of our text-book. There are 'verba obedientiae' helping the boy to assure his master that for the future he will be very careful not to anger him (de cetero vos[10]commovere percavebo), suggestions for defence where a fault could be denied, and ready-made excuses where it was obvious. I regret to say that there are also ready-made 'verba accusationis': 'Please Sir, Jones has torn my grammar' (Joannes Donatum meum dilaniavit) or 'That boy called me the son of a thief' (Ille mihi dixit filium furis). These are evidently tips for whiners in the school itself, but we have a more awful picture in the demand, 'Wherefore, honoured Sir, I earnestly beg you to take steps against evil-doings and punish these fellows scholastically.' No doubt Brown minor had run into some dignity in the street, and this is the formula with which the dignity demanded that Brown should be 'hoisted,' which I take to be the meaning of 'scolastice corrigatis.'

For invitation to dinner and the offering of gifts there are quite a bewildering set of forms, reminding us that school-fees in those days were often paid in kind. In the offering and acceptance of these there is much politeness on each side. The boy begs that the smallness of his present may be excused on account of his poverty and goodwill, or promises that if the master will honour his parents at dinner the best cheer they can provide shall be set before him. The master, on his side, replies that he is quite unworthy of these entertainments, but lest he should seem to despise them he will certainly come. (Nimium est non enim sum dignus cum parentibus tuis prandere. Ne autem me dicant eorum prandium spernere comparebo libenter.) There are also forms of invitation for boys to use to their friends, and Jones (using the polite plural) asks Brown to dinner to-morrow at his parents' request.

Some of the shorter remarks seem to apply to a boarding school. 'Dear master, with your permission, I should like to take a bath' says one boy: another asks that he may go and lay the table, a third that he may take the clothes to the washerwoman! A boy whose mother has called for him addresses his petition for leave to the Precentor, and we may guess therefore that these boarding-schools were attached to churches or monasteries, and that the boys, like the monks themselves, had to do much of their own household work.

The boys are given plenty of tips for talk among themselves. 'Why were you late to-day?' asks one, and is reminded that bed is warm and sleep sweeter than honey. One boy sees a priest coming into the school and hopes he will ask for a holiday. His fellow says they have had several holidays lately and doubts if another will be granted. The gloomy side of medieval school-life is not left unrepresented. 'How often have you been punished to-day?' is one of the questions, and as if the alternative answers 'semel—bis—ter—quater,' were not enough, they are crowned with the cruel prophecy 'et iterum cras corrigeris.'

The last paragraph of the book is concerned with the appointment, duties and behaviour of monitors. They are called 'monitors' nowadays because, I suppose, they jog memories as to what is the next day's work, and in other ways prevent crime. In those days they were called 'custodes,' chiefly I am afraid because they kept the rods. 'You've got to appoint monitors, Sir,' says a boy. 'You be monitor, then,' 'Please, Sir, I've only just been monitor, and it's not my turn.' 'Who ought to be appointed then?' 'This is the boy, Sir, both because it's his turn and because he knows how to get you long and nasty rods!' That is one dialogue. Here is another, boy with boy. 'Have you been putting down the boys who made a disturbance and ran as they came out of church?' 'I have.' 'Have you been putting me down?' 'I have; Jones saw you running in the street and gave me your name to be put down.' 'Dear monitor, take my name off, lest I be punished, and I'll ask my mother to give you a big bun (magnum panem).' 'Hold your tongue, then, and I'll take it off'—whereat the boy thanks heaven, and we gather that there was rather a bad tone in the schools in which 'Es tu Scolaris?' was in use. It must also be said that if the boys talked as they were taught, they talked very bad Latin.

The edition from which I have taken these notes has no 'woodcuts.' If it had had one it would probably have been something of the nature of this picture from an English grammar book, in which the master is shown armed with the usual birch. The grammars of those days were in fact so bad that it was held to be impossible for any one to learn them without the additional notes offered by a rod. But for my first illustration (p. 100), I have taken a more human and, I think, a more lifelike picture, from a 'Flores Poetarum' printed at Florence about 1500. No doubt by the time boys came to study poetry they had reached a more mature stage, and were treated better. But these young scholars look boyish and vivacious enough, and I would fain hope that this is a true picture of a Florentine classroom. A Venetian book goes even beyond this, anticipating the methods of the Newest Educators, for in a woodcut to it, while the elder students are shown as solemnly attending to a lecture, two little boys are studying their A B C on the floor, with a small dog to help them. But this picture is so plainly imaginative that I will not even show it.

IT may fairly be said that only a writer who knew nothing about them would propose, in a half-hour's paper, to talk about the English books printed abroad, in some forty different places, during the last four centuries. But a consideration of the earlier of these books forms a necessary part of the Society's contribution to the Bibliography of English Literature up to 1640, and the subject, as a whole, has for a long time seemed to me an interesting one; since, either in the state of the printing trade at home, or in the circumstances of the author, or the nature of his subject, in every case a special reason has to be found why the book should have been printed out of England. I have, therefore, light-heartedly endeavoured to map out the broader outlines of the subject, in the hope that I may persuade other members of the Society to give their help in filling in the details, and I must ask you to remember that my paper is put forward only as a means of provoking a discussion much more valuable than anything I can contribute myself.

I have said that the subject we have before us this evening is the English books printed abroad during the last four centuries. It would have been more accurate to say during the last four centuries and a quarter,[12]for the latest book I shall have to mention was printed in Florence in 1895, while Caxton began printing English books at Bruges in 1474 or 1475, and even earlier than these we have a Sarum Breviary printed at Cologne, and assigned by Mr. Gordon Duff to the year 1473. These Sarum Service-books, with which so many foreign printers busied themselves during the next eighty-five years, lie on the outskirts of our subject, as the greater number of them are wholly or mainly in Latin, and we are obliged to limit ourselves at present to English books, and may not take in the very considerable number of Latin works written by Englishmen, and intended mainly for the English market, though printed abroad. It is necessary, indeed, to remember that for some generations after the invention of printing, our country, for many classes of books, was wholly dependent on the enterprise of continental printers, and that, to some extent, this is still the case. A single oration of Cicero and the plays of Terence were the only Latin classics printed in England during the fifteenth century. No Greek book appeared here until 1543, and several of the great Greek classics did not find an English printer until the second half of the seventeenth century. Even now, for the obscurer classics, and for the bulk of Oriental books, we are content to rely on Germany, and in the fifteenth century this reliance on the continental presses extended to every variety of learned book. It would be absurd to attribute this state of things to any lack of enterprise on the part of Caxton and his fellows. Our President has lately shown how carefully, even in Italy, the first printers felt the pulse of their market, and whereas Venice was a great trade centre for the whole of Europe, in England a publisher who produced a book too learned to find purchasers here would have had little chance of appealing to the book lovers of other countries. Thus it may be urged in defence of the Act of RichardIII., which permitted books to be imported into England from abroad and freely sold here, that by encouraging English printers to confine themselves to the popular books for which there was a safe market, it saved them from any temptation to risk the fate which Sweynheym and Pannartz had incurred at Rome; at the same time it greatly helped forward the cause of education. Only three foreign printers, Gerard Leeu and Jan van Doesborgh at Antwerp, and Antoine Vérard at Paris, abused the liberty granted to them by competing needlessly with our native printers in books they were capable of printing equally well themselves. The four popular English books printed by Leeu, who had a special fount of type cut for the purpose, were 'The History of Jason,' 'The History of Knight Paris and the Fair Vienne,' 'The Dialogue of Salomon and Marcolphus,' and 'The Chronicles of England.' These were all issued in 1492 and 1493, and all with the exception of the 'Marcolphus,' were reprints of editions issued by Caxton. Even the 'Marcolphus,' according to Mr. Duff, who has edited a facsimile reprint of it for Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen, may possibly have been reprinted from a Caxton now entirely lost, though this, of course, is a mere conjecture.

Of Doesborgh's English books there is no need to speak at length, since all Members of the Society have in their possession Mr. Proctor's exhaustive monograph of this printer's work. As a printer he was very inferior to Leeu, but as a publisher he showed much more enterprise in his choice of books, introducing to English readers the stories of 'Euryalus and Lucretia,' 'Virgilius the Magician,' 'Frederick of Jennen,' 'Mary of Nemmegen,' 'Tyll Howleglas,' and the 'Parson of Kalenborowe,' in addition to the still more notable book 'Of the New Lands.' Of the thirty-two books which Mr. Proctor has been able to assign to Doesborgh's press, no fewer than eighteen were printed for England, comprising grammars, stories, theology, history, geography, a prognostication, a medical book, and two books on the valuation of gold and silver, thus covering nearly the whole range of the popular literature of the day. The earliest of these books appeared before 1508, the latest some time after 1520, and they thus came out at the rate of rather over one a year. They were all, however, of the class of books which rapidly get themselves thumbed out of existence, and from the extreme rarity of those which survive it is probable that Doesborgh's real output was considerably greater. Antoine Vérard, on the other hand, had a trick of printing a few copies of his books on vellum which has greatly helped to preserve them, and it is improbable that, besides his Service-books, he printed any other works for the English market than the two which have come down to us. These are 'The traitte of god lyuyng and good deyng,' and 'The Kalendayr of Shyppars,' both printed in 1503, and both enriched with numerous illustrations, some beautiful, others grotesquely horrible, mostly taken from his 'Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir' of 1492. In his choice of a translator Vérard was unlucky, for he seems to have employed some wild Scotsman, who was no master of his own tongue and still more ignorant of French. When Robert Copland retranslated the Kalendar for Wynkyn de Worde in 1508, he was as scornful of his predecessor's 'corrupte Englysshe' as any one bibliographer could be of the labours of another, though in saying that 'no man coulde understonde (it) perfectly' he certainly did not err on the side of exaggeration, since most southern readers must have found some difficulty in understanding it at all.

To the names of Leeu, Doesborgh, and Vérard, as printers of English popular books, I ought perhaps to add those of Wolfgang Hopyl of Paris, and Martin Morin and James Ravynell of Rouen, each of whom printed before 1500 an edition of the 'Liber Festivalis' or 'Festial,' the book of sermons with which parsons might regale their parishioners on the high-days and holy-days of the Church. The 'Festial' was of a semi-liturgical nature, and the three printers were all printers of liturgies. We have, thus, an easy transition to the English Service-books printed abroad to which we must now return for a few minutes. Of these the immense majority were for the use of Sarum, though the British Museum possesses a Hereford Missal printed at Rouen in 1502, and three York Missals printed at the same place in 1516-17. Of Sarum Service-books printed before 1540, the 'Old English Catalogue' records no less than one hundred and five as in the possession of the Museum in 1884, and the distribution of these is notable. One Missal was printed atBasel, by Michael Wenssler about 1486; another Missal by Hertzog, at Venice in 1494; eleven service-books at Rouen, the earlier ones by Martin Morin, James Ravynell, P. Violette, and Andrew Myllar; twelve at Antwerp, of which one is a 'Directorium' printed by Leeu in 1488, and most of the rest much later books from the press of Christopher of Endhouen; and lastly no less than fifty-six at Paris, the list of their printers comprising many of the best firms of the time. Against these eighty-one foreign editions, of which, it will be observed, sixty-seven are French, the editions printed in England number no more than twenty-four, and many of these are printed with cuts borrowed or copied from France. Obviously this class of work required special qualifications in the printers, and it was easier and cheaper to import the Service-books, even the Primers, than to produce them at home. During the last few years of HenryVIII.'s reign the number of Service-books, which had previously shown some falling off, again increased, and under his daughter Mary there was, of course, a great revival of them. The English printers were now better able to cope with the demand, and of the forty-five Service-books in the Museum printed during these years, twenty-four were printed in London, against ten at Rouen, five at Paris, and six at Antwerp. Of course, the Museum collection, both of these and of the earlier Service-books, is by no means complete, but it is probably representative, and there can be no doubt that during the period when liturgies are most interesting bibliographically, four-fifths of those printed for use in England came to us from abroad.

One other small class of books, printed like liturgies for the most part in Latin, but with lapses into English, must be noticed before we proceed further—the Latin Grammars for the instruction of English school-boys. The earliest of these is an edition of the Grammar of Perottus, printed by Egidius van der Heerstraten at Louvain, about 1486, and other grammar-books by Anwykyll and Joannes de Garlandia are said to have been printed during the fifteenth century at Deventer, Antwerp, Cologne, and Paris. If any Member of the Society can give me a list of these dreadful little books I shall be very grateful to him, but they have always filled me with so much compassion for the unfortunate children who had to learn them, that I am afraid I have taken no notes of the few I have seen.

In order to give an idea of the way in which the English books printed abroad reflect the changing phases of our national life I propose now to trace with a little more particularity the history of the classes of the English books printed at Antwerp, where throughout the sixteenth century they are specially plentiful. We begin in the quiet days of Gerard Leeu and Jan van Doesborgh, who, good honest men, could have had no other object in their English publications than the making a little profit out of some popular subjects which our native printers were neglecting. The three grammar-books printed by Thierry Martens for Jacobi and Pelgrim in 1507 and 1508, are not very interesting. Christopher of Endhoven, who calls himself with equal frequency Ruremondensis, followed in 1523 in a higher branch of the trade, competing with the printers of Rouen and Paris who produced the Sarum Service-books in such numbers. From 1523 to 1531, the succession of Missals, Processionals, Manuals, Psalters, Hymnals, Breviaries and Horae, which were printed by Endhoven at Antwerp, and sold in London, mostly by Francis Byrckman or Peter Kaetz, is broken only by an edition of Lyndewood's 'Provinciale.' In 1531 we hear for the first time a different note, three books being printed in that year for William Tyndal, which are ascribed to the press of Martin Lempereur, viz.: 'The prophete Jonas, with an introducciõ before, teachinge to vnderstonde him'; 'The exposition of the fyrste Epistle of seynt Jhon'; and 'The praier and complaynte of the ploweman unto Christe'; the latter an old book which the title assigns to not long after 1300. The next year the widow of Endhoven printed another Sarum 'Hymnal,' but in 1534 she was employed by the Reformers, printing George Joy's revision of Tyndal's New Testament, while Joy's English Psalter, and Tyndal's own New Testament were printed by Lempereur. Antwerp editions of the same year of the 'Rudimenta Grammatices,' originally drawn up for Wolsey's school at Ipswich, and of a 'Prognostication,' show that the Dutch printers did not quite forget the existence of untheological English readers, but for a long time to come theology was paramount in English books printed abroad. Several editions of Tyndal's New Testament were printed at Antwerp in 1535, 1536 and 1538, and though the attribution of the Coverdale Bible of 1535 to the press of Jacob van Meteren (a point which I leave to our Bible experts) is not undisputed, it seems generally agreed that the composite version known as 'Matthew's Bible,' brought out by Grafton and Whitchurch in 1537, was really the work of an Antwerp printer, probably Martin Lempereur.

After 1538 there seems to have been a break in the English printing at Antwerp for just a quarter of a century, during which no English work of any importance was issued, the fugitive Reformers finding Switzerland a much safer refuge at this time than the Low Countries. But in 1563 Aegidius Diest printed two books (Vincentius Lirinensis 'On the Antiquity of the Catholick Faith,' and the 'Buke of Fourscore three Questions proponit to the Protestants in Scotland), for Ninian Winzet, a Scotch Catholic in exile for his religion. The times we see have changed, and it is now the Romanist Refugees who seek printers abroad, and the Protestants who answer them in comfortable safety at home; and for several years the Romanists kept the Dutch printers pretty busy. From 1564 to 1569, Diest and Laet at Antwerp, Bogard and Fouler at Louvain, printed between them forty English books, by Harding, Rastell, Martiall, Stapleton, Allen, and Saunders, all more or less called forth by Bishop Jewel's 'Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,' which naturally roused the ire of the Catholics, more particularly of Harding, whom Jewel had ejected from his prebendship.

The ill-health which preceded Jewel's death in 1571 caused him to weary of controversies, and his opponents at last wearied also, the next few years being very unproductive of English books in the Low Countries. When activity revived, Antwerp no longer maintained its supremacy. The majority of the Catholic books were printed now either at Louvain or Douay, while the new refugees, the extreme Puritans and Brownists, took up their quarters at Middleburg, where their books were mostly printed for them by J. or R. Schilders. Whether Middleburg was also the real place of imprint of the editions of Marlowe's 'Epigrammes and Elegies,' the first of which appeared in 1599, is one of the difficulties which still await a final investigation. Mr. Charles Edmonds preferred to assign it to the press of W. Jaggard, with whose edition of the 'Passionate Pilgrim' it is bound up in the Isham collection. In 1589 and 1590 we hear of another Puritan refugee press at Dort, where several works were printed for Barrow and Greenwood, while in 1597 Henoch Clapham found a local printer for two theological works which he had compiled for the benefit of the 'poore English congregation in Amsterdam'; one or two books were also printed for English students at Leyden, and some English medical works at Dort, so that by the end of the century the earlier monopoly of Antwerp was completely destroyed.

We must turn back now to glance at some other places where English books were printed, and first we may note that even in this most theological of centuries a few miscellaneous works demand our attention. Thus in 1551 J. Gryphius of Venice found it worth his while to print a 'Compendious Declaration,' by Thomas Raynalde, 'of the vertues of a certain lateli invented oile,' called 'Oile Imperiale,' and a little later on, when William Turner was tired of 'hunting the Romische wolfe,' Arnold Birckman printed for him, at Cologne, the two parts of his 'Herbal' and his treatise on 'Baths.' Frellon's English edition (Lyons 1549) of Holbein's 'Images of the Old Testament' had no theological import, but is an early example of the printing of the explanatory text of an illustrated book in more languages than one, so as to secure a larger sale. Lastly we must not forget one very important work, Theodor de Bry's 'Briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia,' printed by J. Wechel at Frankfort in 1590. The great bulk, however, of the English books printed abroad during the sixteenth century were theological, and the presses of Augsburg, Basel, Cologne, Geneva, Munster, Nuremberg, Strasburg, Wesel, Wittenberg, and Zurich, besides the famous one of 'Marlborow in the land of Hesse,' all testified to the activity of the English Reformers.

The difficulties which beset the history of these English books printed in Germany and Switzerland are well known. We are not often, in dealing with them, pulled up so sharply as when we find a book of Knox or Bale professedly printed 'at Rome before the Castell of S. Angel,' but there are other imprints in original editions the authenticity of which has been suspected, and the question is immensely complicated by the existence of London editions in which the old imprint has been sedulously preserved. A very large number also of the most interesting books contain no indication whatever of their origin, and the rash attempts to place them, which have been made in catalogues and bibliographies, are often the reverse of helpful. I hope that the Society may eventually help to put the subject on a better footing, but all I can do now is to mention a handful of books, rather with a view of showing the haunts of the reforming authors at various periods than with much bibliographical intention. Thus the edition of Tyndal's New Testament was printed for him by Peter Quentel, at Cologne, in 1525. From 1528 to 1530, we find him employing Hans Lufft 'at Marlborow in the land of Hesse,' to print his 'Obedience of a Christian Man,' 'Parable of the Wicked Mammon' and 'Genesis.' In 1531, as we have seen, Martin Lempereur was working for him at Antwerp. John Frith's 'Pistle to the Cristen Reader' was printed by Lufft, his 'Answer' to More, written when he was a prisoner in the Tower, by C. Willems of Munster. Of the next generation of Reformers, John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, appears first as employing Michael Wood to print his 'Mystery of Iniquity,' at Geneva, in 1545; in 1546, his tract on the 'Examinacyon of Anne Askew' bears the imprint Marburg, and his 'Actes of English Votaries' that of Wesel. His best known work, the 'Illustrium Majoris Britanniae Scriptorum Summarium' (1548), was apparently begun at Wesel by Theodoricus Plateanus and finished at Ipswich by John Overton. After the accession of Mary, Bale seems to have had a hand in one or two books which appear with the imprint, Roane or Rouen, which perhaps is no more authentic than that of 'Rome, before the Castell of St. Angel,' which appears on his account of his 'Vocacyon to the bishopric of Ossory,' in 1553. A correspondent has suggested to me that this last may have been printed at Strasburg; but Knox's book with the same imprint, 'A godly letter sent to the faythefull in London, Newcastell and Barwyke' is attributed in the British Museum Catalogue to the press of Hugh Singleton, in London, and this may have been printed there also. Knox's other books with foreign imprints are mostly Genevan, 'An Answer to a great number of blasphemous cavillations' being printed by Jean Crespin, and 'the copye of a letter sent to the Lady Marye' by J. Poullain and A. Reboul. His 'Faithful Admonition unto the Professours of God's Truths in England,' professedly hails from 'Kalykow,' its real origin being doubtful.

We must hasten on now to the supporters of the other side of the religious controversy, who, on the accession of Elizabeth, in their turn had to seek refuge abroad. As we have seen, they at first congregated at Antwerp, but in 1568 William Allen, afterwards Cardinal, founded the English College at Douay, and thereby made it the headquarters of the English Catholic Press during the next century. Important, however, as Douay is, cataloguers have, perhaps, worked its printers a little too hard, and the tendency to ascribe to them every English Catholic book with a foreign appearance is unfortunate. We must remember that for fifteen years from 1578 the English College was transplanted to Rheims, which thus had the honour of producing, in 1582, the first Roman Catholic version of the New Testament, completed twenty-seven years later by the issue of the Old Testament at Douay in 1609-10. The New Testament was printed by J. Fogny, the Old by Laurence Kellam, and it is needless to say that the versions of both books were vigorously attacked by the Protestant experts. The absence of the English College from Douay, from 1578-93, of course diminishes the probability of English books having been printed there during these years, and the foundation of the Seminary at S. Omer, in the year of its return, soon provided a formidable rival. It appears, however, from the town records that printing was only introduced into S. Omer in 1601, when the town made a grant of 100 livres to F. Bellet for his expenses in bringing thither his press. According to Dr. Oliver, the biographer of the English Jesuits, a book entitled 'An apology for the Arch-Priest,' by the indefatigable Father Parsons, was printed at S. Omer in this same year, 1601, so that Bellet must have got to work very quickly, unless the College had a separate press of its own. Fitzherbert's 'Defence of the Catholic Cause,' dated 1602, is also assigned to Saint Omer, as are the majority of the books mentioned by Oliver as having been printed during the next twenty years. The earliest names I find connected with the Saint Omer press are those of C. Bocard, and John Higham, the latter of whom printed simultaneously at Douay, just as, at an earlier period, J. Fouler had done at Douay, Antwerp, and Louvain. These two latter places were not unproductive of English books during the seventeenth century, and others were printed at Brussels, Ghent, Paris, and Rouen, so that wholesale attributions to Douay are eminently unsafe. It is noteworthy, indeed, that Duthillceul in his 'Bibliographie douaisienne' (second edition, 1842), mentions only just over twenty books as having been printed in English at Douay up to the close of the seventeenth century. This, of course, is ludicrously below the mark, Duthillceul's failure to discover English books being, no doubt, due to their having found their way to the country for which they were intended. As I have said, however, everything points to the English press at Douay having been considerably less prolific than is generally believed.

We must pass on once more and enter the trackless wilderness of the period after 1640. No doubt the enormous increase in the output of the press makes its history during the last two centuries and a half dishearteningly difficult, but when I see all our bibliographical stalwarts so sedulously engaged in crossing the 't's' and dotting the 'i's' in the work of their predecessors in the early history of printing, I cannot help regretting that at least a few of them will not turn their attention to the later period in which everything still remains to be done. As far as I can judge, the Civil War did not leave many traces in English books printed abroad, but I have come across a few of some little interest. Residence in Roman Catholic countries seems to have caused a good many cavaliers to reconsider their religious position, and some of them found it necessary to explain themselves in print. Several books of this kind were printed in Paris. Thus in 1644 Sir Kenelm Digby put forth 'Two Treatises,' one of which was concerned with the 'Immortality of reasonable souls,' while in 1652, Peter Targa published for him 'A Discourse concerning Infallibility in Religion,' which was reprinted in the same year at Amsterdam. In 1647 there was published at Paris an English work called 'Exomologesis,' recording the conversion of Hugh Paulin de Cressy, and this went into a second edition six years later. In 1649 we come across 'A Lost Sheep returned Home, or the motives of the conversion of Thomas Vane,' and in 1657, 'Presbyteries Triall, or the occasion and motives of conversion to the Catholic Faith of a person of quality in Scotland.' We find also several English works of devotion printed in Paris about this time, and in 1659 we have an anonymous 'Answer to the Provinciall Letters published by the Jansenists.' The impatience of the Royalist Colony in France could not wait for the importation of copies of the 'Eikon Basilike' from England, and at least one edition was published in Paris in 1649, as to which Mr. Almack's book (No. 28 in his list) gives full information. At the Hague the King's execution produced a very curious work, a translation of the 'Electra' of Sophocles by C. W. (Christopher Wace), 'presented to her highness the Lady Elizabeth; with an epilogue, shewing the parallel in two points, the Return and the Restauration.' This was the first English rendering of any part of Sophocles, but I see that I wrote of it some years ago that it was 'beneath contempt,' and, I daresay, this unkind opinion had good foundation. In 1653 we have at Bruges an echo of the Lilburne controversy, in an answer to his pamphlet, 'John Lilburne revived,' written by Captain Wendy, under the title 'Vincit qui patitur, or Lieutenant-Colonel John Lylburne decyphered.' Lastly, at the Hague in 1660, Sir William Lower published a 'Relation in form of a Journal of the Voiage and Residencie which CharlesII. hath made in Holland,' and this is the last book of the Civil War period of which I have a note.

During the reign of CharlesII., we have the usual sprinkling of devotional and theological books printed abroad, with a few traces at Ghent and Paris of the controversies of Friar Peter Walsh. I have recollections of one or two pamphlets printed by the ministers of English Puritan Congregations in the Low Countries, but the only one of which I have a note is, 'The Interest of these United Provinces, being a Defence of the Zealanders' Choice,' in which the Rev. Joseph Hill, Pastor of the Scotch Church at Middleburg, where the book was printed, advocated in 1673 an alliance between England and Holland. Such a book would have some interest in itself, but the consequences of its publication give it additional importance in the history of book-lore. Hill's work, which was also printed at Amsterdam in Dutch, gave great offence to the States; he was ordered to leave Zeeland, to which he did not return till 1678, and it was during this enforced absence that he introduced into England, after the death of his friend Dr. Lazarus Seaman, the Dutch practice of selling books by auction. But for that unlucky pamphlet, Sotheby's and Puttick's might never have existed.

Two other Dutch printed books of this period are just worth noting, a reprint, in 1680, at the Hague, of 'Two Speeches made in the House of Peers,' by the Earl of Shaftesbury, and a 'Sermon of Thanksgiving for the delivery of CharlesII.' from the conspiracy of 1683, printed at Rotterdam. As the Revolution approaches, we get a warning of it in the appearance, at the Hague, in 1687 and 1688, of the 'Citation of Gilbert Burnet' and of 'Dr. Burnet's Vindication of himself,' while after the flight of James, we may note the publication at Cologne of 'The Great Bastard, Protector of the Little One,' 'done out of French' in 1689, a Paris edition of the King's 'speeches' in 1692, under the title 'Royal Tracts,' and in the same year at Amsterdam, a 'Letter' written under the name of General Ludlow, defending his comparison of the first four years of CharlesI.'s reign with the tyranny of the four years of JamesII. Six years later, quite in the modern manner, the old regicide published his 'Memoirs, finding a printer in Switzerland 'at Vevay, in the Canton of Bern,' where also a continuation was printed the next year.

The paper is already much longer than I had intended, and it is therefore, perhaps, as well that of English printing abroad during the first half of the eighteenth century I have found no trace, except in a few devotional books published at Douay. Thereoughtto be some Jacobite tracts, and I need not say that any notes of them will be heartily welcomed. But there is a last phase of the foreign printing of English books of which I may be allowed to quote a few instances. For various reasons during the last hundred years or so, a good many English men and women of letters have lived abroad, and though most of them, like Byron, Beddoes, Landor, and the Brownings, have sent their books to be printed in England, their foreign residence has occasionally left interesting traces in books and booklets with foreign imprints. Thus Sir William Hamilton, while Ambassador at the Court of Naples, had two books printed for him there, one 'Campi Phlegraei' (or) 'Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies' in 1776, the other a series of collections of 'Engravings from Ancient Vases' found in Sicily, between 1791 and 1795. Gibbon's long stay in Switzerland doubtless had something to do with the publication at Berne, in 1796-97, of a reprint of his 'Miscellaneous Works' which had then only just appeared in London. Shelley's 'The Cenci' appeared in 1819, with the imprint Italy, and his 'Adonais' was printed 'at Pisa with the types of Didot' in 1821. At Parma, several English works obtained what used to be considered the honour of Bodoni's types, and the English ventures of Galignani at Paris, though far surpassed by the later enterprise of Baron Tauchnitz, deserve a chronicler. The employment of foreign presses by wandering Englishmen has not yet died out. At Davos Platz, Stevenson did better—he set up a toy press of his own. A year or two before the paper was read, Mr. William Sharp gave local colour to his 'Sospiri di Roma' by employing a Roman printer, and in 1895 an important English historical work, 'The Life of Sir Robert Dudley' was printed at Florence.

When the Bibliographical Society takes up the history of English books printed abroad, I hope that, if only in a small print appendix, room may be found for a record of these later books, and that we shall not stop at 1600, or at 1700, or at 1800, but recognise that our own age is as worthy of our attention as any of its predecessors.

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