Fine Books

Typographical Antiquities, and who was ambitious enough to wish

se to see a copy of one of the Dutch editions, and set an English wood-cutter to work, with very poor success, to manufacture a bogus specimen of it, wherewith "to oblige the curious." This, with a similar imitation of a page in the Bib

ss were printed in Germany quite early in the fifteenth century, the cut of S. Christopher, formerly in the Spencer Collection, now in the John Rylands Library, bearing the date 1423.3 On the other hand, printing with movable type was pra

dcut p

pictures and

es and text printed

hich appears to be the oldest of the block-books, was placed about 1430 or 1440, and the Ars Moriendi and the other chief specimens of block-printing were all supposed to have been produced before 1460, the main period of block-printing thus coinciding with the interval between the S. Christopher of 1423 and Pfister's activity at Bamberg about 1461. Positive evidence in favour of this

d as the latest4 is the Opera nova contemplativa per ogni fedel christiano laquale tratta de le figure del testamento vecchio: le quale figure sonno verificate nel testamento nuovo. As its title implies, this, curiously enough

was cast at a time, and that type was quickly distributed and used again, never kept standing on the chance that another edition would be wanted. Now when we come to the illustrations in printed books, we find the same woodblocks used for five or six successive editions, and then, in many cases, enjoying a second lease of life as job-blocks, used at haphazard by inferior printers. It is clear, therefore, that while it was a much more difficult and laborious business to cut the letterpress of a book on blocks of wood than to set it up with movable types, when the blocks were once made much more work could be got out of them. In a word, in the case of a small

ich can only be definitely connected with the years 1470 to 1473. The characteristics of the earlier group are that they are printed (1) with a watery brown ink; (2) always on one side of the paper only; (3) without mechanical pressure;8 (4) two consecutive pages at a time, so that they cannot be arranged in quires, but must be folded and stitched separately, and the book thus formed9 begins and ends with a blank page and has a pair of blank pages between each pair of printed ones. This arrangement in some extant copi

ly a kind of paint) employed in ordinary printing; (2) printing on both sides of the paper; (3) marks of pressure, showing that the paper h

hen laid aside, and reappear between 1550 and 1560, certainly the worse for wear, but yet capable by a lucky chance of yielding quite a fair impression. The fact that one issue of a block-book can be positively assigned to 1470 or 1473, thus does not of itself forbid an earlier issue being placed as far back in the fifteenth century as any one may please to propose. On the other hand, when a printed book was a popular success editions succeeded each other with great rapidity, and one centre of printing vied with another in producing copies of it. The chief reaso

ermany, during the fifteenth century, a painstaking and well-illustrated work in three folio volumes. The most recent and probably the final treatment of the subject is that by Dr. W. L. Schreiber, in Vol. IV of his Manuel de l'Amateur de la Gravure sur bois et sur métal au xve siècle, published in

A PAU

also on scrolls. Schreiber distinguishes ten issues and editions, in addition to an earlier German one of a less elaborate design and with manuscript text, which belongs to a different tradition. The earlier of these ten editions appear to have been made in the Netherlands. An edition with German te

MORI

; the later to Germany. There are also editions with German text, one of them signed "hanns Sporer," and dated 1473. A set of engravings on copper by the Master E. S. (copied by the Master of S. Erasmus) may be either imitations or the originals of the earliest of these Ars Moriendi designs. (See Lionel Cust's The Master E. S. and the Ars Moriendi.) The designs we

A CANT

llustrating the Song of Songs as a parable of t

IS SANCTI

eaf. The early editions are assigned to the Netherlands, the later to Germany. A copy of the edition regarded as the fourth, lately sold by Herr Ludwig Rosent

IENDI, BLOCK

CONTRA VA

HUMANAE S

that two different types are used in different parts of a Dutch printed edition has encouraged Dr. Hessels to believe that this "mixed edition" should be regarded as proving the production of two complete editions, one in each type. On this theory we have (1) a hypothetical Latin block-printed edition; (2-4) three Dutch editions, each printed in a different type; (5) a Latin edition, entirely printed from ty

CHRI

o the Coming of Antichrist, and the Fifteen Signs which were to precede the Last Judgmen

FENSORIUM INVIOLATAE CA

and therefore to render faith in this easier. Unfortunately the marvels are so very marvellous that they do not inspire belief, e.g. one story relates how the sun one day drew up the moisture from the earth with

OHANNES REGIOMON

mation, and a figure of the human body with notes of the signs of the zodiac by which it was influenced. Composed by the fam

IEB. DIE KUN

he paper only, later on both. The printer appears to have been Jorg Schaff, of Augsburg, and the date of issue about 1475. The

ILIA

shed to meet the rush of German pilgrims to Rome at the Jubilee of Pope Sixtus IV, 1475. The blocks were probably cut in Germany, and the printing done at Rome. Some of

ins eighteen leaves, and was probably executed at Venice about the middle of the fifteenth century. Some of the blocks were subsequently used (after a scroll at the foot had been cut off) for an edition of the Devote Meditatione sopra

contemplativa, an adaptation of the Biblia Paupe

then worthies-Hector, Alexander, and Julius C?sar; the second, three from the Old Testament-Joshua, David, and Judas Maccab?us; the third, three from medieval romance-

nor is it in the least likely that one ever e

hrist and the events in the Old Testament history which were regarded as prefigurements of them, as to the dignity of the Blessed Virgin and the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, as to the end of the world and the coming of Antichrist, and as to the spiritual dangers and temptations of the dying and the means by which they might be resisted. As early specimens of book-illustration the value of the block-books varies very greatly. The majority of them are more curious than beautiful, but the pictures of the Cantica Canticorum, the Speculum Humanae Saluationis, and the Ars Moriendi have all ve

s doubtful, and only twenty-five are definitely registered as being in the hands of private collectors, viz. of the Apocalypse, eight copies or fragments; of the Biblia Pauperum, six; of the Speculum and Ars Moriendi, four each; of the Defensorium, two; and of the Cantica Canticorum, one. The chief owners known to Dr. Schreiber were the Earl of Pembroke, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and Major Holford, to whom must now be added Mr. Pierpont Morgan and Mr. Perrins. No doubt the copies in public institutions are much more easily enumerated than those in private hands, and probably most of the untraced copies are owned by collectors. But when allowance has been made for this, it remains obvious that this is no field where an easy harvest can be reaped, and that the average collector may think himself lucky if he obtains one or two single leav

er date, 1418, on a cut of the Bles

48, is spoken of by Mr. Campbell Dodgson as a "belated specimen"

formis impressit aenis Vrbe libros Spira genitus de stirpe Johannes," and the use of Chalcographi as a

mmediate successors. At Rome Sweynheym and Pannartz mostly printed 275 copies, only in a few instances as many as 300.

woodcuts with manuscript text. The most important of these is a German

he face of the block by rubbing it on the back with a burnisher. The paper was thus quite as strongly indented as if passed through a press, but the impression is usually less even.

pasted on walls. In the case of the Biblia Pauperum, for instance, the space between the two woodcuts placed o

r occasionally by their being differently arranged, or with changes made in

resting collection formed by Dr. S