The portrait is another element of illustration, the figure of the

author prefixed to his work. It had already been a custom in the

manuscripts to paint on the first leaf of the work the likeness of him

who composed it, frequently in the act of presenting his book to some

noble patron; and in this way is often preserved the only known portrait

of either patron or author. Printing and engraving rendered these

effigies more common, the portraits of one often served for another, and

the booksellers used them without very much scruple. As we shall see

later, this became in the sixteenth century a means of illustrating a

book plainly, but only at the time when the portrait, drawn or painted,

commenced to be more widely used. Previously the _clichés_ of which we

speak went everywhere, from the Italians to the French, from Æsop to

Accursius; these uncertain physiognomies began with the manuscript

romances of chivalry, from whence they were servilely copied in

typography. From the first the Italians mixed the ancient and the

modern. Thus in a _Breviarium_, printed in 1478, there is an engraved

portrait of Paul Florentin. On the same principle, the portrait of

Burchiello, an early Italian poet, was later reproduced in England as a

likeness of William Caxton.

In France the author is often represented writing, and it was so up to

the middle of the sixteenth century. In an edition of _Des Cas des

Nobles Hommes_, by Jean Dupré, in 1483, Boccaccio is represented seated,

having before him his French translator, Laurent de Premierfait. This

plate is one of the oldest representations of authors in French books.

In the _Roman de la Rose_, first edition of Paris and Lyons, in folio,

probably published by William Leroy about 1485, William de Lorris, the

author, is shown in his bed:--

"Une nuyt comme je songeoye,

Et de fait dormir me convient,

En dormant un songe m'advint...."

[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Woodcut from Caxton's "Game and Playe of the

Chesse."]

There is also a portrait of Alain Chartier in his _Faits_, printed in

1489. In the Terence of Treschel, of Lyons, in 1493, we see a grammarian

of the fifteenth century in a furnished room of the time occupied in

writing at a desk; this is Guy Jouvenal, of Mans, the author of the

commentary.

[Illustration: Fig. 37.--The Knight, a woodcut from Caxton's "Game and

Playe of the Chesse."]

While this good work was progressing so nobly in France, Italy, and

Germany, the typographers of England were by no means idle, although the

illustration of the Book in the fifteenth century was not there so

forward. William Caxton had produced over sixty works, the colophons of

many of them revealing much of the personal life and character of the

first English printer. Some of them were ornamented with woodcuts; we

reproduce two from the "Game and Playe of the Chesse," printed in folio,

about 1476. The first represents a king and another person playing at

chess; the smaller cut is a representation of the knight, who is thus

described in Caxton's own words: "The knyght ought to be maad al armed

upon an hors in suche wise that he have an helme on his heed and a spere

in his right hond, and coverid with his shelde, a swerde and a mace on

his left syde, clad with an halberke and plates tofore his breste, legge

harnoys on his legges, spores on his heelis, on hys handes hys

gauntelettes, hys hors wel broken and taught, and apte to bataylle, and

coveryd with hys armes." The other Caxton block which we reproduce is a

representation of music from the "Mirrour of the World," a thin folio

volume of one hundred leaves printed in 1481, with thirty-eight

woodcuts. These specimens will serve to show the rudimentary character

of English wood engraving in the fifteenth century. No authentic

portrait of Caxton is known, and the one that is generally accepted is

really a portrait of an Italian poet, Burchiello, taken from an octavo

edition of his work on Tuscan poetry, printed 1554; this was copied by

Faithorne for Sir Hans Sloane as the portrait of Caxton, and was

reproduced by Ames in his "Typographical Antiquities," 1749. Lewis

prefixed the portrait here given to his "Life of Mayster Willyam

Caxton," 1737, which is a copy of Faithorne's drawing with some

alterations. John Lettou and William Machlinia issued various statutes

and other legal works.

[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Music, a woodcut from Caxton's "Mirrour of the

World."]

[Illustration: Fig. 39.--William Caxton, from Rev. J. Lewis' "Life."]

[Illustration: Fig. 40.--Mark of Wynken de Worde.]

Wynken de Worde continued printing up to 1534, and issued over four

hundred works. He used no less than nine different marks, all of them

bearing Caxton's initials, evidencing the regard of the pupil for his

master; the mark which we reproduce is one of rare occurrence. Richard

Pynson began in 1493, and continued well into the sixteenth century, and

was one of the first of the "privileged" printers, authorised to issue

the legal and parliamentary publications. One of the marks used by him

is here reproduced. Julian Notary began in 1498. The only style of

illustration used by any of these early printers was the woodcut, and of

this there was very little beyond the title-page and printer's mark. The

artistic form of the Book originated on the Continent, but England was

not slow to adopt it and fashion it to her own ends.

[Illustration: Fig. 41.--Mark of Richard Pynson.]

Thus was printing spread abroad, carrying with it to the countries where

it was established the rules of an unchangeable principle; but,

according to its surroundings, it was so transformed in a few years that

its origin was no longer recognised. It was light in Italy, heavy in

Germany, gay in France. Painting, of which it was accidentally the

issue, returned to it under the form of illustration a short time after

its first and fruitful essays. The Gothic character, generally used in

Germany, continued in France with the Vostres, the Verards, and others

up to the middle of the sixteenth century, although the first artisans

before this used Roman type; it was also the prevailing type used in

English books. In Italy it was Jenson, a Frenchman, who gave to the

matrix the alphabet preserved to the present time; and it was the

Venetians and Florentines who learned before all others the art of

judicious ornamentation of the Book. The French came very near

perfection, thanks to their printers and booksellers, at the end of the

century; and the Germans found illustrious artists to scatter their

compositions in their large, heavy works.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.

1500 TO 1600.

French epics and the Renaissance--Venice and Aldus

Manutius--Italian illustrators--The Germans: _Theuerdanck_,

Schäufelein--The Book in other countries--French books at the

beginning of the century, before the accession of Francis

I.--Geoffroy Tory and his works--Francis I. and the Book--Robert

Estienne--Lyons a centre of bookselling; Holbein's Dances of

Death--School of Basle--Alciati's emblems and the illustrated books

of the middle of the century--The school of Fontainebleau and its

influence--Solomon Bernard--Cornelis de la Haye and the

_Promptuaire_--John Cousin--Copper plate engraving and metal

plates--Woériot--The portrait in the Book of the sixteenth

century--How a book was illustrated on wood at the end of the

century--Influence of Plantin on the Book; his school of

engravers--General considerations--Progress in England--Coverdale's

Bible--English printers and their work--Engraved plates in English

books

Our simple division into chapters will be understood without difficulty

as not corresponding exactly with the most momentous epochs in the

history of the Book in France and abroad. Doubtless it would be easy for

France alone to find some limits and to furnish scholastic formulæ by

which contemporary publishers might be grouped. But in order to present,

as in a synoptical table, an essential and abridged sketch of the Book

in all European countries, it appeared to us more convenient to begin

with the confused and tangled notions by centuries and to unfold in our

review the characteristic facts of each country conjointly. Moreover,

after the sixteenth century neither Italy nor Germany could compare with

France, which, less fortunate, perhaps, at the beginning than her

neighbours, surpassed them in all the pride of her genius.

The commencement of the sixteenth century found the French army in

Italy, under the command of Louis XII. Marching from glory to glory, the

French successively saw Pisa, Capua, and Naples, and that which has

since been called the Renaissance displayed itself little by little to

the conquerors. At Venice was living Aldus Pius Manutius, then the

greatest printer of the entire world. Aldus was proprietor of the

celebrated printing office of Nicholas Jenson, through his

father-in-law, Andrea Torresani, of Asola, who acquired it on the death

of the French printer; and he had in a few years reached a position in

which he was without a rival. We have seen that he composed, at the end

of the fifteenth century, the admirable volume _Hypnerotomachia_, the

renown of which became universal. Aldus was fifty-two years of age,

having been born in 1447; and his learning was increased by daily

intercourse with learned Italians, among them the celebrated Pico de la

Mirandola. His establishment at Venice in 1488 had for its object the

creation of a chair in Greek, in which language he was well instructed

from his youth. Occupied with the idea of issuing editions of the

principal Greek writers, which up to then remained in manuscript, he

engaged himself in the formation of a printing office. He first

published the _Herone et Leandro_ of Musæus in 1494, quarto, in a Greek

character apparently designed by him, and perhaps engraved by Francisco

da Bologna; then the Greek grammar of Constantine Lascaris, with the

date of 1494; and the works of Aristotle in five folio volumes. At the

time of the Italian wars Aldus was making a revolution in typography, by

producing more practical sizes and finer characters, which would permit

a volume of the smallest height to contain the matter of a folio printed

with large type. Legend says that the new letters were copied exactly

from the handwriting of Petrarch, inclining like all cursive writing;

the name of _Italic_ was given to this character, which was also called

_Aldine_, from its inventor. It was engraved by Francisco da Bologna.

Aldus published in octavo size, with this kind of letter, an edition of

Virgil in 1501, then a Horace, a Juvenal, a Martial, and a Petrarch in

the same year. The following year, 1502, he gave an edition of the

_Terze Rime_ of Dante, and for the first time took as his typographical

mark an anchor encircled by a dolphin.[A]

[Footnote A: Tory in his _Champfleury_ explains thus the mark of Aldus

and his device, which was in Greek the "Make haste slowly" of Boileau:

"The anchor signifies tardiness, and the dolphin haste, which is to say

that in his business he was moderate."]

[Illustration: Fig. 42.--The anchor and dolphin, mark of Aldus Manutius,

after the original in the _Terze Rime_ of 1502, where it appears for the

first time.]

His marriage with the daughter of Andrea Torresani, of Asola, brought

together into his possession two printing houses. The burden became too

heavy for Manutius to think henceforth of publishing by himself.

Besides, the wars did not allow him any repose, of which he bitterly

complained in his prefaces. He attracted learned Greek scholars, who

supervised, each one in his specialty, the works in progress, and

founded a society, an Aldine academy, in which the greatest names of the

epoch were united. Aldus conveys the perfect idea of a great printer of

those times, doing honour to celebrated men, in spite of business

preoccupations and of the annoyance caused by the war. It is said that

Erasmus, passing through Venice, called on him, and not making himself

known, was badly received by the powerful printer. All at once, at the

name of the distinguished visitor, Aldus, overwhelmed for an instant,

rose in great haste and showed him how highly he appreciated men of

letters.

The war finished by ruining this state of affairs. In 1505 Aldus quitted

Venice to travel, and on his return found it poorer than when he went

away. Andrea d'Asola, his father-in-law, came to his aid; but the great

printer had received his death-blow; and in spite of the activity which

he brought to the new establishment, he further declined until 1515,

when he expired, leaving an inextricable confusion to his son Paul.

He had early abandoned illustration for the scientific and useful

in his publications; besides, the size of book chosen by him did

not admit of plates; but other publishers employed artists in the

ornamentation of the Book. Lucantonio Giunta, the most celebrated among

them, was printer and engraver, a striking example of the affinity

of the two trades from their origin. In 1508 Lucantonio Zonta, as he

then spelt his name, published a Roman breviary in large quarto, with

twelve engravings in the Lombardo-Venetian manner, signed "L. A.," in

very good style. The same artist-publisher cut a portrait of Virgil for

an edition of that poet about 1515. Furthermore, Giunta did not alone

illustrate the book from his own office. Other designers lent him their

assistance. We find evidence of this in the Bible printed by him in

1519 in small octavo.

[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Mark of Lucantonio Giunta, of Venice.]

The most meritorious of the artists of Venice at this time was John

Andrea, known as Guadagnino. He designed the vignettes for Florus's

epitome of Livy, printed at Venice for Melchior Sessa and Peter of

Ravenna (1520, folio); in 1516 he copied the plates of Dürer's

_Apocalypse_ for that of Alexander Paganini, of Venice. A Venetian work

which signalised the beginning of the sixteenth century was the _Trionfo

di Fortuna_ of Sigismond Fanti, of Ferrara, printed by Agostino da

Portese in 1527.

Venice was the home of Titian, and at the present time the great artist

was at the height of his glory. In 1518 two brothers, Nicholas and

Dominic dal Gesù, published a translation of the celebrated "Golden

Legend" of Voragine. The plates which were added to the work were

manifestly inspired by the school of the Venetian master. Unhappily the

engravers have not always equalled the genius of the drawings.

To resume, the city of Venice was, at the beginning of the sixteenth

century, one of the most prolific in publishers and artists of talent.

Since the first establishments of the Germans, typography had

successively employed in Venice Nicholas Jenson, a Frenchman, inventor

of the Roman character; Erhard Ratdolt, the first to employ illustration

there; and Aldus Manutius, scholar and printer, whose progress in

printing elevated that art to the highest rank among human discoveries;

there were also remarkable engravers and draughtsmen, among others

Guadagnino and Giunta, besides the anonymous masters of the school of

Titian. The part of Venice in the movement, then, was great, but it may

be explained by the riches of its citizens, the extent of its commerce,

and the genius it possessed.

If we now return from Venice to the north, to Milan, the school of

Leonardo da Vinci will make itself apparent in the Book. In order of

date we will mention the _Mysterii Gesta Beatæ Veronicæ Virginis_,

published by Gotardo de Ponte 1518, small quarto, with figures in the

style of Luini, and Vitruvius in Italian by Cesariano. On the testimony

of the author, the wood engravings in a book of Fra Luca Pacioli, _De

Divina Proportione_, are attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. M. Delaborde

does not believe this, but M. Passavant does.

[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Title of the _Theuerdanck_. The flourishes of

the letters are printed.]

In Germany, Nuremberg continued, with Albert Dürer and the artists of

his school, to furnish book illustrations at the beginning of the

century. The master reprinted his valuable engravings of the "Life of

the Virgin" in 1511, and also the "Apocalypse." But after him the art

commenced to decline; a hundred years later nothing remained of the

honour and glory gained by Germany in the commencement. Among the most

interesting of the Nuremberg publications is a chivalric poem by

Melchior Pfinzfing, composed for the marriage of Maximilian and Mary of

Burgundy. As M. Delaborde in his _Débuts de I'Imprimerie_ well remarks,

this is not a book destined for sale by a bookseller; it is a work of

art destined by an emperor for his friends, and he saw that it was an

unapproachable work.

[Illustration: Fig. 45.--Plate taken from the _Theuerdanck_,

representing Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy. Engraved on wood after

Schäufelein.]

Bold strokes, majestic letters, intertwined ornaments, are here

multiplied. Three persons worked upon it for five years; these were,

Peutinger says, Hans Leonard Schäufelein, the painter, Jost Necker, the

engraver, and Schönsperger, the printer of Augsburg, who quitted his

native city for Nuremberg. When they were able to take a proof,

craftsmen were unwilling to believe it to be a book composed in movable

characters; they were sure, on the contrary, that it was a true

xylograph, cut in wood; and, in fact, from the title here reproduced,

the error was excusable. This work, which is now called the

_Theuerdanck_, from the name of the hero of the romance, is ornamented

with a number of wood engravings, numbered by Arabic figures. We

reproduce one of the last plates, in which Theuerdanck--Maximilian--is

introduced to the Queen--Mary of Burgundy. The designs of Schäufelein

recall very nearly the work of Albert Dürer, his master; but, as we said

of him, these works, heavy and dull, although very clever, do not always

suit as vignettes. Again, our criticism does not extend so much to the

_Theuerdanck_, whose letters, excessively ornamented and much flattened,

furnish a framework more suitable for the engravings than would a more

slender character, which would be completely overshadowed by the German

plate.

When we have mentioned the _Passional Christi_ of Lucas Cranach,

published by J. Grünenberg at Wittemberg in 1521--twenty-six mediocre

wood engravings--we shall have cited the most important of the

interesting and rare volumes published in Germany at the commencement of

the sixteenth century.

The Netherlands, Spain, and England were working, but without great

success. In the Low Countries Plantin and his gigantic enterprises may

be recalled. In Spain the taste had not yet developed itself; and

although the drawing of illustrations may be careful enough, the

wood-cutting is pitiable. We will mention the Seneca of Toledo in 1510,

and the "Chronicle of Aragon" in 1523. Of England we will speak later.

In France, on the contrary, we find an enormous commerce in books at the

commencement of the sixteenth century. All the publishers mentioned in

the preceding chapter were still living, and they were feeling the

effects of the French conquests in Italy. The dithyrambic literature

then inaugurated, and which had its origin under Louis XII., exercised a

bad influence equally upon the printers and decorators of the Book.

Doubtless the composition of the text and engravings was done hastily,

for the great people did not like to wait for this kind of history. _Le

Vergier d'Honneur_, written by Octavian de St. Gelais and Andry de la

Vigne, was thus published about the end of the fifteenth century and

ornamented with hasty vignettes, probably at the expense of Antoine

Verard. Upon the accession to the throne of Louis XII., Claude de

Seyssel, his master of council, composed _Les Louenges du Roy Louis

XII._, and soon after translated it from Latin into French for the same

Verard, who printed it in 1508.

The taste for historical works induced the publishers to produce _La Mer

des Histoires_, which had already been published in the fifteenth

century; Thielman Kerver put forth the "Compendium" of Robert Gaguin in

1500 on account of Durand Gerlier and John Petit. The French version of

this work was given in 1514 by Galliot du Pré, with vignettes, and

afterwards under the name of _Mirouer Historial_, by Renaud Chaudière in

1520, by Nyverd, and others; the same with the _Rozier Historial_, with

figures, in 1522 and 1528. Among the most popular works was the

_Illustrations de la Gaule et Singularitez de Troye_, by John le Maire

de Belges, printed in Paris and ornamented. In 1512 it was published by

Geoffroy de Marnef, in 1515 by John and Gilbert de Marnef, by Regnault,

by Philip le Noir, and others, always in the Gothic characters which

prevailed in France at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

We give from the curious book of John le Maire an interesting woodcut

representing Queen Anne of Brittany as Juno, in which we can without

much difficulty see a remarkable sketch by a Bourdichon or a Perréal.

The truly French style of this figure leaves no doubt as to its origin.

At the same time, it may possibly have been inspired by the Virgin of a

German master, say one of 1466, judging from the accessories, and even

from the pose. This engraving will be found in the edition of 1512 of

Gilbert de Marnef, in Gothic letter, quarto. On the reverse are the arms

and device of John le Maire de Belges.

[Illustration: Fig. 46.--Vignette taken from the _Illustrations de la

Gaule et Singularitez de Troye_. Queen Anne of Brittany as Juno.]

The time that elapsed from the death of Louis XI. until the accession of

Francis I.--that is to say, from 1483 to 1515--was, to employ an old

expression, the golden age of French printing and illustration. Under

Charles VIII. and Louis XII. the designers on wood were not yet affected

by the neighbouring schools; neither the accentuated Italian influence

nor the German processes had reached them; they did in their own way

that which came to them, and they did it in their own fashion and habit,

without foreign influence. Further, the kings did not ignore them, and

Louis XII. preserved to the printers of the university all their rights

and privileges in a magniloquent ordinance, in which the art of

typography was extolled in the highest terms. It restores to them all

the advantages that they had lost. It recites, "In consideration of the

great benefit that has come to our kingdom by means of the art and

science of printing, the invention of which seems more Divine than

human, which, thanks to God, has been invented and found in our time by

the help and industry of booksellers, by which our holy Catholic faith

has been greatly augmented and strengthened, justice better understood

and administered, and Divine service more honourably and diligently

made, said, and celebrated, ... by means of which our kingdom precedes

all others," etc., etc. (Blois, 9th April, 1513). Certainly Louis made

the best of himself and his kingdom in this preamble, but it must be

recognised that France already held a predominant rank in the new

industry, and that beyond the Italians she had no fear of serious

rivalry. The school of ornamentists made constant progress. Before the

books of hours, the booksellers contented themselves with miserable

blocks, placed side by side, forming a framework of good and bad

together; but after Simon Vostre, Verard, and the others they were

singularly refined. The borders, at least in the books of hours, had

become the principal part of the book; they had in them flowers,

architectural, complicated, and simple subjects, all of perfect taste

and extreme elegance; and, as we have observed in the representation of

Anne of Brittany in the _Illustrations de la Gaule_, the figure subjects

were no longer mechanical, commonplace, and tiresome blocks, but, on the

contrary, more often works specially designed and engraved by artists of

merit.

[Illustration: Fig. 47.--Title of the _Entree d'Eléonore d'Autriche a

Paris_, by Guillaume Bochetel. Printed by Geoffroy Tory in May, 1531,

quarto.]

Geoffroy Tory, born at Bourges in 1480, continued after Vostre and

Verard the onward march of illustration of the Book. He was a sort of

encyclopædist, who knew and foresaw everything, but with a singularly

subtler and finer genius than his predecessors. There is now very little

doubt that at first Tory was an engraver and printer. Moreover, he

published with Jean Petit one of his first volumes, the geography of

Pomponius Mela, printed by Gilles de Gourmont in 1507. Tory was then an

erudite and diffusive commentator. Later he published a book with poor

engravings (_Valerii Probi Grammatici Opusculum_, 1510), waiting until

his good star should place him on the right road. He had for his mark,

say the bibliographers, the cross of Lorraine [Symbol: double cross],

small enough to be lost in the ornamentation of his plates. Really this

sign is found in Tory's mark--the "Pot Cassé"--the broken jar--and also

sometimes in the letter G, which was his ordinary signature. This

opinion, which we will not try to contradict in a popular work like

this, appears to us to err, as others used this mark, as may be judged

from the essentially different touches of engravings bearing the cross

of Lorraine, and particularly those of Woériot in the middle of the

century.

If M. A. Bernard[A] may be credited, Geoffroy Tory cultivated all the

sciences with equal success. For our purpose, suffice it to recognise

his right to one of the first places in the art of decoration of books

of hours. Doubtless his travels in Italy had contributed to modify his

taste and to detach him a little from the sober and simple manner that

then characterised French engraving; but he nevertheless preserved the

indelible traces of the origin of his art, in the same way as some

people cannot correct their provincial accent. The _Heures de la

Vierge_, which he designed, and which he had engraved about 1520, on

account of Simon de Colines, is marvellously surrounded by ornaments,

until then unknown in France; at the same time, and in spite of other

tendencies, it is purely a French work, and the specimen given here is a

convincing proof.

[Footnote A: _Geoffroy Tory, Peintre et Graveur, Premier Imprimeur

Royal, Réformateur de l'Orthographe et de la Typographie_: Paris, 1857,

8vo.]

[Illustration: Fig. 48.--Full page of the _Heures_ of Simon de Colines,

by Tory.]

[Illustration: Fig. 49.--_Heures_ of Geoffroy Tory. The Circumcision.]

[Illustration: Fig. 50.--_Heures_ of Simon de Colines, with the mark of

the Cross of Lorraine.]

Geoffroy Tory composed a curious book, as poetic as learned, in which he

studied at once the form of the letter from the typographic and the

emblematic point of view, and also the French orthography of the time.

He tells us himself that he was brought to commence this book on the

fête-day of the kings, 1523, when, after a frugal repast, he was, he

says, "dreaming on my bed and revolving my memory, thinking of a

thousand little fancies, serious and mirthful, among which I thought of

some antique letters that I had made for Monseigneur the treasurer for

war, Master Jehan Grolier, councillor and secretary of our lord the

King, amateur of fine letters and of all learned personages." Tory

called his book _Champfleury, auquel est contenu l'art et science de la

deue proportion des lettres ... selon le corps et le visage humain_, and

he published it himself in small folio, putting upon it the sign of

Gilles de Gourmont, in 1529.

At heart Tory had been fascinated by the theories of Dürer on the

proportions of the human body; and he says, "The noble German painter

Albert Dürer is greatly to be praised that he has so well brought to

light his art of painting in designing geometrical forms, the ramparts

of war, and the proportions of the human body." He wished to indicate

the true measure of letters to his contemporaries, "the number of points

and turns of the compass that each one requires." The most amusing part

of this curious treatise is his short academical preface, where, under a

playful form, the great publisher studies the orthography of his time,

and exclaims against the forgers of new words, the Latinisers of the

language, "the skimmers of Latin, jesters and gibberers, ... who mock

not only their shadows, but themselves." The entire passage was copied

by Rabelais, nearly literally, and it indicates that its author was

possessed of good sense, which, unhappily, all his contemporaries were

not.

For the technical part, he added to his theories a number of designs of

geometrical letters, but he was carried away, after the fashion of the

time, by Greek and Roman models, perhaps a little further than he meant,

losing himself in the midst of idle dissertations. To these geometrical

engravings he added small and charming figures, said to be by Jean

Perréal, as well as emblematical letters of the nature of the Y which is

here given, with explanatory text and commentary. To him this Y had two

branches: one of virtue and one of vice; that of virtue shows palms,

crowns, a sceptre, and a book; that of vice birches, a gallows, and

fire.

[Illustration: Fig. 51.--Emblematical letter Y, taken from the

_Champfleury_ of Geoffroy Tory.]

With the importance that cannot be denied to his works, Geoffroy Tory

founded a school; and it was from his workshop that the plates came for

the book of Paulus Jovius on the dukes of Milan, published by Robert

Estienne in 1549, quarto. The portraits of the dukes in this work have

been attributed to Tory himself, but he died in 1533, and there is not

the least indication that he engraved these sixteen portraits with his

own hand sixteen years before their publication. Besides, our doubts as

to the cross of Lorraine being the exclusive signature of Tory, as has

been believed, lead us to think it the collective mark of a workshop,

as we meet it on works long after the death of the master. As a proof,

the mark is found on the engravings of _L'Entrée du Roi à Paris_ in

1549, which cannot be taken as a posthumous work of Tory, for these

engravings had their origin at a certain and special date. But in spite

of the absence of the monogram, the admirable block from the Diodorus

Siculus of Antoine Macault might, from its design and engraving, be

considered as by Tory himself. Holbein, who, about the same time,

designed a somewhat similar scene, the King of France seated on a

throne receiving poison from the hands of Death, never did anything

better. Within the scanty proportions of the design, all the figures

are portraits. Duprat, Montmorency and the three sons of the King may

be recognised; Macault, on the left, is reading his translation to a

circle of nobles and men of letters. This admirable page is one of the

truest and most skilful of the monuments of French engraving; it is

equal to the best inventions of Holbein, and it marks the culminating

point of the illustration of the Book before the exaggerations of the

school of Fontainebleau. Geoffroy Tory was not the publisher. The

Diodorus Siculus, doubtless prepared two or three years before, was not

published until 1535, in quarto, with his ordinary mark of the "Pot

Cassé."

[Illustration: Fig. 52.--Macault reading to Francis I. his translation

of Diodorus Siculus. Wood engraving attributed to Tory.]

We have now arrived through him at the reign of Francis I., who was

called the father of letters, and who for various reasons favoured the

arts. Doubtless grand paintings and the decoration of the royal palaces

interested him more than vignettes in books and the efforts of printers;

but, at the same time, books occupied him. He studied much, and in his

travels accumulated many volumes. An account in the French National

Archives shows that Claude Chappuis, his librarian, packed entire cases,

which were sent to Dauphiné at the time of the wars of Piedmont, the

carriage costing twenty livres tournois. Francis had, moreover,

following sudden impulses, curious fits of wantonness and mischief. It

was perceived a little later that the doctrines of Luther were

propagated by the Book; and the Sorbonne was up in arms, on the pretence

of imposing its own expurgated text of the Bible on the publishers and

tolerating no other. Theodore Beza, enemy of the Sorbonnists, said with

regard to this (we translate the antique French literally), "Our great

doctors with cherubic visage have forbidden men to see the Holy Bible in

vulgar language, of which every one has knowledge, because, they say,

the desire of knowing everything engenders nothing but error, fear, and

care. _Arguo sic_, if they so, for its abuse, wish to take away this

book, it is clear also that it is their duty to put away the wine with

which each of them makes himself drunk."

[Illustration: Fig. 53.--Robert Estienne, after the engraving in the

_Chronologie Collée_.]

This piece is only cited to show to what lengths matters had gone,

thanks to printing. It is very certain that all the pamphlets, placards,

and other horrors published to raise religious warfare, did not aid in

the progress of the Book. The King was not always disinterested on the

technical question; books merited encouragement, at least as much as

castigation, and besides, as time passed, they gradually transformed men

and ideas. In spite of apparent severities, was not the King himself a

little touched by contact with the new religion, like his sister

Marguerite, or his sister-in-law, Renée of Ferrara? However that may be,

he twice showed himself a resolute partisan of the celebrated Robert

Estienne, son-in-law and associate of Simon de Colines, whose works in

point of erudition and typography assumed day by day more importance.

Robert Estienne had the great honour of being chosen from all his

contemporaries by King Francis as the royal printer. This prince had

ordered to be engraved for him by Claude Garamond, after the design of

Ange Vergèce, the first cutter of matrices of his time, a special Greek

character in three sizes, which was used in 1544 to compose the

"Ecclesiastical History" of Eusebius. These are the famous royal

types--_typi regii_--as Estienne did not fail to indicate on the

title-pages of his works. It has been said since that Francis I. founded

the Royal Printing House, but the truth is that Estienne kept these

characters in his own office for use in the royal editions; they may now

be seen in the Imprimerie Nationale at Paris.

Robert Estienne married the daughter of Josse Badius, of Asch--Badius

Ascencianus, one of the first Parisian typographers of the time. We

reproduce the mark of Badius, representing the interior of a printing

house, and shall return in a special chapter to the functions of these

workshops. Meantime it appears proper to present to the reader a

printing office of the time of Robert Estienne and Geoffroy Tory.

[Illustration: Fig. 54.--Printing office of Josse Badius at the

commencement of the sixteenth century.]

Robert Estienne does not appear to have concerned himself much about the

decoration of the Book. The purity of the text and the characters were

essentials with him, erudition, and not art. He published many works in

Latin and Greek, among them the _Thesaurus_, a great Latin dictionary

published in 1532, also a Bible, with notes by Vatable, revised by Leon

de Juda. From that came trouble. Leon de Juda was a partisan of Zwingli;

the Sorbonne accused the Bible of leaning towards the Huguenots;

Francis I. took the part of Estienne, but when that prince died Estienne

fled to Geneva, where he was accused of having imported the royal types.

The truth was that he simply imported the matrices.

[Illustration: Fig. 55.--Portrait of Nicholas Bourbon. Wood engraving of

the commencement of the sixteenth century.]

At this time everything served for the decoration of the Book:

portraits, blazons, topographical plates, costumes, and emblems. Small

portraits engraved on wood usually ornamented the works of the poets,

like that of Nicholas Bourbon, for example, marvel of truth and skill.

The blocks of frontispieces in the folios were multiplied; large initial

letters, ingeniously engraved and stippled, like that at the

commencement of this chapter, were used. Jacques Kerver reproduced in

1545 for himself, and with plates made for him, the famous _Songe de

Poliphile_, published by Aldus in 1499. The widow of the publisher Denis

Janot, Jeanne de Marnef, published one of the most delightful books of

the time, _L'Amour de Cupidon et de Psyche_ of Apuleius, with delicious

figures in wood after Italian engravings. Many more could be named in

the extraordinary profusion of charming books.

[Illustration: Fig. 56.--King and Death. Vignette from the "Dance of

Death" by Holbein.]

Without entering into detail, something must be said of Lyons, then a

most extensive and prosperous centre of bookselling. Lyons had the

signal honour of publishing first in France the celebrated cuts of the

"Dance of Death" of Holbein, the Basle painter. Doubtless Treschel, the

printer, was not the first, as a copy of a German edition is known,

because in the Lyons edition the cuts are worn and broken. However, the

Cabinet d'Estampes of Paris has some of the figures of the Dance with a

German text, probably printed by Froben at Basle. Treschel's title was

_Les Simulachres et Historiées Faces de la Mort autant elegamment

pourtraictes que artificiellement imaginées_, and the volume in quarto

was printed by Frelon. The _Icones veteris testamenti_, which preceded

the publication of the "Dance of Death," had also been printed at Basle

before Lyons.

With Holbein, as with Geoffroy Tory, we arrive at the zenith of

illustration and marvellous skill of the engraver. If we were to

institute comparisons, it was Hans Lutzelburger who cut the blocks after

the designs of the Basle master, but, contrary to what generally

happens, the translator reaches almost to the height of his model; the

line is perfection itself, it is precise and intelligent, simple, and,

above all, explicit. If the work of Lutzelburger be admitted, it must

also be admitted that Holbein designed his cuts before 1526, date of the

death of the Basle engraver; but it was precisely before 1526 that

Holbein lived in Basle, and it was after he had travelled. We will add

nothing to the universal praise of the book of Treschel, of Lyons;

everything has been written of Holbein, and repetitions are unnecessary.

We would ask the reader to compare the Francis I. of Tory and the King

in Holbein's "Dance of Death;" there is a certain family resemblance

between the two cuts, which is a singular honour for Tory.

At the commencement of the century Basle had a school of

_Formschneiders_ working for export. Besides the numerous products used

at Lyons, it had also a trade in wood blocks, which, having been used,

were afterwards sold. Among these exchanges of engravings were many

plates of Brandt's "Ship of Fools," sold in 1520 to Galliot du Pré,

publisher, of Paris, who used them in the _Eloge de la Folie_ of

Erasmus.

The reign of Francis I. saw a great advance in the national art of

illustration. The arrival at the court of Italian artists of the

decadence, such as Rosso and Primaticcio, produced a revolution in

taste. The exaggerated slightness of the figures brought by these

artists from beyond the Alps was considered as of supreme distinction;

in their twisted draperies and mannered poses was seen a precious beauty

that tempted the ready intelligence of the court of France. The simple

and ingenuous figures of the old French artists were ranked among the

refuse of another age, and their compositions were regarded with

contempt, and deemed antique.

The rage for emblems and for allegories and mythological figures

generally was well suited to these eccentric and bizarre inventions.

From another side, an entire class of artists or artisans, book

illustrators first, then enamellers and jewellers, made use of these

Italian models, with which the King encumbered his galleries, and which,

at great expense, covered the walls of Fontainebleau. One can understand

what these skilful men made of such a movement and of so thoughtless an

infatuation. The publishers saw the demand, and composed works of which

the sale was assured by the subjects that they furnished to other

designers. This explains the quantity of Alciati's "Emblems" and Ovid's

"Metamorphoses" published at Lyons and Paris, and copied and recopied a

hundred times by the art industries of the time. Without it the enormous

success of mediocre productions, as the "Emblems," for example, in which

the meaning of the enigma or rebus cannot always be seized, is ill

understood. It was Alciati who made this literature the fashion. He was

a sort of Epicurean and miserly jurisconsult, who had as many lords and

masters on earth, as the kings and princes who liked to bid against each

other to engage him. He had quitted Italy, seduced by the offers of

Francis I., but when Sforza paid him a larger sum, he returned, giving

as reason for his vacillation that the sun had to travel the earth and

warm it by its rays; this was an emblematic answer, for his emblems had

all the coarse, sceptical humour which not a few had then already

discovered. At most these philosophical aphorisms, if we take them

seriously, have their droll side in that their author often practised

the reverse of his teaching. A miser, he abuses the avaricious; flying

his country for the love of gain, he blames those to whom "a better

condition is offered by strangers." Yet he is sometimes logical and

consistent, as when he assures us that "poverty hinders the success of

intelligence," and when, finally, lover of good cheer, he died of

indigestion in 1550.

[Illustration: Fig. 57.--Page of the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid, by Petit

Bernard. Edition of 1564.]

His book of "Emblems" had a vogue that lasted until the seventeenth

century, and repetitions were infinitely multiplied: at Paris by Wechel

in 1534; at Lyons by Hans de Tornes, of Suabia, one of the greatest

Lyons publishers; by Roville, also one of the first Lyons publishers,

and by Bonhomme; at Venice by the Alduses; in fact, everywhere,

translated into French, Spanish, and Italian.

Bernard Salomon, called _le Petit Bernard_, born at Lyons, was one of

the designers of the school of Fontainebleau--that is to say, of the

Franco-Italian school of which we have spoken above--who furnished many

of the engravings for books printed at Lyons. He illustrated the edition

of Alciati's "Emblems" published by Bonhomme in 1560; and designed

skilful little plates, which, with the text, were surrounded by a border

from the workshop of Geoffroy Tory, for Ovid's "Metamorphoses,"

published by Hans de Tornes in 1564. Bernard had all the defects and all

the qualities of those of his time, from John Cousin to the least of

them; he was a Primaticcio on a small scale, but agreeably so. His

designs for the New Testament were also very careful, but in them more

than elsewhere the manner and the affectation of the school of

Fontainebleau are apparent.

[Illustration: Fig. 58.--Portraits of Madeleine, Queen of Scotland, and

of Marguerite, Duchess of Savoy, after the originals of Cornelis of

Lyons.]

[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Portraits of Francis, dauphin, and of Charles,

Duke of Angoûleme, after the originals of Cornelis of Lyons. Woodcuts

taken from Roville's _Promptuaire des Médailles_.]

The workshops of the second city of France, we see, had at this time

attained considerable importance; but before the books of which we shall

speak, Roville published two anonymous books, one _L'Entrée du Roi Henri

II. à Lyon_, in 1549, ornamented with very graceful woodcuts, the other

the _Promptuaire des Médailles_, comprising a series of charming

portraits under the pretence of reproductions from the antique. The

designs of the _Entrée_ are often attributed to John Cousin, as it is a

rule with certain amateurs to give a known name to a work; but it must

be remembered that Lyons then had celebrated artists, Petit-Bernard,

alluded to above, and Cornelis de la Haye, of whom we have more to say;

and it is not necessary to go to Paris or to Rome to find the author of

these illustrations.

[Illustration: Fig. 60.--Captain of foot from the _Entree de Henri II. à

Lyon_ (1549).]

Cornelis de la Haye was a painter who executed nearly the same work as

Francis Clouet in Paris, portraits on panel, in a clear and harmonious

tone, then much the fashion. During a journey of the King, he had, if

Brantôme may be credited, portrayed the entire court, keeping the

sketches for himself. Ten or fifteen years after, Catherine de Medicis,

passing through Lyons, saw these portraits and highly praised them,

recognising the old costumes, astonished at the courtiers of the day,

whom she had never seen in such dress. This artist is now known, thanks

to various works that have been found, among others two portraits of the

sons of Francis I., preserved by Gaignières, who attributed them

resolutely to Cornelis, doubtless on the faith of inscriptions that have

disappeared. Both of them were engraved on wood at Lyons and published

in Roville's book the _Promptuaire des Médailles_, mentioned above,

with small differences of detail altogether insignificant. It is not

impossible then that Cornelis designed these portraits, and that they

were drawn on wood after the cabinet models spoken of by Brantôme. The

delicate figures of the _Promptuaire_ are the work of a master; and the

differences mentioned are those of the artist, not of the copyist, who

would not be permitted to change anything. It is the first time, we

believe, that these comparisons have been made; they will perhaps help

the learned Lyonnais to pierce the mystery, but in any case our

suppositions are more honourable to Cornelis de la Haye than the fancies

of Robert Dumesnil (_Peintre-graveur Français_, tome vi., p. 343). To

judge by the four little medallions here reproduced, the art of

engraving on wood was rarely more skilful than in these portraits. It

would not be astonishing if a man like Cornelis had designed the figures

of the _Entrée de Henri II._ In any case, why should we choose John

Cousin instead of Petit-Bernard? At this time, we know, the kings

carried in their suite their ordinary painters; but we do not know that

John Cousin followed the court to Lyons in 1549. He did not hold an

official position, like Clouet.

This artist produced well-authenticated works; one of them is signed,

and leaves no doubt: the _Livre de Perspective de Jehan Cousin Senonois,

Maistre Painctre_, published in 1560 by Jean le Royer, printer to the

King for mathematics. This profession of printer for mathematics had its

difficulties of engraving, for Le Royer tells us in his preface that he

had himself finished the plates commenced by Albin Olivier. In another

practical treatise, entitled _Livre de Portraiture_, published in 1593,

John Cousin is styled _peintre géometrien_. It is beyond doubt that this

master produced for many works figures and ornaments, but what were the

books? The manner was then to repeat the engraved borders of titles, the

_passe-partout_, in the centre of which the text was printed. Cousin

designed many of these title-pages on wood; that of the _Livre de

Portraiture_ affords a curious element of comparison; but he was not by

any means the inventor. In 1555 was sold at Antwerp a book printed from

engraved plates after John Vriedman, by Gerard Juif, which is simply a

collection of engravings for title-pages for the use of publishers.

[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Title of John Cousin's _Livre de Portraiture_,

published in 1593 by Le Clerc. (The spot on the title is in the

original, preserved among the prints of the Bibliothèque Nationale.)]

It is about this time that metal plates may be seen in conjunction with

wood engraving in the illustration of the Book, and the best artists

attached their names to important publications of this kind. We have

explained in a former chapter in what this process is least convenient

in the impression of a book. In fact, two successive printings, that of

the plates and that of the text, were additional trouble and a frequent

cause of errors; but wood-cutting was somewhat abandoned in the middle

of the sixteenth century, especially for separate plates, and engraved

plates took a considerable importance under different artistic

influences. The first was the facility of engraving a metal plate

compared to the difficulty of cutting a wood block. It thus naturally

happened that the artists of the burin wished to employ their art in

illustration, and taste was soon drawn to the new process.

In France the first volume of this kind was printed in 1488 by Topie de

Pymont in folio: the _Pérégrinations en Terre Sainte_ of Bernard de

Breydenbach, with figures on engraved plates copied from the Mayence

edition of 1486. Since this manner was abandoned until about 1550, as

much for the reasons given above as for others, we only meet with a

stray plate now and again, which remains as a bait, and relates to

nothing. Under the reign of Henri II. the smallness of the volumes did

not always admit of wood engravings, and the artists in metal found a

footing among illustrators; they made attempts, such as that of the

_Histoire de Jason_ of Réné Boivin in 1563, which came out under

Charles IX. in a charming volume of engraved plates by P. Woériot.

The "Emblems" of Georgette de Montenay were also in the burlesque style

of Alciati, but they had an advantage, as the author assures us:--

"Alciat fist des emblèmes exquis,

Lesquels, voyant de plusieurs requis,

Désir me prist de commencer les miens,

Lesquels je croy estre premiers chrestiens."

This orthodoxy does not make them more intelligible, but the engravings

of Woériot, unskilful as they are, import an element of interest which

surpasses the rest. It was always at Lyons, the rival and often the

master of Paris in typography, that the author printed his work.

By the privilege dated 1566, five years before publication, we see that

it is permitted to Peter Woériot, engraver of the Duke of Lorraine, to

portray, engrave, and cut in copper the said figures called emblems for

the time and term of five years (18th October, 1566). Peter Woériot

sometimes signed his prints with the small Lorraine cross adopted by

Geoffroy Tory's workshop, as may be seen in our engraving.

Copper plate engraving had by this time established itself, and the

works that were so illustrated spread themselves. Du Cerceau published

his admirable collection of _Plus Beaux Bastiments de France_ in folio

1576-79, which had numerous plans and views of the royal and princely

castles. Thevet put forth his _Cosmographie Universelle_ and his _Hommes

Illustres_, the latter adorned with skilfully engraved portraits. In

Paris the publishers Mamert Patisson, who married the widow of Robert

Estienne and took his mark, Adrien le Roy, and Robert Ballard, published

the celebrated _Ballet Comique de la Royne Faict aux Nopces de Monsieur

le Duc de Joyeuse_, composed by Balthasar de Beaujoyeux, valet de

chambre to Henri III.; and in this book, in which were put hasty

etchings, the King displayed all his immodesty and depravity. The Book

has often had the unconscious mission of transmitting to posterity the

unworthiness of its author or of its heroes. From this time the Book has

left its golden age to enter into the boastings of courtiers and

political abstractions.

[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Engraving by P. Woériot for Georgette de

Montenay's _Emblèmes_.]

Among the publications opposed to the Government of the time, the two

associates James Tortorel and John Perrissin, of Lyons, had published a

celebrated collection of plates on the religious wars that stained the

reign of Charles IX. with blood. At first engraved on metal, these

plates were worn out, and were gradually replaced by others engraved on

wood, on which several artists worked, among them James le Challeux and

also John de Gourmont, one of the most celebrated wood-cutters of the

sixteenth century. This was a work composed of single leaves in folio

size, which had an extraordinary sale among the religious people of the

time.

At the same time, illustration on wood did not stand still. The

portraits of authors diffused by the pencil of Clouet and his school

were commonly put at the head of their works. We cannot say whether

Clouet himself designed the portraits of Tiraqueau and of Taillemont in

1553; of Du Billon, the author of the _Fort Inexpugnable_, in 1555;

Papon and Ambroise Paré in 1561; Grevin, Ramus, and others; but the

precision of these physiognomies recalls the peculiar manner of the

French artists of the sixteenth century. The "Poems" of Ronsard in 1586

contains a series of very clever portraits, among them that of Muret,

his commentator, one of the most perfect of its kind. Christopher de

Savigny, author of the _Tableaux Accomplis de Tous les Arts Liberaux_,

published by John and Francis de Gourmont in 1587, is represented at

full length in the frontispiece of his work, offering the book to the

Duc de Nevers, to whom it is dedicated. This plate in folio, probably

engraved by John de Gourmont, is the best finished that we have seen.

The work of Savigny, forgotten as it may be now, had a great reputation

in its own time; and Bacon took from it the idea of his "Advancement of

Learning."

Speaking of the Duc de Nevers, it will not be without interest to our

readers to mention here a manuscript found by us in the Bibliothèque

Nationale, which enables us to give an account of the work then

necessary for the publication of an illustrated book. In 1577 the Duke

arranged for the impression of an apologetic book, of which no trace

remains; and his _intendant_ writes a long letter to him on the subject

of composition and bindings. It was necessary that the work should be

produced quickly, bound and gilt, for presents. The _intendant_ thinks

calf will be the most expeditious covering. "It would be much the best

to use black or red calf, ... well gilt above, and not vellum, which is

a thin parchment that quickly shrinks." The statements of this man of

business show that five proofs of each sheet were taken for

typographical correction, and that twelve full days were wanted for the

binding. The most interesting part of this memoir is that which treats

of the engraving on wood of the portrait. The plate was designed by an

artist who had afterwards gone away; it was not satisfactory, but the

ornaments would pass. The _intendant_ proposes to "fix a little piece of

wood in the block that could be drawn upon." Here we see correction by

elimination. The pear-wood on which the original figure was engraved was

to be cut out, and a square of boxwood substituted, "forasmuch as in

this task the pear-wood, which is the successful, well-cut block, is the

wood that is harder."

[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Portrait of Christopher Plantin, printer of

Antwerp. Engraved by Wierix.]

The portrait of the Duchesse de Nevers was better, yet the pear-wood had

given way under the work. "That of Madame is more passable.

Nevertheless, there is still something to say to one eye. The wood

cannot carry the subtlety of the line." Here, in a few clear and

explicit lines by a man of the time, we see the economy of a publication

of the sixteenth century, at a time when wood engraving was declining,

to give place to engraving on metal, which was soon to reign supreme,

through the most important book house of the century: the Plantins of

Antwerp.

Christopher Plantin, like Jenson, came originally from Tours. After

having learned his art with Macé at Caen, he went to Paris, from which

the wars soon drove him. He left for the Low Countries, and there Philip

II. nominated him as chief printer--"architypographus." Established at

Antwerp in 1555, he surrounded himself, as had the Estiennes and

Alduses, with most of the learned and literary men of his time, among

them Justus Lipsius, to whom Balzac attributed the Latin prefaces signed

by Plantin. It is certain that he was neither an Estienne nor an Aldus.

His artistic probity caused him to submit the proofs of his works to

strangers, with promise of recompense for faults indicated; the

Estiennes employed the same system. Plantin, not to be behind any of his

contemporaries in typographical perfection, brought from France the

celebrated type-founder William Lebé, and charged him to furnish a

special fount.[A] Under the orders of Philip II., he printed the

celebrated Polyglot Bible, in eight folio volumes, absolutely perfect in

its execution; unfortunately the Spanish Government, having advanced

funds in the course of publication, prosecuted him with the utmost

rigour to obtain repayment. This very nearly shut up his printing house,

but he took courage and overcame his difficulties, until he became, in

1589, the year of his death, the principal publisher of Flanders. His

mark was a hand holding a compass, with the motto "Labore et

constantia."

[Footnote A: In the Bibliothèque Nationale is a copy of an octavo _Album

de Caractères_, in which Lebé has written, "This gloss, made in Paris

(1574) by me, is my fourteenth letter, and the text is made on the

pattern of the preceding one for size, but of a better art; and from

this was printed the great Bible of Antwerp by Plantin, to whom I sold a

fount" (folio 6). On folio 20 he wrote, "I do not know whence came this

small Hebrew that I received from Plantin to make a smaller one for him.

He sent me this half-sheet, and I have not seen at Venice another

part."]

[Illustration: Fig. 64.--Plantin's mark.]

Plantin died at the age of seventy-four, leaving a prosperous business

to be divided between his three daughters. His first house at Antwerp

employed seventeen presses even at the time when he was in trouble, and

he had branches at Paris and Leyden, of less consequence. His second

daughter married Moretus, and to him descended the Antwerp workshop; he

and his descendants continued the printing house until recently; the

house of the great printer and publisher is now a typographical museum.

The Plantin printing office--"Officina Plantiniana"--was as well managed

by its descendants as by himself. The fashion of engraving in metal

spread itself before the death of the head of the house, and his

successors continued it. The principal engravers with the burin of the

Low Countries were employed by them: Wierix, Galle, Pass, Mallery, Van

Sichern; it was a real school of illustration, that created by degrees a

precious and sustained style, not without influence on the artists of

that epoch. It was from this particular manner that came Thomas de Leu

and Leonard Gaultier in France; and from Antwerp came those small

religious figures that have lasted to our time in their incomprehensible

mysticism.

The title-pages of the Plantin printing office inaugurated the

_passe-partout_ engraved by the burin, overloaded and complicated, of

which the seventeenth century took advantage. To tell the truth, these

elaborate displays, blackened by ink, do not accord well with the

titles; and there is a long distance between this decadence and the

books ornamented with wood blocks by the Italians and French of the

commencement of the century. Exception must be made in favour of Rubens,

who designed many of these titles. The heavy and squat architecture of

the time was least of all appropriate to these decorations, which wanted

grace. It passed from Plantin into France through the engravers; it went

to Rome with Martin de Vos and John Sadeler; it imposed itself

everywhere; and from that day to this it has not ceased. At the time of

which we write it had taken its flight in France, and spread itself in

Europe with extraordinary success. Engraving in relief, holding its

own until then, gave way little by little before this invasion. When

Henri IV. mounted the throne wood engraving had finished its upward

movement, it still remained in the _canards_, or popular pieces sold at

low prices, but it is easy to see what these hasty vignettes are worth.

[Illustration: Fig. 65.--Frontispiece of a book from Plantin's printing

office. Metal engraving.]

We have now seen the history of the Book and its decoration in the

sixteenth century in France: at first French epics in Italy, books of

hours, romances of chivalry; then about 1550, with the reign of Henri

II., the religious pamphlets commenced, bookselling spread itself; the

strife between illustrations on metal plates and those in relief assumed

shape, it continued under Henri III., and terminated abruptly by the

victory of the first at the extreme end of the century. With political

passions, printing had become a weapon of warfare, which it will never

cease to be. They knew in the sixteenth century what perfidious

accusations or excessive praises were worth. The Book followed the fate

of its author. If the writer was burned, so was his book. Witness the

_Christianismi Restitutio_ of the Catholic Servetus, printed at Vienne,

in Dauphiné, and consigned to the flames with its author at Geneva in

1553. A single copy was saved from the fire, and is now preserved in the

Bibliothèque Nationale; it is the identical copy annotated by Colladon,

the accuser of the unhappy Servetus, and still bears traces of fire on

its leaves.

Typography and the illustration of the Book in England in the sixteenth

century did not make the same progress as in France and Italy. Much good

work was done, but it was mostly with foreign material. Type was

obtained from French and Dutch founders, and most of the woodcuts had

the same origin. In the early part of the century most of the

publications were translations of popular foreign books, such as

Voragine's "Golden Legend," Caxton's translations of Cicero, Boetius,

etc. Too many restrictions and privileges obtained to encourage or allow

of the establishment of an English school, which was to come later with

the spread of wealth and education. Books were mostly printed in Gothic

type, or "black letter," and the woodcuts were of the coarsest kind. An

exception was the beautiful Prayer-book of John Day, 1578, known as

Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-book, from the fine portrait of the Queen,

which we reproduce, on the previous page; but in this the woodcuts were

designed by Albert Dürer and Hans Holbein. Pynson was the first to use

Roman type in England, in the _Oratio in pace nuperrimâ_, 1518, quarto;

and the first English Bible in Roman type was printed at Edinburgh in

1576. It is thought that until about 1600 printers were their own

type-founders, as no record exists of founding as a separate trade until

that time.

[Illustration: Fig. 66.--Portrait of Queen Elizabeth from the "Book of

Christian Praiers," printed by John Day, 1578.]

The greatest achievement of the sixteenth century in England was the

printing of the first English Bible, in Coverdale's translation, in

1535, folio, but even this was printed abroad, the latest investigation

giving it to Van Meteren at Antwerp. The woodcuts in it are by Hans

Sebald Beham; we reproduce one representing Cain killing Abel. Tyndall

had previously printed abroad an English New Testament. Another

importation was Brandt's "Shyp of Folys," printed by Pynson, 1509, and

John Cawood, 1570, the woodcuts in both being copied from the originals

before referred to.

[Illustration: Fig. 67.--Woodcut from Coverdale's Bible, 1535. Cain

killing Abel.]

Folio was the size usually adopted, and in this size the series of

chronicles appeared: Arnold, printed abroad in 1502; Fabian, in 1516;

Froissart, by Pynson, in two volumes, 1523-5; Harding, by Grafton, 1543;

Hall, by the same, 1548; Holinshed, in two volumes, 1577. In the same

size Chaucer was first given to the world entire by T. Godfrey in 1532,

and many times reprinted, and Sir Thomas More in 1557. Polemical and

religious treatises were mostly printed in quarto, as were the poets:

Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, in 1590; Langland's _Pierce Plowman_, in

1550; and Sidney's _Arcadia_, in 1590. Plays were also printed in

quarto, in which shape at the end of the century some of Shakespeare's

single plays were issued.

From the great perfection to which the liturgies, or books of hours, had

been brought by Vostre, Verard, and others in France, it is not perhaps

extraordinary that the service books for English use should have been

mostly printed abroad. Those for Salisbury and York were produced at

Paris, Rouen, and Antwerp. A Salisbury Primer in English was printed by

John Kyngston and Henry Sutton in 1557, and Wynken de Worde printed a

York Manual in 1509. The first English Common Prayer Book, known as

Edward VI.'s, was printed by Grafton in 1549, who also printed in 1545

Henry VIII.'s Primer in Latin and English. Edward's book is curious as

having on the last page a royal order as to the price at which it was to

be sold: "No maner of persone shall sell the present Booke vnbounde

aboue the price of two shillynges and two pence. And bound in Forell for

ii_s._ x_d._, and not aboue. And the same bound in Shepes Lether for

iii_s._ iii_d._, and not aboue. And the same bounde in paste or in

boordes, in Calues Lether, not aboue the price of iiii_s._ the pece."

Cranmer's Catechism was printed by Nicholas Hill in 1548, with

twenty-nine woodcuts by Hans Holbein, one of which we reproduce,

representing Christ casting out devils.

Translations from the classics were popular, and in the second half of

the century arose that passion for voyage and travel which has so

largely contributed to the wealth and extension of England. This was

begun by Eden's translation of Peter Martyr's "Decades of the New World;

or, West India," London, 1555, quarto, followed by Hakluyt's "Principall

Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries," 1589, folio. Many accounts of

single voyages and discoveries were issued, and the taste thus created

culminated in the establishment of the East India Company in the last

year of the century.

The first specimen of copper plate engraving for books in England is a

frontispiece to Galen's _De Temperamentis_, printed at Cambridge 1521,

and the number of books containing copper plates engraved before 1600 is

extremely limited, the most notable being portraits of Queen Elizabeth,

Lord Leicester, and Lord Burleigh in Archbishop Parker's Bible of 1568;

Saxton's Atlas, 1579, the first atlas in England; Harrington's

translation of Ariosto, 1591, with forty-seven engraved plates.

[Illustration: Fig. 68.--Woodcut by Hans Holbein from Cranmer's

Catechism, 1548.]

The first printer at Cambridge was John Siberch, 1521. Peter of Treves

established himself at Southwark in 1514. Among his productions is a

Higden's _Polychronicon_, 1527, folio. John Oswen printed at Ipswich

1538, and among the English towns in which printers established

themselves in the century were York, Canterbury, Tavistock, Norwich, and

Worcester.

The establishment of the Reformed Church, and the diffusion of education

among the people which followed, created an original English school of

literature in the sixteenth century, and this gave employment and great

impetus to typography in England, so that by the time we reach the end

of the century we find a great improvement in the art of the Book, to be

carried to still greater perfection in the next.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV.

1600 TO 1700.

Tendencies of the regency of Marie de Medicis--Thomas de Leu and

Leonard Gaultier--J. Picart and Claude Mellan--Lyons and J. de

Fornazeris--The Book at the beginning of the seventeenth century in

Germany, Italy, and Holland--Crispin Pass in France--The Elzevirs

and their work in Holland--Sebastian Cramoisy and the Imprimerie

Royale--Illustration with Callot, Della Bella, and Abraham

Bosse--The publishers and the Hotel de Rambouillet--The reign of

Louis XIV., Antoine Vitré syndic at his accession--His works and

mortifications; the polyglot Bible of Le Jay--Art and illustrators

of the grand century--Sébastien Leclerc, Lepautre, and

Chauveau--Leclerc preparing the illustration and decoration of the

Book for the eighteenth century--The Book in England in the

seventeenth century.

[Illustration: Fig. 69.--Letter engraved by A. Bosse.]

Now we have arrived at a critical epoch, in which the science of the old

printers transformed itself gradually into commerce, in which taste lost

itself under the influence of religious architecture. The title of the

Book represents the portico of a cathedral, with columns, mitred saints,

and crosses, of little decorative aspect. Figures on copper plates

replaced the foliage and arabesques of the older booksellers. Through

the Plantins and their imitators, the architectural passion was far

spread. It inundated France, ran through Germany and Italy, and reigned

pre-eminent in Holland. Literary taste also underwent change; manners

were no longer those of the sixteenth century: bold, free, and gay; from

the religious wars a certain hypocrisy arose; bombast replaced the

natural; the gods were preparing, as a contemporary said, to receive

Louis and his spirit.

It is not that artists were wanting at the opening of the seventeenth

century who could, in giving scope to their talent, show themselves

worthy successors of those who went before them. Unhappily the

booksellers no longer had a loose rein; they had the rope, for they were

hung or burned at the least infraction of political or religious

propriety. Yet the reign of Henri IV. was relatively an easier period

for the artisans of the Book, in which they were less confined to the

strict terms of excessive regulations; but after this prince severity

increased, and during the year 1626 a new law was promulgated punishing

with death the printers or distributers of prohibited books. Doubtless

the books that were thus secretly sold, and prohibited in defence of

good manners, were neither _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of typography nor art. The

author threw off the indecencies by which he hoped to make profit and

fame, regardless of type or illustration. But during the regency of

Marie de Medicis, it was not only the authors of a bad standard that

were in danger of being hung; the printer or seller of the pamphlet or

book of a reputed heterodox author was also hung, and it became

difficult to steer safely among the prohibitions. Enormous numbers of

works were made with frontispieces decorated with colonnades and mitred

saints, and bearing high-sounding titles of sound orthodoxy. A somewhat

gross mysticism, from the office of Plantin, formed the most solid stock

of every respectable dealer.

[Illustration: Fig. 70.--Title of the _Metanealogie_, engraved by

Leonard Gaultier.]

Under Henri IV. and the minority of Louis XIII., two French illustrators

received from the school of Antwerp their inspiration for the ornament

of the Book. Thomas de Leu, probably from Flanders, was allied with the

old Parisian painter and engraver of celebrated portraits, Antoine

Caron, in furnishing the engraved plates for the _Images de Plate

Peinture des Deux Philostrates, Sophistes Grecs_, Paris, Claude

Cramoisy, 1609, folio; and Leonard Gaultier, his contemporary,

collaborated with Jaspar Isaac and other artists in the Book. Leonard

Gaultier contributed most to spread in France the Plantinian style, and

his somewhat cold but characteristic talent suited this art more than

that of any one else then could. He was an engraver of portraits, now

rare and valuable, in the style of Wierix or Thomas de Leu; but, at the

demand of publishers and booksellers, he composed other plates, at first

historical figures representing the royal family and the nobles for the

publisher Leclerc, in a simple and true manner; he also designed pious

figures, recording a miracle or representing the ceremonies of a jubilee

and other devotional things. But he made his great success in the

composition of frontispieces to theological and pious works, printed for

nearly all the booksellers. Leonard Gaultier had a fashion of his own

with pilasters and Grecian columns, under which he boldly placed entire

councils of cardinals and bishops; witness the heading of the

_Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum_, into which he crowded nearly forty

figures. He united also with a certain grace the sacred and the profane,

placing among ideal saints the sinning fine ladies of the time, with

their large collarettes and jewels falling on naked breasts. The work of

Andrew Valladier, chaplain of the King, entitled _Métanéalogie Sacrée_,

published by Peter Chevallier in 1609, was adorned with a title of this

particular kind, in which Gaultier had no rival, and which preserves the

precision of Flemish masters in the detail of ornaments of the toilet.

He was one of the first to work for Sebastian Cramoisy, printer and

publisher, who had established his shop in the Rue St. Jacques at the

sign of the "Stork." We shall have occasion to speak of him later in

connection with the Royal Printing House, of which he was the first

director; he is mentioned now because in 1611 Leonard Gaultier engraved

for him the frontispiece of _L'Aigle Français_, a collection of sermons

by Thomas Girault. The publisher used the same plate in 1618 for the

sermons of Raymond de Hézèque.

Besides the publications of Sebastian Cramoisy and Chevallier, Leonard

Gaultier adorned also those of Nicholas Buon and many other publishers

of the time in Paris and Lyons. With such a profusion of works emanating

from a single artist, without reckoning those which were produced in

great quantity by men of less note, wood engraving was dead. At most it

dared to put a wood block of a printer's mark on a title; more

ordinarily this mark was not alone sufficient, and showed the disdain in

which taste then held wood-cutting. Thus goes fashion, heedless of the

most elementary rules of art. To put type within an engraved title, or

to ornament a printed text with engravings, is a heresy of principle

that was established in the eighteenth century, by the strength of its

cleverness and talent. But at the beginning of the seventeenth, in spite

of Leonard Gaultier or Thomas de Leu, these overloaded titles,

overpowering the opening of the Book, offend the eye by their excessive

blackness, and incontestably make us regret the admirable frontispiece

on wood of the preceding century.

This is all the ornament, properly so called, of the reign of Louis

XIII. Leonard Gaultier composed also small vignettes for an edition of

Homer, but they are mediocre and unskilful, and it must be said that

there were others following the same path. John Picart made a

frontispiece with architecture and figures for the _Histoire de la

Maison de Châtillon-sur-Marne_ for account of Sebastian Cramoisy. A cold

and hard artist he was, the rival of Gaultier, and one of the most

employed of the vignette engravers of Paris. There was also Jaspar

Isaac, a mediocre craftsman, but who could design clever titles, among

them that of the continuation of the _Annales_ of Baronius for the

publisher Denis de la Noue. Then Claude Mellan, whose great and clever

talent did not disdain second-rate works, in which he gave free play to

his burin. It must be said, however, that his bold touch did not well

accommodate itself to reduced spaces, and that he was not working in the

field necessary to his inventive powers. We mention his portrait of

Louis XIV. at the head of the _Code Louis XIV._; the title of the

_Perfection du Chrestien_, in which is included a portrait of Cardinal

Richelieu, A. Vitré, 1647, folio; that of the _Instruction du Dauphin_

for Cramoisy, 1640; that of the works of St. Bernard for the Royal

Printing House; and, perhaps the best of all, the _Poésies_ of Pope

Urban VIII., of which we here give a copy.

[Illustration: Fig. 71.--Title engraved by Claude Mellan for Urban

VIII.'s _Poésies_, printed at the Royal Printing House, in 1642.]

Lyons did not remain far behind in the movement, but how changed from

its great reputation of the sixteenth century! J. de Fornazeris engraved

the frontispieces to Justus Lipsius, published by Horace Cardon in 1613.

Peter Favre and Audran imitated them. C. Audran designed for Claude

Landry the _Theologia Naturalis_ of Theophilus Reynaud, and the

bookseller Picquet ordered from him the title for the _Annales Minorum_

in 1628. Everywhere taste was modelled on the works of the capital, to

name only the principal centres, Rouen, Rheims, Sens, down to Venes, a

small town of Tarn, where William de Nautonnier published in 1603 his

curious book _Mécométrie_, whose frontispiece was bordered by views of

cities, with an equestrian portrait of King Henry.

And if we pass to Germany, we find Mayence with mediocre engravings for

titles according to the formula and process used elsewhere, the title of

the _Droit Civil_ of Aymar Vailius, that of the works of St. Bonaventura

in 1609 for the bookseller Antoine Hiérat, and that of the _Viridarium

Virtutûm_, rather cleverly treated by the burin in 1610. What a period

had passed since Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer! There was still one

Yves Schoeffer at Mayence, but only the name lived; nothing more

remained of the old printers of the other century. It was the same at

Bamberg, Cologne, Nuremberg, and Basle, in all the cities that made the

honour of typography and the Book in former times. Cologne was neither

better nor worse favoured than others. The booksellers Boetzer, Kinck,

and De Binghy had passable engravings for their titles; and the

Commentaries of Salmeron may be mentioned, with portraits from the

German originals of the fifteenth century. At Nuremberg there was a

curious specimen treating of natural history by Basil Besler, in which

the artist gives the interior of a zoological cabinet of the time; but

the blocks and the typography of the city of Koburger are wanting. Basle

held its own later in relief engraving. Meantime there was a mediocre

set of the Dance of Death on copper, published by Miegen, 1621.

At Jena and Frankfort-on-the-Main were prosperous printing houses, but

engravings and ornamentation were neglected. Frankfort employed the

frontispiece in the _Traité du Commerce_ of Sigismond Scaccia, published

by Zuner in 1648; it was divided into compartments, in which the Bourse,

the Exchange, and the port of the city were represented.

It is scarcely necessary to mention the Italian cities which followed

the movement. Venice from the middle of the sixteenth century had used

engraved frontispieces, among which was that of Domenic Zenoi for the

_Portraits des Hommes Illustres_ of Nicholas Valegio. In the same city

James Piccini worked for account of Sgava in 1648, but he was equally at

the service of Roman publishers, for whom he designed a number of

titles. Along with him Frederic Greuter adorned the publications of

Alexander Zanetti, not without talent, but without individuality.

Bologna, Brescia, Florence, and Naples, had no original sentiment; they

followed indifferently the manner of the day.

In Holland, artists were rather numerous. The family of the Passes

designed vignettes for books, and engraved frontispieces, admirably

studied and composed. The clear and truly personal style of their works

places their illustrations in the first rank among those of their time.

They had, at the same time, the genius that created and the intelligent

burin that faithfully translated an idea. They imagined with art the

scenes that they depicted without at all copying their predecessors.

From 1599, the date of the publication of the _Hortus Deliciarum_, one

of their best works, up to about 1623, they were in Holland, at Arnheim

and at Amsterdam. In 1623 we find one of them, the most celebrated,

Crispin the younger, designing figures for the _Manège Royal_ of

Pluvinel, published by Angelier in Paris, and for another edition, with

folding plates, in 1624 for William Lenoir, at the sign of the "White

Rose Crowned." This magnificent work, in which the King, Louis XIII., is

represented receiving lessons from the rider Pluvinel, had a third and

more complete reimpression in 1625 with another publisher, Michael

Nivelle. Here we see the Dutch accredited in France, in Paris, in the

city then the most ready to understand and pay for the works of eminent

artists. In 1624 Gombauld published an _Endymion_--Boileau later

associated Gombauld with other poets to declare him a maker of pitiable

sonnets--Nicholas Buon, the bookseller named above, undertook the

publication, and employed Pass, Leonard Gaultier, and J. Picart to

furnish plates in octavo size. Heavy and black as were these vignettes,

they do not the less make a good appearance in the edition of the

forgotten poet; and it is due to truth to recognise how much Pass was

above his collaborators. The following year, 1625, he engraved the

_Dionysiaques_ of Nonus, for Robert Fouet, and the _Roman des Romans_ of

Du Verdier, comprising more than ten engravings, in a very free and bold

manner. The _Berger Extravagant_ and the _Académie de l'Espée_ came in

1628, among numerous others.

[Illustration: Fig. 72.--Title of Pluvinel's _Manège Royal_, engraved by

Crispin Pass in 1624.]

To speak truly, Crispin Pass did not devote himself entirely to Parisian

publishers; he always preserved interests in Flanders so as to return

there from time to time; but he did not find in his own country the

ready and assured sales of Paris. Still the city of Leyden had then one

of the most renowned workshops of typography; the Elzevirs had commenced

to make a good place for themselves among the printers of Europe by the

extreme correctness of their editions, the distinctness of their work,

and their marvellous art in the taste and economy of the Book. In

reality, the sizes and characters of their books were very small, but if

the smallness of the page did not allow room for vignette or ornament,

they bore a certain practical elegance that was not without charm. The

origin of the printing house was due to Louis Elzevir, who published in

1592 an edition of Eutropius at Leyden. He left sons, who associated

themselves together, and founded a house which was unrivalled.

[Illustration: Fig. 73.--Title of the _Imitation_ of the Elzevirs.]

Bonaventure Elzevir, grandson of Louis, was the most illustrious of this

family, so remarkably devoted to its art. He took Abraham as partner,

and together they put forth those little Latin classics in duodecimo of

which the value is now so great. Among others, Pliny issued from their

presses in the year 1635, in three volumes, Virgil in 1636, and Cicero

in 1642. To-day amateurs, above all those afflicted with bibliomania,

hunt for unbound Elzevirs, because they have full margins. From about

1633 to 1639 these volumes were composed of paper of rather small size,

making a page of a hundred and thirty to a hundred and thirty-three

millimetres; from 1639 onwards the paper was larger, and the page from

about a hundred and thirty-five to a hundred and thirty-seven. One must

be a book-lover to understand the interest attaching to these figures,

and employ his entire activity in the discovery of these undiscoverable

books, which are concealed as soon as they are met with.

One of the most esteemed of their works is the _De Imitatione_ of Thomas

à Kempis, printed by John and Daniel Elzevir about 1653, and known as

the edition without date. But as the association of John and Daniel is

known to have lasted from 1652 to 1654, the date 1653 appears to be very

plausible. We reproduce the entire title of this typographical _bijou_,

which merited a cleverer engraver.

The rarest of all the numerous Elzevirs, possibly by reason of the

popularity of its subject, is the _Pastissier François_, Louis and

Daniel Elzevir, Amsterdam, 1655, of which M. Morgand had an uncut copy,

measuring a hundred and forty-three millimetres, in 1878. The Benzon

copy sold in 1875 for three thousand two hundred and fifty-five francs.

It is to be remarked that the Elzevirs frequently avoided dating or even

signing their books, for reasons easy to comprehend. Publishing numerous

works, they were afraid of compromising themselves in the eyes of the

powerful, and they let them go forth without any trade mark. These

artists in typography were, besides, the most prudent and subtle of men.

Working at a time when bookselling had become an acknowledged commerce,

and a trade requiring all the skill and resources of others, they wisely

availed themselves of these, gathering for themselves honour and profit

without having done more than seize their opportunity. Employing the

characters of Claude Garamond, of James Sanlecques, and the papers of

Angoulême, M. Didot thence claims them as French publishers.

In France the Elzevirs had no rivals; but a fashion was introduced from

the end of the sixteenth century of associating together publishers in

the production of important and costly books. There were, among others,

the company of the "Grand Navire" in 1610, of the "Source" in 1622, and

of the "Soleil" in 1629. In 1631 several publishers united and founded a

second company of the "Grand Navire." These were the two Cramoisys,

Sebastian and Gabriel, Denis Béchet, John Branchu, Denis Moreau, Claude

Sonnius, and Denis Thierry. The associates took a ship as their mark,

but without putting their names on the masts, as the original company of

the "Grand Navire" had done. They published, at common expense and

divided profits, great works, of which each one of them had the right of

sale, but of course reserving to themselves the right to publish such

others as they pleased. Sebastian Cramoisy passes as the chief, the

moral director of another company, formed to publish the Fathers of the

Church, with the royal types, a company affiliated to the "Grand Navire"

and signed in 1638 by Denis Moreau, Gille Morel, Stephen Richer, Claude

Sonnius, and Gabriel Cramoisy. But as regards their personal works, if

they had neither the perfection nor the aspect of those of Froben,

Aldus, the Estiennes, or even of Plantin, they at least surpassed the

French books of the time. Formerly syndic of the Corporation in 1602,

twenty-nine years before the constitution of the "Grand Navire,"

Cramoisy was besides sheriff of Paris, and he exercised his trade in a

shop in the Rue St. Jacques which had been that of Father Nivelle, the

_doyen_ of booksellers, who died in 1603 at the age of eighty years.

The position of Cramoisy made it natural for Cardinal de Richelieu to

fix his eyes on him for the direction of the Royal Printing House. This

establishment, founded by the King in 1640, was installed within the

Louvre, in a long series of rooms which formed a workshop without rival

in the world. Sublet des Noyers was named superintendent, Trichet du

Fresne corrector; and under this triple direction the presses commenced

to work. The first book was the _Imitation de Jésus-Christ_, dated 1640,

folio, a fine book enough, but not to be compared to the Elzevir

editions. The types used in this book are attributed to Claude Garamond,

founder of the sixteenth century, to whom are due the Greek types of

Francis I. With the Royal Printing House, as often happens with State

enterprises, the cost was great, and the return nothing. Only a few

years after its foundation it had swallowed up nearly 400,000 livres, a

very heavy sum for a badly balanced treasury; it had produced sixty or

seventy volumes of moderate value; and after Cramoisy the management was

so little in earnest that it turned the workshops into a stable, called

"the little stable of the King," at the commencement of the eighteenth

century.

[Illustration: Fig. 74.--Plate taken from the _Lumière du Cloistre_.

Copper plate by Callot.]

To return to the artists of the Book under Louis XIII. and Cardinal

Richelieu, we must go back a little, before the foundation of the Royal

Printing House, and we shall find the French school of illustration at a

time when Callot was giving it a vigorous lift and trying to do away

with its affected and hard style. It must be acknowledged that Callot

was not a vignettist, a special designer; his art aimed higher, and

ordinarily succeeded better; yet he did not disdain frontispieces, and

made them for the _Coustumier de Lorraine_, the _Harpalice_ of

Bracciolini, and for a crowd of others of which the enumeration would be

tedious. Certain of his works passed into Italy, where they raised a

little the debased level of the Book. Then he adorned several works with

etchings, among them the _Lumière du Cloistre_, published by Francis

Langlois 1646. It was one of the symbolic and sententious works with

which the public taste is never satiated, and a kind of guide for the

priest. At the bottom of the little etching here given, representing

birds falling from a tree, we read,--

"Ses petits hors du nid le courbeau jette en bas,

Lorsque par leur blancheur ils lui sont dissemblables.

Le bon prélat de mesme au cloistre n'admet pas

Ceux qui n'ont rien d'esgal à ses moeurs vénérables."

Callot also made another set of emblems on the life of the Virgin Mary,

and published in 1620 a series of prints in quarto for the tragedy of

_Soliman_ of Bonarelli, for the account of Cecconnelli. France imposed

herself on fallen Italy, she got her works dispersed there, and if an

engraver arose there, he did not disdain to consecrate himself to

France. Witness Della Bella, who went from Italy to France, where he was

taken under the protection of Cardinal Richelieu. It was about the time

of the establishment of the Royal Printing House, and it was expected

that employment would be found at once for him.

Callot was the model chosen by the young Italian artist, and this choice

might have been less happy. Della Bella took from his master the

philosophic vein, the drollery of design, which he exercised at first in

humorous frontispieces, among others that of Scarron's works, where nine

fish-women, taking the place of the Muses, dance around the poet. But he

passed from gay and pleasant to severe, and made large pages of

architecture for serious titles. In 1649 he designed the plates for the

large and undigested volume of Valdor on Louis XIII., published by

Antoine Estienne at the Royal Printing House. His success was not there;

Della Bella was a painter of groups, of ornaments, of subjects somewhat

heavy and overdrawn, but which, after numerous transformations, opened a

new way to the vignettists of the eighteenth century.

[Illustration: Fig. 75.--Title of the _Manière Universelle_, by

Desargues, in 1643, by Abraham Bosse.]

With Abraham Bosse the decoration of the Book took a considerable

extension. Numerous and charming ornamented letters, heads of pages, and

tailpieces appear. There are few artists that have done so much as he

for graceful illustration and harmony between the vignette and the

printed page. His prodigious fecundity made him attempt every style; and

after the gaieties of the print in which he laughed with his

contemporaries, he adopted a grave air to trace more severe subjects on

copper. However, the book entitled _La Manière Universelle_, by

Desargues, with numerous geometrical figures and an agreeable

frontispiece, bearing the dedication to the Seigneur de Noyers,

superintendent of the Royal Printing House, was a critical work, in

which Bosse, under a serious standard, did not spare an enemy. We do not

bear ill-will to the artist, however, for the following year he

published fourteen plates for the Suetonius printed at the Louvre.

He successively designed plates for the _Histoire de St. Louis_,

numerous vignettes for pious books, figures for the _Pucelle_ of

Chapelain and for the _Larcins de la Fortune_. He was always himself,

refined and ingenious, whether in the most barren or the most

complicated subjects.

[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Print by Abraham Bosse representing the

booksellers of the Palace under Louis XIII.]

He has left us in a celebrated print a representation of a bookseller's

shop of his time. It is for us an interesting page, in which is shown

simply and rather naïvely the picturesque side of these stores, with the

dealer and his wife selling new works to their customers. The shop is

compact, and very much like the open-air stalls of to-day; posting-bills

above the shelves indicate the "new books;" and if the inscriptions

given by Bosse be credited, the Palace dealer offered his books with

singular eclecticism: Boccaccio, Aretin, the _Astrée_ of D'Urfé, the

Bible, and Machiavelli. In the hands of the woman is seen the romance

_Marianne_:

"Icy les cavaliers les plus adventureux

En lisant les romans s'animent à combattre;

Et de leur passion les amants langoureux

Flattent les mouvements par des vers de théâtre,"

says the text of Bosse. What was commonly done then is still done,

shopping and rummaging the stalls, and those of the Palace were

attractive.

If we credit Sauval, the great number of booksellers, in the middle of

the century, was due to the wits of the Hotel de Rambouillet. The

passion for novelty, for recent works, had produced that quantity of

publishers, he says, that we have seen on the Pont Neuf, and that we

still see to-day at the Palace and the University, but of which the

number is so multiplied in all these places that in the Palace they

count more than other dealers; and as to the neighbourhood of the

University, they are obliged, in order to lodge the rest, to extend the

ancient bounds from St. Yves to the river (Sauval, _Antiquités de

Paris_, viii., 354).

In fact, each year saw an increase in the number of publishers in

corporation, with syndicate and adjuncts. Under the reign of Louis

XIII., the single year 1610 had fifty to take rank, and among them

Antoine Vitré, who was to become the most illustrious of his

contemporaries. But, as there were no more than six printers, it may be

inferred that all the rest were booksellers, in the true sense of the

word, of those who encumbered afterwards the great _salle_ of which

Sauval speaks. Antoine Vitré was syndic in May, 1643, on the accession

of Louis XIV. He had four adjuncts. With him the Book marked the solemn

style that the commencement of the century had given to it. Royal

printer for the Oriental languages from 1621, he undertook a Syriac

work, the first that was attempted in Paris. The project of a Polyglot

Bible gave him the idea of acquiring for the King the Oriental

manuscripts and matrices of Savary de Brèves. The King left to him the

care of negotiating the business, but did not reimburse him without

numerous difficulties, in the midst of which the printer was made to

lose the means of conveniently continuing his trade. The advocate Le Jay

charging himself with the enormous expenses necessitated by the Polyglot

Bible, it was composed in the hope that Cardinal Richelieu would pay the

cost. He was willing to do so, but required that his name should figure

on the book; and as Le Jay, an independent man, formally opposed it,

Vitré met with ill-will from the Minister, which increased from day to

day. In 1645 the impression was finished, but Le Jay was ruined, and if

we admire the paper, the type, and the extraordinary size of the nine

volumes of the Polyglot Bible, we find in it so many faults, errors, and

misprints that it has fallen to nearly nothing, hardly being worth its

binding. There were terrible mortifications in the business, and Vitré

had to submit to them more than any one. Nevertheless he did not let his

presses stand still, and he published successively Arabic, Turkish, and

Persian works. His action against the Savary heirs, as representing the

King, in the acquisition mentioned above, continued also after the

impression of the Bible, and hindered his progress. He struggled on; and

the assembly of clergy, of which he was the printer, sought to help him

out of his difficulties. The matter being once terminated, the Cardinal

being dead, and Vitré having been named by Colbert director of the Royal

Printing House in place of Cramoisy, he died in his turn, and was later

accused of having destroyed the types and matrices of the Polyglot

Bible, so that they should not be used after him. This fable, long

accredited, has since been ascertained to be false, for the punches and

matrices passed to the Royal Library, thence to the Royal Printing

House, reorganised in 1691.

Antoine Vitré, in spite of his misfortunes, was a great personage. He

was painted by Champagne and engraved by Morin, as was Richelieu

himself. The portrait was reproduced in the book of M. Delaborde, _La

Gravure_ (p. 189). Such was the man whom we meet at the beginning of the

reign of Louis XIV. as syndic of booksellers; and it was by no means a

sinecure, a canonry giving honour and profit, quite the other way. With

the Draconian rules on the subject, the syndic assumed a heavy burden

towards the King, as well as towards his kinsmen. Religious quarrels

envenomed questions, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to

have for its immediate corollary new and more severe royal ordinances.

The reign of Louis XIV. saw the zenith of engraving with the burin, but

not that of printing or illustration. Doubtless it would be puerile to

pretend that typography had not made any material progress; it had done

so in engraving and in composition; work was done more quickly, because

the presses had been made more perfect. But the wise harmony of the old

printers, their sure taste, even in their old irregular blocks, was no

longer there to form a graceful and charming whole, which is to modern

precision as a picture by Van Eyck is to a chromo-lithograph. Under

Louis XIV., titles became regular, following, as we have said above, and

modelling themselves on, the affected and peruked people who read them.

All art entered on this path of sublimity and grandeur. The painter Le

Brun is the highest exponent of this false Olympus, where an heroic pose

became necessary for the most humble movements. Made popular by

engraving by Pesne, Audran, Poilly, Edelinck, and a hundred others, this

tendency overran everything: art and industry, painting and tapestry,

illustration and typography itself. All was grand, in reverse of other

times, when all was small and mean. The embellishments of the Book were

full of gods in perukes and goddesses in armour, Louis XIV. as Apollo,

as the sun illuminating the world. "Nec pluribus impar" was not the

device of one man; it was the mighty and glorious cry of a whole people,

from great to small, from the sublime painter to the modest printer.

Ordinarily these exaggerations are not useful to the arts. Here they

were. But, for the matter that specially occupies us, it does not appear

that the Book was much advanced. It approached a marvellous epoch of a

delicate and graceful art; but it did not find its form; it dragged

painfully after the Plantinian works, heavily throwing its etchings and

burins in the middle of texts, gross and in bad taste. Yet taste in

literature had an onward tendency; Molière and La Fontaine produced on

their contemporaries the effect that in our day the naturalists have

produced on the romanticists; but this was not for long. Majesty

recovered its rights with Bossuet, Boileau, and the others.

[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Tailpiece of Sébastien Leclerc for the

_Promenade de St. Germain_.]

Sébastien Leclerc was one of the rare artists of the end of the

seventeenth century who dreamed of the vignette in the midst of this

invasion of pompous commonplace. Successor of Callot in manner, induced

by the publishers, he began this style with a romance of La Calprenède,

and continued with the _Promenade de St. Germain_ of Louis le Laboureur,

bailie of Montmorency, of whom Boileau said such curious things. This is

one of the rarest books of Leclerc, and we reproduce one of the pages,

with a charming tailpiece, which comes very near those of the eighteenth

century. There was, moreover, a charm in this ingenious designer; he

adorned the works of his contemporaries with graceful vignettes and

decorations full of suppleness. It may be believed, besides, that he did

not remain behind his _confrères_ in figure composition or allegorical

and Divine emblems. His art did not throw off the errors of the existing

school; he was content not to copy any one and to make his works truly

his own. Such were, for example, the vignettes of the _Histoire de

Turenne_, where the heads of the chapters, the ornamented letters, and

the tailpieces, harmoniously agree, and make the book, a little heavy in

impression, a most agreeable work. Leclerc then found himself ready to

design vignettes for the works of Racine for the publisher, Claude

Barbin, another name frequently encountered in Boileau. The title of

Vol. ii. merits attention.

The same year of this last publication, 1676, Sébastien Leclerc

illustrated the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid for Benserade, the engraving of

which cost the King more than 10,000 livres. Thus adorned, the book had

not a bad appearance, but a satirist of the time, Hardin very probably,

made on it this quatrain:--

"Mais quant à moi j'en trouve tout fort beau:

Papier, dorure, images, caractère,

Hormis les vers qu'il fallait laisser faire

A La Fontaine."

It may be imagined what an engraver could produce working from 1650 and

dying in 1715, that is, a life of work the longest that could be hoped

for. Leclerc was the absolute contemporary of the King. He died, like

him, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, leaving work widely

scattered among books, funeral orations, and placards. After the example

of Callot and Bosse, he did not disdain satire. One of his prettiest

vignettes served to illustrate some pamphlet of Richesource against the

journalists of his time; it represents a dandy of about 1679 offering

his gazette.

By the side of this unrivalled antagonist it is permitted to place

Lepautre, twenty years older than Leclerc, but whose studies had been

principally on architecture. In the moments that he left his special

work he devoted himself to frontispieces and vignettes; nevertheless,

although he had before him the charming designs of Leclerc, he confined

himself to a cold and hard manner, keeping, besides, as much as possible

to titles, in which his particular talent could find scope. He designed

also the Chartreux Missal of 1679, the _Gallia Christiana_ after Marot,

the _Dioptrique Oculaire_ of P. Chérubin, engraved by Edelinck, and a

thousand other works of small repute.

[Illustration: Fig. 78.--Small figure of Sébastien Leclerc for

Richesource's pamphlet.]

Very different was Francis Chauveau, who, without having the delicacy of

Sébastien Leclerc or his art of arrangement, treated at least with grace

little figures and illustrations. Certainly there is an enormous

distance between these correct and commonplace engraved plates and the

delightful wood engravings of the time of Geoffroy Tory, for example.

But, be their worth what it may, they suited very well; and even with

Molière they did not make such a bad figure. Chauveau was associated

with many of the works of Leclerc, who caused him often to be less

heavy, inasmuch as Leclerc corrected in engraving many of his

compositions. It was so with Molière, and still more with Racine in the

plate of the _Plaideurs_, in which Chauveau revealed himself a precursor

of the eighteenth century. Unhappily he did not always follow this

manner. Successively, and with various luck, he illustrated _Alaric_,

_Andromaque_, and the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid for Benserade, with

Leclerc; the _Pucelle_ of Chapelain, and the _Tragédies_ of Racine, to

which Le Brun did not disdain to put his hand.

In short, the connecting link between the beginning of the seventeenth

and that of the eighteenth century in the development of illustration is

Sébastien Leclerc. He had known the artists of the first period; he was

to see at his death appear one of the precursors of the vignettists of

the following century, Claude Gillot. Thanks to him, overburdened titles

and unskilful vignettes underwent a gradual transformation. In the

delicacy and tenuity of his designs may be seen the dominant note of the

eighteenth century, coquetry, and Choffard is divined. He was nearly the

only one who did not fall into the exaggerations of the engravers of the

time; he kept beside them without touching them, and preciously

preserved his own well-accentuated personality. By the smallness and

slenderness of his figures, Leclerc recalls somewhat the school of

Fontainebleau; but he is above all the reflection of Callot, a Lorrainer

like himself.

In Holland, a Frenchman, Bernard Picart, son of Stephen and pupil of

Leclerc, was making a great name as an illustrator. He established

himself as a print-seller at Amsterdam at the sign of "L'Etoile," and

successively designed vignettes for many works, among others the

Boileau of 1718. His vignettes and tailpieces, without possessing either

the spirit of Leclerc or the grace of the eighteenth century, express an

ingenious and inventive art that had broken with the strained traditions

of preceding epochs.

From these two artists the decoration of the Book rapidly advanced. The

form is found, and charming designers are not wanting to apply it.

The troubled state of England during the greater part of the seventeenth

century no doubt accounts for the fact that the art of the Book made but

very little progress. Theological controversies, the persecutions by the

Puritans, and, above all, the great civil war and its antecedents and

results, gave rise to a flood of publications of an ephemeral kind,

which from their nature were hurriedly produced; and there was little

room for pure literature and art. In the early part of the century,

under the influence which Elizabeth left, and which James fostered, some

important works were issued, with finely engraved illustrations; but

wood engraving declined further and further, until it was artistically

dead, to be revived in the next century. The works of the numerous poets

and dramatists were printed in quarto, and collected editions of them in

folio. Thus were issued the works of Shakespeare, first collected by

Jaggard and Blount, 1623, folio, with an engraved portrait by Droeshout,

the faithfulness of which was vouched in an opposite page of verse

signed by Ben Jonson. "Don Quixote" first appeared in an English dress

in 1612-20, published by E. Blount in quarto; and Jaggard, Blount's

partner in the Shakespeare, published Boccaccio's "Decameron," in two

volumes folio, 1620. Among other notable works of the early part of the

century were Drayton's "Polyolbion," 1613; Chapman's Homer, 1611-15,

folio, three volumes; Lord Bacon, whose essays and other single

publications appeared in the seventeenth, to be collected as his "Works"

in the next century; and William Prynne, whose _Histrio Mastrix_, 1633,

so offended Charles I. by its references to the Queen and the court

ladies, that the author had to undergo a severe and degrading

punishment. Many of these works were illustrated with meritorious

engravings on steel and copper by W. Hollar, P. Lombart, W. Marshall,

Hole, W. Pass, W. Faithorne, and R. Vaughan. So that here were all the

materials for the foundation of an English school, to be cruelly broken

up shortly afterwards by the distractions of civil warfare.