FRANCE--FIFTEENTH CENTURY
The earliest productions of the French press will not bear comparison
with those of either the German or the Italian: they have neither the
massive dignity of the one, nor the artistic grace of the other. The
worthy professors at the Sorbonne, who called to their aid the Swiss
or German printers, Crantz Gering and Friburger, bestowed, as we have
seen in our first chapter, considerable trouble on the decoration by
hand of special copies for presentation to influential friends or
patrons, but in other respects, their books were wholly destitute of
ornament. When, after little more than two years, they gave up their
press, the three printers started again on their own account with a
rather ugly gothic type, nor did Gering, who afterwards worked both by
himself and in combination with other printers, produce a really
handsome book until about 1480. The semi-gothic types of another firm
of German printers in Paris, Peter Caesaris and Stoll, are much more
attractive, but the average French work during the seventies is dull.
The first attempt at decoration appears to have been made, not at the
capital, but at Lyons, where, in August 1478, an anonymous printer,
probably Martin Husz, completed a double-column edition of _Le Miroir de
la redemption humaine_, translated from the Latin by Julien Macho, with
cuts previously used in a German edition of the _Speculum_, printed at
Basel in 1476. In 1478, also, Barth['e]lemy Buyer printed an edition of
the romance of _Baudoin, Comte de Flandre_, with no cuts, but with rude
printed initials. In an edition of _Les Quatre Filz Aymon_, unsigned and
undated, but printed at Lyons about 1480, the first page bears four
grotesque woodcuts representing the reception of the youths by
Charlemagne, the buffet which the Emperor's son gave one of them over a
game of chess, the fatal blow with the golden chess-board by which the
buffet was returned, and then the four youths fighting amid a crowd. On
the next page a larger picture shows their expulsion from Charlemagne's
court. Throughout the book are curious woodcut initials, interwoven with
grotesque faces. About 1481 Ortuin and Schenck produced (anonymously) an
edition of the _Roman de la Rose_ with eighty-six small woodcuts, which
were imitated in later editions both at Lyons and Paris, and were not
without a certain rude merit. In 1483 Mathieu Husz and Pierre Hongre
issued a _L['e]gende dor['e]e_, with large pictures of Christ in Glory
on the Last Day, and of the Crucifixion, and numerous very rough cuts at
the head of the different chapters. In the same year, Husz published, in
conjunction with Jean Schabeler, an illustrated translation of
Boccaccio's _De Casibus illustrium virorum_ ('Du dechier des nobles
hommes et femmes'). Meanwhile, at Albi, in Languedoc, of all places in
the world, Neumeister had reprinted in 1481 an illustrated edition of
the _Meditationes_ of Turrecremata, which he had produced two years
previously at Mainz. In 1484 we hear of illustrated books in three other
towns. At Rennes, Pierre Bellescull['e]e and Josses printed the
_Coutumes de Bretagne_, with a woodcut of the arms of Brittany, used
again the next year in the same printers' _Floret en francoys_, a book
noticeable for having a woodcut title printed in white on a black
ground. At Vienne, Pierre Schenck printed another edition, in
double-columns, of _L'Abuz['e] en court_, with small cuts at the chapter
headings. At Chamb['e]ry, Antoine Neyret finished, on July 6th, an
edition of the _Exposition des ['E]vangiles en romant_ of Maurice de
Sully, and in the following November the romance of _Baudoin comte de
Flandre_. The Bishop's sermons have, on the first page, a large initial
I and a very rough cut of the disciples loosing the ass and her colt for
Christ's use. With their other illustrations I am not acquainted. The
romance of Count Baldwin has a full-page cut of the Count riding on a
gaily-decked charger, and thirteen smaller illustrations of his
adventures, of which, however, several are repeated. The execution of
them all is as rude as can well be conceived. Two years later, Neyret
printed the first edition of a very famous book, _Le Livre du Roi Modus
et de la reine Ratio_, 'lequel fait mencion commant on doit deviser de
toutes mani[e']res de chasses.' The cuts in this are numerous, and their
representations of the various hunting scenes are more than sufficiently
grotesque.
The list of books we have named could certainly be extended,
especially as regards those printed at Lyons, but it is sufficiently
full to enable us to draw some useful conclusions from it. The
illustrations are, almost without exception, poor in design and badly
cut, and are mostly accompanied by inferior types and press-work. Some
of them are imitated from the books of foreign printers, and they
contain little evidence of the growth of any French school of
illustrators. On the other hand, they testify to the spread of a
demand for illustrated books, at least in the provinces, which local
printers were doing their best to satisfy. At Paris the demand,
apparently, had not yet arisen. In the first dated book which bears
the name of Jean du Pr['e], a _Missale ad usum ecclesiae Parisiensis_,
printed by him in conjunction with Didier Huym in September 1481,
there is a large woodcut of God the Father and the Crucifixion,
illustrating the Canon. Two months later Du Pr['e] printed a Verdun
missal with a really fine metal cut of a priest at Mass, and a little
figure rising up to represent his soul in prayer. In February 1483-4
appeared his first illustrated secular work, _De la ruine des nobles
hommes_, another translation from Boccaccio's _De Casibus_, with a
woodcut of varying merit at the head of each book. These have a
special interest for English students, as some years later they were
borrowed by Pynson to illustrate his edition of Lydgate's version of
the same work.
In May 1484 Jacques Bonhomme issued Millet's _L'Histoire de la
destruction de Troye la Grant_, with numerous woodcuts of battles,
frequently used in later works; and the following year Guyot Marchant
produced the first of numerous editions of a _Danse Macabre_
illustrated with a wonderful series of pictures, full of grotesque
vigour and skilfully cut, showing Death as a grinning skeleton seizing
on his prey in every class of society. Marchant followed this up with
a _Danse Macabre des femmes_ (somewhat less good) in 1491, and also
with a _Compost et Calendrier des Bergers_, which was no less
successful.
Meanwhile the greatest Paris publisher of the century, Antoine
V['e]rard, had come on the scene. Although some of the innumerable works
which bear his name are said to have been printed '_par_ Antoine
V['e]rard,' it is clear that the expression must not be taken too
literally, and that he was a 'libraire,' _i.e._ a bookseller or
publisher, rather than a printer. His first dated book is an edition,
enriched with a single woodcut, of Laurent du Premier Fait's French
version of the _Decamerone_, and the colophon tells us that it was
printed for Antoine V['e]rard, 'libraire, demeurant sur le Pont Notre
Dame, [a'] l'image de Saint Jean l'Evang['e]liste,' on November 22,
1485. The types used in the book have been identified as belonging to
Jean du Pr['e], and the association of the two men seems to have led to
important results. The next year we find Du Pr['e] printing an edition
of S. Jerome's _Vie des anciens saintz P[e']res_, with a delightful
frontispiece of the saint preaching from a lectern in the open air,
numerous smaller cuts, and initial letters with interwoven faces. During
1486 also, he assisted Pierre G['e]rard (who earlier in the year had
printed by himself an edition of Boutillier's _La Somme Rurale_ with a
single cut), in producing at Abbeville the first really magnificent
French illustrated book, S. Augustine's _Cit['e] de Dieu_, in which paper
and print and woodcuts of artistic value all harmonise.[18] Two years
later he joined with another provincial printer, Jean le Bourgeois, in
producing a still more splendid book, the romance of _Lancelot du Lac_,
the first volume of which was finished by Le Bourgeois at Rouen on
November 24th, and the second by Du Pr['e] at Paris on September 16th. In
1488 also, Du Pr['e] produced his first 'Book of Hours,' but the French
_Horae_ form so important an episode in the history of the decoration of
books, that we must reserve their treatment for a separate chapter, in
which, besides those of Du Pr['e] and V['e]rard, we shall have to speak of
the long series inaugurated by Philippe Pigouchet and Simon Vostre in
1491.
At starting, V['e]rard's resources were probably small, and for a year
or two he produced little beyond his _Horae_. In 1487, however, he
published a French _Livy_, with four small cuts, representing a battle,
a siege, a king and his court, and some riders, whose hats have a very
ecclesiastical shape, entering a town. The next year produced a work
entitled _L'art de Chevalerie selon V['e]g[e']ce_, really an edition of
the _Faits d'arme et de chevalerie_ of Christine de Pisan. This has a
single large cut representing a king and his court. The _Livre de
Politiques d'Aristote_, published in 1489, has a large frontispiece of
the translator, Nicholas Oresme, presenting his book to Charles VIII, in
which the characteristic style of V['e]rard's artist is fully developed.
In 1490, an edition of _Lucain, Suetone et Saluste_, which I have not
seen, was printed for V['e]rard by Pierre Le Rouge. To 1491 probably
belongs his French _Seneca_, and in this year he must have obtained the
aid of the king or of some very rich patron, for his activity from 1492
to the end of the century is quite amazing. It is from about 1493, also,
that we may date the production of those magnificent special copies on
vellum, enriched with elaborate, if not very artistic, miniatures, to
which we have already alluded in our first chapter.
The chief book of 1492 was undoubtedly the series of treatises making up
the _Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir_, of which a detailed
description will be given later on. These treatises were printed for
V['e]rard by Cousteau and Menard, the first part being finished on July
18th, the last on December 19th. Next to them in importance is a
_Josephus de la bataille judaique_, one of V['e]rard's large folios,
with columns of printed text, not reckoning any margin, nearly twelve
inches long. The frontispiece is a fine cut of a triumphal entry of a
king who should be French, since he wears the lilies. The design,
however, must have been made for this book, for a label in the middle of
the picture bears the name 'Josephus,' while in the _Gestes Romaines_
and _Lancelot_, in both of which the cut reappears, the label is left
blank. The 'Entry' is also used again, three times in the _Josephus_
itself, at the beginning of the fourth, fifth, and seventh books. An
entry of a different kind, that of Joshua and his staff into Jericho, is
depicted in the cut (here reproduced) which heads the prologue. This is
faced by the first page of text, headed by a cut of an author presenting
his book to an ecclesiastic. Both pages are surrounded by fine borders
of flowers, women, and shield. The head-cut to the second book shows a
monk handing a book to a king; that used for the third and sixth
(repeated again in the _Lancelot_ of 1494) shows a king on his throne
surrounded by his courtiers, a sword of justice is in his hand, and a
suppliant kneels before him. Small cuts, fitting into the columns, head
the different chapters in each book, but are of no great merit.
Occasionally a border about an inch wide runs up the side of one of the
columns of text, usually on the outer margin, but sometimes on the
inner. Altogether the book is a very notable one.
[Illustration: From V['e]rard's _Josephus_, 1492. (Much reduced.)]
In 1493, V['e]rard's activity was still on the increase, and we have at
least eight illustrated books of his bearing the date of this year. In
the romance of _Le Jouvencel_ and Bonnor's _Arbre des Batailles_, both
in 4to, the cuts, all of them small, are nearly identical, and are
repeated again and again in each book. Much more important than these
are the editions of the _Chronicques de France_ (printed for V['e]rard
by Jehan Maurand), and a translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid,
issued under the very taking title of _La Bible des Poetes_. This is
another of V['e]rard's great folios, with profuse illustrations, large
and small, and in its vellum edition is a very gaudy and magnificent
book. In 1494 V['e]rard published his _Lancelot_; and in 1495, a
_L['e]gende Dor['e]e_ and S. Jerome's _Vie des P[e']res en fran[c,]ois_.
This last book was finished on October 15, but its appearance was
preceded by that of the first volume of the publisher's most ambitious
undertaking, an edition of the _Miroir Historial_ of Vincent de
Beauvais. This enormous chronicle is in thirty-two books, which
V['e]rard divided between five great folio volumes, averaging about
three hundred and twenty leaves, printed in long double columns. The
whole work thus contains about the same amount of matter as some fifty
volumes of the present series, yet it was faultlessly printed on the
finest vellum, and with innumerable woodcuts, subsequently coloured, in
considerably less than a year. The first volume was finished on
September 29, 1495, and the colophon which announces the completion of
the last, '[a'] l'honneur et louenge de nostre seigneur iesucrist et de
sa glorieuse et sacr['e]e mere et de la court celeste de paradis,' bears
date May 7th, 1496. In the face of such activity and enterprise, I feel
ashamed of having girded at the good man for having used some of the
_Ovid_ cuts as a basis to his illuminations in this gigantic work.
After 1496 to the end of the century, V['e]rard's dated books are very
few. The only one I have met with myself is a _Merlin_ of 1498. It is
possible that he produced less (the _Miroir_ may not have proved a
financial success), but it is quite as likely that he merely
discontinued his wholesome practice of dating his books, and that the
_Boethius_, the _Roman de la Rose_, the _Gestes Romaines_, the romances
of _Tristram_ and _Gyron_, and other undated works, whose colophons show
that they were printed while the Pont Notre Dame was still standing,
_i.e._ before October 25th, 1499, belong to these years. After 1500
V['e]rard's enterprise certainly seems less. He continued to issue
editions of poets and romances, but they are much less sumptuous than of
yore, and in place of his great folios we have a series of small
octavos, mostly of works of devotion, with no other ornament than the
strange twists of the initial L, which adorns their title-pages. The
example here given is from an undated and unsigned edition of the _Livre
du Faulcon_, but the letter itself frequently occurs in V['e]rard's
undoubted books. The first hint for this grotesque form of ornament may
have been found in the small initials of Du Pr['e]'s 1486 edition of S.
Jerome's _Vie des anciens saintz P[e']res_, and variants of the L were
used by other publishers besides V['e]rard, _e.g._ by Jacques Maillet at
Lyons, and Pierre Le Rouge and Michel Le Noir at Paris. The most
noticeable examples of the L, besides the one here given, are the
man-at-arms L of the 1488 edition of the _Mer des Histoires_ (P.
Lerouge), the monkey-and-bagpipes L, here shown, from Maillet's 1494
edition of the _Recueil des Histoires Troyennes_, a St.
George-and-the-Dragon L in a Lyons reprint of the _Mer des Histoires_,
and the January-and-May L which, I believe, was first used by V['e]rard
for a 1492 edition of the _Matheolus_, or 'quinze joies du mariage,' but
of which a counterpart existed at Lyons.
[Illustration: Initial L used by V['e]rard.]
[Illustration: Initial L used by Maillet.]
It seems probable that the attention which V['e]rard paid to his vellum
editions, in which the woodcuts were only useful as guides to the
illustrator, made him less careful than he would otherwise have been
to secure the best possible work in his ordinary books. Certainly I
think his most interesting cuts are to be found not in his later
books but in the collection of six treatises which he had printed by
Gillet Cousteau and Jehan Menard in 1492, and republished, somewhat
less sumptuously, the next year, under the collective title _L'art de
bien vivre et de bien mourir_, the reprint coming from the press of
Pierre Le Rouge. The cuts in this collection have a special interest
for us, because some of them were afterwards used in English books,
and we may therefore be allowed to examine them at some length.
[Illustration: From V['e]rard's _Art de bien vivre_. (Reduced.)]
In the 1492 edition the first title-page _Le liure intitule lart de
bien mourir_ heralds only the first work, an adaptation of the old
_Ars Moriendi_ showing the struggle between good and bad angels for
the possession of the dying soul. The devils tempt the sufferer to
hasten his end ('interficias teipsum' one of them is saying, the words
being printed on a label), they remind him of his sins ('periuratus
es'), tempt him to worldly thoughts ('intende thesauro'), persuade his
physicians to over-commiseration ('Ecce quantam penam patitur'), or
flatter him with undeserved praise ('coronam meruisti'). To each of
these assaults his good angels have a 'bonne inspiracion' by way of
answer, and the devils have to confess 'spes nobis nulla' and to see
the little figure of the soul received into heaven. The second
treatise is called at the beginning _L'eguyllon de crainte divine pour
bien mourir_, but on the title-page placed on the back of the last
leaf 'les paines denfer et les paines de purgatoire.' Its
illustrations consist of large cuts in which devils are inflicting
excruciating and revolting tortures on their victims. Its colophon
gives the printers' names and the date July 18, 1492. The next three
parts of the book are _Le Trait['e] de l'avenement de l'Antechrist, Les
Quinze Signes_, or Fifteen Tokens of Judgment, and _Les Joies du
Paradis_. The printing of these was finished on October 28. Only the
middle treatise is much illustrated, but here the artist had full play
for his powers in representing the fish swimming on the hills, the
seas falling into the abyss, the sea-monsters covering the earth, the
flames of the sea, the trees wet with blood, the crumbling of cities,
the stones fighting among themselves, and the other signs of the Last
Day. Perhaps the best of this set of cuts is that representing the
'esbahissement' or astonishment of the men and women who had hidden
themselves in holes in the earth, when at last they ventured forth.
But in the last treatise, the _Art de bien vivre_, quaintness and
horror are replaced by really beautiful work. The cuts here are
intended to illustrate the Ave Maria, Lord's Prayer, Creed, Ten
Commandments, and Seven Sacraments. Those in the last series are the
largest in the book, each of them occupying a full page. The Creed has
a series of smaller cuts of inferior work. But the picture which
precedes this, representing the twelve apostles, and the pictures of
the Angelic Salutation, of the Pope invoking the Blessed Virgin (here
shown), and of Christ teaching the Apostles, show the finest work,
outside the _Horae_, in any French books during the fifteenth century.
These blocks appear also in two English books printed at Paris, in
1503, _The Traytte of god lyuyng and good deyng_, and _The Kalendayr
of Shyppars_, and in many of the English editions of the latter work
from Pynson's in 1506 onward.
Pierre Lerouge, one of V['e]rard's printers, produced at least one fine
book quite independently of him. This is the first illustrated edition
of _La Mer des Hystoires_, the French version of the _Rudimentum
Noviciorum_ (see p. 50), the general plan of which it follows, though
not slavishly. Pierre Lerouge printed his edition for a publisher
named Vincent Commin. It is in two tall folios, with the man-at-arms
L to decorate its title-pages, and splendid initials P, I, and S, the
first having within it a figure of a scribe at work, the S being
twisted into the form of a scaly snake, and the body of the I
containing a figure of Christ. The cuts and borders of the book are
not very remarkable. In 1498 V['e]rard published a new edition of it,
having obtained the use of the old blocks. A Lyons reprint was issued
about 1500, and other editions during the sixteenth century. Two other
printers who cannot be said to have learnt anything from V['e]rard are
Jean Bonhomme, who as early as 1486 printed an illustrated edition of
a very popular book, _Le livre des profits champ[^e]tres_, translated
from the Latin of Petrus Crescentius, and Germain Bineaut, who in 1490
printed a _Pathelin le grant et le petit_ which is said to have
woodcuts. Guyot Marchant's series of editions of the _Danse Macabre_
or 'danse des Morts,' has been already mentioned. An edition of the
same work, printed at Lyons, February 18, 1499 (no printer's name), a
copy of which is among the books which entered the British Museum
under the bequest of Mr. Alfred Huth, is especially interesting as
containing cuts of the shops of a printer and a bookseller, at both of
which Death is at work.
[Illustration: From a Lyons _Danse Macabre_, 1499. (Much reduced.)]
Another edition of the _Danse_ was printed by Nicole de la Barre at
Paris in 1500, and others of the same character in the early years of
the next century. We shall have to recur to the book again both with
reference to the _Horae_ and for the later Lyons editions, the cuts in
which followed designs by Holbein.
The only other Paris printer whom we have space here to mention is
Jean Trepperel, whose career began in 1492, in which year, according
to Hain, he issued a _Histoire de Pierre de Provence et de la belle
Maguelonne_, probably illustrated. In 1493 he published an edition of
the _Chroniques de France_, with four cuts, one of the founding of a
town, another of an assault, and two battle scenes. They are good of
their kind, especially that which serves for all the founders of
cities from [AE]neas and Romulus to S. Louis, but their repetition
becomes a little wearisome. In an undated issue of Jehan Quentin's
_Orologe de Devotion_ the cuts are all different, but fall into two
series, one badly drawn and infamously engraved, the other showing
really fine work, and having all the appearance of having been
originally designed for a Book of Hours.
The only other fifteenth century book of Trepperel's with which I am
acquainted is a charming quarto edition of the romance of _Paris et
Vienne_, a copy of which is in the Morgan collection. It is undated,
but was printed while the Pont Notre Dame was still standing. The
title-cut shows signs of breakage, and may possibly have been designed
for the earlier edition by Denis Meslier mentioned by Brunet as having
a single cut. The rest of the large cuts in the book have all the
appearance of having been specially designed for the new edition, and
are equal to the best work in the _Horae_. Meanwhile at Lyons the rude
cuts of the books which heralded illustrated work in France had been
replaced by far more artistic productions. In 1488 Michelet Topie de
Pymont and Jacques Herrnberg produced a French version (by Nicole Le
Huen) of Breydenbach's _Peregrinatio_ (see p. 57) with copies of some
of the original cuts, the smaller ones cut on wood, the large maps
engraved on copper. The next year Jacques Maillet brought out a rival
version (by Frere Jehan de Hersin) for which he acquired the original
Mainz woodblocks themselves. To Maillet, also, we owe passable
imitations of some of the less sumptuous books of V['e]rard's. Lastly,
Jean Trechsel struck out a new line in a profusely illustrated
_Terence_ of 1493. At Rouen the Missal and Breviary printed by Martin
Morin were adorned with a curious initial M and B in the same style as
some of the more frequent Ls, and Pierre Regnault did work which
V['e]rard found worthy of his vellum. Paris, however, having once gained
the predominance in illustrated work, had as yet no difficulty in
maintaining her position.
It remains for us to notice briefly the printers' devices in early
French books. These are so numerous that it is possible to divide them
into rough classes. The largest of these is formed by the marks which
have as their central ornament a tree with a shield or label hung on
the trunk, with supporters varied according to the owner's fancy, and
which are not always easy to assign to their right place in the animal
creation. Durand Gerlier preferred rams, Michel Tholoze wild men,
Denys Janot a creature which looks like a kangaroo, Hemon Le Fevre
dancing bears duly muzzled and chained, Simon Vostre leopards,
Thielmann Kerver unicorns, Felix Baligault rabbits, Robert Gourmont
winged stags, Jehan Guyart of Bordeaux dolphins. Most of these devices
have a dotted background, and they are sometimes found printed in red
ink, which adds greatly to their decorative effect. Another class, to
which V['e]rard's well-known device belongs, showed in their upper part
the French lilies crowned and supported by angels. Jean Le Forestier
combined this with the tree of knowledge, choosing lions as its
supporters, but adding also the sacred lamb (for his name 'Jean'), and
similar variations were adopted by other printers. In another large
class the French printers, especially those of Lyons, followed the
simple cross and circle so common in Italy. This was mostly printed in
white on a black ground, as by Pierre Levet, Matthieu Vivian of
Orleans, and Le Tailleur. Less often, as in the marks of Berthold
Rembolt and Georges Wolf, the ground is white and the design black.
Guillaume Balsarin who, as was very common, had two devices, had one
of each kind. Outside these classes the special designs are too many
to be enumerated. The successive Le Noirs punned on their names in at
least six different devices of black heads, and Deny de Harsy with
less obvious appropriateness selected two black men with white
waistbands to uphold his shields. Guyot Marchant's shoemakers, with
the bar of music to complete his pious motto _Sola fides sufficit_,
form one of the earliest and best known of French marks. Pierre
Regnault showed excellent taste in his flower-surrounded P, in which
the letters of his surname may also be deciphered. The scholar-printer
Badius Ascensius chose a useful, if not very pretty, design of
printers at work, the two variants of which first appear respectively
in 1507 and 1521. All these devices and countless others will be found
roughly figured in Silvestre's _Marques Typographiques_, many of them
appear also in Brunet's _Manuel du Libraire_, and those of the chief
fifteenth century printers have been reproduced with absolute fidelity
in M. Thierry-Poux's _Monuments de l'imprimerie fran[c,]aise_. Only the
mark of Du Pr['e] and one of those used by Caillaut are therefore given
here, the first (on p. 141) in honour of a pioneer in French
illustration, the second, as perhaps the most beautiful of any which
the present writer has seen.
[Illustration: Mark of Antoine Caillaut.]
* * * * *
The first Greek book printed in France appeared in 1507, and the
awakening of classical feeling was accompanied, as in other countries,
by the putting away of the last remnants of medi[ae]val art and
literature as childish things. The old romances continued to be
published, chiefly by the Lenoirs, but in a smaller and cheaper form,
and for the most part with old cuts. V['e]rard diminished his output,
and the publishers of the _Horae_ turned in despair to German designs in
place of the now despised native work. Soon only some little octavos
remained to show that there was still an unclassical public to be
catered for. These were chiefly printed by Galliot du Pr['e], with
titles in red and black, and sometimes with little architectural borders
in imitation of the more ambitious German ones. When they disappear we
say farewell to the richness and colour which distinguishes the best
French books of the end of the fifteenth century. Instead of the black
letter and quaint cuts we have graceful but cold Roman types, or pretty
but thin italics, with good initial letters, sometimes with good
head-and tail-pieces, but with few pictures, and with only a neat
allegoric device on the title-page instead of the rich designs used by
the earlier printers.
Geoffroy Tory of Bourges was the first important printer of the new
school. His earliest connection with publishing was as the editor of
various classical works, but he returned from a visit to Italy full of
artistic theories as to book-making, which he proceeded to carry out,
partly in alliance with Simon Colines, for whom he designed a new
device representing Time with his scythe. Tory's own device of the
'pot cass['e],' a broken vase pierced by a _toret_ or auger, is said to
refer to his desolation on the death of his only daughter. Devices of
other printers have been ascribed to him on the ground of the
appearance in them of the little cross of Lorraine, which is found in
some of Tory's undoubted works. It is certain, however, that the cross
was not his individual signature, but only that of his studio.
After the _Horae_, which we shall notice in our next chapter, Tory's
most famous book was his own _Champfleury_, 'auquel est contenu l'art
et science de la vraie proportion des lettres antiques,' printed in
1529. This is a fantastic work, interesting for the prelude in which
he speaks of his connection with the famous Grolier, and for the few
illustrations scattered about the text. The best of these are the
vignettes of 'Hercules Gallicus,' leading in chains the captives of
his eloquence, and of the Triumphs of Apollo and the Muses. The
specimen alphabets at the end of the book also deserve notice. They
show that Tory was better than his theories, for his attempt to prove,
by far-fetched analogies and derivations, that there is an ideal shape
for every letter, is as bad in art as it is false in history.
Tory was succeeded in his office of royal printer by Robert Estienne,
and during the rest of the century the classical editions of this
family of great printers form the chief glories of the French press.
Their books, both large and small, are admirably printed, and in
excellent taste, though with no other ornaments than their printer's
device, and good initials and head-pieces. But it must be owned that
from the reign of Francis I. onwards, the decoration of the text of
most French books is far less interesting than the superb bindings on
which the kings and their favourites began to lavish so much expense.
Only two more Paris books need here be mentioned, both of them printed
in 1546, and both with cuts imitated from the Italian--Jacques
Gohary's translation of the _Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_ and the _Amour
de Cupido et de Psich['e]_ translated from Apuleius. The first of these
was published by Jacques Kerver, the second by Jeanne de Marnef. Of
original Paris work of any eminence we have no record after the death
of Tory.
Meanwhile at Lyons a new school of book-illustration was springing up.
From the beginning of the century the Lyons printers had imitated, or
pirated, the delicate italic books printed by Aldus. The luckless
['E]tienne Dolet added something to the classical reputation of the
town, and by the middle of the century the printers there were turning
out numerous pocket editions of the classics, which they sold to their
customers in 'trade bindings' of calf stamped with gold, and often
painted over with many-coloured interlacements. The fashion for small
books was set, and when illustrations were fitted to them the result was
singularly dainty.
Before considering the editions of Jean de Tournes and his rivals we
must stop to notice the appearance at Lyons in 1538 of the belated
first edition of Holbein's _Dance of Death_, the woodcuts for which,
the work of H. L., whose identity with Hans L[:u]tzelburger has been
sufficiently established, are known to have been in existence as early
as 1527, and were probably executed two or three years before that
date. Several sets of proofs from the woodcuts are in existence, with
lettering said to be in the types of Froben of Basel, who may have
abandoned the idea of publishing them because of the vigour of their
satire on the nobles and well-to-do. The Trechsels, the printers of
the French edition, are known to have had dealings with a Basel
woodcutter with initials H. L., who died before June 1526, and may
have purchased the blocks directly from him, or at a later date from
Froben. In 1538 they issued forty-one woodcuts with a dedication by
Jean de Vauzelles, and a French quatrain to each cut either by him or
by Gilles Corrozet, giving to the book the title _Les Simulachres et
historiees faces de la mort_. Its success was as great as it deserved,
and ten more cuts were added in subsequent editions.
In the same year as the _Dance of Death_ the Trechsels issued another
series of upwards of a hundred cuts after designs by Holbein, the
_Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones_, with explanatory verses by
Gilles Corrozet. These, though scarcely less beautiful, and at the
time almost as successful as those in the _Dance of Death_, are not
quite so well known, and I therefore select one of them, taken from
the reprint of the following year, as an illustration.
[Illustration: From _Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones_, Lyons,
1539.]
The success of these two books invited imitation, and during the next
twenty years many dainty illustrated books were issued by Franciscus
Gryphius, Mac['e] Bonhomme, Guillaume Roville, and Jean de Tournes. In
1540 Gryphius issued a little Latin Testament, with thirty-four lines of
dainty Roman type to a page, which only measures 3-1/2 in. x 2, and in
which are set charming cuts. Bonhomme's chief success was an edition,
printed in 1556, of the first three books of the _Metamorphoses_
translated into French verse by Cl['e]ment Marot and Barth['e]lemy
Aneau. This has borders to every page, and numerous vignettes measuring
only 1-1/2 in. x 2. In the following year this was capped by Jean de
Tournes with another version of the _Metamorphoses_, with borders and
vignettes attributed to Bernard Salomon, usually called 'le petit
Bernard,' and the success of the book caused it to be re-issued in Dutch
and Italian. The borders are wonderfully varied, some of them containing
little grotesque figures worthy of our own Doyle, others dainty
lacework, and others less pleasing architectural essays. This, like most
of the best books of its kind, was printed throughout in italics, and
the attempt about this time of Robert Granjon, another Lyons printer, to
supersede the italic by a type modelled on the French cursive hand, the
'caract[e']res de civilit['e],' was only partially successful. In 1563,
and possibly in other years, Jean de Tournes published an almanack and
engagement-book, a _Calendrier historial_, with tiny vignettes
representing the occupations appropriate to the seasons, and alternate
pages for the entry of notes by any purchasers barbarous enough to
deface so charming a book with their hasty handwriting. When the brief
blaze of pretty books at Lyons died out, French printing fast sinks into
dulness, and the attempt of a Frenchman at Antwerp to revive its glories
was only partially successful, though he has left behind him a great
name. Jean Plantin was born at Tours in 1514, and after trying to earn a
living first at Paris and then at Caen, set up a bookseller's shop at
Antwerp in 1549, and six years later printed his first book, the
_Institution d'une fille de noble maison_. He was soon in a position to
give commissions to good artists, Luc de Heere, Pierre Huys, Godefroid
Ballain, and others, and issued the _Devises H['e]roiques_ of Claude
Paradin (1562), and the _Emblems_ of Sambucus (1564), of Hadrianus
Junius (1565), and Alciati (1566), with illustrations from their
designs. His _Horae_, printed in 1566 and 1575, with florid borders, and
his _Psalter_ of 1571, attempted to revive a class of book then going
out of fashion. Besides the great Antwerp Polyglott, whose printing
occupied him from 1568 to 1573, and nearly brought him to ruin, Plantin
printed some other Bibles, one in Flemish in 1566, and a 'Bible royale'
in 1570, being noticeable for their ambitious decoration. He published
also some great folio missals, more imposing than elegant. He had
numerous sets of large initials, one specially designed for music books
being really graceful, and a long array of variations on the device of
the hand and compass which he adopted as his mark. The title-pages of
his larger books are surrounded with heavy architectural borders, some
of which were engraved on copper. At his death, in 1589, he had attained
_labore et constantia_, as his motto phrased it, to a foremost position
among the printers of his day, but his florid illustrated books have
very little real beauty, and mark the beginning of a century and a half
of bad taste from which only the microscopic editions of the Elzevirs
are wholly free.
* * * * *
[18] The only other Abbeville illustrated book is the 1487 _Triomphe
des Neuf Preux_, with conventional portraits of most of the heroes
(their legs wide apart), and a bullet-headed Du Guesclin, based on
authentic tradition. In a 1508 reprint by Michel le Noir at Paris,
while some of the old cuts were retained this Du Guesclin was replaced
by a much more showy figure.