ENGLISH WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration: XXIX. WESTMINSTER, CAXTON, C. 1488
BONAVENTURA. MEDITATIONES. (PART OF SIG. K 5 RECTO)
CHRIST RAISING THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS]
A few illuminated manuscripts of English workmanship and a few with
illustrations in outline have come down to us from the fifteenth
century, but amid the weary wars with France and the still wearier
struggles of Yorkists and Lancastrians, the artistic spirit which had
been so prominent in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
seems to have died out altogether. Until the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
or perhaps we should rather say until the advent of John Day, few
English books were illustrated, and of these few quite a large
proportion borrowed or copied their pictures from foreign originals.
Nevertheless, English illustrated books are rightly sought after by
English collectors, and though we may wish that they were better, we
must give the best account of them we can.
As we shall see in a later chapter, there is some probability that an
engraving on copper was specially prepared for the first book printed by
Caxton, _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye._ For the present,
however, we must concern ourselves only with illustrations on wood, or
on soft metal cut in relief after the manner of wood, a difference of
more interest to the technical student than to book-lovers. The first
English books thus illustrated appear in or about 1481, the year in
which Jean Du Pre began the use of cuts in Paris. England was thus
fairly well to the front in point of time; it is the quality which is to
seek. The first of these illustrated books was probably an undated
edition of the _Mirrour of the World_, a translation of a French version
of a Latin _Speculum_ or _Imago mundi_. Besides some woodcut diagrams
copied from drawings found in the French manuscripts, this has ten
little cuts, seven of the masters of the seven liberal arts, one of the
author, and two of the Creation. Two of the cuts illustrating the arts
were used again almost at once in Caxton's third edition of the _Parvus
et Magnus Cato_, a book of moral instruction for children in a series of
Latin distichs. In 1481 also Caxton ornamented the second edition of the
didactic treatise, _The Game and Play of the Chess_ (from the Latin of
Jacobus de Cessolis), with sixteen woodcuts, representing the characters
after which the different pieces and pawns were called. The pictures are
clumsy and coarsely cut, comparing miserably with the charming little
woodcuts in the Italian edition printed at Florence, but they illustrate
the book, and may conceivably have increased its sales. In any case,
Caxton seems, in a leisurely way, to have set about producing some more,
since by or about 1484 appeared three of his most important illustrated
books, the _Golden Legend_, the second edition of Chaucer's _Canterbury
Tales_, and an _Aesop_. The _Golden Legend_ is ornamented with eighteen
large and thirty-two smaller woodcuts; the _Aesop_ with a full-page
frontispiece and one hundred and five smaller cuts; the _Canterbury
Tales_ with a large cut of the Pilgrims seated at a round table, and
with some twenty smaller pictures of the different story-tellers on
their horses, some of these being used more than once. For the _Aesop_,
like many other foreign publishers, Caxton sent his illustrators to the
designs made for the Zainers at Augsburg and Ulm, and quickly imitated
all over Germany, and the copies he obtained are merely servile and so
clumsy as occasionally to attain to unintended humour. Foreign influence
is also evident in some at least of the cuts in the _Golden Legend_; on
the other hand, we may be sure that the device of the Earl of Arundel on
leaf 3 verso, a horse galloping past a tree, must have been made in
England. Original, too, of necessity, were the illustrations to the
_Canterbury Tales_, for which no foreign models could have been found.
But the succession of pilgrims, each decked with a huge string of
praying-beads and mounted on a most ungainly horse, is grotesque in its
cumulation of clumsiness, though when we find that the miller really has
got a kind of bagpipe, we recognize that the illustrator had at least
read his text.
Apparently Caxton himself realized that these English-made woodcuts were
a failure, for the only two important illustrated books which he issued
after this, the _Speculum Vitae Christi_, printed about 1488 (see Plate
XXIX), and the _Fifteen Oes_ of a year or two later, both seem to be
decorated with cuts of Flemish origin. The _Fifteen Oes_ (a collection
of fifteen prayers, each beginning with O), though I have called it
important, is so mainly as proving that Caxton must have printed a Horae
of the same measurements (of which it may, indeed, have formed a part),
illustrated with a set of very spirited woodcuts, undoubtedly imported
from Flanders and subsequently found in the possession of Wynkyn de
Worde. That the cuts in the _Speculum Vitae Christi_ are also Flemish is
a degree less certain, but only a degree. Some of these were used again
in the _Royal Book_, the _Doctrinal of Sapience_, and the _Book of
Divers Ghostly Matters_. But the seven books which we have named are the
only ones for which Caxton troubled to procure sets of cuts, and of
these seven sets, as we have seen, one was certainly and another
probably imported, one certainly and another probably copied, and only
three are of English origin, and these the rudest and clumsiest.
While our chief native printer made this poor record his contemporaries
did no better. Lettou and Machlinia used no woodcuts which have come
down to us save a small border, which passed into the possession of
Pynson; for use at Oxford two sets of cuts were imported from the Low
Countries, one which Mr. Gordon Duff thinks was originally designed for
a _Legenda Aurea_, the other clearly meant for a Horae. These were used
together in the Oxford edition of Mirk's _Liber Festivalis_, and the cut
of the author of the _Legenda Aurea_ (Jacobus de Voragine) is used for
Lyndewood in an edition of his _Constitutions_. At St. Albans some poor
little cuts were used in the _Chronicles of England_, but from the point
of view of illustration the anonymous schoolmaster-printer is chiefly
memorable for having printed some cuts of coat-armour in the "Book of
St. Albans" (_The Boke of Haukyng, Huntyng and also of Cote-armuris_) in
colours.
Wynkyn de Worde inherited Caxton's stock of woodcuts, and early in his
career used some of them again in reprints of the _Golden Legend_ and
_Speculum Vitae Christi_, and in his larger Horae used the full set of
cuts which, while in Caxton's hands, is only known from those which
appear in the _Fifteen Oes_. About 1492 he purchased some ornamental
capitals (Caxton had only used a single rather graceful rustic A) and
one or more cuts from Govaert van Os of Gouda. In his 1494 edition of
Walter Hylton's _Scala Perfectionis_ (the first book in which he put his
name) he used a woodblock consisting of a picture of Christ suckled by
His mother with a long woodcut inscription, part of which reads "Sit
dulce nomen domini nostri ihesu christi et nomen genitricis virginis
marie benedictum," the whole surrounded by a graceful floral border. In
1495 came Higden's _Polychronicon_ with a few woodcut musical notes, the
"hystorye of the deuoute and right renommed lyues of holy faders lyuynge
in deserte" (usually quoted as the _Vitas Patrum_), with one large cut
used six times and forty small ones used as 155, and about the same time
a handsome edition of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's _De proprietatibus
rerum_, with large cuts (two-thirds of the folio page) prefixed to each
of the twenty-two books, apparently copied partly from those in a Dutch
edition printed at Haarlem in 1485, partly from the illustrations
(themselves not original) in a French edition printed at Lyon, of which
Caxton, who finished the translation on his death-bed, had made use. In
1496, in reprinting the _Book of St. Albans_ De Worde added a treatise
on _Fishing with an angle_, to which he prefixed a cut of a happy angler
hauling up a fish which will soon be placed in a well-filled tub which
stands beside him on the bank. This is quite good primitive work and was
sufficiently appreciated to be used for numerous later editions, but
soon after this De Worde employed a cutter who served him very badly,
mangling cruelly a set of rather ambitious designs for the _Morte
d'Arthur_ of 1498 (several of them used again in the _Recuyell_ of
1503), and also some single cuts used in different books. For the next
half-dozen years De Worde relied almost exclusively on old cuts, but at
last found a competent craftsman who enabled him to bring out in
January, 1505-6, an English version of the _Art de bien vivre et de bien
mourir_ with quite neat reductions of the pictures in Verard's edition
of 1492. It was, no doubt, the same workman who copied in 1506 the
Verard-Pigouchet cuts in Pierre Gringore's _Chasteau de Labeur_ as
translated by Alexander Barclay, but from the frequent omission of
backgrounds it is obvious that in these he was hurried, and they are by
no means so good as those in the 1505 edition by Pynson with which De
Worde was enviously hastening to compete. The _Calendar of Shepherds_
was another translation from the French, illustrated with copies of
French cuts, while in the prose _Ship of Fools_, translated by Henry
Watson from a French version of the German _Narrenschiff_ of Sebastian
Brant, Basel originals were reproduced probably from intermediate
copies. But when in 1509 Henry VII died, De Worde for once seems to have
let his craftsman do a bit of original work for a title-cut to a funeral
sermon by Bishop Fisher. In this (see Plate XXX) the bishop is shown
preaching in a wooden pulpit, immediately below which is the hearse
covered by a gorgeous pall on which lies an effigy of the dead king,
while beyond the hearse stands a crowd of courtiers. It is evident that
perspective was not the artist's strong point, as the pavement seems
climbing up the wall and the shape of the hearse is quite indeterminate,
but the general effect of the cut is neat and pleasing. That it is an
English cut is certain. A few months later Bishop Fisher preached
another funeral sermon, over Henry VII's aged mother, Margaret Duchess
of Richmond, and when De Worde economically wished to use the same
woodcut on the titlepage of his edition of this, there was a craftsman
on the spot able to cut out the royal hearse from the block and plug in
a representation of an ordinary one, and the similarity of touch shows
that this was done by the original cutter.
[Illustration: XXX. LONDON, WYNKYN de WORDE, 1509
BISHOP FISHER. FUNERAL SERMON ON HENRY VII. (TITLE)]
As we have already noted in Chapter XII, Wynkyn de Worde was singularly
unenterprising as a publisher, and although he lived for nearly a
quarter of a century after the accession of Henry VIII, during all this
time he printed no new book which required copious illustration. On the
other hand, he was a man of fixed habits, and one of these habits came
to be the decoration of the titlepage of nearly every small quarto he
issued with a woodcut of some kind or other, the title itself being
sometimes printed on a riband above it. When a new picture was
absolutely necessary for this purpose it was forthcoming and generally
fairly well cut, but a few stock woodcuts, a schoolmaster holding a
birch for grammatical books, a knight on horseback for a romance, etc.,
were used again and again, and often the block was picked out (we are
tempted to say "at random," but that would be an exaggeration) from one
of the sets already described, which De Worde had commissioned in more
lavish days.
One of Richard Pynson's earliest books was an edition of Chaucer's
_Canterbury Tales_ with about a score of woodcuts of the pilgrims
obviously influenced by those in Caxton's second edition, but in no way
an improvement on them. It is true that not only is the miller again
allowed his bagpipe, but a little mill is placed in the corner of the
cut to identify him beyond doubt. On the other hand, the knight's horse
is bedecked with the cumbrous skirts used in the tilt-yard, but which
would have become sadly draggled ere much progress had been made along
the miry road to Canterbury. The clerk, moreover, is made to carry a
bow as if, instead of having his mind set on Aristotle, he were of the
lusty sort that loved to get venison where they should not. Round most
of the cuts there is a heavy edge of black, as if from an untrimmed
block, which does not improve their appearance. Altogether they are poor
work, and it was doubtless his recognition of this that caused Pynson in
future to rely so largely on the purchase or imitation of foreign
blocks. For his edition of Lydgate's _Falles of Princes_, a verse
rendering of Boccaccio's _De casibus illustrium virorum_, issued in
1494, he procured the woodcuts made for the fine French edition (_De la
ruine des nobles hommes_), printed at Paris by Jean Du Pre in 1483.
Before 1500 he brought out an _Aesop_, copying as usual the German cuts.
In 1505 he printed Alexander Barclay's version of Pierre Gringore's
_Chasteau du Labeur_ with cuts closely and fairly skilfully copied from
those in the Pigouchet-Verard editions. In 1506 he went further and
procured from Verard the blocks for a new edition of the _Kalendar of
Shepherds_, which, however, he caused to be retranslated, with sundry
remarks on the extraordinary English of the version published by Verard.
In 1509 he produced in a fine folio Barclay's free rendering of Brant's
_Narrenschiff_, illustrating this English _Ship of Fools_ with 117 cuts
copied from the originals. In 1518 he procured from Froben some
border-pieces for small quartos, one showing in the footpiece a boy
carried on the shoulders of his fellows, another an elephant, a third
Mutius Scaevola and Porsenna.
[Illustration: XXXI. LONDON, PYNSON, C. 1520
BARCLAY'S VERSION OF SALLUST'S JUGURTHA. THE TRANSLATOR AND THE DUKE OF
NORFOLK. (REDUCED)]
If Pynson had dealt largely in illustrated books the borrowings and
copyings here recited might seem insignificant. He published, however,
very little English work which can be set against them, and even of the
cuts which pass for English the native origin is not always sure. I
should be sorry to pledge myself, for instance, as to the provenance of
some neat but rather characterless column-cuts in his edition of the
_Speculum Vitae Christi_ (fifteenth century). The title-cut to the
_Traduction and Mariage of the Princesse_ (Katherine), printed in 1501,
is almost certainly English in its heaviness and lack of charm, but
despite the fact that they must have been produced in London we can
hardly say as much of the two far prettier pictures which adorn the
_Carmen_ of Petrus Carmelianus on the treaty of marriage between the
future Charles V and the Princess Mary (1508). In the first of these the
ambassadors are being received by Henry VII, in the second by the
Princess who is attended by her maids, and the latter is perhaps the
first English book-illustration with any touch of grace. Unluckily there
is a half Spanish, half Low-Country look about it, which suggests that
some member of the ambassadors' suite with an artistic turn may at least
have supplied the design, so that one hesitates to claim it too
vigorously as English work. We may be more confident about the one good
cut (the rest are a scratch lot) in the 1513 edition of Lydgate's _The
hystory sege and dystruccion of Troy_. In this Henry V is shown seated
in a large room, with his suite, while Lydgate in his black habit as a
Benedictine presents him with his book. There is a general resemblance
between this and another good piece of work, the picture in Alexander
Barclay's translation of Sallust's _Jugurtha_ (undated) of this other
black monk offering his book to the Duke of Norfolk (see Plate XXXI).
Probably both were from the same hand. It may be noted that the cut of
Barclay was used again in the _Myrrour of good maners conteyning the
iiii. vertues called cardynall compyled in latin by Domynicke Mancyn_,
of which he was the industrious translator. In Pynson's 1516 edition of
Fabyan's _Chronicle_, besides some insignificant column-cuts of kings
and some decorative heraldic work, there is an excellent picture of a
disembarkation. In other books we find cuts of a schoolmaster with his
pupils, of an author, of a woman saint (S. Bridget, though used also for
S. Werburga), etc.
Towards the end of his career in the collection of Chaucer's works
(1526) and reprint of Lydgate's _Falles of Princes_ (1527), Pynson drew
on his stock of miscellaneous blocks rather than allow works with which
illustrations had become associated to go forth undecorated.[63] But
with his purchase of the border-pieces from Froben in 1518, it would
seem that he more or less definitely turned his back on pictorial
illustration. Mr. Gordon Duff has shown that a change comes over the
character of his books about this time, and has suggested that during
the latter years of his life his business was to some extent in the
hands of Thomas Berthelet, who succeeded him as King's Printer.
Berthelet himself in the course of his long and prosperous career
eschewed illustrations altogether, while he took some trouble to get
good capitals and had a few ornamental borders. It is thus hardly too
much to say that from 1518 for some forty years, until in 1559 John Day
published Cunningham's _Cosmographicall Glasse_, book-illustration in
England can only be found lurking here and there in holes and corners.
In 1526 Peter Treveris issued the _Grete Herbal_ with numerous botanical
figures; in 1529 John Rastell printed his own _Pastime of People_ with
huge, semi-grotesque cuts of English kings; a few of Robert Copland's
books and a few of Robert Wyer's have rough cuts of no importance. But
when we think of Pynson's edition of Lord Berners' _Froissart_, of
Berthelet's of Gower's _Confessio Amantis_, of Godfray's _Chaucer_, and
of Grafton's edition of Halle's _Chronicle_, all illustratable books and
all unillustrated, it is evident that educated book-buyers, wearied of
rudely hacked blocks, often with no relevance to the book in which they
were found, had told the printers that they might save the space
occupied by these decorations, and that the reign of the primitive
woodcut in English books, if it can be said ever to have reigned, was at
an end.
This emphatic discouragement of book-illustrations during so many years
in the sixteenth century was perhaps the best thing that could have
happened--next to an equally emphatic encouragement of them. There can
have been no reason in the nature of things why English
book-illustrations should continue over a long period of time to be
third-rate. A little help and a little guidance would probably have
sufficed to reform them altogether. Nevertheless it can hardly be
disputed that as a matter of fact they were, with very few exceptions,
third-rate, the superiority of Pynson's to Wynkyn de Worde's being
somewhat less striking than is usually asserted. In the absence of the
needed help and guidance it was better to make a sober dignity the ideal
of book-production than to continue to deface decently printed books by
the use of job lots of column cuts. The borders and other ornaments used
by Berthelet, Reyner Wolfe, and Grafton, the three principal firms of
this period, are at least moderately good. All three printers indulged
in the pleasing heresy of pictorial or heraldic capitals, Wolfe in the
_Homiliae duae_ of S. Chrysostom (1543), Grafton in Halle's Chronicle
entitled _The Union of the Families of Lancaster and York_ (1548), and
Berthelet in some of his later proclamations. As regards their devices,
Grafton's punning emblem (a tree grafted on a tun), though in its
smallest size it may pass well enough, was not worthy of the prominence
which he sometimes gave it; but Wolfe's "Charitas" mark, of children
throwing sticks at an apple tree, is perhaps the most pleasing of
English devices, while Berthelet's "Lucrece," despite the fact that her
draperies have yielded to the Renaissance temptation of fluttering in
the wind rather more than a Roman lady would have thought becoming at
the moment of death, is of its kind a fine piece of work. As for
pictures, from which Berthelet, as far as I remember, was consistent in
his abstinence--Wolfe and Grafton were wisely content to make an
exception in favour of Holbein, a little medallion cut after his
portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt adorning Wolfe's edition of Leland's
_Naeniae_ (1542), and Grafton owing to him the magnificent titlepage to
the Great Bibles in which Cranmer and Cromwell, with a host of other
worthies, are seen distributing Bibles under the superintendence of
Henry VIII. After the fall of Cromwell his armorial bearings were cut
out of the block, a piece of petty brutality on a level with that which
compelled owners of Prayer Books and Golden Legends to deface them by
scratching out the word "pope" and as much as they could of the service
for the day of that certainly rather questionable saint, Thomas a
Becket.
[Illustration: XXXII. LONDON, T. POWELL, 1556
HEYWOOD. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY. PORTRAIT OF HEYWOOD]
In 1548 we come across a definitely illustrated book, Cranmer's
_Catechism_, published by Walter Lynne, with a delicately cut
titlepage[64] showing figures of Justice, Prudence, and Victory, and
also the royal arms, and in the text numerous small Biblical pictures,
two of which are signed "Hans Holbein," while others have been rashly
attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1556 we find Heywood's _Spider and the
Fly_ illustrated not only with various woodcuts of spiders' webs, but
with a portrait of the author stiff and ungainly enough in all
conscience, but carrying with it an impression of lank veracity (see
Plate XXXII). About this time, moreover, William Copland was issuing
folio and quarto editions of some of the poems and romances which had
pleased the readers of the first quarter of the century, and some of
these had the old cuts in them. It is evident that illustrations would
have come back in any case--book-buyers can never abstain from them for
long together. But it is only fair to connect this return with the name
of John Day, who made a strenuous effort, which only just failed of
success, to bring up book-illustration to the high level at which he was
aiming in printing. Day had issued a few books during the reign of
Edward VI, notably a Bible with an excellent pictorial capital showing
the promoter of the edition, Edmund Becke, presenting a copy of it to
the King. As a staunch Protestant he had been in some danger under Queen
Mary, but with the accession of Elizabeth he came quickly to the
front, thanks to the help of Archbishop Parker, and the edition of _The
Cosmographicall Glasse_ of William Cunningham, which he issued in 1559,
is thus, as we have already suggested, a real landmark in English
book-production. In addition to its fine types, this book is notable for
its woodcut diagrams and pictorial capitals, ornamental titlepage, large
map of Norwich and, most important of all, a strong and vigorous
portrait of the author, his right hand on a globe, a _Dioscorides_ with
a diagram of a rose lying open before him, and a wooded landscape being
seen in the distance. The whole is enclosed in an oval frame, round
which runs a Greek motto cut in majuscules, [Greek: E MEGALE EUDAIMONIE
OUDENI PHTHONEIN] ("the great happiness is to envy no man"), with the
author's age, "AETATIS 28" at the foot. The portrait measures about 6
inches by 4(1/2), and occupies the whole folio page. It is only too
probable that it was the work not of a native Englishman, but of some
Dutch refugee, but here at last in an English book was a piece of living
portraiture adequately cut on wood, and with better luck it should have
been the first of a long series. John Day himself did his best to
promote a fashion by prefixing a small portrait of Becon to that
author's _Pomander of Prayer_, 1561, and having a much larger one of
himself cut the next year, "AETATIS SVAE XXXX," as the inscription tells
us, adding also his motto, "LIEFE IS DEATHE AND DEATH IS LIEFE", the
spelling in which suggests a Dutch artist, though Dutch spelling about
this time was so rampant in England that we may hope against hope that
this was English work. The oval portrait is surrounded with strap-work
ornament, another fashion of the day, and at the foot of this are the
initials I. D. On one interpretation these would lead us to believe not
only that the work is English, but that Day himself was the cutter. But
bindings from his shop are sometimes signed I. D. P. (Ioannes Day
pegit), and we must hesitate before attributing to him personal skill
not only in printing, but in binding and wood-cutting as well. The
portrait itself is taken side-face and shows a cropped head, keen eye,
and long beard, the neck being entirely concealed by a high coat-collar
within which is a ruff. The ground to the front of the face is all in
deep shadow, that at the back of the head is left white, a simple
contrast which perhaps makes the general effect more brilliant. Day used
this portrait as a device in some of his largest folio books--for
instance, his three-volume edition of Becon's works (1560-4) and Foxe's
_Book of Martyrs_ (1563).
The full title of the _Book of Martyrs_, which we have now reached, is
_Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching
matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and described the great
persecutions and horrible troubles, that have bene wrought and practised
by the Romishe Prelates, especially in this Realm of England and
Scotlande, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande unto the tyme nowe
present_. It bears an elaborate titlepage showing Protestants and
Catholics preaching, Protestants being burnt at the stake contrasted
with Catholics offering the sacrifice of the Mass, and finally the
Protestant martyrs uplifted in heaven, while the Catholic persecutors
are packed off to hell. The text is very unevenly illustrated, but the
total number of woodcuts even in the first edition (1563) is very
considerable, and as many new pictures were added in the second (1570),
the book was certainly the most liberally illustrated with cuts
specially made for it which had yet been produced in England. One or two
of the smaller cuts, mostly the head of a martyr praying amid the
flames, are used several times; of the larger cuts only a very few are
repeated, and, considering the monotonous subject of the book, it is
obvious that some trouble must have been taken to secure variety in the
illustrations. A few of these occupy a whole page, that illustrating the
Protestant legend of the poisoning of King John by a fanatic monk being
divided into compartments, while others showing some of the more
important martyrdoms are ambitiously designed. The drawing of some of
the later pictures is coarse, but on the whole the designs are good and
with a good deal of character in them. The cutting is careful and
painstaking, but hardly ever succeeds in making the picture stand out
boldly on the page, so that the general effect is grey and colourless.
As to the personality of the designers and cutters we know nothing. Day
at one time was anxious to get leave to keep more than the permitted
maximum of four foreigners in his employment, but we have really no
sufficient ground for arguing either for an English or a foreign origin
for these illustrations.
A few years after this, in 1569, when the new edition of the _Book of
Martyrs_ was in preparation, Day issued another illustrated book: _A
christall glasse of christian reformation, wherein the godly maye
beholde the coloured abuses used in this our present tyme. Collected by
Stephen Bateman_, better known as the "Batman uppon Bartholomew," i.e.
the editor by whom the _De Proprietatibus Rerum_ of Bartholomaeus
Anglicus was "newly corrected, enlarged, and amended" in 1582. The
_Christall glasse of christian reformation_ is a dull book with dull
illustrations, which are of the nature of emblems, made ugly by party
spirit. A more interesting book by the same author and issued in the
same year was _The travayled Pylgrime, bringing newes from all partes of
the worlde_, to which Bateman only put his initials and which was
printed not by Day, but by Denham. This, although I cannot find that the
fact has been noted, is largely indebted both for its scheme and its
illustrations to the _Chevalier Delibere_ of Olivier de la Marche,
though the woodcuts go back not to those of the Gouda and Schiedam
incunabula, but to the Antwerp edition of 1555, in which these were
translated into some of the most graceful of sixteenth century cuts.
Needless to say, much of the grace disappears in this new translation,
although the cutting is more effective than in the _Book of Martyrs_.
Besides these two books by Stephen Bateman, 1569 saw the issue of the
first edition of one of John Day's most famous ventures, _A Booke of
Christian Prayers, collected out of the ancient writers and best learned
in our time, worthy to be read with an earnest mind of all Christians,
in these dangerous and troublesome daies, that God for Christes sake
will yet still be mercifull vnto us_. From the presence on the back of
the titlepage of a very stiff portrait of the Queen kneeling in prayer
(rather like a design for a monumental brass), this is usually quoted as
_Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book_. It was reprinted in 1578 (perhaps also
earlier), 1581, and 1590, and the later editions, the only ones I have
seen, ascribe the compilation to R. D., i.e. Richard Day, John Day's
clergyman son. The book is in appearance a kind of Protestant Horae,
having borders to every page divided into compartments as in the Paris
editions, showing scenes from the life of Christ, the cardinal virtues
and their opposites, the works of charity, and a Dance of Death.
Compared with the best, or even the second best, of the Horae of
Pigouchet or Kerver, the book looks cold and colourless, but the rarity
of the early editions shows that it must have been very popular.
The only other book issued by Day with borders to every page was the
(supposititious) _Certaine select prayers gathered out of S. Augustines
Meditations, which he calleth his selfe-talks with God_, which went
through several editions, of which the first is dated 1574. This is a
much less pretentious book, the borders being decorative instead of
pictorial, but it makes rather a pretty little octavo. Another 1569 book
which has cuts is the edition of Grafton's _Chronicle_ of that year,
printed by Henry Denham, but as the cuts look like a "job" lot, possibly
of German origin, and are only placed at the beginnings of sections in
the short first book, while all the history from 1066 onwards is left
unillustrated, this speaks rather of decadence than progress.
[Illustration: XXXIII. LONDON, C. BARKER, 1575
TURBERVILLE. BOOKE OF FAULCONRIE. QUEEN ELIZABETH HAWKING]
In 1581, towards the close of his career, Day was employed to print John
Derrick's _Image of Ireland_, giving an account of Sir Henry Sidney's
campaign against the Irish "wood-karnes." In some few copies this work
is illustrated with eight very large woodcuts, the most ambitious in
some respects that had ever been attempted in England. The first four
are wretchedly cut; the last four, showing Sir Henry's battle with the
rebels and his triumphal return, are both well designed and well
executed.
Meanwhile, other printers and publishers had produced a few more
illustrated books in the 'seventies. Thus in 1575 Henry Bynneman had
printed Turberville's _Booke of Faulconrie_ for Christopher Barker. The
numerous excellent illustrations of hawks (and probably those of dogs
also) are taken from French books, but there is a fairly vigorous
picture of Queen Elizabeth hawking attended by her suite, badged, back
and front, with large Tudor roses, and this (see Plate XXXIII) looks
like English work. In a much later edition--that of 1611--it is curious
to note that the portrait of the Queen was cut out and one of James I
substituted.
In 1576 a rather forbidding woodcut portrait of George Gascoigne was
printed (by R. Smith) in that worthy's _Steele Glas_. In 1577 came a
very important work, the famous _Chronicle_, begun on a vast scale by
Reyner Wolfe and completed for England, Scotland, and Ireland by Raphael
Holinshed, now published by John Harrison the elder. This has the
appearance of being much more profusely illustrated than the _Book of
Martyrs_ or any other English folio, but as the cuts of battles, riots,
executions, etc., which form the staple illustrations, are freely
repeated, the profusion is far less than it seems. The cuts, moreover,
are much smaller than those in Foxe's _Martyrs_. As a rule they are
vigorously designed and fairly well cut, and if it had come fifty years
earlier the book would have been full of promise. But, as far as
pictorial cuts in important books are concerned, we are nearing the end.
In 1579 H. Singleton published Spenser's _Shepheardes Calender_ with a
small cut of no great merit at the head of each "aeglogue," and in the
same year Vautrollier illustrated North's _Plutarch_ with insignificant
little busts which derive importance only from the large ornamental
frames, stretching across the folio page, in which they are set.
Woodcuts did not cease to be used after this date. They will be found in
herbals (but these were mainly foreign blocks), military works, and all
books for which diagrams were needed. They continued fashionable for
some time for the architectural or other forms of borders to titlepages,
some of them very graceful, as, for instance, that to the early folio
editions of Sidney's _Arcadia_; also for the coats of arms of the great
men to whom books were dedicated. They are found also at haphazard in
the sixpenny and fourpenny quartos of plays and romances, and many of
the old blocks gradually drifted into the hands of the printers of
ballads and chapbooks, and appear in incongruous surroundings after a
century of service. But I cannot myself call to mind any important
English book after 1580 for which a publisher thought it worth his while
to commission a new set of imaginative pictures cut on wood, and that
means that woodcut illustration as a vital force in the making of books
had ceased to exist. They needed good paper and careful presswork, and
all over Europe paper and presswork were rapidly deteriorating. They
cost money, and book-buyers apparently did not care enough for them to
make them a good investment. The rising popularity of copper engravings
for book-illustration on the Continent probably influenced the judgment
of English book-lovers, and although, as we shall see, copper engraving
was for many years very sparingly used in England save for portraits,
frontispieces, and titlepages, woodcuts went clean out of fashion for
some two centuries.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] He had apparently returned the blocks borrowed from Du Pre for
the _Falles of Princes_, as none of them is used in 1527, although
one or two are copied. I have not met with all the Chaucer
illustrations, and it is possible that a few of these are new.
[64] Used again the same year in a treatise by Richard Bonner.