ENGRAVED ILLUSTRATIONS
The good bookman should have no love for "plates," and to do them
justice bookmen have shown commendable fortitude in resisting their
attractions, great as these often are. As a form of book-decoration the
plate reached its highest development in the French _livres-a-vignettes_
of the eighteenth century, the charm of the best bookwork of Moreau,
Eisen, and their fellows being incontestable. It would, indeed, have
argued some lack of patriotism if French book-lovers had not yielded
themselves to the fascination of a method of book-illustration which had
thus reached its perfection in their own country, and they have done so.
But as he reads the enthusiastic descriptions of these eighteenth
century books by M. Henri Beraldi, a foreign book-lover may well feel
(to borrow the phrase which Jonson and Herrick used of the over-dressed
ladies of their day) that the book itself has become its "own least
part." A book which requires as an appendix an album of original
designs, or of proofs of the illustrations, or (worse still) which has
been mounted on larger paper and guarded so that these proofs or designs
can be brought into connection with the text, is on its way to that
worst of all fates, the Avernus of extra illustration or Graingerism.
When it has reached this, it ceases to be a book at all and becomes a
scrap-album of unharmonized pictures.
Lack of means may make it easy for a bookman to resist the temptation to
supplement the illustrations in a book with duplicates in proof or any
like extravagances, but even then few books which have plates in them
fail to bring trouble. If the plates are protected with "flimsies," the
owner's conscience may be perturbed with doubts as to whether these may
lawfully be torn out. If there are no flimsies, the leaf opposite a
plate often shows a set-off from it and is sometimes specially badly
foxed. Moreover, not being an integral part of the book, the plate
presents problems to publishers and binders which are too often left
unsolved. It ought to be printed on paper sufficiently wide to allow of
a flap or turn-over, so that the leaf can be placed in the quire and
properly sewn. But the flap thus left is not pretty, and unless very
thin may cause the book to gape. Thus too often the plate is only glued
or pasted into its place, with the result that it easily comes loose.
Hence misplacements, imperfections, and consequent woe.
It is the charm of the earlier books illustrated with incised engravings
that the impressions are pulled on the same paper as the rest of the
book, very often on pages bearing letterpress, and almost always, even
when they chance to occupy a whole page, the back of which is left
blank, as part of the quire or gathering. The price, however, which had
to be paid for these advantages was a heavy one, the trouble not merely
of double printing, as in the case of a sheet printed in red and black,
but of double printing in two different kinds, one being from a raised
surface, the other from an incised. It is clear that this trouble was
found very serious, as both at Rome and Florence in Italy, at Bruges in
the Low Countries, at Wurzburg and Eichstatt in Germany, and at Lyon in
France, the experiment was tried independently and in every case
abandoned after one or two books had been thus ornamented.
[Illustration: XXXIV. FLORENCE, NICOLUS LAURENTII, 1477
BETTINI. MONTE SANTO DI DIO. CHRIST IN GLORY. (REDUCED)]
At Rome, after the failure of his printing partnership with Pannartz,
Conrad Sweynheym betook himself to engraving maps to illustrate an
edition of Ptolemy's _Cosmographia_, and this was brought out after his
death by Arnold Buckinck, 10 October, 1478. Thirteen months earlier
Nicolaus Laurentii, of Breslau, had published at Florence the _Monte
Santo di Dio_ of Antonio Bettini, with two full-page engravings and
one smaller one. The first of these shows the ladder of Prayer and the
Sacraments up which, by the virtues which form its successive rungs, a
cassocked youth is preparing to climb to heaven, where Christ stands in
a mandorla supported by angels. The second plate is given up entirely to
a representation of Christ in a mandorla, both drawing and engraving
being excellent, and the little angels who are lovingly upholding the
frame being really delightful (see Plate XXXIV). The third picture,
printed on a page with text, is smaller than these and represents the
pains of hell.
When a second edition of the _Monte Santo di Dio_ was needed in 1491 the
copperplates were replaced by woodcuts, a fact which may remind us that
not only the trouble of printing, but the small number of impressions
which could be taken from copperplates, must have been a formidable
objection to their use in bookwork. But at the time the first edition
may well have been regarded as a success. If so, it was an unlucky one,
as Nicolaus Laurentii was thereby encouraged to undertake a much more
ambitious venture, an annotated _Divina Commedia_ with similar
illustrations, and this, which appeared in 1481, can only be looked on
as a failure. No space was left at the head of the first canto, and the
engraving was printed on the lower margin, where it is often found
cruelly cropped. In subsequent cantos spaces were sometimes left,
sometimes not, but after the second the engravings are generally founded
printed on separate slips and pasted into their places, and in no copy
do they extend beyond canto xix. They used to be assigned to Botticelli,
but the discovery of his real designs to the _Divina Commedia_ has shown
that these of 1481 were only slightly influenced by them.
In Germany the only copper engravings found in fifteenth century books
are the coats of arms of the Bishops and Chapters of Wurzburg and
Eichstatt in the books printed for them at these places by Georg and
Michel Reyser respectively. In order more easily to persuade the clergy
of these dioceses to buy properly revised service-books to replace their
tattered and incorrect manuscript copies, the Bishops attached certain
"indulgences" to their purchase, and as a proof that the recital of
these was not a mere advertising trick of the printer permitted him to
print their arms at the foot of the notice. These arms, most charmingly
and delicately engraved, are found in the Wurzburg Missals of 1481 (this
I have not seen) and 1484, and the "Agenda" of 1482 (see Plate XXXV),
and no doubt also in other early service-books printed by Georg Reyser.
The Eichstatt books of his kinsmen Michel are similarly adorned--for
instance, the _Statuta Synodalia Eystettensia_ of 1484, though neither
the design nor the engraving is so good. In how many editions by the
Reysers these engraved arms appeared I cannot say, as the books are all
of great rarity; but by 1495, if not earlier, they had been abandoned,
for in the Wurzburg _Missale Speciale_ of that year we find the delicate
engraving replaced by a woodcut copy of nearly four times the size and
less than a fourth of the charm.
The only French book of the fifteenth century known to me as possessing
copper engravings is a very beautiful one, the version of Breidenbach's
_Peregrinatio ad Terram Sanctam_, by Frere Nicole le Huen, printed at
Lyon by Michel Topie and Jacob Heremberck in 1488, and adorned with
numerous excellent capitals. In this all the cuts in the text of the
Mainz editions are fairly well copied on wood, but the large folding
plans of Venice and other cities on the pilgrims' route are admirably
reproduced on copper with a great increase in the delicacy of their
lines.
[Illustration: XXXV. WURZBURG, G. REYSER, 1482
WURZBURG AGENDA. (END OF PREFACE)]
We come now to a book bearing an earlier date than any of those already
mentioned, but not entitled to its full pride of place because it is
doubtful to what extent the engravings connected with it can be reckoned
an integral part of it. This is the French version of Boccaccio's _De
casibus illustrium virorum_ ("Des cas des nobles hommes"), printed at
Bruges by Colard Mansion and dated 1476. As originally printed there was
no space left for any pictorial embellishments; but in at least two
copies the first leaf of the prologue has been reprinted so as to leave
room for a picture; in another copy, which in 1878 belonged to Lord
Lothian, spaces are left also at the beginning of each of the nine books
into which the work is divided, except the first and sixth, and all the
spaces have been filled with copper engravings coloured by hand; in yet
another copy there is a space left also at the beginning of Book VI.
According to the monograph on the subject by David Laing (privately
printed in 1878), the subjects of the engravings are:--
(1) Prologue, the Author presenting his work to his patron, Mainardo
Cavalcanti.
(2) Book I. Adam and Eve standing before the Author as he writes.
(3) Book II. King Saul on horseback, and lying dead.
(4) Book III. Fortune and Poverty.
(5) Book IV. Marcus Manlius thrown into the Tiber.
(6) Book V. The Death of Regulus.
(7) Book VI. Not known.
(8) Book VII. A combat of six men.
(9) Book VIII. The humiliation of the Emperor Valerian by King Sapor
of Persia.
(10) Book IX. Brunhilde, Queen of the Franks, torn asunder by four
horses.
From the reproductions which Laing gives in his monograph it is evident
that the engraver set himself to imitate the style of the contemporary
illuminated manuscripts of the Bruges school, and that he used his
graver rather to get the designs on to the paper than with any real
feeling for the characteristic charm of his own art. My own inclination
is to believe that we must look on these plates as a venture of Colard
Mansion's rather in his old capacity as an illuminator, anxious to
decorate a few special copies, than as a printer intent on embellishing
a whole edition. The engravings may have been made at any time between
1476 and 1483, when they were clearly used as models by Jean Du Pre for
his Paris edition, the wood-blocks for which, as we have seen, were
subsequently sold or lent to Pynson. The variations in the number of
spaces in different copies may quite as well be due to a mixing of
quires as to successive enlargements of the plan, and the fact that more
copies of the engravings have survived apart from than with the book
draws attention once more to the difficulty found in printing these
incised plates to accompany letterpress printed from type standing in
relief.
There is still one more engraving connected with an early printed book
to be considered, and though the connection is not fully established,
the facts that the book in question was the first from Caxton's press,
and that the engraving may possibly contain his portrait, invite a full
discussion of its claims. The plate (see Frontispiece to Chapter I,
Plate II) represents an author on one knee presenting a book to a lady
who is attended by five maids-of-honour, while as many pages may be seen
standing in various page-like attitudes about the room. A canopy above a
chair of state bears the initials CM and the motto _Bien en aveingne_,
and it is thus clear that the lady represents Margaret Duchess of
Burgundy, and that the offering of a book which it depicts must have
taken place after her marriage with Charles the Bold, 3 July, 1468, and
before the latter's death at Nancy, 5 January, 1477. During the greater
part of this time Caxton was in the service of the Duchess; the donor of
the book is represented as a layman, and a layman not of noble birth,
since there is no feather in his cap; he appears also to be approaching
middle-age. All these points would be correct if the donor were intended
for Caxton, and as we know from his own statement that before his
_Recuyell of the histories of Troy_ was printed he had presented a copy
of it (in manuscript) to the Duchess, probably in or soon after 1471,
until some more plausible original is proposed the identification of the
donor with our first printer must remain at least probable.
Unfortunately, although the unique copy of the engraving is at present
in the Duke of Devonshire's copy of the _Recuyell_, it is certain that
it is an insertion, not an original part of the book, and beyond a high
probability that it has occupied its present position since the book was
bound for the Duke of Roxburghe some time before his sale in 1812,
nothing is known as to how it came there. A really amazing point is that
although the connection of this particular copy with Elizabeth, queen of
Edward IV, caused it to be shown at the Caxton Exhibition, until the
appearance of Mr. Montagu Peartree's article in the _Burlington
Magazine_ for August, 1905, no notice had ever been paid to the
engraving. Analogy with the _Boccaccio_ suggests that Caxton had the
plate made before he realized the difficulties of impression, and that
some prints were separately struck from it and one of these pasted
inside the binding of the Devonshire copy, whence it was removed to its
present position when the book was rebound. It should be noted that the
style of the engraving is quite unlike that of the _Boccaccio_ prints,
and suggests that Caxton procured it from a Dutch rather than a Bruges
engraver, possibly with the aid of Veldener, from whom, or with whose
help, according to Mr. Duff's suggestion, he procured his first type.
For over a quarter of a century after the engraving of the plans in the
Lyon _Breidenbach_ printers seem to have held aloof altogether from
copperplates. In 1514 we find four engraved plans, of only slight
artistic interest, printed as plates in a topographical work on _Nola_
by Ambrogius Leo, the printer being Joannes Rubeus (Giovanni Rossi) of
Venice. Three years later, in 1517, a really charming print is found
(set rather askew in the Museum copy) on the titlepage of a thin quarto
printed at Rome, for my knowledge of which I am indebted to my friend,
Mr. A. M. Hind. The book is a _Dialogus_, composed by the Right Reverend
Amadeus Berrutus, Governor of the City of Rome, on the weighty and still
disputable question as to whether one should go on writing to a friend
who makes no reply,[65] and the plate shows the four speakers, Amadeus
himself, Austeritas, Amicitia, and Amor, standing in a field or garden
outside a building. The figures, especially that of Austeritas, are
charmingly drawn (see Plate XXXVI); the tone of the little picture is
delightful, and it is enclosed in a leafy border, which reproduces in
the subtler grace of engraved work the effect of the little black and
white frames which surround the Florentine woodcuts of the fifteenth
century.
With the _Dialogus_ of Bishop Berrutus copper engravings as
book-illustrations came to an end, as far as I know, for a period of
some forty years. I make this statement thus blankly in the hope that it
may provoke contradiction, and at least some sporadic instances be
adduced. But I have hunted through descriptions of all the books most
likely to be illustrated--Bibles, Horae, editions of Petrarch's
_Trionfi_ and Ariosto's _Orlando Furioso_ and books of emblems, and
outside England (the necessity of the exception is almost humorous) I
have lighted on nothing.
[Illustration: XXXVI. ROME, GABRIEL OF BOLOGNA, 1517
BERRUTUS. DIALOGUS. (TITLE)]
We may, perhaps, trace the revival of engraved illustrations to the
influence of Hieronymus or Jerome Cock, an Antwerp engraver, who in May,
1551, issued a series of plates from the designs of F. Faber, entitled
_Praecipua aliquot Romanae antiquitatis ruinarum monimenta_, without any
letterpress save the name of the subject engraved on each plate. Cock
followed this up in 1556 with twelve engravings from the designs of
Martin van Veen illustrating the victories of Charles V, which are also
celebrated in verses in French and Spanish. He issued also various other
series of Biblical and antiquarian plates, which do not concern us, and
in 1559 a set of thirty-two illustrating the funeral of Charles V. For
this, aided by a subsidy, Christopher Plantin acted as publisher, and we
thus get a connection established between engraving and printing.
This did not, however, bear fruit at all quickly. Plantin's four
emblem-books of 1562, 1564, 1565, and 1566 were illustrated not with
copper engravings, but with woodcuts; so was his Bible of 1566, so were
his earlier Horae. That of 1565 has unattractive woodcut borders to
every page and small woodcut illustrations of no merit. In 1570 he began
the use of engravings for his Horae, but in a copy in the British
Museum, printed on vellum almost as thick as cardboard, he was reduced
to pulling the pictures on paper and pasting them in their places. In
1571 he illustrated the _Humanae salutis monumenta_ of his friend Arias
Montanus with some rather pretty copperplates, each surrounded with an
effective engraved border of flowers and birds, but for a new Horae (on
paper) in 1573, for which he had commissioned a set of full-page plates
of some merit (printed with the text on their back), he had not troubled
to procure borders. Two years later he produced a really curious edition
in which the engraved illustrations (some of them from the _Humanae
salutis monumenta_) are surrounded with woodcut borders, and in many
cases have red underlines, so that each page must have undergone three
printings.[66]
Although woodcuts were considered sufficiently good for Plantin's Bible
of 1566, for his great Polyglot it was indispensable to have titlepages
engraved on copper, and to the first volume he prefixed no fewer than
three, engraved by P. van der Heyden after designs by P. van der Borcht.
All of them are emblematical, the first symbolizing the unification of
the world by the Christian faith and the four languages in which the Old
Testament was printed in the Polyglott, the second the zeal of Philip II
for the Catholic faith, the third the authority of the Pentateuch. While
some volumes had no frontispiece others contained a few illustrations,
and the total number of plates was twenty-eight. Some of these were
used again in Plantin's Bible of 1583, and Raphelengius, into whose
possession the whole set passed in 1590, used sixteen of them three
years later to illustrate the _Antiquitates Judaicae_ of Arias Montanus.
For his Missals and Breviaries as for his Horae Plantin sometimes used
woodcuts, sometimes copperplates. For his editions of the works of S.
Augustine and S. Jerome (1577) he caused really fine portrait
frontispieces to be engraved by J. Sadeler from the designs of Crispin
van den Broeck. As regards his miscellaneous secular books he was by no
means given to superfluous illustrations, and, as we have seen,
continued to use woodcuts contemporaneously with plates. Probably his
earliest secular engravings (published in 1566, but prepared some years
earlier) are the anatomical diagrams in imitation of those in the Roman
edition of _Valverde_ mentioned below, to which he prefixed a better
frontispiece than that of his model. In 1574 he produced a fine book of
portraits of physicians and philosophers, _Icones veterum aliquot ac
recentium medicorum philosophorumque_, in sixty-eight plates, with
letterpress by J. Sambucus. The next year he issued another illustrated
book, the _De rerum usu et abusu_ of Bernardus Furmerius, sharing the
expense of it with Ph. Gallus, a print-seller, for whom later on he
published several books on commission. From 1578 onwards he printed for
Ortelius, the great cosmographer. In 1582 he published the _Pegasides_
of Y. B. Houwaert, in 1584 Waghenaer's _Spieghel der Zeevaerdt_, and
other illustrated books followed. But none of them, little indeed that
Plantin ever produced, now excite much desire on the part of collectors.
Of what took place in other countries and cities in the absence of even
tentative lists of the books printed after 1535 anywhere except in
England it is difficult to say. In 1560 an anatomical book translated
from the Spanish of Juan de Valverde was published at Rome with engraved
diagrams of some artistic merit and a rather poorly executed
frontispiece. In 1566 "in Venetia appresso Rampazetto," a very fine book
of impresas, or emblematical personal badges, made its appearance under
the title _Le Imprese Illustre con espositioni et discorsi del S^or
Ieronimo Ruscelli_, dedicated "al serenissimo et sempre felicissimo re
catolico Filippo d'Austria." This has over a hundred engraved _Imprese_
of three sizes, double-page for the Emperor (signed G. P. F.),
full-pagers for kings and other princely personages, half-pagers for
ordinary folk (if any owner of an _impresa_ may be thus designated), and
all these are printed with letterpress beneath, or on the back of them,
and very well printed too. In another book of _Imprese_, published in
this same year 1566, the text, consisting of sonnets by Lodovico Dolce,
as well as the pictures, is engraved, or rather etched. This is the
_Imprese di diuersi principi, duchi, signori, etc., di Batt^a Pittoni
Pittore Vicentino_. It exists in a bewildering variety of states, partly
due to reprinting, partly apparently to the desire to dedicate it to
several different people, one of the British Museum copies being
dedicated by Pittoni to the Earl of Arundel and having a printed
dedicatory letter and plate of his device preceding that of the Emperor
himself.
Another noteworthy Venetian book, with engraved illustrations, which I
have come across is an _Orlando Furioso_ of 1584, "appresso Francesco de
Franceschi Senese e compagni," its engraved titlepage bearing the
information that it has been "nuouamente adornato di figure di rame da
Girolamo Porro," a little-known Milanese engraver, who had reissued
Pittoni's _Imprese_ in 1578. The illustrations are far too crowded with
incident to be successful, and their unity is often sacrificed to the
old medieval practice of making a single design illustrate several
different moments of the narrative. Their execution is also very
unequal. Nevertheless, they are of interest to English collectors since,
as we shall see, they served as models for the plates in Sir John
Harington's version of the _Orlando_ in 1591. All of them are
full-pagers, with text on the back, and the printer was also compliant
enough to print at the head of each canto an engraved cartouche within
which is inserted a type-printed "Argomento."
Of sixteenth century engraved book-illustrations in France I have no
personal knowledge. In Germany, as might be expected, they flourished
chiefly at Frankfort, which in the last third of the century had, as we
have seen, become a great centre for book-illustration. Jost Amman, who
was largely responsible for its development in this respect, illustrated
a few books with copper engravings, although he mainly favoured wood.
But it is the work of the De Brys, Theodor de Bry and his two sons
Johann Israel and Johann Theodor, which is of conspicuous importance for
our present purpose, for it was they who originated and mainly carried
out the greatest illustrated work of the sixteenth century, that known
to collectors as the _Grands et petits voyages_. This not very happy
name has nothing to do with the length of the voyages described, but is
derived from the fact that the original series which is concerned with
America and the West Indies is some two inches taller (fourteen as
compared with twelve) than a subsequent series dealing with the East
Indies. For the idea of such a collection of voyages Theodor de Bry was
indebted to Richard Hakluyt, whose famous book _The Principall
Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation_, published
in 1589, was in preparation when De Bry was in England, where he worked
in 1587-8. The first volume, moreover, was illustrated with engravings
by De Bry after some of the extraordinarily interesting water-colour
drawings made by an Englishman, John White, in Virginia, and now
preserved in the British Museum.[67] This first part was published in
Latin at Frankfort by J. Wechel in 1590 and a second edition followed
the same year. A second part describing Florida followed in 1591, a
third describing Brazil in 1592. By 1602 nine parts had been issued, all
at Frankfort, though by different publishers, the name of J. Feyrabend
being placed on the fourth, and that of M. Becker on the ninth. After an
interval of seventeen years two more parts of the Latin edition (x. and
xi.) were printed at Oppenheim "typis H. Galleri," and then an appendix
to part xi. at Frankfort in 1620, where also were issued part xii. in
1624 and part xiii., edited by M. Merian, in 1634, this last being
accompanied by an "Elenchus," or index-volume, to the whole series.
Parallel with this Latin series ran a German one with about the same
dates. One or two parts were also issued in French and at least one in
English. There is also an appendix of "other voyages" usually added,
mostly French, and issued at Amsterdam, and of nearly every volume of
the whole series there were several issues and editions, all of them
with differences in the plates. The "Petits voyages" followed a similar
course, beginning in 1598 and ending in 1628. Although the engravings,
many of which are placed unpretentiously amid the text, vary greatly
alike in the interest of their subjects, the value of the original
designs, and the skill of the engraving, taken as a whole they have
given to these _Grands et petits voyages_ a unique position among books
of travel, and a small literature has grown up round them to certify the
collector as to the best state of each plate and what constitutes a
complete set.
While the illustrations to the Voyages formed their chief occupation,
the De Brys found time to engrave many smaller plates for less important
books. Thus in 1593 Theodor de Bry issued an emblem book _Emblemata
nobilitati et vulgo scitu digna_ (text in Latin and German), in which
each emblem is enclosed in an engraved border, mostly quite meaningless
and bad as regards composition, but of a brilliancy in the "goldsmiths'
style" which to lovers of bookplates will suggest the best work of
Sherborn or French. The plates marked B and D, illustrating the lines
"Musica mortales divosque oblectat et ornat" and "Cum Cerere et Baccho
Veneri solemnia fiunt," are especially fine and the "emblems" themselves
more pleasing than usual.
In 1595 there was printed, again with Latin and German text, a _Noua
Alphabeti effictio, historiis ad singulas literas correspondentibus_.
The _motif_ is throughout scriptural. Thus for A Adam and Eve sit on the
crossbar on each side of the letter, the serpent rests on its peak amid
the foliage of the Tree of Knowledge. In B Abel, in C Cain is perched on
a convenient part of the letter, and so on, while from one letter after
another, fish, birds, fruit, flowers, and anything else which came into
the designer's head hang dangling on cords from every possible point.
Nothing could be more meaningless or lower in the scale of design, yet
the brilliancy of the execution carries it off.
The year after this had appeared Theodor de Bry engraved a series of
emblems conceived by Denis Le Bey de Batilly and drawn by J. J.
Boissard. The designs themselves are poor enough, but the book has a
pretty architectural titlepage, and this is followed by a portrait of Le
Bey set in an ornamental border of bees, flowers, horses, and other
incongruities, portrait and border alike engraved with the most
brilliant delicacy (see Plate XXXVII). In the following year, again,
1597, the two younger De Brys illustrated with line engravings the _Acta
Mechmeti Saracenorum principis_, and (at the end of these) the
_Vaticinia Severi et Leonis_ as to the fate of the Turks, also the
_David_ of Arias Montanus. The plates are fairly interesting, but in
technical execution fall far below those of their father.
[Illustration: XXXVII. FRANKFORT, DE BRY, 1596
LE BEY. EMBLEMATA. PORTRAIT OF AUTHOR BY T. DE BRY, AFTER J. J.
BOISSARD]
Turning now to England, we find engraving in use surprisingly early in
some figures of unborn babies in _The Birth of Mankind_, translated from
the Latin of Roesslin by Richard Jonas and printed in 1540 by Thomas
Raynold, a physician, who five years later issued a new edition revised
by himself, again with engravings. In 1545 there appeared a much more
important medical work, a _Compendiosa totius anatomie delineatio_
professedly by Thomas Geminus, a Flemish surgeon and engraver attached
to the English Court. In reality this was a rather shameless adaptation
of the _De Fabrica Humani Corporis_ of Vesalius (Basel, 1543), with
engravings copied by Geminus from the woodcuts of his original. For us
its chief interest lies in an elaborate engraved titlepage showing the
royal arms surrounded by a wealth of architectural and strapwork
ornament in the style, if not actually the work, of Peter Cock of Alost,
as has been shown by Sir Sidney Colvin in the invaluable introduction to
his _Early Engravings and Engravers in England_ (1905). In 1553 an
English translation of the anatomy was published by Nicholas Hyll, and
in a second edition of this, printed in 1559, a rather heavy and stiff
portrait of Elizabeth replaces the royal arms, which were burnished out
to make room for it. Geminus subsequently produced a much larger
portrait of the Queen, set in an architectural frame studded with
emblematical figures, and a royal proclamation forbidding unauthorized
"Paynters, Printers, and Gravers" to meddle with so great a subject
seems to have been provoked by his handiwork.
In 1563 John Shute for his work on _The First and Chief Groundes of
Architecture_ produced four amateurish engravings to illustrate four of
the five "orders," a woodcut being considered good enough for the fifth.
In 1568 we find the first edition of the "Bishops'" Bible adorned with
an engraved titlepage in the centre of which, in an oval, is a not
unpleasing portrait of the Queen, holding sceptre and orb, set in a mass
of strapwork, amid which are seated Charity and Faith with the royal
arms between them, while below the portrait a lion and dragon support a
cartouche enclosing a text. Besides this titlepage, attributed by Sir
Sidney Colvin to Franciscus Hogenberg, before the book of Joshua there
is an engraved portrait of Leicester, while the "Blessed is the man" of
the first Psalm is heralded by another engraved portrait which shows
Lord Burghley holding in front of him a great B. In 1573 Remigius
Hogenberg, brother of Franciscus, engraved after a picture by John Lyne
a stiff but rather impressive portrait of Archbishop Parker, prefixed to
some copies of his _De Antiquitate Ecclesiae Britanniae_. The year
before this the second edition of the "Bishops'" Bible had been enriched
with a decorative engraved map of the Holy Land, and in 1574 Archbishop
Parker employed John Lyne to engrave for the _De Antiquitate Academiae
Cantabrigiensis_ of Dr. Caius (printed by Day) a plate of the arms of
the colleges, a plan of the University schools, and a large map of the
town. In 1579 there appeared a work which had occupied the intermediate
five years, a series of maps of England from the drawings of Christopher
Saxton, engraved by Augustine Ryther (like Saxton a native of Leeds),
Remigius Hogenberg and others, and with a fine frontispiece showing the
Queen seated in state beneath an architectural canopy, which Sir Sidney
Colvin thinks may perhaps be the work of Ryther. Ryther was subsequently
concerned with other maps, including the series illustrating the defeat
of the Armada (_Expeditionis Hispanorum in Angliam vera descriptio_),
and other cartographers got to work who hardly concern us here. Two long
engraved rolls, the first by Marcus Gheraerts, representing a procession
of the Knights of the Garter (1576), the second by Theodor de Bry, from
the designs of Thomas Lant, the funeral of Sir Philip Sidney (1587),
although most safely preserved when bound in book form, can hardly be
reckoned as books. Yet over the latter I must stop to confess a dreadful
sin of my youth, when I jumped to the conclusion that the portrait on
the first page stood for Sidney himself, whereas it really represents
the too self-advertising Lant. That it appears in the sky, above the
Black Pinnace which bore home Sidney's body, and itself bears the
suggestive motto "God createth, Man imitateth, Virtue flourisheth, Death
finisheth," may palliate but cannot excuse the crime which enriched an
edition of _Astrophel and Stella_ with a portrait, not of Sidney, but of
the illustrator of his funeral.
Not until 1590, when Hugh Broughton's _Concent of Scripture_ was
accompanied by some apocalyptic plates engraved by Jodocus Hondius
(subsequently copied by W. Rogers), do we come across what can really be
called engraved illustrations in an English book, and these, which are
of little interest, were speedily eclipsed the next year by Sir John
Harington's _Orlando Furioso in English Heroical verse_ with its
engraved titlepage and forty-six plates. Of these the translator writes
in his introduction:
As for the pictures, they are all cut in brasse, and most of them by
the best workemen in that kinde, that haue bene in this land this
manie yeares: yet I will not praise them too much, because I gaue
direction for their making, and in regard thereof I may be thought
partiall, but this I may truely say, that (for mine owne part) I have
not seene anie made in England better, nor (in deede) anie of this
kinde in any booke, except it were in a treatise, set foorth by that
profound man, maister Broughton, the last yeare, upon the Reuelation,
in which there are some 3. or 4. pretie figures (in octauo) cut in
brasse verie workemanly. As for other books that I haue seene in this
realme, either in Latin or English, with pictures, as Liuy, Gesner,
Alciats emblemes, a booke _de spectris_ in Latin, & (in our tong) the
Chronicles, the booke of Martyrs, the book of hauking and hunting, and
M. Whitney's excellent Emblems, yet all their figures are cut on wood,
& none in metall, and in that respect inferior to these, at least (by
the old proverbe) the more cost, the more worship.
The passage is of considerable interest, but hardly suggests, what is
yet the fact, that, save for the addition on the titlepage of an oval
portrait of the translator and a representation of his dog, all the
plates in the book are closely copied from the engravings by Girolamo
Porro in the Venice edition of 1584. The English titlepage was signed by
Thomas Cockson. We are left to conjecture to whom Harington was indebted
for the rest of the plates.
Although, as we shall see, from this time forward a great number of
English books contain engraved work, those which can be said to be
illustrated during the next sixty years are few enough, a study of Mr.
A. M. Hind's very useful _List of the Works of Native and Foreign
Line-Engravers in England from Henry VIII to the Commonwealth_,[68]
tempting me to place the number at about a score. The year after the
_Orlando Furioso_ came another curious treatise by Hugh Broughton, not
printed with type, but "graven in brasse by J. H.," whom Sir Sidney
Colvin identifies with Jodocus Hondius, a Fleming who lived in England
from about 1580 to 1594, and may have done the plates in the _Concent of
Scripture_ and some at least of those in the _Orlando_. Six years later
(1598) we find Lomazzo's _Tracte containing the artes of curious
Paintinge_ with an emblematical titlepage and thirteen plates by Richard
Haydock, the translator, four of the plates being adapted from Durer's
book on Proportion, and all of them showing very slight skill in
engraving. In 1602 came Sir William Segar's _Honour, Military and
Civil_, with eight plates showing various distinguished persons, English
and foreign, wearing the robes and insignia of the Garter, the Golden
Fleece, S. Michael, etc. Three of the plates are signed by William
Rogers, the most distinguished of the English Elizabethan engravers, and
the others are probably his also. Most of them are very dignified and
effective in the brilliantly printed "first states" in which they are
sometimes found, but ordinary copies with only the "second states" are
as a rule disappointing.
The beginning of the reign of James I was directly responsible for one
ambitious engraved publication, Stephen Harrison's _The Archs of Triumph
erected in honor of the High and mighty prince James, the first of that
name king of England and the sixt of Scotland, at his Maiesties Entrance
and passage through his Honorable City & Chamber of London vpon the
15th day of march 1603 [1604] Invented and published by Stephen Harrison
Joyner and Architect and graven by William Kip_. Here an engraved
titlepage, with dangling ornaments in the style of the De Bry alphabet,
is followed by seven plates of the seven arches, the most notable of
which (a pity it was not preserved) was crowned with a most interesting
model of Jacobean London, to which the engraver has done admirable
justice.
In 1608 came Robert Glover's _Nobilitas politica et civilis_, re-edited
two years later by T. Milles as the _Catalogue of Honour_, with engraved
illustrations (in the text) of the robes of the various degrees of
nobility, attributed by Sir Sidney Colvin to Renold Elstracke, the son
of a Flemish refugee, and also two plates representing the King in a
chair of state and in Parliament. After this we come to two works
illustrated by an English engraver of some note, William Hole, Tom
Coryat's _Crudities_ (1611), with a titlepage recalling various
incidents of his travels (including his being sick at sea) and five
plates (or in some copies, six), and Drayton's _Polyolbion_ (1612,
reissued in 1613 with the portrait-plate in a different state), with a
poor emblematic title, a portrait of Prince Henry wielding a lance, and
eighteen decorative maps of England. In 1615 we come to a really
well-illustrated book, the _Relation of a Journey_, by George Sandys,
whose narrative of travel in Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land, and parts
of Italy, is accompanied with little delicately engraved landscapes and
bits of architecture, etc., by Francis Delaram. The work of the decade
is brought to a close with two print-selling ventures, the
_Basili[omega]logia_ of 1618 and _Her[omega]ologia_ of 1620. The former
of these works describes itself as being "the true and lively effigies
of all our English Kings from the Conquest untill this present: with
their severall Coats of Armes, Impreses and Devises. And a briefe
Chronologie of their lives and deaths. Elegantly graven in copper.
Printed for H. Holland and are to be sold by Comp.[ton] Holland over
against the Exchange." The full set of plates numbers thirty-two,
including eight additions to the scheme of the book, representing the
Black Prince, John of Gaunt, Anne Boleyn, a second version of Elizabeth,
Mary Queen of Scots, Anne of Denmark, Prince Henry, and Prince Charles.
Fourteen of the plates, mostly the earlier ones, are signed by
Elstracke, and Simon Passe and Francis Delaram each contributed four. It
need hardly be said that they are of very varying degrees of
authenticity as well as merit. Several of the later plates are found in
more than one state.
With the second of the two ventures Henry Holland was also concerned,
but the expenses of the book were shared by Crispin Passe and an Arnhem
bookseller named Jansen. Its title reads: "Her[omega]ologia Anglica: hoc
est clarissimorum et doctissimorum aliquot Anglorum qui floruerunt ab
anno Cristi MD. usque ad presentem annum MDCXX." It is in two volumes,
the first containing thirty-seven plates, the second thirty. Two of
these represent respectively Queen Elizabeth's tomb and the hearse of
Henry Prince of Wales. All the rest are portraits of the notable
personages of the reigns of Henry VIII and his successors, some of them
based on drawings by Holbein, the majority on earlier prints, and all
engraved by William Passe (younger brother of Simon) and his sister
Magdalena.
[Illustration: XXXVIII. LONDON. J. MARRIOT, 1638
QUARLES. HIEROGLYPHIKES OF THE LIFE OF MAN. PAGE 22
ENGRAVED BY W. MARSHALL]
The next decade was far from productive of works illustrated with more
than an engraved titlepage and a portrait, but in 1630 appeared Captain
John Smith's _True Travels_ with several illustrations, one of them by
Martin Droeshout; in 1634-5 came Wither's _Emblems_, with plates by
William Marshall, and in 1635 Thomas Heywood's _Hierarchie of the
Blessed Angels_, with an engraved title by Thomas Cecill and plates
representing the several orders, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones being
entrusted to John Payne, Dominations to Marshall, Powers and
Principalities to Glover, Virtues to Droeshout, etc. Some of the plates
record the name of the patron who paid for them, another suggestion
that it was money which stood most in the way of book-illustrating. In
1638 Marshall illustrated Quarles's _Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man_,
with engravings, most of which seem chiefly made up of a candle, but in
one the candle is being extinguished by Death egged on by Time, and to
this not very promising subject (Plate XXXVIII) Marshall, the most
unequal engraver of his day, has brought some of his too rare touches of
delicacy and charm. In 1640 Wenceslaus Hollar, whom Thomas Earl of
Arundel had discovered at Cologne (he was born at Prague) and brought to
England, published his charming costume book _Ornatus Muliebris
Anglicanus_, and his larger work, _Theatrum Mulierum_, must have been
almost ready when Charles I hoisted his standard at Nottingham, since it
was published in 1643. After this the Civil War interfered for some time
with the book trade.
While fully illustrated books were thus far from numerous in the half
century which followed the _Orlando Furioso_ of 1591, the output of
engraved titlepages and portraits to be prefixed to books was sufficient
to find work for most of the minor engravers. The earlier titlepages
were mostly architectural and symbolical, their purport being sometimes
explained in verses printed opposite to them, headed "The Mind of the
Front." William Rogers engraved a titlepage to Gerard's _Herbal_ (1597),
which is never found properly printed, and others to Linschoten's
_Discourse of Voyages into y^e East and West Indies_ (1598), Camden's
_Britannia_ (1600--a poor piece of work), and Moffett's _Theatrum
Insectorum_, this last having only survived in a copy pasted at the head
of the author's manuscript at the British Museum. William Hole did an
enlarged title for Camden's _Britannia_ (1607), titles for the different
sections of Chapman's _Homer_, a portrait of John Florio for the
Italian-English dictionary which he was pleased to call _Queen Anna's
New World of Words_, a charming titlepage to a collection of virginal
music known as _Parthenia_ (1611-12), another to Browne's _Britannia's
Pastorals_, and much less happy ones to Drayton's _Polyolbion_ (1612),
and the _Works_ of Ben Jonson (1616).
The best-known titlepages engraved by Renold Elstracke are those to
Raleigh's _History of the World_ (1614) and the _Workes of the Most High
and Mightie Prince James_ (1616), the latter a good piece of work which
when faced, as it should be, by the portrait of the king by Simon van de
Passe, makes the most decorative opening to any English book of this
period. Passe himself was responsible for the very imaginative engraved
title to Bacon's _Novum Organum_ (1620), a sea on which ships are
sailing and rising out of it two pillars with the inscription: "Multi
pertransibunt et augebitur scientia" (Many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall be increased). His son William, besides his work on the
_Her[omega]ologia_, already mentioned, engraved a complicated title for
Chapman's version of _The Batrachomyomachia_ or Battle of the Frogs and
Mice, humorously called _The Crowne of all Homer's Worckes_.
After 1620 the old architectural and symbolical titlepages began to be
replaced by titles in compartments, in which a central cartouche is
surrounded by little squares, each representing some incident of the
book. Portraits of the author remained much in request, and nearly a
hundred of these were done by William Marshall, who was employed also on
about as many engraved titlepages. As has been noted, his work was
strangely uneven, and he fully deserved the scorn poured on him by
Milton for the wretched caricature of the poet prefixed to the _Poems_
of 1645. Yet Marshall could at times do a good plate, as, for instance,
that in Quarles's _Hieroglyphikes_ already mentioned, a portrait of
Bacon prefixed to the 1640 Oxford edition of his _Advancement of
Learning_ and the charming frontispiece to Brathwait's _Arcadian
Princess_. Marshall at his worst fell only a little below the work of
Thomas Cross; at his best he rivalled or excelled the good work of
Thomas Cecill and George Glover.
After Cromwell's strong hand had given England some kind of settled
government the book market revived, and some ambitiously illustrated
books were soon being published. The too versatile John Ogilby,
dancing-master, poet, and publisher, appeared early in the field, his
version of the Fables of Aesop, "adorned with sculpture," being printed
by T. Warren for A. Crook in 1651. The next year came Benlowe's
_Theophila, or Love's Sacrifice_, a mystical poem, some copies of which
have as many as thirty-six plates by various hands, with much more
etching than engraving in them. In 1654 Ogilby produced his translation
of Virgil, a great folio with plates dedicated to noble patrons by
Pierre Lambart. Ogilby's other important ventures were the large
_Odyssey_ of 1665, and the Aesop's _Fables_ of the same year, with
plates by Hollar, D. Stoop, and F. Barlow, and two portraits of the
translator engraved respectively by Pierre Lambert and W. Faithorne.
Faithorne embellished other books of this period, e.g. the Poems of the
"Matchless Orinda" (1667), with portraits, and publishers who could not
afford to pay Faithorne employed R. White. The presence of a portrait by
White in a copy of the first edition of Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_,
to which it was very far indeed from certain that it really
belonged,[69] has once made the book sell for over L1400, but save for
the sake of completeness his handiwork is not greatly prized by
collectors, nor is there any English illustrated book of this period
after the Restoration which is much sought after for the sake of its
plates, although those of Ogilby's _Virgil_ were sufficiently well
thought of to be used again for Dryden's version in 1697.
Meanwhile, books with illustrations _en taille douce_ were being issued
in some numbers both at Paris and at Amsterdam. In the former city
Francois Chauveau (1613-76), in the latter Jan and Casper Luyken are
credited by Mr. Hind (_A Short History of Engraving and Etching_, 1908)
with having produced "hosts of small and undistinguished plates," and
these damning epithets explain how it is that even patriotic French
collectors like Eugene Paillet and Henri Beraldi thought it wise to
leave the illustrated books of the seventeenth century severely alone.
We meet the first advance guard of the brilliant French eighteenth
century school of book-illustration in 1718, when a pretty little
edition of _Les Amours de Daphnis et Chloe_ (as translated by Bishop
Amyot from the Greek of Longus) made its appearance with twenty-eight
plates by Benoit Audran, after the designs of no less a person than the
Regent of France, and duly labelled and dated "Philippus in. et pinx.
1714." The plates vary very much in charm, but that with the underline
_Chloe sauve Daphnis par le son de sa flute_ certainly possesses it, and
one of the double-plates in the book, _Daphnis prend ses oyseaux pendant
l'Hyver pour voir Chloe_, is really pretty. We find no other book to vie
with this until we come to a much larger and more pretentious one, the
works of Moliere in six volumes, royal quarto, published in 1734. This
was illustrated with thirty-three plates, in the mixture of etching and
engraving characteristic of the French school of the day, by Laurent
Cars, after pencil drawings by Francois Boucher, and by nearly two
hundred vignettes and tailpieces (not all different) after Boucher and
others by Cars and Francois Joullain. Another edition of this in four
volumes with Boucher's designs reproduced on a smaller scale was
published in 1741 and reprinted three times within the decade.
After the Moliere, books and editions which collectors take count of
come much more quickly. There was an edition of Montesquieu's _Le Temple
de Gnide_ in 1742 (imprint: Londres), a _Virgil_ in 1743 with plates by
Cochin, engraved by Cochin pere, the _Contes_ of La Fontaine (Amsterdam,
1743-5) also illustrated by Cochin, Guer's _Moeurs et usages des Turcs_,
with plates after Boucher (1746), an edition of the works of Boileau in
five volumes, with vignettes by Eisen and tailpieces by Cochin (1743-5),
and in 1753 a _Manon Lescaut_ (imprint: Amsterdam) with some plates by
J. J. Pasquier, which are stiff, and others by H. Gravelot, which are
feeble.
In the four-volume edition of the _Fables_ of La Fontaine (1755-9) with
illustrations after J. B. Oudry, we come to a very ambitious piece of
work, handsomely carried out, which a book-lover may yet find it hard to
admire. Oudry's designs are always adequate, and have more virility in
them than is often found in the work of this school, and they are
competently interpreted by a number of etchers and engravers, some of
whom, it may be noted, worked together in pairs on the same plate, so
that we find such signatures as "C. Cochin aqua forti, R. Gaillard caelo
sculpsit," and "Grave a l'eau forte par C. Cochin, termine au burin par
P. Chenu"--a very explicit statement of the method of work. But adequate
as the plates may seem, if they are judged not as book-illustrations but
as engravings, no one could rate them high, and as a book what is to be
said of an edition of La Fontaine's _Fables_, which fills four volumes,
each measuring nearly nineteen inches by thirteen? The bookman can only
regard such a work as a portfolio of plates with accompanying text, and
if the plates as plates are only second rate, enthusiasm has nothing to
build on.
We return to book-form in 1757, when Boccaccio's _Decamerone_ was
published in Italian (imprint: Londra) in five octavo volumes, with
charming vignettes and illustrations mostly by Gravelot, although a few
are by Boucher and Eisen. Gravelot, who was more industrious than
successful as an illustrator, is seen here to advantage, and deserves
some credit for having made his designs not less but more reticent than
the stories he had to illustrate. This praise can certainly not be given
to the famous 1762 edition of the _Contes_ of La Fontaine, the cost of
which was borne by the Fermiers-Generaux (imprint: Amsterdam). The
_fleurons_ by Choffard are throughout delightful and the plates are
brilliantly engraved, but the lubricity of Eisen's designs is wearisome
in the first volume and disgusting in the second, and possessors of the
book are not to be envied. It is to be regretted that the next book we
have to notice, the _Contes Moraux_ of Marmontel (3 vols., 1765), has
very little charm to support its morality, the plates after Gravelot
being poor, while the head- and tailpieces, or rather the substitutes
for them, are wretched. A much better book than either of these last is
the edition in French and Latin of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ in four quarto
volumes (1767-71); with plates after Boucher, Eisen, Gravelot, and
Moreau, and headpieces by Choffard at the beginning of each book. The
imprint, "A Paris, chez Leclerc, Quai des Augustins, avec approbation et
privilege du Roi," prepares us to find that the designers have kept
their licence within bounds, and many of the plates have a combined
humour and charm which are very attractive. If I had to choose a single
plate to show Gravelot at his best, I doubt if prolonged search would
find any success more complete than that of the illustration to Book I,
xi., _Deucalion et Pyrrha repeuplant la Terre, suivant l'Oracle de
Themis_ (see the frontispiece to this volume, Plate I), and though Eisen
was a much better artist than Gravelot, his _Apollon gardant les
troupeaux d'Admet, dans les campagnes de Messene_ (II, x.) is certainly
one of his prettiest pieces.
[Illustration: XXXIX. PARIS, LAMBERT, 1770.
DORAT. LES BAISERS. PAGE WITH ENGRAVED HEADPIECE AFTER EISEN]
During the next few years illustrated books became the fashion, so that
in 1772 Cazotte wrote _Le diable amoureux, nouvelle d'Espagne_, with the
false imprint Naples (Paris, Lejay) and six unsigned plates, said to be
by Moreau after Marillier, on purpose to ridicule the craze for putting
illustrations into every book. In 1768 the indefatigable Gravelot had
illustrated an edition of the works of Voltaire, published at Geneva,
with forty-four designs. In 1769 _Les Saisons_, a poem by Saint Lambert,
was published at Amsterdam, with designs by Gravelot and Le Prince and
_fleurons_ by Choffard. In the same year there was published at Paris
Meunier de Queslon's _Les Graces_, with an engraved title by Moreau, a
frontispiece after Boucher, and five plates after Moreau. In 1770 came
Voltaire's _Henriade_ with ten plates and ten vignettes after Eisen, and
more highly esteemed even than this, Dorat's _Les Baisers_ (La Haye et
Paris), with a frontispiece and plate and forty-four head- and
tailpieces, all (save two) after Eisen, not easily surpassed in their
own luxurious style (see Plate XXXIX). In 1771 Gravelot, more
indefatigable than ever, supplied designs for twenty plates and numerous
head- and tailpieces for an edition of Tasso's _Gerusalemme Liberata_,
and was honoured, as Eisen had been in the Fermiers-Generaux edition of
La Fontaine's _Contes_, by his portrait being prefixed to the second
volume. In 1772 a new edition of Montesquieu's _Le Temple de Gnide_, in
which the text was engraved throughout, was illustrated with designs by
Eisen, brilliantly interpreted by Le Mire, and Imbert's _Le Jugement de
Paris_ was illustrated by Moreau, With, _fleurons_ by Choffard. In 1773
_Le Temple de Gnide_ was versified by Colardeau, and illustrated by
Monnet, and selections from Anacreon, Sappho, Bion, and Moschus by
Eisen, while Moreau and others illustrated the _Chansons_ of Laborde in
four volumes and the works of Moliere in six. After this the pace
slackened, and we need no longer cling to the methods of the annalist.
Moreau illustrated Saint Lambert's _Les Saisons_ and Fromageot's
_Annales du regne de Marie Therese_ (both in 1775), Marmontel's _Les
Incas_ (1777), the seventy-volume Voltaire (1784-9), _Paul et Virginie_
(1789), and many other works, living on to illustrate Goethe's _Werther_
in 1809; other books were adorned by Marillier, Cochin, Duplessis,
Bertaux, Desrais, Saint Quentin, Fragonard, Gerard, and Le Barbier, and
the fashion survived the Revolution and lingered on till about 1820.
We must go back now to England, where at the end of the seventeenth
century the requirements of book-illustration were neglected, partly
because of the growing taste for a neat simplicity in books, partly
because the chief English engravers all devoted themselves to mezzotint.
A few foreigners came over to supply their place, and Michael Burghers,
of Amsterdam, illustrated the fourth edition of _Paradise Lost_, a
stately folio, in 1688, with plates which enjoyed a long life and were
also imitated for smaller editions. Burghers also illustrated the Oxford
almanacs, and supplied frontispieces to the Bibles and other large books
issued by the University Press up to about 1720. Another Dutchman who
came to England not much later (in about 1690) was Michael Van der
Gucht, who worked for the booksellers, as his children did after him.
How low book-illustration had fallen in England at the beginning of the
eighteenth century may be seen by a glance at the wretched plates which
disfigure Rowe's Shakespeare in 1709, the first edition on which an
editor and an illustrator were allowed to work their wills. The year
after this Louis Du Guernier came to England, and was soon engaged in
the not too patriotic task of helping Claude Du Bosc to illustrate the
victories of Marlborough. In 1714 he and Du Bosc were less painfully,
though not very successfully, employed in making plates for Pope's _Rape
of the Lock_. Du Bosc subsequently worked on the _Religious Ceremonies
of all Nations_ (1733), an English edition of a book of Bernard
Picart's, and on plates for Rapin's _History of England_ (1743), but he
was far from being a great engraver. It is a satisfaction that the
plates to the first edition of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719) were engraved by
two Englishmen, and not very badly. Their names are given as "Clark and
Pine," the Clark being presumably John Clark (1688-1736), who engraved
some writing-books, and the Pine, John Pine (1690-1756), who imitated
some designs by Bernard Picart to the book of Jonah in 1720, and may
have been a pupil of his at Amsterdam.
It should, perhaps, have been mentioned that two years before _Crusoe_
an English engraver, John Sturt (1658-1730), produced a Book of Common
Prayer, of which the text as well as the pictures was engraved. This is
rather a curiosity than a work of art, the frontispiece being a portrait
of George I made up of the Creed, Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments,
Prayer for the Royal Family, and Psalm XXI. written in minute
characters, instead of lines. Sturt produced another engraved book, _The
Orthodox Communicant_, in 1721.
In 1723 William Hogarth began what might have proved a notable career as
a book-illustrator had not he soon found more profitable work. He
illustrated the Travels of Aubry de la Mottraye in 1723, Briscoe's
_Apuleius_ (1724), Cotterel's translation of _Cassandra_ (1725),
Blackwell's _Compendium of Military Discipline_ (1726), and (also in
1726) Butler's _Hudibras_, his plates to which, though grotesque enough,
show plenty of character. For some years after this he worked on
frontispieces, e.g. to Leveridge's _Songs_ (1727), Cooke's _Hesiod_
(1728), J. Miller's comedy, _The Humours of Oxford_ (1729), Theobald's
_Perseus and Andromeda_ (1730), and in 1731 to a Moliere, Fielding's
_Tragedy of Tragedies_, and Mitchell's _Highland Fair_. But the success
of his set of prints on "The Harlot's Progress" diverted him from
bookwork, although many years after he contributed frontispieces to
Vols. II and IV of _Tristram Shandy_, and in 1761 a head-and tailpiece
(engraved by Grignion) to a Catalogue of the Society of Arts.
In 1733 Hubert Gravelot was invited from France by Du Bosc to help in
illustrating Picart's _Religious Ceremonies_. He illustrated Gay's
_Fables_ in 1738, Richardson's _Pamela_ in 1742, Theobald's
_Shakespeare_ in 1740, and, mainly after Hayman, Hanmer's in 1744-6.
Neither of the sets of Shakespeare plates deserves any higher praise
than that of being neat and pretty, but at least they were a whole plane
above those in Rowe's edition.
The year after Gravelot came to England, in 1733, Pine produced the
first volume of his _Horace_, engraved throughout, and with head- and
tailpieces in admirable taste. The second volume followed in 1737, and
in 1753 the first of an illustrated _Virgil_ which Pine did not live to
complete.
Besides his work on Hanmer's _Shakespeare_, Francis Hayman designed
illustrations to Moore's _Fables of the Female Sex_ (1744), which were
well engraved, some of them by Charles Grignion, a pupil of Gravelot's,
born in England (1717), but of foreign parentage. Hayman also
illustrated the _Spectator_ (1747), Newton's _Milton_ (1749-52), and
later on, with the aid of Grignion, Smollett's _Don Quixote_ (1755), and
Baskerville's edition of Congreve's _Poems_ (1761). The plates to the
earlier edition of _Don Quixote_, that of 1738, had been chiefly
engraved by Gerard van der Gucht after Vanderbank, but two are by
Hogarth.
[Illustration: XL. LONDON, T. HOPE, 1760
WALTON, COMPLEAT ANGLER W. W. RYLANDS AFTER S. WALE]
Samuel Wale (died 1786), a pupil of Hayman, was also an illustrator, and
in 1760 supplied Sir John Hawkins with fourteen drawings for his edition
of Walton's _Angler_. These were engraved by the luckless W. W. Rylands,
who was hanged for forgery in 1783, and the Walton thus produced is one
of the prettiest and least affected of the illustrated books of its day
(see Plate XL). Wale also drew designs for Wilkie's _Fables_ (1768) and
Goldsmith's _Traveller_ (1774). He also worked for the magazines which
about the middle of the century made rather a feature of engravings,
often as headpieces to music. A few of the isolated books may be named,
thus Paltock's _Peter Wilkins_ (1750) was illustrated very well by Louis
Peter Boitard, who had previously contributed numerous plates to
Spence's _Polymetis_, and in 1751 supplied a frontispiece to each of the
six books of the _Scribleriad_ by R. O. Cambridge. Another book which,
like _Peter Wilkins_, was concerned with flight, Lunardi's _Account of
the first aerial voyage in England_ (1784), has a portrait of the author
by Bartolozzi and two plates. For Baskerville's edition of the _Orlando
Furioso_ (Birmingham, 1773) recourse was had to plates by De Launay,
after Moreau and Eisen.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] "In quo precipue tractat: An amico sepe ad scribendum prouocato
ut scribat, non respondenti sit amplius scribendum."
[66] It was probably from his Horae plates that Plantin illustrated
the _rerum Sacrarum Liber_ of Laur. Gambara in 1577. They are printed
with the text and are of average merit.
[67] They were bought to accompany the fine set of De Bry collected
by Mr. Grenville, but have since been transferred to the Department
of Prints and Drawings.
[68] Contributed to the work by Sir Sidney Colvin, _Early Engravers
and Engraving in England_, already quoted.
[69] This was an early proof of the portrait which is found in a
slightly different state in copies of the third edition, and seemed
to be an insertion in the first edition rather than an integral part
of it.