Read Ebook: A Treatise on Wood Engraving Historical and Practical by Bohn Henry G Henry George Chatto William Andrew Jackson John

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Besides such stamps as have already been described, the ancients used brands, both figured and lettered, with which, when heated, they marked their horses, sheep, and cattle, as well as criminals, captives, and refractory or runaway slaves.

The Athenians, according to Suidas, marked their Samian captives with the figure of an owl; while Athenians captured by the Samians were marked with the figure of a galley, and by the Syracusans with the figure of a horse. The husbandman at his leisure time, as we are informed by Virgil, in the first book of the Georgics,

"Aut pecori signa, aut numeros impressit acervis;"

and from the third book we learn that the operation was performed by branding:

DN CONSTAN TIO AVG SEM PER VICTORI

In Semp?re's "History of the Cortes of Spain," several examples are given of the use of fanciful monograms in that country at an early period, and which were probably introduced by its Gothic invaders. That such marks were stamped is almost certain; for the first, which is that of Gundisalvo Tellez, affixed to a charter of the date of 840, is the same as the "sign" which was affixed by his widow, Flamula, when she granted certain property to the abbot and monks of Carde?a for the good of her deceased husband's soul. The second, which is of the date of 886, was used both by the abbot Ovecus, and Peter his nephew; and the third was used by all the four children of one Ordo?o, as their "sign" to a charter of donation executed in 1018. The fourth mark is a Runic cypher, copied from an ancient Icelandic manuscript, and given by Peringskiold in his "Annotations on the Life of Theodoric:" it is not given here as being from a stencil or a stamp, but that it may be compared with the apparently Gothic monograms used in Spain.

The notaries of succeeding times, who on their admission were required to use a distinctive sign or notarial mark in witnessing an instrument, continued occasionally to employ the stencil in affixing their "sign;" although their use of the stamp for that purpose appears to have been more general. In some of those marks or stamps the name of the notary does not appear, and in others a small space is left in order that it might afterwards be inserted with a pen. The annexed monogram was the official mark of an Italian notary, Nicolaus Ferenterius, who lived in 1236.

The three following cuts represent impressions of German notarial stamps. The first is that of Jacobus Arnaldus, 1345; the second that of Johannes Meynersen, 1435; and the third that of Johannes Calvis, 1521.

Many of the merchants'-marks of our own country, which so frequently appear on stained glass windows, monumental brasses, and tombstones in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, bear a considerable likeness to the ancient Runic monograms, from which it is not unlikely that they were originally derived. The English trader was accustomed to place his mark as his "sign" in his shop-front in the same manner as the Spaniard did his monogram: if he was a wool-stapler, he stamped it on his packs; or if a fish-curer, it was branded on the end of his casks. If he built himself a new house, his mark was frequently placed between his initials over the principal door-way, or over the fireplace of the hall; if he made a gift to a church or a chapel, his mark was emblazoned on the windows beside the knight's or the nobleman's shield of arms; and when he died, his mark was cut upon his tomb. Of the following merchants'-marks, the first is that of Adam de Walsokne, who died in 1349; the second that of Edmund Pepyr, who died in 1483; those two marks are from their tombs in St. Margaret's, Lynn; and the third is from a window in the same church.

In Pierce Ploughman's Creed, written after the death of Wickliffe, which happened in 1384, and consequently more modern than many of Chaucer's poems, merchants'-marks are thus mentioned in the description of a window of a Dominican convent:

Having thus endeavoured to prove by a continuous chain of evidence that the principle of producing impressions from raised lines was known, and practised, at a very early period; and that it was applied for the purpose of impressing letters and other characters on paper, though perhaps confined to signatures only, long previous to 1423,--which is the earliest date that has been discovered on a wood-cut, in the modern sense of the word, impressed on paper, and accompanied with explanatory words cut on the same block; and having shown that the principle of stencilling--the manner in which the above-named cut is coloured--was also known in the middle ages; it appears requisite, next to briefly notice the contemporary existence of the cognate arts of die-sinking, seal-cutting, and engraving on brass, and afterwards to examine the grounds of certain speculations on the introduction and early practice of wood-engraving and block-printing in Europe.

Concerning the first invention of stamping letters and figures upon coins, and the name of the inventor, it is fruitless to inquire, as the origin of the art is lost in the remoteness of antiquity. "Leaving these uncertainties," says Pinkerton, in his Essay on Medals, "we know from respectable authorities that the first money coined in Greece was that struck in the island of AEgina, by Phidon king of Argos. His reign is fixed by the Arundelian marbles to an era correspondent to the 885th year before Christ; but whether he derived this art from Lydia or any other source we are not told." About three hundred years before the birth of Christ, the art of coining, so far as relates to the beauty of the heads impressed, appears to have attained its perfection in Greece;--we may indeed say its perfection generally, for the specimens which were then produced in that country remain unsurpassed by modern art. Under the Roman emperors the art never seems to have attained so high a degree of perfection as it did in Greece; though several of the coins of Hadrian, probably executed by Greek artists, display great beauty of design and execution. The art of coining, with the rest of the ornamental arts, declined with the empire; and, on its final subversion in Italy, the coins of its rulers were scarcely superior to those which were subsequently minted in England, Germany, and France, during the darkest period of the middle ages.

About the year 1300 we have evidence of monumental brasses, with large figures engraved on them, being fixed on tombs in this country; and it is not unlikely that they were known both here and on the Continent at an earlier period. The best specimens known in this country are such as were in all probability executed previous to 1400. In the succeeding century the figures and ornamental work generally appear to be designed in a worse taste and more carelessly executed; and in the age of Queen Elizabeth the art, such as it was, appears to have reached the lowest point of degradation, the monumental brasses of that reign being generally the worst which are to be met with.

The figures on several of the more ancient brasses are well drawn, and the folds of the drapery in the dresses of the females are, as a painter would say, "well cast;" and the faces occasionally display a considerable degree of correct and elevated expression. Many of the figures are of the size of life, marked with a hold outline well ploughed into the brass, and having the features, armour, and drapery indicated by single lines of greater or less strength as might be required. Attempts at shading are also occasionally to be met with; the effect being produced by means of lines obliquely crossing each other in the manner of cross-hatchings. Whether impressions were ever taken or not from such early brasses by the artists who executed them, it is perhaps now impossible to ascertain; but that they might do so is beyond a doubt, for it is now a common practice, and two immense volumes of impressions taken from monumental brasses, for the late Craven Ord, Esq., are preserved in the print-room of the British Museum.

One of the finest monumental brasses known in this country is that of Robert Braunche and his two wives, in St. Margaret's Church, Lynn, where it appears to have been placed about the year 1364. Braunche, and his two wives, one on each side of him, are represented standing, of the size of life. Above the figures are representations of five small niches surmounted by canopies in the florid Gothic style. In the centre niche is the figure of the Deity holding apparently the infant Christ in his arms. In each of the niches adjoining the centre one is an angel swinging a censer; and in the exterior niches are angels playing on musical instruments. At the sides are figures of saints, and at the foot there is a representation of a feast, where persons are seen seated at table, others playing on musical instruments, while a figure kneeling presents a peacock. The length of this brass is eight feet eleven inches, and its breadth five feet two inches. It is supposed to have been executed in Flanders, with which country at that period the town of Lynn was closely connected in the way of trade.

It has frequently been asserted that the art of wood engraving in Europe was derived from the Chinese; by whom, it is also said, that the art was practised in the reign of the renowned emperor Wu-Wang, who flourished 1120 years before the birth of Christ. As both these statements seem to rest on equal authorities, I attach to each an equal degree of credibility; that is, by believing neither. As Mr. Ottley has expressed an opinion in favour of the Chinese origin of the art,--though without adopting the tale of its being practised in the reign of Wu-Wang, which he shows has been taken by the wrong end,--I shall here take the liberty of examining the tenability of his arguments.

At page 8, in the first chapter of his work, Mr. Ottley cautiously says that the "art of printing from engraved blocks of wood appears to be of very high antiquity amongst the Chinese;" and at page 9, after citing Du Halde, as informing us that the art of printing was not discovered until about fifty years before the Christian era, he rather inconsistently observes: "So says Father Du Halde, whose authority I give without any comment, as the defence of Chinese chronology makes no part of the present undertaking." Unless Mr. Ottley is satisfied of the correctness of the chronology, he can by no means cite Du Halde's account as evidence of the very high antiquity of printing in China; which in every other part of his book he speaks of as a well-established fact, and yet refers to no other authority than Du Halde, who relies on the correctness of that Chinese chronology with the defence of which Mr. Ottley will have nothing to do.

Although so little is positively known of the ancient history of "the great out-lying empire of China," as it is called by Sir William Jones, yet it has been most confidently referred to as affording authentic evidence of the high degree of the civilization and knowledge of the Chinese at a period when Europe was dark with the gloom of barbarism and ignorance. Their early history has been generally found, when opportunity has been afforded of impartially examining it, to be a mere tissue of absurd legends; compared to which, the history of the settlement of King Brute in Britain is authentic. With astronomy as a science they are scarcely acquainted; and their specimens of the fine arts display little more than representations of objects executed not unfrequently with minute accuracy, but without a knowledge of the most simple elements of correct design, and without the slightest pretensions to art, according to our standard.

One of the two Mahometan travellers who visited China in the ninth century, expressly states that the Chinese were unacquainted with the sciences; and as neither of them takes any notice of printing, the mariner's compass, or gunpowder, it seems but reasonable to conclude that the Chinese were unacquainted with those inventions at that period.

That the art of engraving wood-blocks and of taking impressions from them was introduced into Europe from China, I can see no sufficient reason to believe. Looking at the frequent practice in Europe, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, of impressing inked stamps on paper, I can perceive nothing in the earliest specimens of wood engraving but the same principles applied on a larger scale. When I am once satisfied that a man had built a small boat, I feel no surprise on learning that his grandson had built a larger; and made in it a longer voyage than his ancestor ever ventured on, who merely used his slight skiff to ferry himself across a river.

"When young, being engaged with my father in going almost every day to hang rooms with our papers, I was, some time in 1719 or 1720, at the village of Bagneux, near Mont Rouge, at a Monsieur De Greder's, a Swiss captain, who had a pretty house there. After I had papered a small room for him, he ordered me to cover the shelves of his library with paper in imitation of mosaic. One day after dinner he surprised me reading a book, which occasioned him to show me some very old ones which he had borrowed of one of his friends, a Swiss officer, that he might examine them at his leisure. We talked about the figures which they contained, and of the antiquity of wood engraving; and what follows is a description of those ancient books as I wrote it before him, and as he was so kind as to explain and dictate to me.

However singular the above account of the works of those "amiable twins" may seem, no less surprising is the history of their birth, parentage, and education; which, taken in conjunction with the early development of their talents as displayed in such an art, in the choice of such a subject, and at such a period, is scarcely to be surpassed in interest by any narrative which gives piquancy to the pages of the Wonderful Magazine.

Upon the blank leaf adjoining the last engraving were the following words, badly written in old Swiss characters, and scarcely legible in consequence of their having been written with pale ink. "Of course Papillon could not read Swiss," says Mr. Ottley, "M. de Greder, therefore, translated them for him into French."--"This precious volume was given to my grandfather Jan. Jacq. Turine, a native of Berne, by the illustrious Count Cunio, chief magistrate of Imola, who honoured him with his generous friendship. Above all my books I prize this the highest on account of the quarter from whence it came into our family, and on account of the knowledge, the valour, the beauty, and the noble and generous desire which those amiable twins Cunio had to gratify their relations and friends. Here ensues their singular and curious history as I have heard it many a time from my venerable father, and which I have caused to be more correctly written than I could do it myself."

Though Papillon's long-lost manuscript, containing the whole account of the works of the Cunio and notices of other old books of engravings, consisted of only three sheets of letter-paper, yet the history alone of the learned, beautiful, and amiable twins, which Turine the grandson caused to be written out as he had heard it from his father, occupies in Papillon's book four long octavo pages of thirty-eight lines each. To assume that his long-lost manuscript consisted of brief notes which he afterwards wrote out at length from memory, would at once destroy any validity that his account might be supposed to possess; for he states that he had lost those papers for upwards of thirty five years, and had entirely forgotten their contents.

Without troubling myself to transcribe the whole of this choice morsel of French Romance concerning the history of the "amiable twins" Cunio,--the surprising beauty, talents, and accomplishments of the maiden,--the early death of herself and her lover,--the heroism of the youthful knight, Alexander Alberic Cunio, displayed when only fourteen years old,--I shall give a brief abstract of some of the passages which seem most important to the present inquiry.

The troubles in Italy having caused the Count Cunio to take up arms, his son, young Alexander Alberic, accompanied him to the field to make his first campaign. Though not more than fourteen years old, he was entrusted with the command of a squadron of twenty-five horse, with which, as his first essay in war, he attacked and put to flight near two hundred of the enemy. His courage having carried him too far, he was surrounded by the fugitives, from whom, however, he fought himself clear without any further injury than a wound in his left arm. His father, who had hastened to his succour, found him returning with the enemy's banner, which he had wrapped about his wound. Delighted at the valour displayed by his son, the Count Cunio knighted him on the spot. The young man then asked permission to visit his mother, which was readily granted by the count, who was pleased to have this opportunity of testifying the love and esteem he still retained towards that noble and afflicted lady, who continued to reside with her aunt; of which he certainly would have given her more convincing proofs, now that his father was dead, by re-establishing their marriage and publicly espousing her, if he had not been in duty bound to cherish the wife whom he had been compelled to marry, and who had now borne him a large family.

After Alexander Alberic had visited his mother, he returned home, and shortly after began, together with his sister Isabella, to design and work upon the pictures of the achievements of Alexander. He then made a second campaign with his father, after which he continued to employ himself on the pictures in conjunction with Isabella, who attempted in reduce them and engrave them on wood. After the engravings were finished, and copies had been printed and given to Pope Honorius, and their relations and friends, Alexander Alberic proceeded again to join the army, accompanied by Pandulphio, a young nobleman, who was in love with the charming Isabella. This was his last campaign, for he was killed in the presence of his friend, who was dangerously wounded in defending him. He was slain when not more than nineteen; and his sister was so affected by his death that she resolved never to marry, and died when she was scarcely twenty. The death of this lovely and learned young lady was followed by that of her lover, who had fondly hoped that she would make him happy. The mother of those amiable twins was not long in following them to the grave, being unable to survive the loss of her children. The Countess de Cunio took seriously ill at the loss of Isabella, but fortunately recovered; and it was only the count's grandeur of soul that saved him from falling sick also.

As this volume is no longer to be found, as no mention is made of such a work by any old writer, and as another copy has not been discovered in any of the libraries of Italy, nor the least trace of one ever having been there, the evidence of its ever having existed rests solely on the account given of it by Papillon. Before saying a word respecting the credit to be attached to this witness, or the props with which Zani and Ottley endeavour to support his testimony, I shall attempt to show that the account affords internal evidence of its own falsehood.

Before noticing the description of the subjects, I shall state a few objections to the account of the twins as written out by order of the youngest Turine, the grandson of Jan. Jacq. Turine, who received the volume from Count Cunio himself, the father of the twins, a few years after their death, which could not well happen later than 1291; as Pope Honorius, to whom their work was dedicated when they were sixteen years old, died in 1287, and Isabella Cunio, who survived her brother, died when she was not more than twenty. Supposing that Count Cunio gave the volume to his friend, J. J. Turine, a native of Berne, in 1300, and that the grandson of the latter caused the history of the twins to be written out eighty years afterwards,--and we cannot fairly assume that it was written later, if indeed so late,--we have thus 1380 as the date of the account written "in old Swiss characters, in a better hand, and with much blacker ink," than the owner's own memorandum of the manner in which the volume came into his family, and his reasons for prizing it so highly. The probable date of the pretended Swiss history of the Cunio, Papillon's advocates carefully keep out of sight; for what impartial person could believe that a Swiss of the fourteenth century could give utterance to the sentimental fustian which forms so considerable a portion of the account? Of the young knight Cunio he knows every movement; he is acquainted with his visit to his repudiated mother; he knows in which arm he was wounded; the number of men that he lost, when with only five-and-twenty he routed two hundred; the name of Isabella's lover; the illness and happy recovery of Count Cunio's wife, and can tell the cause why the count himself did not fall sick.

To any person who reflects on the doctrine of the church of Rome in the article of marriage, it certainly must appear strange that the parents of the Count Cunio and his first wife, the mother of the twins, should have had the power of dissolving the marriage and of banishing the priest by whom it was solemnized; and still more singular it is that the Count Cunio, whom we must suppose to have been a good Catholic, should speak, after his father's death, of re-establishing his marriage with his first wife and of publicly espousing her; and that he should make such a communication to her through the medium of her son, who, as well as his sister, must have been declared illegitimate by the very fact of their mother's divorce. It is also strange that this piece of family history should come to the knowledge of the grandson of Jan. Jacq. Turine. The Count Cunio's second marriage surely must have been canonically legal, if the first were not; and if so, it would not be a sense of duty alone to his second wife that would prevent him divorcing her and re-marrying the first. On such subjects the church was to be consulted; and to such playing fast-and-loose with the sacrament of marriage the church said "NO." Taking these circumstances into consideration, I can come to no other conclusion than that, on this point, the writer of the history of the Cunio did not speak truth; and that the paper containing such history, even if it could be produced, is not genuine, as every other part of it which has the slightest bearing on the point at issue, is equally, if not more, improbable.

With respect to the credibility of Papillon, the sole evidence upon which the history of the wonderful twins rests, I shall have occasion to say very few words. That he was credulous, and excessively vain of what he considered his discoveries in the history of wood engraving, is admitted by those who profess to believe him. He appears also from an early age to have been subject to mental hallucination; and in 1759, the year after he found his papers containing the account of the Cunio, he had a fit of decided insanity which rendered it necessary to convey him to a mad-house, where by copious bleeding he soon recovered his senses. To those interested in the controversy I leave to decide how far the unsupported testimony of such a person, and in such a case, ought to be relied on. How easily he might be deceived on a subject relating to the early history of his art, it is not difficult to comprehend; and even allowing him to be sincere in the belief of what he related, he was a person very likely to occasionally deceive both himself and others.

Having disposed of the story as told by Papillon, it remains now to notice "the learning and deep research" with which it has been supported by Zani, and some of the arguments which have been alleged in its favour by Mr. Ottley.

The reasoning faculties of Signor Zani appear to have been very imperfectly developed, for he cites the following as a case in point; and Mr. Ottley, who gives it in his text, seems to concur in its applicability. He is noticing the objections which have been made to Papillon's account, on the ground of no previous author mentioning the existence of such a work, and that no person subsequently had ever seen a copy. Zani's argument, as given by Mr. Ottley, is as follows: "He, however, who should reason in this manner, might, upon the same grounds, deny the loss of many manuscripts, and even of printed books, which, according to the testimony of credible authors, have become a prey to the flames, or have perished during the anarchy of revolutions, or the distresses occasioned by wars. The learned part of my readers will not require examples. Nevertheless, let him who wants such conviction search throughout all the libraries of Europe for the work entitled 'Meditationes Reverendissimi patris Domini Johannis de Turre-cremata,' printed at Rome by Ulrich Hahn, in 1467, and he will presently be informed by the learned librarians, that of that edition there exists but one copy, which is preserved in the library of Nuremberg. This book is, therefore, unique. Now let us suppose that, by some accident, this book should perish; could our descendants on that account deny that it ever had existed?" And this is a corroborative argument in support of the truth of Papillon's tale! The comment, however, is worthy of the text. It is to be observed that Ulrich Hahn's edition of Turre-cremata appeared ten years after Faust and Scheffer's Psalter, of the date 1457, was printed; and that the existence of several hundred volumes printed before 1467 proves that the art of printing was then practised to a considerable extent. That Ulrich Hahn was a printer at Rome in 1468 and subsequent years is proved by many copies of works which proceeded from his press; and the existence of the identical "unique" copy, referred to by Zani, is vouched for by upwards of fifty learned men who have seen it; and, what is more, mentioned the place where it was preserved, so that, if a person were sceptical, he might satisfy himself by the evidence of his own senses. But who, except Papillon, has ever seen the engravings of the Cunio, executed upwards of a hundred and thirty years prior to the earliest authentic specimen of the art, and who has ever mentioned the place where they were to be seen? Had any person of equal credibility with Papillon described a volume printed at Rome in 1285, the date of the pretended wood-cuts of the Cunio, the case would then have been in point, and the decision of every person in the slightest degree acquainted with the subject, and not rendered blind to simple truth by the vivid brightness of his own speculations, would be inevitably the same; that is, the evidence in both cases would not be relied on.

"Had lights where better eyes are blind, As pigs are said to see the wind."

At page 41, speaking of the probability of wood-engraving, for the purpose of taking impressions, being practised at an earlier period than has been generally supposed, Mr. Ottley expresses himself as follows: "Nor is it any proof or strong argument against the antiquity of such a practice, that authentic specimens of wood-engraving of those early times are not now to be found. They were, it may be supposed, for the most part, detached pieces, whose merits, as works of art, were not such as to render their preservation at all probable. They were the toys of the day; and, after having served the temporary purpose for which they were manufactured, were, no doubt, swept away to make room for others of newer fashion." He thus requires those who entertain an opinion contrary to his own to prove a negative; while he assumes the point in dispute as most clearly established in his own favour.

PROGRESS OF WOOD ENGRAVING.

Playing-Cards Printed from Wood-Blocks -- Early German Wood-Engravers at Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm -- Card-Makers and Wood-Engravers in Venice in 1441 -- Figures of Saints Engraved on Wood -- The St. Christopher, the Annunciation, and the St. Bridget in the Collection of Earl Spencer, with Other Old Wood-Cuts Described -- Block-Books -- The Apocalypse, the History of the Virgin, and the Work Called Biblia Pauperum -- Speculum Salvationis -- Figured Alphabet Formerly Belonging to Sir George Beaumont -- Ars Memorandi, and Other Smaller Block-Books.

From the facts which have been produced in the preceding chapter, there cannot be a doubt that the principle on which wood engraving is founded,--that of taking impressions on paper or parchment, with ink, from prominent lines,--was known and practised in attesting documents in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Towards the end of the fourteenth, or about the beginning of the fifteenth century, there is reason to believe that this principle was adopted by the German card-makers for the purpose of marking the outlines of the figures on their cards, which they afterwards coloured by means of a stencil.

The period at which the game of cards was first known in Europe, as well as the people by whom they were invented, has been very learnedly, though not very satisfactorily discussed. Bullet has claimed the invention for the French, and Heineken for the Germans; while other writers have maintained that the game was known in Italy earlier than in any other part of Europe, and that it was introduced from the East.

Some writers have been of opinion that the art of wood-engraving was derived from the practice of the ancient caligraphists and illuminators of manuscripts, who sometimes formed their large capital letters by means of a stencil or of a wooden stamp. That large capitals were formed in such a manner previous to the year 1400 there can be little doubt; and it has been thought that stencils and stamps were used not only for the formation of capital letters, but also for the impression of a whole volume. Ihre, in a dissertation on the Gospels of Ulphilas, which are supposed to be as old as the fifth century, has asserted that the silver letters of the text on a purple ground were impressed by means of heated iron stamps. This, however, is denied by the learned compilers of the "Nouveau Trait? de Diplomatique," who had seen other volumes of a similar kind, the silver letters of which were evidently formed with a pen. A modern Italian author, D. Vincenzo Requeno, has published a tract to prove that many supposed manuscripts from the tenth to the fourteenth century, instead of being written with a pen, were actually impressed by means of stamps. It is, however, extremely probable that he is mistaken; for if his pretended discoveries were true, this art of stamping must have been very generally practised; and if so, it surely would have been mentioned by some contemporary writers. Signor Requeno's examination, I am inclined to suspect, has not been sufficiently precise; for he seems to have been too willing to find what he sought. In almost every collection that he examined, a pair of fine compasses being the test which he employed, he discovered voluminous works on vellum, hitherto supposed to be manuscript, but which according to his measurement were certainly executed by means of a stamp.

It has been conjectured that the art of wood-engraving was employed on sacred subjects, such as the figures of saints and holy persons, before it was applied to the multiplication of those "books of Satan," playing-cards. It however is not unlikely that it was first employed in the manufacture of cards; and that the monks, availing themselves of the same principle, shortly afterwards employed the art of wood-engraving for the purpose of circulating the figures of saints; thus endeavouring to supply a remedy for the evil, and extracting from the serpent a cure for his bite.

The first person who published an account of this most interesting wood-cut was Heineken, who had inspected a greater number of old wood-cuts and block-books than any other person, and whose unwearied perseverance in searching after, and general accuracy in describing such early specimens of the art of wood-engraving, are beyond all praise. He found it pasted on the inside of the right-hand cover of a manuscript volume in the library of the convent of Buxheim, near Memmingen in Suabia. The manuscript, entitled LAUS VIRGINIS and finished in 1417, was left to the convent by Anna, canoness of Buchaw, who was living in 1427; but who probably died previous to 1435. The above reduced copy conveys a pretty good idea of the composition and style of engraving of the original cut, which is of a folio size, being eleven and a quarter inches high, and eight inches and one-eighth wide.

This cut is much better designed than the generality of those which we find in books typographically executed from 1462, the date of the Bamberg Fables, to 1493, when the often-cited Nuremberg Chronicle was printed. Amongst the many coarse cuts which "illustrate" the latter, and which are announced in the book itself as having been "got up" under the superintendence of Michael Wolgemuth, Albert Durer's master, and William Pleydenwurff, both "most skilful in the art of painting," I cannot find a single subject which either for spirit or feeling can be compared to the St. Christopher. In fact, the figure of the saint, and that of the youthful Christ whom he bears on his shoulders, are, with the exception of the extremities, designed in such a style, that they would scarcely discredit Albert Durer himself.

To the left of the engraving the artist has introduced, with a noble disregard of perspective, what Bewick would have called a "bit of Nature." In the foreground a figure is seen driving an ass loaded with a sack towards a water-mill; while by a steep path a figure, perhaps intended for the miller, is seen carrying a full sack from the back-door of the mill towards a cottage. To the right is seen a hermit--known by the bell over the entrance of his dwelling--holding a large lantern to direct St. Christopher as he crosses the stream. The two verses at the foot of the cut,

Cristofori faciem die quacunque tueris, Illa nempe die morte mala non morieris,

may be translated as follows:

Each day that thou the likeness of St. Christopher shalt see, That day no frightful form of death shall make an end of thee.

They allude to a popular superstition, common at that period in all Catholic countries, which induced people to believe that the day on which they should see a figure or image of St. Christopher, they should not meet with a violent death, nor die without confession. To this popular superstition Erasmus alludes in his "Praise of Folly;" and it is not unlikely, that to his faith in this article of belief, the squire, in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," wore

"A Christofre on his brest, of silver shene."

The engraving, though coarse, is executed in a bold and free manner; and the folds of the drapery are marked in a style which would do credit to a proficient. The whole subject, though expressed by means of few lines, is not executed in the very simplest style of art. In the draperies a diminution and a thickening of the lines, where necessary to the effect, may be observed; and the shades are indicated by means of parallel lines both perpendicular, oblique, and curved, as may be seen in the saint's robe and mantle. In many of the wood-cuts executed between 1462 and 1500, the figures are expressed, and the drapery indicated, by simple lines of one undeviating degree of thickness, without the slightest attempt at shading by means of parallel lines running in a direction different to those marking the folds of the drapery or the outlines of the figure. If mere rudeness of design, and simplicity in the mode of execution, were to be considered as the sole tests of antiquity in wood-engravings, upwards of a hundred, positively known to have been executed between 1470 and 1500, might be produced as affording intrinsic evidence of their having been executed at a period antecedent to the date of the St. Christopher.

On the inside of the first cover or "board" of the Laus Virginis, the volume which contains the St. Christopher, there is also pasted a wood engraving of the Annunciation, of a similar size to the above-named cut, and impressed on the same kind of paper. As they are both worked off in the same kind of dark-coloured ink, and as they evidently have been coloured in the same manner, by means of a stencil, there can be little doubt of their being executed about the same time. From the left-hand corner of the Annunciation the figure of the Almighty has been torn out. The Holy Ghost, who appears descending from the Father upon the Virgin in the material form of a dove, could not well be torn out without greatly disfiguring the cut. An idea may be formed of the original from the following reduced copy.

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