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diff --git a/40250-0.txt b/40250-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..089ff81 --- /dev/null +++ b/40250-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4801 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40250 *** + +THE EX-LIBRIS SERIES. EDITED BY GLEESON WHITE. + +THE DECORATIVE ILLUSTRATION OF BOOKS. BY WALTER CRANE. + + + + +[Illustration: G Bell and Sons] + + + + + OF THE DECORATIVE + ILLUSTRATION OF + BOOKS OLD AND NEW + BY WALTER CRANE + + [Illustration] + + LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS + YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. + NEW YORK: 66 FIFTH AVENUE + MDCCCXCV + + + + + PRINTED AT THE CHISWICK PRESS BY + CHARLES WHITTINGHAM & CO. TOOKS + COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON, E.C. + AND FIRST PUBLISHED DECEMBER, 1896 + SECOND EDITION, REVISED, FEB. 1901 + THIRD EDITION, REVISED, JAN. 1905 + + + + +PREFACE. + + +This book had its origin in the course of three (Cantor) Lectures given +before the Society of Arts in 1889; they have been amplified and added +to, and further chapters have been written, treating of the very active +period in printing and decorative book-illustration we have seen since +that time, as well as some remarks and suggestions touching the general +principles and conditions governing the design of book pages and +ornaments. + +It is not nearly so complete or comprehensive as I could have wished, but +there are natural limits to the bulk of a volume in the "Ex-Libris" +series, and it has been only possible to carry on such a work in the +intervals snatched from the absorbing work of designing. Within its own +lines, however, I hope that if not exhaustive, the book may be found +fairly representative of the chief historical and contemporary types of +decorative book-illustration. + +In the selection of the illustrations, I have endeavoured to draw the +line between the purely graphic aim, on the one hand, and the ornamental +aim on the other--between what I should term the art of _pictorial +statement_ and the art of _decorative treatment_; though there are many +cases in which they are combined, as, indeed, in all the most complete +book-pictures, they should be. My purpose has been to treat of +illustrations which are also book-ornaments, so that purely graphic +design, as such, unrelated to the type, and the conditions of the page, +does not come within my scope. + +As book-illustration pure and simple, however, has been treated of in +this series by Mr. Joseph Pennell, whose selection is more from the +graphic than the decorative point of view, the balance may be said to be +adjusted as regards contemporary art. + +I must offer my best thanks to Mr. Gleeson White, without whose most +valuable help the book might never have been finished. He has allowed me +to draw upon his remarkable collection of modern illustrated books for +examples, and I am indebted to many artists for permission to use their +illustrations, as well as to Messrs. George Allen, Bradbury, Agnew and +Co., J. M. Dent and Co., Edmund Evans, Geddes and Co., Hacon and Ricketts +(the Vale Press), John Lane, Lawrence and Bullen, Sampson Low and Co., +Macmillan and Co., Elkin Mathews, Kegan Paul and Co., Walter Scott, +Charles Scribner's Sons, and Virtue and Co., for their courtesy in giving +me, in many cases, the use of the actual blocks. + +To Mr. William Morris, who placed his beautiful collection of early +printed books at my disposal, from which to choose illustrations; to Mr. +Emery Walker for help in many ways; to Mr. John Calvert for permission to +use some of his father's illustrations; and to Mr. A. W. Pollard who has +lent me some of his early Italian examples, and has also supervised my +bibliographical particulars, I desire to make my cordial acknowledgments. + +WALTER CRANE. + +KENSINGTON: _July 18th, 1896_. + + + + +NOTE TO THIRD EDITION. + + +A reprint of this book being called for, I take the opportunity of adding +a few notes, chiefly to Chapter IV., which will be found further on with +the numbers of the pages to which they refer. + +As touching the general subject of the book one may, perhaps, be allowed +to record with some satisfaction that the study of lettering, +text-writing, and illumination is now seriously taken up in our +craft-schools. The admirable teaching of Mr. Johnston of the Central +School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art in this connection +cannot be too highly spoken of. We have had, too, admirable work, in each +kind, from Mr. Reuter, Mr. Mortimer, Mr. Treglown, Mr. Alan Vigers, Mr. +Graily Hewitt, and Mr. A. E. R. Gill; and Mrs. Traguair and Miss +Kingsford are remarkable for the beauty, delicacy, and invention of their +work as illuminators among the artists who are now pursuing this +beautiful branch of art. + +So that the ancient crafts of the scribe and illuminator may be said to +have again come to life, and this, taken in connection with the revival +of printing as an art, is an interesting and significant fact. + +As recent contributions to the study of lettering we have Mr. Lewis F. +Day's recent book of Alphabets, and Mr. G. Woolliscroft Rhead's sheets +for school use. + +I have to deplore the loss of my former helper in this book, Mr. Gleeson +White, since the work first appeared. His extensive knowledge of, and +sympathy with the modern book illustrators of the younger generation was +remarkable, and as a designer himself he showed considerable skill and +taste in book-decoration, chiefly in the way of covers. As a most +estimable and amiable character he will always be remembered by his +friends. + +WALTER CRANE. + +KENSINGTON: _June, 1904_. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + CHAPTER I.--OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE ILLUSTRATIVE AND + DECORATIVE IMPULSE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES; AND OF THE + FIRST PERIOD OF DECORATIVELY ILLUSTRATED BOOKS IN THE + ILLUMINATED MSS. OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 1. + + CHAPTER II.--OF THE TRANSITION, AND OF THE SECOND PERIOD + OF DECORATIVELY ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, FROM THE INVENTION OF + PRINTING IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY ONWARDS. 45. + + CHAPTER III.--OF THE PERIOD OF THE DECLINE OF DECORATIVE + FEELING IN BOOK DESIGN AFTER THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND OF + THE MODERN REVIVAL. 125. + + CHAPTER IV.--OF RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF DECORATIVE BOOK + ILLUSTRATION, AND THE MODERN REVIVAL OF PRINTING AS AN + ART. 185. + + CHAPTER V.--OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN DESIGNING BOOK + ORNAMENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS: CONSIDERATION OF ARRANGEMENT, + SPACING AND TREATMENT. 279. + + INDEX. 329. + +[Illustration] + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. + + + GERMAN SCHOOL, XVTH CENTURY. PAGE + + "Leiden Christi." (Bamberg, 1470) 3 + Boccaccio, "De Claris Mulieribus." (Ulm, 1473) 7, 11 + "Buch von den sieben Todsünden." (Augsburg, 1474) 15 + "Speculum Humanæ Vitæ." (Augsburg, _cir._ 1475) 17 + Bible. (Cologne, 1480) 21 + Terrence: "Eunuchus." (Ulm, 1486) 27 + "Chronica Hungariæ." (Augsburg, 1488) 35 + "Hortus Sanitatis." (Mainz, 1491) 39 + "Chroneken der Sassen." (Mainz, 1492) 41 + Bible. (Lübeck, 1494) 47 + "Æsop's Fables." (Ulm, 1498) 53 + + + FLEMISH AND DUTCH SCHOOLS, XVTH CENTURY. + + "Spiegel onser Behoudenisse." (Kuilenburg, 1483) 25 + "Life of Christ." (Antwerp, 1487) 31 + + + FRENCH SCHOOL, XVTH CENTURY. + + "La Mer des Histoires." Initial. (Paris, 1488) 37 + "Paris et Vienne." (Paris, _cir._ 1495) 51 + + + ITALIAN SCHOOL, XVTH CENTURY. + + "De Claris Mulieribus." (Ferrara, 1497) 54 + Tuppo's "Æsop." (Naples, 1485) 55 + P. Cremonese's "Dante." (Venice, 1491) 56 + "Discovery of the Indies." (Florence, 1493) 57 + "Fior di Virtù." (Florence, 1498) 58 + Stephanus Caesenas: "Expositio Beati Hieronymi in + Psalterium." (Venice, 1498) 59 + "Poliphili Hypnerotomachia." (Venice, 1499) 63, 65 + Ketham's "Fasciculus Medicinæ." (Venice, 1493) 295 + Pomponius Mela. (Venice, 1478) 297 + + + ITALIAN SCHOOL, XVITH CENTURY. + + Artist Unknown. Bernadino Corio. (Milan, Minuziano, + 1503) 67 + School of Bellini: "Supplementum Supplementi + Chronicarum, etc." (Venice, 1506) 69 + "The Descent of Minerva": from the Quatriregio. + (Florence, 1508) 71 + Aulus Gellius. (Venice, 1509) 73 + Quintilian. (Venice, 1512) 75 + Ottaviano dei Petrucci. (Fossombrone, 1513) 77 + Ambrosius Calepinus. (Tosculano, 1520) 121 + Artist unknown: Portrait title: Ludovico Dolci, + 1561. (Venice, Giolito, 1562) 133 + + + GERMAN SCHOOL, XVITH CENTURY. + + Albrecht Dürer: "Kleine Passion." (Nuremberg, + 1512) 81, 83, 85 + Albrecht Dürer: "Plutarchus Chaeroneus." + (Nuremberg, 1513) 87 + Albrecht Dürer: "Plutarchus Chaeroneus." + (Nuremberg, 1523) 89 + Hans Holbein: "Dance of Death." (Lyons, 1538) 91, 92 + Hans Holbein: Title-page: Gallia. (Basel, _cir._ + 1524) 93 + Hans Holbein: Bible Cuts. (Lyons, 1538) 95, 96 + Ambrose Holbein: "Neues Testament." (Basel, 1523) 97 + Hans Burgmair: "Der Weiss König." (1512-14) 99 + Hans Burgmair: "Iornandes de Rebus Gothorum." + (Augsburg, 1516) 101 + Hans Burgmair: "Pliny's Natural History." + (Frankfort, 1582) 103 + Hans Burgmair: "Meerfahrt zu viln onerkannten + Inseln," etc. (Augsburg, 1509) 105 + Hans Baldung Grün: "Hortulus Animæ." (Strassburg, + 1511) 107, 108, 109, 110 + Hans Wächtlin: Title Page. (Strassburg, 1513) 111 + Hans Sebald Beham: "Das Papstthum mit seinen + Gliedern." (Nuremberg, 1526) 113 + Reformation der bayrischen Landrecht. (Munich, + 1518) 117 + Fuchsius: "De Historia Stirpium." (Basel, 1542) 123 + Virgil Solis: Bible. (Frankfort, 1563) 131 + Johann Otmar: "Pomerium de Tempore." (Augsburg, + 1502) 147 + + + FRENCH SCHOOL, XVITH CENTURY. + + Oronce Finé: "Quadrans Astrolabicus." (Paris, 1534) 127 + + + MODERN ILLUSTRATION. + + William Blake: "Songs of Innocence," 1789 137 + William Blake: "Phillip's Pastoral" 139 + Edward Calvert: Original Woodcuts: "The Lady and + the Rooks," "The Return Home," "Chamber Idyll," + "The Flood," "Ideal Pastoral Life," "The Brook," + 1827-29 141, 143 + Dante Gabriel Rossetti: "Tennyson's Poems," 1857 151 + Dante Gabriel Rossetti: "Early Italian Poets," 1861 153 + Albert Moore: "Milton's Ode on the Nativity," 1867 155 + Henry Holiday: Cover for "Aglaia," 1893 157 + Randolph Caldecott: Headpiece to "Bracebridge + Hall," 1877 158 + Kate Greenaway: Title Page of "Mother Goose" 159 + Arthur Hughes: "At the Back of the North Wind," + 1871 160, 161 + Arthur Hughes: "Mercy" ("Good Words for the + Young," 1871) 304 + Robert Bateman: "Art in the House," 1876 162, 163, 164, 165 + Heywood Sumner: Peard's "Stories for Children," + 1896 167, 170 + Charles Keene: "A Good Fight." ("Once a + Week," 1859) 169 + Louis Davis: "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" ("English + Illustrated Magazine," 1892) 171 + Henry Ryland: "Forget not yet" ("English + Illustrated Magazine," 1894) 173 + Frederick Sandys: "The Old Chartist" ("Once a + Week," 1861) 175 + M. J. Lawless: "Dead Love" ("Once a Week," 1862) 177 + Walter Crane: Grimm's "Household Stories," 1882 179 + Walter Crane: "Princess Fiorimonde," 1880 181 + Walter Crane: "The Sirens Three," 1886 183 + Selwyn Image: "Scottish Art Review," 1889 187 + William Morris and Walter Crane: "The Glittering + Plain," 1894 191, 290, 291 + C. M. Gere: "Midsummer" ("English Illustrated + Magazine," 1893) 195 + C. M. Gere: "The Birth of St. George" 197 + Arthur Gaskin: "Hans Andersen," 1893 199 + E. H. New: "Bridge Street, Evesham" 201 + Inigo Thomas: "The Formal Garden," 1892 204, 205 + Henry Payne: "A Book of Carols," 1893 209 + F. Mason: "Huon of Bordeaux," 1895 211 + Gertrude, M. Bradley: "The Cherry Festival," 213 + Mary Newill: Porlock 215 + Celia Levetus: A Bookplate 217 + C. S. Ricketts: "Hero and Leander," 1894 219 + C. S. Ricketts: "Daphnis and Chloe," 1893 223 + C. H. Shannon: "Daphnis and Chloe," 1893 224 + Aubrey Beardsley: "Morte d'Arthur," 1893 225, 226, 227 + Edmund J. Sullivan: "Sartor Resartus," 1898 228 + Patten Wilson: A Pen Drawing 229 + Laurence Housman: "The House of Joy," 1895 231 + L. Fairfax Muckley: "Frangilla" 233 + Charles Robinson: "A Child's Garden of Verse," + 1895 235, 237, 239 + J. D. Batten: "The Arabian Nights," 1893 241, 242 + R. Anning Bell: "A Midsummer Night's Dream," 1895 243 + R. Anning Bell: "Beauty and the Beast," 1894 245 + R. Spence: A Pen Drawing 247 + A. Garth Jones: "A Tournament of Love," 1894 249 + William Strang: "Baron Munchausen," 1895 251, 253 + H. Granville Fell: "Cinderella," 1894 254 + John Duncan: "Apollo's Schooldays" ("The Evergreen," + 1895) 255 + John Duncan: "Pipes of Arcady" ("The Evergreen," + 1895) 257 + Robert Burns: "The Passer-By" ("The Evergreen," + 1895) 259 + Mary Sargant Florence: "The Crystal Ball," 1894 261 + Paul Woodroffe: "Ye Second Book of Nursery + Rhymes," 1896 263 + Paul Woodroffe: "Ye Book of Nursery Rhymes," 1895 265 + M. Rijsselberghe: "Dietrich's Almanack," 1894 266 + Walter Crane: "Spenser's Faerie Queen," 1896 269, 281, 283, 285 + Howard Pyle: "Otto of the Silver Hand" 271, 273 + Will. H. Bradley: Covers for "The Inland Printer," + 1894 274 + Will. H. Bradley: Prospectus for "Bradley His + Book," 1896 275 + Will. H. Bradley: Design for "The Chap Book," + 1895 277 + Alan Wright: Headpieces from "The Story of My + House," 1892 309, 341 + + The untitled tailpieces throughout this volume are from Grimm's + "Household Stories," illustrated by Walter Crane. (Macmillan, 1882.) + + + APPENDIX OF HALF-TONE BLOCKS. + + I. Book of Kells. Irish, VIth century. + + II., III., IV. Arundel Psalter. English, XIVth century. + (Arundel MSS. 83 B. M.) + + V. Epistle of Phillipe de Comines to Richard II. French, + + XIVth century. (Royal MSS. 20 B. vi. B. M.) + + VI., VII. Bedford Hours. (MSS. 18, 850 B. M.) + + VIII. Romance of the Rose. English, late XVth century. + (Hast. MSS. 4, 425.) + + IX. Choir Book. Siena. Italian, XVth century. + + X., XI. Hokusai. Japanese, XIXth century. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER I. OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE ILLUSTRATIVE AND DECORATIVE IMPULSE +FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES; AND OF THE FIRST PERIOD OF DECORATIVELY +ILLUSTRATED BOOKS IN THE ILLUMINATED MSS. OF THE MIDDLE AGES. + + +My subject is a large one, and touches more intimately, perhaps, than +other forms of art, both human thought and history, so that it would be +extremely difficult to treat it exhaustively upon all its sides. I shall +not attempt to deal with it from the historical or antiquarian points of +view more than may be necessary to elucidate the artistic side, on which +I propose chiefly to approach the question of design as applied to +books--or, more strictly, the book page--which I shall hope to illustrate +by reproductions of characteristic examples from different ages and +countries. + +I may, at least, claim to have been occupied, in a practical sense, with +the subject more or less, as part of my work, both as a decorator and +illustrator of books, for the greater part of my life, and such +conclusions as I have arrived at are based upon the results of personal +thought and experience, if they are also naturally coloured and +influenced from the same sources. + +All forms of art are so closely connected with life and thought, so bound +up with human conditions, habits, and customs; so intimately and vividly +do they reflect every phase and change of that unceasing movement--the +ebb and flow of human progress amid the forces of nature we call +history--that it is hardly possible even for the most careless stroller, +taking any of the by-paths, not to be led insensibly to speculate on +their hidden sources, and an origin perhaps common to them all. + +The story of man is fossilized for us, as it were, or rather preserved, +with all its semblance of life and colour, in art and books. The +procession of history reaching far back into the obscurity of the +forgotten or inarticulate past, is reflected, with all its movement, gold +and colour, in the limpid stream of design, that mirror-like, paints each +passing phase for us, and illustrates each act in the drama. In the +language of line and of letters, of symbol and picture, each age writes +its own story and character, as page after page is turned in the book of +time. Here and there the continuity of the chapters is broken, a page is +missing, a passage is obscure; there are breaks and fragments--heroic +torsos and limbs instead of whole figures. But more and more, by patient +research, labour, and comparison, the voids are being filled up, until +some day perhaps there will be no chasm of conjecture in which to plunge, +but the volume of art and human history will be as clear as pen and +pencil can make it, and only left for a present to continue, and a future +to carry to a completion which is yet never complete. + +[Sidenote: ILLUMINATED MSS.] + +If painting is the looking-glass of nations and periods, pictured-books +may be called the hand-glass which still more intimately reflects the +life of different centuries and peoples, in all their minute and +homely detail and quaint domesticity, as well as their playful fancies, +their dreams, and aspirations. While the temples and the tombs of ancient +times tell us of the pomp and splendour and ambition of kings, and the +stories of their conquests and tyrannies, the illuminated MSS. of the +Middle Ages show us, as well as these, the more intimate life of the +people, their sports and their jests, their whim and fancy, their work +and their play, no less than the mystic and religious and ceremonial side +of that life, which was, indeed, an inseparable part of it; the whole +worked in as with a kind of embroidery of the pen and brush, with the +most exquisite sense of decorative beauty. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +LEIDEN CHRISTI. (BAMBERG, ALBRECHT PFISTER, 1470.)] + +Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the course of his enunciation of the philosophy +of evolution, speaks of the book and the newspaper lying on the table of +the modern citizen as connected through a long descent with the +hieroglyphic inscriptions of the ancient Egyptians, and the +picture-writing of still earlier times. We might go (who knows how much +further?) back into prehistoric obscurity to find the first illustrator, +pure and simple, in the hunter of the cave, who recorded the incidents of +his sporting life on the bones of his victims. + +We know that the letters of our alphabet were once pictures, symbols, or +abstract signs of entities and actions, and grew more and more abstract +until they became arbitrary marks--the familiar characters that we know. +Letters formed into words; words increased and multiplied with ideas and +their interchange; ideas and words growing more and more abstract until +the point is reached when the jaded intellect would fain return again to +picture-writing, and welcomes the decorator and the illustrator to +relieve the desert wastes of words marshalled in interminable columns on +the printed page. + +In a journey through a book it is pleasant to reach the oasis of a +picture or an ornament, to sit awhile under the palms, to let our +thoughts unburdened stray, to drink of other intellectual waters, and to +see the ideas we have been pursuing, perchance, reflected in them. Thus +we end as we begin, with images. + +Temples and tombs have been man's biggest books, but with the development +of individual life (as well as religious ritual, and the necessity of +records,) he felt the need of something more familiar, companionable, and +portable, and having, in the course of time, invented the stylus, and the +pen, and tried his hand upon papyrus, palm leaf, and parchment, he wrote +his records or his thoughts, and pictured or symbolized them, at first +upon scrolls and rolls and tablets, or, later, enshrined them in bound +books, with all the beauty that the art of writing could command, +enriched and emphasized with the pictorial and ornamental commentary in +colours and gold. + +As already indicated, it is my purpose to deal with the artistic aspects +of the book page, and therefore we are not now concerned with the various +forms of the book itself, as such, or with the treatment of its exterior +case, cover, or binding. It is the open book I wish to dwell on--the page +itself as a field for the designer and illustrator--a space to be made +beautiful in design. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +FROM BOCCACCIO, DE CLARIS MULIERIBUS. (ULM, JOHANN ZAINER, 1473.)] + +[Sidenote: THE TWO GREAT DIVISIONS.] + +Both decorated and illustrated books may be divided broadly into two +great periods: + +I. The MS., or period before printing. + +II. The period of printed books. + +Both illustrate, however, a long course of evolution, and contain in +themselves, it might be said, a compendium--or condensation--of the +history of contemporary art in its various forms of development. The +first impulse in art seems to answer to the primitive imitative impulse +in children--the desire to embody the familiar forms about them--to +characterize them in line and colour. The salient points of an animal, +for instance, being first emphasized--as in the bone scratchings of the +cave men--so that children's drawings and drawings of primitive peoples +present a certain family likeness, allowing for difference of +environment. They are abstract, and often almost symbolic in their +characterization of form, and it is not difficult to imagine how letters +and written language became naturally evolved through a system of +hieroglyphics, starting from the unsystemized but irrepressible tendency +of the human to record his linear ideas of rhythm on the one hand, or his +impressions of nature on the other. It would seem that the illustrator or +picture writer came first in the order of things, and the book +afterwards--like the system we have heard of under modern editors of +magazines, of the picture being done first and then written up to, or +down to, by the author. + +Side by side with the evolution of letters and calligraphic art went on +the evolution of the graphic power and the artistic sense, developing on +the one hand towards close imitation of nature and dramatic incident, and +on the other towards imaginative beauty, and systematic, organic +ornament, more or less built upon a geometric basis, but ultimately +bursting into a free foliation and flamboyant blossom, akin in inventive +richness and variety to a growth of nature herself. The development of +these two main directions of artistic energy may be followed throughout +the whole world of art, constantly struggling, as it were, for the +ascendancy, now one and now the other being paramount; but the history of +their course, and the effect of their varying influences is particularly +marked in the decoration and illustration of books. + +Although as a rule the decorative sense was dominant throughout the +illuminated books of the Middle Ages, the illustrator, in the form of the +miniaturist, is in evidence, and in some, especially in the later MSS., +finally conquers, or rather absorbs, the decorator. + +There is a MS. in the Egerton collection in the British Museum (No. 943), +"The Divina Commedia" of Dante, with miniatures by Italian artists of the +fourteenth century, which may be taken as an early instance of the +ascendancy of the illustrator, the miniatures being placed somewhat +abruptly on the page, and with unusually little framework or associated +ornament; and although more or less decorative in the effect of their +simple design, and frank and full colour, the main object of their +artists was to illustrate rather than to decorate the text. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +FROM BOCCACCIO, DE CLARIS MULIERIBUS. (ULM, JOHANN ZAINER, 1473.)] + +[Sidenote: THE BOOK OF KELLS.] + +The Celtic genius, under the influence of Christianity, +and as representing the art of the early Christian Western +civilization--exemplified in the remarkable designs in the Book +of Kells--was, on the other hand, strictly ornamental in its +manifestations, suggesting in its richness, and in the intricacy and +ingenuity of its involved patterns, as well as the geometric forms of +many of its units, a relation to certain characteristics of Eastern as +well as primitive Greek art. + +The Book of Kells derives its name from the Columban Monastery of Kells +or Kenlis, originally Cennanas, a place of ancient importance in the +county of Meath, Ireland, and it is supposed to have been the Great +Gospel brought to the Christian settlement by its founder, St. Columba, +and perhaps written by that saint, who died in the year 597. The original +volume is in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. + +In one of the pages of this book is represented the Greek monogram of +Christ, and the whole page is devoted to three words, Christi Autem +Generatio. It is a remarkable instance of an ornamental initial spreading +over an entire page. The effect of the whole as a decoration is perhaps +what might be called heavy, but it is full of marvellous detail and +richness, and highly characteristic of Celtic forms of ornamental design +(_see_ No. 1, Appendix). + +The work of the scribe, as shown in the form of the ordinary letters of +the text, is very fine. They are very firm and strong in character, to +balance the closely knit and firmly built ornamentation of the initial +letters and other ornaments of the pages. We feel that they have a +dignity, a distinction, and a character all their own. + +There is a page in the same book where the symbols of the evangelists are +inclosed in circles, and panelled in a solid framing occupying the whole +page, which suggests Byzantine feeling in design. + +The full pages in the earlier illuminated MSS. were often panelled out in +four or more compartments to hold figures of saints, or emblems, and in +the twelfth and thirteenth centuries such panels generally had small +patterned diapered backgrounds, on dark blue, red, green, or burnished +gold. + +The Anglo-Saxon MSS. show traces of the influence of the traditions of +Classic art drawn through the Byzantine, or from the Roman sources, which +naturally affected the earliest forms of Christian art as we see its +relics in the catacombs. These classical traditions are especially +noticeable in the treatment of the draperies clinging in linear and +elliptical folds to express the limbs. In fact, it might be said that, +spread westward and northward by the Christian colonies, this classical +tradition in figure design lingered on, until its renewal at the dawn of +the Renaissance itself, and the resurrection of classical art in Italy, +which, uniting with a new naturalism, grew to that wonderful development +which has affected the art of Europe ever since. + +The Charter of Foundation of Newminster, at Winchester, by King Edgar, +A.D. 966, written in gold, is another very splendid early example of book +decoration. It has a full-page miniature of the panelled type above +mentioned, and elaborate border in gold and colours by an English artist. +It is in the British Museum, and may be seen open in Case 2 in the King's +Library. + +[Sidenote: ANGLO-SAXON MS.] + +"The Gospels," in Latin. A MS. of the eleventh century, with initials and +borders in gold and colours, by English artists, is another fine specimen +of the early kind. Here the titles of each gospel, boldly inscribed, are +inclosed in a massively designed border, making a series of full title +pages of a dignified type. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +"BUCH VON DEN SIEBEN TODSÜNDEN UND DEN SIEBEN TUGENDEN." (AUGSBURG, +BÄMLER, 1474.)] + +As examples of illustrated books, according to the earlier Mediæval +ideas, we may look at twelfth and thirteenth century "Herbals," wherein +different plants, very full and frank in colour and formal in design, are +figured strictly with a view to the ornamentation of the page. There is a +very fine one, described as written in England in the thirteenth century, +in the British Museum. Decoration and illustration are here one and the +same. + +A magnificent specimen of book decoration of the most splendid kind is +the "Arundel Psalter" (Arundel MS. 83, Brit. Mus.), given by Robert de +Lyle to his daughter Audry, as an inscription in the volume tells us, in +1339. Here scribe, illuminator, and miniaturist are all at their best, +whether one and the same or different persons. It is, moreover, English +work. There is no doubt about the beauty of the designs, and the variety +and richness of the decorative effect. Like all the Psalters, the book +commences with a calendar, and full pages follow, panelled out and filled +in with subjects from the life of Christ. A particularly splendid +full-page is that of the Virgin and Child under a Gothic canopy, with +gold diapered background. There are also very interestingly designed +genealogical trees, and fine arrangements of double columned text-pages +with illuminated ornament (_see_ Nos. 2, 3, and 4, Appendix). + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +SPECULUM HUMANÆ VITÆ. (AUGSBURG, GÜNTHER ZAINER, _circa_ 1475.) + +(_Size of original, 6-5/8 in. × 10-5/16 in._)] + +[Sidenote: XIIITH AND XIVTH CENTURY MSS.] + +The Tenison Psalter (Addit. MS. 24686) is a specimen of English +thirteenth century work. "Probably executed for Alphonso, son of Edmund +I., on his contemplated marriage with Margaret daughter of Florentius, +Count of Holland, which was frustrated by the prince's death on 1st +August, 1224." + +The full-page miniatures arranged in panels--in some instances four on a +page, with alternate burnished gold and dark blue diapered backgrounds +behind the figures, and in others six on a page, the miniature much +smaller, and set in a larger margin of colour, alternate red and +blue--are very full, solid, and rich in colour with burnished gold. The +book is further interesting, as giving excellent and characteristic +instances of another and very different treatment of the page (and one +which appears to have been rather peculiarly English in style), in the +spiny scrolls which, often springing from a large illuminated initial +letter upon the field of the text, spreads upon and down the margin, or +above and below, often holding in its branching curves figures and +animals, which in this MS. are beautifully and finely drawn. Note the one +showing a lady of the time in pursuit of some deer. + +In the thirteenth century books the text is a solid tower or column, from +which excursions can be made by the fancy and invention of the designer, +up and down and above and beneath, upon the ample vellum margins; in some +cases, indeed, additional devices appear to have been added by other and +later hands than those of the original scribe or illuminator. + +There is a very remarkable Apocalypse (Brit. Mus. MSS. 17353; formerly +belonging to the Carthusian house of Vau Dieu between Liège and Aix) by +French artists of the early fourteenth century, which has a series of +very fine imaginative and weird designs (suggestive of Orcagna), highly +decorative in treatment, very full and frank in colour, and firm in +outline. The designs are in oblong panels, inclosed in linear coloured +borders at the head of each page, and occupying about two-thirds of it, +the text being written in double columns beneath each miniature, with +small illuminated initials. The backgrounds of the designs are diapered +on grounds of dark green and red alternately. + +The imaginative force and expression conveyed by these designs--strictly +formal and figurative, and controlled by the ornamental traditions of the +time--is very remarkable. The illustrator and decorator are here still +one. + +Queen Mary's Psalter (Brit. Mus. MS. Royal 2, B. VII.), again, is +interesting as giving instances of a very different and lighter treatment +of figure designs. We find in this MS., together with illuminations in +full colours and burnished gold, a series of pale tinted illustrations in +Bible history drawn with a delicate pen line. + +The method of the illuminators and miniaturists seems always to have been +to draw their figures and ornaments clearly out first with a pen before +colouring. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +BIBLE, HEINRICH QUENTEL. (COLOGNE, 1480.)] + +In the full-coloured miniatures the pen lines are not visible, but in +this MS. they are preserved with the delicate tinted treatment. The +designs I speak of are placed two on a page, occupying it entirely. They +are inclosed in vermilion borders, terminated at each corner with a leaf. +There is a very distinct and graceful feeling about the designs. The same +hand appears to have added on the lower margins of the succeeding text +pages a series of quaint figures--combats of grotesque animals, hunting, +hawking, and fishing scenes, and games and sports, and, finally, +Biblical subjects. Here, again, I think we may detect in the early +illustrators a tendency to escape from the limitations of the book page, +though only a tendency. + +A fine ornamental page combining illumination with miniature is given in +the "Epistle of Philippe de Comines to Richard II." at the end of the +fourteenth century. The figures, interesting historically and as examples +of costume, are relieved upon a diapered ground. The text is in double +columns, with square initials, and the page is lightened by open +foliation branching out upon the margin from the straight spiney border +strips, which on the inner side terminate in a dragon. + +[Sidenote: THE BEDFORD BOOK OF HOURS.] + +As a specimen of early fifteenth century work, both for illuminator, +scribe, and miniaturist, it would be difficult to find a more exquisite +book than the Bedford Hours (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 18850), dated 1422, said +to be the work of French artists, though produced in England. The +kalendar, which occupies the earlier pages, is remarkable for its small +and very brilliant and purely coloured miniatures set like gems in a very +fine, delicate, light, open, leafy border, bright with burnished gold +trefoil leaves, which are characteristic of French illuminated books of +this period (_see_ Nos. 5 and 6, Appendix). + +There is an elaborate full-page miniature containing the Creation and +Fall, which breaks over the margin here and there. The thirteenth and +fourteenth century miniaturists frequently allowed their designs to break +over the framework of their diapered grounds or panels in an effective +way, which pleasantly varied the formality of framed-in subjects upon +the page, especially where a flat margin of colour between lines inclosed +them; and some parts of the groups broke over the inner line while +keeping within the limits of the outer one. Very frequently, as in this +MS., a general plan is followed throughout in the spacing of the pages, +though the borders and miniatures in detail show almost endless +variation. In such splendid works as this we get the complete and +harmonious co-operation and union between the illustrator and the +decorator. The object of each is primarily to beautify his page. The +illuminator makes his borders and initial letters branch and bud, and put +forth leaves and flowers spreading luxuriantly up and down the margin of +his vellum pages (beautiful even as the scribe left them) like a living +growth; while the miniaturist makes the letter itself the shrine of some +delicate saint, or a vision of some act of mercy or martyrdom; while the +careless world plays hide and seek through the labyrinthine borders, as +the seasons follow each other through the kalendar, and the peasant +ploughs, and sows, and reaps, and threshes out the corn, while gay +knights tourney in the lists, or, with ladies in their quaint attire, +follow the spotted deer through the greenwood. + +[Sidenote: MERRY ENGLAND.] + +In these beautiful liturgical books of the Middle Ages, as we see, the +ornamental feeling developed with and combined the illustrative function, +so that almost any illuminated Psalter or Book of Hours will furnish not +only lovely examples of floral decoration in borders and initials of +endless fertility of invention, but also give us pictures of the life and +manners of the times. In those of our own country we can realize how +full of colour, quaint costume, and variety was life when England was +indeed merry, in spite of family feuds and tyrannous lords and kings; +before her industrial transformation and the dispossession of her people; +ere Boards of Works and Poor-law Guardians took the place of her +monasteries and abbeys; before her streams were fouled with sewage, and +her cities blackened with coal smoke--the smoke of the burning sacrificed +to commercial competition and wholesale production for profit by means of +machine power and machine labour; before she became the workshop and +engine-room of the world. + +[Illustration: DUTCH SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +SPIEGEL ONSER BEHOUDENISSE, KUILENBURG. (JAN VELDENER, 1483.)] + +These books glowing with gold and colour tell of days when time was no +object, and the pious artist and scribe could work quietly and lovingly +to make a thing of beauty with no fear of a publisher or a printer before +his eyes, or the demands of world market. + +In the midst of our self-congratulation on the enormous increase of our +resources for the rapid and cheap production of books, and the power of +the printing press, we should do well not to forget that if books of +those benighted centuries of which I have been speaking were few, +comparatively, they were fit, though few--they were things of beauty and +joys for ever to their possessors. A prayer-book was not only a +prayer-book, but a picture-book, a shrine, a little mirror of the world, +a sanctuary in a garden of flowers. One can well understand their +preciousness apart from their religious use, and many have seen strange +eventful histories no doubt. The Earl of Shrewsbury lost his prayer-book +(the Talbot prayer-book) and his life together on the battle-field at +Castillon (about thirty miles from Bordeaux) in 1453. This book, as Mr. +Quaritch states, was carried away by a Breton soldier, and was only +re-discovered in Brittany a few years ago. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +"DEUTSCHE UEBERSETZUNG DES EUNUCHUS DES TERENTIUS." (ULM, DINCKMUT, +1486.)] + +[Sidenote: MISSALS.] + +It has been suggested that the large coloured and illuminated initial +letters in liturgical books had their origin as guides in taking up the +different parts of the service; and, as I learn from Mr. Micklethwaite, +in some of the Missals, where the crucifixion is painted in an +illuminated letter, a simple cross is placed below for the votary to kiss +instead of the picture, as it was found in practice, when only the +picture was there, the tendency was to obliterate it by the recurrence of +this form of devotion. + +As an example of the influence of naturalism which had begun to make +itself felt in art towards the end of the fifteenth century, we may cite +The Romance of the Rose (Harl. MSS. 4425), in the British Museum, which +has two fine full-page miniatures with elaborate borderings, full of +detail and colour, and which are also illustrative of costume (_see_ No. +8, Appendix). The text pages show the effect of double columns with small +highly-finished miniatures (occupying the width of one column) +interspersed. The style of work is akin to that of the celebrated Grimani +Breviary, now in the library of St. Mark's, Venice, the miniatures of +which are said to have been painted by Memling. They are wonderfully rich +in detail, and fine in workmanship, and are quite in the manner of the +Flemish pictures of that period. We feel that the pictorial and +illustrative power is gaining the ascendancy, and in its borders of +highly wrought leaves, flowers, fruit, and insects, given in full relief +with their cast shadows--wonderful as they are in themselves as pieces of +work--it is evident to me, at least, that whatever graphic strength and +richness of chiaroscuro is gained it is at the distinct cost of the +beauty of pure decorative effect upon the page. After the delicate +arabesques of the earlier time, these borders look a little heavy, and +however great their pictorial or imitative merits, they fail to satisfy +the conditions of a page decoration so satisfactorily. + +Perhaps the most sumptuous examples of book decoration of this period are +to be found in Italy, in the celebrated Choir Books in the cathedral of +Siena. They show a rare union of imaginative form, pictorial skill, and +decorative sense in the miniaturist, united with all the Italian richness +and grace in the treatment of early Renaissance ornament, and in its +adaptation to the decoration of the book page (_see_ No. 9, Appendix). + +These miniatures are the work of Girolamo da Cremona, and Liberale da +Verona. At least, these two are described as "the most copious and +indefatigable of the artists employed on the Corali." Payments were made +to them for the work in 1468, and again in 1472-3, which fixes the date. + +[Illustration: FLEMISH SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +"LIFE OF CHRIST." (ANTWERP, GHERAERT LEEU, 1487.) + +(_Original, 7-3/8 in. × 5-1/8 in._)] + +[Sidenote: ILLUMINATED MSS.] + +I am not ignoring the possibility of a certain division of labour in the +illuminated MS. The work of the scribe, the illuminator, and the +miniaturist are distinct enough, while equally important to the result. +Mr. J. W. Bradley, who has compiled a Dictionary of Miniaturists, +speaking of calligrapher, illuminator, and miniaturist, says:--"Each of +these occupations is at times conjoined with either or both of the +others," and when that is so, in giving the craftsman his title, he +decides by the period of his work. For instance, from the seventh to the +tenth centuries he would call him calligrapher; eleventh to fifteenth +centuries, illuminator; fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, miniaturist. +Transcription he puts in another category as the work of the copyist +scribe. But whatever division of labour there may or may not have been, +there was no division in the harmony and unity of the effect. If in some +cases the more purely ornamental parts, such as the floral borders and +initials, were the work of one artist, the text of another, and the +miniatures of another, all I can say is, that each worked together as +brethren in unity, contributing to the beauty of a harmonious and organic +whole; and if such division of labour can be ascertained to have been a +fact, it goes to prove the importance of some co-operation in a work of +art, and its magnificent possibilities. + +The illuminated MS. books have this great distinction and advantage in +respect of harmony of text and decoration, the text of the calligrapher +always harmonizing with the designs of the illuminator, it being in like +manner all through the Middle Ages a thing of growth and development, +acquiring new characteristics and undergoing processes of transformation +less obvious perhaps, but not less actual, than the changes in the style +and characters of the devices and inventions which accompanied it. The +mere fact that every part of the work was due to the hand, that manual +skill and dexterity alone has produced the whole, gives a distinction and +a character to these MS. books which no press could possibly rival. + +The difficulty which besets the modern book decorator, illustrator, or +designer of printers' ornaments, of getting type which will harmonize +properly with his designs, did not exist with the mediæval illuminator, +who must always have been sure of balancing his designs by a body of text +not only beautiful in the form of its individual letters, but beautiful +and rich in the effect of its mass on the page, which was only enhanced +when the initials were relieved with colour on gold, or beautiful pen +work which grew out of them like the mistletoe from the solid oak stem. + +The very pitch of perfection which penmanship, or the art of the +calligrapher had reached in the fifteenth century, the calculated +regularity and "purgation of superfluities" in the form of the letters, +the squareness of their mass in the words, and approximation in length +and height, seem to suggest and naturally lead up to the idea of the +movable type and the printed page. + +Before, however, turning the next page of our subject, let us take one +more general and rapid glance at the MS. books from the point of view of +design. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +"CHRONICA HUNGARIÆ." (AUGSBURG, RATDOLT, 1488.)] + +While examples of the two fields into which art may be said to be always +more or less divided--the imitative and the inventive, or the +illustrative and the decorative--are not altogether absent in the books +of the Middle Ages, the main tendency and prevailing spirit is decidedly +on the inventive and decorative side, more especially in the work of the +illuminators from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, and yet this +inventive and decorative spirit is often allied with a dramatic and +poetic feeling, as well as a sense of humour. We see how full of life is +the ornament of the illuminator, how figures, birds, animals, and insects +fill his arabesques, how he is often decorator, illustrator, and +pictorial commentator in one. + +[Illustration: FRENCH SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +INITIAL FROM "LA MER DES HISTOIRES." (PARIS, PIERRE LE ROUGE, 1488.)] + +[Sidenote: THE BEAUTIFUL PAGE.] + +Even apart from his enrichments, it is evident that the page was regarded +by the calligrapher as a space to be decorated--that it should at least, +regarded solely as a page of text, be a page of beautiful writing, the +mass carefully placed upon the vellum, so as to afford convenient and +ample margin, especially beneath. The page of a book, in fact, may be +regarded as a flat panel which may be variously spaced out. The +calligrapher, the illuminator, and the miniaturist are the architects who +planned out their vellum grounds and built beautiful structures of line +and colour upon them for thought and fancy to dwell in. Sometimes the +text is arranged in a single column, as generally in the earlier MSS.; +sometimes in double, as generally in the Gothic and later MSS., and these +square and oblong panels of close text are relieved by large and small +initial letters sparkling in gold and colour, inclosed in their own +framework, or escaping from it in free and varied branch work and +foliation upon the margin, and set with miniatures like gems, as in the +Bedford Hours, the larger initials increasing to such proportions as to +inclose a more important miniature--a subject-picture in short--a book +illustration in the fullest sense, yet strictly a part of a general +scheme of the ornamentation of the page. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +"HORTUS SANITATIS." (MAINZ, JACOB MEIDENBACH, 1491.)] + +[Sidenote: THE MINIATURISTS.] + +Floral borders, which in some instances spread freely around the text and +fill the margins, unconfined though not uninfluenced by rectangular lines +or limits from a light and open, yet rich and delicate tracery of leaves +and fanciful blossoms (as in the Bedford Hours); are in others framed in +with firm lines (Tenison Psalter, p. 11); and in later fifteenth century +MSS. with gold lines and mouldings, as the treatment of the page becomes +more pictorial and solid in colour and relief. Sometimes the borders form +a distinct framework, inclosing the text and dividing its columns, as in +"The Book of Hours of René of Anjou" (Egerton MS. 1070), and the +same design is sometimes repeated differently coloured. Gradually the +miniaturist--the picture painter--although at first almost as formally +decorative as the illuminator--asserts his independence, and influences +the treatment of the border, which becomes a miniature also, as in the +Grimani Breviary, the Romance of the Rose, and the Choir Books of Siena, +until at last the miniature or the picture is in danger of being more +thought of than the book, and we get books of framed pictures instead of +pictured or decorated books. In the Grimani Breviary the miniature +frequently occupies the whole page with a single subject-picture; or the +miniature is superimposed upon a pictured border, which, strengthened by +rigid architectural lines and tabernacle work, form a rich frame. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +"CHRONEKEN DER SASSEN." (MAINZ, SCHÖFFER, 1492.)] + +All these varieties we have been examining are, however, interesting and +beautiful in their own way in their results. In considering any form of +art of a period which shows active traditions, real life and movement, +natural growth and development, we are fascinated by its organic quality, +and though we may detect the absorption or adaptation of new elements and +new influences from time to time leading to changes of style and +structure of design, as well as changed temper and feeling, as long as +this natural evolution continues, each variety has its own charm and its +own compensations; while we may have our preferences as to which +approaches most nearly to the ideal of perfect adaptability, and, +therefore, of decorative beauty. + +In the progressive unfolding which characterizes a living style, all its +stages must be interesting and possess their own significance, since all +fall into their places in the great and golden record of the history of +art itself. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER II. OF THE TRANSITION, AND OF THE SECOND PERIOD OF DECORATIVELY +ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, FROM THE INVENTION OF PRINTING IN THE FIFTEENTH +CENTURY ONWARDS. + + +We have seen to what a pitch of perfection and magnificence the +decoration and illustration of books attained during the Middle Ages, and +the splendid results to which art in the three distinct +forms--calligraphy, illumination, and miniature--contributed. We have +traced a gradual progression and evolution of style through the period of +MS. books, both in the development of writing and ornament. We have noted +how the former became more and more regular and compact in its mass on +the page, and how in the latter the illustrative or pictorial size grew +more and more important, until at the close of the fifteenth century we +had large and elaborately drawn and naturalistic pictures framed in the +initial letters, as in the Choir Books of Siena, or occupying the whole +page with a single subject, as in the Grimani Breviary. The tree of +design, springing from small and obscure germs, sends up a strong stem, +branches and buds in the favourable sun, and finally breaks into a +beautiful free efflorescence and fruitage. Then we mark a fresh change. +The autumn comes after the summertide, winter follows autumn, till the +new life, ever ready to spring from the husk of the old, puts forth its +leaves, until by almost imperceptible degrees and changes, and the +silent growth of new forces, the face of the world is changed for us. + +So it was with the change that came upon European art towards the end of +the fifteenth century, the result of many causes working together; but as +regards art as applied to books, the greatest of these was of course the +invention and application of printing. Like most great movements in art +or life, it had an obscure beginning. Its parentage might be sought in +the woodcuts of the earlier part of the fifteenth century applied to the +printing of cards. The immediate forerunners of printed books were the +block books. Characteristic specimens of the quaint works may be seen +displayed in the King's Library, British Museum. The art of these block +books is quite rude and primitive, and, contrasted with the +highly-finished work of the illuminated MS. of the same time, might +almost belong to another period. These are the first tottering steps of +the infant craft; the first faint utterances, soon to grow into strong, +clear, and perfect speech, to rule the world of books and men. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +FROM THE LÜBECK BIBLE. (LÜBECK, STEFFEN ARNDES, 1494.)] + +[Sidenote: THE EARLIEST PRINTERS.] + +Germany had not taken any especial or distinguished part in the +production of MSS. remarkable for artistic beauty or original treatment; +but her time was to come, and now, in the use of an artistic application +of the invention of printing, and the new era of book decoration and +illustration, she at once took the lead. Seeing that the invention itself +is ascribed to one of her own sons, it seems appropriate enough, and +natural that printing should grow to quick perfection in the land of +its birth; so that we find some of the earliest and greatest triumphs of +the Press coming from German printers, such as Gutenberg, Fust, and +Schoeffer, not to speak yet of the wonderful fertility of decorative +invention, graphic force, and dramatic power of German designers, +culminating in the supreme genius of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein. + +The prosperous German towns, Cologne, Mainz, Frankfort, Strassburg, +Augsburg, Bamberg, Halberstadt, Nuremberg, and Ulm, all became famous in +the history of printing, and each had its school of designers in black +and white, its distinctive style in book-decoration and printing. + +Italy, France, Switzerland, and England, however, all had their share, +and a glorious share, in the triumph of printing in its early days. The +presses of Venice, of Florence, and of Rome and Naples, of Paris, and of +Basel, and of our own William Caxton, at Westminster, must always be +looked upon as in the van of the early progress of the art, and the +richness of the decorative invention and beauty, in the case of the +woodcut adornments used by the printers of Venice and Florence +especially, gives them in the last years of the fifteenth century and the +early years of the sixteenth a particular distinction. + +1454 appears to be the earliest definite date that can be fixed on to +mark the earliest use of printing. In that year, the Mainz "Indulgences" +were in circulation, but the following year is more important, as to it +is assigned the issue, from the press of Gutenberg and Fust at Mainz, of +the famous Mazarin Bible, a copy of which is in the British Museum. Mr. +Bullen says, "The copy which first attracted notice in modern times was +discovered in the library of Cardinal Mazarin"--hence the name. + +It is noticeable as showing how transitional was the change in the +treatment of the page. The scribe has been supplanted--the marshalled +legions of printed letters have invaded his territory and driven him from +his occupation; but the margin is still left for the illuminator to +spread his coloured borders upon, and the initial letters wait for the +touch of colour from his hand. The early printers evidently regarded +their art as providing a substitute for the MS. book. They aimed at doing +the work of the scribe and doing it better and more expeditiously. No +idea of a new departure in effect seems to have been entertained at +first, to judge from such specimens as these. + +[Illustration: FRENCH SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +FROM PARIS ET VIENNE. (PARIS, JEHAN TREPEREL, C. 1495.)] + +[Sidenote: THE MAINZ PSALTER.] + +Another early printed book is the Mainz Psalter. It is printed on vellum, +and comes from the press of Fust and Schoeffer in 1457. It is +remarkable not only as the first printed psalter and as the first book +printed with a date, but also as being the first example of printing in +colours. The initial letter B is the result of this method, and it +affords a wonderful instance of true register. The blue of the letter +fitted cleanly into the red of the surrounding ornament with a precision +which puzzles our modern printers, and it is difficult to understand how +such perfection could have been attained. Mr. Emery Walker has suggested +to me that the blue letter itself might have been cut out, inked, and +dropped in from the back of the red block when that was in the press, and +so the two colours printed together. If this could be done with +sufficient precision, it would certainly account for the exactitude of +the register. Apart from this interesting technical question, however, +the page is a very beautiful one, and the initial, with its solid shape +of figured blue, inclosed in the delicate red pen-like tracery climbing +up and down the margin, is a charming piece of page decoration. The +original may be seen in one of the cases in the King's Library, British +Museum. We have here an instance of the printer aiming at directly +imitating and supplanting by his craft the art of the calligrapher and +illuminator, and with such a beauty and perfection of workmanship as must +have astonished them and given them far more reason to regard the printer +as a dangerous rival than had (as it is said) the early wood engravers, +who were unwilling to help the printer by their art for fear his craft +would injure their own, which seems somewhat extraordinary considering +how closely allied both wood engraver and printer have been ever since. +The example of the Mainz Psalter does not seem to have been much +followed, and as regards the application of colour, it was as a rule left +as a matter of course to be added by the miniaturist, who evidently +declined as an artist after he had got into the way of having his designs +in outline provided for him ready-made by the printer; or, rather, +perhaps the accomplished miniature printer, having carried his art as +applied to books about as far as it would go, became absorbed as a +painter of independent pictures, and the printing of books fell into +inferior hands. There can be no doubt that the devices and decorations of +the early printers were intended to be coloured in emulation of +illuminated and miniatured MSS., and were regarded, in fact, as the pen +outlines of the illuminator, only complete when filled in with colours +and gold. It appears to have been only by degrees that the rich and +vigorous lines of the woodcut, as well as the black and white effect, +became admired for their own sake--so slowly moves the world! + +[Sidenote: GERMAN ILLUSTRATION.] + +A good idea of the general character of the development of the wood (and +metal) cut in book and illustration and decoration in Germany, from 1470 +(Leiden Christi, Pfister, Bamberg, 1470) to (Virgil Solis' Bible) 1563, +may be gained from a study of the series of reproductions given in this +and the preceding chapter, in chronological order, with the names, dates, +and places, as well as the particular characteristics of the style of the +different designers and printers. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +"DAS BUCH UND LEBEN DES HOCHBERÜHMTEN FABELDICHTERS ÆSOPI." (ULM, +1498.[1])] + + [1] This is the date of the copy from which the illustration is + reproduced. The first edition of the book was, however, probably + issued about 1480. + +[Sidenote: ITALIAN ILLUSTRATIONS.] + +The same may be said in regard to the Italian series which follows, and +those from Basel and Paris. + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +DE CLARIS MULIERIBUS. (FERRARA, 1497.)] + +Perhaps the most interesting examples of the use of early printing as a +substitute for illumination and miniature are to be found in the Books of +Hours which were produced at Paris in the later years of the fifteenth +and the early years of the sixteenth centuries (1487-1519 about) by +Vérard, Du Pré, Philip Pigouchet, Kerver, and Hardouyn. + +Specimens of these books may be seen in the British Museum, and at the +Art Library at South Kensington Museum. The originals are mostly printed +on vellum. + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +TUPPO'S ÆSOP. (NAPLES, 1485.)] + +[Sidenote: BORDERS AND ORNAMENTS.] + +The effect of the richly designed borders on black dotted grounds is +very pleasant, but these books seem to have been intended to be +illuminated and coloured. We find in some copies that the full-page +printed pictures are coloured, being worked up as miniatures, and the +semi-architectural borderings with Renaissance mouldings and details are +gilded flat, and treated as the frame of the picture. There is one which +has the mark of the printer Gillet Hardouyn (G. H. on the shield), on the +front page. In another copy (1515) this is painted and the framework +gilded; the subject is Nessus the Centaur carrying off Deianira, the +wife of Hercules; a sign of the tendency to revive classical mythology +which had set in, in this case, in curious association with a Christian +service-book. It is noticeable how soon the facility for repetition by +the press was taken advantage of, and a design, especially if on +ornamental borderings of a page, often repeated several times throughout +a book. These borderings and ornaments being generally in separate +blocks as to headings, side panels, and tail-pieces, could easily be +shifted and a certain variety obtained by being differently made up. Here +we may see commercialism creeping in. Considerations of profit and +economy no doubt have their effect, and mechanical invention comes in to +cheapen not only labour, but artistic invention also. + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +P. CREMONESE'S "DANTE." (VENICE, NOVEMBER, 1491.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +THE DISCOVERY OF THE INDIES. (FLORENCE, 1493.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +FIOR DI VIRTÙ. 1498 (FLORENCE, 1493?)] + +[Sidenote: THE RENAISSANCE.] + +It took some time, however, to turn the printer into the manufacturer or +tradesman pure and simple. Nothing is more striking than the high +artistic character of the early printed books. The invention of printing, +coming as it did when the illuminated MSS. had reached the period of its +greatest glory and perfection, with the artistic traditions of fifteen +centuries poured, as it were, into its lap, filling its founts with +beautiful lettering, and guiding the pencil of its designers with a still +unbroken sense of fitness and perfect adaptability; while as yet the +influence of the revival of classic learning and mythology was only felt +as the stirring and stimulating breath of new awakening spring--the aroma +of spice-laden winds from unknown shores of romance--or as the mystery +and wonder of discovery, standing on the brink of a half-disclosed new +world, and fired with the thought of its possibilities-- + + "Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes + He stared at the Pacific." + +Had the discovery of printing occurred two or three centuries earlier, it +would have been curious to see the results. But after all, an invention +never lives until the world is ready to adopt it. It is impossible to say +how many inventions are new inventions. "Ask and ye shall have," or the +practical application of it, is the history of civilization. Necessity, +the stern mother, compels her children to provide for their own physical +and intellectual necessities, and in due time the hour and the man (with +his invention) arrives. + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +STEPHANO CAESENATE PEREGRINI INVENTORE (S.C. P.I.). (VENICE, DE +GREGORIIS, 1498.)] + +Classical mythology and Gothic mysticism and romance met together in the +art and books of the early Renaissance. Ascetic aspiration strives with +frank paganism and nature worship. The gods of ancient Greece and Rome +seemed to awake after an enchanted sleep of ages, and reappear again unto +men. + +Italy, having hardly herself ever broken with the ancient traditions of +Classical art and religion, became the focus of the new light, and her +independent republics, such as Florence and Venice, the centres of +wealth, culture, refinement, and artistic invention. Turkish conquest, +too, had its effect on the development of the new movement by driving +Greek scholars and the knowledge of the classical writers of antiquity +Westward. These were all materials for an exceptional development of art, +and, above all, of the art of the printer, and the decoration and +illustration of books. + +The name of Aldus, of Venice, is famous among those of the early +Renaissance printers. Perhaps the most remarkable book, from this or any +press, for the beauty of its decorative illustration, is the _Poliphili +Hypnerotomachia_--"The Dream of Poliphilus"--printed in 1499, an +allegorical romance of love in the manner of those days. The authorship +of the design has been the subject of much speculation. I believe they +were attributed at one time to Mantegna, and they have also been ascribed +to one of the Bellini. The style of the designer, the quality of the +outline, the simplicity yet richness of the designs, their poetic +feeling, the mysticism of some, and frank paganism of others, places the +series quite by themselves. The first edition is now very difficult to +obtain, and might cost something like 100 guineas. + +My illustrations are taken from the copy in the Art Library at South +Kensington Museum, and are from negatives taken by Mr. Griggs, for the +Science and Art Department, who have issued a set of reproductions in +photo-lithography, by him, of the whole of the woodcuts in the volume, +of the original size, at the price, I believe, of 5_s._ 6_d._ Here +is an instance of what photographic reproduction can do for us--when +originals of great works are costly or unattainable we can get +reproductions for a few shillings, for all practical purposes as good +for study as the originals themselves. If we cannot, in this age, +produce great originals, we can at least reproduce them--perhaps the +next best thing. + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +POLIPHILUS. (VENICE, ALDUS, 1499.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. =TERTIVS= XVTH CENTURY. + +POLIPHILUS. (VENICE, ALDUS, 1499.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +ALESSANDRO MINUZIANO. (MILAN, DESIGNER UNKNOWN, 1503.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +SCHOOL OF GIOV. BELLINI. + +(VENICE, GEORGIUS DE RUSCONIBUS, 1506.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +THE DESCENT OF MINERVA, FROM THE QUATRIREGIO. (FLORENCE, 1508.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +AULUS GELLIUS, PRINTED BY GIOV. TACUINO. (VENICE, 1509.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +QUINTILIAN. (VENICE, GEORGIUS DE RUSCONIBUS, 1512.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +OTTAVIANO DEI PETRUCCI. (FOSSOMBRONE, 1513.)] + +There is a French edition of Poliphilus printed at Paris, by Kerver, in +1561,[2] which has a frontispiece designed by Jean Cousin. The +illustrations, too, have all been redrawn, and are treated in quite a +different manner from the Venetian originals--but they have a character +of their own, though of a later, florid, and more self-conscious type, as +might be expected from Paris in the latter half of the sixteenth century. +The initial letters of a series of chapters in the book spell, if read +consecutively, Francisco Columna (F.R.A.N.C.I.S.C.O. C.O.L.V.M.N.A.)--the +name of the writer of the romance. + + [2] The first French edition is dated 1546. + +Whether such designs as these were intended to be coloured is doubtful. +They are very satisfactory as they are in outline, and want nothing else. +The book may be considered as an illustrated one, drawings of monuments, +fountains, standards, emblems, and devices are placed here and there in +the text, but they are so charmingly designed and drawn that the effect +is decorative, and being in open line the mechanical conditions are +perfectly fulfilled of surface printing with the type. + +[Sidenote: CAXTON.] + +After the beautiful productions of the German, Italian (of which some +reproductions are given here), and French printers, our own William +Caxton's first books seem rather rough, though not without character, +and, at any rate, picturesqueness, if they cannot be quoted as very +accomplished examples of the printer's art. The first book printed in +England is said to be Caxton's "Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers," +printed by him at Westminster in 1477. + +A noticeable characteristic of the early printed books is the development +of the title page. Whereas the MSS. generally did without one, with the +advent of printing the title page became more and more important, and +even if there were no other illustrations or ornaments in a book, there +was often a woodcut title. Such examples as some here given convey a good +idea of what charming decorative feeling these title page designs +sometimes displayed, and those greatest of designers and book decorators +and illustrators, Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein, showed their power and +decorative skill, and sense of the resources of the woodcut, in the +designs made by them for various title pages. + +The noble designs of the master craftsman of Nuremberg, Albrecht Dürer, +are well known. His extraordinary vigour of drawing, and sense of its +resources as applied to the woodcut, made him a great force in the +decoration and illustration of books, and many are the splendid designs +from his hand. Three designs from the fine series of the Little Passion +and two of his title pages are given, which show him on the strictly +decorative side. The title dated 1523 may be compared with +that of Oronce Finé (Paris, 1534). There appears to have been a return to +this convoluted knotted kind of ornament at this period. It appears in +Italian MSS. earlier, and may have been derived from Byzantine sources. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +ALBRECHT DÜRER, "KLEINE PASSION." (NUREMBERG, 1512.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. ALBRECHT DÜRER, "KLEINE +PASSION." (NUREMBERG, 1512.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +ALBRECHT DÜRER, "KLEINE PASSION." (NUREMBERG, 1512.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +ALBRECHT DÜRER. (NUREMBERG, HEINRICH STEYNER, 1513.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +DESIGNED BY ALBRECHT DÜRER. (NUREMBERG, 1523.)] + +[Sidenote: HANS HOLBEIN.] + +There is a fine title page designed by Holbein, printed by Petri, at +Basle, in 1524. It was originally designed and used for an edition of the +New Testament, printed by the same Adam Petri in 1523. At the four +corners are the symbols of the Evangelists; the arms of the city of Basle +are in the centre of the upper border, and the printer's device occupies +a corresponding space below. Figures of SS. Peter and Paul are in the +niches at each side. But the work always most associated with the name of +Holbein is the remarkable little book containing the series of designs +known as the "Dance of Death," the first edition of which was printed at +Lyons in 1538. The two designs here given are printed from the blocks cut +by Bonner and Byfield (1833). These cuts are only about 2-1/2 by 2 +inches, and yet an extraordinary amount of invention, graphic power, +dramatic and tragic force, and grim and satiric humour, is compressed +into them. They stand quite alone in the history of art, and give a +wonderfully interesting and complete series of illustrations of the life +of the sixteenth century. Holbein is supposed to have painted this "Dance +of Death" in the palace of Henry VIII., erected by Cardinal Wolsey at +Whitehall, life size; but this was destroyed in the fire which consumed +nearly the whole of that palace in 1697. + +[Illustration: GER. SCHOOL. XVITH CENT. + +HOLBEIN. "DANCE OF DEATH." + +THE NUN. (LYONS, 1538.)] + +The Bible cuts of Hans Holbein are also a very fine series, and +remarkable for their breadth and simplicity of line, as well as +decorative effect on the page. + +[Illustration: GER. SCHOOL. XVITH CENT. + +HOLBEIN, "DANCE OF DEATH." + +THE PLOUGHMAN. (LYONS, 1538.)] + +It is interesting to note that Holbein's father and grandfather both +practised engraving and painting at Augsburg, while his brother Ambrose +was also a fertile book illustrator. Hans Holbein the elder married a +daughter of the elder Burgmair, father of the famous Hans Burgmair, +examples of whose fine and vigorous style of drawing are given. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS HOLBEIN. (BASEL, ADAM PETRI, _circa_ 1524.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS HOLBEIN. HIST. VET. TEST. ICONIBUS ILLUSTRATA.] + +[Sidenote: THE GERMAN MASTERS.] + +[Sidenote: THE GERMAN TRADITION.] + +Albrecht Dürer and Holbein, indeed, seem to express and to sum up all the +vigour and power of design of that very vigorous and fruitful time of the +German Renaissance. They had able contemporaries, of course, among whom +are distinguished, Lucas Cranach (the elder) born 1470, and Hans +Burgmair, already named, who was associated with Dürer in the work of the +celebrated series of woodcuts, "The Triumphs of Maximilian;" one of the +fine series of "Der Weiss König," a noble title page, and a vigorous +drawing of peasants at work in a field, here represent him. Other notable +designers were Hans Sebald Beham, Hans Baldung Grün, Hans Wächtlin, Jost +Amman, and others, who carried on the German style or tradition in design +to the end of the sixteenth century. This tradition of convention was +technically really the mode of expression best fitted to the conditions +of the woodcut and the press, under which were evolved the vigorous pen +line characteristic of the German masters. It was a living condition in +which each could work freely, bringing in his own fresh observation and +individual feeling, while remaining in collective harmony. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS HOLBEIN. BIBLE.] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +AMBROSE HOLBEIN. "DAS GANTZE NEUE TESTAMENT," ETC. + +(BASEL, 1523.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS BURGMAIR. "DER WEISS KÖNIG" (1512-14).] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS BURGMAIR. (AUGSBURG, 1516.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS BURGMAIR. "HISTORIA MUNDI NATURALIS," PLINY. (FRANKFORT, 1582.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS BURGMAIR. "DIE MEERFAHRT ZU VILN ONERKANNTEN INSELN UND +KUNIGREICHEN." + +(AUGSBURG, 1509.)] + +[Sidenote: PRINTERS' MARKS] + +[Sidenote: EMBLEM BOOKS.] + +The various marks adopted by the printers themselves are often decorative +devices of great interest and beauty. The French printers, +Gillett Hardouyn and Thielman Kerver, for instance, had +charming devices with which they generally occupied the front page of +their Books of Hours. Others were pictorial puns and embodied the name of +the printer under some figure, such as that of Petri of Basle, who +adopted a device of a stone, which the flames and the hammer stroke +failed to destroy; or the mark of Philip le Noir--a black shield with a +negro crest and supporter; or the palm tree of Palma Isingrin. Others +were purely emblematic and heraldic, such as the dolphin twined round the +anchor, of Aldus, with the motto "_Propera tarde_"--"hasten slowly." +This, and another device of a crab holding a butterfly by its wings, with +the same signification, are both borrowed from the favourite devices of +two of the early emperors of Rome--Augustus and Titus. This symbolic, +emblematic, allegorizing tendency which had been more or less +characteristic of both art and literature, in various degrees, from the +most ancient times, became more systematically cultivated, and +collections of emblems began to appear in book form in the sixteenth +century. The earliest being that of Alciati, the first edition of whose +book appeared in 1522, edition after edition following each other from +various printers and places from that date to 1621, with ever-increasing +additions, and being translated into French, German, and Italian. Mr. +Henry Green, the author of "Shakespeare and the Emblem Writers" (written +to prove Shakespeare's acquaintance with the emblem books, and constant +allusions to emblems), said of Alciati's book that "it established, if +it did not introduce, a new style for emblem literature--the classical, +in the place of the simply grotesque and humorous, or of the heraldic and +mystic." + +[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN. "HORTULUS ANIMÆ." + +(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)] + +[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN. "HORTULUS ANIMÆ." + +(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)] + +[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN. "HORTULUS ANIMÆ." + +(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)] + +[Illustration: HANS BALDUNG GRÜN. + +"HORTULUS ANIMÆ." + +(STRASSBURG, MARTIN FLACH, 1511.)] + +There is an edition of Alciati printed at Lyons (Bonhomme), 1551, a +reprint of which was published by the Holbein Society in 1881. The figure +designs and the square woodcut subjects are supposed to be the work of +Solomon Bernard--called the little Bernard--born at Lyons in 1522. These +are surrounded by elaborate and rather heavy decorative borders, in the +style of the later Renaissance, by another hand, some of them bearing the +monogram P.V., which has been explained to mean either Pierino del Vaga, +the painter (a pupil of Raphael's), or Petro de Vingles, a printer of +Lyons. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS WÄCHTLIN. (STRASSBURG, MATHIAS SCHÜRER, 1513.)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +HANS SEBALD BEHAM. "DAS PAPSTTHUM MIT SEINEN GLIEDERN." + +(NUREMBERG, HANS WANDEREISEN, 1526.)] + +These borders, as we learn from a preface to one of the editions ("Ad +Lectorem"--Roville's Latin text of the emblems), were intended as +patterns for various craftsmen. "For I say this is their use, that as +often as any one may wish to assign fulness to empty things, ornament to +base things, speech to dumb things, and reason to senseless things, +he may, from a little book of emblems, as from an excellently +well-prepared hand-book, have what he may be able to impress on the walls +of houses, on windows of glass, on tapestry, on hangings, on tablets, +vases, ensigns, seals, garments, the table, the couch, the arms, the +sword, and lastly, furniture of every kind." + +[Sidenote: EMBLEMS.] + +An emblem has been defined ("Cotgrave's Dictionary," Art. "Emblema") as +"a picture and short posie, expressing some particular conceit;" and by +Francis Quarles as "but a silent parable;" and Bacon, in his "Advancement +of Learning," says:--"Embleme deduceth conceptions intellectuall to +images sensible, and that which is sensible more fully strikes the +memory, and is more easily imprinted than that which is intellectual." + +[Sidenote: THE COPPER-PLATE.] + +All was fish that fell into the net of the emblem writer or deviser; +hieroglyphic, heraldry, fable, mythology, the ancient Egyptians, Homer, +ancient Greece and Rome, Christianity, or pagan philosophy, all in their +turn served + + "To point a moral and adorn a tale." + +As to the artistic quality of the designs which are found in these books, +they are of very various quality, those of the earlier sixteenth century +with woodcuts being naturally the best and most vigorous, corresponding +in character to the qualities of the contemporary design. Holbein's +"Dance of Death," or rather "Images and Storied Aspects of Death," its +true title, might be called an emblem book, but very few can approach it +in artistic quality. Some of the devices in early editions of the emblem +books of Giovio, Witney, and even the much later Quarles have a certain +quaintness; but though such books necessarily depended on their +illustrations, the moral and philosophic, or epigrammatic burden proved +in the end more than the design could carry, when the impulse which +characterized the early Renaissance had declined, and design, as applied +to books, became smothered with classical affectation and pomposity, and +the clear and vigorous woodcut was supplanted by the doubtful advantage +of the copper-plate. The introduction of the use of the copper-plate +marks a new era in book illustration, but as regards their decoration, +one of distinct decline. While the surface-printed block, whether woodcut +or metal engraving (by which method many of the early book illustrations +were rendered) accorded well with the conditions of the letter-press +printing, as they were set up with the type and printed by the same +pressure in the same press. With copper-plate quite other conditions came +in, as the paper has to be pressed into the etched or engraved lines of +the plate, instead of being impressed by the lines in relief of the wood +or the metal. Thus, with the use of copper-plate illustrations in printed +books, that mechanical relation which exists between a surface-printed +block and the letter-press was at once broken, as a different method of +printing had to be used. The apparent, but often specious, refinement of +the copper-plate did not necessarily mean extra power or refinement of +draughtsmanship or design, but merely thinner lines, and these were +often attained at the cost of richness and vigour, as well as +decorative effect. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +REFORMATION DER BA[:Y]RISCHEN LANDRECHT. (MUNICH, 1518.)] + +The first book illustrated with copper-plate engravings, however, bears +an early date--1477. ["El Monte Sancto di Dio." Niccolo di Lorenzo, +Florence]. In this case it was reserved for the full page pictures. The +method does not seem to have commended itself much to the book designers, +and did not come into general use until the end of the sixteenth century, +with the decline of design. + +The encyclopædic books of this period--the curious compendiums of the +knowledge of those days--were full of entertaining woodcuts, diagrams, +and devices, and the various treatises on grammar, arithmetic, geometry, +physiology, anatomy, astronomy, geography, were made attractive by them, +each section preceded perhaps by an allegorical figure of the art or +science discoursed of in the costume of a grand dame of the period. The +herbals and treatises on animals were often filled with fine floral +designs and vigorous, if sometimes half-mythical, representations of +animals. + +[Sidenote: FUCHSIUS.] + +[Sidenote: HERBALS.] + +There are fine examples of plant drawing in a beautiful herbal +("Fuchsius: De Historia Stirpium"; Basle, Isingrin, 1542). They are not +only faithful and characteristic as drawings of the plants themselves, +but are beautiful as decorative designs, being drawn in a fine free +style, and with a delicate sense of line, and well thrown upon the page. +At the beginning of the book is a woodcut portrait of the author, Leonard +Fuchs--possibly the fuchsia may have been named after him--and at the end +is another woodcut giving the portrait of the artist, the designer of +the flowers, and the draughtsman on wood and the formschneider, or +engraver on wood, beneath, who appears to be fully conscious of his own +importance. The first two are busy at work, and it will be noticed the +artist is drawing from the flower itself with the point of a brush, the +brush being fixed in a quill in the manner of our water-colour brushes. +The draughtsman holds the design or paper while he copies it upon the +block. The portraits are vigorously drawn in a style suggestive of Hans +Burgmair. Good examples of plant drawing which is united with design are +also to be found in Matthiolus (Venice, 1583), and in a Kreuterbuch +(Strasburg, 1551), and in Gerard's Herbal, of which there are several +editions. + +As examples of design in animals, there are some vigorous woodcuts in a +"History of Quadrupeds," by Conrad Gesner, printed by Froschover, of +Zurich, in 1554. The porcupine is as like a porcupine as need be, and +there can be no mistake about his quills. The drawings of birds are +excellent, and one of a crane (as I ought, perhaps, more particularly to +know) is very characteristic. + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +(TOSCULANO, ALEX. PAGANINI, 1520.) + +(_Comp. Dürer's title page, Nuremberg, 1523._)] + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +"FUCHSIUS: DE HISTORIA STIRPIUM." (BASLE, ISINGRIN, 1542.)] + +[Sidenote: THE NEW SPIRIT.] + +But we have passed the Rubicon--the middle of the sixteenth century. +Ripening so rapidly, and blossoming into such excellence and perfection +as did the art of the printer, and design as applied to the printed page, +through the woodcut and the press, their artistic character and beauty +was somewhat short-lived. Up to about this date (1554 was the date of our +last example), as we have seen, to judge only from the comparatively few +specimens given here, what beautiful books were printed, remarkable +both for their decorative and illustrative value, and often uniting these +two functions in perfect harmony; but after the middle of the sixteenth +century both vigour and beauty in design generally may be said to have +declined. Whether the world had begun to be interested in other +things--and we know the great discovery of Columbus had made it +practically larger--whether discovery, conquest, and commerce more and +more filled the view of foremost spirits, and art was only valued as it +illustrated or contributed to the knowledge of or furtherance of these; +whether the Reformation or the spirit of Protestantism, turning men's +minds from outward to inward things, and in its revolt against the half +paganized Catholic Church--involving a certain ascetic scorn and contempt +for any form of art which did not serve a direct moral purpose, and which +appealed to the senses rather than to the emotions or the +intellect--practically discouraged it altogether. Whether that new +impulse given to the imagination by the influence of the revival of +Classical learning, poetry, and antique art, had become jaded, and, while +breaking with the traditions and spirit of Gothic or Mediæval art, began +to put on the fetters of authority and pedantry, and so, gradually +overlaid by the forms and cerements of a dead style, lost its vigour and +vitality--whether due to one or all of these causes, certain it is that +the lamp of design began to fail, and, compared with its earlier +radiance, shed but a doubtful flicker upon the page through the +succeeding centuries. + + + + +CHAPTER III. OF THE PERIOD OF THE DECLINE OF DECORATIVE FEELING IN BOOK +DESIGN AFTER THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND OF THE MODERN REVIVAL. + + +As I indicated at the outset of the first chapter, my purpose is not to +give a complete historical account of the decoration and illustration of +books, but rather to dwell on the artistic treatment of the page from my +own point of view as a designer. So far, however, the illustrations I +have given, while serving their purpose, also furnished a fair idea of +the development of style and variation of treatment of both the MS. and +printed book under different influences, from the sixth to the close of +the sixteenth century, but now I shall have to put on a pair of +seven-league boots, and make some tremendous skips. + +We have seen how, at the period of the early Renaissance, two streams +met, as it were, and mingled, with very beautiful results. The freedom, +the romance, the naturalism of the later Gothic, with the newly awakened +Classical feeling, with its grace of line and mythological lore. The rich +and delicate arabesques in which Italian designers delighted, and which +so frequently decorated, as we have seen, the borders of the early +printer, owe also something to Oriental influence, as indeed their name +indicates. The decorative beauty of these early Renaissance books were +really, therefore, the outcome of a very remarkable fusion of ideas and +styles. Printing, as an art, and book decoration attained a perfection +it has not since reached. The genius of the greatest designers of the +time was associated with the new invention, and expressed itself with +unparalleled vigour in the woodcut; while the type-founder, being still +under the influence of a fine traditional style in handwriting, was in +perfect harmony with the book decorator or illustrator. Even geometric +diagrams were given without destroying the unity of the page, as may be +seen in early editions of Euclid, and we have seen what faithful and +characteristic work was done in illustrations of plants and animals, +without loss of designing power and ornamental sense. + +[Sidenote: THE CLASSICAL INFLUENCE.] + +This happy equilibrium of artistic quality and practical adaptation after +the middle of the sixteenth century began to decline. There were +designers, like Oronce Finé and Geoffroy Tory, at Paris, who did much to +preserve the traditions in book ornament of the early Italian printers, +while adding a touch of grace and fancy of their own, but for the most +part the taste of book designers ran to seed after this period. The +classical influence, which had been only felt as one among other +influences, became more and more paramount over the designer, triumphing +over the naturalistic feeling, and over the Gothic and Eastern ornamental +feeling; so that it might be said that, whereas Mediæval designers sought +after colour and decorative beauty, Renaissance designers were influenced +by considerations of line, form, and relief. This may have been due in a +great measure to the fact that the influence of the antique and Classical +art was a sculpturesque influence, mainly gathered from statues and +relievos, gems and medals, and architectural carved ornaments, and more +through Roman than Greek sources. While suggestions from such sources +were but sparingly introduced at first, they gradually seemed to outweigh +all other motives with the later designers, whose works often suggest +that it is impossible to have too much Roman costume or too many Roman +remains, which crowd their Bible subjects, and fill their borders with +overfed pediments, corpulent scrolls, and volutes, and their interstices +with scattered fragments and attitudinizing personifications of Classical +mythology. The lavish use of such materials were enough to overweight +even vigorous designers like Virgil Solis, who though able, facile, and +versatile as he was, seems but a poor substitute for Holbein. + +[Illustration: FRENCH SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +DESIGNED BY ORONCE FINÉ. (PARIS, SIMON DE COLINES, 1534.) + +(_Comp. Dürer's title to Plutarch, 1513, and St. Ambrosius, 1520._)] + +[Sidenote: THE RENAISSANCE.] + +What was at first an inspiriting, imaginative, and refining influence in +art became finally a destructive force. The youthful spirit of the early +Renaissance became clouded and oppressed, and finally crushed with a +weight of pompous pedantry and affectation. The natural development of a +living style in art became arrested, and authority, and an endeavour to +imitate the antique, took its place. + +The introduction of the copper-plate marked a new epoch in book +illustration, and wood-engraving declined with its increased adoption, +which, in the form it took, as applied to books, in the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries, was certainly to the detriment and final extinction +of the decorative side. + +[Sidenote: COPPER-PLATE.] + +It has already been pointed out how a copper-plate, requiring a +different process of printing, and exhibiting as a necessary consequence +such different qualities of line and effect, cannot harmonize with type +and the conditions of the surface-printed page, since it is not in any +mechanical relation with them. This mechanical relation is really the key +to all good and therefore organic design; and therefore it is that design +was in sounder condition when mechanical conditions and relations were +simpler. A new invention often has a dislocating effect upon design. A +new element is introduced, valued for some particular facility or effect, +and it is often adopted without considering how--like a new element in a +chemical combination--it alters the relations all round. + +Copper-plate engraving was presumably adopted as a method for +book-illustration for its greater fineness and precision of line, and its +greater command of complexity in detail and chiaroscuro, for its purely +pictorial qualities, in short, and its adoption corresponded to the +period of the ascendancy of the painter above other kind of artists. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. LATE XVITH CENTURY. + +VIRGIL SOLIS, BIBLE. (FRANKFORT, SIGM. FEYRABEND, 1563.)] + +[Illustration: VENETIAN SCHOOL. LATE XVITH CENTURY. + +ARTIST UNKNOWN. (VENICE, G. GIOLITO, 1562.)] + +As regards the books of the seventeenth century, while "of making many +books there was no end," and however interesting for other than artistic +reasons, but few would concern our immediate purpose. Woodcuts, headings, +initials, tail-pieces, and printers' ornaments continued to be used, but +greatly inferior in design and beauty of effect to those of the sixteenth +century. The copper-plates introduced are quite apart from the page +ornaments, and can hardly be considered decorative, although in the +pompous title-pages of books of this period they are frequently formal +and architectural enough, and, as a rule, founded more or less upon +the ancient arches of triumph of Imperial Rome. + +Histories and philosophical works, especially towards the end of the +seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, were embellished +with pompous portraits in frames of more or less classical joinery, with +shields of arms, the worse for the decorative decline of heraldry, +underneath. The specimen given is a good one of its type from a Venetian +book of 1562, and gives the earlier form of this kind of treatment. +Travels and topographical works increased, until by the middle of the +eighteenth century we have them on the scale of Piranesi's scenic views +of the architecture of ancient Rome. + +The love of picturesqueness and natural scenery, or, perhaps, landscape +gardening, gradually developing, concentrated interest on qualities the +antithesis of constructive and inventive design, and drew the attention +more and more away from them, until the painter, pure and simple, took +all the artistic honours, and the days of the foundation of academies +only confirmed and fixed the idea of art in this restricted sense in the +public mind. + +[Sidenote: HOGARTH.] + +Hogarth, who availed himself of the copper-plate and publication in book +form of his pictures, was yet wholly pictorial in his sympathies, and his +instincts were dramatic and satiric rather than decorative. Able painter +and designer as he was in his own way, the interest of his work is +entirely on that side, and is rather valuable as illustrating the life +and manners of his time than as furnishing examples of book illustration, +and his work certainly has no decorative aim, although no doubt quite +harmonious in an eighteenth century room. + +[Sidenote: STOTHARD.] + +Chodowiecki, who did a vast quantity of steel frontispieces and +illustrations for books on a small scale, with plenty of character, must +also be regarded rather as a maker of pictures for books than as a book +decorator. He is sometimes mentioned as kindred in style to Stothard, but +Stothard was much more of an idealist, and had, too, a very graceful +decorative sense from the classical point of view. His book designs are +very numerous, chiefly engraved on steel, and always showing a very +graceful sense of line and composition. His designs to Rogers' "Poems," +and "Italy," are well-known, and, in their earlier woodcut form, his +groups of Amorini are very charming. + +Flaxman had a high sense of sculpturesque style and simplicity, and great +feeling and grace as a designer, but he can hardly be reckoned as a book +decorator. His well-known series to Homer, Hesiod, Æschylus, and Dante +are strictly distinct series of illustrative designs, to be taken by +themselves without reference to their incorporation in, or relation to, a +printed book. Their own lettering and explanatory text is engraved on the +same plate beneath them, and so far they are consistent, but are not in +any sense examples of page treatment or spacing. + +[Illustration: XIXTH CENTURY. WILLIAM BLAKE. + +"SONGS OF INNOCENCE," 1789.] + +[Sidenote: WILLIAM BLAKE.] + +We now come to a designer of a very different type, a type, too, of a new +epoch, whatever resemblance in style and method there may be in his work +to that of his contemporaries. William Blake is distinct, and stands +alone. A poet and a seer, as well as a designer, in him seemed to awake +something of the spirit of the old illuminator. He was not content to +illustrate a book by isolated copper or steel plates apart from the text, +although in his craft as engraver he constantly carried out the work of +others. When he came to embody his own thoughts and dreams, he recurred +quite spontaneously to the methods of the maker of the MS. books. He +became his own calligrapher, illuminator and miniaturist, while availing +himself of the copper-plate (which he turned into a surface printing +block) and the printing press for the reproduction of his designs, and in +some cases for producing them in tints. His hand-coloured drawings, the +borderings and devices to his own poems, will always be things by +themselves. + +His treatment of the resources of black and white, and sense of page +decoration, may be best judged perhaps by a reference to his "Book of +Job," which contains a fine series of suggestive and imaginative designs. +We seem to read in Blake something of the spirit of the Mediæval +designers, through the sometimes mannered and semi-classic forms and +treatment, according to the taste of his time; while he embodies its more +daring aspiring thoughts, and the desire for simpler and more humane +conditions of life. A revolutionary fire and fervour constantly breaks +out both in his verse and in his designs, which show very various moods +and impulses, and comprehend a wide range of power and sympathy. +Sometimes mystic and prophetic, sometimes tragic, sometimes simple and +pastoral. + +Blake, in these mixed elements, and the extraordinary suggestiveness of +his work and the freedom of his thought, seems nearer to us than others +of his contemporaries. In his sense of the decorative treatment of the +page, too, his work bears upon our purpose. In writing with his own hand +and in his own character the text of his poems, he gained the great +advantage which has been spoken of--of harmony between text and +illustration. They become a harmonious whole, in complete relation. His +woodcuts to Phillip's "Pastoral," though perhaps rough in themselves, +show what a sense of colour he could convey, and of the effective use of +white line. + +[Illustration: + +WILLIAM BLAKE. + +WOODCUT FROM PHILLIP'S "PASTORAL."] + +[Sidenote: EDWARD CALVERT.] + +Among the later friends and disciples of Blake, a kindred spirit must +have been Edward Calvert, whose book illustrations are also decorations; +the masses of black and white being effectively distributed, and they are +full of poetic feeling, imagination, and sense of colour. I am indebted +for the first knowledge of them to Mr. William Blake Richmond, whose +father, Mr. George Richmond, was a friend of William Blake and Calvert, +as well as of John Linnell and of Samuel Palmer, who carried on the +traditions of this English poetic school to our own times; especially the +latter, whose imaginative drawings--glowing sunsets over remote +hill-tops, romantic landscapes, and pastoral sentiment--were marked +features in the room of the Old Water Colour Society, up to his death in +1881. His etched illustrations to his edition of "The Eclogues of +Virgil," are a fine series of beautifully designed and poetically +conceived landscapes; but they are strictly a series of pictures printed +separately from the text. Palmer himself, in the account of the work +given by his son, when he was planning the work, wished that William +Blake had been alive to have designed his woodcut headings to the +"Eclogues."[3] + + [3] A memoir of Edward Calvert has since been published by his + son, fully illustrated, and giving the little engravings just + spoken of. They were engraved by Calvert himself, it appears, and + I am indebted to his son, Mr. John Calvert, for permission to + print them here. + +[Sidenote: THOMAS BEWICK.] + +To Thomas Bewick and his school is due the revival of wood-engraving as +an art, and its adaptation to book illustration, quite distinct, of +course, from the old knife-work on the plank. Bewick had none of the +imaginative poetry of the designers just named, although plenty of humour +and satire, which he compressed into his little tail-pieces. He shows his +skill as a craftsman in the treatment of the wood block, in such works as +his "British Birds;" but here, although the wood-engraving and type may +be said to be in mechanical relation, there is no sense of decorative +beauty or ornamental spacing whatever, and, as drawings, the engravings +have none of the designer's power such as we found in the +illustrations of Gesner and Matthiolus at Basle, in the middle of the +sixteenth century. There is a very literal and plain presentment of facts +as regards the bird and its plumage, but with scarcely more than the +taste of the average stuffer and mounter in the composition of the +picture, and no regard whatever to the design of the page as a whole. + +[Illustration: XIXTH CENTURY. EDWARD CALVERT. + +THE RETURN HOME. + +THE FLOOD. + +THE CHAMBER IDYLL. + +FROM THE ORIGINAL BLOCKS DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY EDWARD CALVERT. +BRIXTON, 1827-8-9.] + +[Illustration: XIXTH CENTURY. EDWARD CALVERT. + +THE LADY AND THE ROOKS. + +IDEAL PASTORAL LIFE. + +THE BROOK. + +FROM THE BLOCKS DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED ON WOOD BY EDWARD CALVERT. BRIXTON, +1827-8-9.] + +It was, however, a great point to have asserted the claims of +wood-engraving, and demonstrated its capabilities as a method of book +illustration. + +[Sidenote: THE SCHOOL OF BEWICK.] + +Bewick founded a school of very excellent craftsmen, who carried the art +to a wonderful degree of finish. In both his and their hands it became +quite distinct from literal translation of the drawing, which, unless in +line, was treated by the engraver with a line, touch, and quality all his +own, the use of white line,[4] and the rendering of tone and tint +necessitating a certain power of design on his part, and giving him as +important a position as the engraver on steel held in regard to the +translation of a painted picture. + + [4] A striking instance of the use of white line is seen in the + title page "Pomerium de Tempore," printed by Johann Otmar, + Augsburg, as early as 1502. It is possible, however, that this is + a metal engraving. It is given overleaf. + +Such a book as Northcote's "Fables," published 1828-29, each fable having +a head-piece drawn on wood from Northcote's design by William Harvey--a +well-known graceful designer and copious illustrator of books up to +comparatively recent times--and with initial letters and tail-pieces of +his own, shows the outcome of the Bewick school. Finally "fineness of +line, tone, and finish--a misused word," as Mr. W. J. Linton says, "was +preferred to the simple charm of truth." The wood engravers appeared to +be anxious to vie with the steel engravers in the adornment of books, and +so far as adaptation was concerned, they had certainly all the advantage +on their side. The ornamental sense, however, had everywhere declined; +pictorial qualities, fineness of line, and delicacy of tone, were sought +after almost exclusively. + +[Sidenote: STOTHARD AND TURNER.] + +Such books as Rogers's "Poems" and "Italy," with vignettes on steel from +Thomas Stothard and J. M. W. Turner, are characteristic of the taste of +the period, and show about the high-water mark of the skill of the book +engravers on steel. Stothard's designs are the only ones which have +claims to be decorative, and he is always a graceful designer. Turner's +landscapes, exquisite in themselves, and engraved with marvellous +delicacy, do not in any sense decorate the page, and from that point of +view are merely shapeless blots of printers' ink of different tones upon +it, while the letterpress bears no relation whatever to the picture in +method of printing or design, and has no independent beauty of its own. +Book illustrations of this type--and it was a type which largely +prevailed during the second quarter of the century--are simply pictures +without frames. + +[Illustration: GERMAN SCHOOL. XVITH CENTURY. + +JOHANN OTMAR. (AUGSBURG, 1502.)] + +[Sidenote: W. J. LINTON.] + +No survey of book illustration would be complete which contained no +mention of William James Linton--whom I have already quoted. I may be +allowed to speak of him with a peculiar regard and respect, as I may +claim him as a very kind early friend and master. As a boy I was, in +fact, apprenticed to him for the space of three years, not indeed with +the object of wielding the graver, but rather with that of learning the +craft of a draughtsman on wood. This, of course, was before the days of +the use of photography, which has since practically revolutionized the +system not only of drawing for books but of engraving also. It was then +necessary to draw on the block itself, and to thoroughly understand what +kind of work could be treated by the engraver. + +I shall always regard those early years in Mr. Linton's office as of +great value to me, as, despite changes of method and new inventions, it +gave me a thorough knowledge of the mechanical conditions of +wood-engraving at any rate, and has implanted a sense of necessary +relationship between design, material, and method of production--of art +and craft, in fact--which cannot be lost, and has had its effect in many +ways. + +Mr. Linton, too, is himself a notable historic link, carrying on the lamp +of the older traditions of wood-engraving to these degenerate days, when +whatever wonders of literal translation, and imitation of chalk, +charcoal, or palette and brushes, it has exhibited under spell of +American enterprise--and I am far from denying its achievements as +such--it cannot be said to have preserved the distinction and +independence of the engraver as an artist or original designer in any +sense. When not extinguished altogether by some form of automatic +reproductive process, he is reduced to the office of "process-server"--he +becomes the slave of the pictorial artist. The picturesque sketcher loves +his "bits" and "effects," which, moreover, however sensational and +sparkling they may be in themselves, have no reference as a rule to the +decoration of the page, being in this sense no more than more or less +adroit splashes of ink upon it, which the text, torn into an irregularly +ragged edge, seems instinctively to shrink from touching, squeezing +itself together like the passengers in a crowded omnibus might do, +reluctantly to admit a chimney-sweep. + +While, by his early training and practice, he is united with the Bewick +school, Mr. Linton--himself a poet, a social and political thinker, a +scholar, as well as designer and engraver--having been associated with +the best-known engravers and designers for books during the middle of the +century, and having had art of such a different temper and tendency as +that of Rossetti pass through his hands, and seen the effect of many new +impulses, is finally face to face with what he himself has called the +"American New Departure." He is therefore peculiarly and eminently +qualified for the work to which he has addressed himself--his great work +on "The Masters of Wood Engraving," which appeared in 1889, and is in +every way complete as a history, learned in technique, and sumptuous as a +book. + +I have not mentioned Gustave Doré, who fills so large a space as an +illustrator of books, because though possessed of a weird imagination, +and a poetic feeling for dramatic landscapes and grotesque characters, as +well as extraordinary pictorial invention, the mass of his work is purely +scenic, and he never shows the decorative sense, or considers the design +in relation to the page. His best and most spirited and sincere work is +represented by his designs in the "Contes Drolatiques." + +[Sidenote: THE PRE-RAPHAELITES.] + +The new movement in painting in England, known as the pre-Raphaelite +movement, which dates from about the middle years of our century, was in +every way so remarkable and far-reaching, that it is not surprising that +it should leave its mark upon the illustrations of books; particularly +upon that form of luxury known as the modern gift-book, which, in the +course of the twenty years following 1850, often took the shape of +selections from or editions of the poets plentifully sprinkled with +little pictorial vignettes engraved on wood. Birket Foster, John Gilbert, +and John Tenniel were leading contributors to these collections. + +In 1857 appeared an edition of "Tennyson's Poems" from the house of +Moxon. This work, while having the general characteristics of the +prevailing taste--an accidental collection of designs, the work of +designers of varying degrees of substance, temper, and feeling, casually +arranged, and without the slightest feeling for page decoration or +harmony of text and illustration--yet possessed one remarkable feature +which gives it a distinction among other collections, in that it contains +certain designs of the chief leaders of the pre-Raphaelite movement, D. +G. Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt. + +[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. + +FROM TENNYSON'S POEMS. (MOXON, 1857.)] + +I give one of the Rossetti designs, "Sir Galahad"; the "S. Cecilia" and +the "Morte d'Arthur" were engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, the "Sir +Galahad" by Mr. W. J. Linton. It seems to me that the last gives the +spirit and feeling of Rossetti, as well as his peculiar touch, far more +successfully. These designs, in their poetic imagination, their richness +of detail, sense of colour, passionate, mystic, and romantic feeling, and +earnestness of expression mark a new epoch. They are decorative in +themselves, and, though quite distinct in feeling, and original, they are +more akin to the work of the Mediæval miniaturist than anything that had +been seen since his days. Even here, however, there is no attempt to +consider the page or to make the type harmonize with the picture, or to +connect it by any bordering or device with the book as a whole, and being +sandwiched with drawings of a very different tendency, their effect is +much spoiled. In one or two other instances where Rossetti lent his hand +to book illustration, however, he is fully mindful of the decorative +effect of the page. I remember a title page to a book of poems by Miss +Christina Rossetti, "Goblin Market," which emphatically showed this. The +title-page designed for his "Early Italian Poets" (given here), and his +sonnet on the sonnet too, in which the design encloses the text of the +poem, written out by himself, are other instances. + +[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. + +DESIGN FOR A TITLE PAGE.] + +[Sidenote: DALZIEL'S BIBLE GALLERY.] + +Some of the designs made for a later work (Dalziel's Bible Gallery, about +1865-70) also show the effect of the pre-Raphaelite influence, as well +as, in the case of the designs of Sir Frederic Leighton and Mr. Poynter, +the influence of Continental ideas and training. I saw some of these +drawings on the wood at the time, I remember. For study and research, and +richness of resource in archæological detail, as well as firmness of +drawing, I thought Mr. Poynter's designs were perhaps the most +remarkable. A strikingly realized picture, and a bright and successful +wood-engraving, is Ford Madox Brown's design of "Elijah and the Widow's +Son." There is a dramatic intensity of expression about his other one +also, "The Death of Eglon." Still, at best, we find that these are but +carefully studied pictures rendered on the wood. The pre-Raphaelite +designs show the most decorative sense, but they are now issued quite +distinct from the page, whatever was the original intention, and while +they may, as to scale and treatment, be justly considered as book +illustrations, and as examples of our more important efforts in that +direction at that time, they are not page decorations. + +One may speak here of an admirable artist we have lost, Mr. Albert Moore, +who so distinguished himself for his refined decorative sense in +painting, and the outline group of figures given here shows that he felt +the conditions of the book page and the press also. + +[Illustration: ALBERT MOORE. + +FROM MILTON'S ODE ON CHRIST'S NATIVITY. (NISBET, 1867.)] + +[Sidenote: HENRY HOLIDAY.] + +Mr. Henry Holiday is also a decorative artist of great refinement and +facility. He has not done very much in book illustration, but his +illustrations to Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark" were admirable. +His decorative feeling in black and white, however, is marked, as may be +seen in the title to "Aglaia." + +[Illustration: HENRY HOLIDAY. + +COVER FOR A MAGAZINE.] + +[Sidenote: TOY BOOKS.] + +As, until recently, I suppose I was scarcely known out of the nursery, it +is meet that I should offer some remarks upon children's books. Here, +undoubtedly, there has been a remarkable development and great activity +of late years. We all remember the little cuts that adorned the books of +our childhood. The ineffaceable quality of these early pictorial and +literary impressions afford the strongest plea for good art in the +nursery and the schoolroom. Every child, one might say every human being, +takes in more through his eyes than his ears, and I think much more +advantage might be taken of this fact. + +If I may be personal, let me say that my first efforts in children's +books were made in association with Mr. Edmund Evans. Here, again, I was +fortunate to be in association with the craft of colour-printing, and I +got to understand its possibilities. The books for babies, current at +that time--about 1865 to 1870--of the cheaper sort called toy books were +not very inspiriting. These were generally careless and unimaginative +woodcuts, very casually coloured by hand, dabs of pink and emerald green +being laid on across faces and frocks with a somewhat reckless aim. There +was practically no choice between such as these and cheap German +highly-coloured lithographs. The only attempt at decoration I remember +was a set of coloured designs to nursery rhymes by Mr. H. S. Marks, which +had been originally intended for cabinet panels. Bold outlines and flat +tints were used. Mr. Marks has often shown his decorative sense in book +illustration and printed designs in colour, but I have not been able to +obtain any for this book. + +It was, however, the influence of some Japanese printed pictures given to +me by a lieutenant in the navy, who had brought them home from there as +curiosities, which I believe, though I drew inspiration from many +sources, gave the real impulse to that treatment in strong outlines, and +flat tints and solid blacks, which I adopted with variations in books +of this kind from that time (about 1870) onwards. Since then I have had +many rivals for the favour of the nursery constituency, notably my late +friend Randolph Caldecott, and Miss Kate Greenaway, though in both cases +their aim lies more in the direction of character study, and their work +is more of a pictorial character than strictly decorative. The little +preface heading from his "Bracebridge Hall" gives a good idea of +Caldecott's style when his aim was chiefly decorative. Miss Greenaway is +the most distinctly so perhaps in the treatment of some of her calendars. + +[Illustration: RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. + +HEADPIECE TO "BRACEBRIDGE HALL." (MACMILLAN, 1877.)] + +[Illustration: KATE GREENAWAY. + +KEY BLOCK OF TITLE-PAGE OF "MOTHER GOOSE." + +(ROUTLEDGE, N.D.)] + +[Sidenote: CHILDREN'S BOOKS.] + +Children's books and so-called children's books hold a peculiar position. +They are attractive to designers of an imaginative tendency, for in a +sober and matter-of-fact age they afford perhaps the only outlet for +unrestricted flights of fancy open to the modern illustrator, who likes +to revolt against "the despotism of facts." While on children's books, +the poetic feeling in the designs of E. V. B. may be mentioned, and I +mind me of some charming illustrations to a book of Mr. George +Macdonald's, "At the Back of the North Wind," designed by Mr. Arthur +Hughes, who in these and other wood engraved designs shows, no less than +in his paintings, how refined and sympathetic an artist he is. Mr. Robert +Bateman, too, designed some charming little woodcuts, full of poetic +feeling and controlled by unusual taste. They were used in Macmillan's +"Art at Home" series, though not, I believe, originally intended for it. + +[Illustration: ARTHUR HUGHES. + +FROM "AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND." (STRAHAN, 1871.)] + +[Sidenote: JAPANESE INFLUENCE.] + +[Sidenote: JAPANESE ILLUSTRATION.] + +There is no doubt that the opening of Japanese ports to Western commerce, +whatever its after effects--including its effect upon the arts of Japan +itself--has had an enormous influence on European and American art. Japan +is, or was, a country very much, as regards its arts and handicrafts with +the exception of architecture, in the condition of a European country in +the Middle Ages, with wonderfully skilled artists and craftsmen in all +manner of work of the decorative kind, who were under the influence of a +free and informal naturalism. Here at least was a living art, an art of +the people, in which traditions and craftsmanship were unbroken, and the +results full of attractive variety, quickness, and naturalistic force. +What wonder that it took Western artists by storm, and that its effects +have become so patent, though not always happy, ever since. We see +unmistakable traces of Japanese influences, however, almost +everywhere--from the Parisian impressionist painter to the Japanese fan +in the corner of trade circulars, which shows it has been adopted as a +stock printers' ornament. We see it in the sketchy blots and lines, and +vignetted naturalistic flowers which are sometimes offered as page +decorations, notably in American magazines and fashionable etchings. We +have caught the vices of Japanese art certainly, even if we have +assimilated some of the virtues. + +[Illustration: ARTHUR HUGHES. + +FROM "AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND." (STRAHAN, 1871.)] + +In the absence of any really noble architecture or substantial +constructive sense, the Japanese artists are not safe guides as +designers. They may be able to throw a spray of leaves or a bird or fish +across a blank panel or sheet of paper, drawing them with such consummate +skill and certainty that it may delude us into the belief that it is +decorative design; but if an artist of less skill essays to do the like +the mistake becomes obvious. Granted they have a decorative sense--the +_finesse_ which goes to the placing of a flower in a pot, of hanging a +garland on a wall, or of placing a mat or a fan--taste, in short, that is +a different thing from real constructive power of design, and +satisfactory filling of spaces. + +[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN. + +FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE." + +(MACMILLAN, 1876.)] + +When we come to their books, therefore, marvellous as they are, and full +of beauty and suggestion--apart from their naturalism, _grotesquerie_, +and humour--they do not furnish fine examples of page decoration as a +rule. The fact that their text is written vertically, however, must be +allowed for. This, indeed, converts their page into a panel, and their +printed books become rather what we should consider sets of designs for +decorating light panels, and extremely charming as such. + +[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN. + +FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE." + +(MACMILLAN, 1877.)] + +These drawings of Hokusai's (_see_ Nos. 10 and 11, Appendix), the most +vigorous and prolific of the more modern and popular school, are striking +enough and fine enough, in their own way, and the decorative sense is +never absent; controlled, too, by the dark border-line, they do fill the +page, which is not the case always with the flowers and birds. However, I +believe these holes, blanks, and spaces to let are only tolerable in a +book because the drawing where it does occur is so skilful (except where +the effect is intentionally open and light); and from tolerating we grow +to like them, I suppose, and take them for signs of mastery and +decorative skill. In their smaller applied ornamental designs, however, +the Japanese often show themselves fully aware of a systematic plan or +geometric base: and there is usually some hidden geometric relation of +line in some of their apparently accidental compositions. Their books of +crests and pattern plans show indeed a careful study of geometric shapes, +and their controlling influence in designing. + +[Sidenote: JAPANESE PRINTING.] + +As regards the history and use of printing, the Japanese had it from the +Chinese, who invented the art of printing from wooden blocks in the +sixth century. "We have no record," says Professor Douglas,[5] "as to the +date when metal type was first used in China, but we find Korean books +printed as early as 1317 with movable clay or wooden type, and just a +century later we have a record of a fount of metal type being cast to +print an 'Epitome of the Eighteen Historical Records of China.'" Printing +is supposed to have been adopted in Japan "after the first invasion of +the Korea by the armies of Hideyoshi, in the end of the sixteenth +century, when large quantities of movable type books were brought back by +one of his generals, which formed the model upon which the Japanese +worked."[6] + + [5] Guide to the Chinese and Japanese Illustrated Books in the + British Museum. + + [6] Satow. "History of Printing in Japan." + +[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN. + +FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE." + +(MACMILLAN, 1876.)] + +I have mentioned the American development of wood-engraving. Its +application to magazine illustration seems certainly to have developed or +to have occurred with the appearance of very clever draughtsmen from the +picturesque and literal point of view. + +[Illustration: ROBERT BATEMAN. + +FROM "ART IN THE HOUSE." + +(MACMILLAN, 1876.)] + +[Sidenote: JOSEPH PENNELL.] + +The admirable and delicate architectural and landscape drawings of Mr. +Joseph Pennell, for instance, are well known, and, as purely illustrative +work, fresh, crisp in drawing, and original in treatment, giving +essential points of topography and local characteristics (with a happy if +often quaint and unexpected selection of point of view, and pictorial +limits), it would be difficult to find their match, but very small +consideration or consciousness is shown for the page. If he will pardon +my saying so, in some instances the illustrations are, or used to be, +often daringly driven through the text, scattering it right and left, +like the effect of a coach and four upon a flock of sheep. In some of his +more recent work, notably in his bolder drawings such as those in the +"Daily Chronicle," he appears to have considered the type relation much +more, and shows, especially in some of his skies, a feeling for a +radiating arrangement of line. + +[Sidenote: AMERICAN DRAUGHTSMEN.] + +Our American cousins have taught us another mode of treatment in magazine +pages. It is what I have elsewhere described as the "card-basket style." +A number of naturalistic sketches are thrown accidentally together, the +upper ones hiding the under ones partly, and to give variety the corner +is occasionally turned down. There has been a great run on this idea of +late years, but I fancy it is a card trick about "played out." + +However opinions may vary, I think there cannot be a doubt that in Elihu +Vedder we have an instance of an American artist of great imaginative +powers, and undoubtedly a designer of originality and force. This is +sufficiently proved from his large work--the illustrations to the +"Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." Although the designs have no Persian +character about them which one would have thought the poem and its +imagery would naturally have suggested, yet they are a fine series, and +show much decorative sense and dramatic power, and are quite modern in +feeling. His designs for the cover of "The Century Magazine" show taste +and decorative feeling in the combination of figures with lettering. + +Mr. Edwin Abbey is another able artist, who has shown considerable care +for his illustrated page, in some cases supplying his own lettering; +though he has been growing more pictorial of late: Mr. Alfred Parsons +also, though he too often seems more drawn to the picture than the +decoration. Mr. Heywood Sumner shows a charming decorative sense and +imaginative feeling, as well as humour. On the purely ornamental side, +the accomplished decorations of Mr. Lewis Day exhibit both ornamental +range and resource, which, though in general devoted to other objects, +are conspicuous enough in certain admirable book and magazine covers he +has designed. + +[Illustration: HEYWOOD SUMNER. + +FROM "STORIES FOR CHILDREN," BY FRANCES M. PEARD. (ALLEN, 1896.)] + +[Illustration: CHARLES KEENE. + +ILLUSTRATION TO "THE GOOD FIGHT." ("ONCE A WEEK," 1859.) + +(_By permission of Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew and Co._)] + +[Illustration: HEYWOOD SUMNER. + +FROM "STORIES FOR CHILDREN," BY F. M. PEARD. (ALLEN, 1896.)] + +[Sidenote: THE "ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE."] + +"The English Illustrated Magazine," under Mr. Comyns Carr's editorship, +by its use of both old and modern headings, initials and ornaments, did +something towards encouraging the taste for decorative design in books. +Among the artists who designed pages therein should be named Henry Ryland +and Louis Davis, both showing graceful ornamental feeling, the children +of the latter artist being very charming. + +[Illustration: LOUIS DAVIS. + +FROM THE "ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE" (1892).] + +[Illustration: HENRY RYLAND. + +FROM THE "ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE" (1894).] + +But it would need much more space to attempt to do justice to the ability +of my contemporaries, especially in the purely illustrative division, +than I am able to give. + +[Sidenote: "ONCE A WEEK."] + +The able artists of "Punch," however, from John Leech to Linley +Sambourne, have done much to keep alive a vigorous style of drawing in +line, which, in the case of Mr. Sambourne, is united with great +invention, graphic force, and designing power. In speaking of "Punch," +one ought not to forget either the important part played by "Once a Week" +in introducing many first-rate artists in line. In its early days we had +Charles Keene illustrating Charles Reade's "Good Fight," with much +feeling for the decorative effect of the old German woodcut. Such +admirable artists as M. J. Lawless and Frederick Sandys--the latter +especially distinguished for his splendid line drawings in "Once a Week" +and "The Cornhill;" one of his finest is here given, "The Old Chartist," +which accompanied a poem by Mr. George Meredith. Indeed, it is impossible +to speak too highly of Mr. Sandys' draughtsmanship and power of +expression by means of line; he is one of our modern English masters who +has never, I think, had justice done to him. + +[Illustration: F. SANDYS. + +"THE OLD CHARTIST." ("ONCE A WEEK," 1861.)] + +[Illustration: M. J. LAWLESS. + +"DEAD LOVE." ("ONCE A WEEK," 1862.)] + +I can only just briefly allude to certain powerful and original modern +designers of Germany, where indeed, the old vigorous traditions of +woodcut and illustrative drawing seem to have been kept more unbroken +than elsewhere. + +On the purely character-drawing, pictorial and illustrative side, there +is of course Menzel, thoroughly modern, realistic, and dramatic. I am +thinking more perhaps of such men as Alfred Rethel, whose designs of +"Death the Friend" and "Death the Enemy," two large woodcuts, are well +known. I remember also a very striking series of designs of his, a kind +of modern "Dance of Death," which appeared about 1848, I think. Schwind +is another whose designs to folk tales are thoroughly German in spirit +and imagination, and style of drawing. Oscar Pletsch, too, is +remarkable for his feeling for village life and children, and many of his +illustrations have been reproduced in this country. More recent evidence, +and more directly in the decorative direction, of the vigour and +ornamental skill of German designers, is to be found in those picturesque +calendars, designed by Otto Hupp, which come from Munich, and show +something very like the old feeling of Burgmair, especially in the +treatment of the heraldry. + +I have ventured to give a page or two here from my own books, "Grimm," +"The Sirens Three," and others, which serve at least to show two very +different kinds of page treatment. In the "Grimm" the picture is inclosed +in formal and rectangular lines, with medallions of flowers at the four +corners, the title and text being written on scrolls above and below. In +"The Sirens Three" a much freer and more purely ornamental treatment is +adopted, and a bolder and more open line. A third, the frontispiece of +"The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde," by Miss de Morgan, is more of a +simple pictorial treatment, though strictly decorative in its scheme of +line and mass. + +[Sidenote: THE INFLUENCE OF PHOTOGRAPHY.] + +The facile methods of photographic-automatic reproduction certainly give +an opportunity to the designer to write out his own text in the character +that pleases him, and that accords with his design, and so make his page +a consistent whole from a decorative point of view, and I venture to +think when this is done a unity of effect is gained for the page not +possible in any other way. + +Indeed, the photograph, with all its allied discoveries and its +application to the service of the printing press, may be said to be as +important a discovery in its effects on art and books as was the +discovery of printing itself. It has already largely transformed the +system of the production of illustrations and designs for books, +magazines, and newspapers, and has certainly been the means of securing +to the artist the advantage of possession of his original, while its +fidelity, in the best processes, is, of course, very valuable. + +Its influence, however, on artistic style and treatment has been, to my +mind, of more doubtful advantage. The effect on painting is palpable +enough, but so far as painting becomes photographic, the advantage is on +the side of the photograph. It has led in illustrative work to the method +of painting in black and white, which has taken the place very much of +the use of line, and through this, and by reason of its having fostered +and encouraged a different way of regarding nature--from the point of +view of accidental aspect, light and shade, and tone--it has confused and +deteriorated, I think, the faculty of inventive design, and the sense of +ornament and line; having concentrated artistic interest on the literal +realization of certain aspects of superficial facts, and instantaneous +impressions instead of ideas, and the abstract treatment of form and +line. + +[Illustration: WALTER CRANE. + +FROM GRIMM'S "HOUSEHOLD STORIES." (MACMILLAN, 1882.)] + +[Illustration: WALTER CRANE. + +FRONTISPIECE. "PRINCESS FIORIMONDE" (MACMILLAN, 1880).] + +[Illustration: WALTER CRANE. + +"THE SIRENS THREE" OPENING PAGE. (MACMILLAN, 1886.)] + +[Sidenote: A DECORATIVE IDEAL.] + +This, however, may be as much the tendency of an age as the result of +photographic invention, although the influence of the photograph must +count as one of the most powerful factors of that tendency. Thought and +vision divide the world of art between them--our thoughts follow +our vision, our vision is influenced by our thoughts. A book may be +the home of both thought and vision. Speaking figuratively, in regard to +book decoration, some are content with a rough shanty in the woods, and +care only to get as close to nature in her more superficial aspects as +they can. Others would surround their house with a garden indeed, but +they demand something like an architectural plan. They would look at a +frontispiece like a façade; they would take hospitable encouragement from +the title-page as from a friendly inscription over the porch; they would +hang a votive wreath at the dedication, and so pass on into the hall of +welcome, take the author by the hand and be led by him and his artist +from room to room, as page after page is turned, fairly decked and +adorned with picture, and ornament, and device; and, perhaps, finding it +a dwelling after his desire, the guest is content to rest in the ingle +nook in the firelight of the spirit of the author or the play of fancy of +the artist; and, weaving dreams in the changing lights and shadows, to +forget life's rough way and the tempestuous world outside. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER IV. OF THE RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF DECORATIVE BOOK ILLUSTRATION AND +THE MODERN REVIVAL OF PRINTING AS AN ART. + + +Since the three Cantor Lectures, which form the substance of the +foregoing chapters, were delivered by me at the rooms of the Society of +Arts, some six or seven years have elapsed, and they have been remarkable +for a pronounced revival of activity and interest in the art of the +printer and the decorative illustrator, the paper-maker, the binder, and +all the crafts connected with the production of tasteful and ornate +books. + +Publishers and printers have shown a desire to return to simpler and +earlier standards of taste, and in the choice and arrangement of the type +to take a leaf out of the book of some of the early professors of the +craft. There has been a passion for tall copies and handmade paper; for +delicate bindings, and first editions. + +There has grown up, too, quite a literature about the making of the book +beautiful--whereof the Ex-Libris Series alone is witness. We have, +besides, the history of Early Printed Books by Mr. Gordon Duff, of Early +Illustrated Books by Mr. Pollard. The Book-plate has been looked after by +Mr. Egerton Castle, and by a host of eager collectors ever since. Mr. +Pennell is well known as the tutelary genius who takes charge of +illustrators, and discourses upon them at large, and Mr. Strange bids us, +none too soon, to become acquainted with our alphabets. I have not yet +heard of any specialist taking up his parable upon "end papers," but, +altogether, the book has never perhaps had so much writing outside of it, +as it were, before. + +[Sidenote: MODERN TYPOGRAPHY.] + +A brilliant band of illustrators and ornamentists have appeared, too, and +nearly every month or so we hear of a new genius in black and white, who +is to eclipse all others. For all that, even in the dark ages, between +the mid-nineteenth century and the early eighties, one or two printers or +publishers of taste have from time to time attempted to restrain the wild +excesses of the trade-printer, with his terribly monotonous novelties in +founts of type, alternately shouting or whispering, anon in the crushing +and aggressive heaviness of block capitals, and now in the attenuated +droop of italics. Sad havoc has been played with the decorative dignity +of the page, indeed, as well as with the form and breed of roman and +gothic letters: one might have imagined that some mischievous printer's +devil had thrown the apple of discord among the letters of the alphabet, +so ingeniously ugly were so many modern so-called "fancy" types. + +We have had good work from the Edinburgh houses, from Messrs. R. and R. +Clark, and Messrs. Constable, and in London from the Chiswick Press, for +instance, ever since the old days of its connection with the tasteful and +well printed volumes from the house of Pickering. Various artists, too, +in association with their book designs, from D. G. Rossetti onwards, have +designed their own lettering to be in decorative harmony with their +designs. The Century Guild, with its "Hobby Horse" and its artists, like +Mr. Horne and Mr. Selwyn Image, did much to keep alive true taste in +printing and book decoration, when they were but little understood.[7] +There have been printers, too, such as Mr. Daniel at Oxford, and De Vinne +at New York, who have from different points of view brought care and +selection to the choice of type and the printing of books, and have +adapted or designed type. + + [7] And they elicited a response from across the water in the + shape of "The Knight Errant," the work of a band of young + enthusiasts at Boston, Mass., of which Mr. Lee and Mr. Goodhue may + be named as leading spirits--the latter being the designer of the + cover of "The Knight Errant," and the former the printer. + +[Illustration: SELWYN IMAGE. + +FROM TITLE-PAGE. "THE SCOTTISH ART REVIEW" (SCOTT, 1889).] + +[Sidenote: THE KELMSCOTT PRESS.] + +But the field for extensive artistic experiment in these directions was +tolerably clear when Mr. William Morris turned his attention to printing, +and, in 1891, founded the Kelmscott Press. + +So far as I am aware, he has been the first to approach the craft of +practical printing from the point of view of the artist, and although, no +doubt, the fact of being a man of letters as well was an extra advantage, +his particular success in the art of printing is due to the former +qualification. A long and distinguished practice as a designer in other +matters of decorative art brought him to the nice questions of type +design, its place upon the page, and its relation to printed ornament and +illustration, peculiarly well equipped; while his historic knowledge and +discrimination, and the possession of an extraordinarily rich and choice +collection of both mediæval MSS. and early printed books afforded him an +abundant choice of the best models. + +In the results which have been produced at the Kelmscott press we trace +the effect of all these influences, acting under the strongest personal +predilection, and a mediæval bias (in an artistic sense) which may be +said to be almost exclusive. + +The Kelmscott roman type ("golden") perhaps rather suggests that it was +designed to anticipate and to provide against the demand of readers or +book fanciers who could stand nothing else than roman, while the heart of +the printer really hankered after black letter. But compare this "golden" +type with most modern lower case founts, up to the date of its use, and +its advantages both in form and substance are remarkable. Modern type, +obeying, I suppose, a resistless law of evolution, had reached, +especially with American printers, the last stage of attenuation. The +type of the Kelmscott press is an emphatic and practical protest against +this attenuation; just as its bold black and white ornaments and +decorative woodcuts in open line are protests against the undue thinness, +atmospheric effect, and diaphanous vignetting by photographic process and +tone-block of much modern illustration, which may indeed _illustrate_, +but does not _ornament_ a book. The paper, too, hand-made, +rough-surfaced, and tough, is in equally strong contrast to the shiny +hot-pressed machine-made paper, hitherto so much in vogue for the finer +kinds of printing, and by which it alone became possible. The two +kinds--the two ideals of printing--are as far apart as the poles. Those +who like the smooth and thin, will not like the bold and rough; but it +looks as if the Kelmscott standard had marked the turn of the tide, and +that, judging from the signs of its influence upon printers and +publishers generally, the feeling is running strongly in that direction. +(One would think the human eyesight would benefit also.) This is the more +remarkable since the Kelmscott books are by no means issued at "popular +prices," are limited in number, and for the most part are hardly for the +general reader--unless that ubiquitous person is more erudite and +omnivorous than is commonly credited. + +[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS & WALTER CRANE. + +A PAGE FROM "THE GLITTERING PLAIN." (KELMSCOTT PRESS, 1894.)] + +Books, however, which may be called monumental in the national and +general sense, have been printed at the Kelmscott press, such as +Shakespeare's "Poems," More's "Utopia"; and Mr. Morris's _magnum opus_, +the folio Chaucer, enriched by the designs of Burne-Jones, has recently +been completed.[8] + + [8] Completed, indeed, it might almost be said, with the life of + the craftsman. It is sad to have to record, while these pages were + passing through the press, our master printer--one of the greatest + Englishmen of our time--is no more. + +In Mr. Morris's ornaments and initials, nearly always admirably +harmonious in their quantities with the character and mass of the type, +we may perhaps trace mixed influences in design. In the rich black and +white scroll and floral borders surrounding the title and first pages, we +seem to see the love of close-filling and interlacement characteristic of +Celtic and Byzantine work, with a touch of the feeling of the practical +textile designer, which comes out again in the up-and-down, detached bold +page ornaments, though here combined with suggestions from early English +illuminated MS. + +These influences, however, only add to the distinctive character and +richness of the effect, and no attempt is made to get beyond the simple +conditions of bold black and white designs for the woodcut and the press. + +Mr. Morris adopts the useful canon in printing that the true page is what +the open book displays--what is generally termed a double page. He +considers them practically as two columns of type, necessarily separate +owing to the construction of the book, but together as it lies open, +forming a page of type, only divided by the narrow margin where the +leaves are inserted in the back of the covers. We thus get the _recto_ +and the _verso_ pages or columns, each with their distinctive proportions +of margin, as they turn to the right or the left from the centre of the +book--the narrowest margins being naturally inwards and at the top, the +broadest those outwards and at the foot, which latter should be deepest +of all. It may be called _the handle_ of the book, and there is reason in +the broad margin, though also gracious to the eye, since the hand may +hold the book without covering any of the type. + +It is really the due consideration of the necessity of these little +utilities in the construction and use of a thing which enables the modern +designer--separated as he is from the actual maker--to preserve that +distinctive and organic character in any work so valuable, and always so +fruitful in artistic suggestion, and this I think holds true of all +design in association with handicraft. + +The more immediate and intimate--one might occasionally say +imitative--influence of the Kelmscott press may be seen in the +extremely interesting work of a group of young artists who own +their training to the Birmingham School of Art, as developed under the +taste and ability of Mr. Taylor. Three of these, Mr. C. M. Gere, Mr. E. +H. New, and Mr. Gaskin, have designed illustrations for some of Mr. +Morris's Kelmscott books, so that the connection of ideas is perfectly +sequent and natural, and it is only as might be expected that the school +should have the courage of their artistic opinions, and boldly carry into +practice the results of their Kelmscott inspirations, by printing a +journal themselves, "The Quest." + +[Illustration: C. M. GERE. + +FROM THE "ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE" (1893).] + +[Illustration: (_By permission of the Corporation of Liverpool._) C. M. +GERE. + +FROM A DRAWING FROM HIS PICTURE "THE BIRTH OF ST. GEORGE."] + +[Illustration: ARTHUR GASKIN. + +FROM "HANS ANDERSEN." (ALLEN, 1893.)] + +[Illustration: EDMUND H. NEW. + +PROCESS BLOCK FROM THE ORIGINAL PEN DRAWING.] + +[Sidenote: THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL.] + +Mr. Gere, Mr. Gaskin, and Mr. New may be said to be the leaders of the +Birmingham School. Mr. Gere has engraved on wood some of his own designs, +and he thoroughly realizes the ornamental value of bold and open line +drawing in association with lettering, and is a careful and conscientious +draughtsman and painter besides. A typical instance of his work is the +"Finding of St. George." + +Mr. Gaskin's Christmas book, "King Wenceslas," is, perhaps, his best work +so far as we have seen. The designs are simple and bold, and in harmony +with the subject, and good in decorative character. His illustrations to +Hans Christian Andersen's "Fairy Tales" are full of a naïve romantic +feeling, and have much sense of the decorative possibilities of black and +white drawing. Mrs. Gaskin's designs for children's books show a quaint +fancy and ornamental feeling characteristic of the school. + +Mr. New's feeling is for quaint streets and old buildings, which he draws +with conscientious thoroughness, and attention to characteristic details +of construction and local variety, without any reliance on accidental +atmospheric effects, but using a firm open line and broad, simple +arrangements of light and shade, which give them a decorative look as +book illustrations. It is owing to these qualities that they are +ornamental, and not to any actual ornament. Indeed, in those cases where +he has introduced borders to frame his pictures, he does not seem to me +to be so successful as an ornamentist pure and simple, though in his +latest work, the illustrations to Mr. Lane's edition of Isaac Walton's +"Compleat Angler," there are pretty headings and tasteful title scrolls, +as well as good drawings of places. + +[Illustration: INIGO THOMAS. + +FROM "THE FORMAL GARDEN." (MACMILLAN, 1892.)] + +The question of border is, however, always a most difficult one. One +might compare the illustrative drawings of architecture and gardens of +Mr. Inigo Thomas in Mr. Reginald Blomfield's work on gardens, with Mr. +New, as showing, with considerable decorative feeling, and feeling for +the subject, a very different method of drawing, one might say more +pictorial in a sense, the line being much thinner and closer, and in +effect greyer and darker. The introduction of the titles helps the +ornamental effect. + +[Illustration: INIGO THOMAS. + +FROM "THE FORMAL GARDEN." (MACMILLAN, 1892.)] + +Among the leading artists of the Birmingham School must be mentioned Mr. +H. Payne, Mr. Bernard Sleigh and Mr. Mason for their romantic feeling in +story illustrations; Miss Bradley for her inventive treatment of crowds +and groups of children; Miss Winifred Smith for her groups of children +and quaint feeling; Mrs. Arthur Gaskin also for her pretty quaint fancies +in child-life; Miss Mary Newill for her ornamental rendering of natural +landscape, as in the charming drawing of Porlock; and Miss Celia Levetus +for her decorative feeling. It may, at any rate, I think be claimed for +it, that both in method, sentiment, and subject, it is peculiarly +English, and represents a sincere attempt to apply what may be called +traditional principles in decoration to book illustration. + +Among the recent influences tending to foster the feeling for the +treatment of black and white design and book illustrations, _primarily +from the decorative point of view_, the Arts and Crafts Exhibition +Society may claim to have had some share, and they have endeavoured, by +the tendency of the work selected for exhibition as well as by papers and +lectures by various members on this point, to emphasize its importance +and to spread clear principles, even at the risk of appearing partial +and biased in one direction, and leaving many clever artists in black and +white unrepresented. + +[Sidenote: ILLUSTRATION AND DECORATION.] + +Now for graphic ability, originality, and variety, there can be no doubt +of the vigour of our modern black and white artists. It is the most vital +and really popular form of art at the present day, and it, far more than +painting, deals with the actual life of the people; it is, too, +thoroughly democratic in its appeal, and, associated with the newspaper +and magazine, goes everywhere--at least, as far as there are shillings +and pence--and where often no other form of art is accessible. + +But graphic power and original point of view is not always associated +with the decorous ornamental sense. It is, in fact, often its very +antithesis, although, on the other hand, good graphic drawing, governed +by a sense of style to which economy or simplicity of line often leads, +has ornamental quality. + +I should say at once that sincere graphic or naturalistic drawing, with +individual character and style, is always preferable to merely lifeless, +purely imitative, and tame repetition in so-called decorative work. + +[Illustration: HENRY PAYNE. + +FROM "A BOOK OF CAROLS." (ALLEN, 1893.)] + +[Illustration: F. MASON. + +FROM "HUON OF BORDEAUX." (ALLEN, 1895.)] + +[Illustration: GERTRUDE M. BRADLEY. + +THE CHERRY FESTIVAL. (FROM A PEN DRAWING.)] + +[Illustration: MARY NEWILL. + +PORLOCK. (FROM A PEN DRAWING.)] + +[Sidenote: DECORATIVE PRINCIPLES.] + +While I claim that certain decorative considerations such as plan, scale +balance, proportion, quantity, relation to type, are essential to really +beautiful book illustration, I do not in the least wish to ignore the +clever work of many contemporary illustrators because they only care to +be illustrators pure and simple, and prefer to consider a page of paper, +or any part of it unoccupied by type, as a fair field for a +graphic sketch, with no more consideration for its relation to the page +itself or the rest of the book, than an artist usually feels when he jots +down something from life in his sketch-book. + +[Illustration: CELIA LEVETUS. + +A BOOKPLATE.] + +I think that book illustration should be something more than a collection +of accidental sketches. Since one cannot ignore the constructive organic +element in the formation--the idea of the book itself--it is so far +inartistic to leave it out of account in designing work intended to form +an essential or integral part of that book. + +I do not, however, venture to assert that decorative illustration can +only be done in _one_ way--if so, there would be an end in that direction +to originality or individual feeling. There is nothing absolute in art, +and one cannot dogmatize, but it seems to me that in all designs certain +conditions must be acknowledged, and not only acknowledged but accepted +freely, just as one would accept the rules of a game before attempting to +play it. + +The rules, the conditions of a sport or game, give it its own peculiar +character and charm, and by means of them the greatest amount of pleasure +and keenest excitement is obtained in the long run, just as by observing +the conditions, the limitations of an art or handicraft, we shall extract +the greatest amount of pleasure for the worker and beauty for the +beholder. + +[Sidenote: THE DIAL.] + +Many remarkable designers in black and white of individuality and +distinction, and with more or less strong feeling for decorative +treatment, have arisen during the last few years. Among these ought to be +named Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon, whose joint work upon "The Dial" is +sufficiently well known. They, too, have taken up printing as an art, Mr. +Ricketts having designed his own type and engraved his own drawings on +wood. They are excellent craftsmen as well as inventive and original +artists of remarkable cultivation, imaginative feeling and taste. There +is a certain suggestion of inspiration from William Blake in Mr. Shannon +sometimes, and of German or Italian fifteenth century woodcuts in the +work of Mr. Ricketts. The weird designs of Mr. Reginald Savage should +also be noted, as well as the charming woodcuts of Mr. Sturge Moore. + +[Illustration: C S. RICKETTS. + +FROM "HERO AND LEANDER." (THE VALE PRESS.)] + +Another very remarkable designer in black and white is Mr. Aubrey +Beardsley. His work shows a delicate sense of line, and a bold decorative +use of solid blacks, as well as an extraordinarily weird fancy and +grotesque imagination, which seems occasionally inclined to run in a +morbid direction. Although, as in the case of most artists, one can trace +certain influences which have helped in the formation of their style, +there can be no doubt of his individuality and power. The designs for the +work by which Mr. Beardsley became first known, I believe, the "Morte +d'Arthur," alone are sufficient to show this. There appears to be a +strong mediæval decorative feeling, mixed with a curious weird +Japanese-like spirit of _diablerie_ and grotesque, as of the opium-dream, +about his work; but considered as book-decoration, though it is +effective, the general abstract treatment of line, and the use of large +masses of black and white, rather suggest designs intended to be carried +out in some other material, such as inlay or enamel, for instance, in +which they would gain the charm of beautiful surface and material, and +doubtless look very well. Mr. Beardsley shows different influences in his +later work in the "Savoy," some of which suggests a study of eighteenth +century designers, such as Callot or Hogarth, and old English mezzotints. + +[Sidenote: THE STUDIO.] + +[Sidenote: CONTEMPORARY ILLUSTRATORS.] + +"The Studio," which, while under the able and sympathetic editorship of +Mr. Gleeson White, first called attention (by the medium of Mr. Pennell's +pen) to Mr. Beardsley's work, has done good service in illustrating the +progress of decorative art, both at home and abroad, and has from time to +time introduced several young artists whose designs have thus become +known to the public for the first time, such as Mr. Patten Wilson, Mr. +Laurence Housman, Mr. Fairfax Muckley, and Mr. Charles Robinson, who all +have their own distinctive feeling: the first for bold line drawings +after the old German method with an abundance of detail; the second for +remarkable taste in ornament, and a humorous and poetic fancy; the third +for a very graceful feeling for line and the decorative use of black and +white--especially in the treatment of trees and branch work, leaves and +flowers associated with figures. + +Mr. J. D. Batten has distinguished himself for some years past as an +inventive illustrator of Fairy Tales. In his designs, perhaps, he shows +more of the feeling of the story-teller than the decorator in line, on +the whole; his feeling as a painter, perhaps, not making him quite +content with simple black and white; and, certainly, his charming tempera +picture of the sleeping maid and the dwarfs, and his excellent printed +picture of Eve and the serpent, printed by Mr. Fletcher in the Japanese +method, might well excuse him if that is the case. + +Mr. Henry Ford is another artist who has devoted himself with much +success to Fairy Tale pictures in black and white, being associated with +the fairy books of many different colours issued under the fairy +godfather's wand (or pen) of Mr. Andrew Lang. He, too, I think perhaps, +cares more for the "epic" than the "ornamental" side of illustration; he +generally shows a pretty poetical fancy. + +At the head, perhaps, of the newer school of decorative illustrators +ought to be named Mr. Robert Anning Bell, whose taste and feeling for +style alone gives him a distinctive place. He has evidently studied the +early printers and book-decorators in outline of Venice and Florence to +some purpose; by no means merely imitatively, but with his own type of +figure and face, and fresh natural impressions, observes with much taste +and feeling for beauty the limitations and decorative suggestions in the +relations of line-drawing and typography. Many of his designs to "The +Midsummer Night's Dream" are delightful both as drawings and as +decorative illustrations. + +[Illustration: CHARLES RICKETTS. + +FROM "DAPHNIS AND CHLOE." (THE VALE PRESS.)] + +The newest book illustrator is perhaps Mr. Charles Robinson, whose work +appears to be full of invention, though I have not yet had sufficient +opportunities of doing it justice. He shows quaint and sometimes weird +fancy, a love of fantastic architecture, and is not afraid of outline and +large white spaces. + +[Illustration: C. H. SHANNON. + +FROM "DAPHNIS AND CHLOE." (THE VALE PRESS.)] + +Mr. R. Spence shows considerable vigour and originality. He distinguished +himself first by some pen drawings which won the gold medal at the +National Competitions at South Kensington, in which a romantic feeling +and dramatic force was shown in designs of mediæval battles, expressed in +forcible way, consistent with good line and effect in black and white. +His design of the Legend of St. Cuthbert in "The Quarto" is perhaps the +most striking thing he has done. I am enabled to print one of his +characteristic designs of battles. + +[Illustration: AUBREY BEARDSLEY. + +FROM THE "MORTE D'ARTHUR." (J. M. DENT AND CO.)] + +Mr. A. Jones also distinguished himself about the same time as Mr. Spence +in the National Competition, and showed some dramatic and romantic +feeling. The design given shows a more ornamental side. + +[Illustration: AUBREY BEARDSLEY. + +FROM THE "MORTE D'ARTHUR." (DENT.)] + +Mr. William Strang, who has made his mark in etching as a medium for +designs full of strong character and weird imagination, also shows in his +processed pen drawings vigorous line and perception of decorative value, +as in the designs to "Munchausen," two of which are here reproduced. + +[Sidenote: THE EVERGREEN.] + +The publication of "The Evergreen" by Patrick Geddes and his colleagues +at Edinburgh has introduced several black and white designers of force +and character--Mr. Robert Burns and Mr. John Duncan, for instance, more +particularly distinguishing themselves for decorative treatment in which +one may see the influences of much fresh inspiration from Nature. + +[Illustration: AUBREY BEARDSLEY. + +FROM THE "MORTE D'ARTHUR." (DENT.)] + +[Sidenote: CONTEMPORARY ILLUSTRATORS.] + +Miss Mary Sargant Florence shows power and decorative feeling in her +outline designs to "The Crystal Ball." Mr. Granville Fell must be named +among the newer school of decorative illustrators; and Mr. Paul +Woodroffe, who also shows much facility of design and feeling for old +English life in his books of Nursery Rhymes; his recent work shows much +refinement of drawing and feeling. + +Miss Alice B. Woodward ought also to be named for her clever treatment of +mediæval life in black and white. + +More recently, perhaps the most remarkable work in book illustration has +been that of Mr. E. J. Sullivan, whose powerful designs to Carlyle's +"Sartor Resartus" are full of vigour and character. + +Force and character, again, seem the leading qualities in the striking +work of another of our recent designers in black and white, Mr. +Nicholson, who also engraves his own work. + +[Illustration: EDMUND J. SULLIVAN. + +FROM "SARTOR RESARTUS." (BELL.)] + +Mr. Gordon Craig adds printing to the crafts of black and white design +and engraving, and has a distinctive feeling of his own. + +The revival in England of decorative art of all kinds during the +last five and twenty years, culminating as it appears to be doing in +book-design, has not escaped the eyes of observant and sympathetic +artists and writers upon the Continent. The work of English artists +of this kind has been exhibited in Germany, in Holland, in Belgium +and France, and has met with remarkable appreciation and sympathy. + +[Illustration: PATTEN WILSON. + +FROM THE PEN DRAWING.] + +[Illustration: LAURENCE HOUSMAN. + +TITLE-PAGE OF "THE HOUSE OF JOY." (KEGAN PAUL, 1895.)] + +[Illustration: L. FAIRFAX MUCKLEY. + +FROM "FRANGILLA." (ELKIN MATHEWS.)] + +[Illustration: CHARLES ROBINSON. + +FROM "A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSE." (LANE, 1895.)] + +[Illustration: CHARLES ROBINSON. + +FROM "A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSE." (LANE, 1895.)] + +[Illustration: CHARLES ROBINSON. + +FROM A "CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSE." (LANE, 1895.)] + +[Sidenote: BELGIUM.] + +In Belgium, particularly, where there appears to be a somewhat similar +movement in art, the work of the newer school of English designers has +awakened the greatest interest. The fact that M. Oliver Georges Destrée +has made sympathetic literary studies of the English pre-Raphaelites and +their successors, is an indication of this. The exhibitions of the "XX^e +Siècle," "La libre Æsthetique," at Brussels and Liège, are also evidence +of the repute in which English designers are held. + +[Illustration: J. D. BATTEN. + +FROM "THE ARABIAN NIGHTS." (J. M. DENT AND CO.)] + +[Sidenote: THE CONTINENT.] + +In Holland, too, a special collection of the designs of English book +illustrators has been exhibited at the Hague and other towns under the +auspices of M. Loffelt. + +[Illustration: J. D. BATTEN. + +FROM "THE ARABIAN NIGHTS." (J. M. DENT AND CO.)] + +At Paris, also, the critics and writers on art have been busy in the +various journals giving an account of the Arts and Crafts movement, the +Kelmscott Press, and the school of English book-decorators in black and +white, and the recent exhibitions of "L'Art Nouveau" and "Le +Livre Moderne" at Paris are further evidence of the interest +taken there in English art. + +[Illustration: R. ANNING BELL. + +FROM "A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM." + +(J. M. DENT AND CO., 1895.)] + +[Illustration: R. ANNING BELL. + +FROM "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST." + +(J. M. DENT AND CO., 1894.)] + +[Illustration: R. SPENCE. + +FROM A PEN DRAWING.] + +[Illustration: ALFRED JONES. + +A TITLE-PAGE.] + +[Illustration: WILLIAM STRANG. + +FROM "BARON MUNCHAUSEN." (LAWRENCE AND BULLEN.)] + +[Illustration: WILLIAM STRANG. + +FROM "MUNCHAUSEN" (LAWRENCE AND BULLEN).] + +Without any vain boasting, it is interesting to note that whereas most +artistic movements affecting England are commonly supposed to have been +imported from the Continent, we are credited at last with a genuine home +growth in artistic development. Although, regarded in the large sense, +country or nationality is nothing to art (being at its best always +cosmopolitan and international) yet in the history of design, national +and local varieties, racial characteristics and local developments must +always have their value and historic interest. + +[Illustration: H. GRANVILLE FELL. + +FROM "CINDERELLA." (J. M. DENT AND CO.)] + +[Sidenote: BELGIUM.] + +We may, perhaps, take it as a sympathetic response to English feeling, +the appearance of such books as M. Rijsselberghe's Almanack, with its +charming designs in line, from the house of Dietrich at Brussels. M. +Fernand Knopff's work, original as it is, shows sympathy with the later +English school of poetic and decorative design of which D. G. Rossetti +may be said to have been the father, though in book-illustration proper I +am not aware that he has done much. In Holland in black and +white design there is M. G. W. Dijsselhof and M. R. N. Roland Holst. + +[Illustration: JOHN DUNCAN. + +FROM "THE EVERGREEN." (GEDDES AND CO., 1895.)] + +[Illustration: JOHN DUNCAN. + +FROM "THE EVERGREEN." (GEDDES AND CO., 1895.)] + +[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS. + +FROM "THE EVERGREEN." (GEDDES AND CO., 1895.)] + +[Illustration: MARY SARGANT FLORENCE. + +FROM "THE CRYSTAL BALL." (BELL, 1894.)] + +[Illustration: PAUL WOODROFFE. + +FROM "SECOND BOOK OF NURSERY RHYMES." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] + +[Illustration: PAUL WOODROFFE. + +FROM "NURSERY RHYMES." (BELL, 1895.)] + +[Sidenote: GERMANY.] + +In Germany, such original and powerful artists as Josef Sattler and Franz +Stück; the former seemingly inheriting much of the grim and stern humour +of the old German masters, as well as their feeling for character and +treatment of line, while his own personality is quite distinct. While +Sattler is distinctly Gothic in sympathy, Stück seems more to lean to the +pagan or classical side, and his centaurs and graces are drawn with much +feeling and character. We have already mentioned the "Munich Calendar," +designed by Otto Hupp, which is well known for the vigour and spirit with +which the artist has worked after the old German manner, with bold +treatment of heraldic devices, and has effectively used colour with line +work. The name of Seitz appears upon some effectively designed +allegorical figures, one of Gutenberg at his press. + +[Sidenote: "JUGEND."] + +"Jugend," a copiously illustrated journal published at Munich by Dr. +Hirth, shows that there are many clever artists with a more or less +decorative aim in illustration, which in others seems rather overgrown +with grotesque feeling and morbid extravagance, but there is an abundance +of exuberant life, humour, whimsical fancy and spirit characteristic of +South Germany. + +[Illustration: M. RIJSSELBERGHE.] + +"Ver Sacrum," the journal of the group of the "Secession" artists of +Vienna, gives evidence of considerable daring and resource in black and +white drawing, though mainly of an impressionistic or pictorial aim. + +M. Larisch, of Vienna, has distinguished himself by his works upon the +artistic treatment and spacing of letters which contain examples of the +work of different artists both continental and English. + +French artists in decoration of all kinds have been so largely influenced +or affected by the Japanese, and have so generally approached design from +the impressionistic, dramatic, or accidental-individualist point of view, +that the somewhat severe limits imposed by a careful taste in all art +with an ornamental purpose, does not appear to have greatly attracted +them. At all times it would seem that the dramatic element is the +dominant one in French art, and this, though of course quite reconcilable +with the ornament instinct, is seldom found perfectly united with it, +and, where present, generally gets the upper hand. The older classical or +Renaissance ornamental feeling of designers like Galland and Puvis de +Chavannes seems to be dying out, and the modern _chic_ and daring of a +Cheret seems to be more characteristic of the moment. + +[Sidenote: GRASSET.] + +Yet, on the other hand, among the newer French School, we find an artist +of such careful methods and of such strong decorative instinct as +Grasset, on what I should call the architectural side in +contradistinction to the impressionistic. His work, though quite +characteristically French in spirit and sentiment, is much more akin in +method to our English decorative school. In fact, many of Grasset's +designs suggest that he has done what our men have done, studied the art +of the middle ages from the remains in his own country, and grafted upon +this stock the equipment and sentiment of a modern. + +[Sidenote: LETTERING.] + +In his book illustrations he seems, however, so far as I know, to lean +rather towards illustrations pure and simple, rather than decoration, and +exhibits great archæological resource as well as romantic feeling in +such designs as those to "Les Cinq Fils d'Aymon." The absence of book +decoration in the English sense, in France, however, may be due to the +want of beauty or artistic feeling in the typographer's part of the work. +Modern French type has generally assumed elongated and meagre forms which +are not suggestive of rich decorative effect, and do not combine with +design: nor, so far as I have been able to observe, does there seem to be +any feeling amongst the designers for the artistic value of lettering, or +any serious attempt to cultivate better forms. The poster-artist, to whom +one would think, being essential to his work, the value of lettering in +good forms would appeal, generally tears the roman alphabet to tatters, +or uses extremely debased and ugly varieties. + +More recently, however, French designers and printers appear to be giving +attention to the subject, and newly designed types are appearing; one +firm at Paris having issued a fount designed by Eugene Grasset. + +The charming designs of Boutet de Monvel should be named as among the +most distinctive of modern French book illustrations, for their careful +drawing and decorative effect, although, being in colours, they hardly +belong to the same category as the works we have been considering, and +the relation of type to pictures leaves something to be desired. + +A respect for form and style in lettering, is, I take it, one of the most +unmistakable indications of a good decorative sense. A true ornamental +instinct can produce a fine ornamental effect by means of a mass of good +type or MS. lettering alone: and considered as accompaniments or +accessories to design they are invaluable, as presenting opportunities of +contrast or recurrence in mass or line to other elements in the +composition. To the decorative illustrator of books they are the unit or +primal element from which he starts. + +[Illustration: WALTER CRANE. + +FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." + +(GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] + +[Sidenote: ITALY.] + +The publication at Venice of "L'Arte della stampa nel Renascimento +Italiano Venezia," by Ferd. Ongania--a series of reproductions of +woodcuts, ornaments, initials, title-pages, etc., from some of the +choicest of the books of the early Venetian and Florentine printers, may +perhaps be taken as a sign of the growth of a similar interest in book +decoration in that country, unless, like other works, it is intended +chiefly for the foreign visitor. + +A sumptuously printed quarterly on Art, which has of late made its +appearance at Rome, "Il Convito," seems to show an interest in the +decorative side, and does not confine its note on illustrations to +Italian work, but gives reproductions from the works of D. G. Rossetti, +and from Elihu Vedder's designs to "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." + +Certainly if the possession of untold treasures of endlessly beautiful +invention in decorative art, and the tradition of ancient schools tend to +foster and to stimulate original effort, one would think that it should +be easier for Italian artists than those of other countries to revive +something of the former decorative beauty of the work of her printers and +designers in the days of Aldus and Ratdolt, of the Bellini and +Botticelli. + +It does not appear to be enough, however, to possess the seed merely; or +else one might say that where a museum is, there will the creative art +spring also; it is necessary to have the soil also; to plough and sow, +and then to possess our souls in patience a long while ere the new crop +appears, and ere it ripens and falls to our sickle. It is only another +way of saying, that art is the outcome of life, not of death. + +Artists may take motives or inspiration from the past, or from the +present, it matters not, so long as their work has life and beauty--so +long as it is organic, in short. + +[Illustration: HOWARD PYLE. + +FROM "OTTO OF THE SILVER HAND." (SCRIBNER.)] + +[Sidenote: HOWARD PYLE.] + +I have already alluded to the movement in Boston among a group of +cultured young men--Mr. Lee the printer and his colleagues--more or less +inspired by "The Hobby Horse" and the Kelmscott Press, which resulted in +the printing of "The Knight Errant." + +[Illustration: HOWARD PYLE. + +FROM "OTTO OF THE SILVER HAND." (SCRIBNER.)] + +Some years before, however, Mr. Howard Pyle distinguished himself as a +decorative artist in book designs, which showed, among other more modern +influences, a considerable study of the method of Albert Dürer. I give a +reproduction which suggests somewhat the effect of the famous copperplate +of Erasmus. He sometimes uses a lighter method, such as is shown in the +drawings to "The One Horse Shay." + +Of late in his drawings in the magazines, Mr. Pyle has adopted the modern +wash method, or painting in black and white, in which, however able in +its own way, it is distinctly at a considerable loss of individuality +and decorative interest.[9] + + [9] I am informed that the adoption of the wash method is not + recent with Mr. Pyle, but that he adapts his method to his matter. + This does not, however, affect the opinion expressed as to the + relative artistic value of wash and line work. + +[Illustration: WILL. H. BRADLEY. + +A COVER DESIGN. (CHICAGO, 1894.)] + +[Illustration: WILL. H. BRADLEY. + +PROSPECTUS OF "BRADLEY HIS BOOK." + +(SPRINGFIELD, MASS., 1896.)] + +[Illustration: WILL. H. BRADLEY. + +DESIGN FOR "THE CHAP-BOOK." (CHICAGO, 1895.)] + +[Sidenote: "THE INLAND PRINTER."] + +[Sidenote: AMERICAN ARTISTS.] + +Another artist of considerable invention and decorative ability has +recently appeared in America, Mr. Will. H. Bradley, whose designs for +"The Inland Printer" of Chicago are remarkable for careful and delicate +line-work, and effective treatment of black and white, and showing the +influence of the newer English school with a Japanese blend. + +[Illustration] + + + + +CHAPTER V. OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN DESIGNING BOOK ORNAMENTS AND +ILLUSTRATIONS: CONSIDERATIONS OF ARRANGEMENT, SPACING, AND TREATMENT. + + +It may not be amiss to add a few words as a kind of summary of general +principles to which we seem to be naturally led by the line of thought I +have been pursuing on this subject of book decoration. + +As I have said, there is nothing final or absolute in Design. It is a +matter of continual re-arrangement, re-adjustment, and modification or +even transformation of certain elements. A kind of imaginative chemistry +of forms, masses, lines, and quantities, continually evolving new +combinations. But each artistic problem must be solved on its merits, and +as each one varies and presents fresh questions, it follows that no +absolute rules or principles can be laid down to fit particular cases, +although as the result of, and evolved out of, practice, certain general +guiding principles are valuable, as charts and compasses by which the +designer can to a certain extent direct his course. + +To begin with, the enormous variety in style, aim, and size of books, +makes the application of definite principles difficult. One must narrow +the problem down to a particular book, of a given character and size. + +Apart from the necessarily entirely personal and individual questions of +selection of subject, motive, feeling or sentiment, consider the +conditions of the book-page. Take an octavo page--such as one of those +of this volume. + +Although we may take the open book with the double-columns as the page +proper, in treating a book for illustration, we shall be called upon +sometimes to treat them as single pages. But whether single or double, +each has its limits in the mass of type forming the full page or column +which gives the dimensions of the designer's panel. The whole or any part +of this panel may be occupied by design, and one principle of procedure +in the ornamental treatment of a book is to consider any of the territory +not occupied by the type as a fair field for accompanying or terminating +design--as, for instance, at the ends of chapters, where more or less of +the type page is left blank. + +Unless we are designing our own type, or drawing our lettering as a part +of the design, the character and form of the type will give us a sort of +gauge of degree, or key, to start with, as to the force of the black and +white effect of our accompanying designs and ornaments. For instance, one +would generally avoid using heavy blacks and thick lines with a light +open kind of type, or light open work with very heavy type. (Even here +one must qualify, however, since light open pen-work has a fine and rich +effect with black letters sometimes.) + +[Illustration: WALTER CRANE. + +FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] + +[Illustration: WALTER CRANE. + +FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] + +[Illustration: WALTER CRANE. + +FROM SPENSER'S "FAERIE QUEENE." (GEORGE ALLEN, 1896.)] + +My own feeling--and designing must always finally be a question of +individual feeling--is rather to acknowledge the rectangular character of +the type page in the shape of the design; even in a vignette, by making +certain lines extend to the limits, so as to convey a feeling of +rectangular control and compactness, as in the tail-piece given +here from "The Faerie Queene." + +[Sidenote: OF END PAPERS.] + +But first, if one may, paradoxically, begin with "end paper" as it is +curiously called, there is the lining of the book. Here the problem is to +cover two leaves entirely in a suggestive and agreeable, but not +obtrusive way. One way is to design a repeating pattern much on the +principle of a small printed textile, or miniature wall-paper, in one or +more colours. Something delicately suggestive of the character and +contents of the book is in place here, but nothing that competes with the +illustrations proper. It may be considered as a kind of quadrangle, +forecourt, or even a garden or grass plot before the door. + +We are not intended to linger long here, but ought to get some hint or +encouragement to go on into the book. The arms of the owner (if he is +fond of heraldry, and wants to remind the potential book borrower to +piously return) may appear hereon--the book-plate. + +If we are to be playful and lavish, if the book is for Christmastide or +for children, we may catch a sort of fleeting butterfly idea on the +fly-leaves before we are brought with becoming, though dignified +curiosity, to a short pause at the half-title. Having read this, we are +supposed to pass on with somewhat bated breath until we come to the +double doors, and the front and full title are disclosed in all their +splendour. + +[Sidenote: OF FRONTISPIECES AND TITLE PAGES.] + +Even here, though, the whole secret of the book should not be let out, +but rather played with or suggested in a symbolic way, especially in any +ornament on the title-page, in which the lettering should be the chief +ornamental feature. A frontispiece may be more pictorial in treatment if +desired, and it is reasonable to occupy the whole of the type page both +for the lettering of title and the picture in the front; then, if +richness of effect is desired, the margin may be covered also almost to +the edge of the paper by inclosing borders, the width of these borders +varying according to the varying width of the paper margin, and in the +same proportions, _recto_ and _verso_ as the case may be, the broad side +turning outwards to the edge of the book each way. + +This is a plan adopted in the opening of the Kelmscott books, of which +that of "The Glittering Plain," given here, may be taken as a type. +Though Mr. Morris places his title page on the left to face the opening +of first chapter, and does not use a frontispiece, he obtains a +remarkably rich and varied effect of black and white in his larger title +pages by placing in his centre panel strong black Gothic letters; or, as +in the case of the Kelmscott Chaucer, letters in white relief upon a +floral arabesque adapted to the space, and filling the field with a +lighter floral network in open line, and enclosing this again with the +rich black and white marginal border. + +[Illustration: FROM "THE STORY OF THE GLITTERING PLAIN."] + +[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS AND WALTER CRANE. + +(KELMSCOTT PRESS, 1894.)] + +If I may refer again to my own work, in the designs to "The Faerie +Queene" the full-page designs are all treated as panels of figure design, +or pictures, and are enclosed in fanciful borders, in which subsidiary +incidents of characters of the poem are introduced or suggested, somewhat +on the plan of mediæval tapestries. A reduction of one of these is given +above. + +[Sidenote: OF OUTLINE AND BORDERS.] + +A full-page design may, thus inclosed and separated from the type pages, +bear carrying considerably further, and be more realized and stronger in +effect than the ornaments of the type page, just as in the illuminated +MSS. highly wrought miniatures were worked into inclosing borders on the +centres of large initial letters, which formed a broad framework, +branching into light floral scroll or leaves upon the margin and uniting +with the lettering. + +Much depends upon the decorative scheme. With appropriate type, a +charming, simple, and broad effect can be obtained by using outline +alone, both for the figure designs or pictures, and the ornament proper. + +The famous designs of the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili," 1499, may be taken +as an instance of this treatment; also the "Fasciculus Medicinæ," 1495, +"Æsop's Fables," 1493, and other books of the Venetian printers of about +this date or earlier, which are generally remarkable for fine quality of +their outline and the refinement and grace of their ornaments. + +One of the most effective black and white page borders of a purely +ornamental kind is one dated 1478, inclosing a page of Roman type, (_see_ +illustration, Venice, 1478, Pomponius Mela). A meandering arabesque of a +rose-stem leaf and flower, white on a black ground, springing from a +circle in the broad margin at the bottom, in which are two shields of +arms. A tolerably well known but most valuable example. + +[Sidenote: OF DESIGNING TYPE.] + +The opening chapter of a book affords an opportunity to the designer of +producing a decorative effect by uniting ornament with type. He can +place figure design in a frieze-shaped panel (say of about a fourth of +the page) for the heading, and weight it by a bold initial letter +designed in a square, from which may spring the stem and leaves of an +arabesque throwing the letter into relief, and perhaps climbing up and +down the margin, and connecting the heading with the initial. The +initialed page from "The Faerie Queene" is given as an example of such +treatment. The title, or any chapter inscription, if embodied in the +design of the heading, has a good effect. + +Harmony between type and illustration and ornament can never, of course, +be quite so complete as when the lettering is designed and drawn as a +part of the whole, unless the type is designed by the artist. It entails +an amount of careful and patient labour (unless the inscriptions are very +brief) few would be prepared to face, and would mean, practically, a +return to the principle of the block book. + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +KETHAM'S "FASCICULUS MEDICINÆ." (VENICE, DE GREGORIIS, 1493.)] + +[Illustration: ITALIAN SCHOOL. XVTH CENTURY. + +POMPONIUS MELA. (VENICE, RATDOLT, 1478.)] + +Even in these days, however, books have been entirely produced by hand, +and, for that matter, if beauty were the sole object, we could not do +better than follow the methods of the scribe, illuminator, and +miniaturist of the Middle Ages. But the world clamours for many copies +(at least in some cases), and the artist must make terms with the +printing press if he desires to live. It would be a delightful thing if +every book were different--a millennium for collectors! Perhaps, too, it +might be a wholesome regulation at this stage if authors were to qualify +as scribes (in the old sense) and write out their own works in +beautiful letters! How it would purify literary style! + +There is no doubt that great attention has been given to the formation of +letters by designers in the past. + +[Sidenote: THE DÜRER ALPHABETS.] + +Albrecht Dürer, in his "Geometrica," for instance, gives an elaborate +system for drawing the Roman capitals, and certainly produces by its +means a fine alphabet in that type of letter, apparently copied from +ancient Roman inscriptions. He does the same for the black letters +also.[10] + + [10] Reproduced in "Alphabets," by E. F. Strange (pp. 244-250), + Ex-Libris Series. Bell. + +For the Roman capitals he takes a square, and divides it into four equal +parts for the A. The horizontal line across the centre gives the +crossbar. The sides of the square are divided into eighths, and one +eighth is measured at the top of vertical dividing line, one eighth again +from each bottom corner of the square to these points, the limbs of the +A, are drawn; the up stroke and cross-bar being one-sixteenth, the down +stroke being one-eighth of the square in thickness. Circles of one-fourth +of the square in diameter are struck at the top of the A where the limbs +meet, and at lower corners, to form the outside serifs of the feet, the +inside serifs being formed by circles of one-sixteenth diameter; and so +the A is complete. Various sub-divisions of the square are given as +guides in the formation of the other letters less symmetrical, and two or +three forms are given of some, such as the O, and the R, Q, and S; but +the same proportions of thick and thin strokes are adhered to, and the +same method of forming the serifs. + +For the black letter (lower case German) text the proportions are five +squares for the short letters i, n, m, u, the space between the strokes +of a letter like u being one-third the thickness of the stroke, the top +and bottom one being covered with one square, set diamond-wise. Eight +squares for the long letters l, h, b; the tops cut off diagonally, the +feet turned diamond-wise. + +This is interesting as showing the care and sense of proportion which may +be expended upon the formation of lettering. It also gives a definite +standard. The division of eighths and fourths in the Roman capital is +noteworthy, too, in connection with the eight-heads standard of +proportion for the human body; and the square basis reminds one of +Vitruvius, and demonstration of the inclosure of the human figure with +limbs in extension by the square and the circle. + +Those interested in the history of the form of lettering cannot do better +than consult Mr. Strange's book on "Alphabets" in this series. + +It might be possible to construct an actual theory of the geometric +relation of figure design, ornamental forms, and the forms of lettering, +text, or type upon them, but we are more concerned with the free artistic +invention for the absence of which no geometric rules can compensate. The +invention, the design, comes first in order, the rules and principles are +discovered afterwards, to confirm and establish their truth--would that +they did not also sometimes crystallize their vitality! + +I have spoken of the treatment of headings and initials at the opening of +a chapter. In deciding upon such an arrangement the designer is more or +less committed to carrying it out throughout the book, and would do well +to make his ornamental spaces, and the character, treatment, and size of +his initials agree in the corresponding places. This would still leave +plenty of room for variety of invention in the details. + +The next variety of shape in which he might indulge would be the +half-page, generally an attractive proportion for a figure design, and if +repeated on the opposite page or column, the effect of a continuous +frieze can be given, which is very useful where a procession of figures +is concerned, and the slight break made by the centre margin is not +objectionable. + +The same plan may be adopted when it is desired to carry a full-page +design across, or meet it by a corresponding design opposite. + +[Sidenote: OF HEAD AND TAIL-PIECES.] + +Then we come to the space at the end of the chapter. For my part, I can +never resist the opportunity for a tailpiece if it is to be a fully +illustrated work, though some would let it severely alone, or be glad of +the blank space to rest a bit. I think this lets one down at the end of +the chapter too suddenly. The blank, the silence, seems too dead; one +would be glad of some lingering echo, some recurring thought suggested by +the text; and here is the designer's opportunity. It is a tight place, +like the person who is expected to say the exactly fit thing at the right +moment. Neither too much, or too little. A quick wit and a light hand +will serve the artist in good stead here. + +[Sidenote: OF TAIL-PIECES.] + +Page-terminations or tailpieces may of course be very various in plan, +and their style correspond with or be a variant of the style of the rest +of the decorations of the book. Certain types are apt to recur, but while +the bases may be similar, the superstructure of fancy may vary as much as +we like. There is what I should call the mouse-tail termination, formed +on a gradually diminishing line, starting the width of the type, and +ending in a point. Printers have done it with dwindling lines of type, +finishing with a single word or an aldine leaf. + +Then there is the plan of boldly shutting the gate, so to speak, by +carrying a panel of design right across, or filling the whole of the +remaining page. This is more in the nature of additional illustration to +carry on the story, and might either be a narrow frieze-like strip, or a +half, or three-quarter page design as the space would suggest. + +There is the inverted triangular plan, and the shield or hatchment form. +The garland or the spray, sprig, leaf, or spot, or the pen flourish +glorified into an arabesque. + +The medallion form, or seal shape, too, often lends itself appropriately +to end a chapter with, where an inclosed figure or symbol is wanted. One +principle in designing isolated ornaments is useful: to arrange the +subject so that its edges shall touch a graceful boundary, or inclosing +shape, whether the boundary is actually defined by inclosing lines or +frame-work or not. Floral, leaf, and escutcheon shapes are generally the +best, but free, not rigidly geometrical. The value of a certain economy +of line can hardly be too much appreciated, and the perception of the +necessity of recurrence of line, and a re-echoing in the details of +leading motives in line and mass. It is largely upon such small threads +that decorative success and harmonious effect depend, and they are +particularly closely connected with the harmonious disposition of type +and ornamental illustration which we have been considering. + +[Sidenote: THE END.] + +It would be easy to fill volumes with elaborate analysis of existing +designs from this point of view, but designs, to those who feel them, +ought to speak in their own tongue for themselves more forcibly than any +written explanation or commentary; and, though of making of many books +there is no end, every book must have its end, even though that end to +the writer, at least, may seem to leave one but at the beginning. + +[Illustration] + +[Illustration: ARTHUR HUGHES. + +FROM "GOOD WORDS FOR THE YOUNG." (STRAHAN, 1871.)] + +[Sidenote: NOTES FOR NEW EDITION.] + +Chap. IV. Of the Recent Development, etc., p. 189. In addition to the +names of the modern printers and presses mentioned in this chapter must +now be added those of several workers in the field of artistic printing +who have distinguished themselves since the Kelmscott Press. + +Mr. Cobden Sanderson has turned from the outside adornment of the book to +the inside, and, in association with Mr. Emery Walker, whose technical +knowledge and taste was so valuable on the Kelmscott Press, has founded +"The Doves Press" at Hammersmith, and has issued books remarkable for the +pure severity of their typography, founded mainly upon Jenson. + +Mr. St. John Hornby also must be named, more particularly for his revival +of a very beautiful Italian type founded upon the type of Sweynheim and +Pannartz, the first printers in Italy. The Greek type designed by the +late Robert Proctor, based on the Alcala fount used in the New Testament +of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible of 1514, should be mentioned as the +only modern attempt to improve the printing of Greek, with the exception +of Mr. Selwyn Image's, which perhaps suffered by being cut very small to +suit commercial exigences. + +Mr. C. R. Ashbee, too, has established a very extensive printery, "The +Essex House Press," which he has since transplanted to Chipping Camden. +He had the assistance of several of the workers from the Kelmscott Press, +and has produced many excellently printed books of late years, such as +the Benvenuto Cellini, and including such elaborate productions as Edward +VI.'s Prayer Book, with wood-engravings and initials and ornaments as +well as the type of his own design. + +An interesting series of the English poets, also, with frontispieces by +various artists, has been issued from this press. + +P. 218. The death of Aubrey Beardsley since the notice of his work was +written must be recorded, and it would seem as if the loss of this +extraordinary artist marked the decadence of our modern decadents. + +A perhaps equally remarkable designer, however, whose work has a certain +kinship in some features with Beardsley's, is Mr. James Syme, whose work +has not before been noticed in this book. He has a powerful and weird +imagination associated with grotesque and satirical design, and +considerable skill in the use of line and black and white effect. + +P. 267. In writing of book illustrators in France, a leading place should +be given to M. Boutet de Monvel, whose delicate drawing, tasteful +colouring, and sense of decorative effect, combined with abundant +resource in variety of costume, and skilful treatment of crowds, mediæval +battle scenes, and ceremonial groups are seen to full advantage in his +recent "Ste. Jean d'Arc," although no particular relationship between +illustration and type is attempted. + +P. 268. A recent proof of the revival of taste in book-decoration and +artistic printing in Italy may be referred to here as showing the +influence of the English movement. I mean the edition of Gabriele +d'Annunzio's "Francesca da Rimini" with illustrations or rather +decorations by Adolphus de Karolis, printed by the Fratelli Treves in +1902. This book shows unmistakable signs of study of recent English +work, as well as of the early printers of Venice, and it is strange to +think how sometimes artists of one country may come back to an +appreciation of a particular period of their own historic art by the aid +of foreign spectacles. Among the original designers of modern Italy may +be mentioned G. M. Mataloni, who shows remarkable powers of +draughtsmanship and invention, largely spent upon posters and ex-libris. + +Italy, too, has an able critic and chronicler of the work of +book-designers of all countries in Sig. Vittorio Pica of Naples, whose +"Attraverso gli Albi e le Cartelle" (Istituto Italiano d'arti grafiche +editore Bergamo) is very comprehensive. + +In Vienna Prof. Larisch recently published a book of Alphabets designed +by various artists of Europe; Germany, France, Italy, and England being +represented. The group of Viennese artists known as the "Secession" have +issued "Ver Sacrum," a monthly journal, or magazine, giving original +designs of various artists more or less in the direction of +book-decoration. Latterly the designs offered seemed to lose themselves +either in an affectation of primitiveness and almost infantine +simplicity, or the wildest grotesqueness and eccentricity. + + + + +APPENDIX. + + +[Illustration: HEADPIECE BY ALAN WRIGHT.] + +[Illustration: I. IRISH. VITH Century. + +BOOK OF KELLS. [_See page 13._] + +[Illustration: II. ENGLISH. XIVTH CENTURY. + +ARUNDEL PSALTER, 1339. [_See page 16._] + +[Illustration: III. ENGLISH. XIVTH CENTURY. + +ARUNDEL PSALTER, 1339. [_See page 16._] + +[Illustration: IV. ENGLISH. XIVTH CENTURY. + +ARUNDEL PSALTER, 1339. [_See page 16._] + +[Illustration: V. FRENCH. XIVTH CENTURY. + +EPISTLE OF PHILIPPE DE COMINES TO RICHARD II. [_See page 23._] + +[Illustration: VI. FRENCH. XVTH CENTURY. + +BEDFORD HOURS, PAGE OF CALENDAR, A.D. 1422. + +[_See page 23._] + +[Illustration: VII. FRENCH. XVTH CENTURY. + +BEDFORD HOURS, A.D. 1422. [_See page 23._] + +[Illustration: VIII. ENGLISH. LATE XVTH CENTURY. + +ROMANCE OF THE ROSE. [_See page 29._] + +[Illustration: IX. ITALIAN. XVTH CENTURY. + +INITIAL LETTER, CHOIR BOOK, SIENA (1468----1472-3). [_See page 30._] + +[Illustration: X. JAPANESE. XIXTH CENTURY. + +HOKUSAI. [_See page 163._] + +[Illustration: XI. JAPANESE. XIXTH CENTURY. + +HOKUSAI. [_See page 163._] + + + + +INDEX. + + ABBEY, Edwin, 166. + + _Æsop's Fables_ (Venice, 1493), 293. + + ---- (Ulm, 1498), 53. + + ---- (Naples, 1485), 55. + + "Aglaia," cover for, 154, 157. + + Alciati's Emblems, 109. + + Aldus, 62, 63, 65, 108. + + Alphabet (Dürer's), 299. + + _Alphabets_ (Bell, 1894), 299, 300. + + Amman, Jost, 96. + + American Wood-engraving, 148, 164. + + _Andersen's Fairy Tales_ (Allen, 1893), 199. + + Anglo-Saxon MSS., 14, _et seq._ + + Apocalypse, MS., 14th Cent., 19. + + _Arabian Nights_ (Dent, 1893), 241, 242. + + Arndes, Steffen, 47. + + _Art in the House_ (Macmillan, 1876), 160, 162-165. + + Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 207. + + Arundel Psalter, MS., 16. + + Aulus, Gellius (Venice, 1509), 73. + + + Bämler, 15. + + Bateman, Robert, 160, 162-165. + + Batten, J. D., 222, 241, 242. + + Beardsley, Aubrey, 218, 221, 225, 226, 227. + + _Beauty and the Beast_ (Dent, 1894), 245. + + _Bedford Hours_, MS., 23, 24, 38. + + Beham, Hans Sebald, 96, 113. + + Bell, R. A., 222, 243, 245. + + Bellini, Giovanni, 62, 69. + + Bernard, Solomon, 110. + + Bewick, Thomas, 140, 145. + + Bible (Cologne, 1480), 21. + + ---- (Lübeck, 1494), 47. + + ---- (Mainz, 1455), 49. + + ---- (Frankfort, 1563), 53, 131. + + Bible Cuts (Holbein), 92, 95, 96. + + Birmingham School, 203, 204, 207. + + Blake, William, 136-139. + + Block Books, 46. + + Blomfield, Reginald, 207. + + Boccaccio's _De Claris Mulieribus_ (Ulm, 1473), 7, 11; + (Ferrara, 1497), 54. + + Bonhomme, 110. + + _Book of Carols_ (Allen, 1893), 209. + + Books of Hours, 23, 24, 38, 54, 107. + + Borders, 204, 293. + + _Bracebridge Hall_ (Macmillan, 1877), 158. + + Bradley, Gertrude M., 207, 213. + + ---- Will. H., 274, 275, 277, 278. + + Brown, Ford Madox, 154. + + _Buch von den Sieben Todsünden_ (Augsburg, 1474), 15. + + Burgmair, Hans, 92, 95, 99, 101, 103, 105. + + Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 193. + + Burns, Robert, 226, 259. + + + Caesenas, Stephanus, 59. + + Caldecott, Randolph, 158. + + Calepinus, Ambrosius, 121. + + Calvert, Edward, 139-143. + + "Card-Basket Style," The, 165. + + Carroll, Lewis, 154. + + Castle, Egerton, _English Book-plates_, 185. + + Caxton, William, 49, 80. + + _Chaucer_ (Kelmscott Press, 1896), 193, 288. + + Cheret, M., 267. + + _Child's Garden of Verse_ (Lane, 1895), 235, 237, 239. + + Children's Books, 154, 156. + + China, Early Printing in, 164. + + Chiswick Press, The, 186. + + Chodowiecki, D., 136. + + _Christ, Life of_ (Antwerp, 1487), 31. + + _Chroneken der Sassen_ (Mainz, 1492), 41. + + _Chronica Hungariæ_ (Augsburg, 1488), 35. + + _Cinderella_ (Dent, 1894), 254. + + _Cinq Fils d'Aymon, Les_, 268. + + Clark, R. and R., 186. + + Columna, Francisco, 79. + + Constable, T. and A., 186. + + _Contes Drolatiques_, 150. + + "Convito," Il, 270. + + Copper-plate Engraving, 116, 129, 130. + + "Cornhill," The, 172. + + Cousin, Jean, 79. + + Craig, Gordon, 228. + + Cranach, Lucas, 95. + + Crane, Walter, 174, 179, 181, 183, 191, 269, 281, 283, 285, 288, 290, + 291. + + Cremonese, P., 56. + + _Crystal Ball, The_ (Bell, 1894), 227, 261. + + + "Daily Chronicle," Illustrations in the, 165. + + Dalziel Brothers, The, 150. + + Dalziel's _Bible Gallery_, 152. + + _Dance of Death_ (Holbein's, 1538), 91, 92, 115. + + Daniel, Rev. H., of Oxford, 189. + + Dante, _Divina Commedia_ MS., 10. + + Dante (Venice, 1491), 56. + + _Daphnis and Chloe_ (Vale Press, 1893), 223, 224. + + Davis, Louis, 170, 171. + + Day, Lewis, 166. + + _De Claris Mulieribus_ (Ulm, 1473), 7, 11; + (Ferrara, 1497), 54. + + De Colines, Simon, 127. + + De Gregoriis, 59, 295. + + _De Historia Stirpium_ (Basel, 1542), 119, 123. + + _Descent of Minerva, The_ (1508), 71. + + Destrée, Oliver Georges, 241. + + De Vinne Press, The, 189. + + "Dial," The, 218. + + _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_ (1477), 80. + + Dijsselhof, G. W., 265. + + Dinckmut, Conrad, 27. + + _Discovery of the Indies, The_ (Florence, 1493), 57. + + Doré, Gustave, 149. + + Duff, Gordon, _Early Printed Books_, 185. + + Duncan, John, 226, 255, 257. + + Du Pré, 54. + + Dürer, Albrecht, 49, 80, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89, 95; + his _Geometrica_, 294. + + + _Early Italian Poets_ (Smith, Elder, 1861), 152. + + Edgar, King, Newminster Charter, 14. + + Emblem Books, 109, 110, 115, 116. + + End-Papers, 285. + + "English Illustrated Magazine," The, 170, 171, 173, 195. + + Evans, Edmund, 156. + + "Evergreen," The, 226, 255, 257, 259. + + "Ex-Libris Series," The, 185. + + + Finé, Oronce, 91, 126, 127. + + _Fasciculus Medicinæ_ (Venice, 1495), 293. + + Fell, H. Granville, 227, 254. + + Feyrabend, Sigm., 131. + + _Fior di Virtù_ (Florence, 1493?), 58. + + Flach, Martin, 108. + + Flaxman, 136. + + Flemish School, XVth Cent., 31. + + Florence, Mary Sargant, 227, 261. + + Ford, Henry, 222. + + _Formal Garden, The_ (Macmillan, 1892), 204, 205. + + Foster, Birket, 150. + + France, Modern Illustration in, 267. + + _Frangilla_ (Elkin Mathews, 1895), 233. + + French MSS., 19, 37. + + French School, XVth Cent., 37, 51, 126, 127. + + Frontispieces, 286. + + Froschover, 120. + + Fuchsius, _De Historia Stirpium_ (Basel, 1542), 119, 123. + + + Gaskin, Arthur, 199, 203. + + ---- Mrs., 203, 207. + + Georgius de Rusconibus, 69, 75. + + Gerard's Herbal, 120. + + Gere, C. M., 195, 197, 203. + + German School, XVth Cent., 3, 7, 11, 15, 17, 21, 25, 27, 35, 39, 41, + 47, 53. + + ---- XVIth Cent., 81-117, 119, 131, 147. + + Germany, Early Printing in, 46, 49. + + ---- Modern Illustration in, 172, 265. + + Gesner, Conrad, 120. + + Gilbert, John, 150. + + Giolito, G., 133. + + Giovio's Emblems, 116. + + Girolamo da Cremona, 30. + + _Glittering Plain, The_ (Kelmscott Press, 1894), 191, 288, 289. + + _Goblin Market_ (Macmillan, 1862), 152. + + "Good Words for the Young," 304. + + Gospels, The, in Latin, MS., 14. + + Grasset, M., 267, 268. + + Greenaway, Kate, 158, 159. + + Grimani Breviary, The, 29, 43, 45. + + _Grimm's Household Stories_ (Macmillan, 1882), 174, 179. + + Grün, Hans Baldung, 96, 107, 108, 109, 110. + + + Halberstadt Bible, The, 49, 117. + + Hardouyn, Gillet, 54, 107. + + Harvey, William, 145. + + Herbals, 16, 119, 120. + + _Hero and Leander_ (Vale Press, 1894), 219. + + "Hobby Horse," The, 186, 270. + + Hogarth, 135. + + Hokusai, 163. + + Holbein, Hans, 49, 80, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 115. + + ---- Ambrose, 92, 97. + + Holiday, Henry, 154, 157. + + Holland, Illustration in, 242, 265. + + Holst, R. N. Roland, 265. + + Horne, H. P., 186. + + _Hortulus Animæ_(Strassburg, 1511), 107, 108, 109, 110. + + _Hortus Sanitatis_ (Mainz, 1491), 39. + + _House of Joy, The_ (Kegan Paul, 1895), 231. + + Housman, Laurence, 222, 231. + + Hughes, Arthur, 159-161, 304. + + Hunt, Holman, 150. + + _Hunting of the Snark, The_, (Macmillan, 1876), 154. + + _Huon of Bordeaux_ (Allen, 1895), 211. + + Hupp, Otto, 174, 263. + + + Illuminated MSS., 5-10 _et seq._ + + Image, Selwyn, 187, 189. + + _Indulgences_ (Mainz, 1454), 49. + + "Inland Printer," The, 278. + + Isingrin, Palma, 108, 119, 123. + + Italian MSS., 10, 30. + + Italian School, XVth Cent., 54-65. + + ---- ---- XVIth Cent., 67-78, 121, 133. + + Italy, Modern Illustration in, 268, 269. + + + Japan, Early Printing in, 163, 164. + + Japanese Illustration, 156-164. + + Jones, A. Garth, 226, 249. + + "Jugend," 266. + + + Keene, Charles, 169, 172. + + _Kells, The Book of_, 10, 13. + + Kelmscott Press, The, 189, 190, 193, 194, 288, 290, 291. + + Kerver, Thielman, 54, 79, 107. + + _King Wenceslas_, 203. + + _Kleine Passion, Die_ (1512), 80, 81, 83, 85. + + "Knight Errant," The (Boston), 189, 273. + + Knopff, Fernand, 254. + + Kreuterbuch (Strasburg, 1551), 120. + + + Larisch, M., 266. + + Lawless, M. J., 172, 177. + + Leeu, Gheraert, 31. + + _Leiden Christi_ (Bamberg, 1470), 3, 53. + + Leighton, Sir Frederic, 152. + + Lettering, 268. + + Levetus, Celia, 207, 217. + + Liberale da Verona, 30. + + Linnell, John, 140. + + Linton, W. J., 146-149, 151. + + Lübeck Bible, The, 47. + + + Macdonald's _At the Back of the North Wind_ (Strahan, 1871), 159-161. + + Mainz, Early Printing at, 49. + + ---- Indulgences, The, 49. + + ---- Psalter, The, 50, 51. + + Margins, 194. + + Marks, H. S., 156. + + Mason, F., 207, 211. + + Matthiolus, 120. + + Mazarine Bible, The, 49. + + _Meerfahrt zu Viln Onerkannten Inseln_ (Augsburg, 1509), 105. + + Meidenbach, Jacob, 39. + + Menzel, Adolf, 172. + + _Mer des Histoires, La_, MS., 37. + + _Midsummer Night's Dream, A_ (Dent, 1895), 223, 243. + + Millais, Sir J. E., 150. + + _Milton's Ode on Christ's Nativity_ (Nisbet, 1867), 155. + + Minuziano, Alessandro, 67. + + Missals, 29. + + _Monte Santo di Dio, El_ (Florence, 1477), 119. + + Monvel, Boutet de, 268. + + Moore, Albert, 154, 155. + + Moore, Sturge, 218. + + Morris, William, 189, 191, 193, 194, 288, 290, 291. + + _Morte D'Arthur_ (Dent, 1893), 221, 225, 227, 228. + + _Mother Goose_ (Routledge), 159. + + Muckley, L. Fairfax, 222, 233. + + _Munchausen, Baron_ (Lawrence and Bullen, 1894), 226, 251, 253. + + + Neues Testament (Basel, 1523), 97. + + New, Edmund H., 201, 203, 207. + + Newill, Mary, 207, 215. + + _Newminster, Charter of Foundation of_, MS., 14. + + Niccolo di Lorenzo, 119. + + Nicholson, W., 228. + + Northcote's _Fables_, 145. + + _Nursery Rhymes_ (Bell, 1894; Allen, 1896), 227, 263, 265. + + + Omar Khayyam, 166. + + "Once a Week," 169, 172, 175, 177. + + Ongania, Ferd., 269. + + Otmar, Johann, 145, 147. + + Ottaviano dei Petrucci, 77. + + + Paganini, Alex., 121. + + Palmer, Samuel, 140. + + _Papstthum mit sienen Gliedern_ (Nuremberg, 1526), 113. + + _Paris et Vienne_, 1495, 51. + + Parsons, Alfred, 166. + + Payne, Henry, 207, 209. + + Peard's _Stories for Children_ (Allen, 1896), 167, 170. + + Pennell, Joseph, 165, 185, 221. + + Petri, Adam, 91, 107. + + Pfister, Albrecht, 3, 53. + + Philip le Noir, 108. + + _Philippe de Comines, Epistle of_, MS., 23. + + Photography, influence of, 174, 178. + + Pierre le Rouge, 37. + + Pigouchet, 54. + + Pletsch, Oscar, 174. + + Pliny's _Natural History_ (Frankfort, 1582), 103. + + Plutarchus Chæroneus (1513), 87; + (1523), 89. + + _Poliphili Hypnerotomachia_ (1499), 62, 63, 65, 293. + + ----, French Edition, 79. + + Pollard, A. W., _Early Illustrated Books_, 185. + + _Pomerium de Tempore_ (Augsburg, 1502), 147. + + Pomponius Mela, 293, 297. + + Poynter, E. J., 152. + + Pre-Raphaelites, The, 150. + + _Princess Fiorimonde, Necklace of_ (Macmillan, 1880), 174, 181. + + Printers' Marks, 96. + + Psalters, MSS., 16, 20, 24. + + Psalter (Mainz, 1457), 50, 51. + + "Punch," 170, 172. + + Pyle, Howard, 271, 273, 274. + + + _Quadrupeds, History of_ (Zurich, 1554), 120. + + Quarles' Emblems, 115, 116. + + "Quarto," The, 226. + + Quatriregio, 71. + + Queen Mary's Psalter, MS., 20. + + Quentel, Heinrich, 21. + + "Quest," The, 203. + + Quintilian (Venice, 1512), 75. + + + Ratdolt, Erhardt, 35, 297. + + _Reformation der bayrischen Landrecht_ (_Munich_, 1518), 116. + + Renaissance, The, 61. + + René of Anjou, Book of Hours of, 38. + + Rethel, Alfred, 172. + + Ricketts, C. S., 218, 219, 223. + + Rijsselberghe, M., 254, 266. + + Robinson, Charles, 222, 224, 235, 237, 239. + + Rogers' _Poems_, 136, 146. + + ---- _Italy_, 136, 146. + + _Romance of the Rose_, MS., 29, 43. + + Rossetti, Christina, 152. + + Rossetti, D. G., 150, 153. + + Rylands, Henry, 173. + + + Sambourne, Linley, 170. + + Sandys, Frederick, 172, 175. + + _Sartor Resartus_ (Bell, 1898), 228. + + Sattler, Josef, 265. + + Savage, Reginald, 218. + + "Savoy," The, 221. + + Schöffer, P., 41, 49, 50. + + Schürer, Mathias, 111. + + Schwind, M., 172. + + "Scottish Art Review," The, 187. + + Seitz, Professor A., 265. + + Shannon, C. H., 218, 224. + + Siena, Choir Books of, 30, 43, 45. + + _Sirens Three, The_ (Macmillan, 1886), 183. + + Sleigh, Bernard, 207. + + Smith, Winifred, 207. + + _Songs of Innocence_ (1789), 137. + + _Speculum Humanæ Vitæ_ (Augsburg, 1475), 17. + + Spence, R., 224, 247. + + _Spenser's Faerie Queene_ (Allen, 1896), 269, 281, 283, 285, 288, 294. + + _Spiegel onser Behoudenisse_ (Kuilenburg, 1483), 25. + + Steyner, Heinrich, 87. + + Stothard, Thomas, 136, 146. + + Strang, William, 226, 251, 253. + + Strange, E. F., _Alphabets_, 185, 300. + + Stück, Franz, 265. + + "Studio," The, 221. + + Sullivan, E. J., 227, 228. + + Sumner, Heywood, 166, 167, 171. + + + Tacuino, Giov., 73. + + Tail-pieces, 301. + + Talbot Prayer-book, The, 26. + + Tenison Psalter, The, MS., 16, 38. + + Tenniel, Sir John, 150. + + Tennyson's _Poems_ (Moxon, 1857), 150, 151. + + Terence, _Eunuchus_, German translation (Ulm, 1486), 27. + + Thomas, F. Inigo, 204, 205, 207. + + Title Page, development of the, 80. + + Tory, Geoffroy, 126. + + _Tournament of Love, The_ (Paris, 1894), 249. + + Treperel, Jehan, 51. + + _Triumphs of Maximilian, The_, 95. + + Tuppo's Æsop, 1485, 55. + + Turner, J. M. W., 146. + + Type as affecting design, 267, 280, 294. + + + Vedder, Elihu, 166. + + Veldener, Jan, 25. + + Ver Sacrum, 266. + + Vérard, 54. + + Virgil Solis, 131. + + + Wächtlin, Hans, 96, 111. + + _Walton's "Angler"_ (Lane, 1896), 204. + + Wandereisen, Hans, 113. + + _Weiss König, Der_ (1512-14), 95, 99. + + White, Gleeson, 221. + + Wilson, Patten, 221, 229. + + Witney's Emblems, 116. + + _Wood-Engraving, Masters of_ (1889), 149. + + Woodroffe, Paul, 227, 263, 265. + + Woodward, Alice B., 227. + + + Zainer, Johann, 7, 11. + + ---- Günther, 17. + +[Illustration: HEADPIECE BY ALAN WRIGHT.] + +[Illustration] + + + + +Transcriber's Note + + +Illustrations have been moved near the relevant section of the text. + +I have used "=" to denote bolded text. + +[:Y] is used in the text to represent Y with an umlaut above it. + +Page headers varied depending on the subjects under discussion. Where +the headers did not match the chapter title, I have treated the headers +as sidenotes. + +Inconsistencies have been retained in formatting, spelling, hyphenation, +punctuation, and grammar, except where indicated in the list below: + + - Right bracket added before "Augsburg" on Page x + - "Lubeck" changed to "Lübeck" on Page x + - Single quote changed to double quote before"Morte" on Page xiii + - Page number changed from "233" to "283" on Page xiii + - Page number changed from "305" and "335" to "309" and "341" on + Page xiv + - "Liege" changed to "Liège" on Page 19 + - "chiaro-oscuro" changed to "chiaroscuro" on Page 30 + - Period added after "SCHOOL" on Page 71 + - Period added after "1508" on Page 71 + - Period added after "CENTURY" on Page 73 + - Period added after "CENTURY" on Page 87 + - "Fusch" changed to "Fuchs" on Page 119 + - "fuschia" changed to "fuchsia" on Page 119 + - "Wood-cuts" changed to "Woodcuts" on Page 130 + - "caligrapher" changed to "calligrapher" on Page 138 + - Period added after "1827-8-9" on Page 143 + - Period added after "HOLIDAY" on Page 157 + - "HEAD-PIECE" changed to "HEADPIECE" to match Table of Contents on + Page 158 + - "see" italicized on Page 163 + - Double quotes changed to single quotes around "Epitome of the + Eighteen Historical Records of China." followed by a double quote + on Page 164 + - "occured" changed to "occurred" on Page 164 + - Period added after "STRANG" on Page 251 + - "opportunites" changed to "opportunities" on Page 269 + - "see" italicized on Page 293 + - "mediaeval" changed to "mediæval" on Page 306 + - "R.A" changed to "R. A." on Page 335 + - Comma added after "MS." on Page 339 + - "Lorenza" changed to "Lorenzo" on Page 339 + - Colon changed to semicolon after "1894" on Page 339 + - "Pomponious" changed to "Pomponius" on Page 340 + - Repeated line deleted on Page 341 + - "Vèrard" changed to "Vérard" on Page 341 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Of the Decorative Illustration of +Books Old and New, by Walter Crane + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40250 *** |