CHAPTER XIV

ENGLISH WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS

A few illuminated manuscripts of English workmanship and a few with illustrations in outline have come down to us from the fifteenth century, but amid the weary wars with France and the still wearier struggles of Yorkists and Lancastrians, the artistic spirit which had been so prominent in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seems to have died out altogether. Until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or perhaps we should rather say until the advent of John Day, few English books were illustrated, and of these few quite a large proportion borrowed or copied their pictures from foreign originals. Nevertheless, English illustrated books are rightly sought after by English collectors, and though we may wish that they were better, we must give the best account of them we can.

As we shall see in a later chapter, there is some probability that an engraving on copper was specially prepared for the first book printed by Caxton, _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye._ For the present, however, we must concern ourselves only with illustrations on wood, or on soft metal cut in relief after the manner of wood, a difference of more interest to the technical student than to book-lovers. The first English books thus illustrated appear in or about 1481, the year in which Jean Du Pre began the use of cuts in Paris. England was thus fairly well to the front in point of time; it is the quality which is to seek. The first of these illustrated books was probably an undated edition of the _Mirrour of the World_, a translation of a French version of a Latin _Speculum_ or _Imago mundi_. Besides some woodcut diagrams copied from drawings found in the French manuscripts, this has ten little cuts, seven of the masters of the seven liberal arts, one of the author, and two of the Creation. Two of the cuts illustrating the arts were used again almost at once in Caxton's third edition of the _Parvus et Magnus Cato_, a book of moral instruction for children in a series of Latin distichs. In 1481 also Caxton ornamented the second edition of the didactic treatise, _The Game and Play of the Chess_ (from the Latin of Jacobus de Cessolis), with sixteen woodcuts, representing the characters after which the different pieces and pawns were called. The pictures are clumsy and coarsely cut, comparing miserably with the charming little woodcuts in the Italian edition printed at Florence, but they illustrate the book, and may conceivably have increased its sales. In any case, Caxton seems, in a leisurely way, to have set about producing some more, since by or about 1484 appeared three of his most important illustrated books, the _Golden Legend_, the second edition of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, and an _Aesop_. The _Golden Legend_ is ornamented with eighteen large and thirty-two smaller woodcuts; the _Aesop_ with a full-page frontispiece and one hundred and five smaller cuts; the _Canterbury Tales_ with a large cut of the Pilgrims seated at a round table, and with some twenty smaller pictures of the different story-tellers on their horses, some of these being used more than once. For the _Aesop_, like many other foreign publishers, Caxton sent his illustrators to the designs made for the Zainers at Augsburg and Ulm, and quickly imitated all over Germany, and the copies he obtained are merely servile and so clumsy as occasionally to attain to unintended humour. Foreign influence is also evident in some at least of the cuts in the _Golden Legend_; on the other hand, we may be sure that the device of the Earl of Arundel on leaf 3 verso, a horse galloping past a tree, must have been made in England. Original, too, of necessity, were the illustrations to the _Canterbury Tales_, for which no foreign models could have been found. But the succession of pilgrims, each decked with a huge string of praying-beads and mounted on a most ungainly horse, is grotesque in its cumulation of clumsiness, though when we find that the miller really has got a kind of bagpipe, we recognize that the illustrator had at least read his text.

Apparently Caxton himself realized that these English-made woodcuts were a failure, for the only two important illustrated books which he issued after this, the _Speculum Vitae Christi_, printed about 1488 (see Plate XXIX), and the _Fifteen Oes_ of a year or two later, both seem to be decorated with cuts of Flemish origin. The _Fifteen Oes_ (a collection of fifteen prayers, each beginning with O), though I have called it important, is so mainly as proving that Caxton must have printed a Horae of the same measurements (of which it may, indeed, have formed a part), illustrated with a set of very spirited woodcuts, undoubtedly imported from Flanders and subsequently found in the possession of Wynkyn de Worde. That the cuts in the _Speculum Vitae Christi_ are also Flemish is a degree less certain, but only a degree. Some of these were used again in the _Royal Book_, the _Doctrinal of Sapience_, and the _Book of Divers Ghostly Matters_. But the seven books which we have named are the only ones for which Caxton troubled to procure sets of cuts, and of these seven sets, as we have seen, one was certainly and another probably imported, one certainly and another probably copied, and only three are of English origin, and these the rudest and clumsiest.

While our chief native printer made this poor record his contemporaries did no better. Lettou and Machlinia used no woodcuts which have come down to us save a small border, which passed into the possession of Pynson; for use at Oxford two sets of cuts were imported from the Low Countries, one which Mr. Gordon Duff thinks was originally designed for a _Legenda Aurea_, the other clearly meant for a Horae. These were used together in the Oxford edition of Mirk's _Liber Festivalis_, and the cut of the author of the _Legenda Aurea_ (Jacobus de Voragine) is used for Lyndewood in an edition of his _Constitutions_. At St. Albans some poor little cuts were used in the _Chronicles of England_, but from the point of view of illustration the anonymous schoolmaster-printer is chiefly memorable for having printed some cuts of coat-armour in the "Book of St. Albans" (_The Boke of Haukyng, Huntyng and also of Cote-armuris_) in colours.

Wynkyn de Worde inherited Caxton's stock of woodcuts, and early in his career used some of them again in reprints of the _Golden Legend_ and _Speculum Vitae Christi_, and in his larger Horae used the full set of cuts which, while in Caxton's hands, is only known from those which appear in the _Fifteen Oes_. About 1492 he purchased some ornamental capitals (Caxton had only used a single rather graceful rustic A) and one or more cuts from Govaert van Os of Gouda. In his 1494 edition of Walter Hylton's _Scala Perfectionis_ (the first book in which he put his name) he used a woodblock consisting of a picture of Christ suckled by His mother with a long woodcut inscription, part of which reads "Sit dulce nomen domini nostri ihesu christi et nomen genitricis virginis marie benedictum," the whole surrounded by a graceful floral border. In 1495 came Higden's _Polychronicon_ with a few woodcut musical notes, the "hystorye of the deuoute and right renommed lyues of holy faders lyuynge in deserte" (usually quoted as the _Vitas Patrum_), with one large cut used six times and forty small ones used as 155, and about the same time a handsome edition of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's _De proprietatibus rerum_, with large cuts (two-thirds of the folio page) prefixed to each of the twenty-two books, apparently copied partly from those in a Dutch edition printed at Haarlem in 1485, partly from the illustrations (themselves not original) in a French edition printed at Lyon, of which Caxton, who finished the translation on his death-bed, had made use. In 1496, in reprinting the _Book of St. Albans_ De Worde added a treatise on _Fishing with an angle_, to which he prefixed a cut of a happy angler hauling up a fish which will soon be placed in a well-filled tub which stands beside him on the bank. This is quite good primitive work and was sufficiently appreciated to be used for numerous later editions, but soon after this De Worde employed a cutter who served him very badly, mangling cruelly a set of rather ambitious designs for the _Morte d'Arthur_ of 1498 (several of them used again in the _Recuyell_ of 1503), and also some single cuts used in different books. For the next half-dozen years De Worde relied almost exclusively on old cuts, but at last found a competent craftsman who enabled him to bring out in January, 1505-6, an English version of the _Art de bien vivre et de bien mourir_ with quite neat reductions of the pictures in Verard's edition of 1492. It was, no doubt, the same workman who copied in 1506 the Verard-Pigouchet cuts in Pierre Gringore's _Chasteau de Labeur_ as translated by Alexander Barclay, but from the frequent omission of backgrounds it is obvious that in these he was hurried, and they are by no means so good as those in the 1505 edition by Pynson with which De Worde was enviously hastening to compete. The _Calendar of Shepherds_ was another translation from the French, illustrated with copies of French cuts, while in the prose _Ship of Fools_, translated by Henry Watson from a French version of the German _Narrenschiff_ of Sebastian Brant, Basel originals were reproduced probably from intermediate copies. But when in 1509 Henry VII died, De Worde for once seems to have let his craftsman do a bit of original work for a title-cut to a funeral sermon by Bishop Fisher. In this (see Plate XXX) the bishop is shown preaching in a wooden pulpit, immediately below which is the hearse covered by a gorgeous pall on which lies an effigy of the dead king, while beyond the hearse stands a crowd of courtiers. It is evident that perspective was not the artist's strong point, as the pavement seems climbing up the wall and the shape of the hearse is quite indeterminate, but the general effect of the cut is neat and pleasing. That it is an English cut is certain. A few months later Bishop Fisher preached another funeral sermon, over Henry VII's aged mother, Margaret Duchess of Richmond, and when De Worde economically wished to use the same woodcut on the titlepage of his edition of this, there was a craftsman on the spot able to cut out the royal hearse from the block and plug in a representation of an ordinary one, and the similarity of touch shows that this was done by the original cutter.

As we have already noted in Chapter XII, Wynkyn de Worde was singularly unenterprising as a publisher, and although he lived for nearly a quarter of a century after the accession of Henry VIII, during all this time he printed no new book which required copious illustration. On the other hand, he was a man of fixed habits, and one of these habits came to be the decoration of the titlepage of nearly every small quarto he issued with a woodcut of some kind or other, the title itself being sometimes printed on a riband above it. When a new picture was absolutely necessary for this purpose it was forthcoming and generally fairly well cut, but a few stock woodcuts, a schoolmaster holding a birch for grammatical books, a knight on horseback for a romance, etc., were used again and again, and often the block was picked out (we are tempted to say "at random," but that would be an exaggeration) from one of the sets already described, which De Worde had commissioned in more lavish days.

One of Richard Pynson's earliest books was an edition of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ with about a score of woodcuts of the pilgrims obviously influenced by those in Caxton's second edition, but in no way an improvement on them. It is true that not only is the miller again allowed his bagpipe, but a little mill is placed in the corner of the cut to identify him beyond doubt. On the other hand, the knight's horse is bedecked with the cumbrous skirts used in the tilt-yard, but which would have become sadly draggled ere much progress had been made along the miry road to Canterbury. The clerk, moreover, is made to carry a bow as if, instead of having his mind set on Aristotle, he were of the lusty sort that loved to get venison where they should not. Round most of the cuts there is a heavy edge of black, as if from an untrimmed block, which does not improve their appearance. Altogether they are poor work, and it was doubtless his recognition of this that caused Pynson in future to rely so largely on the purchase or imitation of foreign blocks. For his edition of Lydgate's _Falles of Princes_, a verse rendering of Boccaccio's _De casibus illustrium virorum_, issued in 1494, he procured the woodcuts made for the fine French edition (_De la ruine des nobles hommes_), printed at Paris by Jean Du Pre in 1483. Before 1500 he brought out an _Aesop_, copying as usual the German cuts. In 1505 he printed Alexander Barclay's version of Pierre Gringore's _Chasteau du Labeur_ with cuts closely and fairly skilfully copied from those in the Pigouchet-Verard editions. In 1506 he went further and procured from Verard the blocks for a new edition of the _Kalendar of Shepherds_, which, however, he caused to be retranslated, with sundry remarks on the extraordinary English of the version published by Verard. In 1509 he produced in a fine folio Barclay's free rendering of Brant's _Narrenschiff_, illustrating this English _Ship of Fools_ with 117 cuts copied from the originals. In 1518 he procured from Froben some border-pieces for small quartos, one showing in the footpiece a boy carried on the shoulders of his fellows, another an elephant, a third Mutius Scaevola and Porsenna.

If Pynson had dealt largely in illustrated books the borrowings and copyings here recited might seem insignificant. He published, however, very little English work which can be set against them, and even of the cuts which pass for English the native origin is not always sure. I should be sorry to pledge myself, for instance, as to the provenance of some neat but rather characterless column-cuts in his edition of the _Speculum Vitae Christi_ (fifteenth century). The title-cut to the _Traduction and Mariage of the Princesse_ (Katherine), printed in 1501, is almost certainly English in its heaviness and lack of charm, but despite the fact that they must have been produced in London we can hardly say as much of the two far prettier pictures which adorn the _Carmen_ of Petrus Carmelianus on the treaty of marriage between the future Charles V and the Princess Mary (1508). In the first of these the ambassadors are being received by Henry VII, in the second by the Princess who is attended by her maids, and the latter is perhaps the first English book-illustration with any touch of grace. Unluckily there is a half Spanish, half Low-Country look about it, which suggests that some member of the ambassadors' suite with an artistic turn may at least have supplied the design, so that one hesitates to claim it too vigorously as English work. We may be more confident about the one good cut (the rest are a scratch lot) in the 1513 edition of Lydgate's _The hystory sege and dystruccion of Troy_. In this Henry V is shown seated in a large room, with his suite, while Lydgate in his black habit as a Benedictine presents him with his book. There is a general resemblance between this and another good piece of work, the picture in Alexander Barclay's translation of Sallust's _Jugurtha_ (undated) of this other black monk offering his book to the Duke of Norfolk (see Plate XXXI). Probably both were from the same hand. It may be noted that the cut of Barclay was used again in the _Myrrour of good maners conteyning the iiii. vertues called cardynall compyled in latin by Domynicke Mancyn_, of which he was the industrious translator. In Pynson's 1516 edition of Fabyan's _Chronicle_, besides some insignificant column-cuts of kings and some decorative heraldic work, there is an excellent picture of a disembarkation. In other books we find cuts of a schoolmaster with his pupils, of an author, of a woman saint (S. Bridget, though used also for S. Werburga), etc.

Towards the end of his career in the collection of Chaucer's works (1526) and reprint of Lydgate's _Falles of Princes_ (1527), Pynson drew on his stock of miscellaneous blocks rather than allow works with which illustrations had become associated to go forth undecorated.[63] But with his purchase of the border-pieces from Froben in 1518, it would seem that he more or less definitely turned his back on pictorial illustration. Mr. Gordon Duff has shown that a change comes over the character of his books about this time, and has suggested that during the latter years of his life his business was to some extent in the hands of Thomas Berthelet, who succeeded him as King's Printer. Berthelet himself in the course of his long and prosperous career eschewed illustrations altogether, while he took some trouble to get good capitals and had a few ornamental borders. It is thus hardly too much to say that from 1518 for some forty years, until in 1559 John Day published Cunningham's _Cosmographicall Glasse_, book-illustration in England can only be found lurking here and there in holes and corners. In 1526 Peter Treveris issued the _Grete Herbal_ with numerous botanical figures; in 1529 John Rastell printed his own _Pastime of People_ with huge, semi-grotesque cuts of English kings; a few of Robert Copland's books and a few of Robert Wyer's have rough cuts of no importance. But when we think of Pynson's edition of Lord Berners' _Froissart_, of Berthelet's of Gower's _Confessio Amantis_, of Godfray's _Chaucer_, and of Grafton's edition of Halle's _Chronicle_, all illustratable books and all unillustrated, it is evident that educated book-buyers, wearied of rudely hacked blocks, often with no relevance to the book in which they were found, had told the printers that they might save the space occupied by these decorations, and that the reign of the primitive woodcut in English books, if it can be said ever to have reigned, was at an end.

This emphatic discouragement of book-illustrations during so many years in the sixteenth century was perhaps the best thing that could have happened--next to an equally emphatic encouragement of them. There can have been no reason in the nature of things why English book-illustrations should continue over a long period of time to be third-rate. A little help and a little guidance would probably have sufficed to reform them altogether. Nevertheless it can hardly be disputed that as a matter of fact they were, with very few exceptions, third-rate, the superiority of Pynson's to Wynkyn de Worde's being somewhat less striking than is usually asserted. In the absence of the needed help and guidance it was better to make a sober dignity the ideal of book-production than to continue to deface decently printed books by the use of job lots of column cuts. The borders and other ornaments used by Berthelet, Reyner Wolfe, and Grafton, the three principal firms of this period, are at least moderately good. All three printers indulged in the pleasing heresy of pictorial or heraldic capitals, Wolfe in the _Homiliae duae_ of S. Chrysostom (1543), Grafton in Halle's Chronicle entitled _The Union of the Families of Lancaster and York_ (1548), and Berthelet in some of his later proclamations. As regards their devices, Grafton's punning emblem (a tree grafted on a tun), though in its smallest size it may pass well enough, was not worthy of the prominence which he sometimes gave it; but Wolfe's "Charitas" mark, of children throwing sticks at an apple tree, is perhaps the most pleasing of English devices, while Berthelet's "Lucrece," despite the fact that her draperies have yielded to the Renaissance temptation of fluttering in the wind rather more than a Roman lady would have thought becoming at the moment of death, is of its kind a fine piece of work. As for pictures, from which Berthelet, as far as I remember, was consistent in his abstinence--Wolfe and Grafton were wisely content to make an exception in favour of Holbein, a little medallion cut after his portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt adorning Wolfe's edition of Leland's _Naeniae_ (1542), and Grafton owing to him the magnificent titlepage to the Great Bibles in which Cranmer and Cromwell, with a host of other worthies, are seen distributing Bibles under the superintendence of Henry VIII. After the fall of Cromwell his armorial bearings were cut out of the block, a piece of petty brutality on a level with that which compelled owners of Prayer Books and Golden Legends to deface them by scratching out the word "pope" and as much as they could of the service for the day of that certainly rather questionable saint, Thomas a Becket.

In 1548 we come across a definitely illustrated book, Cranmer's _Catechism_, published by Walter Lynne, with a delicately cut titlepage[64] showing figures of Justice, Prudence, and Victory, and also the royal arms, and in the text numerous small Biblical pictures, two of which are signed "Hans Holbein," while others have been rashly attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1556 we find Heywood's _Spider and the Fly_ illustrated not only with various woodcuts of spiders' webs, but with a portrait of the author stiff and ungainly enough in all conscience, but carrying with it an impression of lank veracity (see Plate XXXII). About this time, moreover, William Copland was issuing folio and quarto editions of some of the poems and romances which had pleased the readers of the first quarter of the century, and some of these had the old cuts in them. It is evident that illustrations would have come back in any case--book-buyers can never abstain from them for long together. But it is only fair to connect this return with the name of John Day, who made a strenuous effort, which only just failed of success, to bring up book-illustration to the high level at which he was aiming in printing. Day had issued a few books during the reign of Edward VI, notably a Bible with an excellent pictorial capital showing the promoter of the edition, Edmund Becke, presenting a copy of it to the King. As a staunch Protestant he had been in some danger under Queen Mary, but with the accession of Elizabeth he came quickly to the front, thanks to the help of Archbishop Parker, and the edition of _The Cosmographicall Glasse_ of William Cunningham, which he issued in 1559, is thus, as we have already suggested, a real landmark in English book-production. In addition to its fine types, this book is notable for its woodcut diagrams and pictorial capitals, ornamental titlepage, large map of Norwich and, most important of all, a strong and vigorous portrait of the author, his right hand on a globe, a _Dioscorides_ with a diagram of a rose lying open before him, and a wooded landscape being seen in the distance. The whole is enclosed in an oval frame, round which runs a Greek motto cut in majuscules, [Greek: E MEGALE EUDAIMONIE OUDENI PHTHONEIN] ("the great happiness is to envy no man"), with the author's age, "AETATIS 28" at the foot. The portrait measures about 6 inches by 4(1/2), and occupies the whole folio page. It is only too probable that it was the work not of a native Englishman, but of some Dutch refugee, but here at last in an English book was a piece of living portraiture adequately cut on wood, and with better luck it should have been the first of a long series. John Day himself did his best to promote a fashion by prefixing a small portrait of Becon to that author's _Pomander of Prayer_, 1561, and having a much larger one of himself cut the next year, "AETATIS SVAE XXXX," as the inscription tells us, adding also his motto, "LIEFE IS DEATHE AND DEATH IS LIEFE", the spelling in which suggests a Dutch artist, though Dutch spelling about this time was so rampant in England that we may hope against hope that this was English work. The oval portrait is surrounded with strap-work ornament, another fashion of the day, and at the foot of this are the initials I. D. On one interpretation these would lead us to believe not only that the work is English, but that Day himself was the cutter. But bindings from his shop are sometimes signed I. D. P. (Ioannes Day pegit), and we must hesitate before attributing to him personal skill not only in printing, but in binding and wood-cutting as well. The portrait itself is taken side-face and shows a cropped head, keen eye, and long beard, the neck being entirely concealed by a high coat-collar within which is a ruff. The ground to the front of the face is all in deep shadow, that at the back of the head is left white, a simple contrast which perhaps makes the general effect more brilliant. Day used this portrait as a device in some of his largest folio books--for instance, his three-volume edition of Becon's works (1560-4) and Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_ (1563).

The full title of the _Book of Martyrs_, which we have now reached, is _Actes and Monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and described the great persecutions and horrible troubles, that have bene wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, especially in this Realm of England and Scotlande, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande unto the tyme nowe present_. It bears an elaborate titlepage showing Protestants and Catholics preaching, Protestants being burnt at the stake contrasted with Catholics offering the sacrifice of the Mass, and finally the Protestant martyrs uplifted in heaven, while the Catholic persecutors are packed off to hell. The text is very unevenly illustrated, but the total number of woodcuts even in the first edition (1563) is very considerable, and as many new pictures were added in the second (1570), the book was certainly the most liberally illustrated with cuts specially made for it which had yet been produced in England. One or two of the smaller cuts, mostly the head of a martyr praying amid the flames, are used several times; of the larger cuts only a very few are repeated, and, considering the monotonous subject of the book, it is obvious that some trouble must have been taken to secure variety in the illustrations. A few of these occupy a whole page, that illustrating the Protestant legend of the poisoning of King John by a fanatic monk being divided into compartments, while others showing some of the more important martyrdoms are ambitiously designed. The drawing of some of the later pictures is coarse, but on the whole the designs are good and with a good deal of character in them. The cutting is careful and painstaking, but hardly ever succeeds in making the picture stand out boldly on the page, so that the general effect is grey and colourless. As to the personality of the designers and cutters we know nothing. Day at one time was anxious to get leave to keep more than the permitted maximum of four foreigners in his employment, but we have really no sufficient ground for arguing either for an English or a foreign origin for these illustrations.

A few years after this, in 1569, when the new edition of the _Book of Martyrs_ was in preparation, Day issued another illustrated book: _A christall glasse of christian reformation, wherein the godly maye beholde the coloured abuses used in this our present tyme. Collected by Stephen Bateman_, better known as the "Batman uppon Bartholomew," i.e. the editor by whom the _De Proprietatibus Rerum_ of Bartholomaeus Anglicus was "newly corrected, enlarged, and amended" in 1582. The _Christall glasse of christian reformation_ is a dull book with dull illustrations, which are of the nature of emblems, made ugly by party spirit. A more interesting book by the same author and issued in the same year was _The travayled Pylgrime, bringing newes from all partes of the worlde_, to which Bateman only put his initials and which was printed not by Day, but by Denham. This, although I cannot find that the fact has been noted, is largely indebted both for its scheme and its illustrations to the _Chevalier Delibere_ of Olivier de la Marche, though the woodcuts go back not to those of the Gouda and Schiedam incunabula, but to the Antwerp edition of 1555, in which these were translated into some of the most graceful of sixteenth century cuts. Needless to say, much of the grace disappears in this new translation, although the cutting is more effective than in the _Book of Martyrs_.

Besides these two books by Stephen Bateman, 1569 saw the issue of the first edition of one of John Day's most famous ventures, _A Booke of Christian Prayers, collected out of the ancient writers and best learned in our time, worthy to be read with an earnest mind of all Christians, in these dangerous and troublesome daies, that God for Christes sake will yet still be mercifull vnto us_. From the presence on the back of the titlepage of a very stiff portrait of the Queen kneeling in prayer (rather like a design for a monumental brass), this is usually quoted as _Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book_. It was reprinted in 1578 (perhaps also earlier), 1581, and 1590, and the later editions, the only ones I have seen, ascribe the compilation to R. D., i.e. Richard Day, John Day's clergyman son. The book is in appearance a kind of Protestant Horae, having borders to every page divided into compartments as in the Paris editions, showing scenes from the life of Christ, the cardinal virtues and their opposites, the works of charity, and a Dance of Death. Compared with the best, or even the second best, of the Horae of Pigouchet or Kerver, the book looks cold and colourless, but the rarity of the early editions shows that it must have been very popular.

The only other book issued by Day with borders to every page was the (supposititious) _Certaine select prayers gathered out of S. Augustines Meditations, which he calleth his selfe-talks with God_, which went through several editions, of which the first is dated 1574. This is a much less pretentious book, the borders being decorative instead of pictorial, but it makes rather a pretty little octavo. Another 1569 book which has cuts is the edition of Grafton's _Chronicle_ of that year, printed by Henry Denham, but as the cuts look like a "job" lot, possibly of German origin, and are only placed at the beginnings of sections in the short first book, while all the history from 1066 onwards is left unillustrated, this speaks rather of decadence than progress.

In 1581, towards the close of his career, Day was employed to print John Derrick's _Image of Ireland_, giving an account of Sir Henry Sidney's campaign against the Irish "wood-karnes." In some few copies this work is illustrated with eight very large woodcuts, the most ambitious in some respects that had ever been attempted in England. The first four are wretchedly cut; the last four, showing Sir Henry's battle with the rebels and his triumphal return, are both well designed and well executed.

Meanwhile, other printers and publishers had produced a few more illustrated books in the 'seventies. Thus in 1575 Henry Bynneman had printed Turberville's _Booke of Faulconrie_ for Christopher Barker. The numerous excellent illustrations of hawks (and probably those of dogs also) are taken from French books, but there is a fairly vigorous picture of Queen Elizabeth hawking attended by her suite, badged, back and front, with large Tudor roses, and this (see Plate XXXIII) looks like English work. In a much later edition--that of 1611--it is curious to note that the portrait of the Queen was cut out and one of James I substituted.

In 1576 a rather forbidding woodcut portrait of George Gascoigne was printed (by R. Smith) in that worthy's _Steele Glas_. In 1577 came a very important work, the famous _Chronicle_, begun on a vast scale by Reyner Wolfe and completed for England, Scotland, and Ireland by Raphael Holinshed, now published by John Harrison the elder. This has the appearance of being much more profusely illustrated than the _Book of Martyrs_ or any other English folio, but as the cuts of battles, riots, executions, etc., which form the staple illustrations, are freely repeated, the profusion is far less than it seems. The cuts, moreover, are much smaller than those in Foxe's _Martyrs_. As a rule they are vigorously designed and fairly well cut, and if it had come fifty years earlier the book would have been full of promise. But, as far as pictorial cuts in important books are concerned, we are nearing the end. In 1579 H. Singleton published Spenser's _Shepheardes Calender_ with a small cut of no great merit at the head of each "aeglogue," and in the same year Vautrollier illustrated North's _Plutarch_ with insignificant little busts which derive importance only from the large ornamental frames, stretching across the folio page, in which they are set. Woodcuts did not cease to be used after this date. They will be found in herbals (but these were mainly foreign blocks), military works, and all books for which diagrams were needed. They continued fashionable for some time for the architectural or other forms of borders to titlepages, some of them very graceful, as, for instance, that to the early folio editions of Sidney's _Arcadia_; also for the coats of arms of the great men to whom books were dedicated. They are found also at haphazard in the sixpenny and fourpenny quartos of plays and romances, and many of the old blocks gradually drifted into the hands of the printers of ballads and chapbooks, and appear in incongruous surroundings after a century of service. But I cannot myself call to mind any important English book after 1580 for which a publisher thought it worth his while to commission a new set of imaginative pictures cut on wood, and that means that woodcut illustration as a vital force in the making of books had ceased to exist. They needed good paper and careful presswork, and all over Europe paper and presswork were rapidly deteriorating. They cost money, and book-buyers apparently did not care enough for them to make them a good investment. The rising popularity of copper engravings for book-illustration on the Continent probably influenced the judgment of English book-lovers, and although, as we shall see, copper engraving was for many years very sparingly used in England save for portraits, frontispieces, and titlepages, woodcuts went clean out of fashion for some two centuries.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] He had apparently returned the blocks borrowed from Du Pre for the _Falles of Princes_, as none of them is used in 1527, although one or two are copied. I have not met with all the Chaucer illustrations, and it is possible that a few of these are new.

[64] Used again the same year in a treatise by Richard Bonner.