Only two more Paris books need here be mentioned, both of them printed in 1546, and both with cuts imitated from the Italian—Jacques Gohary's translation of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Amour de Cupido et de Psiché translated from Apuleius. The first of these was published by Jacques Kerver, the second by Jeanne de Marnef. Of original Paris work of any eminence we have no record after the death of Tory.
Meanwhile at Lyons a new school of book-illustration was springing up. From the beginning of the century the Lyons printers had imitated, or pirated, the delicate italic books printed by Aldus. The luckless Étienne Dolet added something to the classical reputation of the town, and by the middle of the century the printers there were turning out numerous pocket editions of the classics, which they sold to their customers in 'trade bindings' of calf stamped with gold, and often painted over with many-coloured interlacements. The fashion for small books was set, and when illustrations were fitted to them the result was singularly dainty.
Before considering the editions of Jean de Tournes and his rivals we must stop to notice the appear
ance at Lyons in 1538 of the belated first edition of Holbein's Dance of Death, the woodcuts for which, the work of H. L., whose identity with Hans Lützelburger has been sufficiently established, are known to have been in existence as early as 1527, and were probably executed two or three years before that date. Several sets of proofs from the woodcuts are in existence, with lettering said to be in the types of Froben of Basel, who may have abandoned the idea of publishing them because of the vigour of their satire on the nobles and well-to-do. The Trechsels, the printers of the French edition, are known to have had dealings with a Basel woodcutter with initials H. L., who died before June 1526, and may have purchased the blocks directly from him, or at a later date from Froben. In 1538 they issued forty-one woodcuts with a dedication by Jean de Vauzelles, and a French quatrain to each cut either by him or by Gilles Corrozet, giving to the book the title Les Simulachres et historiees faces de la mort. Its success was as great as it deserved, and ten more cuts were added in subsequent editions.
In the same year as the Dance of Death the Trechsels issued another series of upwards of a hundred cuts after designs by Holbein, the Historiarum Veteris Testamenti Icones, with explanatory verses by Gilles Corrozet. These, though scarcely less beautiful, and at the time almost as successful as those in the Dance of Death, are not quite so well known,
and I therefore select one of them, taken from the reprint of the following year, as an illustration.
The success of these two books invited imitation, and during the next twenty years many dainty illustrated books were issued by Franciscus Gryphius, Macé Bonhomme, Guillaume Roville, and Jean de Tournes. In 1540 Gryphius issued a little Latin Testament, with thirty-four lines of dainty Roman type to a page, which only measures 3½ in. × 2, and in which are set charming cuts. Bonhomme's chief success was an edition, printed in 1556, of the first three books of the Metamorphoses translated into French verse by Clément Marot and Barthélemy Aneau. This has borders to every page, and numerous vignettes measuring only 1½ in. × 2. In the following year this was capped by Jean de Tournes with another version of the Metamorphoses, with borders and vignettes attributed to Bernard Salomon, usually called 'le petit Bernard,' and the success of the book caused it to be re-issued in Dutch and Italian. The borders are wonderfully varied, some of them containing little grotesque figures worthy of our own Doyle, others dainty lacework, and others less pleasing architectural essays. This, like most of the best books of its kind, was printed throughout in italics, and the attempt about this time of Robert Granjon, another Lyons printer, to supersede the italic by a type modelled on the French cursive hand, the 'caractères de civilité,' was only partially successful. In 1563, and possibly
in other years, Jean de Tournes published an almanack and engagement-book, a Calendrier historial, with tiny vignettes representing the occupations appropriate to the seasons, and alternate pages for the entry of notes by any purchasers barbarous enough to deface so charming a book with their hasty handwriting. When the brief blaze of pretty books at Lyons died out, French printing fast sinks into dulness, and the attempt of a Frenchman at Antwerp to revive its glories was only partially successful, though he has left behind him a great name. Jean Plantin was born at Tours in 1514, and after trying to earn a living first at Paris and then at Caen, set up a bookseller's shop at Antwerp in 1549, and six years later printed his first book, the Institution d'une fille de noble maison. He was soon in a position to give commissions to good artists, Luc de Heere, Pierre Huys, Godefroid Ballain, and others, and issued the Devises Héroiques of Claude Paradin (1562), and the Emblems of Sambucus (1564), of Hadrianus Junius (1565), and Alciati (1566), with illustrations from their designs. His Horae, printed in 1566 and 1575, with florid borders, and his Psalter of 1571, attempted to revive a class of book then going out of fashion. Besides the great Antwerp Polyglott, whose printing occupied him from 1568 to 1573, and nearly brought him to ruin, Plantin printed some other Bibles, one in Flemish in 1566, and a 'Bible royale' in 1570, being noticeable for their ambitious decoration.