and slight angularity in the figures (effects which Tory, the most affected of artists, no doubt deliberately sought for) cause them just to fall short of beauty. Compared, however, with the contemporary editions of other printers, Tory's Horae seem possessed of every beauty. We know of five editions before his death or retirement in 1533, and of some seven others before the close of the half century. After 1550 the publication of Horae in France almost entirely ceased, but some pretty editions were issued at Antwerp by the French printer Christopher Plantin in 1565 and 1575, and perhaps in other years. The decree of Pope Pius V. making the use of the Office no longer obligatory on the clergy seems to have been preceded by a great falling off of the popularity of the Hours among the laity, in whom the booksellers had found their chief customers, and after 1568 a very few editions sufficed to supply the demand of those who were still wedded to their use.
[19] I join this with the other illustration as having a Eucharistic significance, but in one of Vérard's editions the full explanation is given: 'Cest la mesure de la playe du coste de notre seigneur iesucrist qui fut apportee de Constantinople au noble empereur Saint Charlemaine afin que nulz ennemys ne luy peussent nuire en bataille.'
[20] The defects in this reproduction appear also in the original, from which it is reduced.
[21] e.g., in an edition printed by Jean Poitevin, May 15, 1498, the illustrations for Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, and Compline are from Vérard; the others, including the printer's device, were imitated from Pigouchet.
CHAPTER IX
HOLLAND
Thirty years ago, under the title The Woodcutters of the Netherlands (a little suggestive of a story for boys on life in a Dutch forest) Sir Martin Conway wrote a treatise on the early book-illustrations of the Low Countries, which is still the standard work on the subject, and only needed plenty of facsimiles to make it completely illuminating. Unfortunately in 1884 the process block was still in its infancy, and in the absence of this cheap method of reproduction the book was issued without a single picture. Written some nine years later the present chapter epitomises so much of Sir Martin's treatise as the rather scanty stock of Low Country illustrated books in England enabled me to visualise, and for lack of an intervening pilgrimage to Dutch libraries comparatively little can now be added to it.