works or editions. He was succeeded by Christian Snellaert, who, in 1491, endeavoured to imitate Leeu's French cuts in an edition of the Kerstenen Spieghel. John de Westphalia continued to work at Louvain until 1496, but his illustrated books were few and unimportant. At Gouda, Gotfrid de Os, after borrowing blocks from Leeu, when the latter had departed for Antwerp, issued a few books with woodcuts, notably the romance of Godfrey of Boulogne (Historie hertoghe Godeuaerts van Boloen), and Le Chevalier Délibéré by Olivier de Lamarche, with sixteen large and very striking woodcuts, which have been reproduced in facsimile by the Bibliographical Society from the reprint issued about the end of the century at Schiedam.
At Deventer, Jacobus de Breda and Richard Paffroet, from 1486 onwards, printed a large number of books with single cuts, none of any great importance. In the last decade of the century, Hugo Janszoen commissioned several sets of crude religious cuts, while the illustrated books issued at Antwerp by Godfrey Back, who had married the widow of an earlier printer, Mathias van der Goes, do not seem to have been much better. This decline of good work Sir Martin Conway attributes chiefly to the influence of the French woodcuts introduced by Leeu. 'The characteristic quality,' he says, 'of the French cuts is the large mass of delicately cut shade lines which they contain. The workmen of the Low Countries finding these foreign
cuts rapidly becoming popular, endeavoured to imitate them, but without bestowing upon their work that care by which alone any semblance of French delicacy could be attained. From the year 1490 onwards, Dutch and Flemish cuts always contain large masses of clumsily cut shade. The outlines are rude; the old childishness is gone; thus the last decade of the fifteenth century is a decade of decline.'
When we pass from the illustrations to the other decorations in early Dutch books, we find that large borders of foliage, boldly but rather coarsely treated, were used by Veldener in his Fasciculus Temporum of 1480, and in Gerard Leeu's edition of the Dyalogus Creaturarum the following year. Veldener's is accompanied by a fine initial O, in which the design of the border is carried on. Leeu's page contains a rather heavy S, and the woodcut of the faces of the sun and moon.
In 1491, as we have seen, Leeu printed a Psalter of the Blessed Virgin, by S. Bernard, in imitation of the French Horae. This has very graceful little floral borders in small patterns on grounds alternately black and white. After Leeu's death, they passed into the possession of Adrian van Lieseveldt, who used them for a Duytsche Ghetyden in 1495.
The most noteworthy initial letters are the five alphabets, printed in red, used by John of Westphalia. In the smallest the letters are a third of an inch square, in the largest about an inch and a
quarter. This and the next size are picked out with white scroll-work, somewhat in the same way as Schoeffer's. Peter van Os at Zwolle used a large N, four inches square, with intertwining foliage. He had also a fount of rustic capitals, almost undecipherable. Leeu, besides his large S, had several good alphabets of initials. A very beautiful D, reproduced by Holtrop from the Vier Uterste (Quatuor novissima) of 1488, is much the most graceful letter in any Dutch book. No other initials of the same style have been found. Eckert van Hombergh also had some good initials, in which the ground is completely covered with a light floral design. Gotfrid van Os at Gouda, M. van der Goes at Antwerp, Jacob Jacobsoen at Delft, and Lud. de Ravescoet at Louvain, were the chief other possessors of initials, the use of which continued for a long time to be very partial.
Several of the devices of the Dutch printers are very splendid. The borders which surrounded the unicorn of H. Eckert van Hombergh and the eagle of Jacob Bellaert give them special magnificence. The Castle at Antwerp was used as a device by Gerard Leeu, and subsequently by Thierry Martens, and a printer at Gouda placed a similar erection on an elephant, perhaps as a pun between howdah and Gouda. Peter van Os at Zwolle had a large device of an angel holding a shield; M. van der Goes at Antwerp a still larger one of a ragged man flourishing a club, while his shield displays a white lion on a