almost as plentiful as they are good; the great majority of books printed after 1485, which I have seen, being fully provided with them. The prevailing form of initial exhibits very delicate white tracery on a black ground. In a few instances, as in a Seneca printed by Meinardo Ungut and Stanislao Polono, at Seville, in 1491, some of the initials are in red, and have a very decorative effect. A fine capital L and A appear in a work of Jean de Mena, issued by these printers in 1499, and a good M in their Claros Varones of Pulgar in the following year. A Consolat, printed, it is said, by Pedro Posa at Barcelona in 1494, is very remarkable for its profusion of fine initials. Engraved borders are not of common occurrence in Spanish books, though I shall have to notice two striking instances of their use in books printed at Zamora and Valencia. Borders are found, also, on the title-pages of various laws printed at Barcelona during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, but these are of no great beauty, and some of the pieces of which they are composed are poor copies from the French Horae.
As a rule, Spanish title-pages are handsome and imposing. During the last few years of the fifteenth century and the beginning of its successor, the titles of books were often printed in large woodcut letters. A Spanish Livy, printed at Salamanca in 1497, a Vocabulary of Antonio Lebrixa, printed by Kromberger at Seville in 1506, and a Mar de Istorias printed at Valladolid in 1512, supply
examples of this practice. In an Obra a llaors del benauenturat lo senyor sant Cristofol, printed at Valencia in 1498, the woodcut title is in white on a black ground, which is also relieved by a medallion of the saint fording the stream. Pictures were also used in connection with the more ordinary woodcut titles in black—e.g. in Juan de Lucena's Tratado de la vita beata, printed by Juan de Burgos in 1502, we have a cut of a king, bearing his sword of justice and surrounded by his counsellors; and in a Libro de Consolat tractant dels fets maritims of the same year, printed by Johan Luschner at Barcelona, beneath the woodcut title there is a large figure of a ship up whose masts sailors are climbing, apparently in quest of a very prominent moon.
Woodcut pictures of the hero decorate the title-pages of the romances of Spain as of other countries, and these pictorial title-pages are found also, though less frequently, in works of devotion and in plays. Such pictures are less common in Spain than elsewhere, because of the great popularity there of the heraldic title-page, in which the arms of the country, or of the hero or patron of the work, form a singularly successful method of ornament. These heraldic title-pages are found in a few books, printed before 1500, and were in common use throughout the sixteenth century.
The earliest Spanish illustrated book with which I am acquainted is the Libro delos Trabajos de Hercules of the Marquis Enrique de Villena, printed
by Antonio de Centenera at Zamora, on January 15th, 1483 (1484). This has eleven woodcuts, illustrating the hero's exploits, and so rudely executed that they are plainly the work of a native artist. Far more interesting than these 'prentice cuts are the illustrative initials, apparently engraved on soft metal, in a Copilacion de Leyes, promulgated in 1485, and supposed to have been printed by Centenera in the same year. These initials are nine in number, and must have been designed and executed by finished artists, whose work is so fine that the printer in most instances has failed to do justice to it. On the first page of text an initial P contains within it figures of a king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella. This page has at its foot a border containing a hunting scene, with a blank shield in its centre. The rest of the page is surrounded by a text, printed decoratively, so as to form an open-work border. The first section of the laws, treating of 'la Santa Fe,' has an initial E, showing God the Father upholding the crucified Christ. The second section sets forth the duty of the king to hear causes two days a week, and begins with an L, here reproduced, in which the king is unpleasantly close pressed by the litigants.
Two knights spurring from the different sides of an S head the laws of chivalry; a Canonist and his scholars in an A preside over Matrimony; money-changers in a D over Commerce, while a luckless wretch being hanged in the midst of a T
warns evil-doers of what they may expect under the criminal law. The pages containing these initials are enriched also by a border in two pieces, the lower part of which shows a shield, with a device of trees, supported by kneeling youths. The perpendicular piece running up the outer margin bears a floral design. All the letters, while directly illustrating the subjects of the chapters which they begin, are at the same time essentially decorative, and they are certainly the best pictorial initials I have ever seen, though it must be reckoned against them that they were unduly difficult to print with the text.
The page here reproduced, unfortunately only about one-third of its original size, from the famous romance of Tirant lo Blanch, gives us another