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 à Becket.
| XXXII. LONDON, T. POWELL, 1556 HEYWOOD. THE SPIDER AND THE FLY. PORTRAIT OF HEYWOOD |
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, Η ΜΕΓΑΛΗ ΕΥΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΗ ΟΥΔΕΝΙ ΦΘΟΝΕΙΝ (“the great happiness is to envy no man”), with the author’s age, “ÆTATIS 28” at the foot. The portrait measures about 6 inches by 4½, 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, “ÆTATIS SVÆ 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 Délibéré 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.
| XXXIII. LONDON, C. BARKER, 1575 TURBERVILLE. BOOKE OF FAULCONRIE. QUEEN ELIZABETH HAWKING |
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.