(3) Book II. King Saul on horseback, and lying dead.
(4) Book III. Fortune and Poverty.
(5) Book IV. Marcus Manlius thrown into the Tiber.
(6) Book V. The Death of Regulus.
(7) Book VI. Not known.
(8) Book VII. A combat of six men.
(9) Book VIII. The humiliation of the Emperor Valerian by King Sapor of Persia.
(10) Book IX. Brunhilde, Queen of the Franks, torn asunder by four horses.
From the reproductions which Laing gives in his monograph it is evident that the engraver set himself to imitate the style of the contemporary illuminated manuscripts of the Bruges school, and that he used his graver rather to get the designs on to the paper than with any real feeling for the characteristic charm of his own art. My own inclination is to believe that we must look on these plates as a venture of Colard Mansion’s rather in his old capacity as an illuminator, anxious to decorate a few special copies, than as a printer intent on embellishing a whole edition. The engravings may have been made at any time between 1476 and 1483, when they were clearly used as models by Jean Du Pré for his Paris edition, the wood-blocks for which, as we have seen, were subsequently sold or lent to Pynson. The variations in the number of spaces in different copies may quite as well be due to a mixing of quires as to successive enlargements of the plan, and the fact that more copies of the engravings have survived apart from than with the book draws attention once more to the difficulty found in printing these incised plates to accompany letterpress printed from type standing in relief.
There is still one more engraving connected with an early printed book to be considered, and though the connection is not fully established, the facts that the book in question was the first from Caxton’s press, and that the engraving may possibly contain his portrait, invite a full discussion of its claims. The plate (see Frontispiece to Chapter I, Plate II) represents an author on one knee presenting a book to a lady who is attended by five maids-of-honour, while as many pages may be seen standing in various page-like attitudes about the room. A canopy above a chair of state bears the initials CM and the motto Bien en aveingne, and it is thus clear that the lady represents Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, and that the offering of a book which it depicts must have taken place after her marriage with Charles the Bold, 3 July, 1468, and before the latter’s death at Nancy, 5 January, 1477. During the greater part of this time Caxton was in the service of the Duchess; the donor of the book is represented as a layman, and a layman not of noble birth, since there is no feather in his cap; he appears also to be approaching middle-age. All these points would be correct if the donor were intended for Caxton, and as we know from his own statement that before his Recuyell of the histories of Troy was printed he had presented a copy of it (in manuscript) to the Duchess, probably in or soon after 1471, until some more plausible original is proposed the identification of the donor with our first printer must remain at least probable. Unfortunately, although the unique copy of the engraving is at present in the Duke of Devonshire’s copy of the Recuyell, it is certain that it is an insertion, not an original part of the book, and beyond a high probability that it has occupied its present position since the book was bound for the Duke of Roxburghe some time before his sale in 1812, nothing is known as to how it came there. A really amazing point is that although the connection of this particular copy with Elizabeth, queen of Edward IV, caused it to be shown at the Caxton Exhibition, until the appearance of Mr. Montagu Peartree’s article in the Burlington Magazine for August, 1905, no notice had ever been paid to the engraving. Analogy with the Boccaccio suggests that Caxton had the plate made before he realized the difficulties of impression, and that some prints were separately struck from it and one of these pasted inside the binding of the Devonshire copy, whence it was removed to its present position when the book was rebound. It should be noted that the style of the engraving is quite unlike that of the Boccaccio prints, and suggests that Caxton procured it from a Dutch rather than a Bruges engraver, possibly with the aid of Veldener, from whom, or with whose help, according to Mr. Duff’s suggestion, he procured his first type.