Of the next pictorial alphabet in English books I have lately been surprised to find one letter in a proclamation printed by Berthelet in 1546, my previous acquaintance of it beginning with books printed more than ten years later. The pictures in this alphabet are all signed with an A, at the top of which is a little projection suggesting that it stands for the monogram of A. S. My friend Mr. Sayle has found initials with this signature in books printed during the reign of Elizabeth and James I., which nearly make up a complete alphabet, with some letters in duplicate. According to Bryant and Nägler, the engraver Anton Sylvius, who was born at Antwerp in 1526, and worked for Plantin from 1550 to 1573, used the monogram I have described. But I am not wholly satisfied that this A. S. is the same man.
8. PICTORIAL INITIAL ATTRIBUTED
TO ANTON SYLVIUS
Another point of some difficulty is whether the pictures have any relation to the letters. Some of them come in very neatly, thus E and Europa riding on her bull, M and Mercury, T and a lady, who may very well be Thetis, haranguing a council of Gods, another T with Neptune flourishing a very prominent Trident, go well enough together, but why should a W be illustrated by Hercules and Cacus, or an F by Cephalus and Procris, or an I by the birth of Adonis? On the whole, pending further explanations, it would seem that to connect letter and subject was regarded by the designers rather as desirable than essential.
The same point arises as to a much clumsier pictorial alphabet, with large figures in it, found in books and proclamations, printed from 1547 onwards. Here the picture belonging to the T is of Christ and the Tribute-money, but the pictures in other letters seem part of a set illustrating the works of mercy (visiting prisoners, healing the wounded, etc.) and to have no special appropriateness to their initials.
9. HERALDIC INITIAL FROM GRAFTON'S
EDITION OF 'HALL.' LONDON, 1548
In 1554 we find Cawood in possession of both of these sets of initials. He had obtained the first apparently from Berthelet, and the second from Grafton. The ruder set seems to have soon fallen into disuse, though I find some letters from it in the possession of John Day in 1563, but that of A. S. (individual letters being re-cut as need arose) was passed on to Barker, when he became Queen's Printer, and reappears in several books of the seventeenth century.
In 1548, in Grafton's edition of Hall's 'Union of the Families of Lancashire and York,' we find a new experiment in the form of heraldic initials. The dedication to Edward VI. begins with a large O, measuring 2¾ inches each way, and containing the very elaborate arms of the author himself; the records of the reigns of Henry IV., V., and VIII., with an open H; that of Henry VI. with a D, of Edward IV. with a P, and of Henry VII. with a fine C (fig. 9), each letter containing the king's arms.
