Is the same style precisely as above, with the peculiarity of the ornamentation springing from the immediate border surrounding the text. The grotesque animal, twining itself in a curious manner, is also typical of the illuminations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
PLATE VIII.
"THE MODEL OUTLINE."
I have ventured to give a specimen of a modern style of illumination, based upon no principle whatever which could furnish the student with any instructive hints, or enable him to produce original ideas of his own. As a whole, it represents snatches of ornamentations, jumbled together without order or arrangement, and vanishing at both ends into space.
Scrollwork, having neither beginning, middle, or termination, and presenting a series of flourishes, which may be said to give this class of outline a distinctive character, under the generic title of Sign-boarding. It is an attempt at imitating missal, bearing about the same relation to its prototype as the modern to the pure Gothic in architecture, or the ancient Rome of Augustus to that of the present day in civilisation.
De gustibus non disputandum est.
THE END
