5. A print, 12 inches by 6, representing a combat in a wood between several naked persons and a troop of peasants armed with instruments of husbandry. Below on the left, the letters
. Annexed are two tablets, one of which is inscribed HANS LEVCZELLBVRGER FVRMSCHNIDER; on the other is an alphabet. Jansen has also mentioned this print.[108] Brulliot describes a copy of it in the cabinet of prints belonging to the King of Bavaria, in which, besides the name, is the date MDXXII.[109]
6. A print of a dagger or knife case, in length 9 inches. At top, a figure inscribed VENVS has a lighted torch in one hand and a horn in the other; she is accompanied by Cupid. In the middle two boys are playing, and at bottom three others standing, one with a helmet.
7. A copy of Albert Durer’s decollation of John the Baptist, with the mark H L reversed, is mentioned by Zani as certainly belonging to this artist.[110] In the index of names, he says, he finds his name thus written HANNS LVTZELBVRGER FORMSCHNIDER GENANT (chiamato) FRANCK, and calls him the true prince of engravers on wood.
8. An alphabet with a Dance of Death, the subjects of which, with a few exceptions, are the same as those in the other Dance; the designs, however, occasionally vary. In delicacy of drawing, in strength of character and in skill as to engraving they may be justly pronounced superior to every thing of the kind, and their excellence will probably remain a long time unrivalled. The figures are so small as almost to require the aid of lenses, the size of each letter being only an inch square. Zani had seen and admired this alphabet at Dresden.[111]
9. Another alphabet by the same artists. It is a Dance of Peasants, intermixed with other subjects, some of which are not of the most delicate nature. They are smaller than the letters in the preceding article, and are probably connected in point of design with the Dance of Peasants that Holbein is said to have painted at Basle.
10. Another alphabet, also by the same artists. This is in all respects equal in beauty and merit to the others, and exhibits groups of boys in the most amusing and playful attitudes and employments. The size of the letters is little more than half an inch square. These children much resemble those which Holbein probably added to the later editions of the Lyons engravings.[112]
The proofs of the above alphabets, may have been deposited by Lutzenberger in the public library of his native city. Whether they were cut on wood or on metal may admit of a doubt; but there is reason to believe that the old printers and type-cutters occasionally used blocks of metal instead of wood for their figured initial letters, and the term formschneider equally applies to those who engraved in relief on either of those materials. Nothing can exceed the beauty and spirit of the design in these alphabets, nor the extreme delicacy and accurate minuteness of the engraving.
The letters in these respective alphabets were intended for the use of printers, and especially those of Basle, as Cratander, Bebelius, and Isingrin. Copies and imitations of them are to be found in many books printed at Zurich, Strasburg, Vienna, Augsburg, Frankfort, &c. and a few even in books printed at London by Waley, Purslowe, Marsh, and Nicholson, particularly in a quarto edition of Coverdale’s Bible, if printed in the latter city; and one of them, a capital A, is in an edition of Stowe’s Survey of London, 1618, 4to.