citizen of Ghent, and published by Jean de Tournes of Lyons in 1557. From the fineness of the lines and other indications we suspect these designs were cut on metal, which was much used at this time instead of wood. Through the kindness of Messrs. H. S. Nichols & Co., of Soho Square, who possess an excellent copy of this very rare book, we are enabled to offer our readers two cuts, 'The Woman of Samaria' and 'Christ Scourged,' of the same size as the originals. The publishers of Lyons were celebrated from the end of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century for their dainty little books, which were very prettily illustrated.
We must not conclude this chapter without mentioning another celebrated publisher, Christophe Plantin of Antwerp. He was born at Saint-Avertin, near Tours, in 1514, and at an early age apprenticed to a printer and book-binder, Robert Macé, at Caen; thence he went to Paris, whence wars soon drove him away. He next took refuge at Antwerp, where he employed himself in binding books and making leather boxes, coffrets, curiously inlaid and gilt.
By mistake he was, one dark evening, stabbed with a sword, and he afterwards suffered so much pain from the wound that he could not stoop without feeling it: consequently he turned to the business of a printer, and soon became the most celebrated man of the day in that craft. Philip II. of Spain made him his chief printer, and under royal orders Plantin produced the well-known Polyglot Bible in eight folio volumes (1568-1573). He had previously printed some smaller books of Emblems (1564), and Devises Héroïques (1562), and had employed Pierre Huys, Lucas de Heere, Godefroid Ballain, and other artists, to illustrate them. He died in 1589. His second daughter married Jean Moret, one of the overseers of
the printing-office, and the business known as 'Plantin-Moretus' continued to prosper up to the present century. A few years since the offices were bought by the city authorities, and the Plantin Museum is now one of the principal attractions of Antwerp. In his various works Plantin used many woodcuts, but most of his title-pages have borders executed by Wierix, Pass, and other celebrated copperplate engravers. His device was a Hand with a pair of compasses, and his motto Labore et Constantia.
The history of wood-engraving and wood-engravers in Holland forms the subject of a monograph from the pen of Mr. W. M. Conway ('The Woodcutters of the Netherlands,' Cambridge, 1884). The list commences with a Louvain engraver, who worked for Veldener in 1475, and about the same time for John and Conrad de Westphalia.
Most of the greater Dutch towns had wood-engravers, and the work of these artists appears in many of the books printed in the Low Countries. As in France, many of the printers' marks are very good.
It was in this century that publishers began to illustrate their books with copperplate engravings, which soon came into general use, and these plates for many years, to a very great extent, superseded engraving on wood. Etchings by the artist's own hands are also frequently met with, and to these causes we may in a great measure attribute the decay of the Formschneider's art for at least two centuries.