HANS BALDUNG GRÜN, "HORTULUS ANIMAE" (STRASSBURG, 1511).
Now, the early woodcut as we find it in the printed books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries owed its forms and qualities to the necessities of surface printing with types in a hand-press. The vigorous, bold drawing with the pen on the wood-block was cut by the engraver with a knife and on the plank, not as now, upon the cross section of the box tree: softer wood, too, was at first probably used. The engraver's knife left the artist's line firmer, perhaps, than it was drawn, and the design in vigorous open line was exactly adapted to print under the same pressure as the type had to undergo. The two were in true mechanical relation, and also in true artistic relation. The decorative effect of the early printers' pages is remarkably fine, and is obtained by very simple means.
With the decline of the severe and vigorous drawing of the great designers of the late Gothic and early Renascence period, and probably also with the invention of copper-plate engraving and printing, and the more rapid production of books, the art of the book printer declined, and the art of the book decorator with it; and although the woodcut still held its place, and was largely used for the next two centuries, and, indeed, down to our own time, in book ornaments, initial letters, and illustrations, it had fallen into inferior hands.
At the end of last century a sort of revival took place under Thomas Bewick and his school, which led, not to a revival of the firm and open linear drawing of the designers of the early printers, but rather to a search after extra fineness and qualities of tone and colour, hitherto associated with steel or copper-plate. This tendency or aim of the engravers, however, only served to put the woodcut out of relation with the type, and the type itself grew uglier, and was hardly considered as part of the artistic character of the book. William Blake seems to have been the only artist who made any attempt to consider the necessary relation of illustration and type, but he did it by means of copper-plate, and writing his own lettering.
It is only recently that a serious effort has been made to re-establish the old relationship between design and text in surface printing and as applied to books. Our newspapers and illustrated journals still print heavy black blocks, reproduced from wash drawings, along with thin pale type; and the tendency of the recent new photographic processes of reproducing the designs of artists has rather been to dislocate the decorative feeling and the relationship of type and picture aforesaid, by imposing no restrictions of material or method in preparing drawings for the press. We have now, however, a school of printers and designers in black and white who do consider decorative effect in printing and in the design of the printed page.
A CRADLE SONG
Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams.
Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.