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Hystoria Troiana Guidonis,

standing alone at the top of the leaf. The colophon contains allthe rest of the information, 'happily completed in the City ofStrasburg, in the year of Grace Mcccclxxxix, about the Feast of St.Urban.' The printer and publisher give no name at all.

This early simplicity is succeeded, in French books, from, say,1510, and afterwards, by the insertion either of the printer'strademark, or, in black-letter books, of a rough woodcut,illustrative of the nature of the volume. The woodcuts haveoccasionally a rude kind of grace, with a touch of the classicaltaste of the early Renaissance surviving in extreme decay.

[Illustration with title page: Les demandes tamours auec lesrefpofesioyeufes. Demade refponfe.]

An excellent example is the title-page of 'Les Demandes d'amours,avec les responses joyeuses,' published by Jacques Moderne, at Lyon,1540. There is a certain Pagan breadth and joyousness in the figureof Amor, and the man in the hood resembles traditional portraits ofDante.

There is more humour, and a good deal of skill, in the title-page ofa book on late marriages and their discomforts, 'Les dictz etcomplainctes de trop Tard marie' (Jacques Moderne, Lyon, 1540),where we see the elderly and comfortable couple sitting gravelyunder their own fig-tree.

[Illustration of 'Les dictz et complainctes...]

Jacques Moderne was a printer curious in these quaint devices, andused them in most of his books: for example, in 'How Satan and theGod Bacchus accuse the Publicans that spoil the wine,' Bacchus andSatan (exactly like each other, as Sir Wilfrid Lawson will not besurprised to hear) are encouraging dishonest tavern-keepers to stewin their own juice in a caldron over a huge fire. From the samepopular publisher came a little tract on various modes of sport, ifthe name of sport can be applied to the netting of fish and birds.The work is styled 'Livret nouveau auquel sont contenuz xxv receptesde prendre poissons et oiseaulx avec les mains.' A countryman cladin a goat's skin with the head and horns drawn over his head as ahood, is dragging ashore a net full of fishes. There is no morecharacteristic frontispiece of this black-letter sort than thewoodcut representing a gallows with three men hanging on it, whichillustrates Villon's 'Ballade des Pendus,' and is reproduced in Mr.John Payne's 'Poems of Master Francis Villon of Paris' (London,1878). {18}

Earlier in date than these vignettes of Jacques Moderne, but muchmore artistic and refined in design, are some frontispieces of smalloctavos printed en lettres rondes, about 1530. In these rubricatedletters are used with brilliant effect. One of the best is thetitle-page of Galliot du Pre's edition of 'Le Rommant de la Rose'(Paris, 1529). {19} Galliot du Pre's artist, however, surpassedeven the charming device of the Lover plucking the Rose, in histitle-page, of the same date, for the small octavo edition of AlainChartier's poems, which we reproduce here.

[Illustration of title page]

The arrangement of letters, and the use of red, make a charmingframe, as it were, to the drawing of the mediaeval ship, with theMotto VOGUE LA GALEE.

Title-pages like these, with designs appropriate to the character ofthe text, were superseded presently by the fashion of badges,devices, and mottoes. As courtiers and ladies had their privatebadges, not hereditary, like crests, but personal--the crescent ofDiane, the salamander of Francis I., the skulls and cross-bones ofHenri III., the marguerites of Marguerite, with mottoes like the LeBanny de liesse, Le traverseur des voies perilleuses, Tout parSoulas, and the like, so printers and authors had their emblems, andtheir private literary slogans. These they changed, accordinging

[Another illustration titled: Le Pastissier Francois, MDCLV, titlepage]

to fancy, or the vicissitudes of their lives. Clement Marot's mottowas La Mort n'y Mord. It is indicated by the letters L. M. N. M. inthe curious title of an edition of Marot's works published at Lyonsby Jean de Tournes in 1579. The portrait represents the poet whenthe tide of years had borne him far from his youth, far fromL'Adolescence Clementine.

[Another illustration titled: Le Pastissier Francois, 1655, showinga kitchen scene]

The unfortunate Etienne Dolet, perhaps the only publisher who wasever burned, used an ominous device, a trunk of a tree, with the axestruck into it. In publishing 'Les Marguerites de la Marguerite desPrincesses, tres illustre Royne de Navarre,' Jean de Tournesemployed a pretty allegorical device. Love, with the bandage thrustback from his eyes, and with the bow and arrows in his hand, hasflown up to the sun, which he seems to touch; like Prometheus in themyth when he stole the fire, a shower of flowers and flames fallsaround him. Groueleau, of Paris, had for motto Nul ne s'y frotte,with the thistle for badge. These are beautifully combined in thetitle-page of his version of Apuleius, 'L'Amour de Cupido et dePsyche' (Paris, 1557). There is probably no better date forfrontispieces, both for ingenuity of device and for elegance ofarrangement of title, than the years between 1530 and 1560. By1562, when the first edition of the famous Fifth Book of Rabelaiswas published, the printers appear to have thought devices wasted onpopular books, and the title of the Master's posthumous chapters isprinted quite simply.

In 1532-35 there was a more adventurous taste--witness the title of'Gargantua.' This beautiful title decorates the first knownedition, with a date of the First Book of Rabelais. It was sold,most appropriately, devant nostre Dame de Confort. Why should soglorious a relic of the Master have been carried out of England, atthe Sunderland sale? All the early titles of Francois Juste's Lyonseditions of Rabelais are on this model. By 1542 he dropped theframework of architectural design. By 1565 Richard Breton, inParis, was printing Rabelais with a frontispiece of a classical dameholding a heart to the sun, a figure which is almost in the taste ofStothard, or Flaxman.

The taste for vignettes, engraved on copper, not on wood, wasrevived under the Elzevirs. Their pretty little title-pages are notso well known but that we offer examples. In the essay on theElzevirs in this volume will be found a copy of the vignette of the'Imitatio Christi,' and of 'Le Pastissier Francois' a reproductionis given here (pp. 114, 115). The artists they employed had plentyof fancy, not backed by very profound skill in design.

In the same genre as the big-wigged classicism of the Elzevirvignettes, in an age when Louis XIV. and Moliere (in tragedy) worelaurel wreaths over vast perruques, are the early frontispieces ofMoliere's own collected works. Probably the most interesting of allFrench title-pages are those drawn by Chauveau for the two volumes'Les Oeuvres de M. de Moliere,' published in 1666 by Guillaume deLuynes. The first shows Moliere in two characters, as Mascarille,and as Sganarelle, in 'Le Cocu Imaginaire.' Contrast the full-blownjollity of the fourbum imperator, in his hat, and feather, and wig,and vast canons, and tremendous shoe-tie, with the lean melancholyof jealous Sganarelle. These are two notable aspects of the geniusof the great comedian. The apes below are the supporters of hisscutcheon.

The second volume shows the Muse of Comedy crowning Mlle. de Moliere(Armande Bejart) in the dress of Agnes, while her husband is in thecostume, apparently, of Tartuffe, or of Sganarelle in 'L'Ecole desFemmes.' 'Tartuffe' had not yet been licensed for a public stage.The interest of the portraits and costumes makes these title-pagesprecious, they are historical documents rather than merecuriosities.

These title-pages of Moliere are the highwater mark of French tastein this branch of decoration. In the old quarto first editions ofCorneille's early plays, such as 'Le Cid' (Paris 1637), the printersused lax and sprawling combinations of flowers and fruit. These, alittle better executed, were the staple of Ribou, de Luynes, Quinet,and the other Parisian booksellers who, one after another, failed tosatisfy Moliere as publishers.

The basket of fruits on the title-page of 'Iphigenie,' par M. Racine(Barbin, Paris, 1675), is almost, but not quite, identical with thesimilar ornament of De Vise's 'La Cocue Imaginaire' (Ribou, Paris1662). Many of Moliere's plays appearing first, separately, insmall octavo, were adorned with frontispieces, illustrative of somescene in the comedy. Thus, in the 'Misanthrope' (Rihou 1667) we seeAlceste, green ribbons and all, discoursing with Philinte, orperhaps listening to the famous sonnet of Oronte; it is not easy tobe quite certain, but the expression of Alceste's face looks ratheras if he were being baited with a sonnet. From the close of theseventeenth century onwards, the taste for title-pages declined,except when Moreau or Gravelot drew vignettes on copper, withabundance of cupids and nymphs. These were designed for veryluxurious and expensive books; for others, men contented themselveswith a bald simplicity, which has prevailed till our own time. Inrecent years the employment of publishers' devices has been lessunusual and more agreeable. Thus Poulet Malassis had his armesparlantes, a chicken very uncomfortably perched on a rail. InEngland we have the cipher and bees of Messrs. Macmillan, the Treesof Life and Knowledge of Messrs. Kegan Paul and Trench, the Ship,which was the sign of Messrs. Longman's early place of business, anddoubtless other symbols, all capable of being quaintly treated in atitle-page.

A BOOKMAN'S PURGATORY

Thomas Blinton was a book-hunter. He had always been a book-hunter,ever since, at an extremely early age, he had awakened to the errorsof his ways as a collector of stamps and monograms. In book-huntinghe saw no harm; nay, he would contrast its joys, in a ratherpharisaical style, with the pleasures of shooting and fishing. Heconstantly declined to believe that the devil came for that renownedamateur of black letter, G. Steevens. Dibdin himself, who tells thestory (with obvious anxiety and alarm), pretends to refuse credit tothe ghastly narrative. "His language," says Dibdin, in his accountof the book-hunter's end, "was, too frequently, the language ofimprecation." This is rather good, as if Dibdin thought a gentlemanmight swear pretty often, but not "TOO frequently." "Although I amnot disposed to admit," Dibdin goes on, "the WHOLE of the testimonyof the good woman who watched by Steevens's bedside, although myprejudices (as they may be called) will not allow me to believe thatthe windows shook, and that strange noises and deep groans wereheard at midnight in his room, yet no creature of common sense (andthis woman possessed the quality in an eminent degree) could mistakeoaths for prayers;" and so forth. In short, Dibdin clearly holdsthat the windows did shake "without a blast," like the banners inBranxholme Hall when somebody came for the Goblin Page.

But Thomas Blinton would hear of none of these things. He said thathis taste made him take exercise; that he walked from the City toWest Kensington every day, to beat the covers of the book-stalls,while other men travelled in the expensive cab or the unwholesomeMetropolitan Railway. We are all apt to hold favourable views ofour own amusements, and, for my own part, I believe that trout andsalmon are incapable of feeling pain. But the flimsiness ofBlinton's theories must be apparent to every unbiassed moralist.His "harmless taste" really involved most of the deadly sins, or atall events a fair working majority of them. He coveted hisneighbours' books. When he got the chance he bought books in acheap market and sold them in a dear market, thereby degradingliterature to the level of trade. He took advantage of theignorance of uneducated persons who kept book-stalls. He wasenvious, and grudged the good fortune of others, while he rejoicedin their failures. He turned a deaf ear to the appeals of poverty.He was luxurious, and laid out more money than he should have doneon his selfish pleasures, often adorning a volume with a moroccobinding when Mrs. Blinton sighed in vain for some old pointd'Alencon lace. Greedy, proud, envious, stingy, extravagant, andsharp in his dealings, Blinton was guilty of most of the sins whichthe Church recognises as "deadly."

On the very day before that of which the affecting history is now tobe told, Blinton had been running the usual round of crime. He had(as far as intentions went) defrauded a bookseller in HolywellStreet by purchasing from him, for the sum of two shillings, what hetook to be a very rare Elzevir. It is true that when he got homeand consulted 'Willems,' he found that he had got hold of the wrongcopy, in which the figures denoting the numbers of pages are printedright, and which is therefore worth exactly "nuppence" to thecollector. But the intention is the thing, and Blinton's intentionwas distinctly fraudulent. When he discovered his error, then "hislanguage," as Dibdin says, "was that of imprecation." Worse (ifpossible) than this, Blinton had gone to a sale, begun to bid for'Les Essais de Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne' (Foppens, MDCLIX.),and, carried away by excitement, had "plunged" to the extent of 15pounds, which was precisely the amount of money he owed his plumberand gasfitter, a worthy man with a large family. Then, meeting afriend (if the book-hunter has friends), or rather an accomplice inlawless enterprise, Blinton had remarked the glee on the other'sface. The poor man had purchased a little old Olaus Magnus, withwoodcuts, representing were-wolves, fire-drakes, and other fearfulwild-fowl, and was happy in his bargain. But Blinton, with fiendishjoy, pointed out to him that the index was imperfect, and left himsorrowing.

Deeds more foul have yet to be told. Thomas Blinton had discovereda new sin, so to speak, in the collecting way. Aristophanes says ofone of his favourite blackguards, "Not only is he a villain, but hehas invented an original villainy." Blinton was like this. Hemaintained that every man who came to notoriety had, at some period,published a volume of poems which he had afterwards repented of andwithdrawn. It was Blinton's hideous pleasure to collect straycopies of these unhappy volumes, these 'Peches de Jeunesse,' which,always and invariably, bear a gushing inscription from the author toa friend. He had all Lord John Manners's poems, and even Mr.Ruskin's. He had the 'Ode to Despair' of Smith (now a comicwriter), and the 'Love Lyrics' of Brown, who is now a permanentunder-secretary, than which nothing can be less gay nor morepermanent. He had the amatory songs which a dignitary of the Churchpublished and withdrew from circulation. Blinton was wont to say heexpected to come across 'Triolets of a Tribune,' by Mr. John Bright,and 'Original Hymns for Infant Minds,' by Mr. Henry Labouchere, ifhe only hunted long enough.