tained volume of
tracts in the British Museum--Foreign translations of early
English tracts.
OF the _Illustrated Book_, the _Illustrated Copy_, and the _Edition de
Luxe_ we have spoken a few words elsewhere.[2] These are three forms
of competition, which represent as many sources of danger and
disappointment to the inexperienced. When we refer to illustrated
books we of course signify books with woodcuts and other graphic
embellishments from the earliest period, such as the Block Books, the
_Game and Play of the Chess_, the Caxton _AEsop_, the _Nuernberg
Chronicle_, 1493, the _Poliphilo_, 1499, the _Ship of Fools_, 1497,
and the _Dance of Death_; collections of Portraits and Views; down to
the productions of the modern school, and comprising the popular
abridgments of Crouch or Burton, of which an idea may be gained from
the list printed at the end of Bliss's _Reliquiae Hearnianae_, 1857, and
the cheap editions of romances and story-books brought out by sundry
stationers at prices ranging from threepence to a penny in the closing
years of the seventeenth century. In the English series, independently
of the woodcuts which incidentally occur in the books printed by
Caxton and his immediate successors and the _Emblem_ series, there are
Roeslin's _Birth of Mankind_, by Raynald, 1540, Braun's _Civitates
Orbis Terrarum_, Gemini's _Anatomy_, 1545, Godet's _Genealogy of all
the Kings of England_, 1563, Saxton's _Maps_, Holinshed's
_Chronicles_, 1577, Harington's _Ariosto_, 1591, Holland's
_Baziologia_, 1618, and _Heroeologia_, 1620, the various works
illustrated by Pass, Elstracke, Hollar, Barlow, and others, Vicars's
_England's Worthies_, 1645, Ricraft's _Survey of England's Champions_,
1647, and other publications by Ricraft with engravings, till we come
down to the pictorial histories of England by Bishop White, Kennett,
and Rapin and Tindal, Pine's _Horace_, and Buck's _Views_. No doubt
among these there are interesting specimens for the respective
periods. It is noticeable that in the Holinshed of 1577 the
illustrations are frequently repeated without regard to the context.
The engravings by Hollar and Barlow are the most pleasing. But the
_Basiliologia_, 1618, is the rarest book in the whole range of this
class of literature. Pine's _Horace_, even in the first edition,
1733, with the _Post Est_ reading, is common enough; and it has been
found uncut. So far as we are concerned, we should prefer it in the
ori
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