s, mais extraictes de l'escripture
saincte, colorees par Docteurs Ecclesiastiques, & umbragees par
Philosophes_." Then follow the cuts, forty-one in number, each having
its text from the Latin Bible above it, and below, its quatrain in
French, this latter being understood to be from the pen of one Gilles
Corozet. To the cuts succeed various makeweight Appendices of a didactic
and hortatory character, the whole being wound up by a profitable
discourse, _De la Necessite de la Mort qui ne laisse riens estre
pardurable_. Various editions ensued to this first one of 1538, the next
or second of 1542 (in which Corozet's verses were translated into Latin
by Luther's brother-in-law, George Oemmel or Aemilius), being put forth
by Jean and Francois Frellon, into whose hands the establishment of the
Trechsels had fallen. There were subsequent issues in 1545, 1547, 1549,
1554, and 1562. To the issues of 1545 and 1562 a few supplementary
designs were added, some of which have no special bearing upon the
general theme, although attempts, more or less ingenious, have been made
to connect them with the text. After 1562 no addition was made to the
plates.

=The Artist=

From the date of the _editio princeps_ it might be supposed that the
designs were executed at or about 1538--the year of its publication. But
this is not the case; and there is good evidence that they were not only
designed but actually cut on the wood some eleven years before the book
itself was published. There are, in fact, several sets of impressions
in the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, the Basle Museum, the Imperial
Library at Paris, and the Grand Ducal Cabinet at Carlsruhe, all of which
correspond with each other, and are believed to be engraver's proofs
from the original blocks. These, which include every cut in the edition
of 1538, except "The Astrologer," would prove little of themselves as
to the date of execution. But, luckily, there exists in the Cabinet at
Berlin a set of coarse enlarged drawings in Indian ink, on brownish
paper, of twenty-three of the series. These are in circular form; and
were apparently intended as sketches for glass painting. That they are
copied from the woodcuts is demonstrable, first, because they are not
reversed as they would have been if they were the originals; and,
secondly, because one of them, No. 36 ("The Duchess"), repeats the
conjoined "H.L." on the bed, which initials are held to be the monogram
of the woodcutter,