Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/51

Rh tongue, were usually without woodcuts; but those in the vulgar tongues, then becoming true languages, the development and fixing of which are one of the great debts of the modern world to printing, were copiously illustrated, in order to make them attractive to the popular taste.

The great book, on which the printers exercised most care, was the Bible. Many editions were published; but the most important of these, in respect to the history of wood-engraving, was the Cologne Bible (Figs. 8, 9), which appeared before 1475, both because its one hundred and nine



designs were, probably, after the block-books, the earliest series of engraved illustrations of Scripture, and were widely copied, and also because they show an extension of the sphere of thought and increased intellectual activity. The designers of these cuts relied less upon tradition, displayed