Page:A History of Wood-Engraving.djvu/65

Rh led to maintain that they were taken off from metal plates cut in relief, and nearly all writers are ready to admit that this was sometimes, but not always, the case. The question is unsettled; but it is probable that wood was sometimes employed, and it would be impossible to determine with certainty what share in these prints belongs to wood-engraving and metal-engraving respectively. In general, French wood-engraving, in its best early examples at Paris, was characterized by greater fineness and elegance of line, and by more feeling for artistic effects, than was the case with German book-illustration; but the Parisian chronicles, histories, botanical works, and the like, possessed no greater merit than similar publications at Lyons or in the German cities, and their influence upon the middle classes in furthering the advance of education and taste was probably much less.

England was far behind the other nations of Europe in its appreciation of art, and wood-engraving throve there as feebly as did the other arts of design. The first English book with woodcuts was Caxton’s Game and Playe of the Chesse, published about 1476, the first edition of which was issued two years earlier, without illustrations. It is supposed by some writers that Caxton imported the blocks from which these cuts were printed, as he did the type for his text; and it is certain that in later years wood-blocks and metal-plates were brought over from the Continent for illustrating English books. It is not improbable that the art was practised by Englishmen as a part of the printer’s craft, and that there were no professional wood-engravers for many years; indeed, Chatto doubts whether the art was practised separately even so late as Holbein’s time. The cuts in