Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/237

Rh the period of Henry. Upon a sword-blade in the cut of the letter L is written in small characters the word London. In another place in the same cut are letters which are read by some as Westmistre—by others as Bethemsted, It is full of English writing, but it has not been proved that the cuts are the work of an English engraver. Chatto says of them:

—They were neither designed nor engraved by the artists who designed and engraved the cuts in the Apocalypse, the History of the Virgin and the Poor Preachers' Bible. … With respect to drawing, engraving and expression, the cuts of the Alphabet are decidedly superior to those of every block-book, and generally to all' wood engravings executed before the year 1500, with the exception of such as are by Albert Durer, and those contained in the Hypnerotomachia, printed by Aldus at Venice in 1499. …I perceive nothing in them to induce me to suppose that they were the work of a Dutch artist; and I am as little inclined to ascribe them to a German. The style of the drawing is not unlike what we see in illuminated French manuscripts of the middle of the fifteenth century; and as the only two engraved words which occur in the volume are in French, I am rather inclined to suppose that the artist who made the designs was a native of France. The costume of the female to whom the words are addressed appears to be French; and the action of the lover kneeling seems almost characteristic of the nation. No Dutchman