Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/248

238 baffled devils make some frightful contortions and then depart. It is not a pleasant book. But the hideousness of the devils in the illustrations is not so revolting as the craftiness of the author who devised these ghastly scarecrows. The ostensible purpose of the book was the preparation of men for another world; its real object was the aggrandizement of the church, and for this purpose the writer of the book recommended the sacrifice of the desire to provide for one's family. It does not increase our respect for the piety or intelligence of the people to learn that this book was popular for more than a century.

The xylographic editions of this work which contain the names of the printers are in the German language. One of them has these words, Hans Sporer, 1473; another has the imprint of J. W. Presbrm, of Nuremberg; another is dated Leipsic, 1496. One of the typographic editions, dated 1473, is attributed to John Gensberg, of Rome; another, dated 1478, bears the imprint of Ratdolt, of Venice. An edition with a typographic text was printed in 1488 by Peter Van Os, of Zwoll, the same printer who last owned the blocks of the Bible of the Poor. In this edition the words in the scrolls are in the Flemish language, and the text is in Latin. The use of Flemish in the engraved blocks seems to warrant the belief that there must have been an earlier edition, entirely xylographic, but no such edition has been discovered.

This is a folio of fifty-two pages, badly printed, in dark gray ink, on both sides of the paper. The designs are puerile and the engraving is coarse. The text of the book is in the German language. Some copies of the book contain at the foot of one page and outside of the border the name

Other copies of the book have, in the same position, the name  The spelling is different,