Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/162

The ornamentation of a medieval book of the first class is beyond description by words or by wood-cuts. Every inch of space was used. Its broad margins were filled with quaint ornaments, sometimes of high merit, admirably painted in vivid colors.
A French Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century.
[From Lacroix.]Grotesque initials, which, with their flourishes, often spanned the full height of the page, or broad bands of floriated tracery that occupied its entire width, were the only indications of the changes of chapter or of subject. In printers' phrase, the composition was "close-up and solid" to the extreme degree of compactness. The uncommonly free use of red ink for the smaller initials was not altogether a matter of taste; if the page had been written entirely in black ink, it would have been unreadable through its blackness. This nicety in writing consumed much time, but the medieval copyist was seldom governed by considerations of time or expense. It was of little consequence whether the book he transcribed would be finished in one or in ten years. It was required only that he should keep at his work steadily and do his best. His skill is more to be commended than his taste. Many of his initials and borders were outrageously inappropriate for the text for which they were designed. The gravest truths were hedged in with the most childish conceits. Angels, butterflies, gob-