The engraved letters of this book are much more legible than those of the Apocalypse or the Bible of the Poor. The Dutch final t is frequently introduced. The paper-marks most frequently observed are the unicorn, the bull's head, and the letter P; but no information of value can be derived from the paper-marks, and but little from the designs and engravings.
Although we do not know whether the Canticles was printed in the second or third quarter of the fifteenth century, it may be admitted that it was printed in the Netherlands. We see the last trace of the blocks in the hands of the same printer who destroyed the engravings of the Bible of the Poor. A book, bearing the imprint of Peter Van Os, of Zwoll, 1494, has for its frontispiece the upper half of the first plate.
THE STORY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
This is the bibliographic title[1] of a block-book which may be offered as a proper specimen of the popular religious literature of the fifteenth century. Sotheby mentions four distinct editions of the work. The one that has been most frequently described (whether first or last, is not known) consists of sixteen leaves, with four illustrations on each leaf, and a brief explanatory text in Latin. The designs have no artistic merit; the engraving is coarse, and evidently the work of a novice; the letters are legible, but they betray great inexperience in the use of the graver, and they do not, in any feature, resemble those of the block-books previously described. Some of them have mannerisms like those of Gutenberg's Bible. It is possible that the letters of one edition of the book are those of movable types, or that they were engraved on wood from a transfer taken from an impression of movable types. In all editions the letters have German peculiarities, but there is no edition which has the appearance of a first experiment in
- ↑ The full title of the book is, as given by Heineken, The Story of the Blessed Virgin Mary, collected from the Evangelists and the Fathers, and Illustrated by Engravings. Dibdin calls it, The Defense of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
