is but a bit of direct reproduction which may or may not contain the promise of a deeper intelligence to

come.

Twenty-four years later (1517), Robioni brought out at Lyons an edition of the Epistles. This edition. was illustrated copiously with small rude wood-cuts, each of which is divided into three compartments, containing pictures of the beginning, middle, and end of the story told on the pages below. The loves and grief of Menelaus, Paris, and Helen; of Hero and Leander; of Theseus and Ariadne, succeed each other in these quaint triptychs. The cutting is so rude, the size is so minute, that the work is not attractive, and if we set beside it the performance of the Italian designer who enriched the pages of the edition of the Metamorphoses' published at Venice in 1497 by Zoane Rosso, it seems very barbarous. Yet the first composition, in the story of Paris and Enone, has a shade of pathos, and all the three groups in the cut which tells the fortunes of Ulysses and Penelope reach a certain dignity of manner, the power of which is the more noticeable when felt through the clumsy rudeness of imperfect execution dealing with a scale in which successful attainment is possible only to the finest and most delicate workmanship.

These archaic woodcuts were again and again repeated in other editions, but French art was advancing so rapidly in a new direction that they soon lost the

typical character that belonged to them. Prior to the commencement of the sixteenth century there were indeed few books published in France the cuts of which are worthy notice. A volume such as Verard's edition of the 'Metamorphoses' was an exception, and from the presses of Simon Vostre, of Gilles Hardouin, of Godart, and Regnault, there issued during the closing years of the fifteenth century a series of works which show few signs of improvement, but with the opening of the sixteenth century a new impulse communicated itself to every branch of art.

The 'Office de la Vierge,' published at Paris by Simon de Colines in 1524, and signed by Geoffroy Tory, shows on every page evidence of the complete change which had taken place. In the style and subject of the borders which cover the margins, and of the illustrations which they enclose, there is that mingling of things, tant anciens que modernes, to which our attention is especially directed by a sentence in the printer's privilege prefixed to the volume. As we trace on succeeding pages the salamander of François I. and the ermine of Queen Claude, wreathed about by the symmetrical involutions of delicate arabesques, we call to mind the bands of ornament which wind about the slender shafts of Chambord and of Blois, for at Blois and at Chambord, as in these pages, we see the fusion of the old and new.

No skill could refine upon the exquisite exactness

with which the arabesque ornaments of the margins. are cut, but everything is in pure outline, even the illustrations on the pages are blank within the indicating lines. The labour of a trained hand is needed so that they may be worked up into rivalry with the illuminated manuscripts, the fashion of which was being gradually driven out. It was but by slow degrees that the engraver came to rely wholly on the resources of the tools proper to his craft, to fill in agreeably the picture on the page; as yet the mingling of old and new affected the very technic of the art, and if we turn to the illustrations themselves, we find that the matter of Sacred Story has been approached with a corresponding duality of sentiment. 'Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves' is the text employed to explain and comment the solemn presentment of the Crucifixion, and the space about the picture is divided into compartments, each of which contains a lively illustration of the line of Vergil which it accompanies. The bees fly busily about their hive, the sheep are shorn, the birds build their nests, and the oxen sluggishly draw the plough, behind which stalks the ancient driver; yet while each of these four sketches is a direct translation from nature animated by a naïve spirit of inquiry, the tone which pervades every line of the centre subject is subdued by a sentiment of religious subjectivity.

The illustrations to the 'Hecatongraphia' of Gilles

Corrozet, printed by Denis Janot in 1541, show even more unmistakable signs of the influence which had then been exercised on French work by the movement of the Renaissance. The proportions of the figure, which in the cuts to Robioni's Ovid are always markedly short, and sometimes altogether broad and squat, have lengthened out, and are distinguished by that pliancy of line which invariably adds a certain charm to all work of the day.

These compositions in the 'Hecatongraphia' are not throughout by the same hand, and some show an unmistakable superiority over others. The drawing of the dog in 'l'Insuffisance,' for instance, is worth notice, and the draped female figure in 'Plus par douleur que par force,' is noticeable in that it presents in pose, in employment of line, in artistic accent, a remarkable likeness to the work of Jean Cousin. therefore seems probable that now already had begun that co-operation between the artist and the workman which ultimately led to the production of works which, like the Entrée de Henri II. à Paris,' must for ever rank among the triumphs of wood engraving.

It

Some of the illustrations to the Hecatongraphia' have been, I think, mistakenly put down to the score of Cousin himself by M. Renouvier; but M. Didot, on the other hand, who was in general only too liberal in his attributions where Cousin was concerned, in this instance withholds his assent. He sees, however, in

one of the cuts of another work published two years later (1543) by the same Denis Janot evident signs of Cousin's hand.

The book in question is a translation into French verse by Gilles Corrozet, of the Table of Cebes. The cuts by which it is illustrated retain for the most part the characteristics of an earlier art, and on the first occurs the letter F, which is supposed to be the initial of the engraver, J. Ferlato, mentioned by Papillon as having been at work during the youth of Jean Cousin. But one small composition is distinguished by the more elegant proportion in parts, and the more scientific arrangement in the whole, which was gradually gaining ground. This cut, which represents a banquet, and has been reproduced by M. Didot in hisRecueil des œuvres choisies de Jean Cousin,' contains nine figures, seven of whom sit at table served by their attendants who bear in meat. The drawing and composition has no doubt a certain merit, but none of that distinction and style which is appropriate to Cousin's work, and which often atones for the lack of more seductive quality. It may be his, or it may be quite as likely the work of some follower of the school of Fontainebleau; the real point of interest about the design is that its style marks the moment when this branch of art came into contact with the new movement and finally broke with older traditions.