: Early Woodcut Initials Containing over Thirteen Hundred Reproductions of Ornamental Letters of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries by Jennings Oscar - Wood-engraving; Initials; Illustrated books; Block books

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PREFACE, vii

INTRODUCTION, 1

CHAP.

REPRODUCTIONS OF INITIALS, 111

INDEX, 281

INTRODUCTION

The ornamentation of books dates probably from the time of their invention, that is to say, it goes back to a very remote antiquity. From Greece, where the book-trade was flourishing at an early period, it passed into Italy, extending thence to the provinces of the Empire, to Gaul and Spain, where book-lovers became more and more numerous, and as civilisation became more refined, increasingly particular about bindings and ornamentation.

The verse of Tibullus,

'Indicet ut nomen littera picta tuum,'

shows the extent of the embellishments to which bibliophiles had then become accustomed, requiring the titles of their favourite authors to be engrossed in coloured or illuminated letters.

Numerous passages might be quoted from Latin writers to show how great an interest they took in books, and how valuable rare, and what might be called original, editions had even then become. It would seem, too, that they even knew the pleasures of book-hunting, for Aulus Gellius relates how, having a few hours to spare after landing at Brindisi, he spent his time looking through the contents of an old book-stall, and was lucky enough to discover a very old work on occult science.

Besides the title, the headings of chapters and the initial letters were also distinguished in the same way from the rest of the work, a custom which passed from the Roman copyists to those of the Lower Empire, and in course of time became generally adopted in the preparation of manuscripts. But this was not all. It is now recognised that book illustration was known to the Romans, and that the miniatures of the mediaeval manuscripts only followed the fashion of the rich and sumptuous volumes transcribed by the copyists of Athens and Rome. The fourth-century Virgil, for instance, one of the treasures of the Vatican, which has been so well described by M. Pierre de Nolhac, is an example of this, containing as it does a large number of figures. Like all manuscripts of the time, it was written exclusively in majuscules, very similar to those used in Roman inscriptions.

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