by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
Champions. The nine champions are divided into three groups: first, classical heroes-Hector, Alexander,
and Julius Cresar; next, Biblical heroes-Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabreus; and lastly, heroes of
romance Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godefroi of Boulogne. The portraits of these celebrities are
accompanied by verses. This block-book dates from about 1455.
Other block-books were the Speculum Humana: Salvationis, the Apocalypse of St. John, tile Book of
Canticles, Defensorium Inviolatæ Virginitatis Beatæ Marioe Virginis, Mirabilia Romæ; various German
almanacks, and a Planetenbuch, this last representing the heavenly bodies and their influence on human
life. The last of the block- books, so far as is known, was the Opera nova contemplativa, which was
executed at Venice about 1510.
From one point of view the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, or Mirror of Salvation, is the most curious of
its kind. It is looked upon as the connecting link between block-books proper and type-printed books. Its
purpose seems to have been to afford instruction in the facts and lessons of the Christian religion,
beginning with the fall of Satan. It is founded on an old and once popular manuscript work sometimes
ascribed to Brother John, a Benedictine Monk of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Four so-called
"editions" of the Speculum are known, two of which are in Latin rhyme, and two in Dutch prose, all four
having many points in common and standing apart from the later and dated editions afterwards produced
in Germany, Holland, and France.
In these early copies the body of the work consists of a text printed from moveable types, with a
block-printed illustration at the head of each page. But one of the Latin editions is remarkable for having
twenty pages of the text printed from wood-blocks. How and why these xylographic pages appear in a
book whose remaining forty-two pages are printed from types is a mystery. They are inserted at intervals
among the other leaves, and for this and other reasons it is considered improbable that they were
printed from blocks originally intended for a block-book, to help to eke out a not very plentiful stock of
type. Moreover, no entirely xylographic Speculum exists to lend colour to such a theory.
The time and place of origin of the Speculum are unknown, and bibliographers are not agreed as to the
order in which the several " editions" appeared. But such evidence as exists points to Holland as the
home of the printed Speculum, and those who believe that Coster of Haarlem invented typography, credit
him with having produced it.
Block-books are nearly all of German, Dutch, or Flemish workmanship. As a rule the illustrations are
roughly coloured by hand. The method by which they were printed is generally supposed to have been
that of laying a dampened sheet of paper on the inked block, and rubbing it with a dabber or frotton until
the impression was worked up. But De Vinne, in his History of Printing, says that there are practical
reasons against the correctness of this view, and considers it more probable that a rude hand-press was
used.
Those who wish to see some modern examples of block-printing may be referred to the books printed by
the late William Morris at the celebrated Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith. The title-pages and initial
words of these volumes were executed by means of wood-blocks, and are as beautiful examples of
block-printing as the texts of the works they adorn are of typography. All the Kelmscott printing, whose
history, though most interesting, is nevertheless outside the present subject, was done by hand-presses.