the progress of universal knowledge: for one set of types could only
have produced one work, whereas it now serves for hundreds.

When their editions were intended to be curious, they omitted to print
the initial letter of a chapter: they left that blank space to be
painted or illuminated, to the fancy of the purchaser. Several ancient
volumes of these early times have been found where these letters are
wanting, as they neglected to have them painted.

The initial carved letter, which is generally a fine wood-cut, among our
printed books, is evidently a remains or imitation of these
ornaments.[32] Among the very earliest books printed, which were
religious, the Poor Man's Bible has wooden cuts in a coarse style,
without the least shadowing or crossing of strokes, and these they
inelegantly daubed over with broad colours, which they termed
illuminating, and sold at a cheap rate to those who could not afford to
purchase costly missals elegantly written and painted on vellum.
Specimens of these rude efforts of illuminated prints may be seen in
Strutt's Dictionary of Engravers. The Bodleian library possesses the
originals.[33]

In the productions of early printing may be distinguished the various
splendid editions of _Primers_, or _Prayer-books_. These were
embellished with cuts finished in a most elegant taste: many of them
were grotesque or obscene. In one of them an angel is represented
crowning the Virgin Mary, and God the Father himself assisting at the
ceremony. Sometimes St. Michael is overcoming Satan; and sometimes St.
Anthony is attacked by various devils of most clumsy forms--not of the
grotesque and limber family of Callot!

Printing was gradually practised throughout Europe from the year 1440 to
1500. Caxton and his successor Wynkyn de Worde were our own earliest
printers. Caxton was a wealthy merchant, who, in 1464, being sent by
Edward IV. to negotiate a commercial treaty with the Duke of Burgundy,
returned to his country with this invaluable art. Notwithstanding his
mercantile habits, he possessed a literary taste, and his first work was
a translation from a French historical miscellany.[34]

The tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus was said to have been derived
from the odd circumstance in which the Bibles of the first printer,
Fust, appeared to the world; but if Dr. Faustus and Faustus the printer
are two different persons, the tradition becomes suspicious, though, in
some respects, it has a found