on a book-plate; for this reason, that the piracy of private ex-libris designs was too insignificant and unremunerative to require such a safe-guard. The publisher's name first began to be placed on engravings in 1735, in accordance with an Act of Parliament, chiefly passed at Hogarth's* instigation, to secure the copyright in such prints to their designer. In 1796 the illustrations to books all bore this formula. For instance, the Frontispiece to Vol. III of the Lady's Pocket Magazine, 1796, is a wild piece of allegory— Europe Protecting Britannia from the Demons of Discord and this reads Published by Harrison & Co., Feb. 1, 1796. Likely enough, Lady Bessborough's plate first did service in some such serial; and was afterwards converted by a name inscription across the scarf to her more special private use. Still, Bartolozzi's work was then, as now, so popular, that he may have found it worth his while to place even his book-plates and visiting cards under the protection of the act. Our catalogue of allegoric ex-libris may conclude with a batch of less important examples very succinctly described.

Charles Hoare and Joshua Scrope have one design. Winged cherubs hoist their respective arms to the top of a very tall bookcase. The last plate is signed C. & A. Paas, 53, Holborn. Wm. Mitford of Pitt's Hill, a cherub among clouds with an escutcheon, engraved by Sherwin. Thomas Birch is really quaint. Minerva seated has charge of the shield; to whom enter a cherub flying in with the missing

*8. George II. Chap. 38. The Act vested an exclusive right in their works in designers and engravers, and restrained the multiplication of copies without their consent. On the "gratitude" print, published by Hogarth on the passing of the Act, he states it to have been " obtained by his endeavours and almost at his sole expence." Nicholl's Biographical Anecdotes, 2nd Ed. 1782, p. 34.

+ I have seen Miss Callender's card by Bartolozzi appropriated.

E

crest.* Verney Lovett. Trin. Coll. Cant., is in the dotted style, struck off in red, by W. Henshaw. A genius laurel-weathed reclining on a cloud bank, with widely outspread wings, simpers complacently over the Lovett insignia. W. F. Gason, Clare Hall, Camb., is also signed by W. Henshaw. Minerva stands in a landscape, with trees behind her. Before her is an altar, which bears the Gason arms. In the air, a flying cherub, trumpeting, and waving a scroll with the Gason name and address, as given above. In execution very inferior to the last

The reader will by this time have gained a fair idea of this curious vogue of representing things as they are not. We recommend him to study the French book-plates of the seventeenth century, if he wishes to see combinations yet more fantastic. The century of the vignette was the heyday of the ex-libris.† And a leading authority‡ explains that the whole personnel of Olympus, clouds, powers, thunderbolts, cherubins, glories, suns, were in France at that epoch pressed into book-plate requisition. We have nothing on our side the channel to match with this, but even in sober England the allegoric vogue ran its day, and, among the various styles of English ex-libris, it cannot be denied a notice.

* Compare above the description of John Holland's book-plate by Hogarth.

"Le xviii siècle, 'le siècle de la vignette' comme l'on dit Mm. de Goncourt est par excellence, le bon temps des ex libris." M. Tournoux I Amateur d'autographes. Nos. 214-215, p. 61 (Avril, 1872.) ́

P. Poulet-Malassis, p. 28.

THE LANDSCAPE ON ENGLISH

BOOK-PLATES.

GILBERT WAKEFIELD, who passed his life in a good deal of controversial hot water, had engraved about 1780 a pretty wood scene, in which a thirsty stag is drinking at a river, with this motto in Greek, Truth and Freedom. There was no kind of heraldry about the plate, which made it at that period all the more exceptional. A certain amount of allegory the design doubtless contains; but the important point is this, we have before us one of the earliest purely landscape book-plates in our national series. Let this example, therefore, introduce our chapter on a new phase of book-plate art.

Now, no names are more intimately associated with the vignette landscape than those of the Brothers Bewick; and this chapter might, if we chose, be illustrated solely by book-plates of their workmanship. Very charming are their ex-libris vignettes. They show us ruins, rocks, deep foliage, or time-corroded boles, flowing river, distant spire and mountain. They give actual Tyne-side scenes, views of Newcastle, St. Nicholas's Tower, Jarrow Church. Unluckily, the armorial shield is far too often present, intruding itself into fishing scenes and similar incongruous situations. But for this the orderer of the book-plate rather than the engraver was to blame. Of course, the Bewicks applied the landscape vignette to many other pictorial purposes

beside the ex-libris. But a goodly number of bonâ-fide book-plates in this style of their engraving survive; so numerous, indeed, are these examples, that we intend, space permitting, to revert to them specially hereafter.

The earliest dated Bewick book-plate is that of T. Bell, 1797, a date which shows that the Bewicks followed rather than originated a taste and style already popular, which they afterwards brought to such perfection. It is from the works of their less known predecessors and contemporaries that the examples in this chapter will be taken.

Now of the landscape book-plate. This was rather the lineal descendant of the Chippendale than of the Jacobean style. The last expanded into allegory by giving life to its decorative images and busts. The Chippendale decoration developed into landscape by adding to the free flowers of the frame the fields and lands whence such blos

soms had come. But the change did not take place abruptly, or per saltum. Take, to prove this, three transitional or composite book-plates, on which landscape is associated with the earlier fashions, Allegory and Chippendale, which it soon supplanted altogether.

In the Tanrego, Pyott, and Burrow book-plates the fusion of styles and arrangement of the vignette are precisely similar. The foreground of the design is blocked by a gigantic coat of arms framed in the later Chippendale fashion. There is a bracket below, and distinct from the frame; on this is the name, and on its ledge various implements. Behind the shield-frame, left and right, appears a distinct background of landscape; but the sky interval, between the top of the frame and the upper border of the plate, is common to both landscapes, and divided by no line of partition. Middle distance there is none, as the bracket rises high enough to conceal that portion of the design from view.

The first plate belongs to a school. It reads-Tanrego in the County of Sligo, 1786, dated. Scholastic implements crowd the upper portion of the bracket. In its lower left corner a diminutive Minerva is seated. Her helm is plumed, her owl is at her side. She is pointing upwards at the motto of the school, Minerva Duce, which swings on a scroll among all the paraphernalia of learning. The goddess sits just under the school telescope, which considerably exceeds her in length. In the background, to the right, a Greek temple rises from the sea on a wooded promontory; perhaps Sunium is meant. To the left are pyramids and the desert. In the heaven above, a sun with ray effect and a fragment of the zodiacal belt. Signed, F. Taylor sculpt.

Take next a book-plate of the Pyott family. Pietatis Amator. Ed. Bramston sculp. Arranged as the Tanrego ex-libris. Right background gives a sea-view. Vessels are riding at anchor off a small fort, over which a flag flies. A very violent ray effect on the horizon. The left background depicts a land view. There are columns and a ruined arch. An obelisk with a horse-trough. Two shepherds in colloquy, with crooks.

Last comes the plate of Edwd. Burrow, which, though unsigned, must be also by Bramston. The general style and disposition as before. Right background, a sea-fort, and a ship at anchor before it. Left background, another sea view. A ship, much larger than the first, and a fishing town on the horizon. A most awkward effect is produced by the inequality of the horizon line in each distinct vignette. In these three book-plates the landscape is clearly subsidiary to the Chippendale decoration. These vignette background views are merely added to finish off the flowers and flourishes of the frame. Note the date of the Tanrego 1786: for, as we take it, we shall get few later Chippendale specimens.