fancies which one would not expect to meet in a prayer-book. These volumes were so highly prized by foreign nations for the beauty of their workmanship, that they were printed in Flemish, English, and Italian. Those which were issued by Verard, Vostre, Pigouchet, and Kerver were the best products of the early French art.[1] The secular works which contain woodcuts are hardly worthy of mention, excepting Guyot Marchand’s La Dance Macabre, first published in 1485, which is a series of twenty-five spirited and graceful designs, marked by French vivacity and liveliness of fancy. In all early French work the peculiar genius of the people is not so easily distinguishable as in this example, but it is usually present, and gives a national characteristic to the art, notwithstanding the indubitable influences of the German archaic school in the earlier time, and of the Italian school in the first years of the sixteenth century.
French wood-engraving is remarkable, in respect to its technique, for the introduction of criblée, or dotted work, which has previously[2] been described, into the backgrounds on which the designs are relieved. This mode of engraving is probably a survival from the goldsmiths’ work of the first part of the fifteenth century, and it is not unlikely that, as Renouvier suggests, these criblée grounds were meant to represent the gold grounds on which both miniatures and early paintings were relieved. From an examination of the peculiarities of these engravings, some authors[3] have been
