. Old picture books; with other essays on bookish subjects. nd Mr. Saylehas found initials with this signature in books printedduring the reign of Elizabeth and James i., which nearlymake up a complete alphabet, with some letters in dupli-cate. According to Bryant and Nagler, the engraverAnton Sylvius, who w^as born at Antwerp in 1526, andworked for Plantin from 1550 to 1573, used the monogramI have described. But I am not wholly satisfied that thisA. S. is the same man. Another point of some difficulty is whether the pictureshave any relation to the letters. Some of them come invery neatly, t
. Old picture books; with other essays on bookish subjects. nd Mr. Saylehas found initials with this signature in books printedduring the reign of Elizabeth and James i., which nearlymake up a complete alphabet, with some letters in dupli-cate. According to Bryant and Nagler, the engraverAnton Sylvius, who w^as born at Antwerp in 1526, andworked for Plantin from 1550 to 1573, used the monogramI have described. But I am not wholly satisfied that thisA. S. is the same man. Another point of some difficulty is whether the pictureshave any relation to the letters. Some of them come invery neatly, thus E and Europa riding on her bull, M andMercury, T and a lady, who may very well be Thetis, OLD PICTURE BOOKS haranguing a council of Gods, another T with Neptuneflourishing a very prominent Trident, go well enough together, but whyshould a W be illus-trated by Herculesand Cacus, or an Fby Cephalus andProcris, or an I bythe birth of Adonis?On the whole, pend-ing further explana-tions, it would seemthat to connect letterand subject wasregarded by the de-. 8. PICTORIAL INITIAL ATTRIBUTED TOANTON SYLVIUS signers rather as de- sirablethan same pointarises as to a much clumsier pictorial alphabet, with largefigures in it, found in books and proclamations, printedfrom 1547 onwards. Here the picture belonging to the Tis of Christ and the Tribute-money, but the pictures inother letters seem part of a set illustrating the works ofmercy (visiting prisoners, healing the wounded, etc.) andto have no special appropriateness to their initials. In 1554 we find Cawood in possession of both of thesesets of initials. He had obtained the first apparently fromBerthelet, and the second from Grafton. The ruder setseems to have soon fallen into disuse, though I find someletters from it in the possession of John Day in 1563, butthat of A. S. (individual letters being re-cut as need arose)was passed on to Barker, w^hen he became Queens Printer,and reappears in several books of the seven
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