The Printed Book

At the end of 1472 the workshop was somewhat broken up, Fichet having left for Rome and Heinlein preaching in Germany. The three printers had shown by their works that they were in earnest; besides, they had from the first gratuitously distributed copies among the nobles, who, being accustomed to pay highly for manuscripts, did not fail to note the difference. The associates then resolved to quit the Sorbonne and create an establishment for themselves; their patrons being no longer there to sustain them in case of failure, and in giving up their presses and types it may be judged that they were not without anxiety on that point.

Their oldest dated book, the Manipulus Curatorum of Montrochet, was also the first that they printed in their new quarters, at the sign of the "Golden Sun" in the Rue St. Jacques. They remained united up to the year 1477, when Gering alone printed at the "Golden Sun," but he obtained associates, George Mainyal in 1480 and Berthold Rembold in 1494, who lived with him in the Rue de la Sorbonne, where he established himself on leaving the Rue St. Jacques. Ulrich Gering died on the 23rd of August, 1510, after a half-century of work.

The movement inaugurated by the Sorbonne was promptly followed. German workmen opened their shops nearly everywhere in France; then the French themselves scattered. At Lyons in 1472 a Frenchman was established, the same at Angers, Caen, Metz, Troyes, Besançon, and Salins. But in the central provinces we find Henry Mayer at Toulouse, John Neumeister at Albi; in the east Metlinger at Dijon; and Michael Wensler, of Basle, at Macon, among others, about 1493.

We have now arrived at an epoch of greater efforts. The Lyons printers used ornamental letters, from which were developed engravings in the Book. Since the block books illustration had been neglected, as the means were wanting to distribute the plates here and there in the forme; Schoeffer still employed initial letters in wood very like vignettes. John Fust was now dead, but Peter Schoeffer continued to print without intermission.

If we search for the precise epoch in which illustration appeared in the history of the Book, we shall perhaps have to go back to the time of Albert Pfister, printer of Bamberg, who issued in 1461 an edition of the "Fables of Ulrich Bohner" with a hundred and one figures on wood. This may be said to be the unconscious combination of xylography with typography, a kind of transformation of old elements to new things without other importance; art had no place in this adaptation.

Up to this time Germany had not, in its school of painters or miniaturists, men capable of giving a personal impulse to ornament. In the German editions of the block books the influence of Van Eyck had made itself felt very sensibly, and the Flemish had preserved their supremacy on this point; on the other hand, the German printers who went to seek their fortune in Italy fell into the middle of a circle admirably prepared to receive them and to communicate their ideas to them. It is believed that the first book printed in Italy with woodcuts in the text and with an ascertained date is the work of a German established at Rome, Ulrich Hahn, in 1467. An account in the Annuaire du Bibliophile, which, being without citation of authority, we quote for what it is worth, relates that Ulrich Hahn was established as a printer at Vienna about 1462, but was driven thence by the publication of a pamphlet against the burgomaster of the city, and was attracted to Rome by Torquemada, who confided to him the impression of his work the Meditationes. Hahn was an engraver, as were also most of his confrères at that time – that is, he cut in relief designs to be intercalated in the text – and Passavant relates that the designs of the Meditationes were from compositions of Fra Angelico, who died in 1455. Be that as it may, the book, the printing of which was finished on St. Sylvester's Day, 1467, is the first known with engravings, and only three copies of it exist: one at Vienna, one at Nuremberg, and one in Lord Spencer's library; it is composed in Gothic type in folio.

Illustration found a true artist at Verona, Matteo Pasti, who furnished designs for a volume on military art by Valturius, printed in Roman characters in folio, at the expense of John of Verona, and dedicated to Sigismond Pandolfi. Pasti's eighty-two figures are simple outlines, and we here reproduce one of the principal – an archer shooting at a butt. Published in 1472, the volume of Valturius followed soon after the Meditationes, but the engravings enable us to see how the Italian process, consisting mostly of lines without shadows, differed from the Dutch and German. One thing to be remarked here is the purity of the design, in spite of the roughness of the engraving; we see in these figures Italian art at its height, despite the somewhat coarse translation of the wood-cutter.

At Venice the German inventors had reaped their harvest. At the end of the fifteenth century, fifty years after the invention of typography, the printing offices and booksellers' shops were counted by hundreds. It was in this city that for the first time a title with frontispiece carrying indication of the contents, the place, the date, and the name of the printer, was given to the Book. We give here this ornamental title, placed before a Calendario of John de Monteregio, printed by Pictor, Loslein, and Ratdolt in 1476, folio.

The German Erhardt Ratdolt was probably the promoter of these innovations. He soon afterwards published the first geometrical book with figures, the "Elements of Euclid," 1482, folio; in the same year he produced the Poeticon Astronomicum of Hyginus, previously printed at Ferrara, with illustrations on wood of excellent design, but laboriously and unskilfully engraved. Yet the art of the Book could not remain mediocre in this city, where the artists were creating marvels. John of Spire and afterwards Nicholas Jenson, the emigrant from France, of whom we have spoken above, had created, after Italian manuscripts, that Roman letter, the primitive type of which has come down to our time very little retouched. At the death of Jenson in 1481, his materials passed into the hands of Andrew d'Asola, called Andrea Torresani, who did not allow the good traditions of his master to die, and who produced among others a book bearing signatures, catchwords, and paging ("Letters of St. Jerome," 1488). Torresani was the father-in-law of Aldus Manutius, who was to be for ever illustrious in the art of printing at Venice, and raised his art to the highest perfection.

But if decoration by means of relief blocks found a favourable reception in Italy and, above all, a group of artists capable of carrying it to success, there were at the same time other experiments conceived in a different way. The discovery of Maso Finiguerra gave to the art a new process of reproduction, and printing presses had now to render possible and practicable the working of engraved plates. In order to make that which follows comprehensible, we enter into a few technical details, the whole subject having been so admirably and fully treated by MM. Delaborde and Duplessis.

In the engraved wood block, as in the printing type, it is a projection in the wood or metal which, being inked and passed under a press, leaves on paper its lines in black. Naturally then the intercalation of an engraving of this kind in typographical composition is made without difficulty, and the impression of both is taken at once. On the other hand, a line engraving is obtained from incised lines on a plate of copper; that is, an instrument called a burin traces the lines, which are filled with greasy ink. These incised lines only are inked. The surface of the plate is cleaned off to avoid smudging. The sheet of paper destined for the impression has then to be made very pliable, so that at the striking of the press it runs, so to speak, to find the ink in the lines and hold it. It is therefore impossible to take a text from relief characters at the same time as an engraved plate.

However, this kind of reproduction, which, contrary to that from wood, allowed of half-tints or toning down, attracted in good time the workers at the Book. It appeared to them possible to reconcile the two printings by the successive passage of the same sheet of paper through the press, to receive at first the impression from the type and afterwards to find the ink deposited in the incisions in the copper. The first manifestation of this new method of illustration was made at Florence, the home of line engraving, by Nicholas di Lorenzo in 1477, for the work of Antonio Bettini, of Siena, called El Monte Santo di Dio. Here the artists were never known. Common opinion has it that Baccio Baldini borrowed from Sandro Botticelli the subjects of his plates. Italian engraving always seeks its source in Pollajuolo, Botticelli, and Baldini. It is not the simple work of a niellist, but it had not yet reached perfection either in the work or in the impression; the illustrations of the Monte Santo are proof of this, as are also those of the Dante, by Baldini, in 1481, for the same Nicholas di Lorenzo. From this we reproduce the Misers.

At this epoch engravings from the burin were taken with a pale ink, the composition of which is very different from the fine black ink of Schoeffer as well as of the old Italian printers. And besides in most cases the proofs were obtained with the frotton, like the ancient block books, an eminently defective process. The press was not yet well adapted to the delicate work of line engraving, and the workmen, who did not apply the plates until after the text was printed, preferred not to risk the loss of their sheets by the use of inappropriate presses. These, with the insignificant attempts made by the Germans in 1479, ² are the beginnings of the process of line engraving in the ornamentation of the Book. In fact, the process failed to take its due position for want of a more convenient mode of working. Relief engraving had got ahead; with it the sheets used for the impression did not require working more than once to register the figures with the text; in a word, the labour was not so great. A century had to pass before line engraving completely dethroned the vignette on wood, a century in which the latter attained its height, and showed what able artisans could make of a process apparently the least flexible.

Not to leave Italy, which had the honour of making the book with engraved illustrations known to the world, we pass by some years, during which Arnold Bucking gave at Rome a Cosmographia of Ptolemy, 1478, with incised plates, which is the first printed atlas that was produced, whilst as regards ordinary publications there appeared in all parts classical and Italian works, such as Cicero, Virgil, Tacitus, Pliny, Eusebius, among the ancients, and Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, etc., among moderns. Among the editions of Dante, we may cite that of Peter of Cremona, dated 18th November, 1491, with one engraving to each canto, of which the earlier are after Botticelli, and perhaps drawn by him directly on the wood. Passavant believes these figures to be cut in relief in the metal. On some of the plates there is a signature, a Gothic b, the signification of which leaves a free field for conjecture, and perhaps for error. Copies of this book with the complete series of twenty plates are extremely rare; one in the Hamilton Palace Library sold in May, 1884, for £380; the Royal Library of Berlin recently agreed to pay £1,200 for a proof set of the plates.

As we shall see later apropos of German vignettes of the same period, the characteristic of Italian engraving was sobriety, the complete absence of useless work and the great simplicity of the human figure. This special manner will be found in the famous edition of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francis Colonna, printed in 1499 by Aldus, copied sixty years later by a French printer, and lately reproduced in reduced size.

The Italian illustrators, whether they were working in wood, or, as some writers have it, in metal, adroitly brought their figures forward by contrasting some rudimentary work in the persons with the more accentuated and often stippled ground, which formed a dark background. This was also the ordinary process in their ornaments, among the most interesting of which are the borders of the plates to an edition of Dante by Bonino de Bonini, Brescia, 1487, of which a specimen is here reproduced.

If we return from Italy, which then took the lead, to Germany, a school of Formschneiders is found about the year 1470 at Augsburg, whose secluded workshops were of no benefit to the booksellers. These ill-advised artisans went still further. Apparently furious to see printing so widely spread as to render their bad woodcuts difficult to get rid of, they united in a body to interdict Gunther Zainer and Schüssler from putting engravings into their books. They must nevertheless have come to an ultimate arrangement, for Zainer printed in 1477 a book on chess by Jacopo da Cessole, with vignettes. He was one of the few German printers who employed Roman characters in place of the Gothic of Peter Schoeffer. At Cologne in 1474 Arnold Ther Hoernen published a work entitled Fasciculus Temporum, with small illustrations engraved on wood. A Bible without date contains most interesting illustrations. As to the celebrated Todtentantz, or "Dance of Death," published about 1485, it contains forty-one relief plates of the most ordinary kind, the same as in the "Chronicle of Cologne" of 1499, of which the figures, though less German, less distorted, are worth little compared with those of the Nuremberg books, more German, but more artistic.

At Nuremberg, Antony Koburger, called by Badius the prince of booksellers, directed an immense establishment, employing more than a hundred workmen, without counting smaller houses at Basle and Lyons. Koburger was a capable and a fortunate man. He had at first put forth a Bible very indifferently illustrated with the cuts of the Cologne Bible, but he had before him something better than copying others. Michael Wohlgemuth, born at Nuremberg in 1434, was then in the full vigour of his talent. To his school the young Albert Dürer came to study; and as he was able to draw on wood as well as to engrave on copper and paint on panel, Koburger was attracted to him, and engaged him to make a set of illustrations for a book. The projected work was the Schatzbehalter, a sort of ascetic compilation, without interest, without arrangement. Michael Wohlgemuth set to work; and, thanks to the ability of his engravers, of whom William Pleydenwurff was probably one, Koburger was able to put the book on sale in the course of 1491 in three hundred and fifty-two folios of two columns. Without being perfection, the designs of Wohlgemuth, very German, very striking, present the vigour and merit of the future school of Nuremberg. The figure is no longer a simple line, in the manner of the block books, but a combination of interlaced cuttings, intended to imitate colour. Those representing the creation of Eve and the daughter of Jephthah are here reproduced. In the search for harmony between the text and engravings of this curious work, we shall find grace and gaiety laid aside, on the other hand a freedom and boldness that interest and permit us to appreciate at their value the Nuremberg artists and Koburger, the printer. In fact, the German artists are more individual, each one taken by himself, than the Italian illustrators could be, condemned as they were to the hierarchical commonplace and to a certain form of idealism into which the art of Italy entered little by little. The German painters, naturalists and believers, presented their heroes in the image of that robust nature that was before their eyes. It was in this rude and unpolished spirit that Michael Wohlgemuth decorated the Schatzbehalter; he also composed the designs for the "Nuremberg Chronicle" of Dr. Hartman Schedel, printed by Koburger in 1493.

With Dürer, at the latter end of the fifteenth century, the Book was no more than a pretext for engravings. Thausing, his biographer, says that the great artist felt the necessity of designing an Apocalypse at Rome at the time that Luther was premeditating his religious revolution in face of the worldly splendours of the pontifical court. The "Apocalypse," published in 1511 in Latin, with Gothic characters, was an album of fifteen large wood engravings. The Four Horsemen is the best of these plates, and the boldest; but in this gross fancy, in these poor halting old hacks, the fantastic and grand idea which the artist meant to convey can hardly be seen. It may be said the genius of Dürer was little adapted to vignettes, however large they were, and did not easily lend itself to the exigencies of a spun-out subject. The title of his "Apocalypse" is of its kind a curious example of German genius, but, in spite of its vigour, it does not please like an Italian headpiece or like a French or Flemish frontispiece. The other works of Dürer published in the fifteenth century, "The Life of the Virgin" and "The Passion," were also sets of prints that received a text in the sixteenth century.

For the rest of his illustrations Dürer belongs to the sixteenth century, and we shall have occasion to recur to his works. At present it remains to speak of a curious work printed at Basle by Bergman de Olpe in 1497, which appears to be the first comic conception of fifteenth century artists: the Navis Stultifera, or "Ship of Fools," of Sebastian Brandt. This work of the school of Basle lacks neither originality nor vigour. At the time when it was published its success was immense, from the strange tricks of its clowns, with fools' caps, with which every page was adorned. Alas! the best things fall under the satire of these jesters, even the Book and the lover of books, if we may judge by the sarcasms against useless publications volleyed by the personage here reproduced. "I have the first place among fools… I possess heaps of volumes that I rarely open. If I read them, I forget them, and I am no wiser." Brunet sees in these humorous caricatures more art than is really to be found in them. Their value is owing more to their spirit and humour than to any other artistic merit. Even the engraving is singularly fitted to the subject, with its peculiar cutting, somewhat executed in hairlines. The designer was certainly not a Holbein, but he is no longer the primitive artisan of the first German plates, and his freedom is not displeasing.

We have before spoken, apropos of engraving by the burin in Italy, of the small share of Germany in the essay at illustration by that means, and we do not see a real and serious attempt in the two little coats of arms in copper plate in the Missale Herbipolense, printed in 1479.

The Flemish had not taken any great flights in the midst of this almost European movement. The school of Burgundy, whose influence was felt in all the surrounding countries, had lost its authority in consequence of the progress realized at Mayence. Without doubt the great Flemish artists were there, but they were honoured painters, and their inclination did not descend to seeking the booksellers beyond making them offers of service. Besides, the first of these, officially established in Flanders, were two Germans, John of Westphalia and John Veldener, of Cologne, who established themselves in the university of Louvain in 1473, three years after the first Paris printers. John of Westphalia, who took his own portrait for his mark, edited the Fasciculus Temporum, a book which had enormous success in the fifteenth century.

At Haarlem, in spite of the block books attributed to Laurent Coster, illustration was backward. About 1485, a Dutch translation of the Malheurs de Troye of Le Fevre was put on sale. This French book was published at Cologne before France possessed the smallest typographical workshop. At Bruges Colard Mansion illuminated the cuts of his Metamorphoses of Ovid in 1484. Simple engraving appeared to him far remote from manuscripts of which the vogue had not yet passed away. At Zwoll Peter van Os, the publisher, cut up and used the xylographic plates of the Biblia Pauperum, while the master à la navette, John of Cologne, an artist in the best sense of the word, was ornamenting certain popular publications with his designs. At Utrecht Veldener came from Louvain to establish a workshop. He published for the second time a Fasciculus in 1480; he created a style of decoration with flowers and leaves, which shortly after developed into the trade of Rahmenschneiders. Antwerp had attracted Gerard de Leeu from Gouda, and he produced the romance of Belle Vienne. Schiedam had an inventive engraver who illustrated an edition of the Chevalier Delibéré of Oliver de la Marche, in folio, with Gothic letters, after 1483, as we read in the colophon: —

 
"Cet traittié fut parfait l'an mil
Quatre cens quatre vings et trois
Ainsi que sur la fin d'avril
Que l'yver est en son exil,
Et que l'esté fait ses explois.
Au bien soit pris en tous endrois
De ceulx à qui il est offert
Par celui qui Tant a souffert,
 

La Marche."

The French language, bright and harmonious, thus found hospitality in other countries. For many examples of French books published abroad, we cannot cite one German work printed in France. Spreading from the north to the south, typography had from 1490 its two principal centres at Paris and Lyons. After the success of the three Germans at the Sorbonne, events took their own course. In 1474 Peter Cæsaris and John Stol, two students who had been instructed by Gering and Krantz, founded the second establishment in Paris, at the sign of the "Soufflet Vert;" and they printed classical works. Ten years later appeared Antony Vérard, Simon Vostre, and Pigouchet, the first of whom gave to French bookselling an impulse that it has not since lost; but before them Pasquier-Bonhomme published his Grandes Chroniques in 1476, three volumes folio, the oldest in date of books printed at Paris in French.

The French school of illustration was at its most flourishing point at the end of the fifteenth century, but solely in miniature and ornamentation by the pencil. The charming figures of the manuscripts had at this time a Flemish and naturalistic tendency. The most celebrated of the great artists in manuscripts, John Foucquet, could not deny the source of his talent nor the influence of the Van Eyck school, yet the touch remained distinctly personal. He had travelled, and was not confined to the art circles of a single city, as were so many of the earliest painters of Flanders. He had gone through Italy, and from thence he transported architectural subjects for his curious designs in the Heures of Etienne Chevalier, now at Frankfort; a precious fragment of it is preserved in the National Library of Paris. Side by side with this undoubted master, whose works are happily known, lived a more modest artist: John Perréal, called John of Paris, painter to Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Anne of Brittany.

In joining with these two masters, to serve as a transition between Foucquet and Perréal, John Bourdichon, designer to the kings of France from Louis XI. to Francis I., we obtain already a not despicable assemblage of living forces. Without doubt these men were not comparable either with the admirable school of Flanders, or the Germans of Nuremberg, or the masters of Italy; but, moderate as we may deem their merit, they did their tasks day by day, painting miniatures, colouring coats of arms, rendering to the kings, their masters, all the little duties of devoted servants without conceit, and preparing, according to their means, the great artistic movement in France of the seventeenth century. That these men, leaving the brush for the pencil, devoted themselves to design figures on wood, is undeniable. It is said that one of them followed Charles VIII. to the Italian wars, and probably sketched the battles of the campaign as they took place. Now in the books published at this epoch in France we meet with vignettes which so very nearly approach miniatures, that we can easily recognise in them French taste and finish. Such are, for example, the illustrations of the Mer des Histoires, printed by Le Rouge in 1488, where suppleness of design is blended in some parts with extraordinary dexterity in engraving. Nevertheless, others leave something to be desired; they maim the best subjects by their unskilful line and their awkwardness of handling. Were not these engravers on wood printers themselves: the Commins, Guyot Marchants, Pierre Lecarrons, Jean Trepperels, and others? We are tempted to see in certain shapeless work the hasty and light labour of an artisan hurried in its execution. As mentioned above, the part taken by the booksellers in the making of the plates does not make our supposition in itself appear inadmissible.

Printing had been established about twenty years in Paris when Philip Pigouchet, printer and engraver on wood, began to exercise his trade for himself or on account of other publishers. Formerly bookseller in the University, he transported his presses to the Rue de la Harpe, and took for his mark the curious figure here reproduced. At this moment a veritable merchant, Simon Vostre, conceived the idea of putting forth Books of Hours, until then disdained in France, and of publishing them in fine editions with figures, borders, ornaments, large separate plates, and all the resources of typography. The trials made at Venice and Naples between 1473 and 1476 warranted the enterprise. Entering into partnership with Pigouchet, the two were able on the 17th of April, 1488, to place on sale the Heures à l'Usaige de Rome, octavo, with varied ornaments and figures. The operation having succeeded beyond their hopes, thanks to the combination of the subjects of the borders, subjects that could be turned and re-turned in all ways so as to obtain the greatest variety, Simon Vostre reapplied himself to the work, and ordered new cuts to augment the number of his decorations. Passavant's idea is commonly received that the engraving was in relief on metal; the line in it is very fine, the background stippled, and the borders without scratches. Wood could not have resisted the force of the press; the reliefs would have been crushed, the borders rubbed and broken. In all the successive editions hard work and wear are not remarked, and we are forced to admit the use of a harder material than the pear or box-wood of ordinary blocks.

According to his wants, Simon Vostre designed new series of ornaments. Among them were histories of the saints, Biblical figures, even caricatures against Churchmen, after the manner of the old sculptors, who thought that sin was rendered more horrible in the garb of a monk. Then there were the Dance of Death and sibyls, allying sacred with profane, even the trades, all forming a medley of little figures in the margins, in the borders, nestled among acanthus leaves, distorted men, fantastic animals, and saints piously praying. The Middle Ages live again in these bright and charming books, French in their style, imbued with good sense and perfect toleration.

The Book rose under Simon Vostre and Philip Pigouchet to the culminating point of ornamentation. Here design and engraving improve and sustain each other. It is not only the stippled backgrounds of the borders that please the eye. And who was this unknown designer, this painter of bold conceptions, whose work is complete in little nothings? However, the large full-page figures have not always an originality of their own, nor the French touch of the borders. Thus that of the Passion here reproduced is inspired line for line by the German, Martin Schongauer. Are we to suppose, that duplicates of blocks passed between France and Germany, or was a copy made by a French designer? It is difficult to say. Still the coincidence is not common to all the missals of the great Parisian bookseller. The Death of the Virgin here reproduced is an evident proof of it. It forms part of the 1488 book, and is a truly French work.

It may be said that from the artistic association of Philip Pigouchet and Simon Vostre was born the art of illustration of the Book in France; they worked together for eighteen years, in steady collaboration, and, as far as we know, without a cloud. At Vostre's commencement in 1488 he lived in the Rue Neuve Notre Dame, at the sign of "St. Jean l'Evangeliste;" and in 1520 he was still there, having published more than three hundred editions of the Missal, according to the use of the several cities.

Contemporary with Simon Vostre, another publisher was giving a singular impulse to the Book by his extreme energy, true taste, and the aid of first-class artists. Antony Verard, the most illustrious of the old French booksellers, was a writer, printer, illuminator, and dealer. Born in the second half of the fifteenth century, he established himself in Paris on the Pont Notre Dame, both sides of which were then covered with shops, and about 1485 commenced his fine editions with a "Decameron" in French by Laurent de Premierfait. M. Renouvier remarks in his notice of Verard that his first books were not good, the plates were often unskilful, and were probably borrowed or bought from others; this may be very well understood in a beginner whose modest resources did not permit bold enterprises; the figures were in most cases groundworks for miniatures, outlines and sketches rather than vignettes.

Antony Verard was accustomed to take a certain number of fine copies on vellum or paper of each book published by him, in which authorised painters added miniatures and ornaments. It is curious now to find what the cost to one of the great lords of the court of Charles VIII. was of one of these special copies in all the details of its impression, and we find it in a document published by M. Senemaud in a provincial journal (Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de la Charente, 1859, part 2, p. 91), which enables us at the same time to penetrate into a printing office of a great French publisher of the fifteenth century. According to this document, Verard did not disdain to put his own hand to the work, even to carrying the book to the house of his patron if he were a man of consequence. It is an account of Charles de Valois-Angoulême, father of Francis I. He was then living at Cognac; and he ordered Verard to print separately for him on vellum the romance of Tristan, the "Book of Consolation" of Boetius, the Ordinaire du Chrétien, and Heures en François, each with illuminations and binding. In the detail of expenses Verard omits nothing. He reckons the parchment at three sous four deniers the sheet, the painted and illuminated figures at one écu the large and five sols the small. We give here the outline of one of the plates of the Tristan, ordered by the Duc d'Angoulême, reduced by two-thirds, and from it it may be judged that the profession of the illuminator, even for the time, was by no means brilliant. The binding was in dark-coloured velvet, with two clasps with the arms of the Duke, which cost sixty sous each. The work finished, Verard took the route for Cognac, carrying the precious volumes. He was allowed twenty livres for carriage; and this brings the total to 207 livres 10 sous, equivalent to £200 to £240 of present money.