_Colin Clout_, and _The Boke of Phyllip Sparowe_. They were issued in octavo form, and were evidently very hastily turned out from the press, type, woodcuts, and workmanship being of the worst description. At the end of _Colin Clout_ is a woodcut of a figure at a desk, supposed to represent the author, but it is doubtful whether it is anything more than an old block with his name cut upon it. Looking back over the work done at this time, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the art of printing in England had much deteriorated since the days of Pynson, while the best of it, even that of Berthelet, could not be compared with that of the continental presses of the same period. There was an entire absence of originality among the English printers. Types, woodcuts, initial letters, ornaments, and devices, were obtained by the printers from abroad, and had seen some service before their arrival in this country. But just at this time a printer came to the front in this country, who for a few years placed the art on a higher footing than any of his predecessors. [Footnote 3: The _Registers of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars_, edited by W. J. C. Moens (Introduction, pp. xiii.-xiv.).] [Illustration: FIG. 17.--John Day.] CHAPTER IV JOHN DAY John Day, one of the best and most enterprising of printers, was born in the year 1522 at Dunwich, in Suffolk, a once flourishing town, now buried beneath the sea. From the fact that Day was in possession of a device found in the books of Thomas Gibson, the printer whom Latimer unsuccessfully recommended to Cromwell, it has been supposed that it was from Gibson he learnt the art. He may have done so; but whatever he learnt there or elsewhere, in his 'prentice days, he later on threw aside, and by his own enterprise and the excellence of his workmanship raised himself to the proud position of the finest printer England had ever seen. In John Day's first books there was no sign of the skill he afterwards manifested. These were published in conjunction with William Seres, of whom we know little or nothing, outside his connection with Day. These partners began work in the year 1546 at the sign of the Resurrection on Snow Hill, a little above Holborn Conduit, that is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present viaduct. They had also another shop in Cheapside. Their first book, so far as we know, was Sir David Lindsay's poem, '_The Tragical death, of David Beaton, Bishop of St. Andrews in Scotland; Wherunto is joyned the martyrdom of maister G. Wyseharte ... for whose sake the aforesayd bishoppe was not long after slayne_' (1546, 8vo). In the following year (1547) Day and Seres printed several other books of a religious character, nearly all of them in octavo, including Cope's _Godly Meditacion upon the psalms_, and Tyndale's _Parable of the Wicked Mammon_.