[Footnote II-67: This collection of wood engravings from old blocks was published in three parts, large folio, at Gotha in 1808, 1810, and 1816, under the following title: “Holzschnitte alter Deutscher Meister in den Original-Platten gesammelt von Hans Albrecht Von Derschau: Als ein Beytrag zur Kunstgeschichte herausgegeben, und mit einer Abhandlung über die Holzschneidekunst und deren Schicksale begleitet von Rudolph Zacharias Becker.” The collector has frequently mistaken rudeness of design, and coarseness of execution, for proofs of antiquity.] [Footnote II-68: Inquiry, vol. i. p. 130.] The manner in which the cuts are engraved, and the attempts at something like effect in the shading and composition, induce me to think that this book is not so old as either the Apocalypse or the History of the Virgin. That it appeared before 1428, as has been inferred from the date which the Rev. Mr. Horne fancied that he had seen on the ancient binding, I cannot induce myself to believe. It is more likely to have been executed at some time between 1440 and 1460; and I am inclined to think that it is the production of a Dutch or Flemish, rather than a German artist. A work, from which the engraved “Biblia Pauperum Predicatorum” is little more than an abstract, appears to have been known in France and Germany long before block-printing was introduced. Of such a work there were two manuscript copies in the National Library at Paris; the one complete, and the other--which, with a few exceptions, had been copied from the first--imperfect. The work consisted of a brief summary of the Bible, arranged in the following manner. One or two phrases in Latin and in French formed, as it were, the text; and each text was followed by a moral reflection, also in Latin and in French. Each article, which thus consisted of two parts, was illustrated by two drawings, one of which related to the historical fact, and the other to the moral deduced from it. The perfect copy consisted of four hundred and twenty-two pages, on each of which there were eight drawings, so that the number contained in the whole volume was upwards of five thousand. In some of the single drawings, which were about two and one-third inches wide, by three and one-third inches high, Camus counted not less than thirty heads.[II-69] [Footnote II-69: Notice d’un Livre, &c. p. 11.]