There are wood-cuts in the Golden Legend, 1483; the Fables of Esop, 1484; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and other books printed by Caxton; but it is unnecessary either to enumerate them or to give specimens, as they are all executed in the same rude manner as the cuts in the Book of Chess and the Mirror of the World. In the Book of Hunting and Hawking printed at St. Albans, 1486, there are rude wood-cuts; as also in a second and enlarged edition of the same book printed by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton’s successor, at Westminster in 1496. The most considerable wood-cut printed in England previous to 1500 is, so far as regards the design, a representation of the Crucifixion at the end of the Golden Legend printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1493.[IV-40] In this cut, neither of the thieves on each side of Christ appears to be nailed to the cross. The arms of the thief on the right of Christ hang behind, and are bound to the transverse piece of the cross, which passes underneath his shoulders. His feet are neither bound nor nailed to the cross. The feet of the thief to the left of Christ are tied to the upright piece of the cross, to which his hands are also bound, his shoulders resting upon the top, and his face turned upward towards the sky. To the left is seen the Virgin,--who has fallen down,--supported by St. John. In the back-ground to the right, the artist, like several others of that period, has represented Christ bearing his cross. [Illustration] Dr. Dibdin, at page 8 of the “Disquisition on the Early State of Engraving and Ornamental Printing in Great Britain,” prefixed to Ames’s and Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities, makes the following observations on this cut: “The ‘Crucifixion’ at the end of the ‘Golden Legend’ of 1493, which Wynkyn de Worde has so frequently subjoined to his religious pieces, is, unquestionably, the effort of some ingenious foreign artist. It is not very improbable that Rubens had a recollection of one of the thieves, twisted, from convulsive agony, round the top of the cross, when he executed his celebrated picture of the same subject.”[IV-41] In De Worde’s cut, however, it is to be remarked that the contorted attitude of both the thieves results rather from the manner in which they are bound to the cross, than from the convulsions of agony. [Footnote IV-40: A large flowered letter, a T, cut on wood, occurs on the same page as the Crucifixion.] [Footnote IV-41: In a note upon this passage Dr. Dibdin gives the following extract from Sir Joshua Reynolds. “To give animation to this subject, Rubens has chosen the point of time when an executioner is piercing the side of Christ, while another with a bar of iron is breaking the limbs of one of the malefactors, who in his convulsive agony, which his body admirably expresses, has torn one of his feet from the tree to which it was nailed. The expression in the action of the figure is wonderful.”]