If such wood engravings--“the toys of the day”--had been known in the thirteenth, or even the fourteenth century, is it not likely that some mention would be made of them in the writings of some one of the minstrels of the period to whom we are indebted for so many minute particulars illustrative of the state of society at the period referred to? Not the slightest allusion to anything of the kind has hitherto been noticed in their writings. Respecting such “toys” Boccaccio is silent, and our countryman Chaucer says not a word. Of wood-cuts not the least mention is made in Petrarch; and Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham, who lived in the reign of Edward III., in his curious Essay on the Love of Books, says not a syllable of wood-cuts, either as toys, or as illustrations of devotional or historical subjects. Upon this question, affirmed by Papillon, and maintained as true by Zani and Ottley, contemporary authorities are silent; and not one solitary fact bearing distinctly upon the point has been alleged in support of Papillon’s narrative. [Illustration] CHAPTER II. PROGRESS OF WOOD ENGRAVING. Playing-Cards Printed from Wood-Blocks -- Early German Wood-Engravers at Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm -- Card-Makers and Wood-Engravers in Venice in 1441 -- Figures of Saints Engraved on Wood -- The St. Christopher, the Annunciation, and the St. Bridget in the Collection of Earl Spencer, with Other Old Wood-Cuts Described -- Block-Books -- The Apocalypse, the History of the Virgin, and the Work Called Biblia Pauperum -- Speculum Salvationis -- Figured Alphabet Formerly Belonging to Sir George Beaumont -- Ars Memorandi, and Other Smaller Block-Books. From the facts which have been produced in the preceding chapter, there cannot be a doubt that the principle on which wood engraving is founded,--that of taking impressions on paper or parchment, with ink, from prominent lines,--was known and practised in attesting documents in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Towards the end of the fourteenth, or about the beginning of the fifteenth century, there is reason to believe that this principle was adopted by the German card-makers for the purpose of marking the outlines of the figures on their cards, which they afterwards coloured by means of a stencil.[II-1] [Footnote II-1: A stencil is a piece of pasteboard, or a thin plate of metal, pierced with lines and figures, which are communicated to paper, parchment, or linen, by passing a brush charged with ink or colour over the stencil.] The period at which the game of cards was first known in Europe, as well as the people by whom they were invented, has been very learnedly, though not very satisfactorily discussed. Bullet has claimed the invention for the French, and Heineken for the Germans; while other writers have maintained that the game was known in Italy earlier than in any other part of Europe, and that it was introduced from the East.