who have subsequently amplified his narrative. With regard to the engravings in the “Poor Man’s Bible,” Ottley says (p. 87,) “the style of these cuts has considerable resemblance to that of the two Van Eycks,” and he considers that the designs in this work, together with those in the Book of Canticles, and the Mirror of Salvation, were, with the exception of the last ten cuts of the latter, the production of the same artist, or at any rate of artists of the same school; all the others being of a different style, and of inferior merit. He regrets his inability to speak with certainty upon their age, but relies upon the following note in Dr. Dibdin’s _Bibliotheca Spenceriana_, (vol. i. p. 4.) “Mr. Horn, a gentleman long and well known for his familiar acquaintance with ancient books printed abroad was in possession of a copy of the _Biblia Pauperum_, of the _Ars Moriendi_, and of the _Apocalypse_, all bound in one volume, which volume had upon the exterior of the cover, the following words stamped at the extremity of the binding, towards the edge of the squares:--‘HIC LIBER RELEGATUS FUIT PER PLEBANUM ECCLESIE--ANNO DOMINI 142[8].’ Mr. Horn having broken up the volume and parted with its contents, was enabled to supply me with the foregoing information _upon the strength of his memory alone_; but he is quite confident of the three following particulars:--1, That the works, contained in this volume, were as have been just mentioned:--2, That the binding was the ancient legitimate one, and that the treatise had _not_ been _subsequently_ introduced into it:--and 3, That the date was 142...odd--but positively anterior to the year 1430.” This testimony Mr. Ottley considers it ungracious to question; but “with all this,” he says, “I wish that the volume still existed entire, or that, at least, the cover had been preserved.... But, whatever the antiquity of the first block-books, which almost all writers are of opinion preceded the first attempts to print with moveable characters, it is certain, _that for many years after the invention of typography_, the engravers in wood continued to publish works of this kind.”[113]