Besides the preceding doubtful account we have notices of a print in the Library of Lyons with the date 1384. Specimens of engravings of playing cards, as well as of saints, said to have been produced in the years 1390 and 1400 are also extant. From the year 1400 to 1440 other and more elaborate engravings, of a devotional character, are likewise to be met with. One of the most curious, representing St. Christopher carrying the infant Saviour across the sea, is in the possession of Earl Spencer, and bears the date 1423. A few years later we find similar prints accompanied with explanatory inscriptions or texts of Scripture placed beneath them; next came whole series of these prints published together as a book; and lastly, the small Latin Grammars of Donatus, the common school-books of the day, engraved and printed in like manner. These productions are distinguished by Bibliographers as Block-books, and nine or ten different specimens are known to exist. Of these the most remarkable are the _Biblia Pauperum_, or Poor Man’s Bible,[16] a book containing 40 pages of quarto, or small folio prints, with several engravings with inscriptions upon each page, supposed to have been executed (most probably at Zwolle[17] in Holland) between the years 1420 and 1435; and the _Speculum Humanæ Salvationis_,[18] or Mirror of Salvation, a book containing 63 leaves in the two Latin, and 62 in the two Dutch editions, (each in small folio), 58 of which are ornamented with engravings representing stories from the Old and New Testaments, beneath which are more copious explanatory inscriptions than those in the “Biblia Pauperum.” These editions are supposed to have been published between the years 1430 and 1457. Mean as these books would seem if issued from the press at the present day, they were wonderful productions for the age in which they appeared; and although the first named was called the ‘Poor Man’s Bible,’ or ‘Book of the Poor,’ it was only in comparison with the cost of a written copy of the Holy Scriptures, which was worth the, in that day, enormous sum of £100.[19] As very few copies are now in existence, (and those generally in an imperfect state), they have literally become worth more than their weight in gold: a copy of the _Biblia Pauperum_ having been bought by the Duke of Marlborough, after a keen competition at an auction sale in 1813, for the almost fabulous sum of £257.