In the next stage we have a framed initial with an ornamental groundwork, but the composition is less effective in black and white than when the letter itself is picked out in red. A good example of this is in the alphabet of the Zainer German Bible, afterwards used in the _Summa Confessorum_ of J. Friburgensis. In these initials, what a contemporary authority on lettering calls a ‘friskiness’ of the design leads to a difficulty of distinguishing between the ornamental prolongation of the different parts of the letter, and the very similar decorative groundwork,--so much so, that even the rubricator was sometimes mistaken, the colour being left unapplied where needed, and _vice versâ_. Finally we come to initials, of which the specimens that have come down to us are coloured as often as not. These are more effective when not so treated, and were probably intended to be left as printed. The reader can judge from the specimens reproduced. Butsch (_Bücher-Ornamentik_) mentions the _Gulden Bibel_ of Rampigollis, the _Belial_ of 1472, and the _Glossae_ of Salemo, as the earliest works of G. Zainer with woodcut initials. The _Belial_, he says, has a large ornamental initial of arabesque design. Our first selections are from the _Summa Confessorum_; the large P is from the _Margarita Davitica_ of 1475. The new plan was soon adopted by the other Augsburg printers, and spread thence to other towns and countries. As far as Augsburg is concerned, it should be noted that the same letters were often used by different printers, and they are therefore as much illustrative of the town and period, as of any one particular press. Ludwig Hohenwang, for instance, uses the same initials in his _Gulden Bibel_ of 1477, as does J. Pflantzmann in his _Glossa_ of Salemo of the same year. The two specimens given of these printers might have been taken from either volume. Our other examples are taken from works published by Sorg, Keller, Bämler, and Schönsperger. The Bämler selection is exceedingly curious as presenting probably the first example, if our date is correct, of what was afterwards so common--the grotesque profile. Unfortunately we are unable to give their exact origin, as they form part of a collection of initials, cut from early books, but if the attribution ‘Bämler, 1475,’ is correct, they are of the same date as the Rihel Bible of 1475, in which there are two initials with profiles, but neither of them grotesque.[10] [10] There are two pictorial letters in the fifth German Bible (see the reproductions of both at pp. 118, 119), in which the border is formed partly of a grotesque profile.