_anglicé_: ‘The way to preserve body, soul, honour, and means,’ and on the verso is a remarkable engraving of a sick person in bed surrounded by attendants, which evidently suggested the cut representing the sick fool in Brandt’s celebrated _Navis Fatuorum_. At the end of the volume is a great typographical curiosity, which constitutes, when completed by hand, an _ex-libris_. This is a woodcut engraving occupying nearly the whole of the page, with a shield in blank and two scrolls. On one of these are engraved the words, _Das Puch und der Schild ist_, the corresponding one being intended for the owner’s name, and the shield for his coat of arms. [18] Proctor ascribes this work to either Conrad Zeninger or Peter Wagner. In our copy this book-plate remains in its original condition, but we have seen another that was filled up at the time, and which has been the means of rescuing the name of a worthy monk from oblivion. In it, the first part of the sentence is completed by the addition of the words, _des Closters zum Parfusen hat Eundres Gewder gemacht_, the whole forming an _ex-libris_ of the Monastery of Barefooted Brothers of St. Francis, and testifying to the skill of the ‘bibliothecarius,’ Andrew Gewder, who engrossed and illuminated it. There are two specimens of this page also in the Franks collection of book-plates at the British Museum. In one of these the space is blank, in the other it is filled up with the name of a nun, Barbara. The chief interest of this volume, however, resides in its initial letters, after the designs which are preserved at the Pinacothek at Munich, of Israel von Mecken. Many of them are repeated a great many times, there being altogether between seventy and eighty impressions; but these represent only eight different letters of the alphabet, A, D, E, H, I, M, P, S. Of these the E, which we give, is the only letter which is both engraved and printed perfectly, the A being the next best. Nearly all the others are flat, often wanting in depth and relief, besides being badly printed. Altogether this book is one of the most interesting relics of early typography, and is especially noticeable as being the first volume illustrated by a known artist. In the early sixteenth century, works published at Nuremberg were not as a rule well supplied with ornamental initials, the complicated calligraphic letters that became so common in German books, and that were little used elsewhere, taking their place. Butsch in his reproductions of alphabets of this period does not give any specimens. This is all the more remarkable in that Nuremberg was the home of Albert Dürer and the great centre of the wood-engraver’s art. The few examples, moreover, that we have seen, are very primitive both in design and in execution, as the reader can see from the reproductions taken from the _Missale Pataviense_, printed by Jodocus Gutnecht, 1514. CHAPTER IV BASLE AND ZURICH