By its geographical situation, by its proximity to Basle, by its condition as a free town, and through the fairs that attracted within its walls the merchants from other parts of France, as well as from Germany, Italy, and Holland, Lyons became at once a typographical centre of the first importance, even preceding Paris as regards book illustration. In 1473 Barthelemy Buyer, a rich Lyons merchant, founded the first press with the help of William Leroy, publishing first the _Compendium_ of Lotharius, then _La Legende Dorée_, six months before the appearance of the _Chroniques de Saint Denis_ at Paris. Ornamental letters occur for the first time in the _Mirouer Hystorial_.[31] The specimens given were used by Leroy in 1479, and are known as _lettres tourneures fleuronnées_. On the title-page of the _Prestre Jehan_ of the same publisher is a historiated P showing the three companions travelling in the land of Prester John, arriving before a castle of the ‘paynims.’ The text begins with a smaller initial, also a P with a serpent’s head which forms part of the alphabet of the _Statuta Lugdunensia_, and takes the place of the larger initial on the title-page of a later edition. The initials of the _Statuta Synodalia_ are very much like those occurring in the _Quatre Fils Aymon_ and in the _Dechier de Nobles Hommes et Femmes_, a translation of the _De casibus illustrium virorum_ of Boccaccio (Mathieu Husz and Jean Schabeler, 1483), and, although differently treated, the same subjects, grotesque profiles, are to be found in the first Paris letters of Dupré and Vérard. For the other letters of these early alphabets, of which specimens are not given here, the reader is referred to Claudin’s great work on the History of Printing in France, unfortunately left incomplete by the death of the author, but of which the third volume, the first of the two intended to relate to Lyons, is finished. [31] Mr. Pollard speaks of an edition of ‘Beaudoin, Comte de Flandres,’ of 1478, with rude printed initials. It is chiefly in the French books of this period that we meet with those large calligraphic initials for title-pages, generally taking the form of the letter L in the style of the tenth century, which are said by Claudin to be known as _lettres de forme, dites cadeaux_. The two largest are to be found in the _Mer des Histoires_, printed first by Le Rouge in 1488, the initials of which were copied by Dupré in 1491. They exceed the dimensions of this page, and are consequently too tall for reproduction here. M. Thierry Poux in his _Origines de l’Imprimerie en France_, and Claudin (_op. cit._), have given good copies. They represent knights in armour, probably St. George or St. Michael spearing the dragon, with different accessory ornaments along the margin.