Paris. [Illustration: JOHN RASTELL. Fuit Iohannes Rastell] [Illustration: GERARD LEEU.] [Decoration] SOME GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE PRINTER’S MARK. [Illustration: FUST AND SCHOEFFER.] From what has already been stated, it will be seen that the Printer’s Mark plays a by no means unimportant part in the early history of illustration,--whether the phase be serious or grotesque, sublime or ridiculous, we find here manifold examples, crude as well as clever. Although it cannot be said with truth that the Mark as an institution reached, like typography itself, its highest degree of perfection at its inception, some of the earlier examples, nevertheless, are also some of the most perfect. The evolution from the small monogram, generally in white on a black ground, to an elaborate picture occupying from a quarter to a whole page, was much less gradual than is generally supposed. The unambitious marks of the first printers were clearly adopted in consonance with the traders’ or merchants’ marks which began to be so generally employed during the latter part of the fifteenth century. The very natural question, Which was the first Printer’s Mark? admits of an easy answer. It was employed for the first time in the form of the coupled shield of Fust and Schoeffer, in the colophon of the famous Psalter printed by these two men at Mainz in 1457. This book is remarkable as being the costliest ever sold (a perfect copy is valued at 5,000 guineas by Mr. Quaritch): it is the third book printed, and the first having a date, and probably only a dozen copies were struck off for the use of the Benedictine Monastery of St. James at Mainz. It is, however, quite as remarkable for the extraordinary beauty of its initial letters, printed in red and blue ink, the letters being of one colour and the ornamental portion of the other. The Mark of Fust and Schoeffer, it may be mentioned, consists of two printer’s rules in saltaire, on two shields, hanging from a stump, the two rules on the right shield forming an angle of 45°: the adoption of a compositor’s setting-rule was very appropriate. It was nearly twenty years before the introduction of woodcuts into books became general, Gunther Zainer beginning it at Augsburg in 1471-1475. The inception of this movement was naturally followed by a general improvement, or at all events elaboration, of the Printer’s Mark, which, moreover, now began to be printed in colours, as is seen in the Fust and Schoeffer mark in red which appears beneath the colophon of Turrecremata’s Commentary on the Psalms printed by Schoeffer in 1474. Reverting for a moment to the Psalter which has been very properly described as “the grandest book ever produced by Typography,” a very curious fact not at all generally known may be here pointed out. Although the few existing examples with two dates are of the same edition, there are several very curious variations which are well worthy of notice.