The great initial 'S' I claim to be one of the very best printers' ornaments ever made, one which would not disgrace a thirteenth century MS. Adam and Eve are standing on a finely-designed spray of poppy-like leafage, and behind them rise up the boughs of the tree. Eve reaches down an apple to Adam with her right hand, and with her uplifted left takes another from the mouth of the crowned woman's head of the serpent, whose coils, after they have performed the duty of making the S, end in a foliage scroll, whose branches enclose little medallions of the seven deadly sins. All this is done with admirable invention and romantic meaning, and with very great beauty of design and a full sense of decorative necessities. As to faults in this delightful book, it must be said that it is somewhat marred by the press-work not being so good as it should have been even when printed by the weak presses of the fifteenth century; but this, though a defect, is not, I submit, an essential one. In the Æsop the drawing of the designs is in a way superior to that of the last book: the line leaves nothing to be desired; it is thoroughly decorative, rather heavy, but so firm and strong, and so obviously in submission to the draughtman's hand, that it is capable of even great delicacy as well as richness. The figures both of man and beast are full of expression; the heads clean drawn and expressive also, and in many cases refined and delicate. The cuts, with few exceptions, are not bounded by a border, but amidst the great richness of line no lack of one is felt, and the designs fully sustain their decorative position as a part of the noble type of the Ulm and Augsburg printers; this Æsop is, to my mind, incomparably the best and most expressive of the many illustrated editions of the Fables printed in the fifteenth century. The designs of the other German and Flemish ones were all copied from it.