The nature of the new literature, and the effeminate taste of the newly made class of readers, seemed to call for changes in the old methods of making books. It was necessary that the massiveness and barbaric splendor of the monastic books should be supplanted by workmanship combining elegance, lightness and delicacy. It was necessary that the illustrations made for the lady’s missal, or for a book of romance, should be designed, not by some grim old monk whose imagination had been cramped by his solitary life, and whose narrowness and severity were visible in all his workmanship, but by a courtier, an artist, and man of fashion, who knew the world, who knew how to please it, and how to paint it. To this class of men, the forerunners of courtly artists like Durer, Holbein and Rubens, the manufacture of the new books was intrusted. The new artists in book-making organized a nicer division of labor, and supervised and directed the work at every stage of its progress. A copyist selected for his skill wrote the text in prescribed places on the sheets, and, by the uniformity of his penmanship, gave character and connection to the work; one designer sketched the borders, and another outlined the initials; an illuminator filled in the outlines with gold-leaf and bright colors. Then came the artist, or miniaturist, who drew the illustrations and painted the fine pictures which gave the book its great charm. The artists were called miniaturists because their illustrations were miniature pictures, as artistically designed, and always more carefully painted than larger paintings made for the adornment of churches, halls and picture galleries. Avoiding the hard outlines and glaring pigments of the illuminator, the miniaturist painted in low tints, and with the nicest attention to harmony of color. The beauty of the work, which has been but little affected [p167] by time, is recognized to this day. The sheets which had been so artistically painted were as elegantly bound. They were covered with silk, velvet, satin, or bright-colored leather, embroidered with gold and pearls, studded with buttons of gold, banded on the corners with shields, and secured with clasps of precious metals engraved and enameled in the very finest style of decorative art. Admirable as the books are, they do not give us a high opinion of the intelligence of the artists, nor of the culture of their owners, for they are full of anachronisms and absurdities in the pictures and in the text.