Although we do not know whether the _Canticles_ was printed in the second or third quarter of the fifteenth century, it may be admitted that it was printed in the Netherlands. We see the last trace of the blocks in the hands of the same printer who destroyed the engravings of the _Bible of the Poor_. A book, bearing the imprint of Peter Van Os, of Zwoll, 1494, has for its frontispiece the upper half of the first plate. THE STORY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. This is the bibliographic title[118] of a block-book which may be offered as a proper specimen of the popular religious literature of the fifteenth century. Sotheby mentions four distinct editions of the work. The one that has been most frequently described (whether first or last, is not known) consists of sixteen leaves, with four illustrations on each leaf, and a brief explanatory text in Latin. The designs have no artistic merit; the engraving is coarse, and evidently the work of a novice; the letters are legible, but they betray great inexperience in the use of the graver, and they do not, in any feature, resemble those of the block-books previously described. Some of them have mannerisms like those of Gutenberg’s Bible. It is possible that the letters of one edition of the book are those of movable types, or that they were engraved on wood from a transfer taken from an impression of movable types. In all editions the letters have German peculiarities, but there is no edition which has the appearance of a first experiment in [p220] printing. It is probable that all the editions were printed in Germany, and after the invention of typography. The edition from which the annexed illustration was taken was roughly printed on one side of the paper, but in a very black ink. In other editions, which were printed from entirely different blocks, differing both in the size of the block and in the positions of the figures, the ink is of the customary rusty brown. The copy in black is supposed to have been printed on a press, and at a later date. The object of the book is to show the reasonableness of the story of the Incarnation, and to defend the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The bad taste of the author is more signally shown in the text than in the pictures. Arguments in support of the dogma are wrested from sacred history and heathen mythology, and the writings of the fathers of the church. The book is a curious compend of piety and unconscious irreverence, of high scholarship and gross stupidity, as will be more clearly shown by the following translation of the legends that explain the pictures on the opposite page.