The portrait of the Duchesse de Nevers was better, yet the pear-wood had given way under the work. "That of Madame is more passable. Nevertheless, there is still something to say to one eye. The wood cannot carry the subtlety of the line." Here, in a few clear and explicit lines by a man of the time, we see the economy of a publication of the sixteenth century, at a time when wood engraving was declining, to give place to engraving on metal, which was soon to reign supreme, through the most important book house of the century: the Plantins of Antwerp. Christopher Plantin, like Jenson, came originally from Tours. After having learned his art with Macé at Caen, he went to Paris, from which the wars soon drove him. He left for the Low Countries, and there Philip II. nominated him as chief printer--"architypographus." Established at Antwerp in 1555, he surrounded himself, as had the Estiennes and Alduses, with most of the learned and literary men of his time, among them Justus Lipsius, to whom Balzac attributed the Latin prefaces signed by Plantin. It is certain that he was neither an Estienne nor an Aldus. His artistic probity caused him to submit the proofs of his works to strangers, with promise of recompense for faults indicated; the Estiennes employed the same system. Plantin, not to be behind any of his contemporaries in typographical perfection, brought from France the celebrated type-founder William Lebé, and charged him to furnish a special fount.[A] Under the orders of Philip II., he printed the celebrated Polyglot Bible, in eight folio volumes, absolutely perfect in its execution; unfortunately the Spanish Government, having advanced funds in the course of publication, prosecuted him with the utmost rigour to obtain repayment. This very nearly shut up his printing house, but he took courage and overcame his difficulties, until he became, in 1589, the year of his death, the principal publisher of Flanders. His mark was a hand holding a compass, with the motto "Labore et constantia." [Footnote A: In the Bibliothèque Nationale is a copy of an octavo _Album de Caractères_, in which Lebé has written, "This gloss, made in Paris (1574) by me, is my fourteenth letter, and the text is made on the pattern of the preceding one for size, but of a better art; and from this was printed the great Bible of Antwerp by Plantin, to whom I sold a fount" (folio 6). On folio 20 he wrote, "I do not know whence came this small Hebrew that I received from Plantin to make a smaller one for him. He sent me this half-sheet, and I have not seen at Venice another part."] [Illustration: Fig. 64.--Plantin's mark.]