In Holland, a Frenchman, Bernard Picart, son of Stephen and pupil of Leclerc, was making a great name as an illustrator. He established himself as a print-seller at Amsterdam at the sign of "L'Etoile," and successively designed vignettes for many works, among others the Boileau of 1718. His vignettes and tailpieces, without possessing either the spirit of Leclerc or the grace of the eighteenth century, express an ingenious and inventive art that had broken with the strained traditions of preceding epochs. From these two artists the decoration of the Book rapidly advanced. The form is found, and charming designers are not wanting to apply it. The troubled state of England during the greater part of the seventeenth century no doubt accounts for the fact that the art of the Book made but very little progress. Theological controversies, the persecutions by the Puritans, and, above all, the great civil war and its antecedents and results, gave rise to a flood of publications of an ephemeral kind, which from their nature were hurriedly produced; and there was little room for pure literature and art. In the early part of the century, under the influence which Elizabeth left, and which James fostered, some important works were issued, with finely engraved illustrations; but wood engraving declined further and further, until it was artistically dead, to be revived in the next century. The works of the numerous poets and dramatists were printed in quarto, and collected editions of them in folio. Thus were issued the works of Shakespeare, first collected by Jaggard and Blount, 1623, folio, with an engraved portrait by Droeshout, the faithfulness of which was vouched in an opposite page of verse signed by Ben Jonson. "Don Quixote" first appeared in an English dress in 1612-20, published by E. Blount in quarto; and Jaggard, Blount's partner in the Shakespeare, published Boccaccio's "Decameron," in two volumes folio, 1620. Among other notable works of the early part of the century were Drayton's "Polyolbion," 1613; Chapman's Homer, 1611-15, folio, three volumes; Lord Bacon, whose essays and other single publications appeared in the seventeenth, to be collected as his "Works" in the next century; and William Prynne, whose _Histrio Mastrix_, 1633, so offended Charles I. by its references to the Queen and the court ladies, that the author had to undergo a severe and degrading punishment. Many of these works were illustrated with meritorious engravings on steel and copper by W. Hollar, P. Lombart, W. Marshall, Hole, W. Pass, W. Faithorne, and R. Vaughan. So that here were all the materials for the foundation of an English school, to be cruelly broken up shortly afterwards by the distractions of civil warfare. In 1611 Robert Barker first printed the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible, which has been more often reprinted than any other book, and which exists to this day as the great standard of the English language.