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A curious devotional cut is inserted in the Faques Psalter of 1504 in the British Museum, containing the emblems of the Passion and a large I. H. S. At the base of the cut are the initials d. h. b., perhaps referring to the place where the cut was issued. Most of these cuts were doubtless produced in monasteries or religious houses to give or sell to visitors, who very often inserted them in their own private books of devotion, and in this manner many have been preserved. The Lambeth copy of the Wynkyn de Worde Sarum Horæ of 1494 shows signs of having contained eighteen of such pictures, though only three are now left.

After the single leaf prints we come to the block-books, which we may look upon in some ways as the precursors of printed books.

‘A block-book is a book printed wholly from carved blocks of wood. Such volumes usually consist of pictorial matter only; if any text is added in illustration, it likewise is carved upon the wood-block, and not put together with movable types. The whole of any one page, sometimes the whole of two pages, is printed from a single block of wood. The manner in which the printing was done is peculiar. The block was first thoroughly wetted with a thin watery ink, then a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of the paper was carefully rubbed with some kind of dabber or burnisher, till an impression from the ridges of the carved block had been transferred to the paper. Of course in this fashion a sheet could only be printed on one side; the only block-book which does not possess this characteristic is the Legend of St. Servatius in the Royal Library of Brussels, and that is an exceptional volume in many respects besides.’ssss1 These block-books must be considered as forming a distinct group of themselves, radically different from other books, though undoubtedly they gave the idea to the inventor of movable type. They continued to be made during the whole of the fifteenth century, almost always on the same plan, and each one as archaic looking as another. The invention of movable type did not do away with the demand, and the supply was kept up.