arranged in leaded old style types, with plain old style letters for initials, printed on good paper, with ample margins -a very satisfactory "library edition." Las Eroticas, y Traduccion de Boecio, by Villegas, brought out in 1774, are pretty volumes-for Spain-and the engraved title-pages, with doves, clouds, garlands, torch, and lyre, remind us of attractive Parisian volumes of poetry by fashionable versifiers. The simple pages of poetry, without decorations, strike a comparatively modern note (fig. 236). Sancha published many such agreeable books. To see the progress that printing made in this Spanish revival, compare Villa-Diego's edition of Solis' Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, issued at Madrid in 1684 (fig. 232), with Sancha's beautiful quarto edition of the same book, printed under distinguished patronage, also at Madrid, in 1783 (fig. 237). This is still considered the great edition of Solis' work. The types used are frankly old style, and of these the larger sizes are the best. Introductory matter fills fifty pages, and this prefatory material is divided into eleven sections. To arrange it successfully, as Sancha has done, would tax the ingenuity of any printer. On arriving at last at the History, how fine it is! The first page is faced by a portrait of Cortes after Titian; the opening page is really ornamented by its engraved head-piece and initial; the type of the text is a large, beautiful old style, printed on laid paper in a sharp, brilliant impression. A series of twentyfour delightful and rather ingenuous full-page engravings designed by Josef Ximeno are scattered through the work, each Book of which begins with an engraved head-piece and ends with a tail-piece. The engraved lettering beneath the full-page plates shows how magnificent was the style of calligraphy which still survived in Spain. This volume, which Sir William Stirling Maxwell called "the tri HISTORIA DE LA CONQUISTA, POBLACION SEPTENTRIONAL, CONOCIDA POR EL NOMBRE DE NUEVA ESPAÑA. LIBRO I. CAPITULO PRIMERO. MOTIVOS QUE OBLIGAN A TENER por necesario que se divida en diferentes partes la Historia de las Indias, para que pueda comprehenderse. de la Histo. Uró algunos dias en nuestra inclinacion Dificultades el intento de continuar la Historia general ria general. de las Indias occidentales, que dexó el cronista Antonio de Herrera en el año mil quinientos cincuenta y quatro de la Reparacion hu TOM. I. A 237. Opening of Solis' Conquista de Mexico |