It is thus obvious that several designers, or engravers, were at work about this time on pictorial initials, though it will probably be found no easy matter to identify them.
In 1563 most of the letters from the 'Cosmographical Glass' are found again in the very rare edition of the music to Sternhold and Hopkins' metrical version of the Psalms, also printed by Day. In the four parts of the book there are three other initials of the same character, a W representing the battle of the Pigmies and the Cranes, a P of Hercules in the garden of the Hesperides, and an R with a hunting-scene (signed with the monogram C. I.). All are excellent.
[Illustration: 11-13. INITIALS FROM CUNNINGHAM'S 'COSMOGRAPHICAL GLASS,' PRINTED BY JOHN DAY, 1559]
Two or three more examples of these large initials will bring to a close my notes of those which I have been able to find in English books of this period, though doubtless others are awaiting the research of future investigators. In the first edition of Ascham's 'Scholemaster,' printed by Day in 1570, the large S is repeated from the 'Cosmographical Glass,' and shows some signs of wear. Another letter of a slightly larger size by the same designer is found prefixed to the 'History of Ireland' in the 1577 edition of 'Holinshed' printed by Harrison. This is a T, and the picture it contains shows an astronomer, whom we may perhaps reasonably identify with Ptolemy. If so, we may remember that his name used to be spelt all over Europe with the omission of its first letter, though the true form seems to be that used in English books of the period.
[Illustration: 14. FROM ASCHAM'S 'SCHOLEMASTER,' PRINTED BY JOHN DAY, 1570]
The other pictorial initial in the 1577 'Holinshed'[15] is the largest I have found in any English book, measuring nearly three and a half inches each way. The letter is an I, the subject of the picture the Creation, and it is conceivable that, though we find it in an English history, it was originally intended for the first page of a Great Bible, in which it would fitly have illustrated the words 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' It is possible, indeed, that this applicability to a particular text may sometimes have been taken as a motive, when it was found difficult to establish a connection between the initial and the subject of a picture as summed up in any single word. Thus a W, which is found in Cawood's books in connection with the A. S. initials, represents the passage of the Red Sea, and irresistibly reminds us of the verse 'When Israel came out of Egypt,' though not of the word Exodus.