INTRODUCTION.

It is just possible that the reader may not have forgottensome beautifully executed fac-similes, 1 from a once cele-brated Work, which, in its entire and original form, nowclaims his particular attention. When exercised in thetask of selecting those fac-similes, I could have little antici-pated the gratification afforded me, in being engaged, by thePublisher of this Volume, to become the humble instrumentof making such a Work more generally familiar to thePublic.

Little indeed is requisite by way of prefatory observation;and yet it would be offering something like violence toone's feelings, to suffer such a volume to go abroad withoutsome attempt to disarm scepticism respecting doubts whichmay be entertained of the authenticity of these " Images "—as the performance of Hans Holbein. Not only is thetestimony of Vandoperanus (in the Latin verses prefixedto these cuts) express and positive, in assigning them toHans Holbein—but the intrinsic evidence arising fromthe Compositions themselves is not less express andpositive. No man, conversant with the works of Holbein,can deprive that great man of the honour here due to hisname. That it was, however, a Work executed in hisearlier years, and before he had quitted Basle for England,in 1526, is most certain: and, if so, the Original Drawings

1 Bibliographical Decameron, vol. i. pp. 174—180.