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A HISTORY OF WOOD-ENGRAVING

by these thoughts, Poliphilo delays among like relics of the past, and reads on shattered tombs the brief inscriptions which tell the history of the lost lovers who lie beneath, while the pagan burden of their sorrow, and the pagan calm of the "adieu" with which each inscription ends, fill him with tender sentiment. So his dream drifts on through ever-shifting scenes of beauty and ever-dying moments of delight

Fig. 27.— Poliphilo by the Stream. From the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili." Venice, 1499.

to the hour of awakening. These scenes and these moments, which Francesco Columna called out of his imagination, are pictured in the one hundred and ninety-two designs (Figs. 27, 28, 29, 30) which adorn his book; here in simple outline are the gardens, groves, and streams, the no-