Chapter 4

CHAPTER VII.HOW FASHION LIVES.The dim haze which, in the imagination of the populace, once floated above the head of every hungry book-man, was never in those days identified with a mass of tangled, waving hair, which, aureola-like, 'girt his occiput about,' for he was no minor poet, with pale, eager face and love-locks everywhere, but a man, with a rugged front such as Ben Jonson wore, and a heart that beat within. The haze in which he moved was from the dust of old-world tomes; it settled on his coat, and, had he worn a bob-wig, it would have settled on that also, but, since wigs had escaped the fashion of fifty years before, it merely clung to his hair instead, and powdered it gray before its time. Half a century ago the England which for the most part was free from the shriek of the railway-whistle and the rumble of traffic harboured such men as these in their hundreds. They came from the last century, and the further their pilgrimage in this the more they haunted the rustic element in which they moved. They were, in their way, magicians, wearing the consecrated pentacles of Agrippa, 'that man of parts, who dived into the secrets of all arts, that second Solomon, the mighty Hee, that try'de them all, and found them Vanity.'Naturally enough, when one of these old-time bookworms left his seclusion to mix with the whirl and throng of the London thoroughfares, he was swallowed up, as though he had never been, in a huge vortex of unappreciative apathy, for the man in the street never has time to dream, and such books as he affects are ledgers. But he might have strayed into some square which the tide, ebbing westward, had left desolate, and met his counterpart sitting, as he himself did when at home, in the midst of vellum-bound classics far into the night. Indeed, when he came to London, which was but seldom, it would be to visit another bookworm, just as the stage-doorkeeper of the present day spends his evening off at the entrance to another theatre, because he cannot get away, even in spirit, from his life's work and enterprise. Were we to look for these old book-men now, we should look in vain, for the century is fast drawing to its close, and a younger generation has occupied their seats.The transition from the old to the new in the matter of books and all that pertains to them, has been very gradual. It commenced about fifty years ago, or a little earlier, and was due, perhaps, to the spirit of unrest fostered by an improved and quicker system of communication in a country of very small area, absolutely incapable of enlargement. We see a mighty change in everything external, and it is not surprising that our social habits should have experienced a revolution. Round goes the wheel, slowly and persistently, and we go with it, though daily custom and daily experience has a tendency to mask its motion. One day, sooner or later, we start up and look for the familiar landmarks. They are gone. New ones, not at all familiar, but still recognisable, have taken their place, and then we know that time has slipped away while we were dreaming, and that nothing can possibly be done but to take the future by the forelock, and to rush on for a brief space with the rest.And so it is with books, and ever has been. Fifty years and more ago, time waited upon them and stood still; now they are carried along unceasingly, and have no rest. Every year the speed increases. Old companions of the shelf are whirled into space and parted for ever; the very men who buy them are changed in their aspirations, their tastes, and their desires, and in a very short time they will change again, and yet again. They are swayed and driven by Fashion, and this is how Fashion lives.There was something about the dry-as-dust bookworm which, however consonant with antiquated modes of thought and action, was nevertheless felt to be utterly unsuitable to changed conditions. Men must and will read, and to accumulate is equally natural. A life of easy contentment engenders one mode of thought, a life of enterprise another; and the transition from the narrow limits of a prison-bound study to the open air is precisely what might have been expected to occur.Men there were, as I have said, in plenty, who refused to quit the time-honoured traditions of their race; but on every side of them were being born lighter spirits, to whom colossal and intricate volumes were as heavy as lead. We see the changed nature of their tastes in the craving for art, and the outcome of it in scores and hundreds of miscellanies which began to be published about the year 1830, and held imperial sway on drawing-room tables for ten years or more.Fisher's 'Scrap-Book,' and numerous other artistically got up volumes full of excerpts and elegant extracts, illustrated by some of the first engravers of the time, were extremely fashionable in those days, and for light and casual reading very probably supplied all that was necessary. The poets, from the Earl of Surrey onward, were served up in dainty plats, and the best prose authors were disembowelled with remarkable skill. The ingenious Martin Tupper, observing this transformation scene, brought joy into many households by laying down, in the form of explicit statements, matters of theological controversy which had in their day fed the Smithfield fires till they roared and blazed like those of Moloch.These books were for the cultured, to whom the random books of Pierce Egan and William Combe were positively distasteful, and who, having neither the time nor the inclination to bury themselves deeply in classic lore, eagerly welcomed anything which appealed to their better selves and, at the same time, did not too severely tax their brains. The very style and nature of the books which were published at this period show as conclusively as anything can do the great change which was gradually creeping over the public mind.Smollett and Swift were becoming coarse, and Hogarth, in his realm of art, was already much worse. Mrs. Radcliffe and the Rev. Mr. Maturin stalked like a couple of terrifying ghosts hung about with chains, wailing their lost home. They invariably spoke of haunted caverns, and the wind rumbling itself to sleep in the recesses of ruined chimneys. Their novels were the delight of these same dry-as-dusts, to whom the new age had said farewell, but who, in their impenetrable fastnesses, still revelled, though in numbers yearly decreasing, in 'The Raven,' with its soul-quaking refrain, in the 'Castle of Otranto,' and 'The Bravo of Venice.' Things of graver mood they could not find had they searched the entire catalogue of English literature, from the metrical poems of Cædmon, chanted to the winds of Whitby, down to the newest poem or novel.The new school called the old 'unhealthy,' that being a not inapt adjective with which to express the absence of brightness and chic, qualities which came, as everything else comes, when called for, and which were embodied to a nicety in 'Sketches by "Boz,"' 'The Pickwick Papers,' and later on in 'The Yellowplush Correspondence,' and 'The Paris Sketch-Book.' The new poetry was represented by Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow, and many more, and essays of better, or, at any rate, more taking, style than those of the Rev. Vicessimus Knox, were published every day, and what is more to the point, extensively read and hoarded.Collections which had their beginnings in materials such as these authors afforded were, and necessarily must be, totally different in every possible way from those of the prior century; this we find to be the case on looking at the catalogues of sales by auction which were issued under the new régime. Fashion had indeed changed, and at this particular period Hakluyt and Coryat, to say nothing of curious authors like Brathwaite and Seller, were comparatively neglected. They have recovered themselves since, because a revulsion of feeling has taken place in their favour, and many of the old books which were of immense importance sixty or seventy years ago are, after suffering a period of neglect, once more in vogue, and can hardly be met with when sought after, so great is the demand for them. That is the case now, but there is a wide intervening period which needs to be analyzed.In my opinion, Dickens among novelists, and Tennyson among poets, had the greatest amount of influence upon modern collectors as a body. The former was the more powerful at first, since he had the good fortune to meet with extremely talented artists like George Cruikshank, Hablot Browne, Seymour and Leech, to illustrate his works. Cruikshank was fresh from the glories of 'Life in London,' and 'The Life of Napoleon,' which had between them carried his name far and wide, and Browne hit off the meaning of the author in such a marvellous way, that he may almost be said to have discovered him. Seymour's opportunities were few, as his seven etchings for the 'Pickwick Papers' were all he ever accomplished for Dickens; but these were, in their way, masterly, and no doubt contributed greatly to the success of the earlier parts in which they appeared.Slowly but surely the collectors began to turn their thoughts to the new author and the artists who were assisting him, and to accumulate the numbers in which it was the fashion to issue illustrated novels at that time. We often see them now, almost as clean and fresh as when they were first published, showing conclusively that every care has been bestowed upon them. In later days, up to within a year or two in fact, there was a great rush for any books or parts by popular authors containing first-rate illustrations. There is a demand for them now, but only when their condition is immaculate, for fashion has recently changed in a marked degree, owing, perhaps, to the number of rich collectors, who would have these things at any price, and, of course, had their way to the exclusion of the vast majority who were not sufficiently well off to compete with them. And this fashion was the parent, not of another fashion, but of a craze, which raged for two years or more.The years 1893 and 1894 I take to be those in which people, despairing of obtaining their heart's desire, turned their attention to what were known 'Limited Editions,' and raged furiously. Nothing but a thorough grasp of the state of the book-market at the time, and a deep insight into human nature, could have hit upon the 'Limited Edition' as a stop-gap, and those who invented it are entitled to every credit for their enterprise. The apology for the life of the 'Limited Edition' brought to its logical conclusion was this: Times have changed, and, moreover, more people buy books than formerly, whether to read or to store. With the readers we have nothing to do, except incidentally; but so far as the collectors are concerned, it is obvious that only about one out of every ten can afford to pay the extremely high prices demanded for most of the first editions of the authors of repute which they affect.Now comes the point, and upon this the whole argument succeeds or fails. Do they want these coveted books to read or to accumulate? If they wish to read them they can do so at any time, for there are more editions than one in the majority of instances, and the demand for the later and cheaper ones is of a different character altogether; ergo, they really want them, though they would perhaps be highly indignant if we said so, to possess and not necessarily to read. Let us, therefore, make new books in the image of the old, decorating them artistically, and printing them in the best possible style. Let us cut down the edition to a very small number of copies, in order to keep it out of the hands of all but just enough buyers to make the venture pay well, and we ought to succeed in establishing a furore that will continue precisely as long as the strenuous efforts to obtain time-tried poems and essays remain futile by reason of their cost.The venture was purposely confined to poems and essays, because literary wares of this kind good enough for the purpose could be bought for next to nothing. A novel, in order to compete on this particular ground with the older works of Ainsworth, Thackeray, and the rest, would be costly to buy in manuscript, and difficult as well as expensive to produce; and, moreover, novels never pay unless they are sold in large quantities. This argument was sound throughout, and, moreover, a fresh departure of some kind was inevitable, if only to stem the tide that flowed so aggressively in favour of the rich. The venture succeeded, for almost on the instant the collector, casting a lingering look behind on the expensive works for which he craved, turned away from them, and welcomed the 'dainty volumes of delicious verse' which came tumbling down in almost endless variety. There was a scramble for them which continued exactly as long as had been predicted, namely, until the prices of once coveted books began to fall, and then the 'Limited Editions' fell too, and the craze was over, for the present at least.One would have thought that the direct result of this procedure would have been a fresh rush to former fields, but the fact is otherwise. Original editions of the works of older poets and essayists of the highest repute are still as costly as ever, but the general ruck have fallen in the market, and remain fallen to this present day. More than that, the 'Limited Edition' brought within reasonable access innumerable better books, now become cheaper, provided they are not in the very finest condition.Just at the moment there is no great 'boom' observable in the English market, no great craze for books of a certain special kind, though some, as usual, are sought for unceasingly, as, for example, many of those older works of English literature which were seen in such profusion in the collection of Mr. Charles B. Foote, dispersed in New York at the beginning of 1895.Whatever hard things may be said of collectors, however much they may be likened to literary jackdaws, or to what extent their tastes may be criticised and compared with those of other people, they have a virtue—and a great one—one undisputed virtue, which, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins. This cardinal virtue is, that now, as in past times, their primary aim is to appraise literature at its true worth, and to make that theraison d'êtreof their enterprise. The inevitable red herring may lead them, for the moment, away from the pleasant places they have made their home, but it has never yet prevented their return.And this home is among time-tried and intrinsically valuable books, and not among those which are temporarily in vogue. It is a home which existed in Greece, and in Rome, and all through the so-called Dark Ages, during the Renaissance, and down the centuries which succeeded right to this present year of grace—a home furnished with genius and perfumed with sentiment. Look there at Paul Lacroix snatching from a Paris stall the very copy of 'Le Tartuffe' which had belonged to King Louis XIV., and later on sheltering not merely the great Pixérécourt founder of the Société des Bibliophiles Français, but his whole library as well, until such time as his creditors had drawn off their legions and departed. Sentiment, as well as a passion for literature, was at the bottom of these acts, for that very copy of 'Le Tartuffe' had been in Molière's coat-pocket, and Pixérécourt had a tale to tell of every scholarly volume he possessed. You cannot manufacture genuine sentiment, nor is the quality to be evolved from anything except genius.Accordingly, we find that every book which excites the cupidity of the true bibliophile derives its magic power primarily from within, and that this power is often materially increased by reason of extraneous considerations. The instances in which external matters have at any time been capable of investing an inferior book with a halo of importance or romance are so extremely rare that they might almost be counted on the fingers. A mere fleeting craze cannot do it, and it is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that a scarce book would be sought for, and prized when found, merely because it is scarce, and for no other reason. As every book-collector is aware, there are hundreds and thousands of volumes lying neglected on the book-stalls to-day which would never be there if this were not so. Some are scarce in the sense of being difficult to meet with when wanted, but, if that be their only merit, it has never yet been acknowledged.But fashion, though it can never make a bad book good, has the power to subordinate one good book to another, notwithstanding, and to play shuttlecock with the names of authors and printers alike. It was fashion in excelsis which lived with the Elzevirs when men were saying to one another, 'I have all the poets they ever printed. I have ten examples of every volume, and all have red letters, and are of the right date.' It was fashion, too, which assessed the value of Longpierre's copy of Montaigne's 'Essais' (1659), with the buffalo's head on the preface and at the commencement of each chapter, at 5,100 francs, and only the other day (March 20, 1896) flung away a fine tall copy, bound by Bozerian, for the paltry sum of £6 15s.The same capricious mistress assessed Sir Walter Raleigh's 'Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana,' 1626, at a comparatively low rate—£3 3s., if the late Mr. Henry Stevens is to be believed, and no one had a greater knowledge of such books than he—in 1858, notwithstanding the fact that it must be credited to Shakespeare's library, as the 'still vex'd Bermoothes,' and his knowledge of the breaking of the sea on the rugged rocks by which the Bermuda Islands are surrounded, sufficiently demonstrate. Thirty years ago Smith's 'Generall Historie of Virginia,' published for M. Sparkes in 1625, could have been got for a twentieth part of the sum that would be asked for it now, and this too is by Fashion's decree.But in these and any number of typical instances there is no change in the estimation in which good literature is held; no lifting a book from an abyss of mediocrity and placing it on a pinnacle of fame. Fashion may swing men's minds to this or to that, and so indirectly and for the time being cause those ups and downs in the book-market which are the despair of everyone who has endeavoured to account for them, but further than this she cannot go.And therefore, when I said that book-men are swayed by fashion, I meant that their tastes and inclinations are capricious, and not that they would, even if they could, enter upon the task of passing judgment upon the verdict of the world. Fashion may and does make rules which cannot be broken with impunity, so far as the pocket is concerned; it may even create an extraordinary and exceptional interest in one author to-day, and abandon him to-morrow, and do many other wonderful things to cause our unsympathetic neighbours to blaspheme; but the romance of book-collecting would be no romance were it stolidly kept at one dead level of insensibility. To employ a homely illustration—Fashion may decorate a house, it can neither build one nor raze one to the ground.CHAPTER VIII.THE RULES OF THE CHASE.There was a time, and that not so very many years ago, when old books were, if only you got out of the central mart, difficult to procure, and by no means easy to store. They were frequently in folio, huge ponderous works which, unless they were of the very best, challenged the courage of all but veterans, as they looked down from their dark corners. There was no escaping them, no getting away from their costly presence, and no reading them either without sitting at a table; for 'literary machines' were not then invented, and no one seemed to care about lingering with arched back over a fire, with sixty or eighty pounds weight of paper on his knees. Such a discipline would have been valuable, no doubt, but learning grew lazy when it left the monasteries, and a table became a virtual necessity for most folk. After a time folios were turned into octavos, and the price cheapened. The 'extraneous Tegg,' as Carlyle calls the well-known bookseller, and our friends Cooke, Walker, Bell, and many more, commenced to cut the throat of the trade, and to ruin the honest author, by printing favourite books at such a very cheap rate that the public soon became totally demoralized. Cooke made an enormous fortune—for a book-seller—and died amid the plaudits of the mob and the curses of his competitors, for he had out-Heroded Herod in prostituting 'Tom Jones,' a thing deemed impossible, by publishing the text in numbers,verbatim et literatim, at a scandalously cheap price. Then he approached other 'British novelists' in turn, and went through the entire pantheon, winding up with a series of sacred classics. Cooke was a man of immense resource, and no scruples; he got the author out of the way (I don't say he murdered him), sold up his rivals, and positively lived to an advanced age—three crimes which procured him hosts of enemies, but nevertheless altered the whole system of publishing, and solved for ever the problem whether it is better or worse for the producer to sell fifty articles at a penny each, or a single one of the same kind for four and two.Now, Cooke's procedure, and that of the other booksellers who were wise enough to follow his lead, not only had great influence in moulding the character of the bibliophiles of that day, but is directly responsible even now for many of those rules and regulations which their descendants are sticklers in the preservation of. A folio had always been bound in a manner suitable to its bulk, and in such a way as to render a new binding unnecessary for a very long time, and there was, consequently, little or no necessity for rules of any kind for its preservation. When the folio was hoisted to its place, there it would stop, or, if taken down, it would be with a considerable amount of caution.Not so Cooke's cheap and easily handled productions. They were light and airy, and bound in millboard, which, after a moderate use, never failed to come to pieces. As a matter of fact, nearly all Cooke's books met with on the stalls to-day show unmistakable evidence of honest handling. They are thumbed, perhaps torn, and always very feeble in the cover. Should it have been worth anyone's while to rebind one of these cheap little volumes, we may be sure that it will show a stout leather cover, and be scrupulously cut down to the headlines for the sake of the shavings. This cropping of margins was no crime then, because there was no rule to the contrary, and Cooke turned out his books in such numbers that they were really of very trifling value at any time. Before his day, it was a common practice for the publishers themselves to have their books bound in leather, and for the binders to cut as much of the margins away as they decently could.For instance, let us revert to 'Tom Jones,' one of the first books experimented upon by the first of really cheap publishers. When this novel came out, in 1749, it made its appearance in six small volumes bound uniformly in leather, with edges more or less cropped. This cropping process seems to have pleased Fielding immensely, or at any rate there is no doubt in the world that he preferred to see his handiwork issued in the way common to folios, rather than in boards with ragged edges, for a sample set of volumes was done up in the latter style and rejected.We think him foolish, because not very long ago the sample set was discovered in an old farmhouse, and, after changing hands once or twice, packed off to the auction-rooms, where it realized the handsome sum of £69. A little bit of paper made an immense difference in this case, for its presence was in conformity with an imperative rule that has grown up since Fielding's day, and which lays it down that never—no, never—must a book be denuded of its margins if you wish to make the most of it. Whatever its quality, do not deprive it of the minutest fraction of its legitimate area of paper. Of course, this drastic regulation came into force when books began to be generally published, not in folio or quarto, but in a smaller and more handy size.Collectors, whether of books or anything else, are content at first with a little. Their requirements are indeed boundless, so far as number is concerned; but they have not yet become solicitous of technical or minute distinctions. A book is a book, and a coin is a coin, and they are satisfied without it, provided it is substantially the same as some other copy of the same edition, or some other coin struck from the same die, which they happen to have. After a while, however, a very natural desire to excel produces its inevitable result, and all sorts of arbitrary variations are catalogued and insisted upon by those who have plenty of money, and at the same time pride themselves on their discrimination and taste. Thus it is that a comparatively scarce book, this first edition of 'Tom Jones,' for instance, may become excessively scarce under exceptional circumstances. True, the collector who is a terrible stickler for detail may, and probably will, be charged sooner or later with being a fool for his pains; but that penalty he is content to accept, happy in the consciousness, that, when everything is said and done, he has chosen the better part, which in all these cases consists in leaving well alone.Not long ago a London newspaper, which ought to have known better, was very angry with a collector of the circumspect school because he had boasted that all the books in his library were 'uncut.' 'This shows,' said the sage who wrote the article, 'that he has a hundred or more books which he has never read, and, what is worse, has no intention of reading.' He thought that 'uncut' meant 'not cut open,' and perhaps thinks so still, for it was worth no one's while to teach him his business, and so the matter dropped.The cropping of books has, indeed, become as iniquitous as the old Star Chamber practice of cropping of ears, or perhaps even more so, for some at least of the delinquents who appeared to the usual Writ of Rebellion, which it was the practice of that tribunal to issue from time to time, richly deserved all they got. The proper way to deal with a book is to burn it if it be wicked, and if not, to leave it alone; though, if this fact had always been recognised, there would have been no scope for us in the matter of broad expanse of margin, since what everybody has no one craves for.Fine bindings are a law unto themselves, and require separate consideration; but there is a matter connected with bindings generally, or, rather, with the advisability of binding at all, which has created a considerable amount of scandal in times past. Let us take that scarce book, 'The English Dance of Death,' which William Combe wrote in the safe seclusion of the King's Bench Prison. It appeared originally in 1815 in parts, each with its wrapper, and afterwards was bound up in two volumes, whereupon it at once lost, according to present-day ideas on the subject, five-sixths of its value.The 'Tale of Two Cities' when in the original eight parts is worth three times as much, at least, as when in the publisher's cloth binding, and nearly all Thackeray's more important works are subject to a very considerable reduction under identical circumstances. Curiously enough, the rule is imperative in certain specific instances, while in others it has no application at all. The question whether to apply it or not depends on the character of the book. We should insist upon the parts being left unbound in the case of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' but not in that of Trusler's 1833 edition of 'Hogarth Moralized,' for here the twenty-six parts are a positive nuisance unless they are bound. Trusler's melancholy production is not much good, bound or unbound, but it will serve as an illustration, and certain it is that the cost of binding will have to be taken into consideration when estimating the worth of the numbers, in case anyone thrusts them upon a long-suffering purchaser, and will not be denied.'Fools you are!' says Sir Ensor Doone, under other circumstances, and 'Idiots!' adds the man in the street when he reads that somebody has paid a large sum for 'Ask Mamma' in the 'original thirteen parts,' when he could, had he been so minded, have got the entire book, nicely bound, for a fourth of the money—plates, text, and all. This is the cry whenever a sum which appears exorbitant on the face of it is paid for anything.A short time ago £445 was obtained for a fiddle by Stradivari; £798 for an imperfect silver cup made by Jacob Frolich, master of Nuremberg in 1555; and £246 odd for a rose-point flounce of Venetian lace three yards long. Nothing was said about the enormity of these sums, but let a fiftieth part of the smallest amount be realized at any time for a book 'in parts,' and there is a chorus of disapprobation, for which, however, it must be confessed, there is just a modicum of warrant.It is really not at all easy to see why a series of numbers, liable at any moment to injury, and always inconvenient to handle, should, the quality of the plates, if there are any, and other accessories being equal, be so greatly preferred to a volume bound in a proper manner. Perhaps it is a matter of sentiment, perhaps of pure scarcity, or perhaps thebonâ-fidebook-collector likes to give himself as much trouble as he possibly can, by way of purifying his life and chastening his soul. However this may be, there is no question that some books are thought more highly of when in sections, and that the public in their blindness fail to see the reason why.Well, there is, at any rate, much less reason, one would think, in paying £246 for a lace flounce wherewith to minister to the vanity of some middle-aged dame than there is for incurring a fractional obligation for classic works, which will outlast us by many a day, even though they may have the fortune to be uncut and in parts as issued. And besides, O shade of Mr. Burgess! did you not ignore in your lifetime the rule that it were best to let well alone, and were not the consequences terrible in the extreme?[#][#] The library of the late Mr. Frederick Burgess was sold by Messrs. Sotheby on May 31 and three subsequent days, 1894. It consisted almost entirely of then 'Fashionable' books, illustrated by Cruikshank and other talented artists. Parts had been bound up, original cloth covers removed, and expensive bindings substituted, not merely in a few instances, but as a general rule. The collection, though an excellent one of its kind, was disposed of at an enormous sacrifice.Whether any regulations are really necessary for the proper preservation of books old or new let the bibliophiles determine; but so long as they exist it is folly to ignore them. Nay, further, to be as far upon the safe side as possible, we must prefer to buy our books with due regard to those rules and orders which our progenitors have in their wisdom drawn up, selecting the very best copies we can afford to pay or obtain credit for, and even going to the length of investing in 'parts' which shall not shame us, or cause us loss when the inevitable hour of parting arrives.The cardinal rule of the game is triple-headed, and it is this: Buy the best you can, spend what you find convenient without stint, and, above all, keep to the track you have mapped out for yourself and have so far followed. Then will it be well with you now and hereafter in all things bookish. Act the contrary throughout, and every stiver you spend will swell the total of your confusion; drop by drop the clepsydra of your fortunes will run out to your bane.But the rules which hem in the book-buyer, and direct his course, are not solely confined to technical points and details such as those mentioned. On the contrary, they are equally stringent in many other respects, and in particular as to the description of book to buy, its condition, and so on; for it is taken for granted that no man, or at least no bookman worthy the name, would purchase a bad or inferior edition when he could get a better, or a volume that was imperfect or had been shamefully used by a succession of careless owners. Between the quality of one edition and another there is often an immense difference, as all the world knows, or ought to know. That edition of '"Paradise Lost," a Poem in twelve books, the author John Milton, Printed for the Proprietors and sold by all the Booksellers,' no date, but about 1780, is one of the very worst that any misguided man ever picked up from a street stall. The mistakes, not merely in punctuation, but in spelling, are too gross and scandalous for mention; entire lines are not infrequently missing, and whole sentences often perverted. Contrast this with any copy of the first edition, no matter which title-page may have heralded it into the world, and we have a different book entirely. The rule says that, though an ordinary copy of the first edition may be three thousand times as valuable in money as this gutter abortion, you must nevertheless not be attracted by the latter because it is cheap—no, not even though you should think it good enough for everyday use.Naturally enough there are free-lances among book-men, people who are a law unto themselves, and insist upon doing precisely as they like, but it will be noticed that they very rarely fly in the face of any rule in important cases. Your free-lance has the courage of the Seven Champions of Christendom when face to face with Stackhouse's 'History of the Bible,' but let him, for example, come across 'Tamerlaine, and other Poems, By a Bostonian;' not Herne Shepherd's London reprint, but the original tract which Calvin F. S. Thomas printed at Boston in 1827. Let us suppose also that it is in its original tea-tinted paper covers, just as Edgar Allen Poe sent it forth into the world. What would our free-lance do? Have it rebound in defiance of the rule? Hardly, for if he did he would reduce the importance of his exceptionally fortunate find, and therefore its value, to such a considerable extent that even he would hesitate long before committing himself to an act that could never be recalled. Moreover, he would have direct evidence with regard to a copy of this very Pamphlet before his eyes, for a collector once really did pick one up for a few pence. In the first place, let it be stated that only three copies of 'Tamerlaine' can now be traced. One is in the British Museum, which acquired it from the late Mr. Henry Stevens for one shilling. A second was found on a stall in America for the equivalent of something less, and it is this latter copy which furnishes the evidence referred to. The fortunate finder sent it to Messrs. C. F. Libbie and Co., the auctioneers of Boston, who sold it by auction in 1893 for the equivalent of £370 to the agents of Mr. George F. Maxwell, of New York, who had the pamphlet rebound in magnificent style by Lortic Fils, at a cost of several hundred dollars. Moreover, the covers were bound in, and the edges left untrimmed. No expense was spared; everything was done in proper order according to rule of thumb. Yet in April, 1895, when Mr. Maxwell's valuable library was sold by the same auctioneers, this copy of 'Tamerlaine,' vastly improved as one might think, dropped to £290, showing a clear loss of £80, irrespective altogether of the amount paid for binding, auctioneers' commission, and so on.It may, of course, be said that it is a common thing for the same book to bring different amounts at different times, even when the sales take place within a few months of each other. A bookseller, dissatisfied with the amount bid for some scarce work he has put on the market, will frequently buy it in and offer it again later on with satisfactory results.But 'Tamerlaine' is an altogether exceptional piece, and, moreover, where were the gentlemen who respectively bid £360 and £365 on the occasion when Mr. Maxwell secured it for a slightly larger sum? Wherever they were, they seem to have been fully alive to the fact that 'Tamerlaine' was not as it was when Poe sent it out for review ever so many years ago. 'Ah, broken is the golden bowl,' and it is to be feared by that talented binder, Lortic Fils. If ever I find 'Tamerlaine,' I shall keep every binder at arm's length, and not be tempted to paint the lily—no, not even though Derome himself should rise from the dead and offer to array it gratuitously in morocco, tooled to a heavenly pattern, and powdered all over with the fleurs-de-lys of imperial France. In this spirit let us reproduce the title-page of 'Tamerlaine,' as aFrontispieceto this Romance, so that we shall know it on the instant if the gods should only guide our feet to where a fourth copy lies hidden away. Then let us remember the rule to let well alone, and be thankful, for it is a rule of gold, the first and foremost of them all.Never to outrage sentiment, always to identify one's self with the author as far as possible, is to respect both the living and the dead, and to make life comparatively easy, even though its path be strewn with flints and cobble-stones. May the person who has the maximum of respect for the private life and character of one of the greatest of modern poets eventually acquire the shabby copy of 'The Eve of St. Agnes' which the luckless half-immortal thrust into his pocket as theDon Juanwas sent to the bottom of the Gulf of Genoa. It will come with a train of associations that will on the instant forbid the elimination of a single stain, or the slightest repair of its sea-swept cover.The book-hunter who has the feelings and aspirations of an ancient race properly diffused through his system would almost give his head for a relic such as this, for his passion is not to be stifled. He likes to think that the books he reads and handles have a pedigree, that they come to him laden with the fears and aspirations of the past, that they are ghost-haunted, and that they who wrote them, though dead, yet speak, not as man to man, but as soul to soul.CHAPTER IX.THE GLAMOUR OF BINDINGS.There being in very truth no new thing under the sun, it would be egotistical in the highest degree, and absurd, to assert positively that the argument about to be advanced is at all novel, though it may certainly appear strange. It is, however, original so far as I am concerned, for I have not seen it hinted at before by anyone, much less carried to a conclusion. Whether there be any warrant for it or no is a point for others, who have a greater capacity for distinguishing reason in probabilities than I can lay claim to, to determine for themselves.It is admitted by all writers who have studied the subject of bookbinding from its historical aspect, that, as the monks of the Middle Ages were the sole producers of books, so also they were the only binders, and that the record of their achievements dates from about 520 A.D., when Dagæus, the Irish monk, practised his art, to the invention of printing from movable types by Gutenberg and Fust nearly a thousand years later. Not merely in England, but all over Europe, the monks were practically the sole custodians of knowledge during the earlier part of this period; they alone produced books, they alone bound them, they alone could read them. There were, no doubt, laymen who could read and write, but neither accomplishment was general in the outer world. King Alfred (A.D. 870) was a scholar; William the Conqueror, two centuries later, could neither read nor write.The Stowe MS. No. 960 contains all that remains of the register of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, from the time of King Canute, one of its earliest benefactors, to the Dissolution. Among the many interesting articles in this Stowe manuscript there is one which exceeds all the rest in interest, for it bears the actual cross, sign or signature made by William in testimony that he had granted 9 hides of land to the monks, in exchange for the site of the cemetery in the city of Winchester. The King has drawn with a quill a rude and most illiterate cross, if such a thing can be imagined. The ink has not flown evenly from a pen evidently held in a perpendicular position with tremulous and infirm grip. Each line begins with a splutter, and at the point of intersection there is what looks suspiciously like a blot. It is obvious at the first glance that King William, though a man of many accomplishments eminently useful in those days, was accustomed to wield the battle-axe rather than the pen. And this was so general for centuries after his day that, but for the monks, there would have been no learning at all, and no books all that time.It is unnecessary to refer to this phase of the matter further than to say that all the ancient and medieval European manuscripts which still exist were written by ecclesiastics, and doubtless bound by them as well. Manuscripts of the ninth century, beautifully encased in ivory, silver and gold, and sometimes encrusted with precious stones, are still extant. These are undoubtedly monkish, and the question arises, What has become of the vast bulk of which these are but a remnant? What has become of the old English libraries that existed in hundreds at the time of the Reformation? Were they, all but a very few, wantonly destroyed by those who undertook the spoliation of the monasteries, or did many escape them? and if so, where are they now? The suggestion that innumerable volumes, particularly those which were handsomely and expensively bound, would never be seen by the raiders at all is not so improbable as it may at first sight appear, when we come to consider the facts.In November, 1534, an Act of Parliament declared that 'the King's Highness was the supreme head of the Church of England, and had authority to reform and redress all errors, heresies, and abuses in the same.' This Act was speedily followed up, for in 1535 Cromwell, in his capacity of Vicar-General, proceeded to make a visitation of the monasteries, where he is said to have found such evidences of shameless immorality that another Act was passed, transferring such of these establishments to the Crown as were not of the annual value of £200.The number of religious houses at this time dissolved, raided and sacked amounted to 376. With diabolical minuteness the revenues of each and all were estimated to the last penny. Bangor was worth £151 3s., and was accordingly seized on the spot. St. David easily escaped for the time being, for the revenue of that monastery proved to be £426 2s. 1d. St. Asaph, being assessed at £202 10s., escaped an early wreck by £2 10s. It was the same all over England and Wales. The revenue was estimated, and if it fell below £200, the monastery was at once filled with armed men, while Cromwell's experts stripped the walls of their arras, seized the gold and silver vessels, tore up the books, scoured the neighbourhood round about for game, tapped the vintage, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves in their own peculiar way.It is recorded that priceless books and manuscripts were wantonly destroyed, tombs sacrilegiously broken to pieces for the sake of the metal, often merely lead or brass, that extolled the virtues or the lineage of those who slept below; silver and gold plate of exquisite workmanship, and of a degree of antiquity rarely, if ever, seen now, were melted down and sold by weight; buildings of an architectural beauty unsurpassed anywhere were wantonly defaced, and in many cases dismantled, for the sake of the materials, and in the midst of this disgraceful scene of plunder and desecration, the destroyers fought with one another as desperately as Roman gladiators of the days of Nero, for the possession of some coveted jewel or ornament that all wanted and only one could have.Now here comes the crux of the argument. Only the smaller houses were dissolved at this time, and unless human nature were totally different in the days of Henry VIII. from what it is now, unless the Abbots of Furness, Bolton, Fountains, and other large and extremely rich monasteries, looked on unmoved while their humbler brethren were stripped to the skin and flung destitute into the lanes and ditches to die, then it is morally certain that they would take steps to protect themselves, as far as lay in their power, from the fury of the storm which they must have known would shortly burst over their heads. Unless they were wholly infatuated, they would cautiously and gradually remove their choicest possessions, their basins, images, censers, crucifixes and chalices, and above all their precious volumes, with which the very history and fortunes of the abbey were associated, and bury them deep down, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, under the walls.The ruin brought at this time upon all that was priceless by reason of its antiquity and associations is incalculable, and the only ray of consolation let in upon these dark days' doings is that the Abbots of the larger monasteries, taking warning from what they saw going on all around, may have buried their choicest possessions, where, perhaps, they will be found some of these days, when the plough shall furrow up the dust of Furness or Denever.Many of the inventories taken by the King's agents are extant. One of them, that of Fountains, taken just before the Dissolution, will suffice to show what is meant. The value of all the plate, gold and silver, amounted to £708 5s. 9-3/4d.—a comparatively small sum, seeing that the cattle, sheep and swine belonging to the abbey were of much greater value. Not a single book of any kind is scheduled, and yet the library of Fountains was at one time the most extensive and important in Yorkshire. As the Knights Templars buried their gold under the high altar in the church of the New Temple, yet standing within sound of the roar of Fleet Street, in order to protect it against the rapacity of Edward I., so it is suggested that the Abbots of Fountains and other surviving houses buried their treasures in the most sacred place they could think of, thereby handing them over, as it were, to God and the right, rather than abandon them to the tender mercies of man.Now, this is merely an argument based upon probability; it cannot, from the very nature of the case, be supported by a scrap of evidence, and yet it carries with it such a ring of truth in my ears that, were I the happy owner of one of those fast-crumbling piles which still rear their rugged fronts to the sky, I would, by all the enamels of Limoges, by the ivory, gold and silver, and rubies which make up this glamour of bindings unseen, put the argument to the test without hesitation and regardless of cost.Monastic bindings of English workmanship are not, as we may well understand, distinguished as a rule for extreme beauty. The gorgeous covers that protected illuminated manuscripts, themselves extremely valuable, were in vogue at a very early period, long before the invention of printing, and the vast majority were probably either hidden away as suggested, or destroyed. In any case, however, they must have been rare even a thousand years ago—as rare, indeed, as the exceptionally fine missals and breviaries they protected, some of which would take a monk his lifetime to produce. We find that by the fourteenth century monastic bindings were usually serviceable and plain, and that it was only occasionally that rich materials were employed, as, for example, when a King's library was added to, or some important monastery gave a special order by way of continuing the traditions of the house, and showing that time had not in any way curtailed its glories. The most interesting ancient bindings that yet survive to us consist of a specimen of the work of the monk Dagæus, which dates from about 520 A.D., and a manuscript known as the 'Textus Sanctus Cuthberti,' bound in velvet with a broad silver border, and inlaid with gems, by the first English binder, one Bilfred, a monk of Durham, who was living at the beginning of the eighth century. This is the holy volume that was swallowed up by the sea, and, according to the old legend, restored out of respect for the memory of the saint, or perhaps that of the monk or both.We have, therefore, two styles of monastic bindings—one resplendent in gold, ivory, and precious stones, and the other of a more sober character for ordinary and daily use. The latter were of wood covered with embossed leather, or with plain shark skin, or even seal. They were ponderous, massive folios of great weight and durability, protected in vulnerable parts with brass or iron bosses and corner-plates. We find them produced as a matter of course to about the time of the Renaissance, when they gradually gave place to smaller books bound in velvet or silk, and embroidered by abbesses and nuns, and so the custom prevailed until the days of the first printers, when calf and morocco were introduced from the East by the Venetians, and pigskin or thick parchment became fashionable. Prior to this time oaken boards formed the groundwork of every binding, and to this day the word 'boards' is in general use, although the reason for its existence obtains no longer.The Italians were the first to awaken to a sense of the propriety of things, and the modern collector to whom bindings appeal with an irresistible force instinctively turns to the first Italian era to supply him with some of the rarest and choicest examples of the art. The commoner monastic bindings have no beauty in his eyes, and those of a superior order and more costly finish are practically interred within the walls of great public institutions, from which they will, in the nature of things, never emerge. For some reason or other the finest binding loses its glamour, if not its interest, when exhibited in a glass case. We must have these things for our own before we can appreciate them to the full. What more melancholy mortal than a public curator trying to work himself up into a state of enthusiasm as he describes the objects committed to his care? They are mere pots and pans and 'things,' but yet how different if he had them all at home!But to return to our bindings. Let it be observed that with the invention of printing, and the consequent production of books in a more portable form, the modern style of binding was gradually introduced. These were the days of deep-toned leathers, ornamented in gold and variegated colours, and executed for wealthy and powerful Italian families, who employed skilful artists to draw the designs, often consisting of geometrical interfacings or foliage, such as Maioli and Grolier rejoiced in.This style of ornamenting leather came from the East, as did the Saracenic rope ornament, which was perhaps the first design to take the fancy of Italian workmen. The general appearance of this rope design reminds one of the frontispiece to a certain 'Biography of Jack Ketch,' which someone brought out a few years ago. The half-length portrait of the hero is within a graceful border of ropes intertwined, there are ropes tumbling from the clouds, and he holds a rope in his hand, as if ready to begin. Behind, so far as my memory serves me, there is the frowning portal of Newgate, festooned with fetters. A panel of Saracenic rope-design set on end reminds one of this frontispiece, and we listen instinctively for the tolling of the prison bell.The celebrated printer Aldus Manutius seems to have been the first to rebel against such sinister designs as these, and, moreover, he was the friend of Jean Grolier and Thommaso Maioli, princes among book-lovers, and artists by nature. Aldus often bound the books he printed in smooth, rich morocco, tooled in gold to various patterns of elaborate design, and to him we doubtless owe much of the improvement in binding which became so marked at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His were, indeed, publishers' bindings produced by rule of thumb, but they are not on that account less worthy of interest, for the name of Aldus is one to conjure with in all things bookish.The Thommaso Maioli to whom reference has been made exercised a much greater influence than Aldus ever did in the matter of bindings, for his were the models on which were fashioned the designs of later collectors, not merely of Italy, but of France and other European countries. Maioli's designs are free and open, in a style suggestive of Eastern influence, but reduced to earth and reality by perpendicular and perfectly straight lines. His library was open to his friends, and most of his books were lettered on the covers 'Tho. Maioli et amicorum,' qualified sometimes by other words of different import, 'Ingratis servire nephas.' Very likely Maioli was on occasion the victim of some too ardent bibliophile, who would think nothing of borrowing, and perhaps also of some Philistine, who left ruin in the trail of his dirty or heavy fingers.So, too, Jean Grolier, whom Dibdin ludicrously turns into a bookbinder, but who was, in fact, the French contemporary and twin soul of Maioli, chose to follow the traditions of all true book-lovers, and his covers also bear the courteous invitation to friends, 'Io Grolierii et amicorum,' though he too found occasion to alter it from time to time.The bindings of Maioli and Grolier, worked out and finished most probably at Venice for the most part, are highly valued by collectors all over the world, and they are indeed worthy of all the attention they receive.The bindings of Maioli are more difficult to meet with than those of Grolier, because the library of the latter numbered some 8,000 volumes, and was eventually sold by auction and dispersed broadcast. Grolier's descendants had no false sentiment in their composition; the 'amici' were themselves, and they acted in their own interests, in strict accordance with their interpretation of the family motto. Besides, in those days, though the love of books raged furiously in isolated breasts, in general it was cold, and no one could probably have been found to take over the entire library, or even that considerable portion of it which at the last lay among the dust and cobwebs of the Hôtel de Vic.Rarer than any of this period, however, are the medallion bindings of Demetrio Canevari, physician to Pope Urban VII., who was living in the year 1600. In all probability Canevari merely inherited his books, for their covers belong to an earlier period. Still, whatever the fact in this respect, they are called after his name, and are very scarce, notwithstanding that the whole library was intact at Genoa until 1823. Libri thought that these delicate and elaborate bindings had never been surpassed, and certainly they are very beautiful, with their cameos in gold, silver, and colours enriched with classical portraits and mythological scenes.But to the lover of bindings it is Grolier, Grolier, Grolier; from the haunting music of that name there is no escape, and, moreover, Grolier even in death was great. The Emperor Charles V. did not disdain to follow his taste, while Francis I. was completely carried away by it, his bindings, as soon as he could shake off the early influence of Etienne Roffet, being magnificently Grolieresque, blazing with gold and the brightest colours. Then came Henri II. and the accomplished Diane de Poictiers, whose emblems, the crescent moon, the bow, quiver and arrows of the chase, are invariably found associated with the initial of the King. Diane was the royal mistress, and seems to have had a passion for blending the two linked D's with the regal H. This joint monogram was on the walls and furniture of her Château of Anet, and still stares us out of countenance occasionally from behind glass doors. Diane, however, so long as she had it in her power—that is to say, until 1559, when the King died—did everything she could to introduce a taste for magnificent and sumptuous bindings into France; to eclipse once and for all time the efforts of every book-lover who had preceded her. In a measure she succeeded, and certainly no good books come to us, when they come at all, which is but seldom, breathing more of romance than these volumes which Diane treasured till her dying day, in spite of Court frowns and persecution. Her library, which was a very extensive one, remained intact at Anet until 1723, when it was sold.It would be almost an endless task to name all the patrons of artistic bindings who lived in France up to about the time of the Revolution. There was the legitimate Queen of Henri II., Catherine de Medicis, a descendant of the great Lorenzo, called the Magnificent, whose books are often covered in white calf, powdered with golden flowers. This lady was an enthusiastic book-lover, who, when she died, left a library of some 4,000 volumes, most of which are still to be seen in the Bibliotheque Nationale.Then we must not forget her son, Francis II., who married the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. His bindings, whether stamped with the golden dolphin or with a monogram in which his own and the Queen's initials are interlaced, are extremely scarce, and worth much gold. Francis was only seventeen when he died, and had, consequently, no time to become thoroughly saturated with the intense longing for beautiful decorations which probably did much to set Catherine de Medicis and the fair Diane by the ears. His younger brother, afterwards Henri III., had greater opportunities for indulging his tastes in this respect, and the history of his bibliopegic life, so to speak, is full of strange surprises.Like all other bindings with a history, specimens from the library of this gloomy and taciturn monarch are very rarely met with. They are distinctly worth looking at, however, especially by those of a morbid turn of mind. They are more suggestive than the Saracenic rope style, and infinitely more eloquent of woe. Henri ought to have married the Princess Condé, but she died, and the young King, then about twenty-four years old, and apparently influenced by the example of his father and mother, turned for consolation to his library, and the designing of emblems congenial to his mood.These consist, at least at this period, when his grief was young and fresh, of skulls garnished with cross-bones, tears, and other emblems of the grave. They are, in their way, absolutely unique, and much more remarkable than the curled snake of Colbert or the three towers of Madame de Pompadour. The bindings of Henri III., though uncongenial to most tastes, are of excellent design and workmanship, for Nicholas and Clovis Eve were living in his day, and better artists than they proved themselves to be it would be hopeless to look for. It was one or other of the brothers who introduced the fanfare style, which resolved itself finally into a profusion of small flourished ornaments, so closely worked together that a volume bound in this way looked as though picked out ethereally with sprays, scrolls, and showers of golden rain. The fanfare style was, so it is said, introduced to put an end to the suicidal gloom that had overtaken the Court of Henri III.That monarch, though a bad man, was probably the most original thinker in the matter of bindings who ever lived, for De Thou's plan of inventing a fresh design every time he got married resolved itself into nothing more than a series of heraldic changes, and De Thou is generally credited with a considerable amount of ingenuity, and regarded as a person distinctly worth collecting on account of the variations in which he is found, and for other reasons. Every book which touches, however remotely, on the subject of bindings never fails to give the armorial bearings of De Thou at different periods of his life; and we must pass on to Marguerite de Valois; not the celebrated Queen of Navarre who wrote the 'Heptameron' in her youth, but the daughter of Henri II., already mentioned as a great lover of bindings. Marguerite very appropriately, having regard to the origin of her name, chose designs of daisies, which she placed in oval compartments bearing the quarterings of Valois, the whole being surrounded with leafy and branching scroll-work. Clovis Eve was her binder, and the work he turned out at this period is in his best style.The history of bookbinding takes a curious turn at this epoch. Hitherto we have heard more of the patron than of the artist, a state of things which from this time forth exists no longer. I would not commit myself to the assertion that Marguerite de Valois, who, by the way, died in 1615, was the last of the great collectors who eclipsed the reputation of the binders they employed; but I know that about this period we begin to hear more of the workman and less of the patron. When everybody of the least importance begins to collect books, and to have them bound in specially designed covers, the artist rises on the ashes of the amateur, whose day is from that time forth over and gone, except in the limited circle in which he moves. So it was at the epoch which immediately followed the death of Marguerite de Valois. The Eves had forced their way into notice in spite of the overwhelming presence of Henri II., Diane de Poictiers and Charles IX., Henri III. and IV., and other less-exalted persons; and now Le Gascon made his presence felt still more forcibly than they.Le Gascon, who is identified with one Florimond Badier, introduced a style of ornamentation known aspointillé, consisting of graceful geometrical designs worked out with innumerable minute gold dots, usually on a ground of bright scarlet. The effect of a perfectly fresh and bright binding by Le Gascon must have been brilliant in the extreme; but, alas! the cost was something phenomenal, and the style, after being parodied and imitated by mechanical process, finally died out in France some thirty-five years after its introduction. Mazarin was the great patron of Le Gascon, and many books which once belonged to the great Cardinal are found with ornamentation, arms and motto—'His Fulta Manebunt'—laboriously picked out in the beautifulpointilléstyle.During the latter part of the sixteenth century, and during the whole of the seventeenth, the French bookbinders had no equal, and if they afterwards deteriorated, they had still many great names among their ranks. Padeloup's binding of a 'Daphne et Chloe' of 1718, with the arms of the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, is a masterpiece; and then there are his bindings in mosaic, looking like lace-work, and the masterly designs worked out for Madame de Pompadour, Queen Maria Leczinska, and many other celebrities. Derome, the Abbé Du Sueil, and Monnier were all fine binders, whose work is eagerly sought for. And then comes the French Revolution, which for the time being seems to have utterly demoralized art in all its branches. Most modern collectors who affect notable bindings have to look to later days, when the surge and storm of the turmoil had passed away, and when Thouvenin, Bauzonnet, Duru, Trantz, Lortic, Marius-Michel, and many more, were in their prime.English bindings, so far as past times are concerned, were never remarkable for refinement or taste. Velvet or silk, frequently embroidered and tasselled, was often used for royal books, and we also meet with pasteboard covered with leather and studded with gilt ornaments on the back. There is, however, not a trace of the genius of Le Gascon or Derome in any of these productions, and the designs show very little originality. Occasionally, however, an English binding is produced which, bound in morocco—the introduction of which is placed to the credit of James I.—has an extremely good effect, as in the case of the 'Pontificale Romanum,' 1595, now in the British Museum. This specimen is elaborately gold-tooled with the arms and badges of the King. A facsimile of it will be found facing page 228 of Mr. W. Salt Brassington's 'History of the Art of Bookbinding.' It is a clever and characteristic piece of work in brown morocco, and gives a very good idea of the highest form of English art of the period which it was possible to produce.The English, however, have never been at any period particularly conspicuous for their talent in the art of designing book-covers, and it is probable that the majority of well-informed persons who have not made a study of this branch of art would, in case they were asked to enumerate half a dozen good binders of English nationality, find themselves unable to mention more than one. They would begin and end with the talented but eccentric and thirsty Roger Payne, whose bindings are often original and elegant, and who might, had he been able to keep himself respectable, have attained an excellence worthy of the palmy days of France. But Payne chose to live in a tumbledown garret, denuded of plaster, and spent his money in the proportion of

CHAPTER VII.

HOW FASHION LIVES.

The dim haze which, in the imagination of the populace, once floated above the head of every hungry book-man, was never in those days identified with a mass of tangled, waving hair, which, aureola-like, 'girt his occiput about,' for he was no minor poet, with pale, eager face and love-locks everywhere, but a man, with a rugged front such as Ben Jonson wore, and a heart that beat within. The haze in which he moved was from the dust of old-world tomes; it settled on his coat, and, had he worn a bob-wig, it would have settled on that also, but, since wigs had escaped the fashion of fifty years before, it merely clung to his hair instead, and powdered it gray before its time. Half a century ago the England which for the most part was free from the shriek of the railway-whistle and the rumble of traffic harboured such men as these in their hundreds. They came from the last century, and the further their pilgrimage in this the more they haunted the rustic element in which they moved. They were, in their way, magicians, wearing the consecrated pentacles of Agrippa, 'that man of parts, who dived into the secrets of all arts, that second Solomon, the mighty Hee, that try'de them all, and found them Vanity.'

Naturally enough, when one of these old-time bookworms left his seclusion to mix with the whirl and throng of the London thoroughfares, he was swallowed up, as though he had never been, in a huge vortex of unappreciative apathy, for the man in the street never has time to dream, and such books as he affects are ledgers. But he might have strayed into some square which the tide, ebbing westward, had left desolate, and met his counterpart sitting, as he himself did when at home, in the midst of vellum-bound classics far into the night. Indeed, when he came to London, which was but seldom, it would be to visit another bookworm, just as the stage-doorkeeper of the present day spends his evening off at the entrance to another theatre, because he cannot get away, even in spirit, from his life's work and enterprise. Were we to look for these old book-men now, we should look in vain, for the century is fast drawing to its close, and a younger generation has occupied their seats.

The transition from the old to the new in the matter of books and all that pertains to them, has been very gradual. It commenced about fifty years ago, or a little earlier, and was due, perhaps, to the spirit of unrest fostered by an improved and quicker system of communication in a country of very small area, absolutely incapable of enlargement. We see a mighty change in everything external, and it is not surprising that our social habits should have experienced a revolution. Round goes the wheel, slowly and persistently, and we go with it, though daily custom and daily experience has a tendency to mask its motion. One day, sooner or later, we start up and look for the familiar landmarks. They are gone. New ones, not at all familiar, but still recognisable, have taken their place, and then we know that time has slipped away while we were dreaming, and that nothing can possibly be done but to take the future by the forelock, and to rush on for a brief space with the rest.

And so it is with books, and ever has been. Fifty years and more ago, time waited upon them and stood still; now they are carried along unceasingly, and have no rest. Every year the speed increases. Old companions of the shelf are whirled into space and parted for ever; the very men who buy them are changed in their aspirations, their tastes, and their desires, and in a very short time they will change again, and yet again. They are swayed and driven by Fashion, and this is how Fashion lives.

There was something about the dry-as-dust bookworm which, however consonant with antiquated modes of thought and action, was nevertheless felt to be utterly unsuitable to changed conditions. Men must and will read, and to accumulate is equally natural. A life of easy contentment engenders one mode of thought, a life of enterprise another; and the transition from the narrow limits of a prison-bound study to the open air is precisely what might have been expected to occur.

Men there were, as I have said, in plenty, who refused to quit the time-honoured traditions of their race; but on every side of them were being born lighter spirits, to whom colossal and intricate volumes were as heavy as lead. We see the changed nature of their tastes in the craving for art, and the outcome of it in scores and hundreds of miscellanies which began to be published about the year 1830, and held imperial sway on drawing-room tables for ten years or more.

Fisher's 'Scrap-Book,' and numerous other artistically got up volumes full of excerpts and elegant extracts, illustrated by some of the first engravers of the time, were extremely fashionable in those days, and for light and casual reading very probably supplied all that was necessary. The poets, from the Earl of Surrey onward, were served up in dainty plats, and the best prose authors were disembowelled with remarkable skill. The ingenious Martin Tupper, observing this transformation scene, brought joy into many households by laying down, in the form of explicit statements, matters of theological controversy which had in their day fed the Smithfield fires till they roared and blazed like those of Moloch.

These books were for the cultured, to whom the random books of Pierce Egan and William Combe were positively distasteful, and who, having neither the time nor the inclination to bury themselves deeply in classic lore, eagerly welcomed anything which appealed to their better selves and, at the same time, did not too severely tax their brains. The very style and nature of the books which were published at this period show as conclusively as anything can do the great change which was gradually creeping over the public mind.

Smollett and Swift were becoming coarse, and Hogarth, in his realm of art, was already much worse. Mrs. Radcliffe and the Rev. Mr. Maturin stalked like a couple of terrifying ghosts hung about with chains, wailing their lost home. They invariably spoke of haunted caverns, and the wind rumbling itself to sleep in the recesses of ruined chimneys. Their novels were the delight of these same dry-as-dusts, to whom the new age had said farewell, but who, in their impenetrable fastnesses, still revelled, though in numbers yearly decreasing, in 'The Raven,' with its soul-quaking refrain, in the 'Castle of Otranto,' and 'The Bravo of Venice.' Things of graver mood they could not find had they searched the entire catalogue of English literature, from the metrical poems of Cædmon, chanted to the winds of Whitby, down to the newest poem or novel.

The new school called the old 'unhealthy,' that being a not inapt adjective with which to express the absence of brightness and chic, qualities which came, as everything else comes, when called for, and which were embodied to a nicety in 'Sketches by "Boz,"' 'The Pickwick Papers,' and later on in 'The Yellowplush Correspondence,' and 'The Paris Sketch-Book.' The new poetry was represented by Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow, and many more, and essays of better, or, at any rate, more taking, style than those of the Rev. Vicessimus Knox, were published every day, and what is more to the point, extensively read and hoarded.

Collections which had their beginnings in materials such as these authors afforded were, and necessarily must be, totally different in every possible way from those of the prior century; this we find to be the case on looking at the catalogues of sales by auction which were issued under the new régime. Fashion had indeed changed, and at this particular period Hakluyt and Coryat, to say nothing of curious authors like Brathwaite and Seller, were comparatively neglected. They have recovered themselves since, because a revulsion of feeling has taken place in their favour, and many of the old books which were of immense importance sixty or seventy years ago are, after suffering a period of neglect, once more in vogue, and can hardly be met with when sought after, so great is the demand for them. That is the case now, but there is a wide intervening period which needs to be analyzed.

In my opinion, Dickens among novelists, and Tennyson among poets, had the greatest amount of influence upon modern collectors as a body. The former was the more powerful at first, since he had the good fortune to meet with extremely talented artists like George Cruikshank, Hablot Browne, Seymour and Leech, to illustrate his works. Cruikshank was fresh from the glories of 'Life in London,' and 'The Life of Napoleon,' which had between them carried his name far and wide, and Browne hit off the meaning of the author in such a marvellous way, that he may almost be said to have discovered him. Seymour's opportunities were few, as his seven etchings for the 'Pickwick Papers' were all he ever accomplished for Dickens; but these were, in their way, masterly, and no doubt contributed greatly to the success of the earlier parts in which they appeared.

Slowly but surely the collectors began to turn their thoughts to the new author and the artists who were assisting him, and to accumulate the numbers in which it was the fashion to issue illustrated novels at that time. We often see them now, almost as clean and fresh as when they were first published, showing conclusively that every care has been bestowed upon them. In later days, up to within a year or two in fact, there was a great rush for any books or parts by popular authors containing first-rate illustrations. There is a demand for them now, but only when their condition is immaculate, for fashion has recently changed in a marked degree, owing, perhaps, to the number of rich collectors, who would have these things at any price, and, of course, had their way to the exclusion of the vast majority who were not sufficiently well off to compete with them. And this fashion was the parent, not of another fashion, but of a craze, which raged for two years or more.

The years 1893 and 1894 I take to be those in which people, despairing of obtaining their heart's desire, turned their attention to what were known 'Limited Editions,' and raged furiously. Nothing but a thorough grasp of the state of the book-market at the time, and a deep insight into human nature, could have hit upon the 'Limited Edition' as a stop-gap, and those who invented it are entitled to every credit for their enterprise. The apology for the life of the 'Limited Edition' brought to its logical conclusion was this: Times have changed, and, moreover, more people buy books than formerly, whether to read or to store. With the readers we have nothing to do, except incidentally; but so far as the collectors are concerned, it is obvious that only about one out of every ten can afford to pay the extremely high prices demanded for most of the first editions of the authors of repute which they affect.

Now comes the point, and upon this the whole argument succeeds or fails. Do they want these coveted books to read or to accumulate? If they wish to read them they can do so at any time, for there are more editions than one in the majority of instances, and the demand for the later and cheaper ones is of a different character altogether; ergo, they really want them, though they would perhaps be highly indignant if we said so, to possess and not necessarily to read. Let us, therefore, make new books in the image of the old, decorating them artistically, and printing them in the best possible style. Let us cut down the edition to a very small number of copies, in order to keep it out of the hands of all but just enough buyers to make the venture pay well, and we ought to succeed in establishing a furore that will continue precisely as long as the strenuous efforts to obtain time-tried poems and essays remain futile by reason of their cost.

The venture was purposely confined to poems and essays, because literary wares of this kind good enough for the purpose could be bought for next to nothing. A novel, in order to compete on this particular ground with the older works of Ainsworth, Thackeray, and the rest, would be costly to buy in manuscript, and difficult as well as expensive to produce; and, moreover, novels never pay unless they are sold in large quantities. This argument was sound throughout, and, moreover, a fresh departure of some kind was inevitable, if only to stem the tide that flowed so aggressively in favour of the rich. The venture succeeded, for almost on the instant the collector, casting a lingering look behind on the expensive works for which he craved, turned away from them, and welcomed the 'dainty volumes of delicious verse' which came tumbling down in almost endless variety. There was a scramble for them which continued exactly as long as had been predicted, namely, until the prices of once coveted books began to fall, and then the 'Limited Editions' fell too, and the craze was over, for the present at least.

One would have thought that the direct result of this procedure would have been a fresh rush to former fields, but the fact is otherwise. Original editions of the works of older poets and essayists of the highest repute are still as costly as ever, but the general ruck have fallen in the market, and remain fallen to this present day. More than that, the 'Limited Edition' brought within reasonable access innumerable better books, now become cheaper, provided they are not in the very finest condition.

Just at the moment there is no great 'boom' observable in the English market, no great craze for books of a certain special kind, though some, as usual, are sought for unceasingly, as, for example, many of those older works of English literature which were seen in such profusion in the collection of Mr. Charles B. Foote, dispersed in New York at the beginning of 1895.

Whatever hard things may be said of collectors, however much they may be likened to literary jackdaws, or to what extent their tastes may be criticised and compared with those of other people, they have a virtue—and a great one—one undisputed virtue, which, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins. This cardinal virtue is, that now, as in past times, their primary aim is to appraise literature at its true worth, and to make that theraison d'êtreof their enterprise. The inevitable red herring may lead them, for the moment, away from the pleasant places they have made their home, but it has never yet prevented their return.

And this home is among time-tried and intrinsically valuable books, and not among those which are temporarily in vogue. It is a home which existed in Greece, and in Rome, and all through the so-called Dark Ages, during the Renaissance, and down the centuries which succeeded right to this present year of grace—a home furnished with genius and perfumed with sentiment. Look there at Paul Lacroix snatching from a Paris stall the very copy of 'Le Tartuffe' which had belonged to King Louis XIV., and later on sheltering not merely the great Pixérécourt founder of the Société des Bibliophiles Français, but his whole library as well, until such time as his creditors had drawn off their legions and departed. Sentiment, as well as a passion for literature, was at the bottom of these acts, for that very copy of 'Le Tartuffe' had been in Molière's coat-pocket, and Pixérécourt had a tale to tell of every scholarly volume he possessed. You cannot manufacture genuine sentiment, nor is the quality to be evolved from anything except genius.

Accordingly, we find that every book which excites the cupidity of the true bibliophile derives its magic power primarily from within, and that this power is often materially increased by reason of extraneous considerations. The instances in which external matters have at any time been capable of investing an inferior book with a halo of importance or romance are so extremely rare that they might almost be counted on the fingers. A mere fleeting craze cannot do it, and it is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that a scarce book would be sought for, and prized when found, merely because it is scarce, and for no other reason. As every book-collector is aware, there are hundreds and thousands of volumes lying neglected on the book-stalls to-day which would never be there if this were not so. Some are scarce in the sense of being difficult to meet with when wanted, but, if that be their only merit, it has never yet been acknowledged.

But fashion, though it can never make a bad book good, has the power to subordinate one good book to another, notwithstanding, and to play shuttlecock with the names of authors and printers alike. It was fashion in excelsis which lived with the Elzevirs when men were saying to one another, 'I have all the poets they ever printed. I have ten examples of every volume, and all have red letters, and are of the right date.' It was fashion, too, which assessed the value of Longpierre's copy of Montaigne's 'Essais' (1659), with the buffalo's head on the preface and at the commencement of each chapter, at 5,100 francs, and only the other day (March 20, 1896) flung away a fine tall copy, bound by Bozerian, for the paltry sum of £6 15s.

The same capricious mistress assessed Sir Walter Raleigh's 'Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana,' 1626, at a comparatively low rate—£3 3s., if the late Mr. Henry Stevens is to be believed, and no one had a greater knowledge of such books than he—in 1858, notwithstanding the fact that it must be credited to Shakespeare's library, as the 'still vex'd Bermoothes,' and his knowledge of the breaking of the sea on the rugged rocks by which the Bermuda Islands are surrounded, sufficiently demonstrate. Thirty years ago Smith's 'Generall Historie of Virginia,' published for M. Sparkes in 1625, could have been got for a twentieth part of the sum that would be asked for it now, and this too is by Fashion's decree.

But in these and any number of typical instances there is no change in the estimation in which good literature is held; no lifting a book from an abyss of mediocrity and placing it on a pinnacle of fame. Fashion may swing men's minds to this or to that, and so indirectly and for the time being cause those ups and downs in the book-market which are the despair of everyone who has endeavoured to account for them, but further than this she cannot go.

And therefore, when I said that book-men are swayed by fashion, I meant that their tastes and inclinations are capricious, and not that they would, even if they could, enter upon the task of passing judgment upon the verdict of the world. Fashion may and does make rules which cannot be broken with impunity, so far as the pocket is concerned; it may even create an extraordinary and exceptional interest in one author to-day, and abandon him to-morrow, and do many other wonderful things to cause our unsympathetic neighbours to blaspheme; but the romance of book-collecting would be no romance were it stolidly kept at one dead level of insensibility. To employ a homely illustration—Fashion may decorate a house, it can neither build one nor raze one to the ground.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE RULES OF THE CHASE.

There was a time, and that not so very many years ago, when old books were, if only you got out of the central mart, difficult to procure, and by no means easy to store. They were frequently in folio, huge ponderous works which, unless they were of the very best, challenged the courage of all but veterans, as they looked down from their dark corners. There was no escaping them, no getting away from their costly presence, and no reading them either without sitting at a table; for 'literary machines' were not then invented, and no one seemed to care about lingering with arched back over a fire, with sixty or eighty pounds weight of paper on his knees. Such a discipline would have been valuable, no doubt, but learning grew lazy when it left the monasteries, and a table became a virtual necessity for most folk. After a time folios were turned into octavos, and the price cheapened. The 'extraneous Tegg,' as Carlyle calls the well-known bookseller, and our friends Cooke, Walker, Bell, and many more, commenced to cut the throat of the trade, and to ruin the honest author, by printing favourite books at such a very cheap rate that the public soon became totally demoralized. Cooke made an enormous fortune—for a book-seller—and died amid the plaudits of the mob and the curses of his competitors, for he had out-Heroded Herod in prostituting 'Tom Jones,' a thing deemed impossible, by publishing the text in numbers,verbatim et literatim, at a scandalously cheap price. Then he approached other 'British novelists' in turn, and went through the entire pantheon, winding up with a series of sacred classics. Cooke was a man of immense resource, and no scruples; he got the author out of the way (I don't say he murdered him), sold up his rivals, and positively lived to an advanced age—three crimes which procured him hosts of enemies, but nevertheless altered the whole system of publishing, and solved for ever the problem whether it is better or worse for the producer to sell fifty articles at a penny each, or a single one of the same kind for four and two.

Now, Cooke's procedure, and that of the other booksellers who were wise enough to follow his lead, not only had great influence in moulding the character of the bibliophiles of that day, but is directly responsible even now for many of those rules and regulations which their descendants are sticklers in the preservation of. A folio had always been bound in a manner suitable to its bulk, and in such a way as to render a new binding unnecessary for a very long time, and there was, consequently, little or no necessity for rules of any kind for its preservation. When the folio was hoisted to its place, there it would stop, or, if taken down, it would be with a considerable amount of caution.

Not so Cooke's cheap and easily handled productions. They were light and airy, and bound in millboard, which, after a moderate use, never failed to come to pieces. As a matter of fact, nearly all Cooke's books met with on the stalls to-day show unmistakable evidence of honest handling. They are thumbed, perhaps torn, and always very feeble in the cover. Should it have been worth anyone's while to rebind one of these cheap little volumes, we may be sure that it will show a stout leather cover, and be scrupulously cut down to the headlines for the sake of the shavings. This cropping of margins was no crime then, because there was no rule to the contrary, and Cooke turned out his books in such numbers that they were really of very trifling value at any time. Before his day, it was a common practice for the publishers themselves to have their books bound in leather, and for the binders to cut as much of the margins away as they decently could.

For instance, let us revert to 'Tom Jones,' one of the first books experimented upon by the first of really cheap publishers. When this novel came out, in 1749, it made its appearance in six small volumes bound uniformly in leather, with edges more or less cropped. This cropping process seems to have pleased Fielding immensely, or at any rate there is no doubt in the world that he preferred to see his handiwork issued in the way common to folios, rather than in boards with ragged edges, for a sample set of volumes was done up in the latter style and rejected.

We think him foolish, because not very long ago the sample set was discovered in an old farmhouse, and, after changing hands once or twice, packed off to the auction-rooms, where it realized the handsome sum of £69. A little bit of paper made an immense difference in this case, for its presence was in conformity with an imperative rule that has grown up since Fielding's day, and which lays it down that never—no, never—must a book be denuded of its margins if you wish to make the most of it. Whatever its quality, do not deprive it of the minutest fraction of its legitimate area of paper. Of course, this drastic regulation came into force when books began to be generally published, not in folio or quarto, but in a smaller and more handy size.

Collectors, whether of books or anything else, are content at first with a little. Their requirements are indeed boundless, so far as number is concerned; but they have not yet become solicitous of technical or minute distinctions. A book is a book, and a coin is a coin, and they are satisfied without it, provided it is substantially the same as some other copy of the same edition, or some other coin struck from the same die, which they happen to have. After a while, however, a very natural desire to excel produces its inevitable result, and all sorts of arbitrary variations are catalogued and insisted upon by those who have plenty of money, and at the same time pride themselves on their discrimination and taste. Thus it is that a comparatively scarce book, this first edition of 'Tom Jones,' for instance, may become excessively scarce under exceptional circumstances. True, the collector who is a terrible stickler for detail may, and probably will, be charged sooner or later with being a fool for his pains; but that penalty he is content to accept, happy in the consciousness, that, when everything is said and done, he has chosen the better part, which in all these cases consists in leaving well alone.

Not long ago a London newspaper, which ought to have known better, was very angry with a collector of the circumspect school because he had boasted that all the books in his library were 'uncut.' 'This shows,' said the sage who wrote the article, 'that he has a hundred or more books which he has never read, and, what is worse, has no intention of reading.' He thought that 'uncut' meant 'not cut open,' and perhaps thinks so still, for it was worth no one's while to teach him his business, and so the matter dropped.

The cropping of books has, indeed, become as iniquitous as the old Star Chamber practice of cropping of ears, or perhaps even more so, for some at least of the delinquents who appeared to the usual Writ of Rebellion, which it was the practice of that tribunal to issue from time to time, richly deserved all they got. The proper way to deal with a book is to burn it if it be wicked, and if not, to leave it alone; though, if this fact had always been recognised, there would have been no scope for us in the matter of broad expanse of margin, since what everybody has no one craves for.

Fine bindings are a law unto themselves, and require separate consideration; but there is a matter connected with bindings generally, or, rather, with the advisability of binding at all, which has created a considerable amount of scandal in times past. Let us take that scarce book, 'The English Dance of Death,' which William Combe wrote in the safe seclusion of the King's Bench Prison. It appeared originally in 1815 in parts, each with its wrapper, and afterwards was bound up in two volumes, whereupon it at once lost, according to present-day ideas on the subject, five-sixths of its value.

The 'Tale of Two Cities' when in the original eight parts is worth three times as much, at least, as when in the publisher's cloth binding, and nearly all Thackeray's more important works are subject to a very considerable reduction under identical circumstances. Curiously enough, the rule is imperative in certain specific instances, while in others it has no application at all. The question whether to apply it or not depends on the character of the book. We should insist upon the parts being left unbound in the case of 'Bells and Pomegranates,' but not in that of Trusler's 1833 edition of 'Hogarth Moralized,' for here the twenty-six parts are a positive nuisance unless they are bound. Trusler's melancholy production is not much good, bound or unbound, but it will serve as an illustration, and certain it is that the cost of binding will have to be taken into consideration when estimating the worth of the numbers, in case anyone thrusts them upon a long-suffering purchaser, and will not be denied.

'Fools you are!' says Sir Ensor Doone, under other circumstances, and 'Idiots!' adds the man in the street when he reads that somebody has paid a large sum for 'Ask Mamma' in the 'original thirteen parts,' when he could, had he been so minded, have got the entire book, nicely bound, for a fourth of the money—plates, text, and all. This is the cry whenever a sum which appears exorbitant on the face of it is paid for anything.

A short time ago £445 was obtained for a fiddle by Stradivari; £798 for an imperfect silver cup made by Jacob Frolich, master of Nuremberg in 1555; and £246 odd for a rose-point flounce of Venetian lace three yards long. Nothing was said about the enormity of these sums, but let a fiftieth part of the smallest amount be realized at any time for a book 'in parts,' and there is a chorus of disapprobation, for which, however, it must be confessed, there is just a modicum of warrant.

It is really not at all easy to see why a series of numbers, liable at any moment to injury, and always inconvenient to handle, should, the quality of the plates, if there are any, and other accessories being equal, be so greatly preferred to a volume bound in a proper manner. Perhaps it is a matter of sentiment, perhaps of pure scarcity, or perhaps thebonâ-fidebook-collector likes to give himself as much trouble as he possibly can, by way of purifying his life and chastening his soul. However this may be, there is no question that some books are thought more highly of when in sections, and that the public in their blindness fail to see the reason why.

Well, there is, at any rate, much less reason, one would think, in paying £246 for a lace flounce wherewith to minister to the vanity of some middle-aged dame than there is for incurring a fractional obligation for classic works, which will outlast us by many a day, even though they may have the fortune to be uncut and in parts as issued. And besides, O shade of Mr. Burgess! did you not ignore in your lifetime the rule that it were best to let well alone, and were not the consequences terrible in the extreme?[#]

[#] The library of the late Mr. Frederick Burgess was sold by Messrs. Sotheby on May 31 and three subsequent days, 1894. It consisted almost entirely of then 'Fashionable' books, illustrated by Cruikshank and other talented artists. Parts had been bound up, original cloth covers removed, and expensive bindings substituted, not merely in a few instances, but as a general rule. The collection, though an excellent one of its kind, was disposed of at an enormous sacrifice.

Whether any regulations are really necessary for the proper preservation of books old or new let the bibliophiles determine; but so long as they exist it is folly to ignore them. Nay, further, to be as far upon the safe side as possible, we must prefer to buy our books with due regard to those rules and orders which our progenitors have in their wisdom drawn up, selecting the very best copies we can afford to pay or obtain credit for, and even going to the length of investing in 'parts' which shall not shame us, or cause us loss when the inevitable hour of parting arrives.

The cardinal rule of the game is triple-headed, and it is this: Buy the best you can, spend what you find convenient without stint, and, above all, keep to the track you have mapped out for yourself and have so far followed. Then will it be well with you now and hereafter in all things bookish. Act the contrary throughout, and every stiver you spend will swell the total of your confusion; drop by drop the clepsydra of your fortunes will run out to your bane.

But the rules which hem in the book-buyer, and direct his course, are not solely confined to technical points and details such as those mentioned. On the contrary, they are equally stringent in many other respects, and in particular as to the description of book to buy, its condition, and so on; for it is taken for granted that no man, or at least no bookman worthy the name, would purchase a bad or inferior edition when he could get a better, or a volume that was imperfect or had been shamefully used by a succession of careless owners. Between the quality of one edition and another there is often an immense difference, as all the world knows, or ought to know. That edition of '"Paradise Lost," a Poem in twelve books, the author John Milton, Printed for the Proprietors and sold by all the Booksellers,' no date, but about 1780, is one of the very worst that any misguided man ever picked up from a street stall. The mistakes, not merely in punctuation, but in spelling, are too gross and scandalous for mention; entire lines are not infrequently missing, and whole sentences often perverted. Contrast this with any copy of the first edition, no matter which title-page may have heralded it into the world, and we have a different book entirely. The rule says that, though an ordinary copy of the first edition may be three thousand times as valuable in money as this gutter abortion, you must nevertheless not be attracted by the latter because it is cheap—no, not even though you should think it good enough for everyday use.

Naturally enough there are free-lances among book-men, people who are a law unto themselves, and insist upon doing precisely as they like, but it will be noticed that they very rarely fly in the face of any rule in important cases. Your free-lance has the courage of the Seven Champions of Christendom when face to face with Stackhouse's 'History of the Bible,' but let him, for example, come across 'Tamerlaine, and other Poems, By a Bostonian;' not Herne Shepherd's London reprint, but the original tract which Calvin F. S. Thomas printed at Boston in 1827. Let us suppose also that it is in its original tea-tinted paper covers, just as Edgar Allen Poe sent it forth into the world. What would our free-lance do? Have it rebound in defiance of the rule? Hardly, for if he did he would reduce the importance of his exceptionally fortunate find, and therefore its value, to such a considerable extent that even he would hesitate long before committing himself to an act that could never be recalled. Moreover, he would have direct evidence with regard to a copy of this very Pamphlet before his eyes, for a collector once really did pick one up for a few pence. In the first place, let it be stated that only three copies of 'Tamerlaine' can now be traced. One is in the British Museum, which acquired it from the late Mr. Henry Stevens for one shilling. A second was found on a stall in America for the equivalent of something less, and it is this latter copy which furnishes the evidence referred to. The fortunate finder sent it to Messrs. C. F. Libbie and Co., the auctioneers of Boston, who sold it by auction in 1893 for the equivalent of £370 to the agents of Mr. George F. Maxwell, of New York, who had the pamphlet rebound in magnificent style by Lortic Fils, at a cost of several hundred dollars. Moreover, the covers were bound in, and the edges left untrimmed. No expense was spared; everything was done in proper order according to rule of thumb. Yet in April, 1895, when Mr. Maxwell's valuable library was sold by the same auctioneers, this copy of 'Tamerlaine,' vastly improved as one might think, dropped to £290, showing a clear loss of £80, irrespective altogether of the amount paid for binding, auctioneers' commission, and so on.

It may, of course, be said that it is a common thing for the same book to bring different amounts at different times, even when the sales take place within a few months of each other. A bookseller, dissatisfied with the amount bid for some scarce work he has put on the market, will frequently buy it in and offer it again later on with satisfactory results.

But 'Tamerlaine' is an altogether exceptional piece, and, moreover, where were the gentlemen who respectively bid £360 and £365 on the occasion when Mr. Maxwell secured it for a slightly larger sum? Wherever they were, they seem to have been fully alive to the fact that 'Tamerlaine' was not as it was when Poe sent it out for review ever so many years ago. 'Ah, broken is the golden bowl,' and it is to be feared by that talented binder, Lortic Fils. If ever I find 'Tamerlaine,' I shall keep every binder at arm's length, and not be tempted to paint the lily—no, not even though Derome himself should rise from the dead and offer to array it gratuitously in morocco, tooled to a heavenly pattern, and powdered all over with the fleurs-de-lys of imperial France. In this spirit let us reproduce the title-page of 'Tamerlaine,' as aFrontispieceto this Romance, so that we shall know it on the instant if the gods should only guide our feet to where a fourth copy lies hidden away. Then let us remember the rule to let well alone, and be thankful, for it is a rule of gold, the first and foremost of them all.

Never to outrage sentiment, always to identify one's self with the author as far as possible, is to respect both the living and the dead, and to make life comparatively easy, even though its path be strewn with flints and cobble-stones. May the person who has the maximum of respect for the private life and character of one of the greatest of modern poets eventually acquire the shabby copy of 'The Eve of St. Agnes' which the luckless half-immortal thrust into his pocket as theDon Juanwas sent to the bottom of the Gulf of Genoa. It will come with a train of associations that will on the instant forbid the elimination of a single stain, or the slightest repair of its sea-swept cover.

The book-hunter who has the feelings and aspirations of an ancient race properly diffused through his system would almost give his head for a relic such as this, for his passion is not to be stifled. He likes to think that the books he reads and handles have a pedigree, that they come to him laden with the fears and aspirations of the past, that they are ghost-haunted, and that they who wrote them, though dead, yet speak, not as man to man, but as soul to soul.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GLAMOUR OF BINDINGS.

There being in very truth no new thing under the sun, it would be egotistical in the highest degree, and absurd, to assert positively that the argument about to be advanced is at all novel, though it may certainly appear strange. It is, however, original so far as I am concerned, for I have not seen it hinted at before by anyone, much less carried to a conclusion. Whether there be any warrant for it or no is a point for others, who have a greater capacity for distinguishing reason in probabilities than I can lay claim to, to determine for themselves.

It is admitted by all writers who have studied the subject of bookbinding from its historical aspect, that, as the monks of the Middle Ages were the sole producers of books, so also they were the only binders, and that the record of their achievements dates from about 520 A.D., when Dagæus, the Irish monk, practised his art, to the invention of printing from movable types by Gutenberg and Fust nearly a thousand years later. Not merely in England, but all over Europe, the monks were practically the sole custodians of knowledge during the earlier part of this period; they alone produced books, they alone bound them, they alone could read them. There were, no doubt, laymen who could read and write, but neither accomplishment was general in the outer world. King Alfred (A.D. 870) was a scholar; William the Conqueror, two centuries later, could neither read nor write.

The Stowe MS. No. 960 contains all that remains of the register of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, from the time of King Canute, one of its earliest benefactors, to the Dissolution. Among the many interesting articles in this Stowe manuscript there is one which exceeds all the rest in interest, for it bears the actual cross, sign or signature made by William in testimony that he had granted 9 hides of land to the monks, in exchange for the site of the cemetery in the city of Winchester. The King has drawn with a quill a rude and most illiterate cross, if such a thing can be imagined. The ink has not flown evenly from a pen evidently held in a perpendicular position with tremulous and infirm grip. Each line begins with a splutter, and at the point of intersection there is what looks suspiciously like a blot. It is obvious at the first glance that King William, though a man of many accomplishments eminently useful in those days, was accustomed to wield the battle-axe rather than the pen. And this was so general for centuries after his day that, but for the monks, there would have been no learning at all, and no books all that time.

It is unnecessary to refer to this phase of the matter further than to say that all the ancient and medieval European manuscripts which still exist were written by ecclesiastics, and doubtless bound by them as well. Manuscripts of the ninth century, beautifully encased in ivory, silver and gold, and sometimes encrusted with precious stones, are still extant. These are undoubtedly monkish, and the question arises, What has become of the vast bulk of which these are but a remnant? What has become of the old English libraries that existed in hundreds at the time of the Reformation? Were they, all but a very few, wantonly destroyed by those who undertook the spoliation of the monasteries, or did many escape them? and if so, where are they now? The suggestion that innumerable volumes, particularly those which were handsomely and expensively bound, would never be seen by the raiders at all is not so improbable as it may at first sight appear, when we come to consider the facts.

In November, 1534, an Act of Parliament declared that 'the King's Highness was the supreme head of the Church of England, and had authority to reform and redress all errors, heresies, and abuses in the same.' This Act was speedily followed up, for in 1535 Cromwell, in his capacity of Vicar-General, proceeded to make a visitation of the monasteries, where he is said to have found such evidences of shameless immorality that another Act was passed, transferring such of these establishments to the Crown as were not of the annual value of £200.

The number of religious houses at this time dissolved, raided and sacked amounted to 376. With diabolical minuteness the revenues of each and all were estimated to the last penny. Bangor was worth £151 3s., and was accordingly seized on the spot. St. David easily escaped for the time being, for the revenue of that monastery proved to be £426 2s. 1d. St. Asaph, being assessed at £202 10s., escaped an early wreck by £2 10s. It was the same all over England and Wales. The revenue was estimated, and if it fell below £200, the monastery was at once filled with armed men, while Cromwell's experts stripped the walls of their arras, seized the gold and silver vessels, tore up the books, scoured the neighbourhood round about for game, tapped the vintage, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves in their own peculiar way.

It is recorded that priceless books and manuscripts were wantonly destroyed, tombs sacrilegiously broken to pieces for the sake of the metal, often merely lead or brass, that extolled the virtues or the lineage of those who slept below; silver and gold plate of exquisite workmanship, and of a degree of antiquity rarely, if ever, seen now, were melted down and sold by weight; buildings of an architectural beauty unsurpassed anywhere were wantonly defaced, and in many cases dismantled, for the sake of the materials, and in the midst of this disgraceful scene of plunder and desecration, the destroyers fought with one another as desperately as Roman gladiators of the days of Nero, for the possession of some coveted jewel or ornament that all wanted and only one could have.

Now here comes the crux of the argument. Only the smaller houses were dissolved at this time, and unless human nature were totally different in the days of Henry VIII. from what it is now, unless the Abbots of Furness, Bolton, Fountains, and other large and extremely rich monasteries, looked on unmoved while their humbler brethren were stripped to the skin and flung destitute into the lanes and ditches to die, then it is morally certain that they would take steps to protect themselves, as far as lay in their power, from the fury of the storm which they must have known would shortly burst over their heads. Unless they were wholly infatuated, they would cautiously and gradually remove their choicest possessions, their basins, images, censers, crucifixes and chalices, and above all their precious volumes, with which the very history and fortunes of the abbey were associated, and bury them deep down, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, under the walls.

The ruin brought at this time upon all that was priceless by reason of its antiquity and associations is incalculable, and the only ray of consolation let in upon these dark days' doings is that the Abbots of the larger monasteries, taking warning from what they saw going on all around, may have buried their choicest possessions, where, perhaps, they will be found some of these days, when the plough shall furrow up the dust of Furness or Denever.

Many of the inventories taken by the King's agents are extant. One of them, that of Fountains, taken just before the Dissolution, will suffice to show what is meant. The value of all the plate, gold and silver, amounted to £708 5s. 9-3/4d.—a comparatively small sum, seeing that the cattle, sheep and swine belonging to the abbey were of much greater value. Not a single book of any kind is scheduled, and yet the library of Fountains was at one time the most extensive and important in Yorkshire. As the Knights Templars buried their gold under the high altar in the church of the New Temple, yet standing within sound of the roar of Fleet Street, in order to protect it against the rapacity of Edward I., so it is suggested that the Abbots of Fountains and other surviving houses buried their treasures in the most sacred place they could think of, thereby handing them over, as it were, to God and the right, rather than abandon them to the tender mercies of man.

Now, this is merely an argument based upon probability; it cannot, from the very nature of the case, be supported by a scrap of evidence, and yet it carries with it such a ring of truth in my ears that, were I the happy owner of one of those fast-crumbling piles which still rear their rugged fronts to the sky, I would, by all the enamels of Limoges, by the ivory, gold and silver, and rubies which make up this glamour of bindings unseen, put the argument to the test without hesitation and regardless of cost.

Monastic bindings of English workmanship are not, as we may well understand, distinguished as a rule for extreme beauty. The gorgeous covers that protected illuminated manuscripts, themselves extremely valuable, were in vogue at a very early period, long before the invention of printing, and the vast majority were probably either hidden away as suggested, or destroyed. In any case, however, they must have been rare even a thousand years ago—as rare, indeed, as the exceptionally fine missals and breviaries they protected, some of which would take a monk his lifetime to produce. We find that by the fourteenth century monastic bindings were usually serviceable and plain, and that it was only occasionally that rich materials were employed, as, for example, when a King's library was added to, or some important monastery gave a special order by way of continuing the traditions of the house, and showing that time had not in any way curtailed its glories. The most interesting ancient bindings that yet survive to us consist of a specimen of the work of the monk Dagæus, which dates from about 520 A.D., and a manuscript known as the 'Textus Sanctus Cuthberti,' bound in velvet with a broad silver border, and inlaid with gems, by the first English binder, one Bilfred, a monk of Durham, who was living at the beginning of the eighth century. This is the holy volume that was swallowed up by the sea, and, according to the old legend, restored out of respect for the memory of the saint, or perhaps that of the monk or both.

We have, therefore, two styles of monastic bindings—one resplendent in gold, ivory, and precious stones, and the other of a more sober character for ordinary and daily use. The latter were of wood covered with embossed leather, or with plain shark skin, or even seal. They were ponderous, massive folios of great weight and durability, protected in vulnerable parts with brass or iron bosses and corner-plates. We find them produced as a matter of course to about the time of the Renaissance, when they gradually gave place to smaller books bound in velvet or silk, and embroidered by abbesses and nuns, and so the custom prevailed until the days of the first printers, when calf and morocco were introduced from the East by the Venetians, and pigskin or thick parchment became fashionable. Prior to this time oaken boards formed the groundwork of every binding, and to this day the word 'boards' is in general use, although the reason for its existence obtains no longer.

The Italians were the first to awaken to a sense of the propriety of things, and the modern collector to whom bindings appeal with an irresistible force instinctively turns to the first Italian era to supply him with some of the rarest and choicest examples of the art. The commoner monastic bindings have no beauty in his eyes, and those of a superior order and more costly finish are practically interred within the walls of great public institutions, from which they will, in the nature of things, never emerge. For some reason or other the finest binding loses its glamour, if not its interest, when exhibited in a glass case. We must have these things for our own before we can appreciate them to the full. What more melancholy mortal than a public curator trying to work himself up into a state of enthusiasm as he describes the objects committed to his care? They are mere pots and pans and 'things,' but yet how different if he had them all at home!

But to return to our bindings. Let it be observed that with the invention of printing, and the consequent production of books in a more portable form, the modern style of binding was gradually introduced. These were the days of deep-toned leathers, ornamented in gold and variegated colours, and executed for wealthy and powerful Italian families, who employed skilful artists to draw the designs, often consisting of geometrical interfacings or foliage, such as Maioli and Grolier rejoiced in.

This style of ornamenting leather came from the East, as did the Saracenic rope ornament, which was perhaps the first design to take the fancy of Italian workmen. The general appearance of this rope design reminds one of the frontispiece to a certain 'Biography of Jack Ketch,' which someone brought out a few years ago. The half-length portrait of the hero is within a graceful border of ropes intertwined, there are ropes tumbling from the clouds, and he holds a rope in his hand, as if ready to begin. Behind, so far as my memory serves me, there is the frowning portal of Newgate, festooned with fetters. A panel of Saracenic rope-design set on end reminds one of this frontispiece, and we listen instinctively for the tolling of the prison bell.

The celebrated printer Aldus Manutius seems to have been the first to rebel against such sinister designs as these, and, moreover, he was the friend of Jean Grolier and Thommaso Maioli, princes among book-lovers, and artists by nature. Aldus often bound the books he printed in smooth, rich morocco, tooled in gold to various patterns of elaborate design, and to him we doubtless owe much of the improvement in binding which became so marked at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His were, indeed, publishers' bindings produced by rule of thumb, but they are not on that account less worthy of interest, for the name of Aldus is one to conjure with in all things bookish.

The Thommaso Maioli to whom reference has been made exercised a much greater influence than Aldus ever did in the matter of bindings, for his were the models on which were fashioned the designs of later collectors, not merely of Italy, but of France and other European countries. Maioli's designs are free and open, in a style suggestive of Eastern influence, but reduced to earth and reality by perpendicular and perfectly straight lines. His library was open to his friends, and most of his books were lettered on the covers 'Tho. Maioli et amicorum,' qualified sometimes by other words of different import, 'Ingratis servire nephas.' Very likely Maioli was on occasion the victim of some too ardent bibliophile, who would think nothing of borrowing, and perhaps also of some Philistine, who left ruin in the trail of his dirty or heavy fingers.

So, too, Jean Grolier, whom Dibdin ludicrously turns into a bookbinder, but who was, in fact, the French contemporary and twin soul of Maioli, chose to follow the traditions of all true book-lovers, and his covers also bear the courteous invitation to friends, 'Io Grolierii et amicorum,' though he too found occasion to alter it from time to time.

The bindings of Maioli and Grolier, worked out and finished most probably at Venice for the most part, are highly valued by collectors all over the world, and they are indeed worthy of all the attention they receive.

The bindings of Maioli are more difficult to meet with than those of Grolier, because the library of the latter numbered some 8,000 volumes, and was eventually sold by auction and dispersed broadcast. Grolier's descendants had no false sentiment in their composition; the 'amici' were themselves, and they acted in their own interests, in strict accordance with their interpretation of the family motto. Besides, in those days, though the love of books raged furiously in isolated breasts, in general it was cold, and no one could probably have been found to take over the entire library, or even that considerable portion of it which at the last lay among the dust and cobwebs of the Hôtel de Vic.

Rarer than any of this period, however, are the medallion bindings of Demetrio Canevari, physician to Pope Urban VII., who was living in the year 1600. In all probability Canevari merely inherited his books, for their covers belong to an earlier period. Still, whatever the fact in this respect, they are called after his name, and are very scarce, notwithstanding that the whole library was intact at Genoa until 1823. Libri thought that these delicate and elaborate bindings had never been surpassed, and certainly they are very beautiful, with their cameos in gold, silver, and colours enriched with classical portraits and mythological scenes.

But to the lover of bindings it is Grolier, Grolier, Grolier; from the haunting music of that name there is no escape, and, moreover, Grolier even in death was great. The Emperor Charles V. did not disdain to follow his taste, while Francis I. was completely carried away by it, his bindings, as soon as he could shake off the early influence of Etienne Roffet, being magnificently Grolieresque, blazing with gold and the brightest colours. Then came Henri II. and the accomplished Diane de Poictiers, whose emblems, the crescent moon, the bow, quiver and arrows of the chase, are invariably found associated with the initial of the King. Diane was the royal mistress, and seems to have had a passion for blending the two linked D's with the regal H. This joint monogram was on the walls and furniture of her Château of Anet, and still stares us out of countenance occasionally from behind glass doors. Diane, however, so long as she had it in her power—that is to say, until 1559, when the King died—did everything she could to introduce a taste for magnificent and sumptuous bindings into France; to eclipse once and for all time the efforts of every book-lover who had preceded her. In a measure she succeeded, and certainly no good books come to us, when they come at all, which is but seldom, breathing more of romance than these volumes which Diane treasured till her dying day, in spite of Court frowns and persecution. Her library, which was a very extensive one, remained intact at Anet until 1723, when it was sold.

It would be almost an endless task to name all the patrons of artistic bindings who lived in France up to about the time of the Revolution. There was the legitimate Queen of Henri II., Catherine de Medicis, a descendant of the great Lorenzo, called the Magnificent, whose books are often covered in white calf, powdered with golden flowers. This lady was an enthusiastic book-lover, who, when she died, left a library of some 4,000 volumes, most of which are still to be seen in the Bibliotheque Nationale.

Then we must not forget her son, Francis II., who married the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. His bindings, whether stamped with the golden dolphin or with a monogram in which his own and the Queen's initials are interlaced, are extremely scarce, and worth much gold. Francis was only seventeen when he died, and had, consequently, no time to become thoroughly saturated with the intense longing for beautiful decorations which probably did much to set Catherine de Medicis and the fair Diane by the ears. His younger brother, afterwards Henri III., had greater opportunities for indulging his tastes in this respect, and the history of his bibliopegic life, so to speak, is full of strange surprises.

Like all other bindings with a history, specimens from the library of this gloomy and taciturn monarch are very rarely met with. They are distinctly worth looking at, however, especially by those of a morbid turn of mind. They are more suggestive than the Saracenic rope style, and infinitely more eloquent of woe. Henri ought to have married the Princess Condé, but she died, and the young King, then about twenty-four years old, and apparently influenced by the example of his father and mother, turned for consolation to his library, and the designing of emblems congenial to his mood.

These consist, at least at this period, when his grief was young and fresh, of skulls garnished with cross-bones, tears, and other emblems of the grave. They are, in their way, absolutely unique, and much more remarkable than the curled snake of Colbert or the three towers of Madame de Pompadour. The bindings of Henri III., though uncongenial to most tastes, are of excellent design and workmanship, for Nicholas and Clovis Eve were living in his day, and better artists than they proved themselves to be it would be hopeless to look for. It was one or other of the brothers who introduced the fanfare style, which resolved itself finally into a profusion of small flourished ornaments, so closely worked together that a volume bound in this way looked as though picked out ethereally with sprays, scrolls, and showers of golden rain. The fanfare style was, so it is said, introduced to put an end to the suicidal gloom that had overtaken the Court of Henri III.

That monarch, though a bad man, was probably the most original thinker in the matter of bindings who ever lived, for De Thou's plan of inventing a fresh design every time he got married resolved itself into nothing more than a series of heraldic changes, and De Thou is generally credited with a considerable amount of ingenuity, and regarded as a person distinctly worth collecting on account of the variations in which he is found, and for other reasons. Every book which touches, however remotely, on the subject of bindings never fails to give the armorial bearings of De Thou at different periods of his life; and we must pass on to Marguerite de Valois; not the celebrated Queen of Navarre who wrote the 'Heptameron' in her youth, but the daughter of Henri II., already mentioned as a great lover of bindings. Marguerite very appropriately, having regard to the origin of her name, chose designs of daisies, which she placed in oval compartments bearing the quarterings of Valois, the whole being surrounded with leafy and branching scroll-work. Clovis Eve was her binder, and the work he turned out at this period is in his best style.

The history of bookbinding takes a curious turn at this epoch. Hitherto we have heard more of the patron than of the artist, a state of things which from this time forth exists no longer. I would not commit myself to the assertion that Marguerite de Valois, who, by the way, died in 1615, was the last of the great collectors who eclipsed the reputation of the binders they employed; but I know that about this period we begin to hear more of the workman and less of the patron. When everybody of the least importance begins to collect books, and to have them bound in specially designed covers, the artist rises on the ashes of the amateur, whose day is from that time forth over and gone, except in the limited circle in which he moves. So it was at the epoch which immediately followed the death of Marguerite de Valois. The Eves had forced their way into notice in spite of the overwhelming presence of Henri II., Diane de Poictiers and Charles IX., Henri III. and IV., and other less-exalted persons; and now Le Gascon made his presence felt still more forcibly than they.

Le Gascon, who is identified with one Florimond Badier, introduced a style of ornamentation known aspointillé, consisting of graceful geometrical designs worked out with innumerable minute gold dots, usually on a ground of bright scarlet. The effect of a perfectly fresh and bright binding by Le Gascon must have been brilliant in the extreme; but, alas! the cost was something phenomenal, and the style, after being parodied and imitated by mechanical process, finally died out in France some thirty-five years after its introduction. Mazarin was the great patron of Le Gascon, and many books which once belonged to the great Cardinal are found with ornamentation, arms and motto—'His Fulta Manebunt'—laboriously picked out in the beautifulpointilléstyle.

During the latter part of the sixteenth century, and during the whole of the seventeenth, the French bookbinders had no equal, and if they afterwards deteriorated, they had still many great names among their ranks. Padeloup's binding of a 'Daphne et Chloe' of 1718, with the arms of the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, is a masterpiece; and then there are his bindings in mosaic, looking like lace-work, and the masterly designs worked out for Madame de Pompadour, Queen Maria Leczinska, and many other celebrities. Derome, the Abbé Du Sueil, and Monnier were all fine binders, whose work is eagerly sought for. And then comes the French Revolution, which for the time being seems to have utterly demoralized art in all its branches. Most modern collectors who affect notable bindings have to look to later days, when the surge and storm of the turmoil had passed away, and when Thouvenin, Bauzonnet, Duru, Trantz, Lortic, Marius-Michel, and many more, were in their prime.

English bindings, so far as past times are concerned, were never remarkable for refinement or taste. Velvet or silk, frequently embroidered and tasselled, was often used for royal books, and we also meet with pasteboard covered with leather and studded with gilt ornaments on the back. There is, however, not a trace of the genius of Le Gascon or Derome in any of these productions, and the designs show very little originality. Occasionally, however, an English binding is produced which, bound in morocco—the introduction of which is placed to the credit of James I.—has an extremely good effect, as in the case of the 'Pontificale Romanum,' 1595, now in the British Museum. This specimen is elaborately gold-tooled with the arms and badges of the King. A facsimile of it will be found facing page 228 of Mr. W. Salt Brassington's 'History of the Art of Bookbinding.' It is a clever and characteristic piece of work in brown morocco, and gives a very good idea of the highest form of English art of the period which it was possible to produce.

The English, however, have never been at any period particularly conspicuous for their talent in the art of designing book-covers, and it is probable that the majority of well-informed persons who have not made a study of this branch of art would, in case they were asked to enumerate half a dozen good binders of English nationality, find themselves unable to mention more than one. They would begin and end with the talented but eccentric and thirsty Roger Payne, whose bindings are often original and elegant, and who might, had he been able to keep himself respectable, have attained an excellence worthy of the palmy days of France. But Payne chose to live in a tumbledown garret, denuded of plaster, and spent his money in the proportion of

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