There are so many gaps in our knowledge of the history of books in
England that we can hardly claim that our own dwelling is set in order,
and yet many of our bookmen appear more inclined to re-decorate their
neighbour's houses than to do work that still urgently needs to be done
at home. The reasons for this transference of energy are not far to
seek. It is quite easy to be struck with the inferiority of English
books and their accessories, such as bindings and illustrations, to
those produced in the same centuries on the Continent. Thus to compare
the books printed by Caxton with the best work of his German or Italian
contemporaries, to compare the books bound for Henry, Prince of Wales,
with those bound for the Kings of France, to try to find even a dozen
English books printed before 1640 with woodcuts (not imported from
abroad) of any real artistic merit--if any one is anxious to reinforce
his national modesty, here are three very efficacious methods of doing
it! On the other hand, English book-collectors have always been
cosmopolitan in their tastes, and without leaving England it is possible
to study to some effect, in public or private libraries, the finest
books of almost any foreign country. It is small wonder, therefore, that
our bookmen, when they have been minded to write on their hobbies, have
sought beauty and stateliness of work where they could most readily
find them, and that the labourers in the bookfield of our own country
are not numerous. Touchstone's remark, 'a poor thing, but mine own,'
might, on the worst view of the case, have suggested greater diligence
at home; but on a wider view English book-work is by no means a 'poor
thing.' Its excellence at certain periods is as striking as its
inferiority at others, and it is a literal fact that there is no art or
craft connected with books in which England, at one time or another, has
not held the primacy in Europe.
[16] From the introduction to the 'English Bookman's Library,' by
leave of Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co.
It would certainly be unreasonable to complain that printing with
movable types was not invented at a time better suited to our national
convenience. Yet the fact that the invention was made just in the middle
of the fifteenth century constituted a handicap by which the printing
trade in this country was for generations overweighted. At almost any
earlier period, more particularly from the beginning of the fourteenth
century to the first quarter of the fifteenth, England would have been
as well equipped as any foreign country to take its part in the race.
From the production of Queen Mary's Psalter at the earlier date to that
of the Sherborne Missal at the later, English manuscripts, if we may
judge from the scanty specimens which the evil days of Henry VIII. and
Edward VI. have left us, may vie in beauty of writing and decoration
with the finest examples of Continental art. If John Siferwas, instead
of William Caxton, had introduced printing into England, our English
incunabula would have taken a far higher place. But the sixty odd years
which separate the two men were absolutely disastrous to the English
book-trade. Already exhausted by the futile war with France, England was
torn asunder by the wars of the Roses, and by the time these were ended
the school of illumination, so full of promise, and seemingly so firmly
established, had absolutely died out. When printing was introduced
England possessed no trained illuminators or skilful scribes such as in
other countries were obliged to make the best of the new art in order
not to lose their living, nor were there any native wood-engravers ready
to illustrate the new books. I have never myself seen or heard of a
'Caxton' in which an illuminator has painted a preliminary border or
initial letters; even the rubrication, where it exists, is usually a
disfigurement; while as for pictures, it has been unkindly said that
inquiry whence they were obtained is superfluous, since any boy with a
knife could have cut them as well.
Making its start under these unfavourable conditions, the English
book-trade was exposed at once to the full competition of the
Continental presses, Richard III. expressly excluding it from the
protection which was given to other industries. Practically all learned
books of every kind, the great majority of our service-books, most
grammars for use in English schools, and even a few popular books of the
kind to which Caxton devoted himself, were produced abroad for the
English market and freely imported. Only those who mistake the shadow
for the substance will regret this free trade, to which we owe the
development of scholarship in England during the sixteenth century. None
the less, it was hard on a young industry, and though Pynson, Wynkyn de
Worde, the Faques, Berthelet, Wolfe, John Day, and others produced fine
books in England during the sixteenth century, the start given to the
Continental presses was too great, and before our printers had fully
caught up their competitors, they too were seized with the carelessness
and almost incredible bad taste which marks the books of the first half
of the seventeenth century in every country of Europe.
Towards the close of the eighteenth century, as is well known, the
French thought sufficiently well of Baskerville's types to purchase a
fount after his death for the printing of an important edition of the
works of Voltaire. But the merits of Baskerville as a printer, never
very cordially admitted, are now more hotly disputed than ever; and if I
am asked at what period English printing has attained that occasional
primacy which I have claimed for our exponents of all the bookish arts,
I would boldly say that it possesses it at the present day. On the one
hand, the Kelmscott Press books and those of the Doves Press, on their
own lines, are the finest and most harmonious which have ever been
produced; on the other, the book-work turned out in the ordinary way of
business by the five or six leading printers of England and Scotland
seems to me, both in technical qualities and in excellence of taste, the
finest in the world, and with no rival worth mentioning, except in the
work of one or two of the best firms in the United States. Moreover, as
far as I can learn, it is only in Great Britain and America that the
form of books is now the subject of the ceaseless experiment and
ingenuity which are the signs of a period of artistic activity.
As regards book-illustration the same claim may be put forward, though
with a little more hesitation. We have been taught lately, with
insistence, that 'the sixties' marked an epoch in English art, solely
from the black and white work in illustrated books. At that period our
book-pictures are said to have been the best in the world; unfortunately
our book-decoration, whether better or worse than that of other
countries, was almost unmitigatedly bad. In the last quarter of a
century our decorative work has improved in the most striking manner;
our illustrations, if judged merely for their pictorial qualities, have
not advanced. In the eyes of artists the sketches for book-work now
being produced in other countries are probably as good as our own. But
an illustration is not merely a picture, it is a picture to be placed in
a certain position in a printed book, and in due relation to the size of
the page and the character of the type. English book-illustrators by no
means always realise this distinction, yet there is on the whole a
greater feeling for these proprieties in English books than in those of
other countries, and this is an important point in estimating merits.
Another important point is that the rule of the 'tint' or 'half-tone'
block, with its inevitable accompaniment of loaded paper, ugly to the
eye and heavy in the hand, though it has seriously damaged English
illustrated work, has not yet gained the predominance it has in other
countries. Our best illustrated books are printed from line-blocks, and
there are even signs of a possible revival of artistic wood-engraving.
In endeavouring to make good my assertion of what I have called the
occasional primacy of English book-work, I am not unaware of the danger
of trying, or seeming to try, to play the strains of 'Rule Britannia' on
my own poor penny whistle. As regards manuscripts, therefore, it is a
pleasure to be able to seek shelter behind the authority of Sir Edward
Maunde Thompson, whose words in this connection carry all the more
weight, because he has shown himself a severe critic of the claims which
have been put forward on behalf of several fine manuscripts to be
regarded as English. In the closing paragraphs of his monograph on
'English Illuminated Manuscripts' he thus sums up the pretensions of the
English school:--
'The freehand drawing of our artists under the Anglo-Saxon kings
was incomparably superior to the dead copies from Byzantine models
which were in favour abroad. The artistic instinct was not
destroyed, but rather strengthened, by the incoming of Norman
influence; and of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there is
abundant material to show that English book-decoration was then at
least equal to that of neighbouring countries. For our art of the
early fourteenth century we claim a still higher position, and
contend that no other nation could at that time produce such
graceful drawing. Certainly inferior to this high standard of
drawing was the work of the latter part of that century; but still,
as we have seen, in the miniatures of this time we have examples of
a rising school of painting which bid fair to attain to a high
standard of excellence, and which only failed for political
causes.'[17]
[17] 'English Illuminated Manuscripts.' By Sir Edward Maunde
Thompson K.C.B. (Kegan Paul, 1895), pp. 66, 67.
To this judicial pronouncement on the excellence of English manuscripts
on their decorative side, we may fairly add the fact that manuscripts of
literary importance begin at an earlier date in England than in any
other country, and that the Cotton MS. of 'Beowulf' and the miscellanies
which go by the names of the 'Exeter Book' and the 'Vercelli Book,' have
no contemporary parallels in the rest of Europe.
When we turn from books, printed or in manuscript, to their possessors,
it is only just to begin with a compliment to our neighbours across the
Channel. No English bookman holds the unique position of Jean Grolier,
and _les femmes bibliophiles_ of England have been few and
undistinguished compared with those of France. Grolier, however, and his
fair imitators, as a rule, bought only the books of their own day,
giving them distinction by the handsome liveries which they made them
don. Our English collectors have more often been of the omnivorous type,
and though Lords Lumley and Arundel in the sixteenth century cannot,
even when their forces are joined, stand up against De Thou, in Sir
Robert Cotton, Harley, Thomas Rawlinson, Lord Spencer, Heber, Grenville,
and Sir Thomas Phillipps (and the list might be doubled without much
relaxation of the standard), we have a succession of English collectors
to whom it would be difficult to produce foreign counterparts. Round
these _dii majores_ have clustered innumerable demigods of the
book-market, and certainly in no other country has collecting been as
widely diffused, and pursued with so much zest, as in England during the
present century. It is to be regretted that so few English collectors
have cared to leave their marks of ownership on the books they have
taken so much pleasure in bringing together. Michael Wodhull was a model
in this respect, for his book-stamp is one of the most pleasing of
English origin, and his autograph notes recording the prices he paid for
his treasures, and his assiduous collation of them, make them doubly
precious in the eyes of subsequent owners. Mr. Grenville also had his
book-stamp, though there is little joy to be won from it, for it is
unpleasing in itself, and is too often found spoiling a fine old
binding. Mr. Cracherode's stamp was as graceful as Wodhull's; but, as a
rule, our English collectors, though, as is shown elsewhere in this
volume, many more of them than is generally known have possessed a
stamp, have not often troubled to use it, and their collections have
never obtained the reputation which they deserve, mainly for lack of
marks of ownership to keep them green in the memory of later possessors.
That this should be so in a country where book-plates have been so
common may at first seem surprising. But book-plates everywhere have
been used rather by the small collectors than the great ones, and the
regrettable peculiarity of our English bookmen is, not that they
despised this rather fugitive sign of possession, but that for the most
part they despised book-stamps as well.
Of book-plates themselves I have no claim to speak; but for good taste
and grace of design the best English Jacobean and Chippendale specimens
seem to me the most pleasing of their kind, and certainly in our own day
the work of Mr. Sherborne has no rival, except in that of Mr. French,
who, in technique, would, I imagine, not have refused to call himself
his disciple.
Turning lastly to bindings, the first point which may fairly be made is
that England is the only country besides France in which the art has
been consistently pursued with success through many centuries, and that
in length of pedigree it far surpasses even France herself. Early in the
twelfth century, if not before, the Winchester bookmen turned their
attention also to leather-binding, and the school of design which they
started, spreading to London, Durham, and Oxford, did not die out until
it was ousted by the large panel stamps introduced from France at the
end of the fifteenth century. During the first half of this period the
English leather-binders were the finest in Europe; during the second,
the Germans pressed them hard, and when the large panel stamps, three or
four inches square and more, were introduced in Holland and France, the
English adaptations of them were distinctly inferior to the originals.
The earliest English bindings with gold tooling were, of course, also
imitative. The use of gold reached this country but slowly, as the
first known English binding, in which it occurs, is on a book printed
in 1541, by which time the art had been common in Italy for a
generation. The English bindings found on books bound for Henry VIII.,
Edward VI., and Mary I., all of which are roughly assigned to Berthelet
as the Royal binder, resemble the current Italian designs of the day,
with sufficient differences to make it probable that they were produced
by Englishmen. We know, however, that until the close of the century
there were occasional complaints of the presence of foreign binders in
London, and it is probable that the Grolieresque bindings executed for
Wotton were foreign rather than English. Where, however, we find work on
English books distinctly unlike anything in France or Italy, it is
reasonable to assign it to a native school, and such a school seems to
have grown up about 1570, in the workshop of John Day, the helper of
Archbishop Parker in so many of his literary undertakings. These
bindings attributed to Day, especially those in which he worked with
white leather on brown, although they have none of the French delicacy
of tooling, may fairly be said to attack the problem of decoration with
a greater sense of the difference between the styles suitable for a
large book and a small than is always found in France, where the
greatest binders, such as Nicholas Eve and Le Gascon, often covered
large folios with endless repetitions of minute tools, whose full beauty
can only be appreciated on small decimos or octavos. The English designs
with a large centre ornament and corner-pieces are rich and impressive,
and we may fairly give Day and his fellows the palm for originality and
effectiveness among Elizabethan binders. In the next reign the French
use of the semis or powder, a single small stamp, of a fleur-de-lys, a
thistle, a crown, or the like, impressed in rows all over the cover,
was increasingly imitated in England, very unsuccessfully, and, save for
a few traces of the style of Day, the leather bindings of the first
third of the century deserve the worst epithets which can be given them.
Until, however, French fashions came into vogue after the Restoration,
English binders had never been content to regard leather as the sole
material in which they could work. Embroidered bindings had come into
use in England in the fourteenth century, and in the sixteenth
embroidered work was very popular with the Tudor princesses, gold and
silver thread and pearls being largely used, often with very decorative
effect. The simplest of these are also the best--but, as a rule, much
elaboration was employed, and on a presentation copy of Archbishop
Parker's 'De Antiquitate Ecclesiae Britannicae' we find a clever but
rather grotesque representation of a deer-paddock. Under the Stuarts the
lighter feather-stitch was preferred, and there seems to have been a
regular trade in embroidered Bibles and Prayer-books of small size,
sometimes with floral patterns, sometimes with portraits of the King, or
Scriptural scenes. A dealer's freak which compelled the British Museum
to buy a pair of elaborate gloves of the period rather than lose a
finely embroidered Psalter, with which they went, was certainly a
fortunate one, enabling us to realise that in hands thus gloved these
little bindings, always pretty, often really artistic, must have looked
exactly right, while their vivid colours must have been admirably in
harmony with the gay Cavalier dresses.
Besides furnishing a ground for embroidery, velvet bindings were often
decorated, in England, with goldsmith work. One of the most beautiful
little bookcovers in existence is on a book of prayers, bound for Queen
Elizabeth in red velvet, with a centre and corner pieces delicately
enamelled on gold. Under the Stuarts, again, we frequently find similar
ornaments in engraved silver, and their charm is incontestable.
Thus while for English bindings of this period in gilt leather we can
only claim that Berthelet's show some freedom in their adaptation of
Italian models, and Day's a more decided originality, we are entitled to
set side by side with this scanty record a host of charming bindings in
more feminine materials, which have no parallel in France, and certainly
deserve some recognition. After the Restoration, however, leather
quickly ousted its competitors, and a school of designers and gilders
arose in England, which, while taking its first inspiration from Le
Gascon, soon developed an individual style. In effectiveness, if not in
minute accuracy of execution, this may rank with the best in Europe. We
can trace the beginnings of this lighter and most graceful work as early
as the thirties, and it might be contended with a certain plausibility
that it began at the Universities. Certainly the two earliest examples
known to me--the copy of her 'Statutes' presented to Charles I. by
Oxford in 1634, and the Little Gidding 'Harmony' of 1635, the tools
employed in which have been shown by Mr. Davenport to have been used
also by Buck, of Cambridge--are two of the finest English bindings in
existence, and in both cases, despite the multiplicity of the tiny tools
employed, there is a unity and largeness of design which, as I have
ventured to hint, is not always found even in the best French work. The
chief English bindings after the Restoration, those associated with the
name of Samuel Mearne, the King's binder, preserves this character,
though the attempt to break the formality of the rectangle by the
bugles at the side and the little penthouses at foot and head (whence
its name, the 'cottage' style) was not wholly successful. The use of the
labour saving device of the 'roll,' in preference to impressing each
section of the pattern by hand, is another blot. Nevertheless, it is
almost impossible to find an English or Scotch binding of this period
which is less than charming, and the best of them are admirable. At the
beginning of the eighteenth century a new grace was added by the
inlaying of a leather of a second colour. The fine Harleian bindings let
us down gently from this eminence, and then, after a period of mere
dulness, with the rise of Roger Payne we have again an English school
(for Payne's traditions were worthily followed by Charles Lewis) which,
by common consent, was the finest of its time.
After Payne and Lewis, English binding, like French, became purely
imitative in its designs; but while in our own decade the French artists
have endeavoured to shake themselves free from old traditions by mere
eccentricity, in England we have several living binders (Mr. Cobden
Sanderson and Mr. Douglas Cockerell), who work with notable originality
and yet with the strictest observance of the canons of their art.
Moreover in the application of decorative designs to cloth cases,
England has invented, and England and America have brought to
perfection, an inexpensive and very pleasing form of bookcover, which
gives the bookman ample time to consider whether his purchase is worth
the more permanent honours of gilded leather, and also, by the facts
that it is avowedly temporary, and that its decoration is cheaply and
easily effected by large stamps, renders forgivable vagaries of design,
which when translated, as they have been of late years in France, into
time-honoured and solemn leather, seem merely incongruous and
irreverent.
In binding, then, as in the other Bookish Arts, Anglo-Saxondom has no
need to be ashamed of its record, while, if we look to the work of the
present day, there is good reason to hope that our part in the future
may be a still worthier one.