Materials on which books are printed--Early popular works printed
on vellum--The _edition de luxe_ again--Binding of
books--Earliest method and style--Printers who were also
binders--Superiority of morocco to russia and calf--Influence of
climate and atmosphere on bindings--Character of old English
bindings--Charm of a Caxton or other precious volume in the
original covers--A first folio Shakespeare in old calf--Our
latter-day literature compared with the old--Splendour of the
liveries of books in the libraries of France under the ancient
regime--Disappointment at the interiors of well-bound volumes
explained--The author plays a subordinate part--The Parisian
book-binding Code--The difference between the French and
ourselves--The original publisher's boards--The Frenchman's
_maroquin rouge_--A suggestion to collectors--Bibliographical
_simulacra_--Do not touch!--Sentiment finds a place in England in
regard to the treatment of old books--Thoughts which a book may
awaken.
IT may be necessary to introduce a few words about the material on
which the Printed Book has at various times been brought before its
readers, or at least its purchasers. The oldest European fabrics
employed for books of this class (not MSS.) were paper and parchment,
the latter very often prepared with very slight care, but the former
of remarkable strength and durability. The cost must have been at
first very onerous; but impressions of ancient volumes were usually
limited. By degrees, fine vellum, alike conspicuous for its delicacy
of quality and beauty of tone, was introduced, and became fashionable
among the patrons of literature in Italy and elsewhere during the
Renaissance. No such luxurious mode of presenting the type and giving
full effect to the work of the illuminator, which so constantly formed
a feature and a charm in the productions of the presses of the
Continent of Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has ever
since been found possible. It is rather singular that not merely
classical authors and other _editiones principes_ received this
sumptuous treatment, but even such books as grammars and theological
treatises. A copy of the _Grammatica_ of Alexander Gallus (or _De
Villa Dei_) was lately offered for sale by auction, and realised L23;
it was printed on vellum of excellent character and colour about 1480.
A visit to the galleries where the show-cases are ranged at the
British Museum in intelligible order, is by no means the worst method
of arriving at an introductory or general acquaintance with this
aspect of the matter. For there examples of printing on parchment or
vellum in all countries from the earliest period are conveniently
grouped together. The National Library is fairly rich in treasures of
the present class, partly owing to the two facts, that it has
inherited a good deal from the old royal collections and the Grenville
one, and that it was already in the field when prices were more
consistent with the financial resources of the institution. Among the
productions on vellum here to be found are the Gutenberg, and Fust
and Schoeffer, Bibles (1455-62); the Psalters of 1457 and 1459; the
Cicero of 1465; the Livy of 1469; the _Book of St. Albans_, 1486; one
of the two known Caxtons on vellum (the _Speculum Vitae Christi_,
bought of Mr. Maskell in 1864); the Sarum Missals of 1492 and 1497;
the Great Bible of 1540; and the Works of Aquinas, in seventeen folio
volumes, formerly belonging to Pope Pius V. and Philip III. of Spain.
A curious episode is connected with the last item. In the time of
Panizzi the copy was offered for sale, and the Museum commission
(L300, we believe) was topped; but the book occurred again, and was
acquired by Coventry Patmore, who presented it to the establishment,
where he had for many years been an officer.
On the whole, there is no doubt that the English, and much more the
Scotish, printers employed this costly and durable substance far more
sparingly than those of the Continent. Of many no specimens whatever
have descended to us; and the circumstances render it improbable that
we shall hereafter add sensibly to our stores in this direction. In
the case even of the Romish service-books, printed on paper, it is a
matter of common knowledge among book-lovers that the _Canon Missae_,
which was subject to exceptional wear and tear, is usually on vellum.
In our own language, works which we are accustomed to view as
essentially popular were occasionally struck off (in a few copies, no
doubt) on parchment. There is the edition of _Helyas, Knight of the
Swan_, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1512, of which only one copy
remains, and the metrical version of the _Ship of Fools_, from the
same press, 1509, of which an unique copy is in the National French
library. Let us recollect, too, the Scotish Boece of 1536, the Great
Bible of 1539, and the Tudor Prayer-Book of 1544.
Except paper, parchment (called in some old documents _parthemen_),
and vellum, there are no substances which can be said to boast any
degree of antiquity, so far as European literature is concerned. We
have, as is sufficiently well known, many others of comparatively
modern introduction, which tend to impart to the editions or specimens
for which they are employed a special value and curiosity. Such are:
(1) Whatman's hand-made paper; (2) Dutch paper (_papier de Hollande_),
of which there are cheap and worthless imitations; (3) China paper;
(4) India paper; (5) Japanese (so-called) vellum; (6) tinted paper;
(7) writing paper; (8) motley paper or paper of different colours; (9)
silk; (10) satin.
The _edition de luxe_ has consumed in its time an enormous total of
some of these descriptions of receptacle for literary products. The
lovers of the Select in Books, who more commonly regard their
possessions as _vertu_ rather than as vehicles of instruction or
amusement, not unnaturally prefer something which the ordinary
purchaser cannot procure, or at any rate does not seek. The fancy
appears to be, for the most part, worse than futile, unless it is that
books with engravings sometimes gain by being taken off on one or
another of these materials; although in practice illustrations are
found to be just as apt to come out well on ordinary paper of good
quality as on spurious vellum. It was not unusual in the last century,
in Mexico and in South America, to print on silk even ordinary works;
it may have been possibly found cheaper than paper. Satin is purely
ceremonial.
Certain books occur of various dates, such as the _Livre de Quatre
Couleurs_, printed on paper of various shades or colours, either for
some passing reason or as a mere matter of fancy. A modern jest-book
appeared not long since, harmoniously executed on motley paper in a
motley binding--a humorous conceit!
It is sufficiently remarkable that neither the Printing nor the
Book-binding industries ever erected themselves into societies or
guilds, as did the representatives of so many trades far less
important in the nature as well as the influence of their products.
All the early typographers, at all events from the sixteenth century,
were members of the Stationers' Company, and the investiture of books
in liveries of different kinds became the function of an unprivileged
and unchartered body, of which our knowledge is on that account even
more limited and imperfect than it would otherwise have been. It is
only through occasional and casual notices in correspondence or
diaries that we hear of those who bound volumes for the older
collectors, and we have to wait till we come down to the Harleian
era, before we find artificers of this class in possession of a
recognised calling and competent staff. Three employments, which have
long been independent and distinct, those of the printer, stationer,
and binder, were therefore at first and during a prolonged period in
the same hands and under the same roof.
Anterior to the introduction of printed books, the literary product or
record was either rolled up (_volutus_) or stitched, with or without a
wrapper; and hence, when there were no volumes in the more modern
acceptation in existence, there were rolls. We do not agree with the
editor of Aubrey's _Letters_, &c., 1813, where, in a note to a letter
from Thomas Baker to Hearne, he (the editor) remarks that the term
_explicitus_ was applied to the completion of the process of unfolding
a roll: it always signified the termination of the labour of the
scribe, and even in early printed books occurs in the form _explicit_
to convey the same idea on the part of the printer.
The most ancient binders were the monks, who stitched together their
own compositions or transcripts, or, when the volume was more
substantial, encased it in oaken boards, which a subsequent hand often
improved and preserved by a coat of leather. But laymen were
occasionally their own binders, as we perceive in the note to Warton's
Poetry,[3] where a "Life of Concubranus" in MS. is said to have been
bound by William Edis, afterward a monk at Burton-on-Trent, while he
was a student at Oxford in 1517.
At Durham and Winchester there were notable schools of art of the
present class in the Middle Ages, and specimens occasionally occur,
though rarely in good state. A very fine Winchester piece of work was
sold in 1898 among William Morris's books (No. 580), and all over the
country and abroad, even down to the present time, the inmates of
religious institutions occupy themselves with the same industry on a
less ambitious scale, and with infinitely less artistic and
picturesque results.
When Barclay wrote his English paraphrase of Brandt's _Stulltifera
Navis_ about 1508, it almost seems as if the type of connoisseur, who
understood the outside better than the interior of a book, was already
in evidence, for the writer says:--
"Still am I busy bookes assembling,
For to have plentie it is a pleasaunt thing
In my concept, and to haue them ay in hand:
But what they meane do I not vnderstand. . . .
Lo in likewise of bookes I haue store,
But fewe I reade, and fewer vnderstande,
I folowe not their doctrine nor their lore,
It is ynough to beare a booke in hande."
In Barclay's English _Ship of Fools_, 1509, it is stated that at that
time damask, satin, and velvet were employed as luxurious materials
for the covering of books, and it seems to have been usual to draw a
curtain before the case in which they were preserved. Showy or gay
bindings were approved, especially where the owner was not a reader,
but, to quote the Latin text, was "Viridi contentus tegmine libri."
The formation of Book-binding into a distinct employment and
organisation must have preceded any explicit evidence of the fact. The
gradual increase in the output of literature of all kinds from the
days of Elizabeth necessitated the surrender to an independent craft
of the envelopment of volumes in various liveries, more especially
when the French and Italians had set the fashion of elaborate
ornamental patterns and rich gilding. Already in the time of Edward
VI. the tariff chargeable for certain quasi-official publications,
such as the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, was fixed by Government,
and at a later date scales of prices for binding in different styles
or materials were periodically printed. That of 1646 is reprinted
entire in the _Antiquary_ for 1886.
The most usual styles were plain brown sheep or calf without any
lettering, a publisher's label inside the volume sometimes supplying
the latter deficiency, and communicating to a shelf of books an aspect
far from picturesque; but vellum or parchment of varying consistence
was also a favourite and inexpensive mode of covering the contents of
a library. Morocco and russia were later innovations, and the former
is not unusually found altogether free from decoration or gilding and
with a lettering, probably abbreviated and obscure, on the back. Very
sumptuous examples alike of calf and turkey leather binding
frequently present themselves, either executed for ordinary persons,
or without any note of the original owner; many are more or less
successful copies of Continental models, such as the Lyonnese calf,
the Grolier and Maioli pattern; but in general our ancestors seem to
have been satisfied with the paned sides and floriate back, unless
heraldic accessories intervened to usurp the space occupied by the
lateral ornament or (as in some of John Evelyn's or his sovereign's
books) a gilt ornamental cypher formed the dorsal embellishment.
A visit to some old church or parish, or even cathedral, library
nowadays may afford a notion of the external aspect of the early
book-closet of the English student or amateur. The glass case is
conspicuously absent; the shelf on which the volumes are ranged has to
our eyes a ragged, slatternly look; and nothing can well be more
opposite to modern taste. Yet the feeling for the printed matter
between the two covers or behind the paper label was more genuine, may
be, and more practical when a handful of volumes, reflecting the
personal predilections or requirements of the owner, gradually
accumulated, and the acquisition did not amount to a pursuit, much
less to a passion and a competitive race.
The professional binding of books in our country, whether they had
been actually produced here or had been purchased abroad, was at the
outset almost exclusively executed by printers, who must have had a
special department to carry out this branch of work. We hear of the
site of Dean Colet's original school having been a bookbinder's, and
of the teaching establishment occupying the upper part of the
building. The usual style of binding appears to have been the covering
of stamped leather, of which such a rich store of examples still
survives, and which was copied from the German and Low-Country models.
For weightier books oaken boards frequently served as a foundation, on
which the leather was laid. Our sovereigns and nobility employed
Pynson, Berthelet, Raynes, and other typographers to clothe the
volumes which formed their libraries, before the more luxurious and
splendid fashion was introduced of investing them in richly gilt calf
bindings, with or without armorial cognisances, and these were again
superseded by the adoption of the Continental taste for Levant morocco
(_maroquin de Constantinople_).
Down to the time of the earlier Stuarts the binding department more
than probably remained part of the printer's functions, and calf or
sheep was the usual material employed. Thomas Vautrollier, however,
the Elizabethan typographer, who carried on business in the Black
Friars, and who adopted the _Anchora Spei_ as a device on his
title-pages, seems to have occasionally bound copies of his own
publications in morocco with the same symbol on the covers in
gold--perhaps to order; and Lyonnese calf was another style in favour
at the same date. Some highly preserved specimens of the latter have
descended to us.
Another of the earlier essays in England in the direction of morocco
bindings appears to have had in view as a model the Grolieresque style
of decoration. A copy of a Latin Bible printed at Venice in 1537, and
presented in 1563 by the Earl of Arundel to Sir William Petre, bears
the crest of the Fitzalans, a white horse, on sides enclosed in a
painted design, the compartments filled in with a dotted pattern. But
examples of the same or a similar class are by no means uncommon. A
copy of a very common volume, Knolles's _History of the Turks_, 1638,
was sold among the Morris books in 1898 at a high price on account of
the very charming red morocco binding, richly gilt, with the unusual
feature of side-panels filled in with dotted scrolls.
Early Continental collectors more usually than our own registered not
only the place and date of purchase on the fly-leaf or title-page, but
the circumstances attendant on the binding, as we find in the volume
of tracts elsewhere mentioned, put into their existing covers in 1469,
in the nearly coeval assemblage of tracts formed and bound by Udalric
Ellenbog in 1476, and in the Latin _Petrarch_ of 1501, bound for
Antonius Kressen of Nuernberg in 1505, now in the British Museum.
The middle-period schools of collectors and binders, who displayed a
preference for morocco over russia and calf, were assuredly wise in
their generation. Much of the russia has perished, or is perishing
fast, under a variety of deleterious agencies; and the more modern
calf, at least, does not bear its years well. But morocco, at first
more expensive, withstands infinitely better and longer the incidence
of social life. What noble sets of books, as well as single volumes,
have almost crumbled away in damp country-houses, sometimes relegated
to the garret or the stable by the intelligent and highly-educated
proprietors, while others have fallen a prey to gas and dust in town.
These sources of injury and natural ruin no material can of course
long resist; and, the foreigner often enjoying the advantage of a less
impure atmosphere, and not usually aiming at a larger collection than
may be necessary as chamber-furniture, his acquisitions are apt to
come down to us in a more contemporary state, although we grant that,
where certain postulates have been fulfilled, we have shown our
capability of presenting to a distant age an assemblage of the ancient
literature of our own and other countries as immaculate as when it
changed hands over the counter in Tudor or in Stuart times.
Binding and Bibliography, no less than literature, are in opposite
lobbies as regards the character of the objects which one sees
submitted to periodical competition. The taste in books has undergone
revolutionary changes; the volumes on which early owners lavished
extravagant sums have too often become _per se_ waste paper; and it
consequently happens that a catalogue devoted to an account of such
relics of the past has to register titles and names which play a
subordinate part in the matter, and are, as it were, merely useful as
a means of identification.
While a large number of splendid examples of binding in russia and
morocco have been produced in Great Britain, there has scarcely been
at any time a school of binding analogous to those which France, and
even Italy, have known, each with its distinctive and recognisable
characteristics; nor have we attained in the liveries of our books to
the same splendour and beauty of decoration, or to an equal degree of
historical or personal interest.
A large number of fine examples present themselves in our sale-rooms
here, formerly ornaments of some of the noble collections formed in
different parts of Germany; too often they show traces of neglect, yet
occasionally they have preserved their pristine beauty and freshness
almost unimpaired. They are, for the most part, of the very favourite
class, where the oaken boards constitute a receptacle or foundation
for an encasement of leather (frequently pigskin) stamped with some
beautiful historiette on either side, and carrying the date and other
particulars of origin and ownership. We meet with numerous specimens
from time to time of the libraries of the Electors of Saxony and
Bavaria in this picturesque and becoming raiment.
There should be by right, and with advantage, as distinct an
intellectual spirit or element of thought in the binding as in the
writing and printing of a book. A man who traces on the covers and
back of a volume lines, curves, circles, crescents, scrolls, and
other figures without harmony and without significance--in other
words, without _mind_ or _esprit_--is no true artist, but either an
unskilful copyist or a rude beginner. Different schools naturally
adopted new ideas of the beautiful or the elegant; some of our most
ancient patterns were scriptural or mathematical; the age ruled the
prevailing taste and fashion, and everything in and out of Nature has
had its turn and its day. Then, again, nationality goes for something:
the Frenchman is fond of his _lis_ and the Scot of his thistle.
Artistic and historical book-covers have more than a special and
technical importance, inasmuch as they contribute to enrich a pursuit
which might otherwise become more limited in its interest than it is.
For gay or splendid bindings assist in bringing the Book, manuscript
or printed, within the category of antiquities or curiosities, where
it awakens sentiments in the breasts of persons, neither literary nor
bibliographical in their tastes, akin to those which they entertain
for a specimen of old furniture or old porcelain; and so indeed we see
entire libraries, which are little more than assemblages of triumphs
of the binder's art and agreeable memorials of prior ownership. A once
rather famous emporium in Piccadilly was known as the Temple of
Leather and Literature, because the extrinsic was supposed to govern;
and the same point is illustrated by the enormous difference in
pecuniary value between copies of many old works in morocco and in
more humble garb. Here Dress makes the book no less than in the song
it is said to make the man. So it was with the three independent
libraries of _Mesdames de France_, daughters of Louis XV. Each of
these ladies had her favourite hue in morocco, with the royal arms on
the sides; for Madame Adelaide it was red, for Madame Sophie, citron,
and for Madame Victoire, green or olive. The ornamental details of
early bindings, especially those of Continental origin, embrace nearly
every section of natural history: beasts, birds, fishes, insects,
flowers, and fruit, and endless varieties of geometrical lines and
curves. A Spanish New Testament, printed at Venice in 1556, even
presented on its sides what were described in the Ashburnham Catalogue
as "richly gilt raindrops." Among flowers we most frequently meet with
the rose, the daisy, the lily, and the tulip.
Many varieties of form in connection with the gift of books to friends
or patrons formerly subsisted, apart from the autograph note inside
the volume. We have adverted to the Grolier group of bindings and
certain other allied types perhaps borrowed from Grolier, and the
practice was followed, though on a very limited scale, in England,
where the token in all cases was mainly confined to the title or
fly-leaf, and consequently enters into a distinct category. A very
unusual example of presentation occurs in a copy printed on vellum of
Voerthusius' _Consecrationis Augustae Liber Unus_, printed at Antwerp
in 1563, where the centres of either side of the volume are occupied
by an inscription in gold letters to the Archbishop-Elector of
Cologne.
Of the Grolier examples which have descended to us--and possibly the
greater part has done so--we possess two or three types as regards the
mode of registering the proprietorship; the books occur with and
without the autograph: "Jo. Grolierij Lugdunensis: et Amicorum," which
generally occurs at the end, and with variant mottoes: "Portio mea
Domine sit in Terra Viventium," "Spes mea Dominus et verbo ejus fidem
habeo," and "AEque difficilior." He was a noble patron of learning, and
on the title of a volume on Music, printed in 1518, dedicated to him,
appear his arms and the motto, "Joannes Grolierius Musarum Cultor."
To the same school belongs the equally well-known Maioli, with the
similar method of establishing his claim: "Tho. Maioli et Amicorum;"
Cristoforo Beneo of Milan ("Questo libro e de Christophore Beneo de
Milano e soi Amize"); Antonio Maldonado, of whom a volume of Petrarch
has on the upper cover the name of the poet, and on the reverse, "D.
Antonio Maldonado," with a shield enclosing five fleurs-de-lis; and
Penelope Coleona, with flowering vases heightened in silver, and her
initials at the foot of the book.
This is, of course, a most fascinating and covetable class of
possession, and the difficulty of procuring genuine specimens of the
Henry Deux and Diane de Poitiers bindings, and of all the other
sumptuous and artistic productions of a like character belonging to
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, has naturally suggested to
certain ingenious persons the desirability of counterfeiting them. The
Maioli bindings have long been subject to this treatment and abuse;
but at present almost every other book which offers itself in a fine
state of preservation is suspicious from a wholesale system of
forgery, which has more or less recently been introduced with
considerable success, and culminated in an entire sale at a leading
auction-room of a library almost exclusively composed of such
fabrications.
Of the genuine old English bindings, the usual materials are vellum or
parchment and sheep or calf. All these may be, and in general are,
ostentatiously plain; but they are, on the contrary, susceptible of
being rendered in the highest degree ornamental. Nothing is more
agreeable to the eye, and even the touch, than an old book in
contemporary gilt calf, with arms on the sides, or in the original
vellum wrapper, or, again, in the plebeian _mutton_.
The two former modes of treatment may, as we have said, be developed
to any extent in the direction of tooling and gilding; the sheep has
to be left unadorned--_simplex munditiis_.
What can we desire more characteristic and harmonious than a Caxton,
uncut and in oaken boards, or even in a secondary vesture of vellum,
like the Holford copy of the _Life of Godfrey of Bouillon_? Or than a
volume of Elizabethan poetry or a first Walton's _Angler_, in the
primitive sheep, as clean as a new penny, like the Huth examples of
Turbervile, 1570, and Walton? The purest copy of the first folio
Shakespeare we ever saw was Miss Napier's, in the original calf, but
wanting the verses. It sold at the sale for L151, and subsequently for
over L400. There exist such things as Laneham's _Letter from
Kenilworth_, 1575, Spenser's _Faery Queen_, 1590, Allot's _England's
Parnassus_, 1600, and Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_, 1611, in the
pristine vellum wrappers; and one of the Bodleian copies of
Brathwaite's most rare _Good Wife_, 1618, is just as it was received
280 years since from the stationer who issued it. Would any one wish
to see these remains tricked out in the sprucest, or even the richest,
modern habiliments?
Among ourselves in these islands we commonly prize and preserve (even
in a leathern case) a highly preserved specimen of Tudor or Stuart
binding; and there are instances where to exchange the old coat for a
new one, however magnificent or (so to speak) appropriate, is not
merely sacrilege, but absolute surrender of value. A copy of the first
folio Shakespeare, of a Caxton, of Spenser's _Faery Queen_, in
unblemished primitive clothing, could not be re-attired without making
the party convicted of the act liable to capital punishment without
benefit of clergy.
Besides the methods and kinds of binding above mentioned, there are
others of a metallic and a textile character. We find volumes clothed
in bronze, silver, silver-gilt, gold, and embroidered silks, the last
variety usually associated with the Nunnery of Little Gidding, without
absolute certainty of correctness so far as the claim set up on behalf
of that institution to be an exclusive source of such products goes.
Mr. Brassington has furnished in his well-known work examples of all
these more or less exceptional and luxurious liveries. In the most
precious metal the most celebrated specimen is the _Book of Prayers_
of Lady Elizabeth Tirrwhyt, 1574, formerly belonging to Queen
Elizabeth, and ascribed to the Edinburgh goldsmith, George Heriot.
Next in point of rarity to gold comes bronze; silver and silver-gilt
are comparatively frequent; and the embroidered style is only uncommon
where the execution and condition are unimpeachable, as in the case of
a few in our public libraries. The most ordinary books found within
embroidered covers are small editions of the Common Prayer and Psalms;
and they are almost invariably in a dilapidated state. Gilding books
was usually considered at a later epoch, at all events in France, part
of the business of a binder, and so perhaps it may have been in the
case of Dubuisson, who flourished about the middle of the last century
at Paris; yet we observe on his ticket attached to an exquisitely gilt
copy of an almanac for 1747, in red morocco of the period, simply
"Dore par Dubuisson," as if that portion or branch of the
work only had been his.
Some curious episodes have ere now occurred in connection with sets of
books, or even works in two or three volumes, in historical bindings,
or with a remarkable and interesting _provenance_ of another kind. It
was only at the sale of the last portion of the Ashburnham Library
(1898), No. 3574, that the third and fourth parts of Tasso, _Rime e
Prose_, 1589, bound together by Clovis Eve for Marie-Marguerite de
Valois Saint-Remy, was acquired by a French firm through Mr. Quaritch,
the purchaser having already secured at the Hamilton Palace sale the
first and second portions, also in one volume, in the same binding,
and the set still wants Parts v.-vi., so that it will demand a small
fortune to effect a perfect reunion.
It is hazardous to discount the durability and permanence of our best
modern bindings of English origin, and to answer our own question,
whether hereafter they will be appreciated in the same way as those of
the old masters here and abroad. Yet we think that we can offer a
valid and persuasive reason why we shall fall short of former ages in
this handicraft. The feudal conditions and atmosphere, which go far to
win our regard or arrest our attention in the case of the older
binders and their work, have vanished, and can never revive. It is
with the book from this point of view as it is from that of the
autograph inscription or signature; both are extensions of the owner's
personality; and what a personality it was! Those who follow us at a
distance may find reason to think and speak differently; but we can
at the present moment scarcely realise the possibility of our
latter-day literature acquiring a pedigree and an incrusted fragrance
such as belong to works, however dull and worthless in themselves,
from the libraries of Grolier, Maioli, De Thou, Peiresc, or Pompadour.
There is a sort of sensation of awe in taking up these volumes, as if
they had passed through some holy ordeal, as if they had been
canonised. It is not the piece of dressed leather with its decorative
adjuncts which casts its spell over us: it is the reputation of the
courtly patron of learning and art; of the statesman and soldier who
sought a diversion in the formation of a library from severer
employments; of the prince who loved to gather round him such
evidences of his taste, or to lay them at the feet of _a chere amie_;
of the licentious but superb Lady Marquise, who vied with her king in
the magnificence of her books, as she did with his consort in that of
her toilette--it is this which exercises upon our imagination its
ridiculous yet unalterable sway.
It is impossible to avoid the discovery, if we take for the first time
a survey of a library chiefly conspicuous for the splendour of its
bindings, how almost invariably we are disappointed by the contrast
between the exterior and the contents. It would probably be far from
easy to fill a small case with examples where a really valuable book
was enshrined in a covering of corresponding character. It is our
ordinary experience to meet with some obsolete nondescript classic, or
some defunct theological treatise of alike infinitesimal worth, in a
sumptuous morocco garb, bestowed on it by the author as a compliment
to his sovereign, or by the sovereign as an oblation to his mistress.
In those princely establishments for which such things were destined
and reserved, it was necessary that all the constituent features
should correspond in external grandeur, the costumes of the great
folks themselves, the furniture, the decorations, the equipages, the
dependents, the book-bindings.
The remarkable changes of taste in books cannot be more powerfully and
decisively exemplified than by the thousands of volumes which have
descended to us in all languages and many branches of literature in
liveries once only a subsidiary feature in the eyes of the possessors
or acquirers, and at present often the sole title to regard and the
sole object of competition. The work has become mere printed paper;
but it is perhaps not less covetable as a triumph of bibliopegistic
art, than as a memorial of the distinguished or interesting personages
through whose hands it has passed to our own. The book, alas! has
degenerated into a vehicle for external accessories. We are asked to
admire, not the quality of the text or the style of the writer, but
the beauty of the type, the splendour of the ink, and the elegance of
the initial letters, on the one hand; on the other, the excellence of
the leather, the brilliance of the gilding, the ingenuity and skill of
the design, and the curiosity of the _ex libris_. But this has to be
kept well in mind. It is the binding which constitutes the supreme
feature of importance and attraction. A second copy in shabby attire
may plead in vain its merits of production; but it fares as ill as a
person of the highest respectability who labours under the misfortune
of being badly dressed.
There is no point of distinction on the part of our own countrymen
more marked and enduring than the very qualified allegiance which they
give to the Parisian book-binding code. It is true enough that in
England we admire not merely the old French School, but the modern
one; but our loyalty and liking are by no means unreserved. A
Frenchman, in nine cases out of ten, will not, in the first place, buy
any book that was born out of France, any more than he will buy an
article of furniture or china, or a coin, emanating from a less
favoured soil; nor will he willingly acquire even a volume of native
origin in any state but the orthodox morocco; but his first impulse
and act, if he does so under protest, is to strip and re-clothe the
disreputable article, and have it put into habiliments worthy of the
_cabinet choisi_ of Monsieur.
Now, we have had, and no doubt have still, on this side of the Channel
certain heathens in the likeness of collectors who, no matter how
perfect and how fresh, and how suitable, the original jacket, commit
the heinous offence of following the Continental mode, and in such a
way thousands of lovely examples, transmitted to us as heirlooms from
our ancient families, have been sacrificed. But let us congratulate
ourselves that we have among us many who know better, who will not
even let the binder desecrate a faultless copy of Tennyson, Byron,
Shelley, or Keats in the publisher's boards.
This is, however, not exactly an analogy. The analogy arises and grows
possible when we compare such writers as Montaigne, Moliere,
Corneille, or again, certain of the Elzevir series, with our
corresponding foremost names. If we meet with the latter in vellum or
in sheep, we only too gladly preserve them as we find them, provided
that the outward garb is irreproachable. Of how many gems do we not
know, in all the peerless glory of their pristine life, tenderly
ensconced in morocco envelopes. Let them never be acquainted with
another existence! Let no binder's unholy hand come near them! Let
them be exhibited as historical monuments.
On the other hand, if we could oblige Monsieur to comply with this
law, he would be _desole_; for it is not the matter which
makes the book; it is the _maroquin rouge_.
Even in England, where we are more robust in our taste, the true
collector is not a reader. He may buy a cheap book now and then; but
he hands it to the cook when he has perused it. Such things are
outside his category; they are for those interesting creatures the
toiling million. His possessions or _desiderata_ are not vehicles of
instruction; they are far too valuable; they are objects of ocular and
sensuous indulgence equally with china, paintings, sculpture, and
coins. They are classable with bric-a-brac. You have an opportunity of
appreciating the quality of the paper or vellum, the type, and the
binding. The merits of the author are reserved.
It is better, if a gentleman leans a little to the practical side, and
chooses to admit literature for actual reading, to have two cases, one
for Books, the other for Bibliographical _Simulacra_. For it is not
for one till he has graduated to lay his prentice fingers on a tome in
the pristine _mutton_, or to endanger the maidenhood of a Clovis Eve,
a Padeloup, or a Derome, which you must handle as if it were the
choicest and daintiest proof medal or etching. Why, one has to bear in
mind that he is not dealing with a mere ordinary source of
intellectual gratification and improvement, but with a mechanical
product perfect in all its parts. Let him come gloved, and his friend
the owner will bless him.
Between a book bound in its original cloth or paper boards, and one in
its rich vesture of morocco or russia, there is a contrast similar to
that between a woodland and a park. In the one case, at a distance,
perhaps, of fifty or even a hundred years from the period of
publication, we hold in our hand a volume precisely in the state in
which it passed from that of the contemporary salesman to the
contemporary buyer; and not a stain nor a finger-mark save the
mellowing touch of time is upon it anywhere. Let us look at the
description in a sale catalogue of such a rarity as Lamb's _Poetry for
Children_, 1807, "in the original grey boards, with red labels," or a
copy of the first edition of Fielding's _Tom Jones_, absolutely uncut,
and in the bookseller's pristine covers, or, better still, of the
first part of the first edition of Spenser's _Faery Queen_, 1590, in
the Elizabethan wrapper! It is not the mere circumstance, let it be
understood, of untrimmed edges which makes the charm; many a book or
pamphlet occurs as innocent of the binder's knife as the lamb unborn,
and highly desirable it is too; but to render an example of this class
complete, its authentic outward integument in blameless preservation
is as essential to its repute and its marketable worth as the presence
of the claws is held to be in the original valuation of a fur of fox
or beaver.
No educated eye can regard with indifference a more or less
interesting volume clothed in a becoming livery by an accomplished
artist either of other times or of these. If it is an ancient vesture,
with the credentials in the form of a coat of arms, an _ex libris_, or
a signature, or all of these, handed down with it to us, we appear to
be able to disregard time, and feel ourselves brought within touch of
the individual who owned it, of him who encased it in its lavishly
gilt leathern coat, and of the circle to which it was long a familiar
object, as it reposed unmolested in a corner of some _petite
bibliotheque_ or study during generations--if the subject of which it
treated had to be handled, a vicarious copy in working raiment doing
duty for it. For it is not a book in the ordinary acceptation of the
word; it is a _souvenir_ of the past, a message and a voice from
remote times, ever growing remoter, or an _objet de luxe_, a piece of
literary, or rather bibliographical, dandyism. In any case, its
identity is to be preserved and held sacred.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Hazlitt's edition, 1871, iii. 193.