“Where we know that a book is at once both good and rare—where the individual is almost the species,
‘We know not where is that Prometian torch
That can its light relumine;’
“Such a book for instance as the ‘Life of the Duke of Newcastle’ by his Duchess—no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe such a jewel
“To view a well arranged assortment of block-headed encyclopœdias (Anglicana or Metropolitanas), set out in an array of Russia and Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclothe my shivering folios, would renovate Parcelsus himself, and enable old Raymond Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long to strip them and warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.”
here spoke the true Book-Worm. What a pity he could not have sold a part of his good sense and fine taste to some of the affluent collectors of this period!
Doubtless an experienced binder could give some amusing examples of mistakes in indorsing books with their names. One remains in my memory. A French binder, entrusted with a French translation of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in two volumes, put “L’Oncle” on both, and numbered them “Tome 1,” “Tome 2.” Charles Cowden-Clarke tells of his having ordered Leigh Hunt’s poems entitled “Foliage” to be bound in green, and how the book came home in blue. That would answer for the “blue grass” region of Kentucky. I have no patience with those disgusting realists who bind books in human or snake skin. In his charming book on the Law Reporters, Mr. Wallace says of Desaussures’ South Carolina Reports: “When these volumes are found in their original binding most persons, I think, are struck with its peculiarity. The cause of it is, I believe, that it was done by negroes.” What the “peculiarity” is he does not disclose. But book-binding seems to be an unwonted occupation for negro slaves. It was not often that they beat skins, although their own skins were frequently beaten.
