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.