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 £151, and subsequently for over £400. There exist such things as Laneham's Letter from Kenilworth, 1575, Spenser's Faëry 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 Faëry 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 "Doré 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 chère 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.
