Page:Historical essay on the art of bookbinding (IA 0130ARTO).pdf/38

38 they were wont to send to European bookbinders, in spite of the most vexatious delays. Assuredly, fostered and encouraged, American bookbinders are to attain the highest niche in the temple.

A writer in the “Miscellanées Bibliographiques,” Jean Poche, has given a copy of an account of the binder Duseuil, in which twelve volumes of the second tome of the Manuscripts of the Library of the King, bound in morocco, with gold filigree and the royal coat-of-arms, are quoted at 30 livres each, and the writer of the article adds a note to the effect that the director of the Imprimerie Royale reduced the price to 25 francs.

The French bibliophiles were slow to appreciate the value of Grolier’s bindings. In 1725 the highest price paid for them by the Count d’Hoym was 7 livres 10 sous; in 1813, at the MacCarthy Reagh sale, 75 francs was considered an exorbitant price. In England in 1810 the famous London bookseller, James Edwards, found a ready sale for them at 1,000 francs, and wrote to Renouard that he would be glad to buy all volumes of the Aldine press, with the binding and the name of Grolier, at 1 louis a volume. Grolier’s copy of the “Philostrati Vita Apollinii Tyanci et Eusebius contra Hierocleni,” which at the McCarthy