Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/168

 !^6 The Library. The name of Grolier, the continuity of the art in France and the fact that, to quote Mr. Home again, "in that country, alone, does there exist any 'considerable literature upon its history and methods" have thrown the early Italian binders into undeserved obscurity, and we are glad to see them come by their own again. For though the French attained to a much higher degree of mechanical perfection, it was the Italians who raised bookbinding to its nearest approach to a fine art. Indeed, Mr. Home would have us call it a fine art, and speaks of it as being even now " sensible to new emotions." But binding is, after all, a mechanical craft in which usefulness is the one thing necessary, while ornament is a mere adjunct and is restricted within very narrow limits. The handling of the book must always be reckoned with, and as for the ornamentation that endeavours to connect itself with the text, it is (pace Mr. Cobden Sanderson) usually as ridiculous as a frame of tree-calf round a land- scape. The " bands of daisies " on a copy of " In Memoriam," which receive Mr. Home's lukewarm approbation, remind us of those memorial cards which some people delight to distribute after a funeral. For his French bindings, Mr. Home is largely indebted to Thoinau, Bouchot and others, as he is forward to acknowledge ; but the informa- tion is excellently arranged, and not only gives all that is known of the Eves, Le Gascon, Padeloup, etc., but not a single known name appears to us to be omitted. The account of the English binders is likewise remarkably complete, and a particular interest attaches to the influence of foreign importations of books, and to the struggles of our native binders to hold their own against the foreign craftsmen who came over in such considerable num- bers. In an extract from one of Berthelet's bills for binding a New Testament and Psalter for Henry VIII., the volumes are described as "bounde backe to backe." Now this is so exceedingly rare a form of binding that we think it should have been explained. It consists in making one cover common to two books, reversing them so that the fore- edge of one is next to the back of the other. We wish that Mr. Home's style were as good as his matter, but owing to an extraordinary system of punctuation, which has not even the merit of consistency, his sentences are broken up into jerky fragments ; in fact, his book is a perfect series of colons and semi-colons, and is powdered with commas. This is sufficiently irritating, but when he goes so far as to introduce them into quotations, and to write " que j'ai tirees, d'un Manu- scrit" (p. ix.), we should like, in the spirit of the Mikado, to condemn him to a few "virgules" a la militaire. His accuracy, too, is not above suspicion, for in the same quotation he gives "du" for "d'un," and "S. A. R." for "S. A. S."; in another (p. 107) "bien nous aidera" for "Dieu nous aidera"; and again (p. 211) "gene" for "geue." But let us not end with a carping note, for the book is a valuable mine of information, and in that respect fitly terminates the excellent and useful series of "Books about Books." The Bookplate Annual and Armorial Yearbook, 1894. London : A. &C. Black. 4 to. Price 2s. 6d. We offer a hearty welcome to this new venture of Mr. Leighton's ; and trust that he may be spared to issue a goodly series of his annual. t is unnecessary to tell those who know anything of Mr. Leighton's work and methods that it is beautifully got up ; and that the paper, type and illustrations are all that could be desired. It contains many items likely to be of use to the herald and the antiquary ; but, we take it, that use only was not the aim of the ingenious editor, for it abounds rather in quaint conceits than in prosy information.