The English School of Binding brings before us a roll of names borne by artists of successive periods and of varying merit, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century to the present time. That it is by no means exhaustive is due to the circumstance that in the case of many of the older, and some of the more recent, masters, there is no clue to the origin in the shape of an external inscription on the cover, as we find on foreign works, or in that of a ticket or a signature. As it so frequently happens with old pictures, the style of a binder was often, indeed generally, imitated by his pupils or successors, and we are apt to mistake the original productions for the copies, unless we engage in a very close study of minute details.

In the English, Scotish, and Irish series it is equally true that the preponderance of bindings are unidentified. The monastic liveries, in which so many venerable tomes have come down to us, were executed within the walls of the buildings which held the books, and had perhaps produced them; and analogously most of our early printers were binders of their own stocks, as well as of any other works brought to them. We may incidentally remind the reader that one practice on their part was to utilise waste as end-papers or pasteboard, and to that circumstance we are indebted for the recovery of numerous typographical fragments belonging to publications not otherwise known. That Pynson, Julian Notary, John Reynes, and others executed book-binding outside their own productions seems to be proved by the existence of much early literature of foreign origin with English end-papers and covers. In fact, till the Stationers' Company made the sale of books or printed matter a separate industry, the typographer was his own binder and vendor.

The bibliopegist, as an independent artificer whom we are able to identify, dates from the seventeenth century. We have already mentioned Francis Rea or Read of Worcester as flourishing in 1660. John Evelyn seems to have employed some one who executed good work in morocco, and in better taste than that done for royalty at the same period; yet we cannot be sure that he did not carry the books abroad for the purpose. Pepys had in his service a binder named Richardson, whom he mentions in the Diary, and who is otherwise known. A copy of Stow's Survey, 1633, passed through his hands; it is in the original calf; and he was merely engaged to repair it, as appears from a memorandum inside the cover.

Of authentic names of later English binders, considering the incalculable amount of work done, the number is extremely limited. If we tabulate, we find only:—

This represents not only the entire assemblage and succession, so far as England is concerned, but covers Scotland and Ireland; and several of the names are obviously those of foreigners. The Scotish artists, if, as there is no absolute reason to doubt, a large number of early books were clothed on the spot, possessed much taste and originality, and some of them have descended to us in a pristine state of preservation with the lavish gilding as fresh and brilliant as when they left the workshop. We may fairly consider, looking at the intimate relationship between Scotland and France in former times, that a certain proportion of volumes of Scotish origin were bound abroad, just as Americans at present send over their books to England. Coming down to more recent days, the two names chiefly associated with Scotland are C. Murton and J. Mackenzie, neither of whom attained special celebrity.

But it is to be more than suspected that all important work in this direction was long executed out of Scotland—either in London or in Paris. The time came, however, when the Scots acquired a school and style of their own, and all that can be pleaded for it is, that it is manneristic and peculiar. Of recent years heavy prices have been paid for first-class examples, which are of unusual rarity. Messrs. Kerr & Richardson, of Glasgow, bought over Mr. Quaritch at the Laing sale in London at a preposterous figure (£295) a copy of one of Sir George Mackenzie's legal works simply for the covers; it was offered by the purchasers afterward to the underbidder, who quietly informed them that he had come to his senses again.

There is no reason why the magnificent copy on vellum of Boece's Chronicles of Scotland (1536), which occurred at the Hamilton sale in 1884, should not have received its clothing of oaken boards covered with gilt calf at home.

The most familiar names to English ears are perhaps those of Roger Payne, Charles Hering, C. Kalthoeber, Charles Lewis, Francis Bedford, Robert Riviere, and Zaehnsdorf. The genuine Roger Paynes in good state are very scarce and equally desirable. Hering excelled in russia and half-binding. Lewis bound with equal excellence in brown calf and Venetian morocco, and was largely employed by Heber. Bedford had two or three periods, of which the last was, on the whole, the best; he was famous for his brown calf, but made it too dark at first, instead of allowing it to deepen in colour with time. Riviere could do good work when he took pains; but he was unequal and uncertain.

Charles Lewis had been preceded by another person of his name, who is noticed in Nichols's Anecdotes (iii. 465) as dying in 1783, and as of Chelsea. This personage was held in high esteem by his clients, and was very intimate with Smollett the novelist, who is said to have had Lewis in his mind, when he drew the character of Strap in Roderick Random. Fashions in binding, which occupy a distinct position, are the embroidered covers in gold, silver, and variegated threads, executed both abroad and in England, and of which many examples are ascribed to the Nuns of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire; and velvet, silk, and metal bindings, which exist in sufficient abundance, and usually occur with marks of original ownership, lending to them a special value. Much depends in all these instances on the character of the work and the preservation of the copy; and each book has to be judged on its own merits. A considerable proportion of indifferent specimens are constantly in the market.

The Little Gidding bindings are made additionally interesting by the apparent connection between them and John Farrer of Little Gidding, who had a principal hand in producing a volume on Virginia entitled Virgo Triumphans, of which there were three issues, 1650-51, the last of which has the map by Goddard in two states, one bearing the inscription: John Farrer, Esq., Collegit. And the other: Domina Virginia Farrer Collegit. It is highly probable that the material for the book-covers worked by the Nunnery were obtained by the Farrers direct from Virginia. But it may be well questioned whether the holy ladies did more than the decorative and finishing stages.

The early provincial school of English binding is chiefly remarkable for the productions of Edwards of Halifax, who, with his two sons, James and Thomas, held a prominent rank in the book-trade at Halifax and in London in the last and present century, and whose name is also recognised as that of an enthusiastic amateur. It was at the sale of the private library of James Edwards in 1815 that the celebrated Bedford Missal occurred. The bindings of Edwards present nothing very extraordinary; but many of them have painted edges or sides, sometimes executed with great care and skill. A copy of the History of Halifax, with a view of the place thus given on the leaves, is a favourable illustration of a practice which was formerly carried out on an extensive scale, and of course with very unequal results. A brisk demand arose a short time since for this branch of ingenuity; but it has probably ere now subsided, having been in response to a call for the artist by one or two collectors. Of course, the prices advanced instantaneously to high-water mark, from the certainty that the craze was ephemeral.

But the school of Edwards of Halifax probably borrowed the idea from earlier men, who had occasionally decorated the edges of books in this way, and we may instance Samuel Mearne, bookbinder to Charles II., by whom a copy of North's Plutarch, 1657, was clothed in a richly gilt morocco vesture, the leaves gilt and painted with flowers. Mearne also introduced what is known as the cottage-roof pattern.

There are two fashions in the costlier department of binding which have recommended themselves to adoption by some connoisseurs in this country, and to which we do not find it easy to reconcile our taste: the investiture of old English books in Parisian liveries and their treatment by our own binders in the French style. Both courses of proceeding strike us, we have to confess, as equally unsatisfactory. There is an absence of harmony and accord between the book and its cover, like dissonant notes in music. At the same time, Bedford was fairly successful in copying the French manner for foreign works, and his productions of this class are very numerous.

The practice of clothing English volumes in foreign liveries was occasionally followed in early times. Messrs. Pearson & Co. bought at Paris some years ago a lovely copy of Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-Book, 1590, in a richly gilt contemporary French, perhaps Lyonnese, calf binding. The work was executed for an Englishman resident abroad, more probably than for a local collector. But these instances are rare. One of a different character occurred to our notice in a copy of Whitney's Choice of Emblems, printed at Leyden in 1586, and still preserved in the old Dutch boards—old, but not coeval.

Of amateur binding all countries have had their examples to show, and here we do not intend the limitation of the artist to a particular pattern and material chosen by his employer, such as the Hollis plain red morocco, or the Duke of Roxburghe's half-morocco with marbled paper sides for his old plays, but the conduct of the whole process under the owner's roof, as in the case of Robert Southey, whose first wife attired many of her husband's books in cotton raiment, and led him to speak of them as his Cottonian library; or, nearer to us, in that of Sir Edward Sullivan, who devotes himself to the finishing stages of any volumes belonging to friends or otherwise, when the article has been "forwarded" in an ordinary workshop. Sir Edward tools, gilds, decorates, and letters, and subscribes or inscribes himself E. S. Aurifex. Specimens of his handicraft occur fairly often in the market; as to their merit, opinions differ. But after all, there is a soupÇon of gratification in having a Baronet to your binder; and we understand that Sir Edward is complaisant enough to accept commissions outside his personal acquaintance.

A second essayist in the same way, who has become almost a member of the vocation, is Cobden Sanderson, who bound several books of ordinary character and moderate value for William Morris, and whose merit, if the prices realised for the lots in the auction be any sort of a criterion, must be extremely high. The present writer and many others carefully examined the volumes, and failed to see any justification for the enthusiasm awakened in at least two competitors.

Specimens occur also now and then in the market of the beautiful morocco bindings executed by another and (as some think) superior amateur, Mrs. Prideaux. A copy of Arnold's edition of Wordsworth's Select Poems, 1893, bound by this lady in Levant morocco, with elaborate gold tooling on back and sides—only one small octavo volume—is priced in a catalogue of 1898 at £12, 12s. The Parisian differs from us islanders in these particulars toto cÆlo. There is an utter and hopeless incompatibility. His predilection is for morocco in genere; he estimates it not only above russia (calf is hardly in his dictionary), but above even the choicest vellum encasement to be procured or conceived; but on maroquin rouge dentellÉ or aux petits fers from some pre-revolutionary workshop he is hobbyhorsical to a pathetic extent.

The most celebrated French binders are carefully enumerated by the latest authorities in their chronological order, but there is a difficulty in respect to many of them analogous to that encountered by the inquirer on English ground, since the names of several even of the best period are unknown, and the productions are accordingly classable only under their styles or their early owners.

A good deal of the finest French work is attributed to the two Eves, whose chefs d'oeuvre must, and can easily, be distinguished from the tolerably frequent imitations put into the market from time to time, some probably nearly coeval with the original examples. Prior to the Eves, however, France had more or less skilful artists in this line of industry. In the Frere sale at Sotheby's in 1896 occurred a copy of Philelphus De Liberorum Educatione, printed by Gilles Gourmont in 1508, in the original stamped leather covers, with the name of AndrÉ Boule on the sides. Under Francis I. we find the names of Estienne Roffet, dit le Faulcheur, as "Relieur du Roy," and also with that of Pignolet. The initials G. G. occur on a volume of 1523 in Messrs. Pearson & Co.'s catalogue, 1897-98, No. 679; they are probably those of Gilles Gourmont above mentioned. In 1528, according to his edition of Meliadus de Leonnois, Galliot du PrÉ was sworn binder to the University of Paris. In the imprint of his edition of Lancelot du Lac, Paris, 1533, Philippe le Noir describes himself as one of the two sworn binders of the same University; and we gather elsewhere that FranÇois Regnault was then the other.

When we reach the seventeenth century, greater facilities naturally arise for identification of artists. One of the earliest directly associated with his own labours was Le Gascon (1620-60), followed by the Boyets (1650-1725), Louis de Bois (1725-28), Augustin du Seuil, (1728-46), and Andreau (binder to the queen of Louis XV.). From the commencing years of the eighteenth century, in addition to the binders just enumerated, there is a fairly consecutive series, who worked for the court and the public: Padeloup, the two Deromes, Douceur (who was much employed by Madame de Pompadour), the two BozÉrians, Le Monnier, Tessier, Dubuisson (famous for his gilding), Simier, Thompson of Paris, CapÉ, Duru, Chambolle, Lesne (who printed in 1827 a didactic poem on his craft), Trautz, Bauzonnet, Marius-Michel, and Lortic.

Agreeably to the experience in every other department of skilled labour connected with book-production, the French obeyed here the early influence of Italian and German taste, and the germ was Teutonic, as in Spain it was Moorish. The stamped leather bindings, mainly common to Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, &c., were largely copied in England for the royal and noble libraries of the Tudor era. In some of those executed abroad, the artificer, as we have seen, was accustomed to place his name or initials very conspicuously outside the cover. Ludovicus or Lodewijk Bloc, for instance, who flourished at Ghent or Bruges at the close of the fifteenth century, usually signs and claims his work in an elaborate inscription. Two specimens bear: Ludovicus Bloc ob Amorem Christi librum hunc rectÉ ligavi. Jodocus de Lede adopted a similar method of commemoration.

In the case of foreign books, especially those of French origin, the presence of a pure and unblemished morocco binding by a recognised artist, coupled with the armorial cognisance or ex libris of some famous amateur and the binder's ticket, which is equally de rigueur, enhances the commercial importance of a volume or set of volumes beyond calculation, and has its only analogue in the stupendous figures paid for the SÈvres soft paste porcelain of the true epoch, when all the necessary conditions are happily united and fulfilled. Nothing is more striking than the immense disparity between a book in the right sort of garniture and in the wrong one, or, again, in the true covers with some ulterior sophistication in the shape of added arms, restored joints, renovated gilding, and a hundred other subtleties difficult to detect. The case is on all fours with a specimen of unimpeachable SÈvres contrasted with another of which the porcelain dates back beyond the painting and the gold. A French book in old morocco by Derome, Le Gascon, or some other esteemed artist, with its credentials and pedigree above suspicion, may fetch £50 or double; the identical production in old calf or in modern morocco or russia will not bring the price of the binding; all the magic is in the leather and the ticket. It is not a literary object, but an article of vertu. There is probably no description of Continental books which has so greatly risen in value during the last thirty years as the illustrated publications of the last century, provided always that they conform to the very exacting requirements of a Parisian exquisite. Above all, they must be of the statutory tallness and breadth, and in the livery by bibliographical injunction and usage prescribed.

No more impressive exemplification of the difference between a book or set of books in the French series, in the right and in the wrong state, could be afforded or desired than the edition of MoliÈre, 1773, which in contemporary morocco may be worth £100, and in calf or any other ordinary dress a five-pound note. But after all, a still more signal case is that of Laborde's Chansons mises en Musique, published in the same year, which, even in thoroughly preserved contemporary calf, brings under the hammer in proof state nearly £200, while in modern morocco it is rather dear at a quarter of that amount.

The extreme rarity of pure and genuine specimens of the work of the earliest foreign binders—nay, of our own—has naturally produced a large inheritance of imitations of varied character and degree. There is nothing to save the amateur from deception but the same kind of training which qualifies collectors in other departments to distinguish what is true from what is false. A man who proposes to himself to make Bindings a speciality, cannot do better than graduate by studying the most trustworthy and contemporary guides on the subject in different literatures, and then we should send him on a tour round the great public and private libraries of Great Britain and the Continent. This, of course, applies only where the undertaker is in thorough earnest, and wishes to spare himself a good deal of expense and a good deal of mortification. Illustrated catalogues are of very indifferent value, especially those of auctioneers, which too often offer the result of sophistication so cleverly disguised that to an inexperienced eye the repair is not palpable. If one goes in search of desiderata to the trade, let it be to the dealer who knows his business and charges his price, but who supplies the article, and not to the empiric, who charges a price and does not supply it, for the excellent reason (among others) that this party does not know a fine binding when he sees it—or a spurious one. In curiosities generally it is the safest plan for a private collector to place himself more or less in the hands of the highest firms in the particular line which he selects, provided that he is not one of a hundred thousand, and is a mile or two ahead even of professional experts. Then, wherever he goes and whatever he buys, he is always armed cap-À-pie. To him, to him solely, are the lots almost as precious as the purse of Fortunatus; he alone it is who may fall in with Caxtons, Clovis Eves, Rembrandts, Syracusan medallions, for a song, and carry them home without a qualm.

A curious case, unique in its way, of what may be characterised as perverted ingenuity, occurred at a public sale in November 1897 at Sotheby's rooms. It was, in the words of the catalogue, "A Remarkable Collection of Magnificent Modern Bindings, Formed by an Amateur;" but the salient feature was—in fact, the ruling one, with one exception—that the whole of the specimens represented imitations of ancient work and of historical copies of early books. The interiors were authentic; they had simply served as the medium for carrying out a rather whimsical, not to say foolish, project, and the hundred and ten lots, destitute of any conspicuous or genuine interest, probably yielded very much less than the cost of their counterfeit liveries.

The present volume is not a treatise on Binding, and we can merely indicate the general bearings of this branch and aspect of Book-Collecting, on which several useful, and some very sumptuous and beautiful, monographs have appeared of recent years. An amateur cannot do better, for purposes of reference, than secure a copy of Mr. Quaritch's Catalogue of Bindings, 1888, which includes particulars of all the principal works on the subject, English and foreign, and one of Zaehnsdorf's Short History of Bookbinding, 1895, with illustrations of processes, and a glossary of styles and terms used in the art. Mr. Wheatley and Mr. Brassington have also produced monographs upon it.

In America, during many years past, there has been a laudable effort to establish a national taste and feeling in this direction; for collectors in the States formerly made a general rule of sending their books either to London or to Paris for treatment. The institution of the Grolier Club of New York nearly twenty years since was a step in the direction of independence, and its Transactions form an interesting and creditable series. The Club printed a catalogue of its library of early typographical examples in 1895, with facsimiles of bindings.

The modern French school of literary architecture unites in the type, the paper, the illustrations such a remarkable degree of taste and feeling, combined with economy of production, that in England there is no present approach to what may be termed the ensemble of a volume placed in the market by our neighbours. This style of book-making asks of course age to mellow it, and perchance the materials employed may not bear the test of time and manipulation by successive owners, like the old eighteenth-century work. But as they emerge from the workshop, and stand upon the shelves or in the case, their aspect is decidedly agreeable, while half a roomful of them are to be had for the price of a Clovis Eve or even a first-rate Padeloup. Very much, on the contrary, we are apt to conceive a dislike for that unwieldy imperial format which some of the Parisian libraires editeurs affect, and which perhaps occupy the same place in French literature of the day as our detestable English editions de luxe.