or BAEDREM, a small town of Anatolia, in Asia Minor, situated at the bottom of a deep bay. It is sup- posed to occupy the site of the ancient Halicarnassus, and the vicinity abounds with many relics of antiquity. The houses are irregularly built along the shore, and are inter- spersed, as is usual in Asiatic cities, with gardens, burying- grounds, and cultivated fields. Throughout the streets, and in different parts of the bazaar, are scattered fragments of columns and mutilated sculptures. The castle stands on a broad square rock, which projects into the bay, and has a small harbour on the western side, which, though it has fallen into decay, is still convenient and safe, and is fre- quented by Turkish cruisers. This castle is adorned with the most exquisite sculptures in different parts of the walls, and is said to have been built by the knights of Rhodes in 1402. There are still some traces of the ancient walls, and above the town are the remains of a theatre, about 280 feet in diameter, which appears to have had thirty-six rows of marble seats. Near the harbour is the palace, with some small mosques. Pop. about 11,000, consisting chiefly of Greeks and Turks. Long. 27. 33. E. Lat. 37. 7. N.
BOOK, the common name for any literary production of bulk; but more particularly applied to a printed composi- tion forming a volume.
Various substances have been used for writing upon; such as plates of lead and copper, the bark of trees, bricks, stone, wood, &c. Josephus speaks of two columns, the one of stone and the other of brick, on which the children of Seth wrote their inventions and astronomical discoveries; and Porphyry mentions some pillars preserved in Crete, on which the ceremonies observed by the Corybanites in their sacrifices were recorded. Hesiod's works were originally written upon tablets of lead, and deposited in the temple of the Muses, in Boeotia; the ten commandments delivered to Moses were written upon stone; and the laws of Solon were inscribed upon wooden planks. Tablets of wood and of ivory were common among the ancients; but when of wood, they generally received a coating of wax, on which the let- ters were traced with a pointed style. The leaves of the palm-tree were afterwards used instead of wooden tablets; and also the inner bark of such trees as the lime, the ash, the maple, and the elm; whence the word liber, literally the inner bark of a tree. As these barks were rolled up, the rolls were called columnæ, a volume; a name afterwards given to similar rolls of paper or parchment.
The first writing was upon blocks and tablets; but when flexible matter came into use it was found more convenient to make books in the form of rolls, which were composed of several sheets fastened to each other, and rolled upon a staff, the whole forming a kind of cylinder. The ends of the staff were usually ornamented with bosses of wood or ivory, and sometimes of silver, and even gold and precious stones. The title (titulus index) was either suspended to the roll or pasted on the outside; and the whole volume, when extended, might be about a yard or more in breadth, and sometimes fifty in length. The square form composed of separate leaves was also known, though little used by the ancients.
The internal arrangement of books has undergone many modifications. At first the letters were divided only into lines; then into separate words; and these, by degrees, were noted with accents, and distributed by points and stops, into periods, paragraphs, chapters, and other divisions. In some countries, as among the orientals, the direction of the lines was from right to left; in others, as among the northern and western nations, from left to right; while the early Greeks followed both directions, writing alternately from right to left and from left to right, which was called boustroph- edon, from its analogy to the path of oxen in ploughing. In this manner Solon's laws were written. In most countries the lines run from one side to the other; in some, particu- larly among the Chinese, their direction is from top to bottom. The Egyptian monumental writing, or hieroglyphics, is ar- ranged in all these directions, and in several peculiar to itself. Sometimes we find it proceeding from right to left; some- times from left to right; very frequently from top to bottom, in regular parallel columns; in a few instances, and but a few, boustrophedon; occasionally arranged in groups or clus- ters, as in anaglyphs; and where the space was irregular. as on the sides of obelisks, disposed in an arbitrary manner, varying according to the circumstances. But this total want of system, or rather this mode of arranging the characters upon all systems and in all ways, can never be productive of any difficulty or ambiguity, as the disposition and true sequence of the writing is in every case clearly and almost intuitively indicated by the direction given to the principal figures, more especially to those which represent animals, or the human form. With regard to the other modes of writing practised by the ancient Egyptians, that called the hieratic follows to a certain extent the varieties of the hieroglyphic; but the demotic, enchorial, or civil form, is generally disposed from right to left, in the ordinary manner of oriental writing.
Of the scarcity of books during the seventh and subsequent centuries Warton gives the following curious account: "Towards the close of the seventh century," says this writer, "even in the papal library at Rome, the number of books was so inconsiderable, that Pope Saint Martin requested Sanctamund, bishop of Maestricht, if possible, to supply this defect from the remotest parts of Germany. In this year 855 Lupus, abbot of Ferrières, in France, sent two of his monks to Pope Benedict III. to beg a copy of Cicero de Oratore, and Quintilian's Institutes, and some other books: 'for,' says the abbot, 'although we have part of these books, yet there is no whole or complete copy of them in all France.' Albert, abbot of Gembloux, who with incredible labour and immense expense had collected a hundred volumes on theological, and fifty on profane subjects, imagined he had formed a splendid library. About the year 790 Charlemagne granted an unlimited right of hunting to the abbot and monks of Sithin, for making their gloves and girdles of the skins of the deer they killed, and covers for their books. We may imagine that these religious were more fond of hunting than reading. It is certain that they were obliged to hunt before they could read; and at least it is probable that, under these circumstances, and of such materials, they did not manufacture many volumes. At the beginning of the tenth century books were so scarce in Spain, that one and the same copy of the Bible, Saint Jerome's Epistles, and some volumes of ecclesiastical offices and martyrologies, often served several different monasteries. Among the constitutions given to the monks of England by Archbishop Lanfranc, in the year 1072, the following injunction occurs. At the beginning of Lent the librarian is ordered to deliver a book to each of the religious; a whole year was allowed for the perusal of this book, and at the returning Lent those monks who had neglected to read the books they had respectively received are commanded to prostrate themselves before the abbot, and to supplicate his indulgence. This regulation was partly occasioned by the low state of literature which Lanfranc found in the English monasteries. But at the same time it was a matter of necessity, and is in a great measure to be referred to the scarcity of copies of useful and suitable authors. In an inventory of the goods of John de Pontissara, bishop of Winchester, contained in his capital palace of Wulvesey, all the books which appear are nothing more than Septendecim species librorum de diversis scientiis. This was in the year 1294. The same prelate, in the year 1299, borrows of his cathedral convent of St Swithin at Winchester, Bibliam bene glossatam; that is, the Bible with marginal annotations, in two large folio volumes; but gives a bond for due return of the loan, drawn up with great solemnity. This Bible had been bequeathed to the convent the same year by Pontissara's predecessor, Bishop Nicholas de Ely; and in consideration of so important a bequest, that is, pro bona Bibliam dicti episcopi bene glossata, and one hundred merks in money, the monks founded a daily mass for the soul of the donor. When a single book was bequeathed to a friend or relation, it was seldom without many restrictions and stipulations. If any person gave a book to a religious house, he believed that so valuable a donation merited eternal salvation; and he offered it on the altar with great ceremony. The most formidable anathemas were perpetually denounced against those who should dare to alienate a book presented to the cloister or library of a religious house. The prior and convent of Rochester declare that they will every year pronounce the irrevocable sentence of damnation on him who shall purloin or conceal a Latin translation of Aristotle's Physics, or even obliterate the title. Sometimes a book was given to a monastery on condition that the donor should have the use of it during his life; and sometimes to a private person, with the reservation that he who receives it should pray for the soul of his benefactor. The gift of a book to Lincoln Cathedral by Bishop Repington, in the year 1422, occurs in this form, and under these curious circumstances. The memorial is written in Latin with the bishop's own hand, which I will give in English, at the beginning of Peter's Breviary of the Bible. 'I Philip of Repington, late bishop of Lincoln, give this book, called Peter de Areola, to the new library to be built within the church of Lincoln; reserving the use and possession of it to Richard Tresely, clerk, canon, and prebendary, of Milton, in fee, and to the term of his life; and afterwards to be given up and restored to the said library, or the keepers of the same, for the time being, faithfully, and without delay. Written with my own hand, A.D. 1422.' When a book was bought, the affair was of so much importance, that it was customary to assemble persons of consequence and character, and to make a formal record that they were present on this occasion. Among the royal manuscripts in the book of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, an archdeacon of Lincoln has left this entry: 'This book of the Sentences belongs to master Robert archdeacon of Lincoln, which he bought of Geoffrey the chaplain, brother of Henry vicar of Northkington, in the presence of master Robert de Lee, master John of Lirling, Richard of Luda clerk, Richard the almoner, the said Henry the vicar, and his clerk, and others; and the said archdeacon gave the said book to God and St Oswald, and to Peter abbot of Barton, and the convent of Barden.' The disputed property of a book often occasioned the most violent altercations. Many claims appear to have been made to a manuscript of Matthew Paris, belonging to the last-mentioned library; in which John Russel, bishop of Lincoln, thus conditionally defends or explains his right of possession. 'If this book can be proved to be or to have been the property of the exempt monastery of St Alban, in the diocese of Lincoln, I declare this to be my mind, that in that case I use it at present as a loan under favour of those monks who belong to the said monastery. Otherwise, according to the condition under which this book came into my possession, I will that it shall belong to the college of the blessed Winchester Mary at Oxford, of the foundation of William Wykham. Written with my own hand at Buckdane, 1st Jan. A.D. 1488. Jo. Lincoln. Whoever shall obliterate or destroy this writing, let him be anathema.' About the year 1225, Roger de Insula, dean of York, gave several Latin Bibles to the university of Oxford, with a condition that the students who perused them should deposit a cautionary pledge. The library of that university, before the year 1300, consisted only of a few tracts, chained or kept in chests in the choir of St Mary's church. In the year 1327 the scholars and citizens of Oxford assaulted and entirely pillaged the opulent Benedictine abbey of the neighbouring town of Abingdon. Among the books they found there were one hundred psalters, as many grayes, and forty missals, which undoubtedly belonged to the choir of the church; but besides these there were only twenty-two codices, which I interpret books on common subjects. And although the invention of paper at the close of the eleventh century contributed to multiply manuscripts, and consequently to facilitate know- ledge, yet, even so late as the reign of our Henry VI., we have discovered the following remarkable instance of the inconveniences and impediments to study which must have been produced by a scarcity of books. It is in the statutes of St Mary's College at Oxford, founded as a seminary to Osney Abbey in the year 1446: 'Let no scholar occupy a book in the library above one hour, or two hours at most, so that others be hindered from the use of the same.' The famous library established in the university of Oxford, by that munificent patron of literature Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, contained only 600 volumes. About the commencement of the fourteenth century there were only four classics in the royal library of Paris. These were one copy of Cicero, Ovid, Lucan, and Boethius. The rest were chiefly books of devotion, which included but few of the fathers; many treatises of astrology, geomancy, chronomancy, and medicine, originally written in Arabic, and translated into Latin or French; pandects, chronicles, and romances. This collection was principally made by Charles V., who began his reign in 1365. This monarch was passionately fond of reading; and it was the fashion to send him presents of books from every part of the kingdom of France. These he ordered to be elegantly transcribed and richly illuminated; and he placed them in a tower of the Louvre, from thence called La Tour de la Librairie. The whole consisted of 900 volumes. They were deposited in three chambers, which on this occasion were wainscotted with Irish oak, and ceiled with cypress curiously carved. The windows were of painted glass, fenced with iron bars and copper wire. The English became masters of Paris in the year 1425, on which event the Duke of Bedford, regent of France, sent the whole library, then consisting of only 833 volumes, and valued at 2223 livres, into England, where perhaps they became the groundwork of Duke Humphrey's library just mentioned. Even so late as the year 1471, when Louis XI. of France borrowed the works of the Arabian physician Rhazes from the faculty of medicine at Paris, he not only deposited, by way of pledge, a quantity of valuable plate, but was obliged to procure a nobleman to join with him as surety in a deed, by which he bound himself to return it under a considerable forfeiture. Of the excessive prices of books in the middle ages there are numerous and curious proofs. I will mention a few only. In the year 1174, Walter, prior of St Swithin's at Winchester, afterwards elected abbot of Westminster, a writer in Latin of the lives of the bishops who were his patrons, purchased of the monks of Dorchester in Oxfordshire, Bede's Homilies and St Austin's Psalter, for twelve measures of barley, and a pall, on which was embroidered in silver the history of St Birinus converting a Saxon king. Among the royal manuscripts in the British Museum there is Comestor's Scholastic History in French, which, as it is recorded in a blank page at the beginning, was taken from the king of France at the battle of Poictiers; and being purchased by William Montague, Earl of Salisbury, for 100 marcs, was ordered to be sold by the last will of his Countess Elizabeth for forty livres. About the year 1400 a copy of John of Meun's Roman de la Rose, was sold at Paris for forty crowns, or L.33, 6s. 6d." (Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. i.) For further information regarding books, see Bibliography.
BOOKBINDING is the art of fastening together the sheets of paper composing a book, and inclosing them in cases of pasteboard covered with leather of various kinds, or other materials; the object of which is the preservation of the book, and its protection from injury while in use.
At the time when books were rarities,—either manuscripts produced by patient secluded labour, or the productions of the printing-press during the infancy of typography,—they were naturally very highly prized; and as much labour, skill, care, and expense were bestowed upon the protection and embellishment of a cherished folio as would suffice at the present day to the building of a house. The wooden cover of a book, with its metal hinges, bosses, guards, and clasps, seems, in all but dimensions, fit for a church door; but since the great improvement in all the mechanical arts connected with the production of books, together with the extension of education to all classes, and the consequent diffusion of knowledge, literature has become almost as necessary as clothing and shelter to the comfort of civilized man; hence the multiplication of books, and the gradual but radical changes witnessed during the present century in the art of bookbinding. When libraries were comparatively of limited extent, large sums of money were expended upon binding; but, at the present day, when a well-selected library must of necessity be extensive, a substitute for the old method of binding is sought and obtained in the recent adoption of cloth covers.
As the binding of a book adds considerably to its cost, we find that in France, Germany, and other Continental countries, as well as in the United States of America, most books when first published are merely sewed together, and covered with a paper wrapper, like our magazines. In England, the now elegant and durable cloth binding presents so finished an appearance when ranged upon the shelves of a library, as to supersede the necessity of resorting to the style of binding so long prevalent. The libraries of the affluent, however, continue the demand for that durable and ornamental style of work which has continued in vogue, with slight variations, for the past century; and since all the essential features of other descriptions of binding are contained in this, we shall briefly describe the operations in the successive stages of binding a book, and afterwards indicate the variations included in the other kinds of binding.
The dimensions of the sheets of paper upon which a book is printed, together with the number of pages into which the sheet is divided, necessarily determine the size of a book; for instance, a sheet of the size known as foolscap may, according to the number of times it is folded, make a folio book, a quarto, or an octavo; and so with other sheets of different dimensions, such as demi, royal, imperial, &c. Previous to the present century, folios and quartos were the predominating sizes of library books; but, at the present time, the more portable and convenient octavo is preferred, generally the demi sheet folded into that form containing sixteen pages.
The sheets of a book are readily distinguished from each other by signatures at the foot of the first page of each sheet; and it is these, and not to the paginal number, that the binder looks in arranging and collating. In foreign countries these signatures consist of consecutive numbers; while in this country alphabetical letters are adopted; we give the preference to the former, as being less productive of error in collation, and as possessing certain other advantages.
The operations of binding may be conveniently grouped under two main divisions—"forwarding" and "finishing." Under the first is comprehended everything necessary to the preservation of a book—the second concerns merely the embellishment.
In the first place, the sheets of a book are folded in such a manner that the pages follow each other in consecutive order. In this operation the binder is guided by the "signatures," which indicate the part of a sheet to be superimposed upon another. This labour is performed by women and girls, who acquire incredible dexterity by long-continued practice. The sheets, after being folded, are loose and bulky. The next operation has for its object the bringing them into a more compact form, which is accomplished either by beating them with a broad-faced hammer upon a smooth flat stone, or by passing them between the cylinders of a "rolling machine," invented for that purpose by Mr Burn of Hatton Garden, London. A book must not be submitted to the "beating" process until it has been printed one or two years; for the heat generated by the compression of the air under the blows of the hammer, causes the printing-ink to soften, and "set off" or transfer a portion of its substance to the opposite pages, by which the book is always disfigured, and frequently entirely ruined. This objection does not lie against the rolling machine, provided the cylinders are kept clean; while a great saving of time is effected by its use.
The next operation is that of sewing the sheets together, and to the bands of string or cord by which the book is subsequently secured in its case. The sheets being carefully collated, are given to the sewer, who sits before a contrivance called a "sewing machine," in which the bands are fixed at suitable distances apart; the number of these bands depends upon the size of the volume and the quality of the binding; six bands are usually allowed to folios, and five or four to quartos and octavos; the sewer places a folded sheet with its back to the bands, and pierces it through the middle fold with a needle carrying the thread, at distances corresponding to the bands. The thread, when passed through the sheet, is twisted round the contiguous band, and so with each in succession, until all the sheets composing the volume are fastened to the bands. This method involves what are termed raised bands, which are recognised by a projection over each on the back of the book; but if the back is required to be flat and smooth, sunk bands are adopted. To obtain these, the sheets, before being given to the sewer, are by means of a saw grooved at the back, sufficiently deep to admit the bands. If plates are to be inserted, they are either pasted in at the appropriate places, or, which is preferable, stitched through a marginal fold. When the book is released from the sewing machine, about half an inch of each band is left attached on either side; these ends are "frayed" out and beaten flat, to prevent their forming protuberances on the cover to which they are fastened; the end-papers intended to line the inside of the case are now attached, and the base of the back is covered with glue. Before the glue is quite dry the back is rounded with a hammer, and subsequently placed between two feather-edged boards, above which the upper edge of the book slightly projects; these are then placed together in a press, for the backing process; that is, the back of the book is well beaten until it projects a little over each side of the levelled boards, so as to form a groove or place for the millboard covers to lie in. The book is now removed to the "cutting press," where, by means of an instrument termed a plough, the edges are smoothly cut; but, in order to preserve the convexity of the fore-edge, the back is temporarily flattened, and after the edges are cut, it is restored to its former roundness. The boards were formerly, as the name indicates, really of wood, but now of thick brown paper or mill-board, of various thicknesses, according to the size of the book. They are cut a little larger than the book itself, and attached by the ends of the bands, left for that purpose, being passed through holes in the sides of the boards, glued down, and then hammered flat and smooth. The edges of the volume are now coloured, marbled, or gilt and burnished.
The head-band is an ornamental appendage employed for the purpose of concealing the leather folded over the back. It consists of a piece of parchment or card-board, worked over with coloured silk, which is sewed to the glued back of the sheets, and gives an elegant finish to that part of the book.
Sometimes books are preferred with hollow backs, that is, when the leather of the cover is not attached to the glued back, but this latter is covered with a piece of thick paper. The book is now ready to receive its external covering.
This external covering may be of various materials. For the most part of them, but best is calf-skin dried, of various colours, but kid-skin and its imitation in sheep-skin or vellum, and skin again acknowledged as such, in which school-books and many law-books are bound, are also used in great quantities. The piece of leather, cut to a proper size, is moistened with water, next covered on the inner side with paste or glue, and then applied evenly to the millboard sides; the superfluous edge of the leather, first pared to reduce its thickness, is turned over on the inside, and concealed from view by the end papers attached to the sheets forming the book, which are subsequently pasted down upon the millboards. The book is now "corded," that is, firmly tied between two boards until it is dry, so as to insure perfect smoothness in the cover; it is next removed from these boards and transferred to the finishers. Besides the "lettering" at the back of a book, there is generally a variety of ornamental work, on the back, edges, and sides, the patterns of which may be executed either in blind-tooling, wherein the leather is simply embossed, without the use of gold-leaf; or the metal may be applied only partially to the patterns, or they may be executed wholly in gold-leaf. This is a matter affording much room for the display of taste and skill on the part of the binder, and in many instances is taken advantage of; by none more, at the present day, than by Mr James Hayday of London, whose productions fully equal those of the most eminent binders of past times. The embossing is performed with the aid of brass tools cut to various patterns; when leaf-gold is applied, it is made to adhere, by moistening the leather with the glair of egg mixed with olive oil; the gold-leaf being laid upon this, the hot embossing tool is carefully applied, and the pattern permanently impressed upon the leather.
There are many other minute details into which it is not our purpose to enter. Enough has been said to indicate the various operations to which a book is submitted in being "bound;" but as good binding is necessarily expensive, those who have large libraries to bind are frequently obliged to study economy. This end is attained without any degree sacrificing elegance of appearance, or any of the essential qualities of binding, by adopting the method of having the books half-bound, as it is termed. The only difference between this method and that just described consists in the sides of the millboards being covered with paper or cloth, while the back and corners of the cover are protected with leather; the edges of the leaves are often not cut on the front and bottom, but only on the top, which is usually gilt, to protect the book from disintegration by dust.
The various styles of binding are distinguished from each other by appropriate names, according to the material which is used for the covers. Russian leather is much prized on account of its not being liable to mould in damp apartments, nor to the attacks of insects. These qualities, together with its agreeable colour, it derives from being treated with the empyreumatic oil of birch bark; its peculiar red colour is due chiefly to a dye of Saunders' wood. Many of the Continental books are bound in vellum, a very elegant but expensive style. In Holland and Spain much hog-skin was formerly used. Besides these various leathers, textile fabrics have at all periods been extensively employed for the purposes of binding; some specimens of the earliest dates are covered with velvet and satin; in recent times silk was in great demand for annuals and kindred works; but lately cotton cloth embossed and dyed has, in the extent of its applications, exceeded any other material ever employed. Previous to the year 1825, new books were generally published in boards; that is, millboards covered with drab paper, upon which the title, printed on a white label, was pasted. Although this was greatly superior to the Continental mode of covering new books with thin paper, something more elegant and durable was needed, and Mr Archibald Leighton of London endeavoured to meet this want by introducing coloured cloth (glazed calico). One of the first books of importance bound in this material was the edition of Lord Byron's works in 17 volumes.
Since that period there has been a progressive improvement in the adaptation of coloured cloth to the purposes of binding, both in the colours imparted to it, and in "embossing" upon its surface the grain peculiar to morocco and other kinds of leather; and so perfect is this imitation, that an experienced eye can scarcely detect the difference. The sides and backs of "case" covers, with this fabric are also ornamented in bold relief, with elegant patterns, by means of brass tools applied by powerful arming presses; while the "lettering," at first so clumsily executed, is now as perfect as that impressed upon leather. Skilful artists are constantly employed in designing ornamental patterns; and a new class of tool-cutters, who cut these patterns in solid brass, has been called into existence. Expensive machines also for folding, pressing, cutting the edges, &c., have been contrived.
This style of binding has been received with so much favour that the rapidity of its extension is almost incredible. At one of the numerous large establishments in London, 310 persons are employed, distributed as follows—200 women and girls are occupied in folding, collating, and sewing; and 110 men and boys in the more advanced stages; of these, 40 men are engaged in "backing, cutting the edges, &c.; 5 in gilding or marbling the edges; 15 in making cases; 24 in stamping the sides; 12 as extra binders and finishers of the better kind of work; and 16 as clerks, porters, &c. Ten arming presses for stamping the sides of the covers, each worked by two men, will furnish 3000 impressions per day from a brass block "in blind," i.e. without gold leaf, or 1500 impressions if "with the gold." The value of the gold leaf consumed amounts to L4000 perannum. The superfluous gold wiped off the pattern is saved, and sold for £500 per annum. The quantity of millboards used is at the rate of 8 tons per month. Four men are constantly employed at as many cutting-machines, each of which yields a hundredweight of shavings per week. One man is employed solely in sawing the backs of books; two others in cutting millboard to the required sizes, and four pairs of men in making cloth cases, each pair producing on the average 1200 cases per diem.
The operations in the process of cloth-binding differ from those described under calf-binding in this.—the sheets are not beaten or rolled, nor the edges cut, except that the fore-edge and the tail are usually trimmed; the cases are made separately, and not fastened to the sheets by the bands, but only by the end papers, or by a strip of coarse muslin attached to the glued back of the sheets, being also fastened to the inside of the case. Cloth-covered books have always hollow backs.
There is a recent improvement in fastening together books of plates, music, account-books, &c., which are required to lie open flat; these are not sewed, but the back edge of the leaves is cut even, rasped, and cemented with liquid India-rubber.
The material with which books are covered should be selected with reference to the "tear and wear" to which they may be subjected. For public libraries, the very best workmanship in the forwarding should be secured, while the finishing bestowed must have reference to neatness and economy. The lettering of books rarely receives the consideration it demands; a simple rule is, that it should clearly indicate, 1. The author's name; 2. The subject, and even the divisions of a subject; so that the book may be identified without removing it from its place. In serial works, besides the consecutive number, the date should be affixed, and sometimes even the place of publication. These details may appear trifles, but whoever has to do with large libraries will appreciate their utility. If they are left to the discretion of the binder, he generally contents himself with lettering a book "History of Rome," or "Travels in Europe," which obviously necessitates the opening of the volume before its individuality can be ascertained. For private libraries of large extent there is no better style of binding than "half morocco" with gilt tops, occasionally interspersed with specimens of other styles.
The classification of books in large libraries may be greatly facilitated by appropriating certain colours to specific subjects; e.g., theology might be marked in black or dark purple; history in scarlet; poetry in light-blue or green. In this manner, and by combining them with coloured labels of various hues, the labour of sorting and replacing books upon the shelves may be much lightened to the librarian.
Bookbinding still lacks its historian: it is much to be regretted that on a subject so well deserving the attention of the curious and learned, no researches have been made into the origin, progress, and decline of this art. Beyond a few incidental and fragmentary passages in the writings of bibliographers and travellers, merely descriptive, we may seek in vain for reliable information. In this place we have endeavoured to collect the scattered materials, and present them in a concise form.
Although it is customary to refer binding to remote antiquity, it obviously could not have been practised before books assumed their present form. The manuscripts of the ancients consisted of continuous rolls of papyrus or parchment, a form which did not admit of being bound like the single leaves of a modern book. These manuscripts were wound upon rollers, as our maps are mounted, to which labels bearing the titles were attached at the ends; these rolls were inserted in parchment cases, and preserved from dust and injury in cylindrical boxes with lids (see Gell's Pompeii, &c.). It is more probable, however, that the modern book derived its form from the means taken to preserve the waxed tablets of the Greeks and Romans which were inclosed in covers of wood, ivory, &c. (diptycha, trip-tycha). It would be easy to substitute pieces of papyrus or parchment for these pieces of waxed wood, upon which the writing was graven by the stilus. These diptycha were frequently elaborately carved and ornamented, and many of them, preserved to the present time, very nearly resemble our modern octavos in size. When parchment came to be exclusively employed as a writing material, it gave rise to the invention of libri pluteatis and volumina, names which very clearly indicate the form given to manuscripts. The volumen, so called a volerendo, was the form mostly employed with papyrus and parchment, and now that our books are square or oblong, the term is anomalous; the word remains, but the thing itself has long since entirely disappeared.
It would be exceedingly difficult to determine what the art of bookbinding, or that which occupied its place, was during the middle ages, as no evidence remains, and the light of discovery has not been thrown upon it. All that we can at present learn is, that in the ninth and tenth centuries, owing probably to the impulse given to letters, and to everything connected with literature, by Charlemagne and the princes of his line, the external decoration of manuscripts was carried to a high state of perfection. The parchment, in leaves, was inclosed between two tablets of wood or ivory, inlaid and incrusted with jewels and precious stones, bosses of gold and silver, sometimes with hinges and clasps of these metals. The Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris is very rich in this description of bindings.
The library of the Louvre contains the celebrated Book of Hours, written with letters of gold upon purple parchment; it is covered with red velvet. This book was given to the city of Toulouse by Charlemagne. A New Testament of the eighth century, bound in wooden covers, covered with black satin, in an excellent state of preservation, enriches a private collection.
It was probably only at the epoch of the invention of paper from rags, and its extended use, that modern binding arose: this was towards the end of the thirteenth century (1280). From this period to the sixteenth century the bindings are numerous, but no name of a binder has reached us; they generally followed the good or bad taste that prevailed at the time in other ornamental arts. Thus, during the fifteenth century, binding, like architecture and the ornamental letters of MSS., abounded in foliages and flowers (arabesque), but at no period do we find the elegant simplicity that prevailed in the arts at the commencement of the fourteenth century. The most beautiful bindings preserved to us of the fifteenth century are those of the famous library formed at Buda by Matthias Hunyadi, king of Hungary; it consisted of nearly 50,000 volumes of Greek and Latin manuscripts. They are but very little known. The greater portion of the treasures of this sort collected by Matthias are now in the public library at Munich.
Apart from mere decoration, the main object aimed at in the early bindings was strength and durability, and whether it was owing to the binders being fettered in their ideas to the ivory or wooden covers of the tablets they first imitated, or from an excess of care in securing the preservation of the treasure they inclosed, it is certain they laboured overmuch in their vocation. A folio of this era, with its timber and metal, must have been a formidable affair; and the very means employed for the preservation of the book doubtless frequently led to its destruction.
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1 The oft-repeated anecdote which attributes the erection of a statue to Phillatius, an Athenian, for the invention of bookbinding, is evidently founded upon a misconception of the text of Photius; all that the Athenian did was to glue together into one continuous roll (or volume) the pieces of papyrus, which were previously sewed together.
2 In the Laurentian Library at Florence is Petrarch's manuscript of Cicero's Epistolae ad Atticum, remarkable for its calligraphy and workmanship. The binding is only of the time of Cosmo. The old wooden covers of this volume, so often handled by the poet, had so wounded him by falling repeatedly on his left leg, that he narrowly escaped amputation. So rude and almost murderous were literary pursuits at that period. This volume has still, as before, brass clasps and corners, but they would not inflict such a wound.—Valery. The sixteenth century, the epoch of the Renaissance, is doubtless that in which the art of binding attained its greatest perfection, and the books extant in various public and private libraries confirm this view. It would be out of place to enumerate these treasures, but it would be difficult to meet with one more beautiful than that of the Hours of Margaret of Savoy. At the court of France, during the time of Catherine de Medici, there was a perfect rage for ornamental binding, its greatest promoters being Diane of Poitiers, the treasurer Grolier, the president De Thou, and M. d'Urfé.
In the seventeenth century, with the exception of the bindings executed by Ruette, bookseller and binder to Louis XIV., the art at first remained quite stationary, and afterwards quickly declined; the intrigues and troubles of this period were by no means favourable to so innocent and harmless a passion as that for choice bindings. The eighteenth century was, however, more congenial; the names of eminent binders are sufficiently numerous to indicate that their vocation was in the ascendant. We can only enumerate Guermand, Boyer, Desseille, Padeloup, Gascon, Derome, Chameau, Pontchartrain, Simier, father and son, Purgold, Vaugelles, and Baurzieran. Baurzonnet was contemporary with our Lewis. Upon the whole, the bindings of France excel those of any other nation; they always exhibit a refined taste, and perfect manipulation in the tooling. At the present day the best designs are generally but close imitations of the productions of the past.
The most eminent contemporary binders of France are Madame Gruel, MM. Niédrec, Lortic, Simier, Cape, and Ottman.
The earliest ornamental binding extant in England is of the time of Henry VII.; many specimens of this period are preserved in the British Museum and the Record Office. Stamping the covers with brass tools appears to have been first practised in the reign of Henry VIII., many of which are supposed, upon what authority we know not, to have been designed by Holbein. In the reign of Elizabeth velvet covers embroidered with gold and silver thread and coloured silk were fashionable. It was only in the eighteenth century that binding assumed importance as an art in England. The first, and still unsurpassed binder, is Roger Payne, who was so completely the founder of his art, that he performed every operation with his own hands, from folding, beating, sewing, cutting, mending, head banding, colouring his end-papers, covering, tooling, even to the cutting of the brass tools and letters. The other eminent names since his time are Johnson, Lewis, Kalthoeber, Baumgarten, Bohm, Staggemeir—the last four being Germans; MacKenzie, Clarke, Bedford, Jones, Hering, Hayday, Wright, Riviere. In the present day we have produced no original style of decoration for leather-binding; our highest achievements are in imitating the productions of past centuries. When these imitations combine good taste with good workmanship the highest aim of binding is accomplished, until a new style is originated.
(C. M.—L.)