plausibility that it began at the Universities. Certainly the two
earliest examples known to me--the copy of her _Statutes_ presented to
Charles I. by Oxford in 1634, and the Little Gidding _Harmony_
of 1635, the tools employed in which have been shown by Mr. Davenport to
have been used also by Buck, of Cambridge--are two of the finest English
bindings in existence, and in both cases, despite the multiplicity of
the tiny tools employed, there is a unity and largeness of design which,
as I have ventured to hint, is not always found even in the best French
work. The chief English bindings after the Restoration, those associated
with the name of Samuel Mearne, the King's Binder, preserve this
character, though the attempt to break the formality of the rectangle by
the bulges at the side and the little penthouses at foot and head
(whence its name, the 'cottage' style) was not wholly successful. The
use of the labour-saving device of the 'roll,' in preference to
impressing each section of the pattern by hand, is another blot.
Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to find an English or Scotch
binding of this period which is less than charming, and the best of them
are admirable. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a new grace
was added by the inlaying of a leather of a second colour. These inlaid
English bindings are few in number (the British Museum has not a single
fine example), but those who know the specimens exhibited at the
Burlington Fine Arts Club, two of which are figured in its Catalogue,
will readily allow that their grace has never been surpassed. The fine
Harleian bindings let us down gently from this eminence, and then, after
a period of mere dulness, with the rise of Roger Payne we have again an
English school (for Payne's traditions were worthily followed by Charles
Lewis) which, by common consent, was the finest of its time. Payne's
originality is, perhaps, not quite so absolute as has been maintained,
for some of his tools were cut in the pattern of Mearne's, and it would
be possible to find suggestions for some of his schemes of arrangement