cloth of a good dark tint it may be allowed to remain unbound, but
the primrose and lilac hues soon call out for the aid of the binder.

Much has been written of late about book-binding. In a later part
of this manual we shall have something to say about historical
examples of the art, and the performances of the great masters. At
present one must begin by giving the practical rule, that a book
should be bound in harmony with its character and its value. The
bibliophile, if he could give the rein to his passions, would bind
every book he cares to possess in a full coat of morocco, or (if it
did not age so fast) of Russia leather. But to do this is beyond
the power of most of us. Only works of great rarity or value should
be full bound in morocco. If we have the luck to light on a
Shakespeare quarto, on some masterpiece of Aldus Manutius, by all
means let us entrust it to the most competent binder, and instruct
him to do justice to the volume. Let old English books, as More's
"Utopia," have a cover of stamped and blazoned calf. Let the binder
clothe an early Rabelais or Marot in the style favoured by Grolier,
in leather tooled with geometrical patterns. Let a Moliere or
Corneille be bound in the graceful contemporary style of Le Gascon,
where the lace-like pattern of the gilding resembles the Venetian
point-lace, for which La Fontaine liked to ruin himself. Let a
binding, a la fanfare, in the style of Thouvenin, denote a novelist
of the last century, let panelled Russia leather array a folio of
Shakespeare, and let English works of a hundred years ago be clothed
in the sturdy fashion of Roger Payne. Again, the bibliophile may
prefer to have the leather stamped with his arms and crest, like de
Thou, Henri III., D'Hoym, Madame du Barry, and most of the
collectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet there
are books of great price which one would hesitate to bind in new