Part 37

The Smyth casing-in machine (fig. 13) pastes the sides of a book as required and then attaches the cover over all. Cleverly arranged rollers catch the book, and by a carefully regulated pressure fix the cover in the proper position. There is a "jointing-in" device which at a critical moment forces the joints in the cover into the joints in the book. It will work books from 4 to 22 in. in length and from 1/4 to 3 in. in thickness, and can cover from 10 to 15 books per minute.

Here may also be mentioned the Sheridan wrappering machine, which covers magazines and pamphlets ranging from 5 to 12 in. in length at the rate of 40 a minute.

Wiring.

Wiring is a cheap method of keeping together thin parts of periodicals or tracts. The machine that executes it is simple in construction and use. It drives a short wire pin, bent at right angles at each end, through the folds of the sections of a book or through the entire thickness, sideways, after the manner of stabbing. The projecting ends, when through the substance of the paper, are bent over and flattened so as to grip firmly. The metal used for these pins was at first very liable to rust, and consequently did much damage to the paper near it, but this defect has now been largely remedied. At the same time the principle of using hard metal wire instead of flexible hempen thread is essentially vicious, and should only be used as a temporary expedient for publications of little value.

Blocking.

The machines (fig. 14) now used for blocking designs upon book-covers are practically the same as have been employed for many years. Several small improvements have been introduced as to better inking of the rollers for colour work, and better heating of the blocks used for gold work. A blocking press is now, in consequence of the size of many of the blocks, a large and cumbersome machine. The block itself is fixed firmly in a strong metal bed, and a movable table in front of it is fitted with gauges which keep the cover exactly in its right place. For gold work the block is kept at the proper temperature by means of gas jets, and the cover being properly overlaid with gold leaf is passed, on its table, directly under the block and then pressed steadily upwards against it, lowered, drawn out, and the superfluous gold rubbed off. The same process is followed in the case of colour blocks, only now the block need not be heated, but is inked by means of a roller for each impression. A separate printing is necessary for each colour. These printings always require great care on the part of the operator, who has to watch the working of each pull very carefully, and if any readjustment is wanted, to make it at once, so that it is difficult to estimate at what rate they can be made. In the matter of gold blocking there must be great care exercised in the matter of the heat of the block, for if it is too hot the gold will adhere where it is not wanted, and if too cool it will not adhere where it is required. Great nicety is also necessary as to the exact pressure required as well as the precise number of moments during which the block should be in contact with the gold, which is fastened to the cloth or leather by means of the solidification by heat of egg albumen. Blocking presses are mainly of German make, but Scottish and English presses are also largely used.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Blocking Machine.]

AUTHORITIES.--See the _Anglo-Saxon Review_ (1899-1901); C.J. Davenport, _Royal English Bookbindings_ (1896), _Cantor Lectures on Bookbinding_ (1898), _English Embroidered Bookbindings_ (1899), _Life of Thomas Berthelet_ (1901), _Life of Samuel Mearne_ (1906); W.Y. Fletcher, _English Bookbindings in the British Museum_ (1895), _Foreign Bookbindings in the British Museum_ (1896); L. Gruel, _Manuel de l'amateur de relieures_ (1887); H.P. Horne, _The Binding of Books_ (1894); S.T. Prideaux, _Historical Sketch of Bookbinding_ (1893); E. Thoinan, _Les Relieurs francais_ (1893); O. Uzanne, _La Relieure moderne_ (1887); H.B. Wheatley, _Remarkable Bindings in the British Museum_ (1889); J.W. Zaehnsdorf, _The Art of Bookbinding_ (1880). (C. D.)

## BOOKCASE, an article of furniture, forming a shelved receptacle, usually

perpendicular or horizontal, for the storage of books. When books, being written by hand, were excessively scarce, they were kept in small coffers which the great carried about with them on their journeys. As manuscript volumes accumulated in the religious houses or in regal palaces, they were stored upon shelves or in cupboards, and it is from these cupboards that the bookcase of to-day directly descends. At a somewhat later date the doors were, for convenience' sake, discarded, and the evolution of the bookcase made one step forward. Even then, however, the volumes were not arranged in the modern fashion. They were either placed in piles upon their sides, or if upright, were ranged with their backs to the wall and their edges outwards. The band of leather, vellum or parchment which closed the book was often used for the inscription of the title, which was thus on the fore-edge instead of on the back. It was not until the invention of printing had greatly cheapened books that it became the practice to write the title on the back and place the edges inwards. Early bookcases were usually of oak, which is still deemed to be the most appropriate wood for a stately library. The oldest bookcases in England are those in the Bodleian library at Oxford, which were placed in position in the last year or two of the 16th century; in that library are the earliest extant examples of shelved galleries over the flat wall-cases. Long ranges of book-shelves are necessarily somewhat severe in appearance, and many attempts have been made by means of carved cornices and pilasters to give them a more _riant_ appearance--attempts which were never so successful as in the hands of the great English cabinet-makers of the second half of the 18th century.

Both Chippendale and Sheraton made or designed great numbers of

## bookcases, mostly glazed with little lozenges encased in fret-work

frames often of great charm and elegance. The alluring grace of some of Sheraton's satinwood bookcases has very rarely indeed been equalled. The French cabinet-makers of the same period were also highly successful with small ornamental cases. Mahogany, rosewood, satinwood and even choicer exotic timbers were used; they were often inlaid with marqueterie and mounted with chased and gilded bronze. Dwarf bookcases were frequently finished with a slab of choice marble at the top. In the great public libraries of the 20th century the bookcases are often of iron, as in the British Museum where the shelves are covered with cowhide, of steel, as in the library of Congress at Washington, or of slate, as in the Fitzwilliam library at Cambridge. There are three systems of arranging bookcases--flat against the wall; in "stacks" or ranges parallel to each other with merely enough space between to allow of the passage of a librarian; or in bays or alcoves where cases jut out into the room at right angles to the wall-cases. The stack system is suitable only for public libraries where economy of space is essential; the bay system is not only handsome but utilizes the space to great advantage. The library of the city of London at the Guildhall is a peculiarly effective example of the bay arrangement.

The whole question of the construction and arrangement of bookcases was learnedly discussed in the light of experience by W.E. Gladstone in the Nineteenth Century for March 1890. (J. P.-B.)

BOOK-COLLECTING, the bringing together of books which in their contents, their form or the history of the individual copy possess some element of permanent interest, and either actually or prospectively are rare, in the sense of being difficult to procure. This qualification of rarity, which figures much too largely in the popular view of book-collecting, is entirely subordinate to that of interest, for the rarity of a book devoid of interest is a matter of no concern. On the other hand so long as a book (or anything else) is and appears likely to continue to be easily procurable at any moment, no one has any reason for collecting it. The anticipation that it will always be easily procurable is often unfounded; but so long as the anticipation exists it restrains collecting, with the result that Horn-books are much rarer than First Folio Shakespeares. It has even been laid down that the ultimate rarity of books varies in the inverse ratio of the number of copies originally printed, and though the generalization is a little sweeping, it is not far from the truth. To triumph over small difficulties being the chief element in games of skill, the different varieties of book-collecting, which offer almost as many varieties of grades of difficulty, make excellent hobbies. But in its essence the pastime of a book-collector is identical with the official work of the curator of a museum, and thus also with one branch of the duties of the librarian of any library of respectable age. In its inception every library is a literary workshop, with more or less of a garden or recreation ground attached according as its managers are influenced by the humanities or by a narrow conception of utility. As the library grows, the books and editions which have been the tools of one generation pass out of use; and it becomes largely a depository or storehouse of a stock much of which is dead. But from out of this seemingly dead stock preserved at haphazard, critics and antiquaries gradually pick out books which they find to be still alive. Of some of these the interest cannot be reproduced in its entirety by any mere reprint, and it is this salvage which forms the literary museum. Book-collectors are privileged to leap at once to this stage in their relations with books, using the dealers' shops and catalogues as depositories from which to pick the books which will best fit with the aim or central idea of their collection. For in the modern private collection, as in the modern museum, the need for a central idea must be fully recognized. Neither the collector nor the curator can be content to keep a mere curiosity-shop. It is the collector's business to illustrate his central idea by his choice of examples, by the care with which he describes them and the skill with which they are arranged. In all these matters many amateurs rival, if they do not outstrip, the professional curators and librarians, and not seldom their collections are made with a view to their ultimate transference to public ownership. In any case it is by the zeal of collectors that books which otherwise would have perished from neglect are discovered, cared for and preserved, and those who achieve these results certainly deserve well of the community.

History.

Whenever a high degree of civilization has been attained book-lovers have multiplied, and to the student with his modest desire to read his favourite author in a well-written or well-printed copy there has been added a class of owners suspected of caring more for the externals of books than for the enjoyment to be obtained by reading them. But although adumbrations of it existed under the Roman empire and towards the end of the middle ages, book-collecting, as it is now understood, is essentially of modern growth. A glance through what must be regarded as the medieval text-book on the love of books, the _Philobiblon_, attributed to Richard de Bury (written in 1345), shows that it deals almost exclusively with the delights of literature, and Sebastian Brant's attack on the book-fool, written a century and a half later, demonstrates nothing more than that the possession of books is a poor substitute for learning. This is so obviously true that before book-collecting in the modern sense can begin it is essential that there should be no lack of books to read, just as until cups and saucers became plentiful there was no room for the collector of old china. Even when the invention of printing had reduced the cost of books by some 80%, book-collectors did not immediately appear. There is a natural temptation to imagine that the early book-owners, whose libraries have enriched modern collectors with some of their best-known treasures, must necessarily have been collectors themselves. This is far from being the case. Hardly a book of all that Jean Grolier (1479-1565) caused to be bound so tastefully for himself and his friends reveals any antiquarian instincts in its liberal owner, who bought partly to encourage the best printers of his day, partly to provide his friends with the most recent fruits of Renaissance scholarship. In England Archbishop Cranmer, Lords Arundel and Lumley, and Henry, prince of Wales (1594-1612), in France the famous historian Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553-1617), brought together the best books of their day in all departments of learned literature, put them into handsome leather jackets, and enriched them with their coats of arms, heraldic badges or other marks of possession. But they brought their books together for use and study, to be read by themselves and by the scholars who frequented their houses, and no evidence has been produced that they appreciated what a collector might now call the points of a book other than its fine condition and literary or informational merits. Again, not a few other more or less famous men have been dubbed collectors on the score of a scanty shelf-full of volumes known to have been stamped with their arms. Collecting, as distinct both from the formation of working libraries and from casual ownership of this latter kind, may perhaps be said to have begun in England at the time of the antiquarian reaction produced by the book-massacres when the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII., and the university and college libraries and the parish service books were plundered and stript by the commissioners of Edward VI. To rescue good books from perishing is one of the main objects of book-collecting, and when Archbishop Parker and Sir Robert Cotton set to work to gather what they could of the scattered records of English statecraft and literature, and of the decorative art bestowed so lavishly on the books of public and private devotion, they were book-collectors in a sense and on a scale to which few of their modern imitators can pretend. Men of more slender purses, and armed with none of Archbishop Parker's special powers, worked according to their ability on similar lines. Humphrey Dyson, an Elizabethan notary, who collected contemporary proclamations and books from the early English presses, and George Thomason (d. 1666), the bookseller who bought, stored and catalogued all the pamphlet literature of the Civil War, were mindful of the future historians of the days in which they lived. By the end of the 17th century book-collecting was in full swing all over Europe, and much of its apparatus had come into existence. In 1676 book auctions were introduced into England from Holland, and soon we can trace in priced catalogues the beginning of a taste for Caxtons, and the books prized by collectors slowly fought their way up from amid the heavy volumes of theology by which they were at first overwhelmed.

While book-collecting thus came into existence it was rather as an added grace in the formation of a fine library than as a separate pursuit. Almost all the large book-buyers of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries bought with a public object, or were rewarded for their zeal by their treasures being thought worthy of a public resting-place. Sir Thomas Smith (d. 1577) bequeathed his books to Queens' College, Cambridge; Archbishop Parker's were left under severe restrictions to Corpus Christi College in the same university; Sir Thomas Bodley refounded during his lifetime the university library at Oxford, to which also Laud gave liberally and Selden bequeathed his books. The library of Archbishop Williams went to St John's College, Cambridge; that of Archbishop Usher was bought for Trinity College, Dublin. The mathematical and scientific books of Thomas Howard, earl of Norfolk (d. 1646), were given by his grandson to the Royal Society; the heraldic collections of Ralph Sheldon (d. 1684) to Heralds' College; the library in which Pepys took so much pleasure to Magdalene College, Cambridge. Bishop Moore's books, including a little volume of Caxton quartos, almost all unique, were bought by George I. and presented to the university library at Cambridge. Archbishop Marsh, who had previously bought Stillingfleet's printed books (his manuscripts went to Oxford), founded a library at Dublin. The immense accumulations of Thomas Rawlinson (d. 1725) provided materials for a series of auctions, and Harley's printed books were sold to Osbourne the bookseller. But the trend was all towards public ownership. While Richard Rawlinson (d. 1755) allowed his brother's books to be sold, the best of his own were bequeathed to Oxford, and the Harleian MSS. were offered to the nation at a sum far below their value. A similar offer of the great collections formed by Sir Hans Sloane, including some 50,000 printed books, together with the need for taking better care of what remained of the Cotton manuscripts, vested in trustees for public use in 1702 and partially destroyed by fire in 1731, led to the foundation of the British Museum in 1753, and this on its opening in 1757 was almost immediately enriched by George II.'s gift of the old royal library, formed by the kings and queens of England from Henry VII. to Charles II., and by Henry, prince of Wales, son of James I., who had bought the books belonging to Archbishop Cranmer and Lords Arundel and Lumley. A few notable book-buyers could not afford to bequeath their treasures to libraries, e.g. Richard Smith, the secondary of the Poultry Compter (d. 1675), at whose book-sale (1682) a dozen Caxtons sold for from 2 S. to 18 S. apiece, Dr Francis Bernard (d. 1698), Narcissus Luttrell(d. 1732) and Dr Richard Mead (d. 1754). At the opposite end of the scale, in the earls of Sunderland (d. 1722) and Pembroke (d. 1733), we have early examples of the attempts, seldom successful, of book-loving peers to make their libraries into permanent heirlooms. But as has been said, the drift up to 1760 was all towards public ownership, and the libraries were for the most part general in character, though the interest in typographical antiquities was already well marked.

When George III. came to the throne he found himself bookless, and the magnificent library of over 80,000 books and pamphlets and 440 manuscripts which he accumulated shows on a large scale the catholic and literary spirit of the book-lovers of his day. As befitted the library of an English king it was rich in English classics as well as in those of Greece and Rome, and the typographical first-fruits of Mainz, Rome and Venice were balanced by numerous works from the first presses of Westminster, London and Oxford. This noble library passed in 1823 to the British Museum, which had already received the much smaller but carefully chosen collection of the Rev. C.M. Cracherode (d. 1799), and in 1846 was further enriched by the wonderful library formed by Thomas Grenville, the last of its great book-loving benefactors, who died in that year, aged ninety-one. A few less wealthy men had kept up the old public-spirited tradition during George III.'s reign, Garrick bequeathing his fine collection of English plays and Sir Joseph Banks his natural history books to the British Museum, while Capell's Shakespearian treasures enriched Trinity College, Cambridge, and those of Malone went to the Bodleian library at Oxford, the formation of these special collections, in place of the large general library with a sprinkling of rarities, being in itself worth noting. But the noble book-buyers celebrated by the Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin in his numerous bibliographical works kept mainly on the old lines, though with aims less patriotic than their predecessors. The duke of Roxburghe's books were sold in 1812, and the excitement produced by the auction, more especially by the competition between Lord Spencer and the duke of Marlborough (at that time marquess of Blandford) for an edition of Boccaccio printed by Valdarfer at Venice in 1471, led to the formation of the Roxburghe Club at a commemorative dinner. In 1819 the duke of Marlborough's books were sold, and the Boccaccio for which he had paid L2260 went to Earl Spencer (d. 1834) for L750, to pass with the rest of his rare books to Mrs Rylands in 1892, and by her gift to the John Rylands library at Manchester in 1899. The books of Sir M.M. Sykes were sold in 1824, those of J.B. Inglis in 1826 (after which he collected again) and those of George Hibbert in 1829. The 150,000 volumes brought together by Richard Heber at an expense of about L100,000 were disposed of by successive sales during the years 1834-1837 and realized not much more than half their cost. The wonderful library of William Beckford (d. 1844), especially rich in fine bindings, bequeathed to his daughter, the duchess of Hamilton, was sold in 1882, with the Hamilton manuscripts, for the most part to the German government. Their dispersal was preceded in 1881 by that of the Sunderland collection, already mentioned. The library of Brian Fairfax (d. 1749), which had passed to the earls of Jersey, was sold in 1885, that of Sir John Thorold (d. 1815) in 1884, his "Gutenberg" Bible fetching L3900 and his Mainz Psalter L4950. The great collection of manuscripts formed by Sir Thomas Phillipps (d. 1872) has furnished materials for numerous sales. The printed books of the earl of Ashburnham (d. 1878) kept the auctioneers busy in 1897 and 1898; his manuscripts were sold, some to the British government (the Stowe collection shared between the British Museum and Dublin), the German government (part of the Libri and Barrois collection, all, save one MS. of 13th century German ballads, resold to France), the Italian government (the rest of the Libri collection) Mr Yates Thompson (the MSS. known as the Appendix) and Mr J. Pierpont Morgan (the Lindau Gospels). The collections formed by Mr W.H. Miller (d. 1848, mainly English poetry), the duke of Devonshire (d. 1858) and Mr Henry Huth (d. 1878), are still intact.