The Booklover and His Books | Page 3

soon forgot their proper subordination to the type
and have since kept up a more or less open revolt? The law of fitness
demands that whatever is introduced into the book in connection with
type shall harmonize with the relatively heavy lines of type. This the
early black-line engravings did. But the results of all other processes,
from copper-plate to half-tone, conflict with the type-picture and
should be placed where they are not seen with it. Photogravures, for
instance, may be put at the end of the book, or they may be covered
with a piece of opaque tissue paper, so that either their page or the
facing type-page will be seen alone. We cannot do without illustrations.
All mankind love a picture as they love a lover. But let the pictures
belong to the book and not merely be thrust into it.
The binding is to the book what the book is to its subject-matter, a
clothing and protection. In the middle ages, when books were so few as
to be a distinction, they were displayed sidewise, not edgewise, on the
shelves, and their covers were often richly decorated, sometimes with

costly gems. Even the wooden cover of the pre-Columbian Mexican
book had gems set in its corners. Modern ornamentation is confined to
tooling, blind and gilt, and inlaying. But some booklovers question
whether any decoration really adds to the beauty of the finest leather. It
should be remembered that the binding is not all on the outside. The
visible cover is only the jacket of the real cover on which the integrity
of the book depends. The sewing is the first element in time and
importance. To be well bound a book should lie open well, otherwise it
is bound not for the reader but only for the collector.
It cannot be too often repeated that properly made books are not
extremely costly. A modern book offered at a fancy price means either
a very small edition, an extravagant binding, or what is more likely, a
gullible public. But most books that appeal to the booklover are not
excessive in price. Never before was so much money spent in making
books attractive--for the publisher always has half an eye on the
booklover--and while much of this money is wasted, not all is laid out
in vain. Our age is producing its quota of good books, and these the
booklover makes it his business to discover.
In order to appreciate, the booklover must first know. He must be a
book-kenner, a critic, but one who is looking for excellencies rather
than faults, and this knowledge there are many books to teach him. But
there is no guide that can impart the love of books; he must learn to
love them as one learns to love sunsets, mountains, and the ocean, by
seeing them. So let him who would know the joys and rewards of the
booklover associate with well-made books. Let him begin with the
ancients of printing, the great Germans, Italians, Dutchmen. He can still
buy their books if he is well-to-do, or see them in libraries and
museums if he belongs to the majority. Working down to the moderns,
he will find himself discriminating and rejecting, but he will be
attracted by certain printers and certain periods in the last four hundred
years, and he will be rejoiced to find that the last thirty years, though
following a decline, hold their own--not by their mean but by their
best--with any former period short of the great first half-century,
1450-1500.

Finally, if his book-love develops the missionary spirit in him, let him
lend his support to the printers and publishers of to-day who are
producing books worthy of the booklover's regard, for in no other way
can he so effectually speed the day when all books shall justify the
emotion which more than five hundred years ago Richard de Bury,
Bishop of Durham, expressed in the title of his famous and still
cherished work, the Philobiblon.

FITNESS IN BOOK DESIGN
"A woman's fitness comes by fits," said slanderous Cloten; but to say as
much of fitness in book design would be on the whole a compliment.
Fitness as applied to book design means, of course, that the material
form of the book shall correspond to its spiritual substance, shall be no
finer and no meaner, and shall produce a like, even if a slighter, esthetic
impression. At the outset we have to surrender to commercialism more
than half our territory. All agree that our kings should be clothed in
purple and our commoners in broadcloth; but how about the intellectual
riffraff that makes up the majority of our books? Are our publishers
willing that these should be clothed according to their station? Hardly;
for then would much of their