The Booklover and His Books | Page 5

looks as ridiculously
inflated as did a slender miss of that period in the crinoline then in
vogue. There is one abomination in book design for which I owe a
personal grudge to commercialism, and that is the dropsical book form
given to Locker-Lampson's "My Confidences." If ever there was a
winsome bit of writing it is this, and it should have made a book to take
to one's heart, something not larger than a "Golden Treasury" volume,
but of individual design. My comfort is that this will yet be done, and
my belief is that art will justify itself better in the market than
commercialism did. A more modern instance of expansion for
commercial reasons defeating fitness in design is furnished by Waters'
translation of "The Journal of Montaigne's Travels." Here we have
three small volumes outwardly attractive, but printed on paper thick
enough for catalogue cards, and therefore too stiff for the binding, also
in type too large to be pleasant. The whole should have been issued in
one volume of the same size in smaller type, and would then have been
as delightful in form as it is in substance.

It is not enough that all the elements of a book be honest, sincere,
enduring; otherwise the clumsy royal octavos of Leslie Stephen's
edition of Fielding would be as attractive as "the dear and dumpy
twelves" of the original editions. Royal octavo, indeed, seems to be the
pitfall of the book designer, though there is no inherent objection to it.
Where in the whole range of reference books will be found a more
attractive set of volumes than Moulton's "Library of Literary
Criticism," with their realization in this format of the Horatian simplex
munditiis? For extremely different treatments of this book size it is
instructive to compare the slender volumes of the original editions of
Ruskin with the slightly shorter but very much thicker volumes of the
scholarly definitive edition, which is a monument of excellence in
every element of book design except the crowning one of fitness. Our
libraries must have this edition for its completeness and its editorship;
its material excellence will insure the transmission of Ruskin's message
to future centuries; but no one will ever fall in love with these volumes
or think of likening them to the marriage of "perfect music unto noble
words."
Granted that the designer knows the tools of his trade,--grasps the
expressional value of every element with which he has to deal, from the
cut of a type to the surface of a binder's cloth,--his task, as we said, is
first to know the soul of the book intrusted to him for embodiment; it is
next to decide upon its most characteristic quality, or the sum of its
qualities; and, lastly, it is so to use his physical elements as to give to
the completed book an expression that shall be the outward
manifestation of its indwelling spirit. This is all that can be asked of
him; but, if he would add a touch of perfection, let him convey the
subtle tribute of a sense of the value of his subject by reflecting in his
design the artist's joy in his work.

PRINT AS AN INTERPRETER OF MEANING
The invention of printing, we have often been told, added to book
production only the two commercial elements of speed and cheapness.
As regards the book itself, we are assured, printing not only added

nothing, but, during the four and a half centuries of its development,
has constantly tended to take away. These statements are no doubt
historically and theoretically true, yet they are so unjust to the
present-day art that some supplementary statement of our obligations to
printing seems called for, aside from the obvious rejoinder that, even if
speed and cheapness are commercial qualities, they have reached a
development--especially in the newspaper--beyond the dreams of the
most imaginative fifteenth-century inventor, and have done nothing
less than revolutionize the world.
Taking the service of printing as it stands to-day, what does it actually
do for the reader? What is the great difference between the printed
word and even the best handwriting? It is obviously the condensation
and the absolute mechanical sameness of print. The advantage of these
differences to the eye in respect to rapid reading is hardly to be
overestimated. Let any one take a specimen of average penmanship and
note the time which he consumes in reading it; let him compare with
this the time occupied in reading the same number of printed words,
and the difference will be startling; but not even so will it do justice to
print, for handwriting average in quality is very far from average in
frequency. If it be urged that the twentieth-century comparison should
be between typewriting and print, we may reply