The Booklover and His Books | Page 8

italic. The fineness of the new type, as has
been suggested, called for a smaller size of book, which was also
favored by considerations of economy and convenience; and so Aldus
made up his sheets in a form which the fold compels us to call octavo,
but which to-day would be called sixteenmo. Says Horatio F. Brown, in
his "The Venetian Printing Press": "The public welcomed the new type
and size. The College granted Aldus a monopoly for ten years for all
books printed in this manner. The price of books was lowered at once.
Didot calculates that an octavo of Aldus cost, on an average, two francs
and a half, whereas a folio probably cost about twenty francs. These
two innovations on type and on format constituted a veritable
revolution in the printing press and in the book trade, which now began
to reach a far more extensive market than it had ever touched before.
With this wide diffusion of books came the popularization of
knowledge at which Aldus aimed. Scholarship began to lose its
exclusive and aristocratic character when the classics were placed
within the reach of any student who chose to study, meditate, and

interpret them for himself. And to Aldus belongs the credit of having,
through his new type and size, opened the way to the democratization
of learning."
That the taste which Aldus so successfully hit was no merely temporary
one, any person will be convinced if he will stand before a shelf full of
these little Aldus classics, handle the light, well-proportioned volumes,
and take in the esthetic charm of their type and page and form, which,
in spite of their four hundred years, by no means savors of antiquity. In
these books Aldus achieved one of the greatest triumphs possible in
any art, a union of beauty and utility, each on so high a plane that no
one is able to decide which is pre-eminent. In a copy which I have
before me of his "Rhetoricorum ad C. Herennium Libri IIII," 1546, the
fine proportions of the page appear in spite of trimming. Very
noticeable are the undersized roman capitals; more curious is the letter
printed in the otherwise blank square to indicate what initial the
illuminator should insert in color, and the irregular use of capitals and
small letters after a period. The catchword appears only on the last page
of the signature, not on every page, as was the later practice. Modern
usage wisely consigns italic to a subordinate place, but in point of
beauty combined with convenience, it may well be questioned if four
centuries of printing have made any advance upon this page.
In nearly every library for scholars is to be found a row of plump little
books that never fail to catch the eye of the sightseer. If the visitor does
not know beforehand what they are, he is little enlightened on being
told that they are "Elzevirs," and the attendant must needs supply the
information that the Elzevirs were a family of Dutch printers who
flourished during the century that closed with the arrival of William III
in England, and that these tiny volumes represent their most popular
productions. Says George Haven Putnam in his "Books and their
Makers during the Middle Ages": "The Elzevirs, following the example
set a century and a half earlier by Aldus, but since that time very
generally lost sight of by the later publishers, initiated a number of
series of books in small and convenient forms, twelvemo and
sixteenmo, which were offered to book buyers at prices considerably
lower than those they had been in the habit of paying for similar

material printed in folio, quarto, or octavo.... These well-edited,
carefully printed, and low-priced editions of the classics won for the
Elzevirs the cordial appreciation of scholars and of students throughout
Europe."
Among the authors who acknowledged their indebtedness to the
Elzevirs may be mentioned Galileo, the elder Balzac, and the poet
Ménage. I have before me more than six feet of shelving filled with
these tiny books. They are nearly all bound in vellum, and thus retain
their antique appearance without as well as within. Their subject-matter
is in the fields of literature, ancient and contemporary, and the history,
geography, and political constitution of the principal countries. The
books of the latter division are known as "Respublicæ Variæ." It is
impossible to resist the conclusion that this book form was chosen not
more to supply cheap books which could be sold to impecunious
scholars than to provide portable volumes for travelers. The Elzevir
"Commonwealths" were the predecessors of our "satchel guides," and
the literary publications in this form were evidently designed to be
pocket editions. It was to such books that Dr. Johnson referred when he
advised his friends "never to