A18.9

FROM THE LINOTYPE LIBRARY

Tl.^ ROMAN AID ITALIC PRINTING TYP^B IN THP PRINTING HOUSP OP Tjj( 12 Lafayette Place, N*Y* • The DeYinne Press 1891* This sh0W» DeVinne printings with some fine colored Initials#

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® k* DeVinne &, Go)* mples of many /* '***

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FROM THE LINOTYPE LIBRARY

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THR ROMM AND ITALIC PRINTING TYPE’S IN TIP PRINTING HDUSF OF THODORP L. DsVinne 12 Lafayette Place, N.Y. - The DeVinn* Press 1891, This shonsexamples of many ^DeVinne printings *ith some fins colored initials.

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THE

ROMAN AND ITALIC PRINTING TYPES

IN THE PRINTING HOUSE OF

THEODORE L. DE VINNE & CO.

12 LAFAYETTE PLACE

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NEW-YORK

THE DE YINNE PRESS 1891

&ince honour from tbe foonourer proceeds,

$on> mil do tfoep deSertoe, tdat memorise

&nd teatoe in fcoofcS for aTT posterities

(£f)e names of mortfrieS and tdeir tairtuouS deeds.

John Florio. 1545-1625.

Office of the De Vinne Press, 12 Lafayette Place, New-York, September, 1891.

E take pleasure in presenting to our customers a

V V complete Specimen Book of various sizes and faces of types suitable for books, magazines, pamphlets, catalogues, and circulars. An effort has been made to contrast the old style and modern cuts of letter on opposing pages. To facilitate a comparison of effects the sizes most frequently used are shown in three forms — solid, leaded, and double leaded. Initials have been inserted to show how an other¬ wise unattractive page may be brightened.

Of most of the sizes of types here displayed we have large fonts. Many are new, and all are in good condition, well fitted for the printing of fine book, pamphlet, and job work.

Electrotyping and cloth binding are done in departments of this establishment.

Head-bands and tail-pieces, and typographical book decorations from the leading European founders, can be supplied in great variety.

Theo. L. De Vinne & Co.

GENERAL INFORMATION.

NUMBER OF WORDS IN A SQUARE INCH.

In calculating the number of pages a manu¬ script will occupy, these figures may be used :

Words to Square Inch.

Double small-pica, solid .	• • 4
Great-primer, solid	... 7
English, solid . . . .	1 1
Pica, solid ....	.14
Pica, leaded .	11
Small-pica, solid	... 17
Small-pica, leaded	14
Long-primer, solid	21
Long-primer, leaded	16
Bourgeois, solid	... 28
Bourgeois, leaded	21
Brevier, solid	... 32
Brevier, leaded	• • 23
Minion, solid	... 38
Minion, leaded	• ■ 27
Nonpareil, solid	... 47
Nonpareil, leaded	34
Pearl, solid ....	... 69
Pearl, leaded	• • 50
Thus, suppose the size of	book called me-

dium octavo were selected for a manuscript of 80,000 words. The type page should measure about 3^x6^ inches, or 25^ square inches. If small-pica type, leaded, were desired, the number of words in one page would average 353, and the number of pages in the book, exclusive of titles and other front matter, would be about 227. By fol¬ lowing the same rules, these 80,000 words would make in long-primer 198 pages, in brevier 138 pages, in nonpareil 93 pages. These calculations are for close or compact composition. There must be added a fair al¬ lowance for chapter heads, blank pages, etc.

“ Leaded,” as here used, means a widening of lines with six-to-pica leads.

MAKE-UP OF A BOOK.

The customary order in the make-up of a book is : half-title and blank page, full title and blank page or copyright notice, dedica¬ tion and blank page, preface, list of contents, list of illustrations, text, appendix, glossary, index. When the certificate of a limited edi¬ tion is used it should precede the half-title. A sheet of errata may advantageously follow the list of illustrations, though it often forms the last leaf of the book. An advertisement facing the title-page is not in good taste.

To prevent a frequent occasion for mis¬ understanding, do not use leaf and page as synonymous. A direction to make the words in a piece of copy occupy eight leaves is an authorization to put it on sixteen pages. The word leaf can be properly given only to paper — never to print. A leaf has two sides: if printed on one side only it has but one page of print; if printed on both sides it has two pages of print. The word page can be cor¬ rectly given only to the print on one side of a leaf.

v

RELATIVE SIZES OF TYPES. bruce’s standard.

A page that contains 1000 ems pica is equivalent to a page containing :

Small-pica .... 1260 ems.

Long-primer 1587 “

Bourgeois .... 2000 “

Brevier ..... 2520 “

Minion . 3175 <e

Nonpareil . 4000 “

RELATIVE VALUES OF BINDINGS.

Paper, boards, cloth, skiver, roan, calfskin, russia, turkey morocco, and levant morocco increase in price in the order here given. Parchment, vellum, and hogskin are excep¬ tional bindings.

CUSTOMARY SIZES OF BOOKS.

Sizes of the Untrimmed Leaf, in Inches.

Folio . 12 X 19

Quarto . 9*4 X 12

Imperial 8° . 8^XH^

Super royal 8° . 7Xu

Royal 8° . b}4 X 10

Medium 8° . 6 X 9)4

Demy 8° . 5K X 8^

Medium 12° .... 5^ X 7%

Medium 160 . 4 y2 X

Cap 8° . 4^ X 7

Medium 180 . 4 X 6%

Super royal 320 . . . 3^X5^

Of these the medium 120 and medium 160 may be considered the most popular sizes. When the book is trimmed, the measure¬ ments given above will be slightly reduced. Books can be made of intermediate sizes and of different proportions; but the sizes here specified are regular and will be found the most economical. Intermediate and irregular shapes compel a waste of paper, or the extra delay and extra cost of paper made to order.

The margins of a page often consume three fifths of the space upon it, leaving a comparatively small portion to be occupied by the type.

ABOUT MANUSCRIPTS.

LTntidy and illegible copy is always to the author’s disadvantage — in unavoidable delays, in extra charges for alterations, and in the increased probability of vexatious misprints which the utmost vigilance may not discover. Typewritten copy, if on paper not too thin, is the most satisfactory; but when it is impracticable to furnish this, a

final draft should be made for the printer in which all additions, interlineations, and corrections are inserted in proper order. Plain writing is always preferred : flourished letters confuse and retard the compositor.

Authors can materially assist the printer by furnishing with manuscript a rough draft of the card or circular or pamphlet they have in view, showing the dimensions of the print and prominence to be given each portion of the matter.

Punctuation may safely be left to the proof-readers of a printing office. It is part of their profession ; they make a study of the subject, and are usually better qualified for this work than the inexpert.

*

TITLE-PAGE AND PREFACE.

Copy for title-page and preface is com¬ monly neglected by authors until the rest of the book has been printed, and it not infre¬ quently happens that the title-page is printed on a separate leaf when it should form part of a sheet or signature. This makes need¬ less delay and expense. When possible,, furnish complete manuscript for each con¬ secutive page of a publication.

■9

THE EXPENSE OF PRINTING A BOOK.

This can be determined only by a special estimate from a practical printer. Guesses- and comparisons with the cost of other pub¬ lications are of little value. Submit if pos¬ sible your complete copy and plans to the printer to guide him in his calculations.

To prevent misunderstandings which occa¬ sionally arise from ambiguous directions as to size, it is recommended to those who are seeking estimates that a piece of blank paper be cut to the exact size of the leaf desired, on which can be penciled the width and length of the preferred page. This diagram will give the printer more exact instruction than that had from a specification in inches, or from a reference to' the size of a page in another book.

ROMAN AND ITALIC

PRINTING TYPES

8

Seneca.

9

Six-line Pica No. 16. Solid. *

HAT

tf* • 1

1 r lend

1

can be

more help¬ ful than a book that ennobles?

Five-line Pica Old Style. Double Leaded.

EARN

to wait Time to bring what you desire. It is Time that ripens the corn!

Four-line Pica Roman. Quadruple Leaded.*

mtsmsmm

wmm

HENa

proud man keeps me at my distance, it is comfort¬ ing to see him keep at his also.

Swift.

Four-line Pica Old Style. Leaded.

BEGAN to

think quite soberly of matri¬ mony, and chose my Wife as she did her wedding gown -not for a fine, glossy sur¬ face, but for such qualities as wear.

Goldsmith.

13

Four-line Pica No. 16. Triple Leaded.

HEY well

may fear who have any infirmity of purpose or aim ; But the man that rests on what he is has a destiny.

Emerson.

14

Double Paragon Old Style. Leaded.

OU dwell, said he, in the City of Destruction, in the place also where I was born: I see it to be thus; and dy¬ ing there,— sooner or later,— you will sink into the place that burns with fire and brimstone. . .

*5

Four-line Pica No. 164. Solid. *

OR the other employments of life do not suit all times, ages, or places ; but lit¬ erary studies em¬ ploy the thoughts of the youug, and are the delight of the old.

Cicero.

Double Great Primer Old Style. Leaded.

HIS ultra mer¬ cantile animus which controls all the designs of pub¬ lishers for the better pleasing of the light and capricious taste of the people is not fa¬ vorable for fine print¬ ing. Limitations as to time and expense in¬ evitably decrease the artistic worth of the printer’s work.

Crapelet.

Double Great Primer No. 16. Double Leaded.

ORK, that’s the great thing— the man who works is religious; he adds something to the world to make it bet¬ ter, richer, more com¬ plete; it is capital of which the interest will go on increasing incal¬ culably. What I call “work” is a man giving his soul entirely to it.

Story.

Double Great Primer No. 13. Leaded.

UIDIS (the Ital¬ ian poet) end is stated to have been hastened by the mis¬ prints in his poetical paraphrase upon the Homilies of his pa¬ tron, Clement Xlth. But compositors by scores are annually worried into early graves by trying to decipher wretched¬ ly poor manuscript.

Double Great Primer Light Face. Leaded. *

URING the nine¬ teenth century bookbinding has been making rapid strides, not only as a manu¬ facture, which is evi¬ dent in a marvelous degree, but also in the beautifying of many thousands of private libraries with choice specimens of beauti¬ ful bindings and or¬ nate finishing.

William Matthews.

20

Double English Old Style. Solid.

DO not know a more heartless sight than a recent reprint of the “Anatomy of Melancholy.” What need was there of un¬ earthing the bones of that fantastic old man, to expose them in a winding-sheet of the newest fashion to mod¬ ern censure? What hapless stationer could dream of Burton becoming popular? The wretched Malone could not do any worse when he bribed the sexton of Strat¬ ford church to let him white¬ wash the painted effigy of

old Shakspere. Charles Lamb.

21

Double Great Primer Ornamented No. 1526. Leaded.

Dr. Thomas Fuller.

22

Double English No. 13. Leaded.

HERE is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old; that they have a pleas¬ ure in being read for the first time ; that they open their leaves more cor¬ dially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit of novelty; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put them on the shelf.

William Hazlitt.

23

Double English Light Face. Solid.

LONZO of Arra- gon was wont to say, in comment¬ ing on age, that age appeared to he best in four things : old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. And the wise man of the Persians once said, when asked by what means he had attained to so high a degree of knowledge : “What I did not know, I was not ashamed to in¬ quire about. I inquire about everything!”

24

Double Pica Old Style. Solid.

O man can comfort¬ ably get along with¬ out three copies of each book. One he should have for a

show copy, which he will probably keep at his country house; another he will require for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which would be very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy, he must have a third at the service of his friends.

The great point of view in a collector is to possess that not pos¬ sessed by any other. It is said of a collector lately deceased, that he used to purchase scarce prints at enormous prices in order to destroy them, and thereby render the re¬ maining impressions more valuable.

25

Double Pica Ornamented No. 1526. Leaded. *

rqkny Yklukble

lettefb kqd otbeb wtit- rqgb kte ip pencil. It bkb been dibboYeted that tbe following biinple prodebb will rep tier lekd- penbil writing or drkAAnng kb in¬ delible kb tboiigb done witl| ink: L(ky ti\e writing in k b^kllow dibb kqd pout bkiinined ii)ilk upon it. Spy bp°tb n°t wet kt fitbt inky IpiYe tl\e rqilk plkced upon tbein lightly with k fektber. Ykke up tbe pkper, let tbe ipilk drkii) off, kqd wipe kwky with tbe featbet tbe dtopb AYhieb d oiled t upon tbe lowet edge. f)ty it ckrefully, knd tbe wilting will be found to be petfebtly indelible. It dkq n°t be teipoYed eYen AYitb rqdik rubber.

26

Double Small Pica Old Style No. 15. Leaded.

HAT a wonderful race the Americans have become ! Every man has his news¬ paper. See that drayman there, sitting on his truck eagerly read¬ ing his newspaper; and that hackman, mounted on his perch, with his whip on his knee, diving into his newspaper; and yonder that laborer, stopping on the corner to buy his newspaper; and see that paver, repairing the street, with a newspaper sticking out of his pocket, where he has placed it for further read¬ ing when he has leisure. So it may be seen in every American town or city, in the booming mining settlements of the far West as well as the humming cities of the East. There is nothing like it in Europe. No other people, through all its ranks, is so well versed in the current information of the coun¬ try and the world. German Reform Messenger.

27

Double Small Pica No. 20. Leaded.

HERE it was that one first came upon those pretty little books, the Elzevir classics, a sort

of literary bantams, which are still dear to memory, and awaken old associations with their dwarfish ribbed backs and their exquisite, but now, alas! too minute, type. The eyesight that could formerly peruse them with ease has suf¬ fered decay, but they remain un¬ changed; and in this respect they are unlike many other objects of early interest. Children, homes, flowers, animals, scenery even, all have undergone mutation, but no perceptible shade of change has yet passed over these little reminders of old times — times we would like to see again.

28

Double Small Pica Aldine. Leaded.*

T is one notable feature of the history of print¬ ing, that a large por¬ tion of those who have successfully prosecuted the art have been celebrated for their superior knowledge of and attention to press- work. It is too much the habit of apprentices to devote their atten¬ tion exclusively to composition, and as a consequence compositors are usually plenty and good pressmen are comparatively scarce. All the money and labor spent in purchas¬ ing fonts of letter, and in setting up type correctly and elegantly, is well-nigh useless if bad press-work mars the product of the type foun¬ dry and the composing-room. The work that is well balanced in all its parts is a delight to the eye.

Printers’ Circular.

29

Double Small Pica Light Face. Leaded.

HEN some one of onr relations was discovered to be a bad character, or a tronblesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, npon his leaving my honse I ever took care to lend him a riding coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them. By this the honse was cleared of such as we did not like. Some of these visitors did ns no great honor by their claims of kindred, as we had the blind, the maimed and the halt among the num¬ ber. However, my wife always insisted that they should sit with ns at the same table.

Goldsmith.

30

Great Primer No. 20. Solid.

N D let us, after all, acknowledge that there are few men who are entirely above the influence of binding. No one likes sheep’s clothing for his literature, even if he should not aspire to russia or morocco. Adam Smith, one of the least showy of men, confessed himself to be a beau in his books. Poets, however, are apt to be ragamuffins. It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut the leaves with his snuffers. Perhaps an event in his early career may have soured him. It is said that he had an uncle, a clever, active mechanic, who could do many things with his hands, and contemplated James’s indolent, dreamy; “reckless” character with impatient disgust. When the first of “The Seasons” — “Winter” it was, I believe — had been completed at press, Jamie thought, by a presentation copy, to triumph over his uncle’s skepticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had the book handsomely bound. The old man never looked inside, or asked what the book was about, but, turning it round and round with his fingers in gratified admiration, exclaimed — “Come, is that real¬ ly our Jamie’s doin’ now? Weel, I never thought the cratur wad hae had the handi¬ craft to do the like !”

Burton.

3i

Great Primer No. 16. Solid.

0 you know that all Grub-Street was dead and gone last week ? No more ghosts or murders now for love or money. I worked it very close the last fortnight, and published at least seven papers of my own, besides some of other people’s ; but now every single half-sheet pays a halfpenny tribute to the queen. The ‘Observator’ is fallen; the ‘Medleys’ are jumbled together with the ‘Flying Post’; the ‘Examiner’ is deadly sick; the ‘Spectator’ keeps up and doubles its price; I know not how long it will hold. Have you seen the red stamp the papers are marked with ? I think the stamping alone is worth a halfpenny.” The stamp mark upon the newspapers was a rose *and thistle joined by the stalks, and inclosing between the Irish shamrock ; the whole three were surmounted by a crown. It was also enacted “that one printed copy of every pamphlet, printed or published within London or Westminster, or the weekly bill of mortality, shall within six days after the printing be brought to the head office, and the title thereof, with the number of sheets, and the duty hereby charged, shall be entered; which duty shall be paid to the receiver-general, who shall give a receipt for the same, etc.”

Swift.

Great Primer No. 20. Leaded.

UBSCRIBERS for one copy of the “Arizona, Kicker” will be

'SV

presented with a box of Patent Petroleum Paste Blacking. This is a superior article. It blacks boots or stoves, and may be used as a hair dye.

Subscribers for two single copies will receive a box of French- American sardines.

Subscribers for five copies at the same time will be presented with a pair of iron¬ clad spectacles with real glass eyes, war¬ ranted to suit one age as well as another.

Subscribers for ten copies simultane¬ ously will be entitled to a patent adjustable boot-jack which can also be used as a cork¬ screw, a coffee-mill, or an inkstand.

Subscribers for twenty-five copies, as above, will receive a marble bureau with a mahogany top, custom made.

Subscribers for fifty copies, like con¬ dition, will receive a seven-octave sewing machine with the Agraff attachment.

If any person should desire to subscribe for a larger number of copies, and is pre¬ pared to pay for the same at sight, he may address this office for a special inducement.

Hudson’s Journalism.

33

Great Primer No. 16. Leaded.

HE pages of a book or a magazine should never be cut open with any¬ thing but a paper-cutter. A finger is too blunt, and tears the edges. A knife is too sharp, and may cut the edges unequally. The best paper-cutter is a thin slip of ivory. Wood and bone are nearly as good, but metal is not. Never deface books in any way. Never scribble on them needless¬ ly, or disfigure them with unnecessary stamps, or with stamps in inappropriate places. A good book is a good friend, and ought to be treated with the respect due to a friend. Never wet your fingers to turn over a leaf. Never turn down a corner of a page to hold your place. Never put in a soiled playing- card, or a stained envelope, or a bit of dirty string, or a piece of damp newspaper. Al¬ ways use a regular book-mark. The sim¬ plest, and one of the best, is a card as large as a small visiting card. By cutting this card twice longitudinally from one end almost to the other, you will have a three-legged book-mark which rides a-straddle of the page — one leg on the page below and two on the page you wish to open at.

Arthur Penn.

34

Great Primer No. 15. Leaded.

ASTES in color seem to be limited geographically. In Italy books are bound mostly in white parchment ; in France, in red morocco ; in Eng¬ land royal purple was the prevailing tint, and in America it is brown. There are many ex¬ ceptional instances. The founder of the great Harleian Library, now a part of the British Museum, clad all the volumes he collected in red morocco. Beckford, a superb bibliophile, used unvaryingly an olive-colored binding. Dr. Cogswell, who organized the Astor Library, in¬ sisted on having quite a considerable number of volumes bound in blue skiver backs and corners. Thomas P. Barton, to whom Richard Grant White dedicated his Shakespeare, went to enor¬ mous expense, risk, and trouble to rebind his Shakespearean collection, which was very large, uniformly in red morocco. He often purchased a rare work at some celebrated library in Europe, and found it gorgeously finished in purple or green; but in order to carry out his whim the beautiful cover had to be torn off and the vol¬ ume rebound to match his collection. George T. Strong, a gentleman of very quiet but elegant taste, had a preference for sober browns.

35

Great Primer Light Face. Leaded.

TORN page of a book may be neatly mended in the following manner : Pro¬ cure paper similar to the original leaf, cut it to correspond exactly with the missing portion, adjust it precisely to the torn edge and touch the line of junction very lightly with paste made from rice hour; then place a strip of tissue paper on each side of the leaf and smooth out carefully with a folder. Close the volume and allow it to dry thoroughly ; remove the tissue paper with a delicate touch, and the portions that remain adhering to the seam or line of junction will prove sufficient to secure the new patch to the leaf. In supplying the wanting text, an imitation of the original adds much to the ap¬ pearance of the page. Ventilation and light will prevent books from suffering from mold and weather- stain ; dusting and use preserve them from insects. r—

36

Great Primer Ornamented No. 1526. Leaded.

id Speculative it| dhkbadtet, Sirice the derpkpd

id governed by laws which froip their pktube dappot be, ob kt kny bkte kbe not, pbopebly de- tebiqiped. It id poddible to kpow kbout lqw ipkpy eqtipeebd thebe kbe ip k doiqiqupity, kpd the puiqbet of dopied they will tkke of a l|kpd- book fob tfeeib profession ; it id irp poddible to fotip ipobe than tbe ipeteSt guess ks to how ipkpy bekdebd ip the doipipupity will bedpopd to k poerp wlp^h l|kd judt beep dbekted.

S'S in kll 0 tlier kipdd of dpedulktiop, tl|e out- dide publid l\ekbd of tlpe ^bkpd duddedded, kpd tkked little kddoupt of tl|e uiiSebable failures. >I<lie author whose book faild dkp fipd Sorpe dkt- idfkdtiop ip drawing kpd qukrtebipg the dbitidd — ip k pbivkte dibdle of friepdd. But tl]e pub- lidheb id like the ipdttbkpde corppapy kfteb k fibe — pobody wksted kpy pity op hiq- Tlpd id the bedorppepde of kll who debve rpkpkipd.

Riverside Bulletin.

37

Two-line Pearl Old Style Condensed. Quadruple Leaded.

ANTE one day went to the house of a bookseller, from one of whose windows he had been invit¬ ed to witness a public show exhibited in the square below ; taking up by chance a book, he soon be¬ came so absorbed in it that on returning home he sol¬ emnly declared he had neither seen nor heard anything whatever of all that had taken place before his eyes. Virgil was so fond of salt that he seldom went without a box full in his pocket, which he made use of from time to time as men of the present day use tobacco. Thomas Hood was born, married, and died in the month of May. A curious calculation has been made, resulting in the statement that the single word “[laughter]” in the “Con¬ gressional Globe,” as it occurs in the speeches of Con¬ gressmen, has during the last thirty years cost the government about fifteen hundred dollars, while the word “ [applause] ” has cost twice that sum. An editor’s loaded pistol having been purloined by some daring scamp, he advertises that if the thief will return it he will give him the contents and no questions asked. A Western editor met a well educated farmer recently, and said to him that he would like to have something from his pen ; the farmer sent him a pig, and charged him $9.75 for it. A bachelor editor, who had a pretty unmarried sister, wrote to another editor similarly cir¬ cumstanced, “Please exchange.” Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes has made most fame as a writer, but most money as a very successful physician and surgeon.

38

English No. 20. Solid.

ANY people, besides politicians, are of opinion that they ought to be able easily to make their living in journalism. We know men who have an idea that be¬ cause their clever, off-hand critiques of authors and their bright, descriptive sketches have moved the admiration of the home circle, therefore they are fully equipped to “write for the newspapers.” We may inform these persons that journalism is work, unostentatious drudgery, a profession which exacts of its votaries the most constant labor — dry, hard, and not infrequently repulsive labor. To read a book at one’s leisure, and then sketch the features in it for a friend or relative in the familiar style of personal intercourse, is one affair. To cram a vol¬ ume down one’s mental throat in a half-hour, and be able to show up the points most representative of its merits and defects, requires years of training added to rare adaptability for the work.

The journalist, if fit to be so designated, must daily go patiently over at least one representative news¬ paper of each party from every section of the country.

An editor, or a contributor of the higher order, must be “up” in all that concerns his own constitu¬ ency, and well posted in all that goes forward of the large events in the civilized world. Writing is but a small part of his labor. To know what to write, when to write it, and just how much to write — like Dogberry’s reading and writing — these instincts come largely by nature. Editors of the very high¬ est order “are born, not made.”

Editors and publishers who succeed are those not merely adapted by mental structure to the business, but they are also the men or women who work systematically and spare not themselves, regardless whether the great public smiles or frowns upon the fruits of their labors.

■ •

39

English No. 16. Solid.

HERE is no safer property in which to invest money than in good books and good pictures, provided, of course, they are bought with good judgment and a knowledge of their real value, which, in the case of books, depends largely upon their rarity. Turner’s drawing of Bamborough Castle was purchased in 1858 for £400 ; it was sold in 1859 for £450, and in 1872, at Mr. Gillott’s sale, for £3,307. His picture of the Grand Canal, for which he received £300, brought at auction, in July last, £7,350, the largest sum ever paid for a picture in this way. David Cox painted his picture of Rhyl for 160 guineas ; it was sold four years ago for £2,300. His Hayfield, for which he received about the same price, sold in July last for £2,950. Muller painted his Chess Players in 1843 for £25; it was sold in 1874 for £4,053. A copy of the Mazarin Bible on vellum brought, at the Perkins sale, £3,500. When next offered for sale it will probably bring £5,000. Eliot’s Indian Bible could be bought a few years ago for $500. A copy is now offered for sale in London, on Quaritch’s catalogue, for the quotation of $1,500 in gold. A copy of the first English translation of the Bible by Coverdale fetched £360. A Latin Bible, printed by Jenson in 1476, on vellum, was sold recently for £370 ; a first edition of the Bible in German, for £75 ; and another, without date or printer’s name, but supposed to have been printed circa 1473 at Augsburg, for £32. An early Latin Psalm, on vellum, with miniatures in the Anglo-Saxon style, has just brought £79. Boccaccio’s Decameron, first edition of Valdarfer, 1471, was trans¬ ferred from the Duke of Roxburghe to the Duke of Marlborough for £2,260. In the year 1300 some books bequeathed to Merton College, Oxford, were thus valued : a Concordentia, 10 shillings; the Four Great Prophets, 5 shillings ; a Psalter, 10 shillings ; St. Augustine on Gen¬ esis, 10 shillings. What amounts do you think these could be made to fetch in a modern auction room '?

American Bibliopolist.

40

English No. 20. Leaded.

N printing, it seemeth that China ought to have the precedence of other nations, for according to their books they have used it there sixteen hundred years ; but it is not, as I said before, like unto ours in Europe, for their letters are engraved on tables of wood. The author of the book ordereth what letter he will have, either great, little, or middle-sized ; or, rather, he giveth his manuscript to the graver, who maketh his tables -of the same bigness with the sheets that are given him, and, pasting the leaves upon the tables with the wrong side outwards, he engraveth the letters as he findeth them, with much facility and exactness, and without making any errata. Their writing is not upon both sides the paper, as among us, but on one side only ; and the reason that their books seem to be written on both sides is, because the white side is hidden within the fold.

They print likewise with tables of stone, with this difference, that the paper is made all black and the letters remain white, because when they print thus, they lay the ink upon the superficies of the stone ; but in the tables of wood they put it only in the hollow of the engraving. This printing serveth only for epitaphs, pictures, trees, mountains, and such like things, whereof they do desire to have the memo¬ ries preserved, and they have very many prints of this kind. Any work which they print, as they do in great numbers, remaineth always entire in the print on the tables, to be repeated as often as they please, without any new expense or trouble in set¬ ting for the press as there is in our printing.

4i

English No. 16. Leaded.

HE first time a man looks at an advertisement he does not see it. The second time, he does not notice it. The third time, he is dimly conscious of it. The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen something of the kind before. The fifth time, he half reads it. The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it. The seventh time, he reads it through and says, “Pshaw!” The eighth time, he ejaculates, “ Here’s that confounded thing again ! ” The ninth time, he wonders if “there’s anything in it.” The tenth time, he thinks it might possibly suit some one else’s case. The eleventh time, he thinks he will ask his neighbor if he has tried it or knows anything about it. The twelfth time, he wonders how the advertiser can make it pay. The thirteenth time, he rather thinks it must be a good thing. The fourteenth time, he appears to think it is what he has wanted for a long time. The fifteenth time, he resolves to try it as soon as he can afford it. The sixteenth time, he examines the address carefully and makes a memorandum of it. The seventeenth time, he is painfully reminded how much he needs that particularly excellent article. The eigh¬ teenth time, he counts his money to see how much he would have left if he bought it ; and the nineteenth time, he frantically rushes in a fit of desperation and buys it. Moral : The successful tradesman keeps his name before the public by persistent advertising.

42

Pica No. 20. Solid. 41 Lines, 395 Words.

|VEN logic has not succeeded as yet in discovering ^ the means of framing a title-page which shall be jg^jl exhaustive, as it is termed, and constitute an infal¬ lible finger-post to the nature of a book. From the very beginning of all literature it may be said that man has been continually struggling after this achievement, and struggling in vain ; and it is a humiliating fact that the greatest adepts, abandoning the effort in despair, have taken refuge in some fortuitous word, which has served their pur¬ pose better than the best results of their logical analysis. The book which has been the supreme ruler of the intellect in this kind of work stands forth as an illustrious example of failure. To those writings of Aristotle which dealt with mind his editing pupils could give no name, therefore they called them the things after the physics — the Metaphysics ; and that fortuitous title the great arena of thought to which they refer still bears, despite the efforts of critical students to supply an apter designation in such words as Psychology, Pneumatology, and Transcendentalism.

Writhing under this nightmare kind of difficulty, men in later times tried to achieve completeness by lengthening the title-page ; but they found that the longer they made it, the more it wriggled itself into devious tracks, and the farther did it depart from a comprehensive name. Some title-pages in old folios make about half an hour’s reading. One ad¬ vantage, however, was found in these lengthy titles — they afforded to controversialists a means of condensing the pith of their malignity towards each other, and throwing it, as it were, right in the face of the adversary. It will thus often happen that the controversialist states his case first in the title-page ; he then gives it at greater length in the intro¬ duction ; again, perhaps, in a preface ; a third time in an analytical form, through means of a table of contents ; after all this skirmishing, he brings up his heavy columns in the body of the book.

Busy men of the present day look to the title-page to help them in deciding what books to read, just as the head¬ lines in their favorite newspapers inform them of current events and invite or repel further research. It is better to spend half an hour on an exhaustive title-page than to waste several hours upon an uninstructive book.

43

Pica No. ii. Solid. 41 Lines, 388 Words.

NDEED, volumes are in their varied external conditions much like human beings. There are some stout and others frail, some healthy and others sickly ; and it happens often that robust are the most precious. The full, fresh health of some of the old folio fathers and schoolmen, ranged side by side in solemn state on the oaken shelves of some venerable repository, is apt to surprise those who expect mouldy decay : the stiff, hard binding is as an¬ gular as ever ; there is no abrasion of the leaves, not a single dog-ear or a spot, nor even a dust-border upon the mellowed white of the margin. So, too, of those quarto civilians and canonists of Leyden and Amsterdam, with their smooth white vellum coats, bearing so generic a resemblance to Dutch cheeses that they might easily be supposed to represent the experiments of some Grouda dairyman on the quadrature of the circle. An easy life and an established position in society are the secret of their excellent preservation and condition. Their re¬ pose has been little disturbed by intrusive readers and unceremonious investigators, and their repute for solid learning has given them a claim to attention and care¬ ful preservation. It has sometimes occurred to me to penetrate to the heart of one of these solid volumes and And it closed in this wise : As the binder of a book is himself bound to cut off as little as possible of its white margin, it may take place, if any of the leaves are in¬ accurately folded, that their edges are not cut, and that, as to such leaves, the book is in the uncut condition so severely denounced by impatient readers. So have I sometimes had to open with a paper-cutter the pages which had shut up for two hundred years that knowl¬ edge which the ponderous volume pretended to be dis¬ tributing abroad from its place of dignity on the shelf. Sometimes, also, there will drop out of a heavy folio a little slip of orange-yellow paper covered with some cabalistic-looking characters, which a careful study dis¬ covers to be a hint, conveyed in high or low Dutch, that the dealer from whom the volume was purchased would be rather gratified than otherwise should the purchaser be pleased to remit to him the price of it.

the least

44

Pica No. 20. Leaded. 35 Lines, 325 Words.

JOHNSON published the following curious advertisement in order to suppress the pirat¬ ical practice of inserting his Idlers , without any acknowledgment, in other publications :

“London, January 5th, 1759. — (Advertisement.)

“The proprietors of the papers entitled The Idler , having found that those essays are inserted in the newspapers and magazines with so little regard to justice or decency that the Universal Chronicle , in which they first appear, is not always mentioned, think it necessary to declare to the pub¬ lishers of those collections that, however patiently they have hitherto endured these injuries, they have determined to en¬ dure them no longer. They have seen essays for which a very large price is paid transferred with the most shameless rapacity into the weekly or monthly compilations, and their right, at least for the present, alienated from them before they could themselves be said to enjoy it. But they would not willingly be thought to want tenderness even for men by whom no tenderness hath been shown. The past is without remedy, and shall be without resentment. But those who have been thus busy with their sickles in the fields of their neighbours are henceforward to take notice that the time of impunity is at an end. Whoever shall, without our leave, lay the hand of rapine upon our papers, is to expect that we shall vindicate our due. We shall lay hold, in our turn, on their copies, degrade them from the pomp of wide margin and diffuse typography, contract them into a narrow space, and sell them at an humble price ; yet not with a view of growing rich by confiscations, for we think not much better of money got by punishment than by crimes : we shall, therefore, when our losses are repaid, give what profit shall remain to the magdalens : for we know not who can be more properly taxed for the sup¬ port of penitent prostitutes, than prostitutes in whom there yet appears neither penitence nor shame.”

45

Pica No. ii. Leaded. 35 Lines, 353 Words.

OOKS I consider as spirits walking abroad on the face of the earth. A hook is a voice to which one seems compelled to listen— a voice which addresses itself to yon ; it is the living thonght of a person separated from yon only by space of time ; it is a burning intellect. The books collected in a library, viewed with the eyes of the mind, represent to ns the master spirits of every country and of every age, who are there present with us to speak, to instruct, and to console us. Note that books alone endure ; men pass away, monuments crumble into dust ; but what remains, what survives, is human thought. I am told that Mo- liere is dead ; I deny it. Is he not present ? When I entertain myself with him, is he not there ? Madame de Sevigne, they say, was buried in 1696. I maintain that yesterday I was in communion with her. I know her just as I know Coulanges, Madame de Grrignon, La Rochefoucauld, and all her friends. For me all that world lives, and I live with them. The book, or rather the intelligence preserved in the book, is society which one can enjoy either in prosperous or in adverse days. Do we wish for amusement ? Let us take up our “Don Quixote” ; we shall laugh as we never laughed before. Or are we in sorrow ? Read the “Imitation of Christ.” In whatever state we may be books are ever welcome. On the eve of departure, is it not to a book we turn for consolation ? Is it not the “Evangelists” that teach us how to endure suffering by telling us of words of Him who endured long misery and every suffering ? Every¬ where and at all times a book is of use, and he who can read has more enjoyment at his command than many a monarch, for he has a court of faithful friends who ever surround and minister to him. Our friends often weary us ; but if a book fatigues us we put it aside without any fear of its being offended, and take up another.

M. Laboulaye.

46

Pica No. 15. Leaded. 35 Lines, 374 Words.

RINTERS are often asked in what way various kinds of paper obtained the peculiar names they bear. Here is the answer : In ancient times, when comparatively few people could read, pictures of every kind were much in use where writing is now employed. Every shop, for instance, had its sign, as well as every public house, and those signs were not then, as they often are now, only painted on a board, but were invariably actual models of the thing which the sign expressed— as we still occasionally see some such sign as a bee-hive, a tea-canister, a doll, or the like. For the same reason printers employed some device, which they put upon their title- pages and at the end of their books. And paper-makers also introduced marks by way of distinguishing the paper of their manufacture from that of others. These marks, becoming com¬ mon, naturally gave their names to different sorts of paper. A favorite paper-mark between 1540 and 1560 was the jug or pot, and would appear to have originated the term pot paper. The fool’s cap was a later device, and does not seem to have been nearly of such long continuance as the former. It has given place to the figure of Britannia, or that of a lion rampant sup¬ porting the cap of liberty on a pole. The name, however, has continued, and we still denominate paper of a particular size by the title of “foolscap.” Post paper seems to have derived its name from the post-horn, which at one time was its distinguishing mark. It does not appear to have been used prior to the estab¬ lishment of the General Post Office (1670), when it became the custom to blow a horn; to which circumstance, no doubt, we may attribute its introduction. Bath post is so named after that fash¬ ionable city. Demy is from the French demi, signifying an intermediate size. Royal and crown explain their origin, and many other names, such as commercial and packet note, check folio, medium, super-royal, imperial, elephant, columbier, atlas, double medium, and double elephant, were invented to denote some early peculiarity of size, use, or mark, which, though the name remains, has now nearly or quite disappeared.

London Printers’ Register.

47

Pica Light Face. Leaded. 35 Lines, 293 Words.

)B Bookes are not absolutely dead things, bnt they doe contain a poten- cie of life in them to he as active as that sonle was whose progeny they are ; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth ; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring u|3 armed men. And yet on the other hand unlesse wari- nesse be us’d, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book ; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image ; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the very Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth ; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life. Tis true, no age can re¬ store a life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse ; and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that season’d life of man preserv’d and stor’d up in Books ; since we see a kinde of homi¬ cide may be thus committed, sometimes a mar- tyrdome, and if it extend to the whole impres¬ sion, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall life, but strikes at that ethereall and lift [first] essence, the breath of reason it selfe, slaies an immortality rather than a life.

John Milton, “ The Areopagitica.'

48

Elzevir, Body 14. Leaded. 29 Lines, 253 Words.

*TW R.1STOTLE tells us that the world is a copy or transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of the first Being, and that those ideas which are in the mind of man are a transcript of the world. To this may be added, that words are the transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of man, and that writing or printing are the transcript of words. As the Supreme Being has expressed and as it were printed his ideas in the creation, men express their ideas in books, which by this great invention of these latter ages may last as long as the sun and moon, and perish only in the general wreck of nature. . . . There is no other method of fixing those thoughts which arise and disappear in the mind of man, and transmitting them to the last periods of time ; no other method of giving a permanency to our ideas and preserving the knowledge of any particular period, when his body shall for ages have been mixed with the common mass of matter and his soul retired into the world of spirits.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from gen¬ eration to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn. Knowledge of books in a man of business is a torch in the hands of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered the way which leads to prosperity and

Welfare. Joseph Addison, “The Spectator.’’

49

Pica Expanded. Treble Leaded. 27 Lines, 121 Words.

HA.T delightful reading I found in the literature of those times ! There was no “Philadelphia Led¬ ger,” hut we regaled ourselves with Joseph R. Chandler’s 44 Tet¬ ters from my Armchair” in the “United States Grazette.” There was no “Yew -York Tribune,” but we became inspired by the splendid typography and ner¬ vous Saxon of Horace GEreeley’s 44 AC eekly ]ST ew -' Y orker.” There was no 4!Atlantic” or “Harper’s,” but we revelled in the pages of AC al die’s Tibrary. ACe had no Macaulay or Bancroft, but we had Hinton and Hildreth. ACe had no Dickens, or Thackeray, or Charles Reade, or ACilkie Col¬ lins, or Oliver ACendell Holmes, or .Alfred Tennyson, but we lived in the gorgeous world of AC alter Scott, made musical with the enchanting melodies of Thomas Moore.

John W. Forney.

50

Pica No. 20. Double Leaded. 31 Lines, 301 Words.

O W paradoxical a character a man may become, is described in the autobiography of Solom Maimon, one of the most learned men and sharpest casuists of the Hebrew race. He was, according to a reviewer of the work, a “skeptical rabbi, a great Talmudist who despised the Talmud, an omnivorous reader of all such science as in the last century a Polish Jew could get hold of, a genuine idler in literature, who, although he could dash off a considerable spell of work in a short time, had no work in him, had no method in him, and always pre¬ ferred slipshod effort to steady industry ; a man whom want and misery had reduced into spasmodic fits of intemperance, which rather grew upon him toward the end.” With all this he spent a half year of his life as a regular professional beg¬ gar — adopting apparently all the habits and feelings of a beggar. “None the less he was a man of remarkable ac¬ quirements, being a learned Talmudist, for those times at least a considerable mathematician, and having in middle life mastered Latin, German, French, and English, besides the various Eastern dialects of which his Hebrew knowledge was the foundation. He had evidently a very great turn for physics as well as for mathematics, and a wonderful capacity for the acquisition of languages without the slightest com¬ munication with those who could speak them, so that he knew a language fairly well of Ayhich he could not properly pro¬ nounce a single sentence.” He so criticized Kant’s greatest work as to excite the admiration of the author. In charac¬ ter “he was candid, grateful, generous, and full of kindly feelings. But he was conceited, irreverent, passionate, in¬ tolerant of the influence of others, and never really at ease among the class for which his knowledge fitted him.”

Popular Science Monthly.

5i

Pica No. ii. Double Leaded. 31 Lines, 297 Words.

HALL I tell you what, reader"? But first I should call you gentle, courteous, and wise ; but ’tis no matter, they’re but foolish words of course, and better left out than printed : for if you be so, you need not be called so ; and if you be not so, then were lawe against me for calling you out of your names. By John of Powles churchyard I sweare, and that oath will be taken at any haberdasher’s, I never wisht this booke a better fortune than to fall into the hands of a true spelling printer, and an honest stitching bookseller ; and if honestie could be soulde by the bushell, like oysters, I had rather have one bushell of honestie than three of monie.

Why I call these Father Hubbard's Tales , is not to have them called in againe as the tales of Mother Hub¬ bard ; the worlde would shewe little judgment in that yfaith, and I should say then plena stultorum omnia . For I entreat here neither of rugged beares nor apes ; no, nor the lamentable downefal of the olde wives’ plat¬ ters ; I deale with no such mettall. What is mirth in mee is harmlesse as the Quarter Jack in Powles, they are up with them elbowes foure times an houre, and yet misuse no creature living. The verie bitterest in mee is but a physical frost, that nips the wicked blood a little, and so makes the whole bodie the more whole- somer. Then to condemn these tales following, because Father Hubbard tells them in the small syze of an ant, is even as much as, if these two wordes God and Devil were printed both in one line, to skip it over, and say that line were naught, because the Devil were in it ; Sat Sapienti.

Extract from Preface.

52

Small Pica No. 20. Solid. 46 Lines, 512 Words.

HERE are thousands of mole-eyed people who count all passion in print a lie, — people who will go into a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark, and love in secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all under the cloak of what they call — propriety. I can see before me now some gray-haired old gentleman, very money-getting, very correct, very cleanly, who reads the morning paper with unction, and his Bible with determination, — who listens to dull sermons with patience, and who prays with quiet self-applause ; and yet there are moments belonging to his life when his curdled affections yearn for something that they have not, — when his avarice oversteps all the commandments, — when his pride builds castles full of splendor; and yet put this before his eye, and he reads with the most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant fiction what cannot be proven to the elders. . . . The trouble has been, that those

who have believed one passage have discredited another ; and those who have sympathized with me in trifles have deserted me when affairs grew earnest. . . .

I have only one thing more to say before I get upon my story. A great many sharp-eyed people, who have a horror of light read¬ ing, — by which they mean whatever does not make mention of stocks, cottons, or moral homilies, — will find much fault with my book for its ephemeral character. I am sorry that I cannot gratify such : homilies are not at all in my habit ; and it does seem to me an exhausting way of disposing of a good moral, to hammer it down to a single point, so that there shall be only one chance of driving it home. For my own part, I count it a great deal better philoso¬ phy to fuse it, and rarefy it, so that it shall spread out into every crevice of a story, and give a color and a taste, as it were, to the whole mass.

I know there are very good people, who, if they cannot lay their finger on so much doctrine set down in old-fashioned phrase, will never get an inkling of it at all. With such people, goodness is a thing of understanding more than of feeling, and all their morality has its action in the brain. God forbid that I should sneer at this terrible infirmity which Providence has seen fit to inflict ; God forbid, too, that I should not be grateful to the same kind Provi¬ dence for bestowing upon others among his creatures a more genial apprehension of true goodness, and a hearty sympathy with every shade of human kindness.

But in all this I am not making out a case for my own correct teaching, or insinuating the propriety of my tone. I shall leave the book, in this regard, to speak for itself ; and whoever feels himself growing worse for the reading, I advise him to lay it down. It will be very harmless on the shelf, however it may be in the hand.

Ik Marvel, Preface to “Dream-Life.”

53

Small Pica No. ii. Solid. 46 Lines, 485 Words.

HERE is no treasure in this life like a love for books, for they are safe guides in youth and a solace in age. A book is your best companion at all times. In choosing a book, as in choosing a dictionary, we ought to follow the advice of the advertisements and Get the Best. In literature as in life we should keep the best company we can. Life is short and libraries are big ; and precious time is lost in reading fee¬ ble writing which unfits us for stronger food. Emerson’s three rules for reading were : 1. Never read any book that is not a year old. 2. Never read any but famed books. 3. Never read any books but what you like. That these were sound rules for Emerson himself we need not doubt, but they are a little too rigid and restricting for most of us. Mr. F. B. Perkins, in his interesting notes on “ Courses of Reading,” suggests that Emer¬ son’s rules would be perfect if to each were added the clause, “ unless you choose.” The advice of Goethe is the advice of Emerson. “ Do not read your fellow-strivers, your fellow- workers,” said Goethe. And Mr. Matthew Arnold adds, u Of the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plentifully around us, we can, indeed, hardly read too little.” This is a hard say¬ ing for the man or woman who seeks in books temporary rest and relief after the toil and harass and stress of daily life. Most of us have not the high and cultivated taste which finds more enjoyment in Homer, or Dante, or Milton, than in a light and lively tale of to-day. And for most of us, therefore, the advice of Goethe, Emerson, and Mr. Arnold is too severe, and must be broadened and brightened. Yet there can be no doubt that they are right in the main, and that the nearer we come to the attainment of this ideal, the better it will be for us. The man who has grasped the inner beauty of the Greek and Roman classics has laid hold of a noble thing, for they are among the best that has been thought and said in the world. There are many classics — Greek and Latin, Italian and French, English and American. “Robinson Crusoe” is as genuine a classic as “Paradise Lost.” Homer, Dante, and Goethe are classics truly, but they are not more truly classic than Ben¬ jamin Franklin, Walter Scott, or Henry Wadsworth Long¬ fellow. “A classic,” says Lowell, “is properly a book which maintains itself by virtue of that happy coalescence of matter and style, that innate and exquisite sympathy between the thought that gives life and the form which consents to every mood of grace and dignity, which can be simple without being vulgar, elevated without being distant, and which is some¬ thing neither ancient nor modern, always new, and incapable of growing old.”

The Home Library.

54

Small Pica No. 20. Leaded. 39 Lines, 385 Words.

ROPOSALS for the Printing of a large Bible, by William Bradford, January 14, 1688. These, are to give Notice, that it is proposed for a large house-Bible to be Printed by way of Subscriptions [a method usual in England for the printing of large Volumns, because Printing is very chargeable]. Therefore to all that are willing to forward so good a Work, as the Printing of the holy Bible, are offered these Proposals, viz. :

1. That it shall be printed in a fair Character, on good Paper, and well bound.

2. That it shall contain the Old and New Testament, with the Apocraphy, and all to have useful Marginal Notes.

3. That it shall be allowed (to them that subscribe) for Twenty Shillings per Bible : [A Price which one of the same volumns in England would cost.]

4. That the pay shall be half Silver Money, and half Country Produce at Money price. One half down now, and thfe other half on the delivery of the Bibles.

5. That those who do subscribe for six, shall have the seventh gratis, and have them delivered one month before any above that number shall be sold to others.

6. To those which do not subscribe, the said Bibles will not be allowed under 26 s. a piece.

7. Those who are minded to have the Common-Prayer, shall have the whole bound up for 22 s., and those that do not subscribe 28 s. and 6 d. per Book.

8. That as encouragement is given by Peoples subscribing and paying down one half, the said Work will be put forward with what Expedition may be.

9. That the Subscribers may enter their Subscriptions and time of Payment, at Pheneas Pemberton’s and Robert Hall’s in the County of Bucks. At Malen Stacy’s Mill at the Falls. At Thomas Budd’s House in Burlington. At John Hasting’s in the County of Chester. At Edward Blake’s in New-Castle. At Thomas Vvood- rooff’s in Salem. And at William Bradford’s in Philadelphia, Printer and Undertaker of the said Work. At which places the Subscribers shall have a Receipt for so much of their Subscriptions as paid and an obligation for the delivery of the number of Bibles (so Printed and Bound as aforesaid) as the respective Subscribers shall deposit one half for.

Hudson’s Journalism.

55

Small Pica No. ii. Leaded. 39 Lines, 438 Words.

T is not easy to advise exactly as to the best way of buying books, since so much depends on cir¬ cumstance and situation. In general, it is best to make a friend of the most active and intelligent bookseller within reach. Decide on the sum you can afford to spend this year. Make out a list of the books you want. Take this to the bookseller and ask him to get you the books, and to allow you a fair discount proportionate to the size of the order. After these books have come, keep on good terms with the bookseller. Form the habit of dropping into his store now and again to see what he has likely to suit you. Lay aside a fixed sum annually to be spent in books. Consult with the bookseller as to the best means of laying this out to advantage. Remember that in general it is best to deal directly and regularly with an established bookseller. Beware of the itinerant book-peddler ; most of his books are made to sell, and are not worth reading. Beware of the canvassing agent, unless he represents a reputable house. Never buy at auction unless you have had an opportunity previously to ex¬ amine the goods to see that they have no defects, and are in every way in good condition. Remember that the highest- priced books are not necessarily the best, or the lowest-priced necessarily the cheapest. Choose good type, and good paper, and good ink, even if they cost a little more ; it is false to spare the pocket and spoil the. eyes. A book that is worth buying at all is worth buying in good condition and in a good edition. When in doubt between two editions of the same standard book, choose that which has the fullest index. In buying second-hand books — and many, if not most, standard works can best be had second-hand from a dealer in old books — it costs but little more to get a copy well bound in morocco, in half roan, or even in half calf. A second-hand book sells on its own merits independent of its binding, and by biding your time and looking about you can generally pick up a neatly bound copy for the price you would pay for a copy in cloth or in boards ; and even if it is second-hand, there is twice the satisfaction to be got out of a book you own than is to be got out of a book only borrowed. Own all the books you can, and use all the books you own.

The Home Library.

56

Small Pica No. 20. Double Leaded. 33 Lines, 368 Words.

Books we find the dead as it were living ; in Books we foresee things to come ; in Books warlike affairs are methodized ; the rights of peace proceed from Books. All things are corrupted and decay with time. Saturn never ceases to devour those whom he generates ; insomuch that the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion if God had not provided mortals with a remedy in Books. Alexander, the ruler of the world ; Julius, the invader of the world and of the city, the first who in unity of person assumed the empire in arms and arts ; the faithful Fabricius, the rigid Cato, would at this day have been without a memorial if the assistance of Books had failed them. Towers are razed to the earth, cities overthrown, triumphal arches mouldered to dust ; nor can the king or Pope be found upon whom the privilege of a lasting name can be conferred more easily than by Books. A Book made, renders succession to the author : for as long as the book exists the author cannot perish. The Truth written in a book, being not fluctuating, but permanent, shows itself openly to the sight, passing through the spiritual ways of the eyes, as the porches and halls of common sense and imagina¬ tion ; it enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself on the couch of memory, and there congenerates the eternal Truth of the mind. Consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in Books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal noth- ing; if you mistake them, they never grumble ; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you. You only, O Books, are liberal and in¬ dependent. You give to all who ask, and enfranchise all who serve you assiduously. You are golden urns in which manna is laid up, rocks flowing with honey, or rather indeed honey-combs ; udders most copiously yielding the milk of life ; store-rooms ever full.

Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham.

57

Small Pica No. ii. Double Leaded, 33 Lines, 350 Words.

HE Commerce of Books comforts me in my age and solitude : it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness, and delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike ; and it blunts the point of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, ’tis but to run to my Books ; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts ; and do not mutiny to see that I have only recourse to them for want of other more real, natural, and lively conveniences ; they always receive me with the same kindness. I never travel without Books, either in peace or war ; and yet sometimes I pass over several days, and sometimes months, without looking into them. I will read by and by, say I to myself, or to-morrow, or when I please, and time steals away without any incon¬ venience. I rest content in this consideration, that I have them by me, to divert myself with them when I am so dis¬ posed, and to call to mind what an ease and assistance they are to my life. They will not flee from me. I may neglect them, but they do not turn away. I forget their teachings, and they inform me again. Patient and faithful servants of a fickle master! whose changing moods are but occasions for proving anew your unvarying friendship. Your affec¬ tions, are sure and lasting. Books have very many charm¬ ing qualities to such as know how to choose them. But every good has its ill ; Tis a pleasure that is not pure and clean, no more than others : it has its inconveniences, and great ones too. The mind indeed is exercised by it, but the body, the care of which I must withal never neglect, remains in the mean time without action, and grows heavy and mel¬ ancholy. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining age, than the nourishment of the mind at the body’s expense.

Michael de Montaigne.

58

Long Primer No. 20. Solid. 51 Lines, 610 Words.

HE manufacture of paper of any description was not established in any of the colonies until full fifty years after the introduction of printing, the first paper mill having been erected in the vicin¬ ity of Philadelphia by one William Rittenhousen, a native of Germany, about the year 1690. The first paper mill in New England was established in the town of Milton, near Boston, in 1730. In 1732 the following advertisement appeared in the “Rehearsal,” of Boston:

“ Richard Fry, Stationer, Bookseller, Paper-maker, and Rag Merchant, from the city of London, keeps at Mr. Thomas Fleet’s, printer, at the Heart and Crown, in Cornhill, Boston, where said Fry is ready to accommodate all Gentlemen, Merchants and Tradesmen with setts of Account books after the most acute manner for twenty per cent, cheaper than they can have them from London. I return the Public Thanks for following the Directions of my former Advertisement for gathering rags, and hope they will continue the like Method, having received upward of Seven thousand weight already.”

The early scarcity of paper in the colonies is illustrated by the following curious advertisement, which appeared in the Boston “Post” in 1748:

“ Choice Pennsylvania Tobacco paper is to be sold by the publisher of this paper at the Heart and Crown, where may be also had the Bulls or Indulgences of the present Pope, Urban VIII., either by the single Bull, Quire or Ream, at a much cheaper rate than they can be purchased of the French or Spanish priests.”

The explanation of this was that several bales of “ indulgences,” printed upon very good paper and only on one side, had been captured by an English cruiser from a Spanish vessel, and being offered at a very low price, had been purchased by the Boston printer, who saw an opportunity for profit by print¬ ing ballads or other matter for his customers upon the backs of the pontifical documents in question. It is also to be noted that about this time Robert Saltonstall was fined five shillings by the General Court of Massachusetts for presenting a petition On a small and bad piece of paper.

In 1768 Colonel Christopher Leffingwell erected at Norwich the first paper mill in the colony of Connecticut, under the promise of a bounty from the General Assembly. Two years after he was accordingly awarded two-pence a quire on 4020 quires of writing paper, and one penny each on 10,600 quires of printing paper. This mill attained a high degree of success.

In Pennsylvania the Dunkers, who settled in Lancaster county, very early gave their attention to the manufacture of paper, and also set up a printing press. During the Revolution, and just previous to the battle of the Brandy¬ wine, messengers were sent to their mill for a supply of paper for cartridges. The mill happening to be out of unmanufactured paper, the fraternity, who held their property in common, sent back to the Continental army as a sub¬ stitute several wagon loads of an edition of Fox’s “Book of Martyrs,” and from the paper supplied by the pages of this work cartridges used in the battle were in part manufactured.

About the year 1770 the number of paper mills in the provinces of Penn¬ sylvania, New Jersey and Delaware was reported to be forty, this department of manufacturing industry having especially developed in the vicinity of Phila¬ delphia, which was at that time the center of literary activity for the colonies. It was a business, moreover, in which Dr. Franklin was greatly interested; and he told De Warville, a French traveller who visited America in 1788, that he had himself established as many as eighteen mills.

Harper’s Magazine.

59

Long Primer No. ii. Solid. 51 Lines, 431 Words.

HE modern subscription book has curiously shown the revival of an¬ cient custom in the matter of title- pages. The plausible book agent who, at the proper point, opens his book at the title, smooths it down with his broad hand and proceeds to read it, underscoring the lines with his fore-finger, knows well the virtue of a full, descriptive, and eloquent title. To be sure he has committed it to memory, the bet¬ ter to aid his tongue, but he allows his customer to enjoy with him the unctuous feast which the title by foretaste gives. His eye, his finger, and his tongue travel slowly and with due emphasis down the meandering stream, and the book must be a meager one indeed that cannot thus spread its tempting bill of fare before the reader. Com¬ pare with such a title-page any one of the ordinary title-pages of modern fashion, and how reserved is the latter. ‘‘Verses,” it may be, at the head of the page, “A. B.” in the middle, and the publisher’s modest imprint at the foot.

The printer who has an eye for typographic display, if a true master of his art, does not take refuge in fantastically cut type, or seek vari¬ ety by the use of many kinds of letter, but depends for the effect he is to produce upon the proportions of his page and the proper break¬ ing up of his lines. He likes, moreover, to study the color of his page, and selects his type with reference to its harmony of tone and the gentle emphasis which may now and then be attained by a bolder face. Especially he is glad if it warrants the use of a line of rich Caxton type, shining, so to speak, like a black diamond, lighting the page.

The basis of a good title-page is no doubt in the selection of type and the adjustment of lines, but upon this groundwork may be built very beautiful and ornate effects. The use of red ink is one of the most common and effective appliances, and where the ink is a brilliant carmine there is a boldness and beauty which captivate the eye, if only it is properly used. It is not enough that two red lines should avoid proximity ; it is important that the type used for taking the red should give a clear, full impression. A choice means of securing pleasing effect is in the use of a vignette, coat of arms, or monogram. Of these three the vignette allies the page most closely to decorative art, and is unquestionably the most attractive. It may be said that with rare ex¬ ceptions a confined vignette is better on a title-page than a free one. The use of type above and below necessarily gives the page a geomet¬ rical form, and the introduction of a flowing design in the center is apt to destroy the harmony. A head-piece has sometimes been well used, especially when the lines beneath form a pendant to it, and some of Whittingham’s books, which are notable for the beauty of their title- pages, show a deep arabesque border inclosing the entire page, which is very suitable to books wdiose general characteristic is quaintness.

N. Y. Tribune.

6 o

Long Primer No. 20. Leaded. 42 Lines, 520 Words.

T the head of all the pleasures which offer themselves to the man of liberal education may confidently be placed that de¬ rived from books. In variety, durability, and facility of (H attainment no other can stand in competition with it, and even in intensity it is inferior to few. Imagine that we had it in our power to call up the shades of the greatest and wisest men that ever existed, and oblige them to converse with us on the most interesting topics — what an inestimable privilege should we think it! — how superior to all common enjoyments! But in a well furnished library we in fact possess this power. We can question Xenophon and Caesar on their campaigns, make Demosthenes and Cicero plead before us, join in the audiences of Socrates and Plato, and receive demonstrations from Euclid and Newton. In books we have the choicest thoughts of the ablest men in their best dress. We can at pleasure exclude dullness and impertinence, and open our doors to wit and good sense alone. It is needless to repeat the high commendations that have been bestowed on the study of letters by persons who had free access to every other source of gratification. Instead of quoting Cicero to you, I shall in plain terms give you the result of my own experience on this subject. If domestic enjoyments have contributed in the first degree to the happiness of my life (and I should be ungrateful not to acknowledge that they have), the pleasures of reading have beyond all question held the second place. Without books I have never been able to pass a single day to my entire satisfaction : with them, no day has been so dark as not to have its pleasure. Even pain and sickness have for a time been charmed away by them. By the easy provision of a book in my pocket, I have frequently worn through long nights and days in the most disagreeable parts of my profession, with all the difference in my feelings between calm content and fretful impatience. Reading may in every sense be called a cheap amusement. A taste for books, indeed, may be made expensive enough ; but that is a taste for editions, bindings, paper, and type. If you are satisfied with getting at the sense of an author, in some commodious way, a crown at a stall will supply your wants as well as a guinea at a shop. Learn to distinguish the difference between using books and owning books. Socrates once administered a sarcastic rebuke to a young man who was ambitious to be considered deeply learned, and thought to gain that end by boasting of his extensive and valuable collection of manuscripts. “Have you read them?” asked he.

No apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary for the en¬ joyment of reading. From the midst of bustle and business you may, in an instant, by the magic of a book, plunge into scenes of remote ages and coun¬ tries, and disengage yourself from present care and fatigue. Happy the man who has found in books a peaceful retreat.

* Dr. John Aikin.

Long Primer No. ii. Leaded. 42 Lines, 500 Words.

F all the amusements which can possibly be imagined for a hard working man, after his daily toil, or in its intervals, there is nothing like reading an entertaining book, sup¬ posing him to have a taste for it and supposing him to have the book to read. It calls for no bodily exertion, of which he has had enough or too much. It relieves his home of its dullness and sameness, which, in nine cases out of ten, is what drives him out to the ale-house, to his own ruin and his family’s. It transports him to a livelier, and gayer, and more diversified and interesting scene, and while he enjoys himself there he forgets the evils of the present moment. Nay, it accompanies him to his next day’s work, and if the book he has been reading be anything above the very idlest and light¬ est, it gives him something to think of besides the mere mechanical drudgery of his every-day occupation —something he can enjoy while absent, and look forward with pleasure to return to.

If I were to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, and human friends forsake me, it would be a taste for reading.

I recollect an anecdote told me by a late highly respected inhabitant of Windsor as a fact to which he could personally testify, having oc¬ curred in a village where he resided several years, and where he act¬ ually was at the time it took place. The blacksmith of the village had got hold of Richardson’s novel of “ Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded,” and used to read it aloud in the long summer evenings, seated on his anvil, and never failed to have a large and attentive audience. It is a pretty long-winded book, but their patience was fully a match for the au¬ thor’s prolixity, and they fairly listened to it all. At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily according to the most approved rules, the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells ring¬ ing. Now let any one say whether it is easy to estimate the amount of good done in this simple case. Not to speak of the number of hours agreeably and innocently spent, not to speak of the good- fellowship and harmony promoted, here was a whole rustic, popula¬ tion fairly won over to the side of good — charmed, and night after night spell-bound within that magic circle which genius can trace so effectually, and compelled to bow before that image of virtue and purity which (though at a great expense of words) no one knew better how to body forth than the author of that commendable work.

Sir John Herschel.

6 2

Long Primer No. 15. Leaded. 43 Lines, 587 Words.

HARLES LAMB writes of books which are not books. In the same way there are readers who are not readers — they read with the eye alone, while the brain is inert. This is a class far harder to deal with than that other class which has never made any use of the power of reading which was hammered into them in the primary school. The man who has rarely opened a book may be induced to do so ; and he may be so gratified with his discovery of the pleasure and profit which he finds in reading that he will never give it up. There is a well-known story of a man who, after a very slight schooling, had been obliged to earn his own living; he was possessed of the combination of pow¬ ers which make for success, and he gained a large fortune in California before he was forty. He built him a fine house, in which the architect put a “li¬ brary, ” so the owner sent a five-thousand-dollar check East to a bookseller for books to fill it. The books went to California, and the new millionaire, having now time on his hands, took to reading. A few months later he wrote East to the bookseller, saying that the books he had sent were thor¬ oughly satisfactory, especially the plays of a man called Shakespeare. He had enjoyed these very much. They were the real thing, and if this Shake¬ speare should ever write anything more, please forward it to him at once by express, C. O. D. This story, which I have seen cited as characteristic stupidity on the part of a self-made man, strikes me, on the contrary, as highly to his credit. That he, without any literary culture whatever, should be able to appreciate Shakespeare’s work, in spite of the archaisms and other things which tend to veil its beauty and its strength from us, is as good proof of his native intelligence as one could wish. If that man had spent his spare time reading cheap fiction, in all probability he would never have made his fortune ; and of a certainty he would never have been able to enjoy Shake¬ speare if his appreciation of what is good had been lowered by trash.

Those who do not read can best be got to read by giving them something which will interest them sufficiently to make them want to read it through when they have once begun. And what will interest a man depends alto¬ gether on the man. In literature, as in dietetics, what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison. You cannot cure a boy of reading “The Bold Brigand of Dead Gulch ” by giving him “The Student’s Hume” — one of the driest books which ever made a boy thirsty— or any of the ordinary old fashioned text-books of history. But you might get him to give up “Lone¬ eyed Jim, the Boy Scout,” to read one of Mayne Reid’s stories; and from those the transition is easy to the sea-tales of Cooper and Marryat.

The one essential thing to do, when you are trying to change a man who does not read into a man who does read, is to put yourself in his place. What is his business ? What are his tastes ? What are his surroundings ? Study the man or the woman or the child, and put before him or her the book he or she is most likely to begin, and, having begun, most likely to finish.

Arthur Penn.

Long Primer Light Face. Leaded. 43 Lines, 383 Words.

|T last Maggie’s eyes glanced down on tlie books tli at lay on tlie window shelf, and slie lialf forsook ker reverie to turn over listlessly tlie leaves of tlie 44 Portrait Gallery,” but she soon pnsked tlris aside to examine tlie little row of books tied together witk string: 4 4 Beauties of tke Spectator,” “Kasselas,” 44 Economy of Human Life,” 44 Gregory’s Letters” — she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these ; the 44 Christian Year ’’—that seemed to be a hymn-book, and she laid it down again; but 44 Thomas h Kempis”? — the name had come across her in her reading, and she felt the sat¬ isfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity : it had the corners turned down in many places, and some hand, now forever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and- ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed: 44 Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world. . . If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free from care: for in every thing somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross thee. . . Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee, every where thou shalt find the Cross: and every where of necessity thou must have pa¬ tience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.” A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she had been awakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, hardly conscious that she was reading — seem¬ ing rather to listen while a low voice said: 44 1 have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace. Then shall immoderate fear leave thee, arid inordinate love shall die.”

George Eliot, “ Mill on the Floss.

64

Elzevir Body io. Leaded. 39 Lines, 383 Words.

HE actual interest of Mr. Glad¬ stone’s article on books in the “Nineteenth Century” is not perhaps in its mechanical dis¬ cussion of the housing of them, but in what he says of books themselves. At times he speaks of books with something of the enthusiasm of the true collector, or if it be not really enthusiasm it sounds like sympathy. But it is, nevertheless, always open to doubt whether he cares very much for books otherwise than for the purposes of reading. There is not much in this article, or in any writing of his which I recall to mind, to show that he possesses any special knowledge of books from the collector’s point of view. Curiosities like the diamond editions of the late Mr. Pickering or the miniature prayer-books of Mr. Froude amuse him. Nay, he makes a remark on one of them which almost savors of humor. Pickering’s Dante, says Mr. Gladstone, weighs less than a number of “The Times.” With these exceptions, his thirteen pages might have been written by one to whom books are precious only for what they contain, and not for their rarity, or for their beauty, or for having belonged to famous owners, or for being original edi¬ tions, or for the printer’s mark, or for any other of the many reasons which make many volumes dear to the true lover of books, in addi¬ tion to, and sometimes independently of, their literary worth.

Mr. Gladstone is a utilitarian, but he never could have regarded books as Darwin did. There is a horrible passage in one of Darwin’s letters, in which he describes himself as tearing in two a volume which he found inconveniently heavy. The book was not rent asunder with any thought of its parts being recruited or bound ; it was left in frag¬ ments, its dismemberment was forever, and there was no instigating circumstance in the barbarity of the act of the great naturalist. Yet even Mr. Gladstone is capable of proposing to pack his books upon shelves constructed as to allow neither light nor air. He says “twelve inches is a fair and liberal depth for octavos,” and he allows but nine inches for the average height of 8vo shelving. This is to construct, not a library, nor even a warehouse for books, but a prison.

G. W. Smalley, in “ New-York Tribune.”

65

Long Primer Expanded. Treble Leaded. 31 Lines, 236 Words.

HILE X am with my books I enjoy tbe best solitary company in tbe world. In this particu¬ lar chiefly they excel all other company, that in stndy I am snre to converse with none bnt wise men ; bnt it is impossible abroad for me to avoid the so¬ ciety of fools. Here, withont traveling so far as Endor, I can call np the ablest spirits of those times, the learnedest philosophers, the wisest connselors, the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make bold with the best j ewels they have in their treasnry with the same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of the Egyptians, and, withont suspicion of felony, make use of them as mine own. I can here, withont trespassing, go into their vineyards, and not only eat my fill of their grapes for my pleasnre, bnt pnt np as mnch as I will in my vessel, and store it for my profit. Eord, teach me so to stndy other men’s works as not to neglect mine own; and so to stndy thy "W^ord, which is thy work, that it may be my candle to work by. Take me off from the cnriosity of knowing only to know ; from the vanity of knowing only to be known ; and from the folly of pretending to know more than I do know : and let it be my wis¬ dom to know thee who art life eternal.

Sir William Waller.

66

Long Primer No. 20. Double Leaded. 36 Lines, 456 Words.

HE inhabitants of the earth in remote times were divided into small states or societies, often at enmity among them¬ selves, and whose thoughts and interests were confined within their own narrow territories. In succeeding ages men joined themselves into larger communities, as when the English heptarchy became united, or later when England, Scotland and Ireland became one; but still distant kingdoms and quarters of the world were of no interest to them, and often were totally unknown. Now, however, a man feels that he is a member of one vast civilized society which covers the face of the earth, and no part of the earth is indifferent to him. Even a journeyman mechanic who is honest, sober, and intelligent may say with truth and exultation : “I am lodged in a house that affords me con¬ veniences and comforts which some centuries ago even a king could not command. Ships are crossing the seas in every direction to bring to me what is useful from all parts of the earth; in China men are gathering the tea leaf for me; in the West India Islands and elsewhere they are preparing my sugar and my coffee; in the South they are cultivating cotton for me; elsewhere they are shearing the sheep to give me abundance of warm cloth¬ ing; at home powerful steam engines are spinning and weaving for me, and making cutlery, and pumping the mines that minerals useful to me may be procured. My patrimony was small, yet I have railway trains running day and night on all the roads to carry my correspondence and to bring the coal for my winter fire ; nay, I have protecting fleets and armies around my happy country, to render secure my enjoyments and repose. Then I have editors and printers, who daily send me an account of what is going on throughout the world, among these people who serve me. And in a corner of my house I have books — the miracle of all my possessions, more wonderful than the wishing-cap of the Arabian tales, for they transport me instantly, not only to all places, but to all times. By my books I can conjure up before me to a momentary existence many of the great and good men of past ages, and for my individual satisfaction they seem to act again the most renowned of their achievements; the orators declaim for me, the historians recite, the poets sing.” This picture is not overcharged, and might be much extended ; such being the goodness and providence which devised this world, that each individual of the civilized millions that cover it, if his conduct be prudent, may have nearly the same happiness as if he were the single lord of all.

Dr. Arnott.

Long Primer No. ii. Double Leaded. 36 Lines, 447 Words.

DO not know whether it has been sufficiently brought home to you that there are two kinds of books. When a man is reading on any kind of subject, in most de¬ partments of books, — in all books, if you take it in a wide sense, — he will find that there is a division into good books and bad books. Everywhere a good kind of book and a bad kind of book. I am not to assume that you are unacquainted, or ill-acquainted, with this plain fact; but I may remind you that it is becoming a very important consideration in our day. And we have to cast aside altogether the idea people have, that if they are reading any book, that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all. I must entirely call that in ques¬ tion; I even venture to deny that. It would be much safer and better for many a reader, that he had no concern with books at all. There is a number, a frightfully increasing number, of books that are decid¬ edly, to the readers of them, not useful. But an ingenious reader will learn, also, that a certain number of books were written by a supremely noble kind of people; not a very great number of books, but still a number fit to occupy all your reading industry, do adhere more or less to that side of things. In short, as I have written it down somewhere else, I conceive that books are like men’s souls — divided into sheep and goats. Some few are going up, and carrying us up, heavenward ; calculated, I mean, to be of priceless advantage in teaching — in for¬ warding the teaching of all generations. Others, a frightful multitude, are going down, down ; doing ever the more and the wider and the wilder mischief. Keep a strict eye on that latter class of books, my young friends. Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things you have a real interest in, — a real, not an imaginary, — and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in. The most unhappy of all men is the man wffio cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go into it with all his might. For work is the grand cure of all the mal¬ adies and miseries that ever beset mankind — honest work, which you intend getting done.

Thomas Carlyle.

68

Bourgeois No. 20. Solid. 57 Lines, 654 Words.

} E form judgments of men from little things about their houses, of which the owner, perhaps, never thinks. In earlier years when traveling in the West, where taverns were very scarce, and in some places indeed unknown, and every settler’s house was a house of entertainment, it was a matter of some importance and experience to select where you should put up. And we always looked for flowers. If there were no trees for shade, no bright patch of flowers in the yard, we became suspicious of the place. But no matter how rude the cabin, or how rough the surroundings, if we saw that the window held a little trough for flowers, and that some vines

r , v . .... . . . twined about strings let down from

the eaves, we were confident that there was some taste and carefulness in the log cabin. In a new country, where the people have to tug for a living, no one will take the trouble to rear flowers unless the love of them is pretty strong; and this taste, blossoming out of uncultivated people, is like a clump of harebells growing out of the seams of a rock. We were very seldom misled. Flowers came to signify kind people, clean beds, and good bread.

But in other states of society other signs are more significant. Flowers about a rich man’s house may signify only that he has a good gardener, and does what he sees them do. But men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If on visiting the dwelling of a man in slender means we find that he con¬ tents himself with cheap carpets and very plain furniture in order that he may purchase books, he rises at once in our esteem. Books are not made for furni¬ ture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborate etagere or sideboard. Give us a house furnished with books rather than furniture. Both if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days in a friend’s house, and hunger for something to read, while you are treading on costly carpets, and sitting on luxuriant chairs, and sleeping upon down, is as if one were bribing your body for the sake of cheating your mind. Is it not pitiable to see a man growing rich, augmenting the comforts of home, and lavishing money on ostentatious upholstery, upon the table, upon everything but what the soul needs? We know of many and many a rich man’s house, where it would not be safe to ask for the commonest English Classics. A few garish Annuals on the table, a few pictorial monstrosities, together with the stock religious books of his “persuasion,” and that is all! No poets, no essayists, no historians, no travels or biographies, no select fiction or curious legendary lore. But the wall paper cost three dollars a roll, and the carpet cost four dollars a yard !

Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his chil¬ dren without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them ! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices. Let us congratulate the poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add a hundred volumes to his library for the price which his tobacco and his beer would cost him. A little library growing larger every year is an honorable part of a man’s history.

Henry Ward Beecher.

69

Bourgeois No. ii. Solid. 57 Lines, 660 Words.

GREAT library cannot be constructed — it is the growth of ages. You may buy books at any time with money, but you cannot make a library like one that has been a century or two a-growing, though you had the whole national debt to do it with. I remember once how an extensive publisher, speak¬ ing of the rapid strides which literature had made of late years, and referring to a certain old public library, celebrated for its affluence in the fathers, the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers, stated how he had himself freighted for exportation, within the past month, as many books as that whole library consisted of. This was likely enough to be true, but the two collections were very dif¬ ferent from each other. The cargoes of books were probably thousands of copies of some few popular selling works. They might be a powerful illus¬ tration of the diffusion of knowledge, but what they were compared with was its concentration. Had all the paper of which these cargoes consisted been bank-notes they would not have enabled their owner to duplicate the old library, rich in the fathers, the civilians, and medieval chroniclers.

This impossibility of improvising libraries is really an important and curi¬ ous thing ; and since it is apt to be overlooked, owing to the facility of buy¬ ing books, in quantities generally far beyond the available means of any ordinary buyer, it seems worthy of some special consideration. A man who sets out to form a library will go on swimmingly for a short way. He will easily get Tennyson’s Poems, Macaulay’s and Alison’s histories, the Ency¬ clopaedia Britannica, Buckle on Civilization — all the books “in print,” as it is termed. Nay, he will find no difficulty in procuring copies of others which may not happen to be on the shelves of the publisher or of the retailer of new books. Of Voltaire’s works — a little library in itself — he will get a copy at his call in London, if he has not set his mind on some special edition. So of Scott’s edition of Swift or Dry den, Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Johnson, and the like. One can scarcely suppose a juncture in which any of these cannot be found through the electric chain of communication established by the book-trade. Of Gibbon’s and Hume’s histories, Jeremy Taylor’s works, Bossuet’s Universal History, and the like, copies abound everywhere. Go back a little and ask for Rennet’s Collection of the Historians, Echard’s His¬ tory, Bayle Moreri, or Father Daniel’s History of France ; you cannot be so certain of immediately obtaining your object, but you will get the book in the end — no doubt about that. They are not yet excessively rare.

Everything has its caprices, and there are some books which might be ex¬ pected to be equally shy, but in reality, by some inexplicable fatality, are as plentiful as blackberries. Such, for instance, are Famianus Strada’s History of the Dutch War of Independence — one of the most brilliant works ever writ¬ ten, and in the very best Latin after Buchanan’s. There is Buchanan’s own history, very common even in the shape of the early Scotch edition of Ar- buthnot’s printing. Then there are Barclay’s Argenis, and Raynal’s Philo¬ sophical History of the East and West Indies, without which no book-stall is to be considered complete, and which seem to be possessed of a supernatural power of resistance to the elements, since, month after month, in fair weather or foul, they are to be seen at their posts dry or dripping.

So the collector goes on, till he perhaps collects some five thousand volumes or so of select works. If he is miscellaneous in his tastes, he may get on pretty comfortably to ten or fifteen thousand, and then his troubles will arise. And woe betide him if he sets his heart upon obtaining the original editions of rare prints, for after the search of a lifetime he may go to his grave a disap¬ pointed man.

70

Bourgeois No. 20. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 50 Lines, 688 Words.

SAY first we have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as com¬ pared with what we spend on our horses ? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad — a biblio-maniac. But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch as compared with the contents of its wine cellars ? What position would its expenditure on literature take as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body : now a good book contains such food inexhaust¬ ibly ; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end than most men’s dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy ; and if public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much ; nor is it serviceable until it has been read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again ; and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good ; but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be poor indeed which once in their lives can¬ not, for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker’s bill. We call ourselves a rich and great nation, and yet we are filthy enough and foolish enough to thumb each other’s books out of circulating libraries !

Nevertheless I hope it will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them ; the same series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared for that national series in the most perfect way possible ; their text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in the hand, beautiful and strong, and thorough as examples of binder’s work ; and that these libraries will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of the day and evening ; strict law being enforced for this cleanliness and quietness.

I could shape for you other plans, for art galleries, and for natural history galleries, and for many precious, many, it seems to me, needful, things ; but this book plan is the easiest and the needfulest, and would prove a considerable tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have got its corn laws repealed for it ; try if you cannot get corn laws estab¬ lished for it, dealing in a better bread — bread made of that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens doors ; doors, not of robbers’, but of Kings’ Treasuries.

John Ruskin.

7*

Bourgeois No. ii. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 50 Lines, 637 Words.

DR the knowledge that comes from books I would claim no more than it is fairly entitled to. I am well aware that there is no inevitable connection between intellectual cul¬ tivation, on the one hand, and individual virtue or social well-being, on the other. u The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.” I admit that genius and learning are sometimes found in combination with gross vices, and not unfrequently with contemptible weaknesses $ and that a community at once cultivated and corrupt is no impossible monster. But it is no overstatement to say that, other things being equal, the man who has the greatest amount of intellectual resources is in the least danger from infe¬ rior temptations — if for no other reason, because he has fewer idle moments. The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour. Occupation is the armor of the soul $ and the train of Idleness is borne up by all the vices. I remem¬ ber a satirical poem in which the devil is represented as fishing for men, and adapting his baits to the taste and temperament of his prey 5 but the idler pleased him most, he said, because he bit the naked hook. To a young man away from home, friendless and forlorn in a great city, the hours of peril are those between sunset and bed-time ; for the moon and the stars see more of evil in a single hour than the sun in his whole day’s circuit. The poet’s vis¬ ions of evening are all compact of tender and soothing images. It brings the wanderer to his home, the ox to his stall, and the weary laborer to his rest. But to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless city, and stands “ homeless among a thousand homes,” the approach of even¬ ing brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desolation, which comes down upon the spirit like darkness upon the earth. In this mood his best impulses become a snare to him $ and he is led astray because he is social, af¬ fectionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. If there be a young man thus circumstanced who reads these lines, let me inform you that books are the friends of the friendless, and that a library is the home of the homeless. A taste for reading will always carry you into the best possible society, and enable you to converse with men who will instruct you by their wisdom, and charm you by their wit ; who will soothe you when fretted, refresh you when weary, counsel you when perplexed, and sympathize with you at all times.

In books, be it remembered, we have the best products of the best minds. We should any of us esteem it a great privilege to pass an evening with Shakespeare or Bacon, were such a thing possible. But, were we admitted to the presence of one of these illustrious men, we might find him touched with infirmity or oppressed with weariness, or darkened with the shadow of a recent trouble, or absorbed by intrusive and tyrannous thoughts. To us the oracle might be dumb, and the light eclipsed. But when we take down one of these volumes we run no such risk. Here we have their best thoughts embalmed in their best words. Here we find the growth of the choicest sea¬ sons of the mind, when mortal cares were forgotten, and mortal weaknesses were subdued, and the soul, stripped of its vanities and passions, gave forth its highest emanations of truth and beauty. We may be sure that Shake¬ speare never out-talked his Hamlet, nor Bacon his Essays.

Great writers are indeed best known through their books. How very little, for instance, do we know of the life of Shakespeare ; but how much do we know of him !

George S. Hillard.

72

Bourgeois No. 20. Leaded. 47 Lines, 623 Words.

SAY, then, that books, taken indiscriminately, are no cure to the diseases and afflictions of the mind. There is a world of science necessary in the taking them. I have known some people in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the last light book in fashion. One might as well take a rose-draught for the plague ! Light reading does not do when the heart is really heavy. I am told that Goethe, when he lost his son, took to study a science that was new to him. Ah ! Goethe was a physician who knew what he was about. In a great grief like that, you cannot tickle and divert the mind ; you must wrench it away, abstract, absorb — bury it in an abyss, hurry it into a labyrinth. Therefore, for the irremediable sorrows of middle life and old age, I recommend a strict chronic course of science and hard reasoning — counter-irritation. Bring the brain to act upon the heart ! If science is too much against the grain (for we have not all got mathematical heads), something in the reach of the humblest under¬ standing, but sufficiently searching to the highest — a new language — Greek, Arabic, Scandinavian, Chinese, or Welsh! For the loss of fortune the dose should be applied less directly to the understanding — I would administer some¬ thing elegant and cordial. For, as the heart is crushed and lacerated by a loss in the affections, so it is rather the head that aches and suffers by the loss of money. Here we find the higher class of poets a very valuable remedy. For observe that poets of the grander and more comprehensive kind of genius have in them two separate men, quite distinct from each other — the imaginative man, and the practical, circumstantial man; and it is the happy mixture of these that suits diseases of the mind, half imaginative and half practical. If you take them gently and quietly, they will not, like your mere philosopher, your unreason¬ able stoic, tell you that you have lost nothing; but they will insensibly steal you out of this world, with its losses and crosses, and slip you into another world, before you know where you are ! — a world where you are just as welcome, though you carry no more earth of your lost acres with you than covers the sole of your shoe. Then, for hypochondria and satiety, what is better than a brisk, alterative course of travels — especially early, out-of-the-way, marvelous, legendary travels ! How they freshen up the spirits ! How they take you out of the humdrum, yawn¬ ing state you are in. Then, for that vice of the mind which I call sectarianism — not in the religious sense of the word, but little, narrow prejudices, that make you hate your next-door neighbor because he has his eggs roasted when you have yours boiled; and gossiping and prying into people’s affairs, and backbiting, and thinking heaven and earth are coming together, if some broom touch the cobweb that you have let grow over the window-sill of your brains — what like a large and generous, mildly aperient course of history ! How it clears away all the fumes of the head! — better than the hellebore with which the old leeches of the middle ages purged the cerebellum. There, amidst all that great whirl and sturmbad, as the Germans say, of kingdoms and empires, and races and ages, how your mind enlarges beyond that little, feverish animosity to John Styles ; or that unfortunate prepossession of yours, that all the world is interested in your grievances against Tom Stokes and his wife ! . . .

“How little a space one sorrow really makes in life; and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it ! ”

Lord Lytton (Bulwer), ‘‘The Caxtons.”

73

Bourgeois No. ii. Leaded. 47 Lines, 572 Words.

HEN work is offered by an entire stranger, without set¬ tled or known place of business, prepayment should be requested. This is a delicate duty, but it may be done courteously, and without giving offense. An honest and reasonable customer will readily see the necessity of the rule, and will as readily comply with it. If the necessary precaution is omitted, the office must look for many losses. Credit is frequently requested. This is an application that no clerk has a right to entertain, even from persons of known responsi¬ bility. In all cases such a request should be referred to the proprietor or manager for his decision. It is a matter in which there is much conflicting local usage, and for which no positive rules can be given. There are cases in which credit is beneficial to both parties, but upon most applications it should be declined. The apparent value of printed work, and the disposition to pay for it, is never greater than it is on its first receipt. It will be found judicious to avoid all running accounts, and to secure at least monthly settle¬ ments with all customers. Cash should be the rule ; credit the exception .

To persons of an enthusiastic and speculative temperament, printing prom¬ ises great advantages in the prosecution of business. Their proclivity to run in debt should not be encouraged by any printer. If the applicant has not the money to hazard in an advertising experiment, it is more than probable that he never will earn it. There are certain kinds of printing for which credit should never be given. All kinds of election work, the publishing of a newspaper or a book, or the establishment of an invention or patent med¬ icine, are as full of hazard as any form of gambling. The party intending to reap the reward should take the sole risk, and pay any loss.

Probably no class of tradesmen suffer more severely from the failure of adventurers than printers. A thrifty printer, who wishes to maintain his own credit, must be inexorable in refusing credit to all new and unendorsed publishing enterprises. Work should stop when pay stops. Cases will occur where the application of such a rigorous rule will appear both harsh and injudicious. But it is the experience of all old printers, that it is much the wiser course to lose an apparently valuable customer and profitable work, rather than take risk with him. To break friendly business relations on grounds of distrust with an estimable man is always an unpleasant duty, and one that will require some nerve on the part of the young printer, especially if the customer is already somewhat in debt, and refusal to trust him further is probably equivalent to a certain loss of the indebtedness that has been already incurred. This disagreeable task can be materially lightened by advising the customer before the work is accepted, that under no circum¬ stances can there be any credit; that a failure to make weekly payments from any cause whatever will stop the work. A customer who declines to accede to such arrangements is not desirable. When credit is given, it should be given with a limit as to amount, but fully and heartily in form. Pay no attention to evasive or conditional promises. Accept no equivocation or division of responsibility. If the person who is expected to pay the bill will not give a positive order, decline the work.

74

Brevier No. 20. Solid. 64 Lines, ioii Words.

HERE came into my hands by chance the other day a copy of the first edition of the works of John Hookham Frere, published by Mr. B. M. Picker¬ ing, son of that William Pickering whose name has long been honored by lovers of fine books. This copy — and I hope not to scare off the gen¬ eral reader by the phrase — is on large paper, and of such copies only 25 in all were printed. Of those on ordinary paper the whole number, if I recollect rightly, did not exceed 750. The book became a scarce one soon after its publication, for when it went out of print copies filtered back into the market very slowly. Both the Pickerings have shown courage in giving to the public editions of great writers whom other publishers would not touch. The public prove sometimes grateful and sometimes ungrateful. In other words, these issues were not al¬ ways profitable, but scholars and literary men and bibliophiles of all grades reaped the benefit of Mr. Pickering’s enterprise. In the end, I may add, the public has been made to pay handsomely. Many books which the late Mr. Pickering sold off at a fourth of the cost have of late years been bringing more than four times their published price. It is a pity that this appreciation of them came too late to be of help to him. In the case of Mr. Frere’s works, the demand proved to be so unexpectedly great that a second edition was finally called for. This has been printed in a style slightly less luxurious than the first, but is, in point of elegance, superior to most of the books of the day.

As there is still here and there a publisher who aims at excellence in book-making, he will perhaps allow me to suggest to him that he could not do better than examine with some care the work that has been done on the large paper Frere of the first edition. The paper is hand-made, and of a texture just suited to take a good impression: not too hard in surface, as the best Whatman paper sometimes is ; not too rough, as some of the best of the Van Gelder and other Dutch papers are. It certainly would not answer for ordi¬ nary books, being too costly, too stiff for easy folding, and otherwise ill-adapted to the hurried processes of book-binding by machinery. I notice that in this copy, though it is not bound in the proper sense of the word, but has been put into cloth boards, the binder has taken the precaution to cut up every alternate leaf, with the gratifying result that no creases are to be seen. The necessity for all this care is rather an advantage than other¬ wise, for excellence in no art can be attained without difficulties to overcome. And in treating of book-making as an art, what we want to know is, not the best average work that can be done, but the best absolutely. There will be no danger of its influence on the habits of the trade proving too great. The paper is white, with just the suggestion of a yellowish tint to keep it from being glaring — by no means what American publishers at one time were so fond of under the name of tinted paper, which was of a positive color, and almost worse than the blue tint which is so common a fault in the Dutch papers.

A practical printer would be the first to admire the typography of the book. Its various contents required' a great variety of type. More than a dozen different sorts of letter may be counted sometimes on a single page, yet there is an evenness of appearance throughout which is the best proof of good taste in selection. The face of the type is almost always thin, and the whole of it is at once elegant and clear. The vignettes, initial letters, fleurons and culs-de-lampe are carefully designed and artistic. The press-work has been done with considerable care. It is too seldom that one sees in a modern book so distinct an impression, or a more exact register. And the ink is black — not quite uniformly so, but as a rule, and has a real luster. This is the greater merit, because in no particular does modern book-making — even the best — more commonly fail. In cheap books it must be expected to fail, for good ink fetches a good price. This is the weak point of the modern French printers. Marne’s otherwise fine series of French classics offers you a page which is positively weak from the paleness of the ink. Some of Jouaust’s work has the same fault; so has Scheuring’s and Claye’s, though an exception in favor of the latter must be made in the case of the Bida Gospels which he printed for Messrs. Hachette. It must be said that Whittingham is capable, like other mortals, of using gray ink, and that ink may be black without being brilliant. The Chiswick press, like all others, must do cheap work for profit, and occasional good work for the glory of the printer’s art. In accuracy it leaves something to be desired. The page of errata at the end of the first volume shows careless proof-reading. The most beautiful books have not always been the most accu¬ rate. Many of the incunabula swarm with errors ; the best sixteenth century books, the best Aldines excepted, are far from immaculate ; the Elzevirs in the next age are of every degree of merit ; and when we get down to Bodoni we find in a single volume the extreme of typographical luxury combined with scandalous carelessness. If this is the practical age we proclaim it to be, how happens it we make so little progress in an art which in no other age was ever used so extensively as now? Our mechanical improvements have been marvelous, but our real gains are limited to speed and cheapness of production.

G. W. Smalley, in “New -York Tribune.”

75

Brevier No. ii. Solid. 64 Lines, 913 Words.

HERE is a practice among publishers which, at first blush, seems an insult offered to good literature. When sending out a traveler to make sales to booksellers of some forthcoming book, they will fre¬ quently provide him, not with a copy of the book itself, but with a dummy made up of blank paper, trimly clad in the cloth case which is finally to hold the book, duly stamped and lettered in black and gold, black alone, or gold alone, or simply stamped in blind. By this sample he is to recommend the book to the dealer, and on this to take his orders. It is better to find the rationale of this custom than to denounce it as a slight put upon literature. The cover sells the book to the dealer, because the dealer himself sells the book to his customer in turn very largely by means of its outside dress. Many a book which has doggedly refused to move from the bookseller’s shelf has refused in the most lively manner to stay there when newly set out in some jaunty fashion of bookbinding. The book agent, too, lets his victim feast his eyes on the fool’s gold that displays itself upon the broad expanse of the subscription book, knowing the charm that lies in it.

It is not to be expected that the bookbinders and the public will ever keep very far apart in their taste, but it is nevertheless possible to bind books in accordance with sound taste, and to catch the public eye also. Moreover, it only needs a little courage on the part of a publisher to make him a reformer in good taste, in a mod¬ est way, and there will always be a long suffering minority who will hail with re¬ joicing any recognition of their very reserved rights. The first consideration and the last is that every book should have a cover which bears some relation to the contents of the book. A cook book and a theological treatise ought not to make the same appeal to the eye. No one who stops to think would deny this proposi¬ tion. But there are more subtle distinctions which are constantly overlooked. A book in pure literature should not be mistaken for a book in science, yet any pre¬ vailing fashion, as for instance that of gold lettering and black arabesque printing, will probably display itself in both cases without discrimination.

To begin at the bottom, the board used in cloth covers should be graded in its thickness according to the weight of the book which it has to sustain ; it is a piece of deception and of vulgarity to put heavy boards with beveled edges upon thin books. It is done to make them look more substantial, and so warrant a higher price. The cloth again is likely to run upon some fancy pattern or color, which is merely novel and not in itself good. The pattern and color should be determined by two considerations, the nature of the book and the character of the decoration to be used on this ground. A dark brown is suited to historical works, and in gen¬ eral to books of dignity ; blue might fairly be used for romance and poetry, but, unfortunately, blue is not in favor, because it is said to fade ; this may be true of the lighter shades, but we have seen smooth blue cloth-bound books that look as delightful to the eye as they did years ago. Red, especially in its deeper tones, suits scientific and military books and books relating to the mechanic arts. Black the human mind instinctively refers to theology, and it is curious to see how the books which of late years have undertaken to make theology popular have invari¬ ably dressed themselves in the more sociable brown cloth. White, or the lightest shades of yellow, belongs to the fine arts, but for the lightest of gay reading it may well be used if covered boldly with a black stamp that only lets the light through here and there. Novels and easy-going literature generally should be allowed the buffs and grays, while travel and natural history claim green. The mineral colors as a rule are detestable. We hold that the grain of the cloth should obey the gen¬ eral law, that the daintier the book the smoother it should be, books that require a firmer grasp being entitled to rough grain.

When it comes to the matter of lettering and decoration it is more difficult to lay down specific rules. Yet here also there are certain canons which ought not to be disregarded. The lettering on our books is almost always bad. A condensed let¬ ter is too much used, owing to the endeavor to make narrow backs carry broad titles. We would simplify the titles in the first place, then use as round a letter as possible, and avoid imitation of fancy types. When a title, however, forms part of some general scheme of decoration, the artist ought to make the lettering also picturesque. The decoration of a book cover most certainly ought to be intrusted to a special artist, and that artist ought not to be the die-sinker, but a workman in the bindery. The greatest evil we have to contend against is the inveterate habit of our Western eye, when not cultivated, to call for formal symmetry. It is ne¬ cessary now, when a good design is to be procured, to go outside of the craft.

New -York Tribune.

?6

Brevier No. 20. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 55 Lines, 834 Words.

OOKS are our household gods ; and we cannot prize them too highly. They are the only gods in all the mythologies that are ever beautiful and unchangeable; for they betray no man, and love their lovers. I confess myself an idolator of this literary religion, and am grateful for the blessed ministry of books. It is a kind of heathenism which needs no missionary funds, no Bible even, to abolish it ; for the Bible itself caps the peak of

this new Olympus, and crowns it with sublimity and glory. Amongst the many things we have to be thankful for, as the result of modern discoveries, surely this of printed books is the highest of all; and I, for one, am so sensible of its merits that I never think of the name of Gutenberg without feelings of veheration and homage.

I no longer wonder, with this and other instances before me, why in the old* days of reverence and worship the saints and benefactors of mankind were exalted into a kind of demi-gods, and had worship rendered to their tombs and memories; for this is the most natural, as well as the most touching, of all human generosities, and springs from the profoundest depths of man’s nature. Who does not love John Gutenberg ?— the man that with his leaden types has made the invisible thoughts and imaginations of the soul visible and readable to all and by all, and secured for the worthy a double immortality? The birth of this person was an era in the world’s history second to none save that of the Advent of Christ. The dawn of printing was the outburst of a new revelation, which, in its ultimate unfoldings and consequences, are alike inconceivable and immeasurable.

I sometimes amuse myself by comparing the condition of the people before the time of Gutenberg with their present condition, that I may fix the idea of the value and blessed¬ ness of books more vividly in my mind. It is an occupation not without profit, and makes me grateful and contented with my lot. In these reading days one can hardly con¬ ceive how our good forefathers managed to kill their superfluous time, or how at least they could be satisfied to kill it as they did. A life without books, when we have said all we can about the honor and nobility of labor, would be something like Heaven without God — scarcely to be endured by an immortal nature. And yet this was the condition of things before Gutenburg made his far-sounding metallic tongues, which reach through all the ages that have since passed away, and make us glad with their eloquence.

Formerly the ecclesiastics monopolized the literature of the world; they were indeed in many cases the authors and transcribers of books, and we are indebted to them for the preservation of the old learning. Now every mechanic is the possessor of a library, and may have Plato and Socrates, as well as Chaucer and the bards, for his companions. I call this a heavenly privilege, and the greatest of all known miracles, notwithstanding it is so cheap and common. Plato died above two thousand years ago, yet in these printed books he lives and speaks forever. There is no death to thought, which, though it may never be imprisoned in lettered language, has nevertheless an existence and propagative vitality as soon as it is uttered, and endures from generation to generation, to the very end of the world. I think we should all of us be grateful for books: they are our best friends and most faithful companions. They instruct, cheer, elevate, and ennoble us; and in whatever mood we go to them, they never frown upon us, but receive us with cordial and loving sincerity: neither do they blab, or tell tales of us when we are gone, to the next comer; but honestly, and with manly frankness, speak to our hearts in admonition or encouragement. I do not know how it is with other men, but I have so much rever¬ ence for these silent and beautiful friends that I feel in them to have an immortal and di¬ vine possession, which is more valuable to me than many estates and kingdoms. The noise and babble of men disturb me not in my princely domain, enriched by the presence of so many high and royal souls. We make too little of books, and have quite lost the meaning of contemplation. Our times are too busy, too exclusively outward in their ten¬ dency, and men have lost their balance in the whirlpools of commerce and the fierce tor¬ nadoes of political strife. I want to see more poise in men, more self-possession; and these can only be gained by communion with books. I lay stress on the word commun¬ ion. If an author be worth anything, he is worth bottoming. It may be all very well to skim milk, for the cream lies on the top ; but who could skim Lord Bacon ?

“January Searle.”

77

Brevier No. ii. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 55 Lines, 777 Words.

F a man with a fondness for books has also money enough to build a special room to hold them, as did the late William E. Bur¬ ton to contain his fine theatrical library, he ought to consult those learned in the law of book-protecting. He would be told that the library should have very thick walls, to exclude the damp of spring, the heat of summer, and the cold of winter. He wou](i be informed that the library should have windows only on one side, and that these windows should be recessed, that the sun may not shine in too violently, to the increase of moths and worms, and to the destruction of bind¬ ings. He would learn that the library should not be a corner, and that it should be protected, if possible, by other rooms on three sides. There are those who advocate a library wholly without windows, and lighted only by a skylight ; but this is too severe and cheerless an arrangement for a true book-lover. There should be no carpet on the floor, for carpets hold dust, and dust is a great danger to books. Rugs, which may be shaken frequently, are sufficient covering for the floor. The heating arrangements, an open fire-place if convenient, should be ample enough to warm the room without making it hot ; the ordinary hot-air furnace is very injurious to books, and should be the last resort.

These, however, are prescriptions for those who carry a long purse. The ordi¬ nary American is well satisfied if he can give up any corner of his house to his books. As often as not it is an odd room, useless for any other purpose, and cheer¬ less at all times. Now this ought not to be. The library should be a room into which every member of the family may feel glad to go. It ought to be bright and cheerful. It ought to be easily accessible. It ought to be warmed in winter, and protected from the glare of the sun in summer. If the only room which can be de¬ voted to holding books is too small to hold all the volumes the family is fortunate enough to own, or if no room at all can be given up to them exclusively, then by all means let the books overflow the house. Some authors have had books in almost every room of their residence. Southey had his even down along the staircase, lining its walls, and Shelley declares that Southey did not like his venturing to take down a volume as he descended the steps.

There are book-cases and book-cases, just as there are books and books. There is the richly-carved cabinet, with its inlaid panels, its elaborate brass, its silken curtains, its beveled glass, its chamois-covered shelves, its tough back carefully protected against damp, all uniting to perfect a fit tabernacle for priceless volumes, so old, so rare, so beautifully bound, as to be absolutely too precious for human creatures’ daily food. There is the single board held against the side of a shanty by a bit of string and a nail or two, and supporting a worn Emerson, an old copy of Franklin, a cheap Shakespeare, and two or three volumes of Cooper, Scott, or Longfellow, battered and worn. And between these two extremes are number¬ less intermediate varieties. There is the sober row of books filling the top of the mantel-piece — a bad place for books, as the warped backs and cracking covers re¬ veal only too soon. There is the first attempt at a book-case, the box once filled with soap or wine, now planed and stained and divided in two by a transverse partition, which serves as a shelf, and with the bottom and top gives accommo¬ dation for three rows of books ; this primitive device is not to be despised, for it will afford shelf room for quite fifty volumes, two-thirds of which are inside the box, and are thus always ready to move and easy to handle. In a country with a population as nomadic as ours, any book-case, however elementary, which holds books as well in one place as another, and as well when moving from one place to another as when settled, and which saves all trouble of packing before transport and of rearrangement afterward, is not without its good points ; and there are many worse ways of providing for books than a combination — by means of a few screws — of half a dozen such boxes into a large stand. A Massachusetts author keeps his entire library of several thousand volumes in these boxes.

78

Brevier No. 15. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 54 Lines, 729 Words.

I not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety if we first handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places and commend them to undefiling cus¬ tody, that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand and repose in se¬ curity when laid up in their repositories. Truly, next to the vestments and the ves¬ sels dedicated to the body of the Lord, holy books deserve to be most decorously handled by the clergy, upon which injury is inflicted as often as they presume to touch them with a dirty hand. Where- for, we hold it expedient to exhort stu¬ dents upon various negligences which can always be avoided.

In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with precipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly closed ; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully preserved than a shoe. But school folks are in general perversely educated, and, if not restrained by the rule of their superiors, are puffed up with infinite absurdities; they act with petulance, swell with presump¬ tion, judge of everything with certainty, and are unexperienced in anything.

You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time ; oppressed with cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with its vile dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler’s apron in the place of his book. He has a nail like a giant’s, with which he points out the place of any pleasant subject. He distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his mem¬ ory cannot retain. These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests, and which no¬ body takes out, at first distend the book from its accustomed closure, and being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book, and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it; and because he has not his alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to his companions; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void of physical mean¬ ing, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap, with the sputtering of his saliva. What is worse, he next reclines with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap; and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of the leaves, to the no small detriment of the volume. He goes out in the rain, and now flowers make their appearance upon our soil. Then the scholar we are describing, the neglecter rather than the inspector of books, stuffs his volume with firstling violets, roses, and quadrifoils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with sweat, to turning over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all over with his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with his forefinger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the holy book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a month, and is so swelled with dust that it will not yield to the efforts of the closer.

And impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling with books, who, when they are learning to draw the forips of letters, if copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to become incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broadest margin about the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet, or their unchastened pen immediately pre¬ sumes to draw any other frivolous thing whatever that occurs to their imagination. There are also certain thieves who enormously dismember books by cutting off the side margins for letter- paper (leaving only the letters or text), or the fly-leaves put in for the preservation of the book, which sort of sacrilege ought to be prohibited under a threat of anathema.

Richard de Bury.

79

Brevier Light Face. Leaded. 50 Lines, 497 Words.

HERE is some comfort for those who, like the essayist Henry Rogers for example, look with despair upon the accumulation of hooks, and with hopefulness in some overruling fate which disposed of the Alexandria library. There is an enormous mass no doubt of books in the world, but when we subtract the books to be read from the books which simply serve some temporary purpose, the remainder is small enough to restore cheerfulness, and when again we divide, setting apart those books which are them¬ selves the origin and cause of other books, there is hope even for the man of business, that in his leisure moments he may read and enjoy them all.

The practical use to which every student or reader may put this discovery, is in the right he may claim to select his read¬ ing. Since the mere fact of something being in print lays no compulsion upon him to read it, for there is a splendid impos¬ sibility of his reading everything, he may have the most dense ignorance of the great mass of what goes by the name of literature, and retain his self-respect. Some idle reader of advertisements and book-notices saunters along with us as we go to our work and speaks of this or that new book, and we may bravely admit our utter ignorance of it. We need give ourselves no more concern about it than we do about the young women who comb their hair and shake bottles in advertisements of hair oil. Yet it requires oftentimes no small courage to be ready with our ignorance. It is like the mention of a name to us in conversation with a friend, who appeals to us for a sort of moral support as he is about to tell a story: You know — — ? We gently incline our head, try¬ ing not to commit ourselves to a plump acknowledgment. It is not of the slightest consequence to the story, but we are so anxious to oblige a friend. And in discourse of many books we are apt to give tacit admission of an acquaintance with them. Yes, we have merely seen it, we say, and bow — on the counter, we mentally explain, but it sounds as if we had glanced through it at least.

The dispersion of literature by the manifold instruments of books, magazines, and papers, and the universal spread of a common-school education, have conspired to cheapen not the real value of literature, but its apparent value. Every one reads — nearly every one writes. Books that have cost labor are condensed into a review article, strained into a weekly journal, scattered in short paragraphs through the daily pa¬ pers. Gossip about authors, tattle about their work, vulgar comparisons, and the easy praise of good-natured, hard- worked noticers, help to make the act of reading an indolent diver¬ sion. Printing caused writing, and the awakening of human thought, Which was contemporaneous with the invention of printing, found other forms of activity also.

8o

Elzevir Body 8. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 49 Lines, 707 Words.

UT books have the advantage in many other respects: you may read an able preacher, when you have but a mean one to hear. Every congregation cannot hear the most judicious or powerful preachers; but every single person may read the books of the most powerful and judicious. Preachers may be silenced or banished, when books may be at hand : books maybe kept at a smaller charge than preach¬ ers: we may choose books which treat of that very subject which we desire to hear of, but we cannot choose what subject the preacher shall treat of. Books we may have at hand everyday and hour, when we can have sermons but seldom, and at set times. If sermons be forgotten, they are gone. But a book we may read over and over until we remember it ; and, if we forget it, we may again peruse it at our pleas¬ ure, or at our leisure. So that good books are a very great mercy to the world.

As for play-books, and romances, and idle tales, I have already shewed in my “Book of Self-Denial” how pernicious they are, especially to youth, and to frothy, empty, idle wits, that know not what a man is, nor what he hath to do in the world. They are powerful baits of the devil, to keep more necessary things out of their minds, and better books out of their hands, and to poison the mind so much the more dangerously, as they are read with more delight and pleasure: and to fill the minds of sensual people with such idle fumes and intoxicating fancies as may divert them from the serious thoughts of their salvation, and (which is no small loss) to rob them of that precious time which was given them for more important business, and which they will wish and wish again at the last that they had spent more wisely.

Reading, with most people, doth more conduce to knowledge than hearing doth, and with very many it doth more than hearing to move the heart ; because lively books may be more easily had than lively preachers.

The truth is, it is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good ; but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And yet the reading of as many as is possible tendeth much to the increase of knowl¬ edge, and were the best way, if greater matters were not that way unavoidably to be omitted ; life therefore being short, and work great, and knowledge being for love and practice, and no man having leisure to learn all things, a wise man must be sure to lay hold on that which is most useful. And the very subjects that are to be un¬ derstood are numerous, and few men write of all. And on the same subject men have several modes of writing; as one excelleth in accurate method, and another in clear, convincing argumentation, and another in an affectionate, taking style: and the book that doth one cannot well do the other, because the same style will not do it.

Great store of all sorts of good books (through the great mercy of God) are com¬ mon among us : he that cannot buy, may borrow. But take heed that you lose not your time in reading romances, play-books, vain jests, seducing or reviling disputes, or needless controversies. A course of reading Scripture and good books will be many ways to your great advantage. It will, above all other ways, increase your knowledge. It will help your resolutions and holy affections, and direct your lives. It will make your lives pleasant. The knowledge, the usefulness, and the variety to be found in these works will be a continual recreation to you, unless you are utterly besotted or debauched. The pleasure of this will turn you from your fleshly pleas¬ ures. You will have no need to go for delight to a play-house or a drinking-house. It will keep you from the sinful loss of time, by idleness or unprofitable employment or pastimes. You will cast away cards and dice when you find the sweetness of youth¬ ful learning.

Richard Baxter.

8i

Brevier Expanded. Triple Leaded. 36 Lines, 295 Words.

I

DLENESS is a disease which mast be combated; bat I woald not advise a rigid adherence to a particalar plan of stndy. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read jnst as inclination leads him ; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” A yoang man shoald read five hoars in the day, and so may acqaire a great deal of knowledge. . . .

He then took occasion to enlarge on the advan¬ tage of reading, and combated the idle, saperhcial notion that knowledge enoagh may be acqnired in conversation. 66 The fonndation,” said he, “mast be laid by reading.” Greneral principles mast be had from books, which, however, mast be broaght to the test of real life. In conversation yoa never get a system. What is said apon a sabject is to be gathered from a handred people. The parts of a trath which a man gets thas are at sach a distance from each other that he never attains a satisfactory view. . . .

He said that for general improvement a man shoald read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to; tlioagh to be wise, if a man have a science to learn, he mast regalarly and resolately advance. He added, 64 What we read with inclination works a mach stronger impres¬ sion.” If we read withoat inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention ; so there is bat one-half to be employed on what we read. He told as he read Fielding’s 44 Amelia” throagh withoat stopping. He said, 44 If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not qn.it it to go to the beginning. He may not feel again the inclination.” Boswell,s „Samukl JoMok.»

82

Brevier No. 20. Leaded. 50 Lines, 734 Words.

POET so full of zest as Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is wont to live his life, rather than to scorn delights in service of the thankless muse. Dr. Holmes’s easy-going method, and a sensible estimate of his own powers, have defined the limits of his zeal. His poetry was and is, like his humor, the overflow of a nervous, original, decidedly intellectual nature ; of spark¬ ling life, no less, in which he gathered the full worth of heyday experiences. See that glimpse of Paris, a student’s pencilled sketch, with Clemence tripping down the Rue de Seine. It is but a bit, yet through its atmosphere we make out a poet who cared as much for the sweets of the poetic life as for the work that was its product. He had through it all a Puritan sense of duty, and the worldly wisdom that goes with a due perception of values, and he never lost sight of his practical career. His pro¬ fession, after all, was what he took most seriously. Accepting, then, with hearty thanks, his care-dispelling rhyme and reason, pleased often by the fancies which he tenders in lieu of imagination and power, we go through the collection of his verse, and see that it has amounted to a great deal in the course of a bustling fifty years. These numerous pieces divide themselves, as to form, into two classes — lyrics and poetic essays in solid couplet- verse ; as to purpose, into the lighter songs that may be sung, and the nobler numbers, part lyrical, part the poems, both gay and sober, delivered at frequent intervals during his pleasant career. In the years that followed his graduation, while practicing in Boston and afterward a lecturer at Dartmouth, he was summoned, nothing loath, whenever a dinner- song or witty ballad was needed at home, and calls from transpontine and barbaric regions came fast upon him as his popularity grew. Here are some forty printed poems, which cheered that lucky class of ’29, and how many others went before and after them we know not. He is among college poets the paragon, and is surely the ideal civic bard.

The Autocrat is an essential part of Boston, like the crier who becomes so identified with a court that it seems as if Justice must change her quarters when he is gone. The Boston of Holmes, distinct as his own personality, certainly must go with him. Much will become new, when old things pass away with the generation of a wit who made a jest that his State House was the hub of the solar system, and in his heart believed it. The time is ended when we can be so local : this civic faith was born before the age of steam, and cannot outlast, save as a tradition, the advent of electric motors and octuple- sheets. Towns must lose their individuality, even as men — who yearly differ less from one another. Yet the provincialism of Boston has been its charm, and its citizens, striv¬ ing to be cosmopolitan, in time may repent the effacement of their birth-mark.

A phantasmagory of the songs, odes, and rhymed addresses of so many years ; col¬ legiate and civic glories ; tributes to princes, embassies, generals, heroes ; welcomes to novelists and poets ; eulogies of the dead ; verse inaugural and dedicatory ; stanzas read at literary breakfasts, New England dinners, municipal and bucolic feasts ; odes natal, nuptial, and mortuary ; metrical delectations offered to his brothers of the medical craft to which he is so loyal — bristling with scorn of quackery and challenge to opposing systems — not only equal to all occasions, but growing better with their increase. The half of his early collections is made up from efforts of this sort, and they constitute four-fifths of his verse during the last thirty years.

Now, what has carried Holmes so bravely through all this, if not a special kind of mas- terhood, an individuality, humor, touch, that we shall not see again ? Thus we come, in fine, to be sensible of the distinctive gift of this poet. The achievement for which he must be noted is, that in a field the most arduous and least attractive he should bear himself with such zest and fitness as to be numbered among poets, and should do honor to an office which they chiefly dread or mistrust, and which is little calculated to excite their inspiration.

E. C. Stedman, “Poets of America.”

Brevier No. ii. Leaded. 50 Lines, 673 Words.

REASONABLE number of good books for boys is not to be had. Many of the old tales are out of point. Most of the new ones are trash. Some of the trash is religious in tone. Much more of it is of the “Old Sleuth” variety of reading. A part of it follows the “Jack Harkaway” style of impossible schoolboy feats. But all of it is useless from a literary, teaching, or amusing standpoint.

Some years ago counterfeit bank notes were common throughout the country. People looked on every note they received with great suspicion. Many of these notes were accepted at a heavy discount. Only legal tender notes passed without question at the full standard of value. It is a pity that there is no way of dis¬ tinguishing good books from bad ones, like the old tests employed to find out which bank notes were good and which were bad. If there were, books might be stamped at their face value and readers might buy them accordingly. As it is, counterfeits of books are very plentiful, and only the practiced eye can detect the fraud that lies under the respectable cover.

In former days, readers were much fewer than at present. The writer found that publishers would only accept his work after the most careful scrutiny. Good fiction, especially, was not buried under a mass of rubbish as it is at present. It is impossible for even a man whose sole business in life is to write about novels, to keep track of all the stories, good and bad, now annually published.

Much of this superabundance of fiction is due to the financial needs of a few writers of stories who have turned their profession into a trade. After writing a few books with care, and receiving public appreciation for the doing of it, they began to use their names as a kind of trade mark and to prostitute their talents to rehashing their own first and best work. So far have such schemes been devel¬ oped that several catch names are owned by New -York publishers of cheap fiction, and any modern Grub-street hack may be employed to write under such titles ; the real author receives remuneration for his work, and waives the “glory.”

The primary object of books in a boy’s hands is amusement. He does not care a peanut for the instruction a book may contain. If he is informed that it will do him good, he will most probably cease reading it at once. But while the dime- novel variety of reading induces a morbid craving for more that is never satisfied, good books are like a healthy meal that comes in its due season. A boy may have his good impulses increased by reading good books, just as they will be depraved by reading bad ones. All kinds of seed grow in a boy’s fertile mind.

Modern writers make a great mistake to suppose that boys are not, in their way, as great critics as grown persons. They know a good book when they read it. Witness Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” and Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s “Story of a Bad Boy.” Indeed, the latter story seems nearer to the genuine univer¬ sal American boy’s heart than any other book written. Just as the Viking blood of British boys makes them like “Robinson Crusoe” and wish to be sailors, so the “Story of a Bad Boy” impels the American boy to “ do things.”

Boys will have good books when their parents exercise an intelligent supervision in the selection of them. The Free Circulating Library and its branches and the Mercantile Library have done excellent work in this direction. But boys want healthier, stronger food than the libraries will grant them without their parents’ cooperation. Any one who takes an interest in boys’ reading should examine the catalogue of the juvenile department of the Mercantile Library. It is excellent, no doubt, but the omissions and retentions are a chart of what the average parent thinks a boy should read.

New -York Sun.

84

Minion No. 20. Solid. 71 Lines, 11 18 Words.

KOENPHli if HARLES LAMB left us many bright paragraphs helpful to book-lovers. In an essay on “The Two Races of Men ” is- this passage: “To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon : I ( mean your borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the gfetMl symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. That foul gap in the bottom * shelf facing you, like a great eye-tooth knocked out — (you are now with me in

.■ * ^ my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader) — with the huge Switzer-like tomes

on each side, once held the tallest of my folios, ‘Opera Bonaventurae,’ choice and massy di¬ vinity, to which its two supporters showed but as dwarfs. That Comberbatch [Coleridge] ab¬ stracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that ‘ the title to property in a book [my Bonaventure, for instance] is in exact ratio to the claimant’s powers of understanding and appreciating the same.’ Should he go on acting upon this theory, which of our shelves is safe? The slight vacuum in the left- hand case, two shelves from the ceiling, — scarcely distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser, — was whilom the commodious resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly al¬ lege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was in¬ deed the first of the moderns to discover its beauties; — but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the presence of a rival more qualified than himself to carry her off. Just below, Dodsley’s dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is. The re¬ mainder nine are as distasteful as Priam’s refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. There loitered the Complete Angler ; and in yonder nook John Buncle, a widower volume, with ‘ eyes closed,’ mourns his ravished mate.”

From “Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading” these extracts are taken : “ I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot allow for such. In this catalogue of books which are no books I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards bound and lettered at the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacks, Stat¬ utes at Large, the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and, generally, all those volumes which ‘no gentleman’s library should be without,’ the Histories of Flavius Josephus, and Paley’s Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding.

“I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books’ clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted play-book, then, opening what ‘seem its leaves,’ to come bolt upon a withering Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged assort¬ ment of block-headed Encyclopedias set out in an array of russia or morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would comfortably re-clothe my shivering folios ; would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never see these impostors but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged veterans in their spoils.

“I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow-hill, between the hours of ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstraction beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled along, keeping clear of sec¬ ular contacts. An illiterate encounter with a bread basket would have quickly put to flight all the theology I am master of, and have left me worse than indifferent to the five points.

“There is a class of street-readers whom I can never contemplate without affection — the poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls; the owner, with his hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, and thinking when they will have done. Venturing tenderly, page after page, expecting every mo¬ ment when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable to deny themselves the gratification,

they ‘snatch a fearful joy.’ Martin B - , in this way, by daily fragments, got through two

volumes of Clarissa, when the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition by asking him whether he meant to purchase the work. M. declares that under no circumstances of his life did he ever peruse a book with half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy snatches.”

From “Old China” : “ Do you remember the brown suit which you made to hang upon you till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker’s in Covent Garden ? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late — and when the old book¬ seller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures — and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome — and when you presented it to me — and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (‘collating’ you called it) — and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak — was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn suit for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum which you had lavished ? ”

Minion No. ii. Solid. 71 Lines, 1094 Words.

WILLINGLY concede all that you say against fashionable society as a whole. It is, as you say, frivolous, bent on amusement, incapable of at¬ tention sufficiently prolonged to grasp any serious subject, and liable both to confusion and inaccuracy in the ideas which it hastily forms or easily receives. You do right, assuredly, not to let it waste your most valuable hours, but I believe also that you do wrong in keeping out of it alto¬ gether. The society which seems so frivolous in masses contains indi¬ vidual members who, if you knew them better, would he able and willing to render you the most efficient intellectual help, and you miss this help by restricting yourself exclusively to hooks. Nothing can replace the conversation of living men and women ; not even the richest literature can replace it.

The solitude which is really injurious is the severance from all who are capable of under¬ standing us. Painters say that they cannot work effectively for very long together when separated from the society of artists, and that they must return to London, or Paris, or Rome, to avoid an oppressive feeling of discouragement which paralyzes their productive energy. Authors are more fortunate, because all cultivated people are society for them ; yet even authors lose strength and agility of thought when too long deprived of a genial intellectual atmosphere. In the country you meet with cultivated individuals ; hut we need more than this, we need those general conversations in which every speaker is worth lis¬ tening to. The life most favorable to culture would have its times of open and equal inter¬ course with the best minds, and also its periods of retreat. My ideal would be a house in London, — not far from one or two houses that are so full of light and warmth that it is a liberal education to have entered them, — and a solitary tower on some island of the Heb¬ rides, with no companions hut the sea-gulls and the thundering surges of the Atlantic. One such island I know well, and it is before my mind’s eye, clear as a picture, while I am writing. It stands in the very entrance of a fine salt water loch, rising above two hundred feet out of the water and setting its granite front steep against the western ocean. When the evenings are clear you can see Staffa and Iona like blue clouds between you and the sunset ; and on your left, close at hand, the granite hills of Mull, with Ulva to the right across the narrow strait. It was the dream of my youth to build a tower there, with three or four little rooms in it, and walls as strong as a lighthouse. There have been more fool¬ ish dreams, and there have been less competent teachers than the tempests that would have roused me and the calms that would have brought me peace. If any serious thought, if any noble inspiration might have been hoped for, surely it would have been there, where only the clouds and waves were transient, but the ocean before me, and the stars above, and the mountains on either hand, were emblems and evidences of eternity.

Let me recommend certain precautions which taken together are likely to keep you safe. Care for the physical health in the first place, for if there is a morbid mind the bodily or¬ gans are not doing their work as they ought to do it. Next, for the mind itself, I would heartily recommend hard study, really hard study, taken very regularly but in very mod¬ erate quantity. The effect of it on the mind is as bracing as that of cold water on the body, but as you ought not to remain too long in the cold bath, so it is dangerous to study hard more than a short time every day. Do some work that is very difficult (such as reading some language that you have to study out d coups de dictionnaire) two hours a day regularly, to brace the fighting power of the intellect, but let the rest of the day’s work be easier. Ac¬ quire especially, if you possibly can, the enviable faculty of getting entirely rid of your work in the intervals of it, and of taking a hearty interest in common things, in a garden, or stable, or dog-kennel, or farm. If the work pursues you, — if what is called unconscious cerebration, which ought to go forward without your knowing it, becomes conscious cere¬ bration, and bothers you, then you have been working beyond your cerebral strength.

The reading practised by most people, by all who do not set before themselves intellectual culture as one of the definite aims of life, is remarkable for the regularity with which it neglects all the great authors of the past. The books provided by the circulating library, the reviews and magazines, the daily newspapers, are read while they are novelties, but the standard authors are left on their shelves unopened. We require a firm resolution to resist this invasion of what is new, because it flows like an unceasing river, and unless we protect our time against it by some solid embankment of unshakable rule and resolution, every nook and cranny of it will be filled and flooded. An Englishman whose life was de¬ voted to culture, but who lived in an out-of-the-way place on the Continent, told me that he considered it a decided advantage to his mind to live quite outside of the English library system, because if he wanted to read a new book he had to buy it and pay heavily for car¬ riage besides, which made him very careful in his choice. For the same reason he rejoiced that the nearest English newsroom was two hundred miles from his residence.

For literary men there is nothing so valuable as a window with a cheerful and beautiful prospect. In years gone by, I had only to look up from my desk and see a noble loch in its inexhaustible loveliness, and a mountain in its majesty. It was a daily and hourly delight to watch the breezes play about the enchanted isles, on the delicate silvery surface, dim¬ ming some clear reflection, or trailing it out in length, or cutting sharply across it with acres of rippling blue. It was a frequent pleasure to see the clouds play about the crest of Cruachan and Ben Yorich’s golden head, grey mists that crept upwards from the valleys till the sunshine caught them and made them brighter than the snows they shaded.

Philip G. Hamerton.

86

Minion No. 20. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 61 Lines, 659 Words.

UST how watchful and painstaking the proof-readers in large printing es¬ tablishments are required to be, may¬ be understood from the following ex¬ tracts from the Instructions to Proof¬ readers in the Office Manual of the DeVinne Press:

The spelling, capitalizing, and pointing of a writer who is educated and methodical must not be changed without order from editor or the office. If the writer be educated but not me¬ thodical, the reader must make his work uniform in style according to what he believes is the writer’s neg¬ lected standard. If the copy has been very carelessly written, or is clearly the work of an undisciplined writer, the reader will correct the proof according to the standard of the editor or of the office, as may be directed.

Bad spelling and bad grammar for which there is no authority must be corrected where they have obviously been made through ignorance or thoughtlessness. Exception must be made to this rule in dialect and quo¬ tations intended to be literally exact. Dialect must be made uniform in spelling, even if irreg¬ ular in copy ; different abbreviations of the same word by the same writer should not be passed.

Strange proper names, either of places or people, of history or fiction, must always be veri¬ fied by reference to a biographical or geographical dictionary. A reader is in fault if he allow to be misspelled any word which can be found in the reference books of the office. The same observation will apply to quotations from the Bible, to ordinary proverbs, quotations or phrases in foreign languages, and to the ordinary nomenclature of science.

The time to be spent and the care to be given to a piece of reading must be determined by its importance. Ordinary work should be made correct to copy and yet done with reasonable dispatch. Writings of value should always be read critically, with a view to the discovery of more serious errors than those of spelling and punctuation.

When the reader discovers a plain error of statement, obviously made by the writer through lapse of memory or slip of the pen, he should correct. He does so, however, at his peril. He must know, and not suspect, it to be an error, and must be prepared to vindicate the soundness of his correction, not by his own belief, but by recognized authority. Wherever he only sus¬ pects error, he must query.

Whenever he makes a change in a quotation, date, or statement, he must, without exception, note upon the author’s proof the change he has made.

In every writing of value, the reader should query faulty construction in a sentence, a bad metaphor, an inconsistent statement, the misuse of a word, and all faults of similar character ; but in no case will he be allowed to correct these faults when the author will follow his reading. He must stop with the query. Only in extreme cases will he be warranted in suggesting to the author a proper correction. The reader must not overstep his duty, which is to correct and not to edit. He must not spend unnecessary time in the consultation of reference books to make up the deficiencies of a careless writer, nor should he worry an author with suggested emendations, or pedantic niceties.

Every paragraph containing an alteration in a proof that makes one or more overruns must be re-read as first proof. It must be read aloud by copy-holder, from last altered proof, or must be collated, word for word, to the end of the paragraph. Revising the alteration only, and re-reading the paragraph without copy-holder or collation, will not be permitted.

The second reader must not remodel the punctuation of the first, nor make any serious change in the work he has done, unless the matters to be corrected are of unmistakable importance. If he thinks it necessary to make great changes, he should submit the changes proposed to the foreman for his decision.

»7

Minion No. ii. Ten-to-Pica Leads. 6i Lines, 828 Words.

ROM the same Manual are selected these Rules for Compositors :

As a general rule, follow the fairly prepared copy of an educated writer, in spelling, punctuation, and use of capitals. If you find some words spelled con¬ trary to prevailing usage, — such as Kikero, honour, Havannah, almanack, — or if pointing and capitalizing violate office rules, follow copy without question. It is the author’s undoubted right to go before the public in his own way. But make sure that these peculiarities are his way — that they are of set purpose and not pen-slips.

This rule will not apply to magazines, in which the methods of spelling, pointing, and capitalizing adopted by the editor, for the sake of uniformity, must be observed in prefer¬ ence to the wishes of the author.

You must not follow copy that has been carelessly prepared, without system in the use of points and capitals, and by a writer who spells badly, either through carelessness or ignor¬ ance. You must correct faults of spelling and of grammar ; but you must not transpose clauses, nor disconnect sentences that are too long, nor change words that have not been properly selected. Editing must be done in the manuscript, not at case, nor even in the proof.

Reprint copy, when inserted in a text, in the form of extracts from old books, or letters or quotations intended to be literally exact, must be scrupulously followed in every detail of spelling, abbreviation, pointing, or bad grammar. All the peculiarities of the writer must be preserved, without regard to the method of composition observed in the text.

The text must be uniform in spelling, pointing, and capitalizing, according to the standard selected, which will, as here specified, sometimes be that of the office and, at others, that of editor or author.

In standard book- work, when capitalizing according to the rules of the office, use capitals sparingly. The pronouns he, his, and him, when referring to Deity, will always begin with lower-case h, as is done in the Bible. On catalogues and general job-work, capitals should be more freely used as a means of emphasis.

Divisions of words are not so objectionable as uneven spacing. Do not avoid them at the expense of uniform spacing.

The violent planing-down of a form will be regarded as evidence of the ignorance of the workman who does it. The same remark will apply to unnecessary force in beating a proof.

Follow, as closely as you can, the directions on your copy concerning display, as may be indicated by underscoring or otherwise. If copy is underscored too much, give the leading- lines full prominence, and reduce the size of the minor lines of display.

Set the matter as writer directs, so as to make the most show, even if the direction is in violation of established typographical rules.

Never select ornamented letter for advertisements, or for books, or legal or mercantile work.

You may use the plainer faces of black-letter and pointed texts for the display of law and church work, but they must be used sparingly and with discretion.

Even in ornamental work use ornaments and ornamental letter sparingly. They are not ornamental when used in excess or inappropriately.

As a rule, legibility is wanted oftener than ornament. Plain faces have more admirers than fancy letters.

If you have liberty to choose, never set a solid text type in a measure of more than fifty ems of that text type. Long lines are hard to read.

If you can do so, select for the body of the text a type that can be leaded. A dozen lines of leaded long primer are more readable than fifteen lines of solid small pica.

The monotony of a large piece of plain text, in which or over which there can be little or no display, can be relieved by a large initial letter.

For plain book-work, or for matter like it, in its avoidance of display, a plain two-line letter is large enough. For a circular, or a large quarto page, an initial of three or four lines is permissible. Plain initials of same cut as the text are, as a rule, the ones most approved.

Avoid fantastic arrangements of types and ornaments. Do not try to show your skill by eccentric fancies in composition, but try to show up the sub j ect-matter in the simplest manner.

Never make ornamentation or ornamental letter the feature of your work. Use ornaments only to grace the letter, not to draw the eye away from the reading matter. Observe the architect’s rule: You may ornament construction; you must not construct ornament.

Business Cards should be in very plain and readable types, and the lines should be arranged in the simplest manner. Do not use curved lines or ornamental letters without order. Avoid also extra condensed, script, and black letters.

If practicable, set the card in one style only, making display by different sizes of that style.

Minion No. 20. Leaded. 55 Lines, 895 Words.

HE old theory of a book was, that if it were good enough to print it was good enough to bind, so as to preserve ^^permanently to be read over and over again. But since no book is sufficiently dry, nor is the type set on the paper for this purpose, it was necessary to place it in some kind of wrapper to serve a temporary end. The most elementary covering is that paper wrap known and cursed by all purchasers of German and French books— the lightest sewing, the flimsiest cover, so that the book is in rags before it is read through. But the miraculous thing is, that Continental students not only seem willing to endure this, but, whether it is that they read their books laid flat on the table and less at the fireside than we do, they certainly tear their books less apart, and actually keep them on the shelves for years, referring to them now and again in that condition. The amazement was great when, on first making his acquaintance many years ago. the writer gazed on the library shelves of that great scholar and charming writer, M. Renan, nearly all of which were filled to overflowing with books in paper covers, which, because he wanted them so often for reference, he had never had the time to send to the binders.

The old boarding of the last century, as practiced among ourselves, was pleasant, pretty, and useful. It was simply two sheets of stiff cardboard united by the back, the sides covered with blue or gray paper, and the name of the book on a pasted label. It served its purpose till the book could be bound ; it was neat and cheap, and there was no pretense that it imitated any¬ thing beyond itself. Yet it had its disadvantages: it caught the dirt easily and soon became shabby; while, unquestionably, there are many books not good enough to deserve a leather binding, which are yet worth preserving as long as we are likely to need them. Hence has sprung up what are called cloth bindings, more or less ornate, fairly inoffensive in the hands of a person of taste, but also frequent vehicles for pretension, vulgarity, and imitation. There is little to be said in reference to this matter, except that in the case of really good books “ boards ” should always be regarded as temporary, inadequate coverings. And in reference to future bindings, all faces should be set like flints against a detestable habit lately introduced of using wire instead of thread to fasten the sheets together. When a book stitched in this fashion is sent to be really bound, the difficulty of removing the wire is so great that the book is almost sure to be torn ; and, moreover, this again introduces into books what we should so eagerly strive to eliminate, the merely mechanical, non-human labor.

Readers are much divided on the question whether books should or should not be cut. Some people are angry with the publishers that books to be read are not issued like Bradshaw's Guides, Bibles, Prayer-Books, and the like, with cut edges. The reason is that, when a volume is bound, the edges, being thrown out of the level smoothness they have acquired from the first cutting, will need a second trimming, and the margin will be sensibly reduced, so that the broad type will have a miserably inadequate setting, as though you should put a picture in a frame too narrow for it. Those who care for the future of our well-bound books will see that there is reason for refusing to give in to the unreasonable cry for books with cut edges. But when the paper-knife is used, it should be done thoroughly. Some people never cut a book hu¬ manely ; they tear it, or maltreat it, as though they had a special enmity toward it.

When a book worth preserving is really to be bound, the binding should be suitable, and done by a good workman. The early bindings were most costly. In the British Museum and other great collections, are to be seen covers in gold or silver, or carven wood, with bosses of precious stones, or of the metal itself wrought into special ornament on velvet or leather. But of bindings which were to be used and handled daily, the earliest fine specimens, which even now cannot be outdone, date from the first half of the sixteenth century. Many of the bindings executed for Jean Grolier are still extant, and fetch very high prices when they come into the market ; they are remarkable in another way than their beauty, in showing the large and liberal spirit of a man, for they are inscribed, “ Of the books of Jean Grolier and his friends.” His notion of a book was that it should be used, and indeed if books are to be valued men must be trusted with them, and allowed access even to those which are the most precious. Whoever will have his books really cared for must learn to take in them an intelligent interest, must con¬ sult with, instruct as well as defer to, the artist, and spend at least as much pains about the clothing of his books as about that of his own person or that of his wife and daughters.

Minion No. ii. Leaded. 55 Lines, 838 Words.

Y R. JAYAL in the “Revue Scientifique,” goes very thoroughly into the question of what constitutes legibility of type, commencing by glancing at the general progress of type and printing ; then noticing the particu¬ lar form of each letter ; thereafter going into the question of thin lines or up-strokes, and thick lines or down-strokes, and concluding with the sizes it has been found advisable to adopt both as regards type and leading.

He contends that the eye, while reading, has not time to thoroughly examine each letter in all its parts, but that it follows a strictly horizontal line, intersecting all the short letters at a point a little below the top, and in proof of this he suggests the following trial, viz. : having read a dozen lines or so of a broad-faced, but not leaded, type, to close your eyes suddenly — the result is that one sees reflected in the field of vision “ horizontal flutings ” alternately light and dark, which are the reproduction of the printed matter. This he con¬ siders is sufficient to prove, at all events, that the eye travels horizontally while reading. Again, the eye confines itself to gliding horizontally for the purpose of avoiding complicated and useless movements, and the horizontal position is dictated by the structure of our typo¬ graphical characters. Thus, if you cover over the upper half of a line of type, it is with some difficulty that you can make out the words of which only the lower half is visible ; while if you cover up the lower half, you will be able to read almost as easily as if the whole were entirely exposed.

Dividing the alphabet into four classes, viz., superior long letters, such as b, d, h, &c. ; inferior long letters, like g, j, p, &c. ; short straight letters, such as m, n, &c., and short round letters, such as a, c, e and s, Dr. Javal points out how much more legible some letters will always be than others — no matter what you do to them. He condemns the practice of sacrificing everything to regularity in appearance, and proposes rather to enlarge the heads without altering the lower part of the letters ; and in this he would be guided by ancient precedent. He is strongly in favor of the retention of the “ terminal lines” which end the down-strokes, which he considers corresponds to the apices of the ancient Romans, and are not for the sole purpose of ornament, or merely the result of tradition ; but he at the same time suggests their being made heavier, in order that they may not suffer injury when be¬ ing distributed, or doing correction on the stone, and moreover that they should be reduced somewhat in length. He considers that the perfection of form is a rounded base.

Dr. Javal would distinguish between type to be used for children and that to be used for adults, for the latter read looking to the general appearance of the letters or even of whole words, whereas a child looks carefully at each part of a letter, and for children he would, therefore, make the up as well as the down strokes heavy. He attaches the greatest import¬ ance to spacing, and considers that the white space at the sides of letters, as well as between words themselves, has a very important bearing upon the question of legibility, and for that reason he holds up as an example works printed in English, which he deems owe much of their legibility to the shortness of the words in our language, which has the effect of multiplying the white spaces. Absence of leads, our authority considers a matter of no consequence, and would recommend that type founders should direct their attention to