Hear the gentle Elia cm this topic: " Rummaging over the con- 

 tents of an old stall, at a half book, half old iron shop in Ninety-four 

 alley, leading from Wardour street to Soho, yesterday, I lit upon a 

 ragged duodecimo, which had been the strange delight of my infancy; 

 the price demanded was sixpence, which the owner (a little squab 

 duodecimo of a character himself) enforced with the assurance that 

 his own mother should not have it for a farthing less. On my demur- 

 ring to this extraordinary assertion, the dirty little vendor reinforced 

 his assertion with a sort of oath, which seemed, more than the occasion 

 demanded. 'And now,' said he, 'I have put my soul to it.' Pressed 



seemed to set me, however unworthy, upon a level with his nearest 

 relations ; and depositing a tester, I bore away the battered prize in 

 triumph." 



Bindings occupy the same relation to books that clothing does to 

 the human body, except that the clothing of books does not change 

 until worn out, and looks the better for being old fashioned. There 

 is the same temptation toward gaudiness and extravagance in the one 

 case as in the other. Charles Lamb had some sensible ideas on bind- 

 ings. " To be strong-backed and neat-bound is the desideratum of a 

 volume; magnificence comes after. This, when it can be afforded, is 

 not to be lavished on all kinds of books indiscriminately; I would not 

 dress a set of magazines, for instance, in full suit; the dishabille, or 

 half binding (with Russia backs ever) is our custom. A Shakespeare, 

 or a Milton (unless the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick 

 out in gay apparel ; the possession of them confers no distinction. 

 The exterior of them (the things themselves being so common), 

 strange to say, raises no ticklish sense of property in the owner. 

 Thompson's Seasons, again, looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and 

 dog's eared. In some respects the better a book is, the less it demands 

 from binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and all that class of per- 

 petually self-reproductive volumes —great Nature's stereotypes— we 

 see them individually perish with less regret, because we know the 

 copies of them to be * eterne.' But where we know that a book is at 

 once both good and rare — where the individual is almost the species, 

 and when that perishes, 



such a book, for instance, as the life of the Duke of Newcastle by his 

 Duchess— no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently durable to 

 honor and keep safe such a jewel. Not only rare volumes of this 

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