October, 1919 
27 
Two volumes of a set of 
Dickens with character 
bindings. Brentano’s 
(Below) A volume 
bound by Henry Black- 
well of New York 
(Below) The Sonnets 
of Shakespeare bound 
by Blackwell 
Costello’s Rose Garden of 
Persia bound in green and 
brown levant. London 
anything uncut! With him a 
hook seems to lose interest un¬ 
less it is as it was the day it 
came into the hands of someone 
too tired, too indifferent or too 
lazy to cut its pages. That a 
hook has survived a reader's 
natural curiosity sufficiently to 
descend to him after all these 
years in the same state seems to 
give him an unbounded delight. 
He is known to the book-hawks 
the world over, and they bless 
his name, for his purse puts no 
check to his mania, their con¬ 
sciences none to their desire to 
supply him with everything he 
wants. 
I once thought to catch him 
with a question or two over so 
formidable a thing as a certain 
first edition of a bygone book 
of which his collection boasted 
the only known uncut copy. To 
do it I had subjected myself to 
the preparation entailed by the 
purchase of a late edition, and 
the subsequent boredom of an 
hour’s skimming of its pages. 
But Biblio came off with flying 
honors. He could chat about the 
volume’s contents with a facility 
; 
Andrew Lang’s Books and 
Bookmen, bound and tooled 
by Blackwell 
that could only have had its 
origin in a knowledge of the 
author’s words; and yet, where 
did he get it? Not from his un¬ 
cut copy, I am sure, unless, for¬ 
sooth, he is gifted with second 
sight! I have often suspected 
as much, for what happened in 
the instance to which I have 
just referred, later appeared to 
be the case with every other un¬ 
cut book’s mention, when chance 
led me to refer to this, that or 
another volume in the category. 
However, I think Biblio’s 
knowledge of the insides of 
books is one not so completely 
shared by other collectors who 
also bend in the directions of 
his particular mania. Were it 
otherwise, perhaps there would 
be no occasion to complain. As 
it is, I contend that there is a 
limit to one’s veneration for un¬ 
interesting or unbeautiful— 
definitely uninteresting and un¬ 
beautiful—books in their origi¬ 
nal garb, pages uncut. 
The covers of printed books 
were originally—after printed 
hooks had begun to become 
(Continued on page 88) 
An intricately 
hand tooled 
binding by 
Henry Black- 
well 
A book of 
Shakespeare’s 
Sonnets bound 
by Henry 
Blackwell 
Jeweled cover of a parch¬ 
ment ms. of the Gospels 
A richly embossed 
Persian binding 
A Birdsall binding, 
with inside cover 
