ct one among
them, Inchrule would remorselessly spurn from him the most voluptuously
got-up specimen (to use a favourite phrase of Dibdin's) were it tainted
by the very faintest suspicion of "restoration."

Among the elements which constitute the value of a book--rarity of
course being essential--one might say he counted the binding highest. He
was not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to give the
uninitiated a conception of the importance attached to this mechanical
department of book-making by the adepts. About a third of Dibdin's
Bibliographical Decameron is, if I recollect rightly, devoted to
bindings. There are binders who have immortalised themselves--as
Staggemier, Walther, Payne, Padaloup, Hering, De Rome, Bozerian,
Deseuille, Bradel, Faulkner, Lewis, Hayday, and Thomson. Their names may
sometimes be found on their work, not with any particularities, as if
they required to make themselves known, but with the simple brevity of
illustrious men. Thus you take up a morocco-bound work of some eminence,
on the title-page of which the author sets forth his full name and
profession, with the distinctive initials of certain learned societies
to which it is his pride to belong; but the simple and dignified
enunciation, deeply stamped in his own golden letters, "Bound by
Hayday," is all that that accomplished artist deigns to tell.

And 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. Perhaps the majority of men of letters are so to some
extent, though poets 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 of the proprieties. 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, "feckless"
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 scepticism, 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