second quarter of the
nineteenth century, had passed away, and books were being thrown
together instead of being designed as formerly. The tradition of
excellence in English bookmaking still held sway over the public, and,
as their books sold, most producers saw no reason to disturb themselves.
What to them was progress in other lands, or the claims of a future that
could not be enforced? But after Mr. Stevens's attack they could at
least no longer plead ignorance of their faults. It is certain that an
improvement soon began, which culminated in the present great era of
book design throughout the English world. If the famous bookseller's
address were not the cause of the change, it at least marked a turning
point, and it deserves to be studied as one of the historic documents of
modern printing. It is more than this, however; it is a piece of
creative criticism, and though teaching not by example but by
contraries, it forms one of the best existing brief compends of what a
well-made book must be.

The critic of books as they were made a generation ago begins with the
assertion of a truth that cannot be too often repeated: "The manufacture
of a beautiful and durable book costs little if anything more than that
of a clumsy and unsightly one." He adds that once a handsome book and a
new English book were synonymous terms, but that now the production of
really fine books is becoming one of England's lost arts. He indulges in
a fling at "the efforts of certain recent printers to retrieve this
decadence by throwing on to the already overburdened trade several big,
heavy, and voluminous works of standard authors termed 'editions de
luxe.'" He assures his hearers that his judgments were not formed on the
spur of the moment, but were based partly on long personal
observations--Stevens was the author of that widely influential piece of
selective bibliography, "My English Library," London, 1853--and on the
results of the international exhibitions since 1851, especially those
of Vienna (1874), Philadelphia (1876), and Paris (1878), in the last of
which he was a juror. His conclusion is "that the present new English,
Scotch, and Irish books, of a given size and price, are not of the
average quality of high art and skill in manufacture that is found in
some other countries." He reminds his hearers that "it is no excuse to
say that the rapidity of production has been largely increased. That
amounts merely to confessing that we are no