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diff --git a/22606.txt b/22606.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e087424 --- /dev/null +++ b/22606.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6555 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Booklover and His Books, by Harry Lyman Koopman + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Booklover and His Books + +Author: Harry Lyman Koopman + +Release Date: September 15, 2007 [EBook #22606] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOKLOVER AND HIS BOOKS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Meghan, and the booksmiths +at http://www.eBookForge.net + + + + + + + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note: | + | | + | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | + | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | + | this document. | + | | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + +THE BOOKLOVER AND HIS BOOKS + +[Illustration: From the _Digestum Novum_ of Justinian, printed at Venice +by Jenson in 1477. The type page of which this is a reduction measures +12-1/2 by 8-1/2 inches. The initials in the original have been filled in +by hand in red and blue. + +_From the copy in the Library of Brown University_] + + + + +THE BOOKLOVER AND +HIS BOOKS + +BY + +HARRY LYMAN KOOPMAN, LITT.D. + +LIBRARIAN OF BROWN UNIVERSITY + +BOSTON +THE BOSTON BOOK COMPANY +1917 + +_Copyright, 1916,_ +BY THE BOSTON BOOK COMPANY + +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. + + +TO +THE AUTHORS AND THEIR PRINTERS +WHO HAVE GIVEN US +THE BOOKS THAT WE LOVE + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +The following chapters were written during a series of years as one +aspect after another of the Book engaged the writer's attention. As they +are now brought together, the result is not a systematic treatise, but +rather a succession of views of one many-sided subject. In consequence +there is considerable overlapping. The writer hopes, however, that this +will be looked upon not as vain repetition but as a legitimate +reinforcement of his underlying theme, the unity in diversity of the +Book and the federation of all who have to do with it. He therefore +offers the present volume not so much for continuous reading as for +reading by chapters. He trusts that for those who may consult it in +connection with systematic study a sufficient clue to whatever it may +contain on any given topic will be found in the index. + +Most of these chapters appeared as papers in "The Printing Art"; two +were published in "The Graphic Arts," and some in other magazines. The +writer expresses his thanks to the proprietors of these periodicals for +the permission to republish the articles in their present collective +form. All the papers have been revised to some extent. They were +originally written in rare moments of leisure scattered through the busy +hours of a librarian. Their writing was a source of pleasure, and their +first publication brought him many delightful associations. As they are +presented in their new attire to another group of readers, their author +can wish for them no better fortune than to meet--possibly to +make--booklovers. + +BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, +Commencement Day, 1916 + + + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + + +BOOKS AND BOOKLOVERS 3 +FITNESS IN BOOK DESIGN 9 +PRINT AS AN INTERPRETER OF MEANING 14 +FAVORITE BOOK SIZES 19 +THE VALUE OF READING 28 +THE BOOK OF TO-DAY AND THE BOOK OF TO-MORROW 33 +A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIC OF THE BOOK 38 +BOOKS AS A LIBRARIAN WOULD LIKE THEM 44 +THE BOOK BEAUTIFUL 49 +THE READER'S HIGH PRIVILEGE 63 +THE BACKGROUND OF THE BOOK 79 +THE CHINESE BOOK 87 +THICK PAPER AND THIN 92 +THE CLOTHING OF A BOOK 97 +PARCHMENT BINDINGS 102 +LEST WE FORGET THE FEW GREAT BOOKS 104 +PRINTING PROBLEMS FOR SCIENCE TO SOLVE 115 +TYPES AND EYES: THE PROBLEM 120 +TYPES AND EYES: PROGRESS 128 +EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE OF LEGIBILITY 134 +THE STUDENT AND THE LIBRARY 139 +ORTHOGRAPHIC REFORM 145 +THE PERVERSITIES OF TYPE 152 +A SECRET OF PERSONAL POWER 162 +INDEX 171 + + + + +THE BOOKLOVER AND HIS BOOKS + + + + +THE BOOKLOVER AND HIS +BOOKS + + + + +BOOKS AND BOOKLOVERS[1] + + +The booklover is distinguished from the reader as such by loving his +books, and from the collector as such by reading them. He prizes not +only the soul of the book, but also its body, which he would make a +house beautiful, meet for the indwelling of the spirit given by its +author. Love is not too strong a word to apply to his regard, which +demands, in the language of Dorothy Wordsworth, "a beautiful book, a +book to caress--peculiar, distinctive, individual: a book that hath +first caught your eye and then pleased your fancy." The truth is that +the book on its physical side is a highly organized art object. Not in +vain has it transmitted the thought and passion of the ages; it has +taken toll of them, and in the hands of its worthiest makers these +elements have worked themselves out into its material body. Enshrining +the artist's thought, it has, therefore, the qualities of a true art +product, and stands second only to those which express it, such as +painting and sculpture; but no other art product of its own order, not +the violin nor the jewel-casket, can compare with the book in esthetic +quality. It meets one of the highest tests of art, for it can appeal to +the senses of both beauty and grandeur, either separately, as in the +work of Aldus and of Sweynheym and Pannartz, or together, as in that of +Jenson. + +Books have doubtless had their lovers in all ages, under all their +forms. Even the Assyrian clay tablet, if stamped with the words of poet +or sage, might have shared the affection which they inspired. So might +the papyrus roll of the Egyptian, and so does even to-day the parchment +book of the middle ages, whenever its fortunate owner has the soul of a +booklover. From this book our own was derived, yet not without a break. +For our book is not so much a copy of the Roman and medieval book as a +"substitute" for it, a machine product made originally to sell at a +large profit for the price of hand-work. It was fortunate for the early +printed book that it stood in this intimate if not honored relation to +the work of the scribes and illuminators, and fortunate for the book of +to-day, since, with all its lapses, it cannot escape its heritage of +those high standards. + +Mr. John Cotton Dana has analyzed the book into forty elements; a +minuter analysis might increase the number to sixty; but of either +number the most are subsidiary, a few controlling. The latter are those +of which each, if decided upon first, determines the character of the +rest; they include size, paper, and type. The mention of any size, +folio, quarto, octavo, twelvemo, sixteenmo, calls up at once a distinct +mental picture of an ideal book for each dimension, and the series is +marked by a decreasing thickness of paper and size of type as it +progresses downward from the folio. The proportions of the page will +also vary, as well as the surface of the paper and the cut of the type, +the other elements conforming to that first chosen. + +Next to size, paper determines the expression of a book. It is the +printing material par excellence; but for its production the art could +never have flourished. It is as much preferred by the printer as +parchment was by the scribe. Its three elements of body, surface, and +tint must all be considered, and either body or surface may determine +the size of the book or the character of the type. A smooth surface may +be an element of beauty, as with the paper employed by Baskerville, but +it must not be a shiny surface. The great desideratum in modern paper +from the point of view of the book-buyer is a paper that, while opaque +and tough, shall be thin enough to give us our books in small compass, +one more akin to the dainty and precious vellum than to the heavier and +coarser parchment. It should also be durable. + +Type gives its name to the art and is the instrument by which the spoken +word is made visible to the eye. The aims in its design should be +legibility, beauty, and compactness, in this order; but these are more +or less conflicting qualities, and it is doubtful if any one design can +surpass in all. Modern type is cleaner-cut than the old, but it may be +questioned whether this is a real gain. William Morris held that all +types should avoid hair-lines, fussiness, and ugliness. Legibility +should have the right of way for most printed matter, especially +children's books and newspapers. If the latter desire compactness, they +should condense their style, not their types. + +A further important element, which affects both the legibility and the +durability of the book, is the ink. For most purposes it should be a +rich black. Some of the print of the early masters is now brown, and +there have been fashions of gray printing, but the booklover demands +black ink, except in ornaments, and there color, if it is to win his +favor, must be used sparingly and with great skill. We are told that the +best combination for the eye is ink of a bluish tint on buff-tinted +paper; but, like much other good advice, this remains practically +untried. + +Illustrations have been a feature of the book for over four hundred +years, but they have hardly yet become naturalized within its pages. Or +shall we say that they soon forgot their proper subordination to the +type and have since kept up a more or less open revolt? The law of +fitness demands that whatever is introduced into the book in connection +with type shall harmonize with the relatively heavy lines of type. This +the early black-line engravings did. But the results of all other +processes, from copper-plate to half-tone, conflict with the +type-picture and should be placed where they are not seen with it. +Photogravures, for instance, may be put at the end of the book, or they +may be covered with a piece of opaque tissue paper, so that either their +page or the facing type-page will be seen alone. We cannot do without +illustrations. All mankind love a picture as they love a lover. But let +the pictures belong to the book and not merely be thrust into it. + +The binding is to the book what the book is to its subject-matter, a +clothing and protection. In the middle ages, when books were so few as +to be a distinction, they were displayed sidewise, not edgewise, on the +shelves, and their covers were often richly decorated, sometimes with +costly gems. Even the wooden cover of the pre-Columbian Mexican book had +gems set in its corners. Modern ornamentation is confined to tooling, +blind and gilt, and inlaying. But some booklovers question whether any +decoration really adds to the beauty of the finest leather. It should be +remembered that the binding is not all on the outside. The visible cover +is only the jacket of the real cover on which the integrity of the book +depends. The sewing is the first element in time and importance. To be +well bound a book should lie open well, otherwise it is bound not for +the reader but only for the collector. + +It cannot be too often repeated that properly made books are not +extremely costly. A modern book offered at a fancy price means either a +very small edition, an extravagant binding, or what is more likely, a +gullible public. But most books that appeal to the booklover are not +excessive in price. Never before was so much money spent in making books +attractive--for the publisher always has half an eye on the +booklover--and while much of this money is wasted, not all is laid out +in vain. Our age is producing its quota of good books, and these the +booklover makes it his business to discover. + +In order to appreciate, the booklover must first know. He must be a +book-kenner, a critic, but one who is looking for excellencies rather +than faults, and this knowledge there are many books to teach him. But +there is no guide that can impart the love of books; he must learn to +love them as one learns to love sunsets, mountains, and the ocean, by +seeing them. So let him who would know the joys and rewards of the +booklover associate with well-made books. Let him begin with the +ancients of printing, the great Germans, Italians, Dutchmen. He can +still buy their books if he is well-to-do, or see them in libraries and +museums if he belongs to the majority. Working down to the moderns, he +will find himself discriminating and rejecting, but he will be attracted +by certain printers and certain periods in the last four hundred years, +and he will be rejoiced to find that the last thirty years, though +following a decline, hold their own--not by their mean but by their +best--with any former period short of the great first half-century, +1450-1500. + +Finally, if his book-love develops the missionary spirit in him, let him +lend his support to the printers and publishers of to-day who are +producing books worthy of the booklover's regard, for in no other way +can he so effectually speed the day when all books shall justify the +emotion which more than five hundred years ago Richard de Bury, Bishop +of Durham, expressed in the title of his famous and still cherished +work, the _Philobiblon_. + + + + +FITNESS IN BOOK DESIGN + + +"A woman's fitness comes by fits," said slanderous Cloten; but to say as +much of fitness in book design would be on the whole a compliment. +Fitness as applied to book design means, of course, that the material +form of the book shall correspond to its spiritual substance, shall be +no finer and no meaner, and shall produce a like, even if a slighter, +esthetic impression. At the outset we have to surrender to commercialism +more than half our territory. All agree that our kings should be clothed +in purple and our commoners in broadcloth; but how about the +intellectual riffraff that makes up the majority of our books? Are our +publishers willing that these should be clothed according to their +station? Hardly; for then would much of their own occupation be gone. It +is recognized that for a large proportion of our publications the +design--the outward appearance--is in great measure counted on to sell +the book; and printers and publishers will not consent to send the +paupers of literature forth upon the world in their native rags, for so +they would find no one to welcome them. It will be useless to quarrel +with the fact that the design of many books is meant as a bait and not +as a simple interpretation of their meaning and worth. Design of this +character, however, is relatively easy; it is really not design at all, +but millinery. It is when his work becomes genuinely interpretative that +the designer's difficulties begin. + +The first business of the designer, therefore, is to understand the book +he is treating. Here, of course, his judgment, however sincere, may be +mistaken or misled. A classical instance of this is found in connection +with one of the most famous books in the history of modern +printing,--Barlow's "Columbiad." This work, which first appeared in 1787 +under a different title, was enlarged to epic proportions during the +next twenty years, and was finally given to the world in 1807 in the +belief on the part of its author and in the hope at least on the part of +its publisher that it would take rank and be honored for all time as the +great American epic. Under this misconception the book was clothed in a +form that might worthily have enshrined "Paradise Lost." Its stately +quarto pages were set in a type specially designed for the work and +taking from it the name of Columbian. The volume was embellished with +full-page engravings after paintings in the heroic manner by Smirke; in +short, it was the most pretentious book issued in America up to that +time, and it still ranks, in the words of Professor Barrett Wendell, +"among the most impressive books to look at in the world." But alas for +the vanity of human aspirations! "The Columbiad" is now remembered as a +contribution to typography rather than literature. The designer overshot +his author. + +We have tacitly assumed that a book has but one interpretation and +therefore but one most appropriate design. This, however, is far from +the truth. When, after various more or less successful editions of +Irving's "Knickerbocker" had appeared, Mr. Updike brought out some +twenty years ago his comic edition, with the whole make-up of the book +expressive of the clumsy and stupid Dutchmen depicted in Irving's +mock-heroic, we felt at the moment that here was the one ideal +"Knickerbocker." Yet, much as we still admire it, does it wholly +satisfy us? Is there not as much room as ever for an edition that shall +express primarily not the absurdity of its subject-matter, but the +delicate playfulness of Irving's humor and the lightness and grace of +his exuberant style? Has there ever been a final "Don Quixote"? +Certainly not in the recent monumental editions with their quagmire of +footnotes. Moreover, if _we_ had a final edition of the great romance it +would not remain final for our children's children. Every age will make +its own interpretations of the classics and will demand that they be +embodied in contemporary design. Thus every age in its book design +mirrors itself for future admiration or contempt. + +Obviously, in giving form to a single work a designer is freer than in +handling a series by one or by various authors. In such cases he must +seize upon more general and therefore less salient characteristics. The +designer of "Hiawatha" or "Evangeline" has a fairly clear task before +him, with a chance of distinct success or failure; but the designer of +an appropriate form for the whole series of Longfellow's works, both +prose and poetry, has a less individualized problem, and must think of +the elements that run through all,--sweetness, grace, gentleness, +dignity, learning. Yet, though general, these qualities in a series may +be far from vague. We have only to consider the absurdity of a +handy-volume Gibbon or a folio Lamb. On looking at the bulky, +large-type, black-covered volumes of the Forman edition of Shelley and +Keats one instinctively asks, "What crime did these poets commit that +they should be so impounded?" The original edition of the life of +Tennyson by his son, in two lumbering, royal octavo volumes, comes near +to what Thackeray called the Farnese Hercules, "a hulking abortion." +Contrast with it the dignity linked with charm of the original edition +of Longfellow's life by his brother. But of all monstrosities of book +design the British three-volume novel mania is responsible for some of +the worst. Henry Ward Beecher's one novel, "Norwood," which appeared in +America becomingly clad in a single volume, received in England the +regulation three-volume dress, in which it looks as ridiculously +inflated as did a slender miss of that period in the crinoline then in +vogue. There is one abomination in book design for which I owe a +personal grudge to commercialism, and that is the dropsical book form +given to Locker-Lampson's "My Confidences." If ever there was a winsome +bit of writing it is this, and it should have made a book to take to +one's heart, something not larger than a "Golden Treasury" volume, but +of individual design. My comfort is that this will yet be done, and my +belief is that art will justify itself better in the market than +commercialism did. A more modern instance of expansion for commercial +reasons defeating fitness in design is furnished by Waters' translation +of "The Journal of Montaigne's Travels." Here we have three small +volumes outwardly attractive, but printed on paper thick enough for +catalogue cards, and therefore too stiff for the binding, also in type +too large to be pleasant. The whole should have been issued in one +volume of the same size in smaller type, and would then have been as +delightful in form as it is in substance. + +It is not enough that all the elements of a book be honest, sincere, +enduring; otherwise the clumsy royal octavos of Leslie Stephen's edition +of Fielding would be as attractive as "the dear and dumpy twelves" of +the original editions. Royal octavo, indeed, seems to be the pitfall of +the book designer, though there is no inherent objection to it. Where in +the whole range of reference books will be found a more attractive set +of volumes than Moulton's "Library of Literary Criticism," with their +realization in this format of the Horatian _simplex munditiis_? For +extremely different treatments of this book size it is instructive to +compare the slender volumes of the original editions of Ruskin with the +slightly shorter but very much thicker volumes of the scholarly +definitive edition, which is a monument of excellence in every element +of book design except the crowning one of fitness. Our libraries must +have this edition for its completeness and its editorship; its material +excellence will insure the transmission of Ruskin's message to future +centuries; but no one will ever fall in love with these volumes or think +of likening them to the marriage of "perfect music unto noble words." + +Granted that the designer knows the tools of his trade,--grasps the +expressional value of every element with which he has to deal, from the +cut of a type to the surface of a binder's cloth,--his task, as we said, +is first to know the soul of the book intrusted to him for embodiment; +it is next to decide upon its most characteristic quality, or the sum of +its qualities; and, lastly, it is so to use his physical elements as to +give to the completed book an expression that shall be the outward +manifestation of its indwelling spirit. This is all that can be asked of +him; but, if he would add a touch of perfection, let him convey the +subtle tribute of a sense of the value of his subject by reflecting in +his design the artist's joy in his work. + + + + +PRINT AS AN INTERPRETER OF MEANING + + +The invention of printing, we have often been told, added to book +production only the two commercial elements of speed and cheapness. As +regards the book itself, we are assured, printing not only added +nothing, but, during the four and a half centuries of its development, +has constantly tended to take away. These statements are no doubt +historically and theoretically true, yet they are so unjust to the +present-day art that some supplementary statement of our obligations to +printing seems called for, aside from the obvious rejoinder that, even +if speed and cheapness are commercial qualities, they have reached a +development--especially in the newspaper--beyond the dreams of the most +imaginative fifteenth-century inventor, and have done nothing less than +revolutionize the world. + +Taking the service of printing as it stands to-day, what does it +actually do for the reader? What is the great difference between the +printed word and even the best handwriting? It is obviously the +condensation and the absolute mechanical sameness of print. The +advantage of these differences to the eye in respect to rapid reading is +hardly to be overestimated. Let any one take a specimen of average +penmanship and note the time which he consumes in reading it; let him +compare with this the time occupied in reading the same number of +printed words, and the difference will be startling; but not even so +will it do justice to print, for handwriting average in quality is very +far from average in frequency. If it be urged that the twentieth-century +comparison should be between typewriting and print, we may reply that +typewriting _is_ print, though it lacks most of its condensation, and +that the credit for its superior legibility belongs to typography, of +which the new art is obviously a by-product. But we are not yet out of +the manuscript period, so far as private records are concerned, and it +still is true, as it has been for many generations, that print +multiplies the years of every scholar's and reader's life. + +At this point we may even introduce a claim for print as a contributor +to literature. There are certainly many books of high literary standing +that never would have attained their present form without the +intervention of type. It is well known that Carlyle rewrote his books in +proof, so that the printer, instead of attempting to correct his +galleys, reset them outright. Balzac went a step further, and largely +wrote his novels in proof, if such an expression may be allowed. He so +altered and expanded them that what went to the printing office as copy +for a novelette finally came out of it a full-sized novel. Even where +the changes are not so extensive, as in the proof-sheets of the Waverley +Novels preserved in the Cornell University Library, it is interesting to +trace the alterations which the author was prompted to make by the sight +of his paragraphs clothed in the startling distinctness of print. Nor is +this at all surprising when one considers how much better the eye can +take in the thought and style of a composition from the printed page +than it can even from typewriting. The advantage is so marked that some +publishers, before starting on an expensive literary venture, are +accustomed to have the copy set up on the linotype for the benefit of +their critics. If the work is accepted, the revisions are made on these +sheets, and then, finally, the work is sent back to the composing room +to receive the more elaborate typographic dress in which it is to +appear. + +But to return to the advantages of type to the reader. Handwriting can +make distinctions, such as punctuation and paragraphing, but print can +greatly enforce them. The meaning of no written page leaps out to the +eye; but this is the regular experience of the reader with every +well-printed page. While printing can do nothing on a single page that +is beyond the power of a skillful penman, its ordinary resources are the +extraordinary ones of manuscript. It might not be physically impossible, +for instance, to duplicate with a pen a page of the Century Dictionary, +but it would be practically impossible, and, if the pen were our only +resource, we never should have such a marvel of condensation and +distinctness as that triumph of typography in the service of +scholarship. + +In ordinary text, printing has grown away from the distinctions to the +eye that were in vogue two hundred years ago--a gain to art and perhaps +to legibility also, though contemporary critics like Franklin lamented +the change--but in reference books we have attained to a finer skill in +making distinctions to the eye than our forefathers achieved with all +their typographic struggles. Nor are our reference pages lacking in +beauty. But our familiarity with works of this class tends to obscure +their wonderful merit as time-savers and eye-savers. It is only when we +take up some foreign dictionary, printed with little contrast of type, +perhaps in German text, and bristling with unmeaning abbreviations, that +we appreciate our privilege. Surely this is a marvelous mechanical +triumph, to present the words of an author in such a form that the eye, +to take it in, needs but to sweep rapidly down the page, or, if it +merely glances at the page, it shall have the meaning of the whole so +focused in a few leading words that it can turn at once to the passage +sought, or see that it must look elsewhere. The saving of time so +effected may be interpreted either as a lengthening of life or as an +increased fullness of life, but it means also a lessening of friction +and thus an addition to human comfort. + +We have been speaking of prose; but print has done as much or more to +interpret the meaning of poetry. We have before us a facsimile of +nineteen lines from the oldest Vatican manuscript of Vergil. The +hexameters are written in single lines; but this is the only help to the +eye. The letters are capitals and are individually very beautiful, +indeed, the lines are like ribbons of rich decoration; but the words are +not separated, and the punctuation is inconspicuous and primitively +simple, consisting merely of faint dots. Modern poetry, especially +lyric, with its wealth and interplay of rhyme, affords a fine +opportunity for the printer to mediate between the poet and his public, +and this he has been able to do by mere indention and leading, without +resorting to distinction of type. The reader of a sonnet or ballad +printed without these two aids to the eye is robbed of his rightful +clues to the construction of the verse. It seems hardly possible that a +poem could have been read aloud from an ancient manuscript, at sight, +with proper inflection; yet this is just what printing can make possible +for the modern reader. It has not usually done so, for the printer has +been very conservative; he has taken his conception of a page from +prose, and, not being compelled to, has not placed all the resources of +his art at the service of the poet. Accents, pauses, and certain +arbitrary signs might well be employed to indicate to the reader the +way the poet meant his line to be read. Milton curiously gave us some +metric hints by means of changes in spelling, but we have to read all +our other poets in the light of our own discernment, and it is not to be +wondered at if doctors disagree. Even the caesura, or pause in the +course of a long line, is not always easy to place. Francis Thompson, in +his poem "A Judgement in Heaven," has indicated this by an asterisk, +giving an example that might well be followed by other poets and their +printers. The regularity of eighteenth-century verse made little call +for guide-posts, but modern free meter, in proportion to its greater +flexibility and richness, demands more assistance to the reader's eye, +or even to his understanding. For instance, to read aloud hexameters or +other long lines, some of which have the initial accent on the first +syllable and some later, is quite impossible without previous study +supplemented by a marking of the page. Yet a few printed accents would +make a false start impossible. Poetry will never require the elaborate +aid from the printer which he gives to music; but it seems clear that he +has not yet done for it all that he might or should. + +It is surely not an extreme assumption that the first duty of the +printer is to the meaning of his author, and his second to esthetics; +but shall we not rather say that his duty is to meet both demands, not +by a compromise, but by a complete satisfaction of each? A difficult +requirement, surely, but one that we are confident the twentieth-century +printer will not permit his critics to pronounce impossible. + + + + +FAVORITE BOOK SIZES + + +In the following paper some account will be given of five book sizes +that have taken rank as favorites. It should excite no surprise that all +are small sizes. Nature's favorites are always small; her insect jewels +outnumber her vertebrates a millionfold; and book-loving human nature +takes the same delight in daintiness. + +There is, to be sure, a general impression that the first centuries of +printing were given up to folios, the eighteenth century to quartos and +octavos, and that only the present period has been characterized by +twelvemos and sixteenmos. We think of the Gutenberg Bible, the Nuremberg +Chronicle, the mighty editions of the Fathers, the polyglot Bibles of +Paris, London, and Antwerp,--fairly to be called limp teachers' +Bibles,--the 1611 Bible, the Shakespeare folios; then of the quarto +editions of Addison, Pope, Walpole, and their contemporaries, and the +stately octavo editions of the same writers; and finally of the myriad +_infra_ that have swarmed from the press during the last century. But, +when we walk through a library that offers a representative collection +of books from the invention of printing to the present, we realize that +the bigness of the folios and quartos has deceived us as to their +relative number, all forms of literature being considered. + +The parent of our present book form, the Roman codex, split from an +actual block of wood, had a surface hardly as large as the cover of a +Little Classic. The vellum Books of Hours were dainty volumes. Even in +the period between Gutenberg and Aldus, books of moderate size were not +uncommon, and continuously, from the days of the great Venetian +popularizer of literature to the present, the small books have far +outnumbered their heavy-armed allies. Common sense, indeed, would tell +us that this must be so, even if it had not inspired Dr. Johnson, its +eighteenth century exponent, to declare: "Books that you may carry to +the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all." + +Our account properly begins with Aldus. From 1494, the date of his first +productions, until 1501 he printed his books in folio and quarto. But in +the first year of the new century he began to use his famous cursive +type, now called italic. The fineness of the new type, as has been +suggested, called for a smaller size of book, which was also favored by +considerations of economy and convenience; and so Aldus made up his +sheets in a form which the fold compels us to call octavo, but which +to-day would be called sixteenmo. Says Horatio F. Brown, in his "The +Venetian Printing Press": "The public welcomed the new type and size. +The College granted Aldus a monopoly for ten years for all books printed +in this manner. The price of books was lowered at once. Didot calculates +that an octavo of Aldus cost, on an average, two francs and a half, +whereas a folio probably cost about twenty francs. These two innovations +on type and on format constituted a veritable revolution in the printing +press and in the book trade, which now began to reach a far more +extensive market than it had ever touched before. With this wide +diffusion of books came the popularization of knowledge at which Aldus +aimed. Scholarship began to lose its exclusive and aristocratic +character when the classics were placed within the reach of any student +who chose to study, meditate, and interpret them for himself. And to +Aldus belongs the credit of having, through his new type and size, +opened the way to the democratization of learning." + +That the taste which Aldus so successfully hit was no merely temporary +one, any person will be convinced if he will stand before a shelf full +of these little Aldus classics, handle the light, well-proportioned +volumes, and take in the esthetic charm of their type and page and form, +which, in spite of their four hundred years, by no means savors of +antiquity. In these books Aldus achieved one of the greatest triumphs +possible in any art, a union of beauty and utility, each on so high a +plane that no one is able to decide which is pre-eminent. In a copy +which I have before me of his "Rhetoricorum ad C. Herennium Libri IIII," +1546, the fine proportions of the page appear in spite of trimming. Very +noticeable are the undersized roman capitals; more curious is the letter +printed in the otherwise blank square to indicate what initial the +illuminator should insert in color, and the irregular use of capitals +and small letters after a period. The catchword appears only on the last +page of the signature, not on every page, as was the later practice. +Modern usage wisely consigns italic to a subordinate place, but in point +of beauty combined with convenience, it may well be questioned if four +centuries of printing have made any advance upon this page. + +In nearly every library for scholars is to be found a row of plump +little books that never fail to catch the eye of the sightseer. If the +visitor does not know beforehand what they are, he is little enlightened +on being told that they are "Elzevirs," and the attendant must needs +supply the information that the Elzevirs were a family of Dutch printers +who flourished during the century that closed with the arrival of +William III in England, and that these tiny volumes represent their most +popular productions. Says George Haven Putnam in his "Books and their +Makers during the Middle Ages": "The Elzevirs, following the example set +a century and a half earlier by Aldus, but since that time very +generally lost sight of by the later publishers, initiated a number of +series of books in small and convenient forms, twelvemo and sixteenmo, +which were offered to book buyers at prices considerably lower than +those they had been in the habit of paying for similar material printed +in folio, quarto, or octavo.... These well-edited, carefully printed, +and low-priced editions of the classics won for the Elzevirs the cordial +appreciation of scholars and of students throughout Europe." + +Among the authors who acknowledged their indebtedness to the Elzevirs +may be mentioned Galileo, the elder Balzac, and the poet Menage. I have +before me more than six feet of shelving filled with these tiny books. +They are nearly all bound in vellum, and thus retain their antique +appearance without as well as within. Their subject-matter is in the +fields of literature, ancient and contemporary, and the history, +geography, and political constitution of the principal countries. The +books of the latter division are known as "Respublicae Variae." It is +impossible to resist the conclusion that this book form was chosen not +more to supply cheap books which could be sold to impecunious scholars +than to provide portable volumes for travelers. The Elzevir +"Commonwealths" were the predecessors of our "satchel guides," and the +literary publications in this form were evidently designed to be pocket +editions. It was to such books that Dr. Johnson referred when he advised +his friends "never to go out without some little book or other in their +pocket. Much time is lost by waiting, by travelling, etc., and this may +be prevented by making use of every possible opportunity for +improvement." When the positive doctor, on his journey to the Hebrides, +paid his tribute to George Buchanan at St. Andrews, his acquaintance +with the Latin poetry of the Scotch professor may well have arisen from +his having thus made a pocket piece of one of the several Elzevir +editions of the poet. + +The characteristics of the "Elzevirs" are that they range from about +four to about five inches in height, are always narrow, 2-1/4 to 2-3/4 +inches in width, and are usually thick, in some cases even 1-1/2 inches. +It is hardly necessary to say that the esthetic impression of these +"jewels of typography" is wholly different from that produced by the +"Alduses." It is the beauty of an infant compared with that of a youth, +and, as in the case of the infant, plumpness is a part of the charm. The +thinnest of the "Elzevirs" (about three-fourths of an inch thick) lack +much of the characteristic quality. It is of course granted that no +small portion of the charm exerted by these volumes is due to their +type, which in artistic excellence and practical effectiveness has +hardly been surpassed before or since. + +When William Pickering, in 1830, began to issue his Aldine edition of +the British Poets in the most beautiful and appropriate form that he +could devise, the design which he placed upon the title-page, a dolphin +and an anchor, with the words "Aldi discip. Anglus," was an expression +at once of pride and of obligation. He had gone back to Aldus for his +model, and the book which he produced was in all but its change of type +from italic to roman a nearly exact reproduction of the form which Aldus +had employed so successfully three centuries before. Even the relative +thinness of the volumes was preserved as an important element of their +attractiveness to eye and hand. Whoever would learn what an enormous +difference in esthetic effect can be produced by slight differences in +style and size, especially in thickness, should compare the Pickering +"Aldines" with the rival set of British Poets published by Little and +Brown. The latter series is a noble one, often showing better presswork +than Pickering's, and it was deservedly popular, but it is many degrees +removed from the totality of esthetic charm that would entitle it to +rank as a favorite. + +We said that Pickering went back to Aldus for his model, but he did not +travel a lonely road. The book size in question had never ceased to be +used, and in the eighteenth century it was in full favor. The writings +of the novelists and essayists found ready buyers in this form, as +witness, among others, the Strahan Fielding of 1783, the Rivington Idler +of the same year, and the Rivington Sterne of 1788. The size of the +printed page is usually larger, but that of the Sterne corresponds as +closely to that of the two "Aldines" as the difference in the size of +type will permit. Pickering's contemporaries and successors in the +publishing field recognized the attractiveness of this book size, and +the works of the poets generally were issued in this form; hence we +have, for example, the Longman Southey, the Moxon Wordsworth, and the +Murray Crabbe. The latest series to appeal for popular favor by the use +of this book form is Everyman's Library, in which, though much has been +sacrificed to cheapness, the outward proportions of the volumes are +almost identical with those adopted by Aldus and Pickering. + + Go, little book, whose pages hold + Those garnered years in loving trust; + How long before your blue and gold + Shall fade and whiten in the dust? + +This stanza from Dr. Holmes's introduction to his "Poems" of 1862 may +well be claimed by the Blue and Gold edition of the poets as its +passport to the recognition of future generations. But it will need no +passport; its own enduring charm is sufficient. The volumes of this +dainty series, while larger in all but thickness than the "Elzevirs," +yet make their appeal by much the same qualities, compactness and +portability, with a suggestion of the Elzevirian plumpness. To the +attraction of the size is added the contrasted charm of the blue cover +and the gilt stamp and edges. That a Blue and Gold edition, in the +absence of its name qualities, becomes something far inferior may be +seen from a copy that has lost them in rebinding. In spite of the +hardness of their blue and the crudeness of their stamped designs, these +little volumes attract every reader and never remain long on the shelves +of the second-hand bookstores. We should not expect a publisher to +succeed were he now to put them upon the market for the first time or in +an exact reproduction. But the publisher who shall so recombine their +elements as to produce upon his public the effect which they made upon +theirs, and which they still make as reminiscent of an earlier taste, +will be the envy of his fellows. It is interesting to note that after +fifty years these volumes show no sign of fading, so that Dr. Holmes +might well have made his stanza an exclamation instead of a question. +They seem likely to last as long as the "Elzevirs" or even the "Alduses" +have already lasted, and possibly to outlast the fame, though hardly the +memory, of the poet who sang them. The dimensions of the cover are 5-5/8 +by 3-3/8 inches; the thickness is about an inch. There was a larger Blue +and Gold format, as well as several smaller, but only the standard is +now valued. + +We cannot bring our list of favorite book sizes much nearer the present +without running the risk of confusing the temporary and the permanent in +popular approval. We will, therefore, close with a mention of the Little +Classics. At about the time when the Blue and Gold series ceased to be +published, more exactly in 1874, Mr. Rossiter Johnson designed for the +now famous series which he was then editing a book form that sprang at +once into a favor that it still retains. In this form, which appears to +have no near counterpart in either earlier or later bookmaking, the +volumes are closely six by four inches by three-quarters of an inch in +thickness. The edges are colored red, whatever the color of the sides. +The printed page is relatively wide, and the whole effect of the book is +that of a tiny quarto, though in reality the dimensions are those of a +rather small sixteenmo of normal proportions. Thus the volume produces +upon the eye the charm of daintiness, while the page contains a +sufficient amount of matter to make the volume profitable to the +purchaser. + +This series naturally suggests comparison with the Tauchnitz editions, +which consist of volumes only slightly larger. But really no comparison +is possible. The Tauchnitz editions are merely convenient carriers of +letterpress. The Little Classics are a genuine art product. That the +latter book size has not been more widely used than it has, by its own +and by other publishers, is perhaps due to commercial reasons. But there +can be no question of the esthetic appeal which it makes upon the reader +who is looking for compactness and beauty rather than for the greatest +bulk for his money. With the modern demand for the saving of space in +private libraries we may reasonably look for a revival of this condensed +and charming book size. + +The adoption of a few standard sizes for all books was urged some years +ago at a meeting of American librarians. Commenting on this proposal, a +New York publisher remarked that he should be glad to have such standard +sizes adopted by others, but he should take pains to avoid them in his +own publications in order to gain the distinction of difference. The +discussion stopped suddenly under the impact of this unexpected assault. +But a second thought shows that the publisher's comment leaves the +question still open. It is obvious that if we were to adopt standard +sizes based upon nothing more fundamental than the librarian's desire +for uniformity or the printer's mechanical convenience, without regard +to the tastes and preferences of the reader, who is the final judge, the +publisher might well find his gain in disregarding them. But if the +standards adopted all represented sizes long tested and approved by +popular favor, the publisher who should avoid them would display a +confidence in the Spirit of the Perverse as sublime as it would be +hazardous. Fortunately no formal standardization of book sizes is likely +to be attempted. But, keenly as a publisher would resent any limitation +upon his freedom in book design, he is just as keenly desirous that his +books shall be favorites. To attain his coveted end he has two +resources, experience and experiment, or a mixture of both. While the +book sizes that have been discussed in this chapter do not include all +the favorites, they certainly include some of the first favorites, and +are worthy of study by everyone who is seeking public favor in the +design of that complex art product known as a Book. + + + + +THE VALUE OF READING, TO THE PUBLIC AND TO THE INDIVIDUAL + + +Of what value is it to a community to contain--still more to be composed +of--well-read people? We can best answer this question by picturing its +opposite, a community without readers; this we are unfortunately able to +do without drawing upon our imaginations, for we have only to turn to +certain districts of countries like Spain or Russia. There we shall meet +whole communities, large enough to form cities elsewhere, which are +little more than aggregations of paupers. Shall we find in any of these +homes a daily or a weekly paper, or a monthly magazine, or even a stray +book? Not one, except perhaps in the house of a priest. These masses of +people live on the earth, to be sure, but they do not live in the world. +No currents of the great, splendid life of the twentieth century ever +reach them; and they live in equal isolation from the life of the past. +"The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" have for them +simply no existence. They are truly the disinherited of all the ages. +Though they may not be unhappy, they can be called nothing less than +wretched. Is the fault one of race, or government, or religion? Much +could be said on all these points, both for and against; but one fact +remains indisputable--these people do not read. + +Let us turn now to a different type of community, that represented by +the ordinary New England village. How stands the cause of reading +there? If there is any person of sound mind in the community who has +never learned to read, he is pointed out as a curiosity. There is not a +home in the length and breadth of the town that is without its paper, +its magazine, or its books. In other words, literacy is taken for +granted. Is it any wonder that in progress, wealth, and influence the +one community starts where the other leaves off? In the illiterate towns +just described there is often no man who has the slightest capacity for +business or who can represent the interests of his community before even +the humblest government official. But from towns of the other type come +men who represent with honor their state and their nation; men who widen +the bounds of freedom and who add new stars to the celestial sphere of +knowledge. Is all this wholly a matter of reading? One would not dare to +assert it absolutely, remembering the advantages of race, government, +and religion enjoyed in New England. And yet we have only to fancy the +condition of even such a town after one generation, supposing all its +printed matter and its power to read were taken away, if we would +realize what an impulse to progress and prosperity is given by the +presence of the volumes that line the shelves of our public libraries. + +If the fortunes of a community in the modern world are bound up with the +use that it makes of books and libraries, no less are those of the +individual. This is true whether we refer to his private satisfaction or +to his public advancement. The animal is endowed with instinct, which is +sufficient for the guidance of his life, but it permits of no +development. Man must depend upon judgment, experience, reason--guides +that are often only too blind; but at least they admit of progress. In +fact it is only in the field of knowledge that human progress appears to +be possible. We have no better bodies than the ancient Greeks had--to +put the case very mildly. We have no better minds than they had--to make +an even safer assertion. But we _know_ almost infinitely more than they +did. In this respect the ancient Greeks were but as children compared +with ourselves. What makes this tremendous difference? Simply the fact +that we know all that was known by them and the Romans and the men of +the middle ages, and through this knowledge we have learned more by our +own discovery than they knew, all put together. The path to success for +men and races lies through the storehouse where this vast knowledge is +garnered--the library. But it is something more than a storehouse of +knowledge; it is an electrical battery of power. This knowledge, this +power, can be obtained in its fullness only through books. The man, +therefore, who aspires to lead his fellows, to command their respect or +their votes, must not rely on native talent alone; he must add to it the +stored-up talent of the ages. + +There is an old proverb: "No man ever got rich with his coat off." This +is a puzzling assertion, for it seems to contradict so many accepted +ideas. General Grant, for instance, when asked for his coat-of-arms, +replied: "A pair of shirt sleeves." The answer showed an honorable pride +in labor; but we must remember that it was not General Grant's arms but +his brain that won his victories. Does not our proverb mean simply this: +that the great prizes of life--of which riches is the symbol, not the +sum--cannot be won by main strength and ignorance; that they can be won +only by energy making use of knowledge? But it is not only in the public +successes of life that books have a value for the individual. Public +successes are never the greatest that men win. It is in the expansion +and uplift of the inner self that books render their grandest service. +Emily Dickinson wrote of such a reader: + + He ate and drank the precious words, + His spirit grew robust; + He knew no more that he was poor, + Nor that his frame was dust. + He danced along the dingy days, + And this bequest of wings + Was but a book. What liberty + A loosened spirit brings! + +A final word on values. The philosophers make two great classes of +values, which may be entitled respectively Property and Possessions. +Under Property come money, houses, lands, carriages, clothing, jewels; +under Possessions come love, friendship, morality, knowledge, culture, +refinement. All are good things. There never were any houses or +carriages or clothes too good for a human being. But these obviously +belong to a different type of values from the other group--to a lower +type. What is the test, the touchstone, by which we can tell to which +class any value belongs? We shall find the test clearly stated in the +Sermon on the Mount. Is the treasure in question one that moth and rust +can corrupt or that thieves can break through and steal? If so, it +belongs to the lower class, to Property. But if it is one that cannot be +taken away, then it is a Possession and belongs to the higher type. +There is another test, which is really a part of this: Can you share it +without loss? If I own a farm, and give to another a half of it or a +year's crop from it, I deprive myself of just so much. But, if I have +knowledge or taste or judgment or affection, I can pour them all out +like water for the benefit of my fellows, and yet never have any the +less. On the contrary, I shall find that I have more; for they grow by +sharing. But we have not yet done with the superiority of Possessions +over Property. "Shrouds have no pockets," says the grim old proverb; and +all Property must be laid down at the edge of the grave. But if man be +immortal, as the wise in all ages have believed, then we do not have to +lay down our Possessions with this mortal body. For, if the soul when +freed from the flesh is to remain the soul, the self--and only so can +immortality have any meaning--then it must keep all those inner +acquisitions of knowledge, culture, and character which it has gathered +on earth; nay, it then for the first time truly comes into the enjoyment +of them. What were our earthly Possessions become Treasures laid up for +ourselves in Heaven. + + + + +THE BOOK OF TO-DAY AND THE BOOK OF TO-MORROW + + +The book of to-day is not necessarily the parent of the book of +to-morrow, just as it is itself not necessarily the child of the book of +yesterday. The relation is apt to be one of succession and influence +rather than anything suggesting biological evolution. Nature, according +to Linnaeus's famous maxim, never goes by leaps, but the book is a human +product, and human nature takes its chief pride in its leaps, calling +them inventions and discoveries. Such a leap in book production was the +substitution of parchment for papyrus, of paper for parchment, of +mechanical for manual processes when writing was displaced by +typography, of higher for lower mechanism in the creation of the power +perfecting press. These inventions had behind them, to be sure, the +impetus of economic demand, but no such partial explanation can be given +for the advent of William Morris among the printers of the late +nineteenth century, unless an unrecognized artistic need may be said to +constitute an economic demand. + +The book of to-day in its best examples resembles not so much the book +of yesterday as that of some earlier days, and we may count this fact a +fortunate one, since it relegates to oblivion the books made in certain +inartistic periods, notably of the one preceding the present revival. It +is rather the best of the whole past of the book, and not the book of +to-day alone, that influences the character to be taken by the book of +to-morrow. This element is a historical one and a knowledge of it may be +acquired by study; it is the possible inventions that baffle our +prophecies. We know that any time some new process may be discovered +that will transform the book into something as unlike its present +character as that is unlike the papyrus roll. But because the element of +invention is so uncertain we can only recognize it, we cannot take it +into account. Our advantage in considering the book of to-day in +connection with the book of to-morrow will be chiefly a negative one, in +making the book as it is, so far as we find it defective, our point of +departure in seeking the book as it ought to be. + +To-day, for our present purposes, may be taken as beginning with the +great work of Morris. But its book includes the worst as well as the +best. It is not only the book by which we in our jealousy for the +reputation of our age should like to have our age remembered, but also +the more frequent book that we have to see and handle, however much +against our will, and sometimes even to buy. We may congratulate +ourselves that this book will perish by its own defects, leaving after +all only the best book to be associated with our age; but this does not +alter the fact that in the present the undesirable book is too much with +us, is vastly in the majority, is, in fact, the only book that the great +mass of our contemporaries know. How bad it is most book buyers do not +realize; if they did, a better book would speedily take its place. But, +until they do, our only chance of relief is the doubtful one of an +invention that shall make good books cheaper to make than poor ones, or +the difficult one of educating the public in the knowledge of what a +book should be. The latter is obviously our only rational hope; but +before we turn to consider it, let us first look at the book of to-day +to see exactly what it is. + +The book of to-day is first of all a novel. It has other forms, to be +sure,--poetry, essays, history, travels, works of science and art,--but +these do not meet the eye of the multitude. We may disregard them for +the moment, and, in reply to the question, What is the book of to-day? +we may say: It is a one-volume novel, a rather clumsy duodecimo, with a +showy cover adorned with a colored picture of the heroine. It is printed +on thick paper of poor quality, with type too large for the page, and +ugly margins equal all around. Its binding is weak, often good for only +a dozen readings, though quite as lasting as the paper deserves. For +merits it can usually offer clear type, black ink, and good presswork. +But its great fault is that in addressing the buyer it appeals to the +primitive instinct for bigness rather than to the higher sense that +regards quality. Such is the book of to-day, emphatically what Franklin +over a hundred years ago called a "blown" book. + +But though the novel fills the multitude's field of vision, it is after +all not the only contemporary book; there are others from which we may +be able to choose one worthier to be the book of to-day than the +self-elected novel. But we shall not find it where commercialism is +rife. In the presence of that element we find still only an appeal to +the many--which, if successful, means large profits--by an appearance of +giving much while really giving little. In this game of illusion the +sound principles of bookmaking are forsaken. Books are not designed on +the basis of what they are, but on the basis of what they can be made to +seem. The result is puffery, not merely in advertising, but still +earlier in the dimensions of the book itself--the most modern and +profitable instance of using the east wind for a filler. + +But at this point a new element is introduced, the public library. The +ordinary buyer carries home the distended book, and after he and his +family have read it, he cares not if it falls to pieces after the next +reading. Neither does he care if it takes up thrice the room that it +should, for he no longer gives it room. But the public library, under +the existing inflationism, must not only pay too much for its popular +books; it must also house them at a needless outlay, and must very early +duplicate a serious percentage of their first cost in rebinding them. So +burdensome has this last item become that our libraries are consenting +to pay a slightly larger first cost in order to avoid the necessity of +rebinding; and enterprising publishers, following the lead of a more +enterprising bookbinder, are beginning to cater to this library demand, +which some day, let us hope, may dominate the entire publishing world +for all books worth preserving, and may extend to all the elements of +the book. + +But fortunately there is here and there the uncommercial publisher and +now and then an uncommercial mood in the ordinary publisher. To these we +owe a small but important body of work of which no previous age need +have been ashamed. Of these books we may almost say that they would be +books if there were nothing in them. They have come into being by a +happy conjunction of qualified publisher and appreciative buyers. They +show what most books may be and what all books will strive to be if ever +the majority of book buyers come to know what a good book is. This +brings us finally to the book of to-morrow, what we hope it will be and +how we can make it so. + +The book of to-morrow, the book as it ought to be, will be both better +and cheaper than the book of to-day. It can afford to be cheaper, for it +will have a large and appreciative public, and for the same reason it +will have to be better. The question of supreme importance now, if this +public is ever to exist, is: How to educate our book buyers. The answer +is not easy, for our book buyers do not realize that they are untrained, +and, even if they realized it, the task of training them in the +knowledge and love of the well-made book would be difficult. But we can +do at least three things: agitate--proclaim the existence of a lore to +be acquired, an ignorance and its practices to be eschewed; +illustrate--show the good book and the bad together, and set forth, +point by point, why the good is superior; last and most important, we +must vindicate--back up our words by our deeds, support the publisher +who gives the world good books, and leave to starvation or reform the +publisher who clings to the old unworthy methods of incapacity or fraud. +Even now, if every enlightened booklover in America would carry out this +plan as a matter of duty merely where he could do so without +inconvenience, nothing less than a revolution would be upon us, and we +should have the Book of To-morrow while it is still To-day. + + + + +A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIC OF THE BOOK + + +At the meeting of the British librarians at Cambridge in 1882 a bomb was +thrown into the camp of the book producers in the form of the question: +Who spoils our new English books? In the explosion which followed, +everybody within range was hit, from "the uncritical consumer" to "the +untrained manufacturer." This dangerous question was asked and answered +by Henry Stevens of Vermont, who, as a London bookseller, had for nearly +forty years handled the products of the press new and old, had numbered +among his patrons such critical booklovers as John Carter Brown and +James Lenox, and had been honored with the personal friendship of +William Pickering the publisher and Charles Whittingham the printer. He +had therefore enjoyed abundant opportunity for qualifying himself to +know whereof he spoke. If his words were severe, he stood ready to +justify them with an exhibit of sixty contemporary books which he set +before his hearers.[2] + +The truth is, however unwilling his victims may have been to admit it, +that his attack was only too well timed. The men of creative power, who +had ennobled English book production during the 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 now consuming two bad books in +the place of one good one." + +Mr. Stevens now comes to the direct question: Who spoils our new English +books? He answers it by naming not less than ten parties concerned: (1) +the author, (2) the publisher, (3) the printer, (4) the reader, (5) the +compositor, (6) the pressman or machinist, (7) the papermaker, (8) the +ink maker, (9) the bookbinder, and (10), last but not least, the +consumer. There is no question of honesty or dishonesty, he says, but +there is a painful lack of harmony, the bungling work of one or the +clumsy manipulation of another often defeating the combined excellence +of all the rest. The cure he foresees in the establishment of a school +of typography, in which every disciple of these ten tribes shall study a +recognized grammar of book manufacture based on the authority of the +best examples. + +He now returns to the charge and pays his respects to each member of the +"ten tribes" in turn. The author's offense is found to consist largely +of ignorant meddling. The publisher is too often ignorant, fussy, +unskilled, pedantic, shiftless, and money-seeking, willing to make books +unsightly if their cheapness will sell them. The printer is the +scapegoat, and many books are spoiled in spite of his efforts, while he +gets all the blame. But he is apt to have faults of his own, the worst +of which is a failure in the careful design of the books intrusted to +him. "It was not so," says Mr. Stevens, "with our good old friends +William Pickering and Charles Whittingham, publisher and printer, +working for many years harmoniously together. It was their custom, as +both used repeatedly to tell us, to each first sit upon every new book +and painfully hammer out in his own mind its ideal form and proportions. +Then two Sundays at least were required to compare notes in the little +summer house in Mr. Whittingham's garden at Chiswick, or in the +after-dinner sanctuary, to settle the shape and dress of their +forthcoming 'friend of man.' It was amusing as well as instructive to +see each of them, when they met, pull from his bulging side pocket +well-worn title-pages and sample leaves for discussion and +consideration. When they agreed, perfection was at hand, and the 'copy' +went forward to the compositors, but not till then. The results, to this +day, are seen in all the books bearing the imprint of William Pickering, +nearly all of which bear also evidence that they came from the 'Chiswick +Press.'" + +The reader, Mr. Stevens holds to be, under the printer, the real man of +responsibility; but he too is often hampered by want of plan and due +knowledge of the proportions of the book that he is handling. He also +should go to the school of typography, and the readers of different +offices should learn to agree. The compositor is pronounced "a little +person of great consequence." His moral responsibility is not great, but +too much is often thrust upon him; in fact he is, in many cases, the +real maker of the book. "He ought to have a chance at the school of +typography, and be better instructed in his own business, and be taught +not to assume the business of any other sinner joined with him in the +manufacture of books." Between the compositor and the pressman is a long +road in which many a book is spoiled, but the responsibility is hard to +place. Few people have any idea what constitute the essentials of a +book's form and proportions. Yet our old standards, in manuscript and +print, demand "that the length of a printed page should have relation to +its width, and that the top should not exceed half the bottom margin, +and that the front should be double the back margin." + +The papermaker comes in for a large share of blame, but the remedy lies +only in the hands of the consumer, who must insist on receiving good and +durable paper. "The ink-maker is a sinner of the first magnitude." The +first printing inks are still bright, clean, and beautiful after four +hundred years; but who will give any such warrant to even the best inks +of the present day? Mr. Stevens pronounces the sallow inks of our day as +offensive to sight as they are to smell. The bookbinder is adjudged +equal in mischief to any other of the ten sinners, and the rest are +called upon to combine to prevent their books from being spoiled in +these last hands. + +The consumer, after all, is the person most to blame, for he has the +power to control all the rest. Or, in the critic's closing words: "Many +of our new books are unnecessarily spoiled, and it matters little +whether this or that fault be laid to this or that sinner. The +publisher, the printer, or the binder may sometimes, nay, often does, if +he can, shift the burden of his sins to the shoulders of his neighbor, +but all the faults finally will come back on the consumer if he +tolerates this adulteration longer." + +The great constructive feature of Mr. Stevens's address, which is one +that brings it absolutely up to date, is his call for a school of +typography, which shall teach a recognized grammar of book manufacture, +especially printing, a grammar as standard as Lindley Murray's. He +believes that the art of bookmaking cannot be held to the practice of +the laws of proportion, taste, and workmanship, which were settled once +for all in the age of the scribes and the first printers, without the +existence and pressure of some recognized authority. Such an authority, +he holds, would be furnished by a school of typography. This, as we +interpret it, would be not necessarily a school for journeymen, but a +school for those who are to assume the responsibility too often thrown +upon the journeymen, the masters of book production. With a large annual +output of books taken up by a public none too deeply versed in the +constituents of a well-made book, there would seem to be much hope for +printing as an art from the existence of such an institution, which +would be critical in the interest of sound construction, and one might +well wish that the course in printing recently established at Harvard +might at some time be associated with the name of its prophet of a +generation ago, Henry Stevens of Vermont. + + + + +BOOKS AS A LIBRARIAN WOULD LIKE THEM + + +The librarian is in a position more than any one else to know the +disabilities of books. The author is interested in his fame and his +emoluments, the publisher in his reputation and his profits. To each of +these parties the sales are the chief test. But the librarian's interest +in the book begins after the sale, and it continues through the entire +course of the book's natural life. His interest, moreover, is all-round; +he is concerned with the book's excellence in all respects, +intellectual, esthetic, and physical. He is the one who has to live with +it, literally to keep house with it; and his reputation is in a way +involved with its character. He may, therefore, be allowed for once to +have his say as to how he would like to have books made. + +If a book is worth writing at all, it is worth writing three times: +first to put down the author's ideas, secondly to condense their +expression into the smallest possible compass, and thirdly so to arrange +them that they shall be most easily taken into the mind, putting them +not necessarily into logical order, but into psychological order. If the +author will do this and can add the touch of genius, or--shall we +say?--can suffuse his work with the quality of genius, then he has made +an addition to literature. That, among all the books which the librarian +has to care for, he finds so few that he can call additions to +literature is one of his grievances. The three processes may, indeed, +by a practiced hand be performed as one. The librarian is only anxious +that they be performed and that he have the benefit. + +With the publisher the librarian feels that he can speak still more +bluntly than with the author, for it is against the publisher that the +librarian cherishes one of his greatest grievances, the necessity of +supplying four times the amount of storage room that ought to be +required. I have before me two books, one larger than the other in every +way and four times as thick. Yet the smaller book is printed in larger +type, has twice as many words on a page, and has twice as many pages. +This is, of course, an exceptional contrast, but a difference of four +times between the actual and the possible is by no means unusual. When +one considers that in most of our libraries it costs, all told, a dollar +to shelve a volume, one realizes that the librarian has against the +publisher a grievance that can be put into the language of commerce. If +every book is occupying a dollar's worth of space, which ought to +accommodate three others, then, gentlemen publishers, in swelling your +books to catch the public eye, you have taken from us far more than you +put into your own pockets from your sales to us. You have made our book +storage four times as costly and unwieldy as it ought to be; but you +have done worse than this, you have sold us perishable instead of +durable goods. You have cheapened every element of the book--paper, ink, +and binding--so that, while we begin the twentieth century with some +books on our shelves that are over four hundred years old and some that +are less than one, the only books among them that have any chance of +seeing the twenty-first century are those that will then be five hundred +years old; the books that might have been a century old will then, like +their makers, be dust. It seems to the librarian that you, who have +taken it upon yourselves to direct the service to be rendered to men by +the "art preservative of all arts," have assumed very lightly your +responsibility for the future's knowledge of our time. You may and do +answer that, as the records begin to perish, the most important of them +will be reprinted, and the world will be the better off for the loss of +the rest. To this it may be rejoined that you give the distant future no +chance to revise the judgments of a rather near future, and that vast +quantities of material which would be read with eagerness by future +generations and which would be carefully preserved if it were durable, +will not be reprinted, whatever its value. We may be sure that the daily +papers of the present year will never be reprinted; the world of the +future will be too busy, not to speak of the cost; yet what a series of +human documents will disappear in their destruction! If a part of the +professional obligation which you assumed in making yourselves +responsible for the issues of the press is to transmit the record of +this generation to later time, then it seems to me that you have in +great measure betrayed your trust and have so far brought to naught the +labors of your comrade, the librarian, in the conservation of +literature. Also you compel him to pay for unnecessary rebindings which +can hardly be made, so poor is the stock you furnish the binder; yet on +this point you have shown some indications of a change of heart, and I +will pass it over. Perhaps you have finally come to realize that every +cent paid for rebinding is taken out of your gross receipts. I will not +speak of the books that you ought never to have published, the books +that are not books; most of these the librarian can avoid buying, but +sometimes a book is just "ower gude for banning," and he has to take it +and catalogue it and store it, and take account of it and rearrange it, +and, after all, get scolded by his authorities or ridiculed by the +public for housing so much rubbish. The author is responsible with you +here, but your own individual responsibility is enough for any shoulders +to bear. + +To the printer the librarian would say: since wishing is easy, let us +imagine that what ought always to happen is happening regularly instead +of rarely, namely, that the author produces a book worth printing and +that the publisher leaves you free to put it into a worthy form. This is +the opportunity that you have always been looking for. How are you going +to meet it? Do you know all the elements that you deal with and can you +handle them with a sure touch practically and esthetically? If so, you +will not need any hints from the librarian, and he will order your book +"sight unseen." But still, among the good and right ways of making +books, there may be some that he prefers, and he will ask you, when you +are making books for him and not for private buyers, at least to give +his preferences a hearing. He wants his books no bigger physically than +they need be, and yet he would like to have them of a convenient height, +from seven to nine inches. He would rather have their expansion in +height and width and not in thickness, for the former dimensions up to +ten and a half inches by eight mean no increased demand upon shelf room, +while the thickness of every leaf is taken out of his library's +capacity. He would like to have no wasteful margins and no extreme in +the size of type. If it is too large, the book takes up too much room; +if it is too small, his readers will ruin their eyes over it or, what is +more likely, refuse to read it and so make its possession a useless +expense. For the sake of rapid reading he would like to have every wide +page printed in columns. For the same reason he would like to have every +possible help given to the eye in the way of paragraphs, headlines, and +variation of type, so far as it can be given in consonance with the +esthetic rights of the book. With these points observed, and the book +printed on paper as thin and as light in weight as can be conveniently +used and is consistent with opacity and strength, with clear type, clear +and durable ink, and good presswork, the printer will have done his +part, and a book will go to the binder that is worthy of his best +treatment. + +What that treatment is the binder knows better than I can tell him. When +he has applied it, the book will come out of his hands at once solid and +flexible; unmutilated, either on the outer edges where mutilation can be +seen, or at the back where it cannot be seen, but where it nevertheless +hurts the integrity of the book; covered with honest boards that will +stand use, and clad with a material, cloth or leather, that is both +strong to resist wear and also contains within itself no seeds of +deterioration. Besides this let it have a character, however +unobtrusive, befitting the contents of the book, and the binder will +have paid his full debt to the present and the future. + +While the librarian's ideals of bookmaking are not the only ones, they +are in harmony with the best, and there cannot be progress in bookmaking +without approaching his ideals. He is, therefore, by his very office +committed to every undertaking for the improvement of the book, and +because of the efforts of librarians and other booklovers there is +ground for belief that the books of the present decade will be better +than those of the last. + + + + +THE BOOK BEAUTIFUL + + +We who use books every day as tools of trade or sources of inspiration +are apt to overlook the fact that the book, on its material side, is an +art object. Not, indeed, that it ranks with the products of poetry, +painting, sculpture, and other arts of the first grade; but it has a +claim to our consideration on the level of the minor arts, along with +jewelry, pottery, tapestry, and metal work. Moreover, its intimate +association with literature, of which it is the visible setting, gives +it a charm that, while often only reflected, may also be contributory, +heightening the beauty that it enshrines. + +Using the word beauty for the result of artistic mastery, we may say +that in the other arts beauty is the controlling factor in price, but in +the book this is the case only exceptionally. As a consequence beautiful +books are more accessible for purchase or observation than any other +equally beautiful objects. For the price of a single very beautiful rug +one can obtain a small library of the choicest books. Except in the case +of certain masterpieces of the earliest printing, in which rarity is +joined to beauty, high prices for books have nothing to do with their +artistic quality. Even for incunabula one need pay only as many dollars +as for tapestries of the same grade one would have to pay thousands. In +book collecting, therefore, a shallow purse is not a bar to achievement, +and in our day of free libraries one may make good progress in the +knowledge and enjoyment of beautiful books without any expense at all. + +Public taste is probably as advanced in the appreciation of the book +beautiful as of any other branch of art, but it is active rather than +enlightened. This activity is a good sign, for it represents the first +stage in comprehension; the next is the consciousness that there is more +in the subject than had been realized; the third is appreciation. The +present chapter is addressed to those--and they are many--who are in the +second stage. The first piece of advice to those who seek acquaintance +with the book beautiful is: Surround yourself with books that the best +judges you know call beautiful; inspect them, handle them; cultivate +them as you would friends. It will not be long before most other books +begin to annoy you, though at first you cannot tell why. Then specific +differences one after another will stand out, until at last you come to +know something of the various elements of the book, their possibilities +of beauty or ugliness, and their relations one to another. No one should +feel ashamed if this process takes a long time--is indeed endless. +William Morris pleaded to having sinned in the days of ignorance, even +after he had begun to make books. So wide is the field and so many and +subtle are the possible combinations that all who set out to know books +must expect, like the late John Richard Green, to "die learning." But +the learning is so delightful and the company into which it brings us is +so agreeable that we have no cause to regret our lifelong +apprenticeship. + +The first of all the qualities of the book beautiful is fitness. It must +be adapted to the literature which it contains, otherwise it will +present a contradiction. Imagine a "Little Classic" Josephus or a folio +Keats. The literature must also be worthy of a beautiful setting, else +the book will involve an absurdity. Have we not all seen presentation +copies of government documents which gave us a shock when we passed from +the elegant outside to the commonplace inside? But the ideal book will +go beyond mere fitness; it will be both an interpretation of its +contents and an offering of homage to its worth. The beauty of the whole +involves perfect balance as well as beauty of the parts. No one must +take precedence of the rest, but there must be such a perfect harmony +that we shall think first of the total effect and only afterwards of the +separate elements that combine to produce it. This greatly extends our +problem, but also our delight in its happy solutions. + +The discerning reader has probably noticed that we have already smuggled +into our introduction the notion that the book beautiful is a printed +book; and, broadly speaking, so it must be at the present time. But we +should not forget that, while the printed book has charms and laws of +its own, the book was originally written by hand and in this form was +developed to a higher pitch of beauty than the printed book has ever +attained. As Ruskin says, "A well-written book is as much pleasanter and +more beautiful than a printed book as a picture is than an engraving." +Calligraphy and illumination are to-day, if not lost arts, at best but +faint echoes of their former greatness. They represent a field of +artistic effort in which many persons of real ability might attain far +greater distinction and emolument than in the overcrowded ordinary +fields of art. Printing itself would greatly benefit from a flourishing +development of original bookmaking, gaining just that stimulus on the +art side that it needs to counterbalance the pressure of commercialism. +At present, however, we shall commit no injustice if, while remembering +its more perfect original, we accept the printed book as the +representative of the book beautiful; but, as a matter of fact, most +that we shall have to say of it will apply with little change to the +manuscript book. + +A final point by way of preface is the relation of the book beautiful to +the well-made book. The two are not identical. A book may be legible, +strong, and durable, yet ill-proportioned and clumsy, ugly in every +detail. On the other hand, the book beautiful must be well made, else it +will not keep its beauty. The point where the two demands tend most to +conflict is at the hinge of the cover, where strength calls for +thickness of leather and beauty for thinness. The skill of the good +binder is shown in harmonizing these demands when he shaves the under +side of the leather for the joint. Let us now take up the elements of +the book one by one and consider their relations to beauty. + +To one who never had seen a book before it would seem, as it stands on +the shelf or lies on the table, a curious rectangular block; and such it +is in its origin, being derived from the Roman codex, which was a block +of wood split into thin layers. When closed, therefore, the book must +have the seeming solidity of a block; but open it and a totally new +character appears. It is now a bundle of thin leaves, and its beauty no +longer consists in its solidity and squareness, but in the opposite +qualities of easy and complete opening, and flowing curves. This inner +contradiction, so far from making the book a compromise and a failure, +is one of the greatest sources of its charm, for each condition must be +met as if the other did not exist, and when both are so met, we derive +the same satisfaction as from any other combination of strength and +grace, such as Schiller celebrates in his "Song of the Bell." + +The book therefore consists of a stiff cover joined by a flexible +back--in the book beautiful a tight back--and inclosing highly flexible +leaves. The substance of the board is not visible, being covered with +an ornamental material, either cloth or leather, but it should be strong +and tough and in thickness proportioned to the size of the volume. In +very recent years we have available for book coverings really beautiful +cloths, which are also more durable than all but the best leathers; but +we have a right to claim for the book beautiful a covering of leather, +and full leather, not merely a back and hinges. We have a wide range of +beauty in leathers, from the old ivory of parchment--when it has had a +few centuries in which to ripen its color--to the sensuous richness of +calf and the splendor of crushed levant. The nature of the book must +decide, if the choice is yet to be made. But, when the book has been +covered with appropriate leather so deftly that the leather seems "grown +around the board," and has been lettered on the back--a necessary +addition giving a touch of ornament--we are brought up against the hard +fact that, unless the decorator is very skillful indeed--a true artist +as well as a deft workman--he cannot add another touch to the book +without lessening its beauty. The least obtrusive addition will be blind +tooling, or, as in so many old books, stamping, which may emphasize the +depth of color in the leather. The next step in the direction of +ornament is gilding, the next inlaying. In the older books we find metal +clasps and corners, which have great decorative possibilities; but +these, like precious stones, have disappeared from book ornamentation in +modern times before the combined inroad of the democratic and the +classic spirit. + +Having once turned back the cover, our interest soon forsakes it for the +pages inclosed by it. The first of these is the page opposite the inside +of the cover; obviously it should be of the same or, at least, of a +similar material to the body of the book. But the inside of the cover is +open to two treatments; it may bear the material either of the outer +covering or of the pages within. So it may display, for instance, a +beautiful panel of leather--doublure--or it may share with the next page +a decorative lining paper; but that next page should never be of +leather, for it is the first page of the book. + +As regards book papers, we are to-day in a more fortunate position than +we were even a few years ago; for we now can obtain, and at no excessive +cost, papers as durable as those employed by the earliest printers. It +is needless to say that these are relatively rough papers. They +represent one esthetic advance in papermaking since the earliest days in +that they are not all dead white. Some of the books of the first age of +printing still present to the eye very nearly the blackest black on the +whitest white. But, while this effect is strong and brilliant, it is not +the most pleasing. The result most agreeable to the eye still demands +black or possibly a dark blue ink, but the white of the paper should be +softened. Whether we should have made this discovery of our own wit no +one can tell; but it was revealed to us by the darkening of most papers +under the touch of time. Shakespeare forebodes this yellowing of his +pages; but what was then thought of as a misfortune has since been +accepted as an element of beauty, and now book papers are regularly made +"antique" as well as "white." Even white does not please us unless it +inclines to creamy yellow rather than to blue. But here, as everywhere, +it is easy to overstep the bounds of moderation and turn excess into a +defect. The paper of the book beautiful will not attract attention; we +shall not see it until our second look at the page. The paper must not +be too thick for the size of the book, else the volume will not open +well, and its pages, instead of having a flowing character, will be +stiff and hard. + +The sewing of the book is not really in evidence, except indirectly. +Upon the sewing and gluing, after the paper, depends the flexibility of +the book; but the sewing in most early books shows in the raised bands +across the back, which are due to the primitive and preferable stitch. +It may also show in some early and much modern work in saw-marks at the +inner fold when the book is spread wide open; but no such book can +figure as a book beautiful. The head band is in primitive books a part +of the sewing, though in all modern books, except those that represent a +revival of medieval methods, it is something bought by the yard and +stuck in without any structural connection with the rest of the book. + +It is the page and not the cover that controls the proportions of the +book, as the living nautilus controls its inclosing shell. The range in +the size of books is very great--from the "fly's-eye Dante" to +"Audubon's Birds"--but the range in proportion within the limits of +beauty is astonishingly small, a difference in the relation of the width +of the page to its height between about sixty and seventy-five per cent. +If the width is diminished to nearer one-half the height, the page +becomes too narrow for beauty, besides making books of moderate size too +narrow to open well. On the other hand, if the width is much more than +three-quarters of the height, the page offends by looking too square. In +the so-called "printer's oblong," formed by taking twice the width for +the diagonal, the width is just under fifty-eight per cent of the +height, and this is the limit of stately slenderness in a volume. As we +go much over sixty per cent, the book loses in grace until we approach +seventy-five per cent, when a new quality appears, which characterizes +the quarto, not so much beauty, perhaps, except in small sizes, as a +certain attractiveness, like that of a freight boat, which sets off the +finer lines of its more elegant associates. A really square book would +be a triumph of ugliness. Oblong books also rule themselves out of our +category. A book has still a third element in its proportions, +thickness. A very thin book may be beautiful, but a book so thick as to +be chunky or squat is as lacking in elegance as the words we apply to +it. To err on the side of thickness is easy; to err on the side of +thinness is hard, since even a broadside may be a thing of beauty. + +We now come to the type-page, of which the paper is only the carrier and +framework. This should have, as nearly as possible, the proportion of +the paper--really it is the type that should control the paper--and the +two should obviously belong together. The margins need not be extremely +large for beauty; an amount of surface equal to that occupied by the +type is ample. There was once a craze for broad margins and even for +"large-paper" copies, in which the type was lost in an expanse of +margin; but book designers have come to realize that the proportion of +white to black on a page can as easily be too great as too small. Far +more important to the beauty of a page than the extent of the margin are +its proportions. The eye demands that the upper margin of a printed page +or a framed engraving shall be narrower than the lower, but here the +kinship of page to picture ceases. The picture is seen alone, but the +printed page is one of a pair and makes with its mate a double diagram. +This consists of two panels of black set between two outer columns of +white and separated by a column of white. Now if the outer and inner +margins of a page are equal, the inner column of the complete figure +will be twice as wide as the outer. The inner margin of the page should +therefore be half (or, to allow for the sewing and the curve of the +leaf, a little more than half) the width of the outer. Then, when we +open the book, we shall see three columns of equal width. The type and +paper pages, being of the same shape, should as a rule be set on a +common diagonal from the inner upper corner to the outer lower corner. +This arrangement will give the same proportion between the top and +bottom margins as was assigned to the inner and outer. It is by +attention to this detail that one of the greatest charms in the design +of the book may be attained. + +We saw that the shape of the book is a rectangle, and this would +naturally be so if there were no other reason for it than because the +smallest factor of the book, the type, is in the cross-section of its +body a rectangle. The printed page is really built up of tiny invisible +rectangles, which thus determine the shape of the paper page and of the +cover. A page may be beautiful from its paper, its proportions, its +color effects, even if it is not legible; but the book beautiful, really +to satisfy us, must neither strain the eye with too small type nor +offend it with fantastic departures from the normal. The size of the +type must not be out of proportion to that of the page or the column; +for two or more columns are not barred from the book beautiful. The +letters must be beautiful individually and beautiful in combination. It +has been remarked that while roman capitals are superb in combination, +black-letter capitals are incapable of team play, being, when grouped, +neither legible nor beautiful. There has been a recent movement in the +direction of legibility that has militated against beauty of type, and +that is the enlarging of the body of the ordinary lowercase letters at +the expense of its limbs, the ascenders and descenders, especially the +latter. The eye takes little account of descenders in reading, because +it runs along a line just below the tops of the ordinary letters, about +at the bar of the small e; nevertheless, to one who has learned to +appreciate beauty in type design there is something distressing in the +atrophied or distorted body of the g in so many modern types and the +stunted p's and q's--which the designer clearly did not mind! The +ascenders sometimes fare nearly as badly. Now types of this compressed +character really call for leading, or separation of the lines; and when +this has been done, the blank spaces thus created might better have been +occupied by the tops and bottoms of unleaded lines containing letters of +normal length and height. Too much leading, like too wide margins, +dazzles and offends the eye with its excess of white. The typesetting +machines have also militated against beauty by requiring that every +letter shall stand within the space of its own feet or shoulders. Thus +the lowercase f and y and the uppercase Q are shorn of their due +proportions. These are points that most readers do not notice, but they +are essential, for the type of the book beautiful must not be deformed +by expediency. On the other hand, it need not be unusual; if it is, it +must be exceptionally fine to pass muster at all. The two extremes of +standard roman type, Caslon and Bodoni, are handsome enough for any book +of prose. One may go farther in either direction, but at one's risk. For +poetry, Cloister Oldstyle offers a safe norm, from which any wide +departure must have a correspondingly strong artistic warrant. All these +three types are beautiful, in their letters themselves, and in the +combinations of their letters into lines, paragraphs, and pages. +Beautiful typography is the very foundation of the book beautiful. + +But beautiful typography involves other elements than the cut of the +type itself. The proofreading must be trained and consistent, standing +for much more than the mere correction of errors. The presswork must be +strong and even. The justification must be individual for each line, and +not according to a fixed scale as in machine setting; even when we hold +the page upside down, we must not be able to detect any streamlets of +white slanting across the page. Moreover, if the page is leaded, the +spacing must be wider in proportion, so that the color picture of the +rectangle of type shall be even and not form a zebra of black and white +stripes. It is hardly necessary to say that the registration must be +true, so that the lines of the two pages on the same leaf shall show +accurately back to back when one holds the page to the light. Minor +elements of the page may contribute beauty or ugliness according to +their handling: the headline and page number, their character and +position; notes marginal or indented, footnotes; chapter headings and +initials; catch-words; borders, head and tail pieces, vignettes, +ornamental rules. Even the spacing of initials is a task for the skilled +craftsman. Some printers go so far as to miter or shave the type-body of +initials to make them, when printed, seem to cling more closely to the +following text. Indenting, above all in poetry, is a feature strongly +affecting the beauty of the page. Not too many words may be divided +between lines; otherwise the line endings will bristle with hyphens. A +paragraph should not end at the bottom of a page nor begin too near it, +neither should a final page contain too little nor be completely full. +Minor parts of the book, the half-title, the dedication page, the table +of contents, the preface, the index, present so many opportunities to +make or mar the whole. Especially is this true of the title-page. This +the earliest books did not have, and many a modern printer, confronted +with a piece of refractory title copy, must have sighed for the good old +days of the colophon. Whole books have been written on the title-page; +it must suffice here to say that each represents a new problem, a +triumphant solution of which gives the booklover as much pleasure to +contemplate as any other single triumph of the volume. + +But what of color--splendid initials in red, blue, or green, rubricated +headings, lines, or paragraphs? It is all a question of propriety, +literary and artistic. The same principle holds as in decoration of +binding. A beautiful black and white page is so beautiful that he who +would improve it by color must be sure of his touch. The beauty of the +result and never the beauty of the means by itself must be the test. + +But books are not always composed of text alone. We need not consider +diagrams, which hardly concern the book beautiful, except to say that, +being composed of lines, they are often really more decorative than +illustrations fondly supposed to be artistic. The fact that an engraving +is beautiful is no proof that it will contribute beauty to a book; it +may only make an esthetic mess of the text and itself. As types are +composed of firm black lines, only fairly strong black-line engravings +have any artistic right in the book. This dictum, however, would rule +out so many pictures enjoyed by the reader that he may well plead for a +less sweeping ban; so, as a concession to weakness, we may allow +white-line engravings and half-tones if they are printed apart from the +text and separated from it, either by being placed at the end of the +book or by having a sheet of opaque paper dividing each from the text. +In this case the legend of the picture should face it so that the reader +will have no occasion to look beyond the two pages when he has them +before him. The printers of the sixteenth century, especially the Dutch, +did not hesitate to send their pages through two presses, one the +typographic press, and the other the roller press for copper-plate +engravings. The results give us perhaps the best example that we have of +things beautiful in themselves but unlovely in combination. As in the +use of other ornamental features, there are no bounds to the use of +illustration except that of fitness. + +We have spoken of margins from the point of view of the page; from that +of the closed book they appear as edges, and here they present several +problems in the design of the book beautiful. If the book is designed +correctly from the beginning, the margins will be of just the right +width and the edges cannot be trimmed without making them too narrow. +Besides, the untrimmed edges are witnesses to the integrity of the book; +if any exception may be made, it will be in the case of the top margin, +which may be gilded both for beauty and to make easy the removal of +dust. But the top should be rather shaved than trimmed, so that the +margin may not be visibly reduced. The gilding of all the edges, or +"full gilt," is hardly appropriate to the book beautiful, though it may +be allowed in devotional books, especially those in limp binding, and +its effect may there be heightened by laying the gilt on red or some +other color. Edges may be goffered, that is, decorated with incised or +burnt lines, though the result, like tattooing, is more curious than +ornamental. The edges may even be made to receive pictures, but here +again the effect smacks of the barbaric. + +We have now gone over our subject in the large. To pursue it with all +possible degrees of minuteness would require volumes. William Morris, +for instance, discusses the proper shape for the dot of the i; and even +the size of the dot and its place above the letter are matters on which +men hold warring opinions. We have not even raised the question of laid +or wove paper, nor of the intermixture of different series or sizes of +types. In short, every phase of the subject bristles with moot points, +the settlement of one of which in a given way may determine the +settlement of a score of others. + +But what is the use to the public of this knowledge and enjoyment of +ours? Is it not after all a fruitless piece of self-indulgence? Surely, +if bookmaking is one of the minor arts, then the private knowledge and +enjoyment of its products is an element in the culture of the community. +But it is more than that; it is both a pledge and a stimulus to +excellence in future production. Artists in all fields are popularly +stigmatized as a testy lot--_irritabile genus_--but their techiness does +not necessarily mean opposition to criticism, but only to uninformed and +unappreciative criticism, especially if it be cocksure and blatant. +There is nothing that the true artist craves so much--not even +praise--as understanding of his work and the welcome that awaits his +work in hand from the lips of "those who know." Thus those who +appreciate and welcome the book beautiful, by their encouragement help +to make it more beautiful, and so by head and heart, if not by hand, +they share in the artist's creative effort. Also, by thus promoting +beauty in books, they discourage ugliness in books, narrowing the public +that will accept ugly books and lessening the degree of ugliness that +even this public will endure. Finally, it seems no mere fancy to hold +that by creating the book beautiful as the setting of the noblest +literature, we are rendering that literature itself a service in the +eyes of others through the costly tribute that we pay to the worth of +the jewel itself. + + + + +THE READER'S HIGH PRIVILEGE + + +In De Morgan's winsome story, "Alice for Short," the heroine of the +earlier portion, Miss Peggy Heath, is made to feel what it would mean to +her to be deprived of a certain companion, and thus realizes his +importance to her life. + +It is this test of elimination that I shall ask you to apply to reading. +Imagine yourselves deprived of the privilege, as many another has been +by loss of sight or illness or poverty or removal from book centers. I +have in mind such an instance. The late Professor William Mathews was +injured by a fall when he was ninety years old, and until the end of his +life, about a year later, was confined to his bed. You may know him as +the author of various books of essays: "Getting on in the World," "Great +Conversers," "Hours with Men and Books," "Words, their Use and Abuse," +and other volumes that testify a marvelous range of acquaintance with +literature. He wrote to a friend that he was brightening his hours of +loneliness by repeating to himself passages of poetry and prose that he +had learned by heart in his earlier days. Few of us can ever have such +stores of memory to draw upon as his, but how happy we should be if +under such circumstances we might be able to turn to a like source of +consolation. Yet we have a much more famous instance of a great scholar +cut off from the privilege of reading. Milton has given us in his famous +invocation to Light, with which he opens the third book of "Paradise +Lost," a picture of his own deprivation, presented with a universal +blank in place of Nature's fair book of knowledge. The passage is too +long to quote here, but let the reader turn to it, if only to refresh +his memory. + +This shows the privilege that we are now enjoying, and it may perhaps be +sufficient to take our lesson at this point; but since it is always +pleasanter to consider gain rather than loss, suppose we turn the +subject around and imagine how it would seem if, after having been +deprived all our lives of the privilege of reading, we suddenly had it +thrust upon us. We should now find ourselves able to enjoy those +wonderful works of literature which we had always been hearing about +from the lips of others, but had never been able to know directly. How +we should revel in the prospect before us! At last to be able to read +the "Iliad"! To follow the fortunes of wandering Ulysses! To accompany +Dante in his mystical journey through the three worlds! To dare with +Macbeth and to doubt with Hamlet! Our trouble would be that we should +not know which to select first. We should wish we had the eyes of an +insect that we might read them all at once. + +We have a familiar expression in taking leave of our friends, "Be good +to yourself!" which, it will be seen, is the modern man's translation of +the old "farewell," with the truly modern implication that the question +of his faring well will depend upon himself. But can we call a man good +to himself who does not avail himself of advantages that are freely open +to him and that others about him are embracing? The great men of the +past have been such because to their natural abilities they added an +acquaintance with the thought of the great men who preceded them. The +same is true of the men whom we are glad to honor among our +contemporaries. We may feel very sure that we are not heaven-descended +geniuses, or even possessed of unusual talent; and yet, if we do not +give ourselves the advantages that all those had who have won +distinction, we have certainly not given ourselves a fair chance to show +what is in us. Therefore, as a duty to ourselves, we must make the +acquaintance of the books that the common judgment of the world has +pronounced to be of the most value. They must become more than names to +us. We may not indeed find in all of them food for our own spirits, but +it is a part of our business in seeking a knowledge of mankind to know +the thoughts and thought-forms that men have found of most worth. It is +not to be supposed that we shall prize all these books equally; some of +them will never be more to us than great monuments which, for some +reason peculiar to our temperaments, do not appeal to us; but among +their number we shall find some that will throw open to our souls the +very gates of heaven--books that will raise our natures forevermore to a +higher power, as if from two-dimensional Flatland creatures we had +suddenly been advanced to three dimensions, or, in our own humdrum world +of length, breadth, and thickness, we had received the liberty of the +mysterious fourth dimension. + +Let us now take a brief inventory of our heritage. We can glance at only +the most precious of these treasures, the crown jewels of the world's +literature, which are all ours, whether we choose to wear them or not. +But first let me make it plain that I am not assuming that all the great +monuments of human genius are literary. I am not forgetful of the fact +that literature is only one of the fine arts, that the Strassburg +Cathedral, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Rembrandt's School of Anatomy, +Michelangelo's Moses are all products of man's creative genius, records +of the life of God in the soul of man. But I do insist that literature +is the most inclusive and the most definite of all the arts, and that +therefore books unlock to us a vaster world than obeys the spell of any +other art. One man's soul may attain its transfiguration through +architecture or music or painting or sculpture as another does through +poetry; the great thing is to attain the transfiguration; and let us be +thankful for the many ways in which God fulfills himself to man. I am +not trying to make out a case for literature, but literature is my +subject, and what I say of it must be taken as equally friendly to all +the other great forms of human expression and often as equally +applicable to them. + +We will not talk of a five-foot or a three-foot shelf, or one of any +other exact dimension, though I suspect that no very long range of space +would be required to hold all the supremely great books for whose +contents we should have room in our souls. The limitation will prove to +be in us rather than in the material of literature. The Bible, while +containing supremely great literature, has still higher claims, and for +the present discussion may be left to its special advocates. But +meanwhile our treasures are waiting for their inventory. + +Literature for people of our race begins with Homer and is confined to +Europe and English America. This means in a very true sense that all the +literature which concerns us is modern, for the Greeks are the first and +perhaps the greatest of the moderns. They present us as their first +contribution the works that go under the name of Homer, and we need not +disturb ourselves now with the question whether the "Iliad" and the +"Odyssey" were both written by the same man, or even each written by a +single hand. The point is that we have in them an imperishable picture +of the life of a vanished world. Each is an epic of the natural man, the +one national, the other personal. In the "Iliad" we are plunged into +the thickening close of the ten years' war between the Greeks and +Trojans, during which the beautiful cause of all the trouble, Helen, +retains all her youthful bloom and, in fact, nobody seems to grow any +older. We have a crowded stage with many episodes and interests. In the +"Odyssey" we trace the fortunes of one man, Ulysses, during his return +from the war, which occupies him ten years, so that he is away from +home, as Rip Van Winkle was, twenty years; but, instead of finding +everybody grown old or dead, as Irving's hero did, he finds his wife +still young and attractive and beset by numerous suitors. We are very +glad to have this so, because we are all children at heart and want just +such an ending. The telling of these stories, while simple, is on a +lofty plane; the gods themselves take part in the passions of the +contestants and even in the warfare. The poet, no doubt, meant this for +what it professes to be; but I cannot help seeing in the embroiling of +Olympus a perhaps unrealized tribute of the poet to the greatness of the +human soul in the scale of the universe, a suggestion that moral and +spiritual values and powers outweigh the stars in their courses. + +Great as are the works of Homer, we are not to suppose them the only +masterpieces in Greek literature. Certainly the three great dramatists +cannot be omitted, all so great, yet so unlike. These three, together +with two pastoral poets, one lyric poet, and the greatest of prose +poets, are vividly pictured by Mrs. Browning in the glowing stanzas of +her "Wine of Cyprus." + + Oh, our AEschylus, the thunderous! + How he drove the bolted breath + Through the cloud, to wedge the ponderous + In the gnarled oak beneath. + Oh, our Sophocles, the royal, + Who was born to monarch's place, + And who made the whole world loyal, + Less by kingly power than grace. + Our Euripides, the human, + With his droppings of warm tears, + And his touches of things common + Till they rose to touch the spheres! + Our Theocritus, our Bion, + And our Pindar's shining goals!-- + These were cup-bearers undying + Of the wine that's meant for souls. + And my Plato, the divine one, + If men know the gods aright + By their motions as they shine on + With a glorious trail of light!-- + +It would not be surprising if some who read these lines should find more +food for mind and soul in Plato than in any other of the Greek writers. +Certainly those works of Plato and his contemporary, Xenophon, that +relate to the life, teachings, and death of Socrates are contributions +to a yet uncollected Bible of humanity, one more inclusive than that of +Jew or Christian. + +It is one of the great misfortunes of Roman literature that the works of +its chief writers are used as textbooks for schools, a misfortune shared +to some extent by the Greek. Yet Homer and Xenophon, Vergil and Cicero, +did not write for children or callow youth. They belong to Longfellow's + + grand old masters, + Whose mighty thoughts suggest + Life's endless toil and endeavor, + +and their writings have no relation to adolescence. Yet it is to be +feared that most people who have read their works remember them as seen +through the cloudy medium of their own immaturity. Byron speaks of +reading and hating Horace as a schoolboy, but no normal person can hate +Horace any more than he can hate Washington Irving. It is possible, +however, that pupils who have to read Irving's "Sketch Book" with the +fear of a college entrance examination before their minds may have no +affection even for him. So some of us may have something to unlearn in +our reading of Vergil and Horace, for we must approach their works as +strong meat for mature minds. Vergil's theme is nothing less than the +glorification of the Roman state through its divinely ordered and heroic +founding. School children seldom read more than the six books of the +"Aeneid" required for college; but the other six, though of much less +varied interest, are necessary for the appreciation of the poem. The +whole is a work that no one can afford to pass over in his search for +the burning words that keep alive the thought of other ages. Very +different in theme and manner is the poetry of Horace. He is the most +modern of all the men of old, far more modern than our own Puritan +ancestors. His mixture of grace and shrewdness, poetic charm and worldly +wisdom, we find nowhere else. The bulk of his work is not large, and +this fact, as in the case of Gray and Keats and Poe, is rather in his +favor, because the reader can easily become familiar with it all, though +then he will sigh for more. Horace wears well; the older we grow the +better we like him. He has love songs for youth, political poems for +maturity, and satires for old age. After we have lived with him for half +a century he becomes more real to us than most of our acquaintances in +the flesh. Roman literature is not without other great names to attract +the student; but these two must not be overlooked by the most general or +the most selective reader. + +With Vergil the world always associates the still greater figure of one +who was proud to call him master--that of Dante. More than is true of +almost any other writer, his work is a compendium of the life of his +time. The "Divine Comedy" is first of all poetry, and poetry of the +loftiest order; but it is also an embodiment of the learning, the +philosophy, and the theology of his age. It mirrors at once the +greatness and the limitations of the medieval mind. Dante is not modern +in the sense that Horace is, though he is thrice as near to us in time. +Leigh Hunt said that his great poem ought to be called an infernal +tragedy; but that is true only of the Inferno; the spiritual atmosphere +clears as we follow his footsteps through the Purgatorio and the +Paradiso. Of all the masterpieces of human genius the "Divine Comedy" is +perhaps the one that asks the most self-surrender of the modern reader +and--shall I add?--that repays it most richly. Longfellow's marvelous +sonnet sequence, written while he was translating Dante, portrays at +once the spirit in which we should approach the reading of the "Divine +Comedy" and the wonders that we shall find there. It is a book that we +never can outgrow. To know it is to be made a citizen of the moral +universe. + +In 1616, within ten days of each other, there passed from earth two men, +each the writer first thought of when his country's literature is +mentioned, and one of them the first writer in the world's literature. +Cervantes and Shakespeare very likely died in ignorance of each other's +work. Stoddard has depicted them in Paradise, + + Where sweet Cervantes walks, + A smile on his grave face ... + Where, little seen but light, + The only Shakespeare is. + +There is no injustice in saying that Shakespeare's nature included that +of Cervantes. Not so inclusive was Dante's; what his nature most lacked +we find in the author of "Don Quixote." Yet personally they are equally +heroic figures, and, one an exile and the other a slave, both drained to +the dregs the cup of human suffering. Cervantes has several great +advantages over most of the world's classic writers: his masterpiece is +a work of humor; it is written in a simple and graceful style, at once +easy and winning; and it is written in prose, which, after all, does not +make so severe a cultural demand on the reader as poetry. For these very +reasons it cannot aspire to the highest rank, but what it loses in fame +it makes up in popularity. Though in a few passages it is not parlor +reading, "Don Quixote" is one of the cleanest of all the world's great +books. It is not merely technically clean, but clean-minded. It has the +form of a satire on chivalry, but its meaning goes much deeper. It is +really a satire on a more persistent weakness of the Spanish character, +visionary unrealism. We have this quality held up to ridicule in the +learned man and the ignorant man, for Sancho Panza is as much of an +unrealist as his master, only he is a groveling visionary while Don +Quixote is a soaring one. This, too, is a book that one does not +outgrow, but finds it a perpetually adequate commentary on his own +widening experience of men and their motives. + +In regard to the supreme figure in literature, the least thing that we +can do is to read him, and, having read him, to read him again and to +keep his volumes next to our hands. We shall hardly read Shakespeare +without having the question of commentators come up; and surely +Shakespeare deserves all the attention that we can bestow upon him. But +the general reader should clearly distinguish between the two kinds of +commentary that have appeared regarding Shakespeare, the one having to +do with his text, his historical accuracy, and his use of words, the +other with his meaning. In Hudson's edition these two kinds of notes are +kept separate. Surely it is the thought of Shakespeare that we want, and +not the pedantry of minute scholarship regarding his material, useful as +that is in its place. The reader who has mastered Hudson's +introductions and has read Dowden's "Shakspere: His Mind and Art" or +Brandes's "Critical Study" will have all that he will ordinarily need in +the way of guidance. But remember that reading about Shakespeare is not +reading Shakespeare; _that_ means, for the time at least, self-surrender +to Shakespeare's leading. Shakespeare is perhaps the supreme example of +a man who found the world interesting. He may not be sympathetic with +evil, but he finds it so interesting that he makes us, for the time +being, take a fratricidal usurper like Hamlet's uncle, or a gross, +sponging braggart like Falstaff, at his own estimate. Shakespeare is +never shocked at anything that happens in the world; he knows the world +too well for that. He offends the Puritan in us by his indifference; he +is therefore probably the best kind of reading for Puritans. Shakespeare +is romantic in his literary methods, but in his portrayal of character +he is an unsurpassed realist. If life were all thought and achievement, +Shakespeare would be the last word in literature; but there is another +side, the side which the Puritan represents, with which Shakespeare is +but imperfectly sympathetic. His message accordingly needs to be +supplemented; and it is interesting that his great successor, the man +who still stands next to him in our literature, supplies that missing +strain. If we could take but one book with us into banishment, it would +be Shakespeare--thus proving Shakespeare's supremacy by Miss Peggy +Heath's principle of elimination; but if we could take two, that second, +I am frank to confess, would for me be Milton. + +It is Milton's literary glory that he appeared in the second generation +following Spenser and Shakespeare--he was born in Shakespeare's +lifetime--and carried off the palm, which he still keeps, for the +greatest English poem. In spiritual kinship he is much nearer to Spenser +than to Shakespeare. Shakespeare hides behind his pages; his +personality makes no clear or at least ready impression upon us; but the +colossal personality of Milton towers above all his works. He is Milton, +the superman, and communion with him for the moment lifts us to +something like his own level. In this personal inspiration lies Milton's +greatest service to his readers. Over and above the poetic delights, of +which he is a master unsurpassed, is the inspiration that comes from the +man behind the poetry; or, to express the same thought in other words, +above the organ music of his verse sounds clear and far the trumpet call +of personality. Therefore Milton is destined to inspire generations by +which his theology and his justification of the ways of God to man are +swept into his own limbo of myth and delusion. Fortunately Milton's +verse is not appallingly great in amount. If we cannot hope to know it +all by heart, as Macaulay did, we can at least know it well enough to +recognize any quotation from it, and rich will be the furnishing of our +minds when we have made this true. + +In our beadroll of the world's greatest writers I shall mention only one +more, Goethe. He is the modern man who touched life most widely, +penetratingly, and sanely. His long life came down so near to ours that +many of us have had friends who were in childhood or infancy his +contemporaries. It is fair to say that since his death the world has +moved much nearer to his mental attitude than it stood in his lifetime, +and one of the agencies that have wrought the change is the living force +of his own works, which led and still lead the thought of men. Goethe +may be called the ideal creative critic of life. He held up a mirror, +not to Nature, as Shakespeare did, but to society; and society can get +away from the image which it sees reflected there only by growing away +from it. + +Here let us close our list, not because there are no other great writers +to choose from, but because it is long enough for our present purposes, +and because, from this point on, every addition is open to challenge. I +have intentionally pitched my counsel high; some of my readers may feel +like calling it a counsel of perfection; but according to my way of +thinking, no writer is too good for any of us to read. Moreover, I +honestly think the list interesting. It is not chiefly reading for +recreation, but for soul expansion, and it means intellectual effort. +Unless we wrestle with an author as Jacob did with the angel, we shall +not receive the highest blessing. But some one may plead that, while he +does not wish to read wholly for amusement, he is not in a condition, +either from training or circumstances, to engage in mental athletics. He +cannot apply himself to an author as he recognizes that the greatest +writers deserve; but he is willing to read with attention, and he should +like to feel that what he is reading is good literature. This is a +reasonable request, and, out of countless possible responses, I will +make one that I hope may prove both profitable and attractive. + +Let us set out with the recognition of the fact that systematic reading +is far more profitable than desultory reading, even on the same literary +level. One excellent way to achieve system is to read by authors--to +make the author a study, in his writings and his life. To read +Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables," for instance, is to drink from +a fountain of the purest spiritual delight; but we gain an additional +delight, even if of a lower kind, when we know something of Hawthorne's +life and his relations to the old town of Salem. In many cases it is +necessary to know the author's life in order really to understand his +book. Now I will suggest the reading, not merely of separate authors, +but of a group. There are many such, of varying degrees of greatness: +the Elizabethan group, the Lake poets, the Byron-Shelley-Keats group, +the mid-nineteenth-century British novelists, to go no further than +writers in English. But I am going to ask your interest in the New +England group of authors who were writing fifty years ago. They comprise +the well-known names of Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, +Holmes, Thoreau, and Lowell. Each of these delightful writers deserves +to be studied for his own sake, but, if we take them as a group, we +shall gain still more in understanding and profit. How shall we approach +the reading of them? They obviously cannot all be read at once; so let +us begin with any one, say Hawthorne, read his life in Mrs. Field's +brief Beacon Biography, dipping at the same time into his "Note-Books," +and then read some of his short stories and the "Scarlet Letter." His +biography will already have brought us into contact with most of the +other names, of Longfellow, his college classmate, and of Emerson and +Thoreau, his neighbors at Concord. We may read the Beacon Biography of +Longfellow, but Higginson's would be better, as fuller and more +adequate. We may first read Longfellow's prose works, "Outre-Mer" and +"Hyperion," and then his "Voices of the Night," besides following him in +his "Life, with Extracts from his Journal and Correspondence," edited by +his brother, which is one of the most delightful of books. We shall do +well to read each author's writings in chronological succession; so they +will stand in orderly relation with his life. Similarly we may take up +Emerson first in Mr. Sanborn's Beacon Biography, or in Dr. Holmes's +larger but still handy volume, and then we can apply ourselves with +better understanding to Emerson's essays and poems. I particularly +mention his poems, for I believe that Emerson will come to be rated +higher as a poet than he has yet been. His poetry at its best is hardly +below anyone's best; the only trouble is that there is so little of it; +but ultimately all writers are judged by their best. In the same way we +may take up all the writers of the group, learning something of the life +of each and reading some of his works before passing on to another. Let +me especially call your attention to the writings of Thoreau, who is +less known to his countrymen than any of the others. He is a writer of +great originality and freshness of view. He, too, wrote some exquisite +poetry, worthy of any name in literature; but you will have to look for +it among other verse that has more originality than charm. Obviously +what I have recommended is not the work of one year's leisure, but the +protracted delight of many years: for these books are not to be hurried +over to get to the end of the chapter or to see how they are coming out; +neither are they material for skipping. They are to be read attentively +and reread; and if one or another fails to make a strong appeal to some +reader, surely he cannot fail to find in most of them a source of lofty +pleasure and spiritual enrichment. One fruit that we may expect from +such reading is that we shall find ourselves drawn nearer to the supreme +masters and shall end by surrendering ourselves to them. To know our New +England group is not indeed to climb the Alps of literature, but it is +at least to climb its White Mountains. Every gain will be a fresh +incitement, and those who at the start join the literary Appalachian +Club may be looked for some day in the ranks of the Alpinists. + +A word on the reading of contemporary writers; for even our second list +did not bring us down to our own time. We shall, of course, read our +contemporaries, and we have a right to, so long as we do not give them +the time and attention that clearly belong to their betters. The truth +is that contemporaries--unless they are contemporary poets--have a quite +unfair advantage over their elders, our own in time and place being so +much more attractive to us than anything more remote. Still, our +contemporaries have a claim upon us--even, I am rash enough to assert, +our contemporary poets--for they have a message that their predecessors +cannot give us; it may not be the most important message for us, but it +is a message of value, as we shall see if we return to De Morgan and his +novels. These remarkable books we cannot miss without losing something +that makes our own day fine and precious among earth's generations. But +in this respect they are literally chosen from ten thousand, for we need +constantly the caution that the near carries with it an appearance of +importance that is an illusion; of this truth our periodical literature, +from the newspaper up, is the illustrious example, and the lesson is all +summed up in the one phrase, "back number." Let us be careful that in +heeding contemporary voices we are not storing our minds with the +contents of "back numbers." True literature as we have seen, never +becomes out of date; Homer keeps up with the telegraph. + +I have but one final word, which has been provided for me by Charles +Lamb, who says in his inimitable fashion: "I own that I am disposed to +say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides +my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a +moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have +we none for books, those spiritual repasts--a grace before Milton--a +grace before Shakespeare--a devotional exercise proper to be said before +reading the Fairy Queen?" This is the spirit of a joyous but devoutly +grateful expectance, in which I would have myself approach the reading +of a great book. The gratitude I surely owe the author, for there is no +great book but has come like refined gold out of the furnace fire. I owe +it also to the Providence which has granted me this lofty privilege. +Moreover, it is only in the humility born of such an attitude that I can +make a complete approach to my author and gain that uplift and +enrichment of the soul, which--and not pastime nor pleasure--is the true +end, as it should be the aim of reading. + + + + +THE BACKGROUND OF THE BOOK + + +One of the greatest contributions that modern investigation has made to +human knowledge is background. It was once thought a remarkable +achievement to uncover the historic background of modern institutions, +and this was all that, until lately, scholarship attempted. Dr. Samuel +Johnson confidently remarked that we know no more about ancient Britain +than the old writers have told us, nor can we ever know any more than +this. Edward Clodd reminds us that at the very time when the great +oracle voiced this assertion discoveries had already been made in +England that, when interpreted as they have been since, were to make the +landing of Caesar seem, by comparison, a contemporary occurrence. Now +this inconceivably remote prehistoric era furnishes not merely +arrowheads and stone chisels and burial mounds, but also other objects +that are the background of that "picture of time" of which the book of +to-day is the foreground. + +Very properly these are objects of art, and they afford the earliest +illustrations in histories of art as they do in histories of the book. +Thus the printer who questions what art has to do with his business +stamps himself as two hundred thousand years behind the times. They are +pictures, and the book of to-day has descended as directly from them as +the printer of to-day has descended from the man who made them. They +are, moreover, in some instances, works of very high art. The picture of +the mammoth, scratched on a fragment of the mammoth's tusk, is a piece +of drawing so skillful that only the greatest living masters can equal +it. Not even Rembrandt's drawing of the elephant, which Dr. Holmes +celebrates in one of his poems, is more expressive or wrought with more +economy of effort. In the same district of southwestern France, +Dordogne, that yielded the drawings are found long cave galleries of +paintings representing the creatures of that period, all executed with +great spirit and ability. But what are the steps in the descent from +these ancient pictures to the printed book? + +Primitive man had one more string to his conversational bow than most +civilized people have, namely, sign language. But gesture and speech +alike prevail but little against space and time. Each is possible only +at short range, and each dies on the eye or ear that receives it. +Pictures may be carried to any distance and may be preserved for any +length of time. They were probably made first in response to an instinct +rather for art than for the communication of ideas; but their great +advantage for communication must have been perceived very early, and, as +we find picture writing employed by primitive races to-day, we have the +right to infer that prehistoric peoples at the same stage of culture +also employed it. Pure picture writing, however, does not suffice for +all that men have to say. It is easy to represent a house, but how shall +we represent a home? It is easy to represent a woman, but how shall we +add the idea of wife? To do this we must pass from simple pictures to +symbols. Chinese writing has never advanced beyond this stage. Its +prodigious type-case of more than forty-two thousand characters +contains, therefore, only a series of pictures, direct and symbolic, all +highly conventionalized, but recognizable in their earlier forms. To +represent "wife" the Chinaman combines the two signs for "woman" and +"broom"; to represent "home" he makes a picture of a pig under a roof! +The Egyptian and Mexican systems of writing, though very different to +the eye, were both of this nature and represented ideas rather than +words. Yet all true alphabets, which are representations of sound, have +been derived from such primitive ideograms or pictures of ideas. What +was the process? + +The rebus is the bridge from the writing of thoughts to the writing of +sounds, and it came into use through the necessity of writing proper +names. Every ancient name, like many modern ones, had a meaning. A +king's name might be Wolf, and it would be indicated by the picture of a +wolf. Ordinarily the picture would be named by everyone who saw it +according to his language; he might call it "wolf," or "lupus," or +"lykos"; but when it meant a man's name he must call it Wolf, whatever +his own language. So such names as Long Knife and Strong Arm would be +represented, and these pictures would thus be associated with the sound +rather than the thing. By and by it was found convenient, where the word +had several syllables, to use its picture to represent the sound of only +the first syllable, and, still later, of only the first sound or letter. +Thus the Egyptian symbol for F was originally a picture of the horned +asp, later it stood for the Egyptian name of this venomous creature, and +finally for the first sound in the name, being used as the letter F +itself; and the reason why we have the barred cross-piece in the F, the +two horns in U, V, and Y, and the four in W (VV) is because the Egyptian +asp had two horns, as may be seen from the illustration in the Century +Dictionary under the word cerastes; and every time that we write one of +these letters we are making a faded copy of the old picture. We find +systems of writing in all the stages from pure pictures to the phonetic +alphabet; in Egyptian hieroglyphics we find a mixture of all the stages. +So much for the background of the book as the bringer of a message to +the eye, but the outward form or wrapping of that message has also a +long and interesting history. + +No objects could be much more unlike than a Babylonian tablet, an +Egyptian papyrus roll, and a Mexican book. They are as different as a +brick, a narrow window-shade, and a lady's fan; they have nothing common +in their development, yet they were used for the same purpose and might +bring identically the same message to the mind. Inwardly, as regards +writing or printing, all books have a parallel development; but +outwardly, in their material and its form, they are the results of local +conditions. In Babylonia, which was a fertile river-bottom, bricks were +the only building material, and clay was therefore a familiar substance. +Nothing was more natural than that the Babylonian should scratch his +record or message on a little pat of clay, which he could afterwards +bake and render permanent. Some day all other books in the world will +have crumbled into dust, their records being saved only when reproduced; +but at that remote time there will still exist Babylonian books, even +now five thousand years old, apparently no nearer destruction than when +they were first made. + +The Babylonian book carried its message all on the outside; the Egyptian +book went to the opposite extreme, and we should find our chief +objection to it in the difficulty of getting readily at its contents. +There flourished on the banks of the Nile a stout reed, six feet high, +called by the Egyptians "p-apa" and by the Greeks "papyros" or "byblos." +It was the great source of raw material for Egyptian manufactures. Its +tufted head was used for garlands; its woody root for various purposes; +its tough rind for ropes, shoes, and similar articles--the basket of +Moses, for instance; and its cellular pith for a surface to write on. As +the stem was jointed, the pith came in lengths, the best from eight to +ten inches. These lengths were sliced through from top to bottom, and +the thin slices laid side by side. Another layer was pasted crosswise +above these, the whole pressed, dried in the sun, and rubbed smooth, +thus giving a single sheet of papyrus. As the grain ran differently on +the two surfaces of the papyrus sheet, only one side was written on. +Other sheets were added to this by pasting them edge to edge until +enough for a roll had been made, usually twenty, a roller being fastened +to the last edge and a protecting strip of wood to the front. The +manuscript was unrolled by the right hand and rolled up by the left. It +is obvious that a book of reference in this form would be subjected to +great wear. In our dictionaries it is as easy to find Z as A; but in a +papyrus book, to find the end meant to unroll the whole. The Latin word +for roll was "volumen," hence our "volume." A long work could obviously +not be produced conveniently in a single roll, therefore Homer's "Iliad" +and "Odyssey," for instance, were each divided into twenty-four books, +and that is why the divisions of an epic poem are still called books, +though they are really chapters. The rolls composing a single work were +kept together in a case something like a bandbox. The roll was the book +form of the Greek and Roman as well as the Egyptian world, but it left +no descendants. Our book form was derived from a different source, which +we will now consider. + +Just as we speak of Russia leather, so the ancients spoke of Pergamum +skins, or parchment. The story is that Eumenes II, King of Pergamum, a +city of Asia Minor, tried to build up a library rivaling that of +Alexandria, and the Ptolemies, seeking to thwart him, forbade the export +of papyrus from Egypt. Eumenes, however, developed the manufacture of +Pergamum skin, or parchment, or vellum, which not only enabled him to +go on with his library, but also incidentally changed the whole +character of the book for future ages. This material is not only much +more serviceable than the fragile papyrus, but, being tough enough to +stand folding and sewing, permitted the book to be made in its present +or codex form, the original codex being two or three Roman waxed tablets +of wood, fastened together like hinged slates, and thus opening very +crudely in the manner of our books. This development of parchment +occurred in the first half of the second century before Christ. The new +material and book form gradually made their way into favor and came to +constitute the book of the early Christian and medieval world. Though +paper was introduced into Europe soon after the year seven hundred, it +did not displace parchment until the invention of printing called for a +material of its cheaper and more adaptable character. + +But, though we have traced the origin of our present book form, we have +not yet filled in the background of its history. Several other notable +types of the book deserve our attention; first of all that of China, one +of the most attractive of all book forms, to which we devote our next +chapter. Though it superficially resembles our own books, it is really +the product of a different line of evolution. When we examine it +closely, we find that in many respects it is the exact reverse of our +practice. It is printed on only one side of the paper; it is trimmed at +the back and folded on the fore edge; its wide margin is at the top; its +running headline is on the folded fore edge; its sewing is on the +outside; its binding is limp; its lines run up and down the page; and +its pages, according to Western ideas, open from the back towards the +front. Yet it is a thing of beauty, and let us hope that nothing in the +modern reorganization of China will change its character to prevent it +from remaining a joy forever. + +Just as Chinese paper is made from bamboo, which plays an even greater +part in China than papyrus did in Egypt, so the book of India utilizes +the leaves of that important tropical tree, the palm. The sheets of the +book before me are strips of palm-leaf two inches wide and two feet +long. They are written on both sides and, following the run of the +grain, lengthwise. This makes an inordinate length of line, but, owing +to the small number of lines on the page, the confusion of the eye is +less than might be expected. The leaves composing the book are clamped +between two boards of their own size, the block thus formed is pierced +with two holes, through which pins are thrust, and the whole is wound +with a cord. The dimensions vary, some books being larger and some much +smaller. I have also before me a Burmese booklet in which the leaves are +one inch wide and six inches long. Sometimes the sheets are of brass, +beautifully lacquered, and the writing heavy and highly decorative. +These books also vary greatly in size, some forming truly massive and +sumptuous volumes. Birch bark was also employed as a book material in +India, being used in what we should call quarto sheets, and in Farther +India a peculiar roll is in use, made of Chinese paper, folded at the +side, sewed at the top, and rolled up like a manifold banner in a cover +of orange-colored or brown cotton cloth. + +We do not ordinarily associate books with pre-Columbian America; yet one +of the most interesting of all book forms was current in Mexico before +the Conquest. As in the case of the Chinese book, it looks superficially +like ours; we think it is a tiny quarto until we see that its measure is +rather that of an oblong twenty-fourmo; that is, its dimensions are just +scant of five inches high and six inches wide. It has thin wooden covers +and is, over all, an inch thick; but between these covers is a strip of +deerskin twenty-nine feet long and, of course, nearly five inches wide. +This is folded in screen or fan fashion, the first and last leaves being +pasted to the inside of the covers. This attachment is really the only +binding; the whole strip is capable of being opened up to its full +length. It is read--by those who can read its vividly colored +hieroglyphics--by holding it like a modern book, turning the leaves +until what seems the end is reached, and then turning the cover for the +next leaf, and continuing to turn until the first cover is reached +again, but from the other side. Incredible as it may seem, there is a +book of India which is almost identical in structure with the ancient +Mexican book. It has the shape of the palm-leaf book, but it is made of +heavy paper, blackened to be written on with a chalk pencil, and it +opens like a fan exactly in the Mexican fashion. Each cover is formed by +a double fold of paper, and the writing runs lengthwise of the page as +in the palm-leaf volume. As the writing can be erased, the book serves +the purpose of a slate. + +The variety of objects that men have used to write upon almost surpasses +imagination, ranging from mountain walls to the ivory shoulders of Rider +Haggard's heroine in his "Mr. Meeson's Will." Such unusual, if actual, +writing materials belong, perhaps, rather to the penumbra than to the +background of the book; but, as a final survey of our subject, running +back to the time when there were no books and men must rely upon their +memories, we may quote what Lane says of the sources from which the +Kuran was derived after the death of Mohammed: "So Zeyd gathered the +Kuran from palm-leaves, skins, shoulder-blades (of beasts), stones, and +the hearts of men." + + + + +THE CHINESE BOOK + + +The naturalist, Lloyd Morgan, in one of his lectures threw together on +the screen pictures of a humming bird and an insect of the same size, +the two looking so much alike as to seem to the casual observer to +belong to the same order. Yet they are anatomically far more different +than the man and the fish. In much the same way we may be led to suppose +that a Chinese book and an occidental paper-bound book are much the same +thing in origin as they are to the eye. But here too the likeness is +only apparent. One book form has descended from a block of wood and the +other from a fold of silk. + +The Chinese book is such a triumph of simplicity, cheapness, lightness, +and durability that it deserves a more careful study at the hands of our +book producers than it has yet received. In fact we do not see why books +made on nearly these lines should not be an attractive and popular +innovation in our book trade. Approaches, to be sure, have been made to +this peculiar book form, but they have been partial imitations, not +consistent reproductions. In an illustrated edition of Longfellow's +"Michael Angelo," published in 1885, Houghton, Mifflin and Company +produced a small folio, the binding of which is obviously patterned +after that of a Chinese book. But the printing is on every page, and the +paper is so stiff that the book will not lie open. In the holiday +edition which the same publishers issued in 1896 of Aldrich's poem, +entitled "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book," they produced a volume in +which the front folds were not intended to be cut open; but they outdid +the Chinese by printing on only one of the pages exposed at each opening +of the book, instead of on both, as the Chinese do, thus utilizing only +one-fourth of the possible printing surface of the volume. In this case +again the paper was stiff and the binding was full leather with heavy +tapes for tying. A much closer approach to the Chinese book form was +afforded by "The Periodical," issued by Henry Frowde, in the form which +it bore at first. Here we have what may fairly be called a +naturalization of the Chinese book idea in the occident. But let us see +exactly what that Chinese book form is. + +The standard book is printed from engraved wood blocks, each of which is +engraved on the side of the board, not on the end like our wood blocks, +and for economy is engraved on both its sides. Each of these surfaces +prints one sheet of paper, making two pages. The paper, being unsized, +is printed on only one side, and the fold is not at the back, as in our +books, but at the front. The running headline, as we should call it, +with the page number, is printed in a central column, which is folded +through when the book is bound, coming half on one page and half on the +other. There is always printed in this column a fan-shaped device, +called the fish's tail, whose notch indicates where the fold is to come. +It may be remarked in passing that the Chinese book begins on what to us +is the last page, and that the lines read from top to bottom and follow +one another from right to left. Each page has a double ruled line at top +and bottom and on the inner edge. The top and bottom lines and the +fish's tail, being printed across the front fold, show as black lines +banding the front edge when the book is bound. The bottom line is taken +by the binder as his guide in arranging the sheets, this line always +appearing true on the front edge and the others blurred. The top margin +has more than twice the breadth of the lower. After the sheets are +gathered, holes are punched at proper distances from the back edge--four +seems to be the regulation number whether the book be large or small, +but large books have an extra hole at top and bottom towards the corner +from the last hole. These holes are then plugged with rolls of paper to +keep the sheets in position, and the top, bottom, and back edges are +shaved with a sharp, heavy knife, fifty or more volumes being trimmed at +the same stroke. A piece of silk is pasted over the upper and lower +corners of the back. Covers, consisting of two sheets of colored paper +folded in front like the pages, are placed at front and back, but not +covering the back edge, or there is an outer sheet of colored paper with +inside lining paper and a leaf of heavy paper between for stiffening. +Silk cord is sewn through the holes and neatly tied, and the book is +done--light in the hand and lying open well, inexpensive and capable +with proper treatment of lasting for centuries. + +What are the chief defects of the Chinese book from an occidental point +of view? The most obvious is that it will not stand alone. Another is +that its covers, being soft, are easily crumpled and dog's-eared. A +third is that it is printed on only one side of the paper and therefore +wastes space. All these objections must be admitted, but it may be urged +with truth that our books, in spite of their relatively costly binding, +do not stand alone any too well, and in fact this is a function seldom +asked of books anyway. Its covers are soft, but this means at least that +they are not so hard and foreign to the material of the book as to tear +themselves off after a dozen readings, as is the case with so many of +our bindings. There is no danger of breaking the back of a Chinese book +on first opening it, for it has no lining of hard glue. As to the +utilization of only one side of the paper, it must be remembered that +the Chinese paper is very thin, and that this practice makes it possible +to secure the advantage of opacity without loading the paper with a +foreign and heavy material. Moreover, the thickness of the pasteboard +cover is saved on the shelves, and even if a substitute for it is +adopted, it is in the form of a light pasteboard case that holds several +volumes at once. Such a cover is capable of being lettered on the back, +though the Chinese seem not to think this necessary, but put their title +labels on the side. Really, the back of the Chinese book is to us its +most foreign feature. It is a raw edge, not protected by the cover, and +differs from the front only in consisting of the edges of single leaves +instead of folds. It is in fact a survival from the days before the +invention of paper, when books were printed on silk, the raw edge of +which would fray and was therefore consigned to the position where it +would have the least wear and would do the least harm if worn. + +But there is no reason why, in Europeanizing the Chinese book, the +corner guard should not be extended the whole length of the back and +bear the ordinary lettering. With this slight difference the Chinese +book would be equipped to enter the lists on fairly even terms against +the prevailing occidental type of book, which has come down to us from +the ancient Roman codex through the parchment book, of which ours is +only a paper imitation. In "The Periodical," referred to, four pages +instead of two were printed at once, or, at least, four constitute a +fold. The sheets are stitched through with thread--they might, of +course, have been wire-stitched--and then a paper cover is pasted on, as +in the case of any magazine or paper-bound book. But in this process the +beauty of the Chinese binding disappears, though the Chinese do the +same with their cheapest pamphlets. In these days, when lightness and +easy handling are such popular features in books, what publisher will +take up the book form that for two thousand years has enshrined the +wisdom of the Flowery Kingdom, and by trifling adaptations here and +there make it his own and ours? + + + + +THICK PAPER AND THIN + + +Sir Hiram Maxim, the knight from Maine, prophesies that we shall change +our religion twenty times in the next twenty thousand years. In the last +two thousand years we have changed our book material twice, from papyrus +to parchment and from parchment to paper, with a consequent change of +the book form from the roll to the codex. Shall we therefore change our +book material twenty times in the next twenty thousand years? Only time +itself can tell; but for five hundred years the book has never been in +such unstable equilibrium as at present; the proverb "A book's a book" +has never possessed so little definite meaning. This condition applies +chiefly to the paper, but as this changes, the binding will also change +from its present costly and impermanent character to something at once +cheaper and more durable. + +The changes in modern paper have worked in two opposite directions, +represented on the one hand by Oxford India paper, with its miraculous +thinness, opacity, and lightness, and on the other hand by papers that, +while also remarkably light, offer, as a sample book expresses it, +"excellent bulk"; for instance, 272 pages to an inch as against 1500 to +an inch of Oxford India paper.[3] The contrasted effects of these two +types of material upon the book as a mechanical product are well worth +the consideration of all who are engaged in the making of books. + +Some of these results are surprising. What, for instance, could be more +illogical than to make a book any thicker than strength and convenience +require? Yet one has only to step out into the markets where books and +buyers meet to find a real demand for this excess of bulk. Though +illogical, the demand for size in books is profoundly psychological and +goes back to the most primitive instincts of human nature. The first of +all organs in biological development, the stomach, will not do its work +properly unless it has quantity as well as quality to deal with. So the +eye has established a certain sense of relationship between size and +value, and every publisher knows that in printing from given plates he +can get twice as much for the book at a trifling excess of cost if he +uses thicker paper and gives wider margins. That all publishers do not +follow these lines is due to the fact that other elements enter into the +total field of bookselling besides quantity, the chief of which is cost, +and another of which, growing in importance, is compactness. But it is +safe to say that to the buyer who is not, for the moment at least, +counting the cost, mere bulk makes as great an appeal as any single +element of attractiveness in the sum total of a book. + +This attraction of bulk receives a striking increase if it is associated +with lightness. The customer who takes up a large book and suddenly +finds it light to hold receives a pleasurable shock which goes far +towards making him a purchaser. He seems not to ask or care whether he +may be getting few pages for his money. The presence of this single, +agreeable element of lightness at once gives a distinction to the book +that appears to supplant all other requirements. The purchaser does not +realize that the same lightness of volume associated with half the +thickness would not seem to him remarkable, though the book would take +up only half the room on his shelves. He feels that a modern miracle in +defiance of gravitation has been wrought in his favor, and he is willing +to pay for the privilege of enjoying it. + +Curiously and somewhat unexpectedly the results of neither extreme, +thick paper nor thin, are wholly satisfactory in the library. The +parvenu, who is looking only to the filling up of his shelves with +volumes of impressive size, may find satisfaction in contemplating wide +backs. But the scholar and the public librarian will grudge the space +which this "excellent bulk" occupies. One single element in their favor +he will be quick to recognize, the better space which they afford for +distinct lettering. In a private library that is collected for use and +not for show the thin-paper books are almost an unmixed blessing. They +cost little for what they contain. Their reduction in thickness is often +associated with a reduction in height and width, so that they represent +an economy of space all round. A first-rate example of this is furnished +by the Oxford India Paper Dickens, in seventeen volumes, printed in +large type, yet, as bound, occupying a cubical space of only 13 by 7 by +4-1/2 inches and weighing only nine pounds. A more startling instance is +that of the novels of Thomas Love Peacock, which are issued in a pretty +library edition of ten volumes. But they are also issued in a _single_ +volume, no higher nor wider, and only _three-fourths of an inch thick_. +But it is at this point that the public librarian rises to protest. It +is all very well, he says, for the private owner to have his literature +in this concentrated form, but for himself, how is he to satisfy the +eight readers who call for "Headlong Hall," "Nightmare Abbey," and the +rest of Peacock's novels all at once? To be sure he can buy and +catalogue eight single-volume sets of the author's works instead of one +set in ten volumes, and when he has done this each reader will be sure +to find the particular novel that he is looking for so long as a set +remains; but the cost will naturally be greater. On the other hand, he +welcomes equally with the private buyer the thin-paper edition of the +Shakespeare Apocrypha, which needs only a third of the shelf space +required for the regular edition, seven-sixteenths of an inch as against +an inch and five-sixteenths. He also looks upon his magazine shelves and +sees a volume of the "Hibbert Journal" with 966 pages in large type +occupying the space of a volume of the "Independent" with 1788 pages in +fine type, or again he sees by the side of his thin-paper edition of +Dickens another on heavy paper occupying more than three times the +lineal space with no advantage in clearness of type. By this time he is +ready to vote, in spite of the occasional disability of overcompactness, +for the book material that will put the least strain upon his crowded +shelves. A conference with the booksellers shows him that he is not +alone in this conclusion. Certain standard works, like the Oxford Book +of English Verse and Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, have almost ceased +to be sold in any but the thin-paper editions. Then there dawns upon him +the vision of a library in which all books that have won their way into +recognition shall be clothed in this garb of conciseness, and in which +all that aspire to that rank shall follow their example. In short he +sees what he believes to be the book of the future, which will be as +different from the book of the present as that is from the parchment +book of the early and middle ages of the Christian era, and as different +in binding as it is in material. The realization of this vision will +involve first of all a readjustment of values on the part of the +public, an outgrowing of its childish admiration for bulk. But this +change is coming so rapidly under the stress of modern conditions of +crowding, especially in city life, as to reduce the vision from its +prophetic rank to a case of mere foresight. + + + + +THE CLOTHING OF A BOOK + + +The binding of a book is its most conspicuous feature, the part which +forms its introduction to the public and by which too often it is judged +and valued; yet the binding is not an integral portion of the volume. It +may be changed many times without essentially changing the book; but if +the printed pages are changed, even for others identical to the eye, the +book becomes another copy. The binding is, therefore, a part of a book's +environment, though the most intimate part, like our own clothing, to +which, indeed, it bears a curious resemblance in its purpose and its +perversions. + +Human clothing is for protection and adornment. That of a book involves +two other demands mutually so contradictory that bookbinding has always +offered a most attractive challenge to the skill of the handicraftsman. +The first demand is that the book when closed shall form a well-squared +and virtually solid block, like the rectangle of wood from which its +first predecessors were split, and shall be able to stand alone, +unsupported. The second demand is that this same object, when open, +shall lie flat at any point and display all its leaves in turn as fully, +and far more conveniently, than if they had never been fastened +together. Whatever may be true of other clothing, it is eminently true +of a book's that the part which really counts is the part which is never +seen. Only the ornamental portion of a book's covering is exposed. The +portions which protect the book and render it at once firm and flexible +are out of sight and unheeded by the ordinary reader. Hence the +existence of so much bookbinding that is apparently good and essentially +bad, and hence the perpetual timeliness of attempts like that of the +present chapter, to point out what binding is and should be. The +processes in bookbinding by which its different ends of utility and +ornament are achieved are known under the two heads of Forwarding and +Finishing. + +Forwarding includes many processes, literally "all but the finishing." +It is to forwarding that a book owes its shapeliness, its firmness, its +flexibility, and its durability. Forwarding takes the unfolded and +unarranged sheets as delivered by the printer and transforms them into a +book complete in all but its outermost covering of cloth or leather. The +first process is to fold the sheets and reduce their strange medley of +page numbers to an orderly succession. This is assuming that there is a +whole edition to be bound. If it consists of a thousand copies, then +there will be a certain number of piles of folded sheets, each +containing a thousand copies of the same pages printed in groups, let us +say, of sixteen each. These groups of pages are called sections or +signatures. They are now rearranged, or gathered, into a thousand piles, +each containing the signatures that belong to one book. The edition is +thus separated into its thousand books, which the collator goes over to +see that each is perfect. Let us follow the fortunes of a single one. It +is not much of a book to look at, being rather a puffy heap of paper, +but pressing, rolling, or beating soon reduces it to normal dimensions, +and it is then carried forward to the important process of sewing. This +is the very heart of the whole work. If the book is badly sewed, it will +be badly bound, though a thousand dollars were to be spent upon the +decoration of its covering. There is only one best method of sewing, and +that is around raised cords, in the way followed by the earliest +binders. There are modern machine methods that are very good, but they +are only cheap substitutes for the best. The cords must be of good, +long-fibered hemp, and the thread of the best quality and the right size +drawn to the right degree of tension without missing a sheet. After the +sewing the end papers are put in place, the back is glued and rounded, +and the mill boards are fitted. Into these last the ends of the cords +are laced and hammered. The book is then pressed to set its shape, being +left in the press for some days or even weeks. After it is taken out, if +the edges are to be treated, they are trimmed and then gilded, marbled, +sprinkled, or otherwise decorated. The head band--for which many French +binders substitute a fold in the leather--is now added. It was formerly +twisted as the book was sewn, but at present is too often bought +ready-made and simply glued on. The book is now forwarded. + +The business of the finisher is to cover and protect the work already +done on the book, but in such a way as not to interfere with the +strength and flexibility that have been gained, and, finally, to add +such decoration as may be artistically demanded or within the means of +the purchaser. If leather is employed, it must be carefully shaved to +give an easily opening hinge, yet not enough to weaken it unnecessarily. +This is a most important process and one that must be left largely to +the good faith of the binder. If he is unworthy of confidence, his +mistakes may long escape notice, but, though buried, they are doomed to +an inglorious resurrection, albeit he may count on a sufficient lapse of +time to protect himself. + +The next and last process of finishing is that of the decorator, whose +work passes out of the sphere of handicraft into that of art. His +problem is no easy one; it is to take a surface of great beauty in +itself, as of calf or morocco, and so treat it as to increase its +beauty. Too often, after he has done his utmost, the surface is less +attractive to the eye than it was at the beginning. He, therefore, has a +task quite different from that of the painter or sculptor, whose +materials are not at the outset attractive. This condition is so +strongly felt that many booklovers leave their bindings untooled, +preferring the rich sensuous beauty and depth of color in a choice piece +of leather to any effect of gilding or inlaying. This initial beauty of +the undecorated book does not, however, form an impossible challenge, as +witness the work of the Eves, Le Gascon, and the binders of such famous +collectors as Grolier and de Thou. + +It may be well to consider more particularly what the problem of the +book decorator is. Though perfectly obvious to the eye and clearly +illustrated by the work of the masters, it has been sometimes lost sight +of by recent binders. It is, in a word, flat decoration. In the first +place he has a surface to work upon that is large enough to allow +strength of treatment, yet small enough to admit delicacy; then, +whatever in beautiful effects of setting, relief, harmony, and contrast +can be brought about by blind tooling, gilding, and inlaying, or by +rubbing the surface as in crushed levant, or variegating it as in "tree" +or marbled calf, all this he can command. He has control of an infinite +variety of forms in tooling; he has only to use them with taste and +skill. There is practically no limit to the amount of work that he can +put into the binding of a single book, provided that every additional +stroke is an additional beauty. He may sow the leather with minute +ornament like Mearne, or set it off with a few significant lines like +Aldus or Roger Payne; all depends upon the treatment. If he is a master, +the end will crown the work; if not, then he should have stopped with +simple lettering and have left the demands of beauty to be satisfied by +the undecorated leather. Above all, let every decorator stick to flat +ornament. The moment that he ventures into the third dimension, or +perspective, that moment he invades the province of the draftsman or +painter. One does not care to walk over a rug or carpet that displays a +scene in perspective, neither does one wish to gaze into a landscape +wrought upon the cover of a book, only to have the illusion of depth +dispelled upon opening the volume. Embossing is, to be sure, a literal +not a pictorial invasion of the third dimension, but its intrusion into +that dimension is very slight and involves no cheating of the eye. It +has now practically gone out of use, as has the heavy medieval +ornamentation of studs or jewels. In cloth covers, which are confessedly +edition work and machine made, the rules of ornament need not be so +sharply enforced. Here embossing still flourishes to some extent. But +the decorative problem is essentially the same in cloth as in leather +binding, and the best design will be one that triumphs within the +conditions, not outside them. The machines and the division of labor +have made sad havoc with binding as a craft. The men in America, at +least, who are masters of every process and of all the skill and cunning +of the early binders are few, and their thinning ranks are not being +filled. Will bookbinding, in spite of a high economic demand, share the +fate that has overtaken engraving, or shall we have a renascence of this +fascinating handicraft and delightful art, to take its name from the +present era? + + + + +PARCHMENT BINDINGS + + +There are certain things, the Autocrat informs us, that are "good for +nothing until they have been kept a long while; and some are good for +nothing until they have been long kept and _used_. Of the first, wine is +the illustrious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and +used I will name three--meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems." May we +present another representative of the class which gathers value with the +"process of the suns," one as immortal and historic as wine and even +richer in associations--the parchment book cover? In this case it +matters not whether the object meets with use or neglect. So long as it +is not actually worn to pieces on the one hand, nor destroyed by mold on +the other, the parchment binding will keep on converting time into gold, +until after a few hundred years it reaches a tint far surpassing in +beauty the richest umber of a meerschaum, and approached only by the +kindred hue of antique ivory. + +Here is a table full of old parchment-bound books, ranging from a tiny +twenty-fourmo, which will stay neither open nor shut, to thin, limp +folios that are instantly correspondent to either command. Those that +are bound with boards have taken on a drumhead quality of smoothness and +tension, especially the fat quartos and small octavos, while the larger +volumes that received a flexible binding resemble nothing in surface so +much as the wrinkled diploma on yonder wall, with its cabalistic +signature now to be written no more, Carolus-Guil. Eliot; but all agree +in a tint over which artists rave, the color that gold would take if it +were capable of stain. But there is no stain here, or rather all stains +are taken up and converted into beauty. Dust, dirt, smudges, all are +here, and each is made to contribute a new element of charm. Is the +resultant more beautiful than the spotless original? Compare it with the +pearly tint of the diploma, or turn up the folded edge of one of those +flexible bindings and note the chalky white of the parchment's protected +under-surface. The same three hundred years that have made over Europe +and made English America have, as it were, filled in the rhythmic pauses +between their giant heart-beats by ripening Dr. Holmes's wine and +touching with Midas caress these parchment bindings! + +It is surely a crime to keep such beauty of tint and tone hidden away in +drawers or all but hidden on crowded shelves. Let them be displayed in +open cases where all may enjoy them. But let us go softly; these +century-mellowed parchments are too precious to be displayed to +unappreciative, perhaps scornful, eyes. Put them away in their +hiding-places until some gentle reader of these lines shall ask for +them; then we will bring them forth and persuade ourselves that we can +detect a new increment of beauty added by the brief time since last we +looked on them. I once heard an address on a librarian's duty to his +successors. I will suggest a service not there mentioned: to choose +every year the best contemporary books that he can find worthily printed +on time-proof papers and have them bound in parchment; then let him +place them on his shelves to gather gold from the touch of the mellowing +years through the centuries to come and win him grateful memory such as +we bestow upon the unknown hands that wrought for these volumes the +garments of their present and still increasing beauty. + + + + +LEST WE FORGET THE FEW GREAT BOOKS + + +One result of the stir that has been made in library matters during the +last two generations, and especially during the latter, is the enormous +increase in the size of our libraries. In 1875 the public libraries of +the United States contained a little less than 11,500,000 volumes. In +the five years from 1908 to 1913 the libraries of 5,000 volumes and over +added nearly 20,000,000 volumes, making a total of over 75,000,000 +volumes, an increase of 35.7 per cent. In 1875 there were 3682 libraries +of more than 300 volumes each; in 1913 there were 8302 libraries of over +1000 volumes each. In 1875 there were only nine libraries containing +100,000 volumes or over. These were the Library of Congress, 300,000; +Boston Public Library, 300,000; New York Mercantile Library, 160,000; +Harvard College Library, 154,000; Astor Library, 152,000; Philadelphia +Mercantile Library, 126,000; House of Representatives Library, 125,000; +Boston Athenaeum, 105,000; Library Company of Philadelphia, 104,000. In +1913 there were in this class 82 libraries, or over nine times as many, +including 14 libraries of 300,000 to 2,000,000 volumes, a class which +did not exist in 1875. + +Meanwhile the individual book remains just what it always was, the +utterance of one mind addressed to another mind, and the individual +reader has no more hours in the day nor days in his life; he has no more +eyes nor hands nor--we reluctantly confess--brains than he had in 1875. +But, fast as our libraries grow, not even their growth fully represents +the avalanche of books that is every year poured upon the reader's +devoted head by the presses of the world. To take only the four +countries in whose literature we are most interested we find their +annual book publication, for the latest normal year, 1913, to be as +follows: Germany, 35,078 volumes; France, 11,460; England, 12,379; +America, 12,230. But Japan, Russia, and Italy are each credited with +issuing more books annually than either England or the United States, +and the total annual book publication of the world is estimated to reach +the enormous figure of more than 130,000 volumes. In view of this +prodigious literary output, what progress can the reader hope to make in +"keeping up with the new books"? De Quincey figured that a man might +possibly, in a long lifetime devoted to nothing else, read 20,000 +volumes. The estimate is easy. Suppose we start with one book a +day--surely a large supposition--and count a man's reading years from 20 +to 80, 60 years in all; 60 times 365 is 21,900. This estimate makes no +allowance for Sundays, holidays, or sickness. Yet, small as it is--for +there are private libraries containing 20,000 volumes--it is manifestly +too large. But whatever the sum total may be, whether 20,000 or 2,000, +let us see, if I may use the expression, what a one must read before he +can allow himself to read what he really wants to. + +First of all we must read the books that form the intellectual tools of +our trade, and there is no profession and hardly a handicraft that does +not possess its literature. For instance, there are more than ten +periodicals in the German language alone devoted exclusively to such a +narrow field as beekeeping. Such periodicals and such books we do not +call literature, any more than we do the labors of the man or woman who +supplies the text for Butterick's patterns. But they are printed matter, +and the reading of them takes up time that we might have spent upon +"books that are books." + +But besides this bread and butter reading there is another sort that we +must admit into our lives if we are to be citizens of the world we live +in, contemporaries of our own age, men among the men of our time, and +that is reading for general information. The time has long since gone +by, to be sure, when any man could, like Lord Bacon, take all knowledge +for his province--we can hardly take a bird's-eye view of all knowledge +to-day. No amount of reading will ever produce another Scaliger, learned +in every subject. To be well informed, even in these days of the +banyan-like growth of the tree of knowledge, is to be a miracle of +erudition. Most of mankind must be content with the modest aim which Dr. +Holmes set for the poet, to know enough not to make too many blunders. +In carrying out this humble purpose, that of merely touching elbows with +the thronging multitude of facts of interest to the civilized man, we +have a task great enough to occupy the time of any reader, even if he +made it his vocation; and with most of us it must be only a minor +avocation. The very books about the books in this boundless field, the +compends of the compends, the reviews of the reviews, form in themselves +a library great enough to stagger human weakness. Besides all this--in a +sense a part of it, yet a miscellaneous and irrational part--come the +newspapers, with their daily distraction. This is after all our world, +and we cannot live in it and be absolute nonconformists. So we must +submit to the newspaper, though it makes a heavy addition to our daily +load of reading for information. But there is still another kind of +necessary reading that I wish to mention before we come to that which +ranks chief in importance. + +The woman who takes out of the public or subscription library a novel a +day is only suffering from the perversion of an appetite that in its +normal state is beneficial. It is possible that her husband does not +read enough for amusement, that his horizon is narrowed, his sympathies +stunted by the lack of that very influence which, in excess, unfits his +wife for the realities and duties of everyday existence. It came as a +surprise to many to learn from Tennyson's "Life" that the author of "In +Memoriam" was a great novel reader. But clearly in his case the novel +produced no weakening of the mental fiber. President Garfield advised +the student to mingle with his heavier reading a judicious proportion of +fiction. The novel may rank in the highest department of literature and +may render the inestimable service of broadening and quickening our +sympathies. In this case it belongs to the class of the best books. But +I have introduced it here as the most prominent representative of what +we may call the literature of recreation. There is a further +representative of this class that is peculiarly well fitted to bring +refreshment and cheer to the weary and dispirited, and that is humor, +which is often also the soundest philosophy. + +If the reader does not at the outset make provision in his daily reading +for the best books, the days and the months will go by, and the unopened +volumes will look down upon him from his shelves in dumb reproof of his +neglect and reminder of his loss. In truth it is all a matter of the +balance of gain. What we rate highest we shall find room for. If we +cannot have our spiritual food and satisfy all our other wants, perhaps +we shall find that some of our other wants can do with less +satisfaction. That we should neglect the material side of life for the +spiritual I do not say. But for our encouragement let me quote another +estimate of what may be accomplished by persistent reading, and my +authority shall be the late Professor William Mathews, the essayist, an +author whose graceful style bears lightly as a flower a weight of +learning that would appall, if it did not so delight us. Says Dr. +Mathews: + + Did you ever think of the sum total of knowledge that may be + accumulated in a decade, or score of years, or a lifetime by + reading only 10 pages a day? He who has read but that small + amount daily, omitting Sundays, has read in a year 3130 + pages, which is equal to six volumes of 521 pages each, + enough to enable one to master a science. In five years he + will have read 15,650 pages, equivalent to 30 large volumes, + or to 60 of the average size. Now, we do not hesitate to say + that 30 volumes of 521 pages each of history, biography, + science, and literature, well chosen, well read, and well + digested, will be worth to nine persons out of ten more than + the average collegiate education is to the majority of + graduates. + +Our case for knowing the best books is, therefore, not hopeless. What we +need for the achievement is not genius, but only a moderate amount of +forethought and persistence. But who is there that has not tasted the +joy of discovering a great book that seemed written for himself alone? +If there is such a man, he is to be pitied--unless, indeed, he is to be +congratulated on the unimagined pleasure in store for him. Discovery is +not too strong a word for the feeling of the reader when he lights upon +such a world-opening volume. He feels that no one else ever could have +had the same appreciation of it, ever really discovered it, that he is + + the first that ever burst + Into that silent sea. + +Keats, in his glorious sonnet, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," +has given the finest of all expressions to this sense of literary +discovery. + + Much have I travelled in the realms of gold + And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; + Round many western islands have I been + Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. + Oft of one wide expanse had I been told + That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: + Yet never did I breathe its pure serene + Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: + Then felt I like some watcher in the skies + When a new planet swims into his ken; + Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes + He stared at the Pacific--and all his men + Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- + Silent, upon a peak in Darien. + +To describe such accessions of spiritual vision we turn instinctively to +the narratives of Holy Writ, to Pisgah and its revelation of the +Promised Land, to the ladder at Bethel with its angels ascending and +descending, and to the lonely seer on Patmos with his vision of a new +heaven and a new earth. + +But, questions a listener, do books ever really affect people like this? +Most assuredly! We have only to turn to biography for the record, if we +do not find living witnesses among our friends. It was said of Neander +that "Plato is his idol--his constant watchword. He sits day and night +over him; and there are few who have so thoroughly and in such purity +imbibed his wisdom." + +The elder Professor Torrey, of the University of Vermont, found his +inspiration, as many another has done, in Dante. In his youth he +preferred the Inferno; in his middle life he rose to the calm heights of +the Purgatorio; and he used to say with a smile that perhaps the time +would come when he should be fitted to appreciate the Paradiso. Highly +interesting is John Ruskin's tribute to Sir Walter Scott: + + It is one of the griefs of my old age that I know Scott by + heart, but still, if I take up a volume of him, it is not + laid down again for the next hour. + +Beside this we may place Goethe's testimony, also written in old age: + + We read many, too many, poor things, thus losing our time + and gaining nothing. We should only read what we can admire, + as I did in my youth, and as I now do with Sir Walter Scott. + I have now begun "Rob Roy," and I shall read all his + romances in succession. All is great--material, import, + characters, execution; and then what infinite diligence in + the preparatory studies! what truth of detail in the + composition! Here we see what English history is; what an + inheritance to a poet able to make use of it. Walter Scott + is a great genius; he has not his equal; and we need not + wonder at the extraordinary effect he has produced on the + reading world. He gives me much to think of; and I discover + in him a wholly new art with laws of its own. + +Of Goethe himself Carlyle confessed that the reading of his works made +him understand what the Methodists mean by a new birth. Those who are +familiar with the speeches and writings of Daniel Webster realize the +inspiration that he owed to the grandeur of Milton. His great rival, +Calhoun, honored everywhere as a statesman, was known in his own home as +"the old man of the Bible." It was the reading of the Bible that +equipped John Bunyan to become the author of "Pilgrim's Progress." The +novelists have not failed to recognize the influence of some single book +on a human life. It was the accidental possession of a folio volume of +Shakespeare--in Blackmore's "Lorna Doone"--that transformed John Ridd +from a hulking countryman to a man of profound acquaintance with the +world. And who does not remember Gabriel Betteridge, the simple-hearted +old steward in Wilkie Collins's "Moonstone," who finds for every +occurrence a text to counsel or console in his favorite "Robinson +Crusoe"? + +As the experience of Professor Torrey shows, different books appeal to +us most strongly at different ages. Young men read Shelley, old men +read Wordsworth. In youth "Hamlet" is to us the greatest of all plays; +in old age, "Lear." I know of no more interesting account of the +development of a mind in the choice of books than that presented in John +Beattie Crozier's autobiographical volume entitled "My Inner Life." The +author is an English philosopher, who was born and lived until manhood +in the backwoods of Canada. He tells us how as a young man groping about +for some clew to the mystery of the world in which he found himself, he +tried one great writer after another--Mill, Buckle, Carlyle, +Emerson--all to no purpose, for he was not ready for them. At this +period he read with great profit the "Recreations of a Country Parson," +which, as he says, "gave me precisely the grade and shade of platitude I +required." But more important were the weekly sermons of Henry Ward +Beecher. Of him Crozier says: + + For years his printed sermons were the main source of my + instruction and delight. His range and variety of + observation ... his width of sympathy; his natural and + spontaneous pathos; the wealth of illustration and metaphor + with which his sermons were adorned, and which were drawn + chiefly from natural objects, from his orchard, his farm, + his garden, as well as from machinery and from all kinds of + natural processes; his naturalism and absence of theological + bias; his knowledge of average men and their ways of looking + at things; in a word, his general fertility of thought, + filling up, as it did, the full horizon of my mind, and + running over and beyond it on all sides, so that wherever I + looked he had been there before me--all this delighted and + enchanted me, and made him for some years my ideal of + intellectual greatness; and I looked forward to the + Saturdays on which his weekly sermons reached me with + longing and pure joy. + +Later, in England, Crozier took up the works of the philosophers with +better success. The chapter of most interest for us is the one on the +group which he calls "The Poetic Thinkers"--Carlyle, Newman, Emerson, +Goethe. Of these he places Goethe and Emerson highest. Indeed of +Emerson's essay on "Experience" he says: + + In this simple framework Emerson has contrived to work in + thoughts on human life more central and commanding, more + ultimate and final, and of more universal application than + are to be found within the same compass in the literature of + any age or time, thoughts which rise to the mind as + naturally and spontaneously when the deeper secrets of life + are in question, as proverbs do in its more obvious and + superficial aspects.... Nowhere, indeed, will you find + greater penetration and profundity, or greater refinement + and delicacy than in these essays (of Emerson).... After a + lapse of ten or fifteen years ... no increase of experience + or reflection has enabled me to add or suggest aught by way + of commentary on these great and penetrating observations on + human life that is not either more superficial or less + true.... Until Emerson is understood, no observer of human + life making any pretension to originality can, in my + judgment, consider his reputation safe, or his work free + from the danger of being undermined by this great master of + human thought. + +If some scholar on whose judgment we relied were to speak in these terms +of a book that was only to be read in Persian or Icelandic, how +cheerfully we should bend ourselves to the task of learning these +difficult tongues for the sake of the reward--the possession of the +coveted thought. But the writings of Emerson are in our own language and +accessible in the cheapest editions. If to us personally Emerson does +not make this supreme appeal, there are other writers, all at hand, set +apart from the great multitude of lesser spirits by that final weigher +of human talents whom Bacon calls Good Fame. It is not that among the +myriad volumes of a library we must painfully and largely by accident +discover the few of highest worth--scanning each doubtfully as one +searches for an unknown visitor in the crowd alighting from a train. No, +the best books are the best known, the most accessible. Lists of the +ten, the fifty, the one hundred best books are at our disposal, and, if +they do not always represent final judgments, are near enough for +practical purposes. The will to read the best books is all that we need +to supply--the rest has been done for us. And is there anyone who turns +with indifference from the high and free privilege of making the +greatest spirits that have ever lived his bosom friends, his companions +and counselors? If there be such a one, would that I might repeat to him +more of that glorious chant in praise of books that has been sung by the +wise of all ages, from Socrates to Gladstone. I have given a few of +these tributes already; I will close with one from an unexpected source. +Says Walt Whitman, in his "Democratic Vistas," speaking of the books +that have come down to us from antiquity: + + A few immortal compositions, small in size, yet compassing + what measureless values of reminiscence, contemporary + portraitures, manners, idioms and beliefs, with deepest + inference, hint and thought, to tie and touch forever the + old, new body, and the old, new soul. These! and still + these! bearing the freight so dear--dearer than + pride--dearer than love. All the best experience of humanity + folded, saved, freighted to us here! Some of these tiny + ships we call Old and New Testament, Homer, Eschylus, Plato, + Juvenal, etc. Precious minims! I think if we were forced to + choose, rather than have you, and the likes of you, and what + belongs to and has grown of you, blotted out and gone, we + could better afford, appalling as that would be, to lose all + actual ships, this day fastened by wharf, or floating on + wave, and see them, with all their cargoes, scuttled and + sent to the bottom. + + Gathered by geniuses of city, race or age, and put by them + in highest of art's forms, namely, the literary form, the + peculiar combinations, and the outshows of that city, age or + race, its particular modes of the universal attributes and + passions, its faiths, heroes, lovers and gods, wars, + traditions, struggles, crimes, emotions, joys (or the subtle + spirit of these) having been passed on to us to illumine our + own selfhood, and its experiences--what they supply, + indispensable and highest, if taken away, nothing else in + all the world's boundless storehouses could make up to us, + or ever again return. + + + + +PRINTING PROBLEMS FOR SCIENCE TO SOLVE + + +The book seems to have been regarded for hundreds of years--for +thousands of years if we include its prototypes--as a thing apart, +subject to its own laws of beauty, utility, and economy. But recently +men have come to realize that the book has no special esthetic license, +that what is barbarous art elsewhere is barbarous in the book; they also +recognize that the book is within the domain of economics, that the +invention of typography was primarily a reduction of cost, and that a +myriad later processes, which make the book what it is to-day, are all +developments of the same principle. What has not been so clearly seen is +that in the field of utility the book is not independent, cannot impose +conditions upon its users, but is an instrument strictly subordinate to +human needs. The establishment of its efficiency has only begun when we +have adapted it to the convenience of the hand and the bookshelf. The +real tests of its utility are subtle, not gross, and are, in fact, +beyond the range of ordinary haphazard experience. In this field popular +judgment may be right or wrong; it offers merely an opinion, which it +cannot prove. But here that higher power of common sense that we call +science comes in and gives verdicts that take account of all the +elements involved and can be verified. Rather this is what science has +not yet done for printing, or has done only in part, but which we +confidently expect it is about to do. + +What then are some of the points that we may call in science to settle? +We know surely that fine type, bad presswork, pale ink on gray paper are +all bad for the eyes. But there are a host of other matters connected +with printing, we may even say most matters, in regard to which our +knowledge is either uncertain or indefinite. In respect to this whole +range of practical printing subjects we want to know just what practice +is the best and by what percentage of superiority. This quantitative +element in the solution is of great importance, for when rival +considerations, the esthetic, the economic, for instance, plead for one +choice as against another, we shall know just how much sacrifice of +utility is involved. The tests for which we look to science cover +everything that goes to make up the physical side of the book. The tests +themselves, however, are psychological, for the book makes its appeal to +the mind through one of the senses, that of sight, and therefore its +adaptedness to the manifold peculiarities of human vision must be the +final criterion of its utility. + +Beginning with the material basis of the book--paper--most readers are +sure that both eggshell and glaze finish are a hindrance to easy reading +and even hurtful to the eyes; but which is worse and how much? Is there +any difference as regards legibility between antique and medium plate +finish, and which is better and by what percentage? In regard to the +color as well as the surface of paper we are largely at sea. We realize +that contrast between paper and ink is necessary, but is the greatest +contrast the best? Is the blackest black on the whitest white better, +for instance, than blue-black on buff-white, and how much? Is white on +black not better than black on white, and, if so, in what exact degree? +Or is the real solution to be found in some other color contrast as yet +untried? The very mention of some of these possibilities shocks our +prejudices and stirs our conservatism to revolt in advance; yet, with or +against our will, we may be perfectly sure that the changes which +science finally pronounces imperative will be made. + +Who can tell what is the normal length of line for legibility, or +whether there is one, and whether there is an ideal size of type, or +what it is? Are the newspapers, for instance, right as to length of line +and the books as to size of type, as many suppose? Has each size of type +a length of line normal to it? How is this affected by leading, or is +leading merely of imaginary value? Is large type desirable for the +schoolbooks of the youngest children, and may the type be made smaller, +down to a certain limit, without harm, as the children grow older, or is +there one ideal size for all ages? It is frankly recognized that in +certain works, like editions of the poets, legibility may properly be +sacrificed in some degree to beauty, and in certain reference works, +again, to economy of space; but we should like to know, as we do not now +with any exactness, what amount of legibility is surrendered. + +It is easy, however, to see that one great battleground of controversy +in any suggested reforms must be the design of the type itself. Here, +fortunately, the English public starts with a great advantage. We have +thrown overboard our old black letter with its dazzling contrasts of +shading and its fussy ornament, and therefore can begin where the +Germans must some day leave off. We have no accents or other diacritical +marks, and in this respect are superior to the French also. We start +with a fairly extended and distinct letter like Caslon for our norm, but +even so the problem is in the highest degree complex and baffling. +First, accepting the traditional forms of the letters, we must determine +whether light or heavy, even or shaded, condensed or extended letters +are the more legible, and always in what proportion. We shall then be in +a position to decide the relative standing of the various commercial +types, if such we find, that fairly well meet the conditions. It will +also be obvious what changes can be introduced to improve the types that +stand highest. By and by the limit of improvement will be reached under +the traditional forms of the letters. It will next be the task of +science to show by what modifications or substitutions the poorest +letters, such as s z e a x o can be brought up to the visibility of the +best letters, such as m w d j l p. Some of these changes may be slight, +such as shortening the overhang of the a and slanting the bar of the e, +while others may involve forms that are practically new. It is worth +remembering at this point that while our capital letters are strictly +Roman, our small or lowercase letters came into being during the middle +ages, and many of them would not be recognized by an ancient Roman as +having any relation to his alphabet. They therefore belong to the modern +world and can be altered without sacrilege. + +There will remain other problems to be solved, such as the use of +capitals at all; punctuation, whether to keep our present practice or to +devise a better; the use of spacing between paragraphs, words, and even +letters; besides numerous problems now hardly guessed. Many of the +conclusions of science will be openly challenged, but such opposition is +easiest to overcome. Harder to meet will be the opposition of prejudice, +one of whose favorite weapons is always ridicule. But the results of +science in the field of printing, as in every other, are sure to make +their way into practice, and here their beneficent effect in the relief +of eye strain and its consequent nervous wear and in the saving of time +is beyond our present power to calculate or even imagine. The world at +the end of the twentieth century will be a different world from this, a +far better world, we trust; and one of the potent influences in bringing +about that improvement will then be traced, we are confident, to the +fact that, near the beginning of the century, science was called in to +solve those problems of the book that belong to the laboratory rather +than to the printing office. + + + + +TYPES AND EYES: THE PROBLEM + + +Our modern world submits with an ill grace to the nuisance of +spectacles, but flatters itself that after all they afford a measure of +civilization. Thirty-five years ago Dr. Emile Javal, a Parisian oculist, +contested this self-complacent inference, believing the terrible +increase of near sight among school children to be due rather to a +defect than to an excess of civilization. He conceived that the trouble +must lie in the material set for the eye to work upon, namely, the +printed page. He therefore instituted a series of experiments to +discover its defects from the point of view of hygiene. Being an +oculist, he naturally adopted the test of distance to determine the +legibility of single letters at the limit of vision, and he employed the +oculist's special type. His conclusions cover a wide range. He decided +that paper with a slightly buff tint printed with an ink tinged with +blue was the most agreeable combination for the eye, though in absolute +clearness nothing can surpass the contrast of black upon white. He held +that leading is no advantage to clearness, and that it would be better +to print the same words on the page in a larger type unleaded. He found +the current type too condensed; this is particularly a fault of French +type. But he favored spacing between the letters of a word, a conclusion +in which he has not been followed by later investigators. He found +shaded type a disadvantage and advocated a fairly black type in which +all the lines are of uniform thickness. But most interesting are his +conclusions regarding the letters themselves. He found that the eye in +reading follows a horizontal line which cuts the words just below the +tops of the short letters, the parts of the letters being indistinct in +proportion as they are distant from this line. It is chiefly by their +individuality on this line that letters acquire distinctness. But just +here he found that an unfortunate tendency towards uniformity had been +at work, flattening the rounded letters and rounding the square letters. +In a series of articles he gives exhaustive studies of the various +letters, their characteristics, and their possible reform. + +[Illustration: These ten-point lines in Della Robbia of the American +Type Founders Company include the principal elements of reform advocated +by Dr. Javal, as well as others mentioned below] + +A few years later Dr. Cattell, now a professor in Columbia, but then an +investigator in Wundt's psychological laboratory in Leipsic, made a +series of studies on brain and eye inertia in the recognition of +letters. Like Dr. Javal he found some alphabets harder to see than +others and the letters of the same alphabet different in legibility. He +saw no advantage in having a mixture of capital and small letters. He +condemned shading in types and opposed all ornament as an element of +confusion. He regarded punctuation marks as hard to see and proposed +that they should be displaced, or at least supplemented, by spaces +between the words corresponding to the pause in the thought or the +utterance. + +He tested the letters by their legibility when seen for a small fraction +of a second through a narrow slit in a falling screen. Beginning with +the capitals, he found that out of two hundred and seventy trials for +each letter, W was recognized two hundred and forty-one times and E only +sixty-three times, the former being much more distinct and the latter +much less distinct than any other. Some letters, like S and C, were +found hard to recognize in themselves, and certain groups of letters, +such as O, Q, G, and C, were constantly confused with one another. Said +Dr. Cattell, "If I should give the probable time wasted each day through +a single letter, as E, being needlessly illegible, it would seem almost +incredible; and, if we could calculate the necessary strain put upon eye +and brain, it would be still more appalling." + +In regard to the small letters he found a like difference in legibility. +Out of one hundred trials d was read correctly eighty-seven times, s +only twenty-eight times. He found s, g, c, and x particularly hard to +recognize by reason of their form; and certain pairs and groups were +sources of confusion. The group of slim letters, i, j, l, f, t, is an +instance. He suggested that a new form of l, perhaps the Greek [Greek: +l], should be adopted; and he advocated the dropping of the dot from the +i, as in Greek. He made experiments upon the German as well as the Roman +alphabet, but he found the former so bad that he could only advise +giving it up altogether. + +Somewhat later, in 1888, Mr. E. C. Sanford, now president of Clark +College, published in the "American Journal of Psychology" an exhaustive +study on "The Relative Legibility of the Small Letters." He studied +simply the letter forms, to determine the order of legibility in the +alphabet and the groups most liable to confusion, in order to discover +what letters most need improvement and upon what clearness depends. He +too employed a special type. He found the order under the distance test +to be w m q p v y j f h r d g k b x l n u a t i z o c s e, and the order +under the time test m w d q v y j p k f b l i g h r x t o u a n e s c z. +It will be noticed that of the seven letters most largely represented in +a full font of type, e t a i n o s, all fall in the last third of one or +the other of these two groups, four are there in both groups, while e, +the letter used most of all, stands at the very foot of the list in the +distance group. Could there be any clearer call for the reform of our +letters? + +Mr. Sanford enters at length into the question of the points that help +and hinder legibility and that should therefore be considered in +reforming the shapes of letters. Enlargement of size and increase of +differences are obvious aids to clearness. Simplicity of outline and +concentration of peculiarity upon one feature are important elements of +legibility. Even a letter of small size, like v, is brought into the +first group by a combination of these two qualities. Serifs are +necessary to prevent irradiation, or an overflowing of the white on the +black, but they should be stubby; if long, they take on the character of +ornament and become confusing. The letters g and a are complicated +without being distinctive and are therefore continually confused with +other letters. The c e o group of much used letters can be made less +liable to confusion if the gap on the right of the first two letters is +made wider and the line of the e slants downward as in Jenson. Another +group, a n u, are confused together. To avoid this the top and bottom +openings of n and u should be made as open as possible and the a should +go back to the old script form =a= as in the Humanistic type. The letter s +is a source of great difficulty, being either not recognized at all in +the tests or confused with other letters. It will be remembered that +Franklin greatly deprecated the giving up of the long f, and a return to +this form is now suggested, care being taken, of course, to +differentiate it from f, especially by carrying it below the line. The +dot of the i is of no use when the letter stands alone, but it is an +important element of distinctness in words like "minim." The dot, as Dr. +Javal suggests, should be set on a level with the top of the l rather +than on a level with the top of the t. A reduction of serifs would +lessen the confusion of x and z and of s and z. + +But it is unnecessary to trace these studies in all their minutiae. In +the twenty-eight years that have followed the appearance of Mr. +Sanford's article work along the same lines has been done by many +investigators in various countries. Some of the conclusions that we have +noticed have been sustained, others have been discredited. The most +important conclusions of the investigators down to 1908 will be found +scattered through the pages of Huey's "Psychology and Pedagogy of +Reading," which appeared in that year. Such matters as the normal length +of a line of print, the size of type appropriate to schoolbooks for +children of different ages, the possibilities of future type design with +reference solely to the reader's needs, are among the many subjects +there set forth in an interesting fashion. + +In all these studies one obvious subject of investigation appears to +have been overlooked, and that is the actual types of everyday print. Do +they vary greatly in legibility? Are some of them so bad that they ought +to be rejected _in toto_? On the other hand, have the designers of +certain types attained by instinct or by happy accident a degree of +legibility that approximates the best to be hoped for? If so, can we +trace the direction to be followed in seeking further improvement? To +answer these questions an extended investigation was undertaken at Clark +University in 1911 by Miss Barbara Elizabeth Roethlein under the +direction of Professor John Wallace Baird. Her results were published by +Clark University Library in January, 1912, under the title "The Relative +Legibility of Different Faces of Printing Types." The pamphlet abounds +in tables made clear by the use of the very types under consideration. +The following are the conclusions reached: + + 1. Certain faces of type are much more legible than other + faces; and certain letters of every face are much more + legible than other letters of the same face. + + 2. These differences in legibility prove to be greater when + letters are presented in isolation from one another than + when they are presented in groups. + + 3. Legibility is a product of six factors: (1) the form of + the letter; (2) the size of the letter; (3) the heaviness of + the face of the letter (the thickness of the lines which + constitute the letter); (4) the width of the white margin + which surrounds the letter; (5) the position of the letter + in the letter group; (6) the shape and size of the adjacent + letters. In our experiments the first factor seemed to be + less significant than any of the other five; that is, in the + type-faces which were employed in the present investigation + the form of any given letter of the alphabet usually varied + between such narrow limits as to constitute a relatively + insignificant factor in the determination of its legibility. + + 4. The relatively heavy-faced types prove to be more legible + than the light-faced types. The optimal heaviness of face + seems to lie in a mean between the bold faces and such light + faces as Scotch Roman and Cushing Monotone. + + 5. The initial position in a group of letters is the most + advantageous position for legibility; the final position + comes next in order of advantage; and the intermediate or + internal positions are least favorable for legibility. + + 6. The size and the form of the letters which stand adjacent + to any given letter play an important role in determining + its legibility; and the misreadings which occur in the case + of grouped letters are of a wholly different sort from those + which occur in the case of isolated letters. When letters of + the same height or of similar form appear side by side, they + become relatively illegible. But the juxtaposition of an + ascender, a descender and a short letter tends to improve + the legibility of each, as also does the juxtaposition of + letters which are made up wholly or chiefly of straight + lines and letters which are made up wholly or chiefly of + curved lines. + + 7. The quality and the texture of the paper is a much less + significant factor than has been supposed, provided, of + course, that the illumination and the inclination of the + paper are such as to secure an optimal condition of light + reflection from its surface. + + 8. There is an urgent need for modification of certain + letters of the alphabet. + +Contrary to previous results with special types, these tests of +commercial types represent the capitals as more legible, by about +one-fifth, than the lowercase letters; but, in view of the much greater +bigness and heaviness of capitals, the earlier judgment would seem to be +supported so far as the letter forms of the two classes are concerned. +The order of each class, taking an average of all the faces, is as +follows: W M L J I A T C V Q P D O Y U F H X G N Z K E R B S m w d j l p +f q y i h g b k v r t n c u o x a e z s. Considering only the lowercase +letters, which represent nine-tenths of the print that meets the eye, we +still have four of the most used letters, s e a o, in the lowest fourth +of the group, while s in both sizes of type and in all faces stands at +the bottom. The average legibility of the best and worst is: W, 300.2; +S, 205.7; m, 296.8; s, 152.6. + +The tests were by distance; the letters were all ten-point of the +various faces; and the figures represent the distance in centimeters at +which the letters were recognized. There is a satisfaction in being +assured that the range between the best and the worst is not so great as +had been estimated previously, the proportion being in the one case not +quite 3:2 and in the other not quite 3:1.5. The following twenty-six +widely different faces of type were studied: + + American Typewriter + Bold Antique + Bulfinch + Caslon Oldstyle No. 540 + Century Oldstyle + Century Oldstyle, Bold + Century Expanded + Cheltenham Oldstyle + Cheltenham Bold + Cheltenham Bold, Condensed + Cheltenham Italic + Cheltenham Wide + Clearface + Clearface Italic + Clearface Bold + Clearface Bold Italic + Cushing No. 2 + Cushing Oldstyle No. 2 + Cushing Monotone + Della Robbia + DeVinne No. 2 + DeVinne No. 2, Italic + Franklin Gothic + Jenson Oldstyle No. 2 + News Gothic + Ronaldson Oldstyle No. 551 + +Of these, omitting the boldface and italic types, as well as all +capitals, the six best text types, ranging in average distance of +recognition from 236.4 to 224.3, are News Gothic, Bulfinch, Clearface, +Century Oldstyle, Century Expanded, and Cheltenham Wide. The six worst, +ranging from 206.4 to 185.6, are Cheltenham Oldstyle, DeVinne No. 2, +American Typewriter, Caslon Oldstyle, Cushing Monotone, and Cushing No. +2. The author says, commenting on these findings: + + If legibility is to be our sole criterion of excellence of + typeface, News Gothic must be regarded as our nearest + approximation to an ideal face, in so far as the present + investigation is able to decide this question. The esthetic + factor must always be taken into account, however, here as + elsewhere. And the reader who prefers the appearance of + Cushing Oldstyle or a Century face may gratify his esthetic + demands without any considerable sacrifice of legibility. + +To what extent these conclusions may be modified by future experiments +it is, of course, impossible to predict, but they clearly point the way +towards definiteness and boldness in the design of types as well as to a +preference for the larger sizes in their use. All this, as we shall see +in the next chapter, is in harmony with what experience has been +gradually confirming in the practice of the last generation. + + + + +TYPES AND EYES: PROGRESS + + +The late John Bartlett, whose "Familiar Quotations" have encircled the +globe, once remarked to a youthful visitor that it was a source of great +comfort to him that in collecting books in his earlier years he had +chosen editions printed in large type, "for now," he said, "I am able to +read them." The fading eyesight of old age does not necessarily set the +norm of print; but this is certain, that what age reads without +difficulty youth will read without strain, and in view of the excessive +burden put upon the eyes by the demands of modern life, it may be worth +while to consider whether it is not wise to err on the safer side as +regards the size of type, even by an ample margin. + +It is now some thirty-five years since the first scientific experiments +upon the relations of type to vision were made in France and Germany. It +was peculiarly fitting, we may remark, that the investigation should +have started in those two countries, for the German alphabet is +notoriously hard on the eyes, and the French alphabet is encumbered with +accents, which form an integral part of the written word, and yet are +always minute and in poor print exceedingly hard to distinguish. The +result of the investigation was a vigorous disapproval of the German +type itself and of the French accents and the favorite style of letter +in France, the condensed. It was pointed out that progress in type +design towards the hygienic ideal must follow the direction of +simplicity, uniformity, and relative heaviness of line, with wide +letters and short descenders, all in type of sufficient size for easy +reading. In the generation that has succeeded these experiments have we +made any progress in adapting print to eyes along the lines of these +conclusions? + +The printer might well offer in proof of such progress the page in which +these words are presented to the reader. In the four and a half +centuries of printing, pages of equal clearness and beauty may be found +if one knows just where to look for them, but the later examples all +fall within the period that we are discussing. It may be objected that +this is the luxury of printing, not its everyday necessity, and this +objection must be allowed; but luxuries are a powerful factor in +elevating the standard of living, and this is as true of print as of +food and dress. It must be confessed that an unforeseen influence made +itself felt early in the generation under discussion, that of William +Morris and his Kelmscott Press. Morris's types began and ended in the +Gothic or Germanic spirit, and their excellence lies rather in the +beauty of each single letter than in the effective mass-play of the +letters in words. Kelmscott books, therefore, in spite of their +decorative beauty, are not easy reading. In this respect they differ +greatly from those of Bodoni,[4] whose types to Morris and his followers +appeared weak and ugly. Bodoni's letters play together with perfect +accord, and his pages, as a whole, possess a statuesque if not a +decorative beauty. If the reader is not satisfied with the testimony of +the page now before him, let him turn to the Bodoni Horace of 1791, in +folio, where, in addition to the noble roman text of the poems, he will +find an extremely clear and interesting italic employed in the preface, +virtually a "library hand" script. But no force has told more powerfully +for clearness and strength in types than the influence of Morris, and if +he had done only this for printing he would have earned our lasting +gratitude. + +Morris held that no type smaller than long primer should ever be +employed in a book intended for continuous reading; and here again, in +size of type as distinguished from its cut, he made himself an exponent +of one of the great forward movements that have so happily characterized +the recent development of printing. Go to any public library and look at +the novels issued from 1850 to 1880. Unless your memory is clear on this +point, you will be amazed to see what small print certain publishers +inflicted with apparent impunity on their patrons during this period. +The practice extended to editions of popular authors like Dickens and +Thackeray, editions that now find no readers, or find them only among +the nearsighted. + +The cheap editions of the present day, on the contrary, may be poor in +paper and perhaps in presswork, they may be printed from worn plates, +but in size and even in cut of type they are generally irreproachable. +As regards nearsighted readers, it is well known that they prefer fine +type to coarse, choosing, for instance, a Bible printed in diamond, and +finding it clear and easy to read, while they can hardly read pica at +all. This fact, in connection with the former tolerance of fine print, +raises the question whether the world was not more nearsighted two +generations ago than it is now; or does this only mean that the oculist +is abroad in the land? + +It is recognized that, in books not intended for continuous reading, +small and even fine type may properly be employed. That miracle of +encyclopedic information, the World Almanac, while it might be printed +better and on a higher quality of paper, could not be the handy +reference book that it is without the use of a type that would be +intolerably small in a novel or a history. With the increase of the +length of continuous use for which the book is intended, the size of the +type should increase up to a certain point. Above eleven-point, or small +pica, however, increase in the size of type becomes a matter not of +hygiene, but simply of esthetics. But below the normal the printer's +motto should be: In case of doubt choose the larger type. + +A development of public taste that is in line with this argument is the +passing of the large-paper edition. It was always an anomaly; but our +fathers did not stop to reason that, if a page has the right proportions +at the start, mere increase of margin cannot enhance its beauty or +dignity. At most it can only lend it a somewhat deceptive appearance of +costliness, with which was usually coupled whatever attraction there +might be in the restriction of this special edition to a very few +copies. So they paid many dollars a pound for mere blank paper and +fancied that they were getting their money's worth. The most +inappropriate books were put out in large paper, Webster's Unabridged +Dictionary, for instance. At the other extreme of size may be cited the +Pickering diamond classics, also in a large-paper edition, pretty, +dainty little books, with their Lilliputian character only emphasized by +their excess of white paper. But their print is too fine to read, and +their margins are out of proportion to the printed page. Though their +type is small, they by no means exhibit the miracle of the books printed +in Didot's "microscopic" type, and they represent effort in a direction +that has no meaning for bookmaking, but remains a mere _tour de force_. +Quite different is the case with the Oxford miniature editions, of the +same size outwardly as the large-paper editions of the Pickering +diamond classics; these are modern miracles, for with all their +"infinite riches in a little room," they are distinctly legible. + +As regards the design of type, the recent decades have given us our +choice among type-faces at once so beautiful and so clear as the Century +Oldstyle, Century Expanded, and Cheltenham Wide. To those should be +added Mr. Goudy's virile Kennerley. Still later have appeared, in direct +descent from one of Jenson's type-faces, Cloister and Centaur, two of +the most beautiful types of any age or country, and both, if we may +judge by comparison with the types approved by the Clark University +experiments, also among the most legible. Fortunately in type design +there is no essential conflict between beauty and use, but rather a +natural harmony. Already a high degree of legibility has been attained +without sacrifice; the future is full of promise. + +In respect to books, we may congratulate ourselves that printing has +made real progress in the last generation towards meeting the primary +demand of legibility. The form of print, however, which is read by the +greatest number of eyes, the newspaper, shows much less advance. Yet +newspapers have improved in presswork, and the typesetting machines have +removed the evil of worn type. Moreover, a new element has come to the +front that played a much more subordinate part three or four decades +ago--the headline. "Let me write the headlines of a people," said the +late Henry D. Lloyd to the writer, "and I care not who makes its laws." +It is the staring headlines that form the staple of the busy man's +newspaper reading, and they are certainly hygienic for the eyes if not +always for the mind. While the trend towards larger and clearer type +has gone on chiefly without the consciousness of the public, it has not +been merely a reform imposed from without. The public prefers readable +print, demands it, and is ready to pay for it. The magazines have long +recognized this phase of public taste. When the newspapers have done the +same, the eyes of coming generations will be relieved of a strain that +can only be realized by those who in that day shall turn as a matter of +antiquarian curiosity to the torturing fine print that so thickly beset +the pathway of knowledge from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, +and, in the twentieth, overthrown in the field of books and magazines, +made its last, wavering stand in the newspapers. + + + + +EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE OF LEGIBILITY + + +Since print is meant primarily to be read, the first law of its being is +legibility. As a general principle this must be accepted, but in the +application certain important reservations must be made, all relating +themselves to the question _how_ the print is to be read. For +straightaway, long-time reading, or for reading in which the aim is to +get at the words of the author with the least hindrance, the law of +legibility holds to its full extent--is, in fact, an axiom; but not all +reading is long-continued, and not all is apart from considerations +other than instantaneous contact with the author's thought through his +words. It is these two classes of exceptions that we have now to +consider. + +Let us begin with an example outside the field of typography. On the +first issue of the Lincoln cent were various sizes of lettering, the +largest being devoted to the words which denote the value of the coin, +and the smallest, quite undistinguishable in ordinary handling, to the +initials of the designer, afterwards discarded. Obviously these sizes +were chosen with reference to their power to attract attention; in the +one case an excess of legibility and in the other case, quite as +properly, its deficiency. Thus, what is not designed for the cursory +reader's eye, but serves only as a record to be consulted by those who +are specially interested in it, may, with propriety, be made so +inconspicuous as to be legible only by a distinct effort. Cases in +everyday typography are the signatures of books and the cabalistic +symbols that indicate to the newspaper counting room the standing of +advertisements. Both are customarily rendered inconspicuous through +obscure position, and if to this be added the relative illegibility of +fine type, the average reader will not complain, for all will escape his +notice. + +Again, we may say that what is not intended for ordinary continuous +reading may, without criticism, be consigned to type below normal size. +Certain classes of books that are intended only for brief consultation +come under this head, the best examples being encyclopedias, +dictionaries, and almanacs. As compactness is one of their prime +requisites, it is a mistake to put them into type even comfortably +large. The reader opens them only for momentary reference, and he can +well afford to sacrifice a certain degree of legibility to handiness. +The Encyclopaedia Britannica is a classic instance of a work made bulky +by type unnecessarily coarse for its purpose; the later, amazingly +clear, photographic reduction of the Britannica volumes is a recognition +of this initial mistake. The Century and Oxford dictionaries, on the +other hand, are splendid examples of the judicious employment of fine +print for the purpose both of condensation and the gradation of +emphasis. One has only to contrast with these a similar work in uniform +type, such as Littre's Dictionnaire, to appreciate their superiority for +ready reference. + +The departure from legibility that we have thus far considered has +related to the size of the letters. Another equally marked departure is +possible in respect to their shape. In business printing, especially in +newspaper advertisements, men are sometimes tempted to gain amount at +the risk of undue fineness of type. But no advertiser who counts the +cost will take the chance of rendering his announcement unreadable by +the use of ornamental or otherwise imperfectly legible letters. He sets +no value upon the form save as a carrier of substance. In works of +literature, on the contrary, form may take on an importance of its own; +it may even be made tributary to the substance at some cost to +legibility. + +In this field there is room for type the chief merit of which is apart +from its legibility. In other words, there is and always will be a place +for beauty in typography, even though it involve a certain loss of +clearness. As related to the total bulk of printing, works of this class +never can amount to more than a fraction of one per cent. But their +proportion in the library of a cultivated man would be vastly greater, +possibly as high as fifty per cent. In such works the esthetic sense +demands not merely that the type be a carrier of the alphabet, but also +that it interpret or at least harmonize with the subject-matter. Who +ever saw Mr. Updike's specimen pages for an edition of the "Imitatio +Christi," in old English type, without a desire to possess the completed +work? Yet we have editions of the "Imitatio" that are far more legible +and convenient. The "Prayers" of Dr. Samuel Johnson have several times +been published in what we may call tribute typography; but no edition +has yet attained to a degree of homage that satisfies the lovers of +those unaffected devotional exercises. + +What, therefore, shall be the typography of books that we love, that we +know by heart? In them, surely, beauty and fitness may precede +legibility unchallenged. These are the books that we most desire and +cherish; this is the richest field for the typographic artist, and one +that we venture to pronounce, in spite of all that has yet been done, +still almost untilled. Such books need not be expensive; we can imagine +a popular series that should deserve the name of tribute typography. +Certain recent editions of the German classics, perhaps, come nearer to +justifying such a claim than any contemporary British or American work. +In more expensive publications some of Mr. Mosher's work, like his +quarto edition of Burton's "Kasidah," merits a place in this class. A +better known, if older, instance is the holiday edition of Longfellow's +"Skeleton in Armor." Who would not rather read the poem in this Old +English type than in any Roman type in which it has ever been printed? +The work of the Kelmscott Press obviously falls within this class. + +The truth is, there is a large body of favorite literature which we are +glad to be made to linger over, to have, in its perusal, a brake put +upon the speed of our reading; and in no way can this be done so +agreeably as by a typography that possesses a charm of its own to arrest +the eye. Such a delay increases while it prolongs the pleasure of our +reading. The typography becomes not only a frame to heighten the beauty +of the picture, but also a spell to lengthen our enjoyment of it. It +cannot be expected that the use of impressive type will be confined to +literature. That worthiest use will find the field already invaded by +pamphlet and leaflet advertisements, and this invasion is certain to +increase as the public taste becomes trained to types that make an +esthetic appeal of their own. + +Ordinary type is the result of an attempt to combine with legibility an +all-round fitness of expression. But that very universality robs it of +special appropriateness for works of a strongly marked character. It is +impossible to have a new type designed for every new work, but classes +of types are feasible, each adapted to a special class of literature. +Already there is a tendency to seek for poetry a type that is at least +removed from the commonplace. But hitherto the recognition of this +principle has been only occasional and haphazard. Where much is to be +gained much also can be lost, and interpretative or expressional +typography that misses the mark may easily be of a kind to make the +judicious grieve. But the rewards of success warrant the risk. The most +beautiful of recent types, the New Humanistic, designed for The +University Press, has hardly yet been used. Let us hope that it may soon +find its wider mission so successfully as to furnish an ideal +confirmation of the principle that we have here been seeking to +establish. + + + + +THE STUDENT AND THE LIBRARY + + +What does a student of five and twenty years ago still remember of his +college? My own first and fondest recollection is of the walks and +talks, _noctes coenaeque deum_, with loved and honored companions, in +the bonds of a friendship that can be realized only in youth, under the +inspiration of a common intellectual purpose, and, one is tempted to +add, in the atmosphere of college halls; next arise golden hours passed +in the library; and lastly there come back other hours, not always +golden, spent in the classroom. This is, of course, only to enumerate +the three influences that are, or should be, strongest in a student's +life: the society of his fellows, his private reading, and his studies. +Of these three factors of culture the first and the last are fairly +constant, but the second is apt to vary in the experience of any small +group of students from the foremost place, as in the case of John Hay, +to no place at all. It is of this varying element in the student's +conduct of life that I have undertaken to write. + +Unless student intercourse has an intellectual basis, such as reading +furnishes, it has nothing to distinguish it from any other good +fellowship and can hardly escape triviality. The little groups of +students at Cambridge which included such members as the three +Tennysons, Hallam, Spedding, Fitzgerald, and Thackeray, while they were +no doubt jovial enough, were first of all intellectual associations, +where + + Thought leapt out to wed with Thought + Ere Thought could wed itself with Speech. + +In such companionship men not only share and correct the culture which +they have acquired in private, but they are stimulated to higher and +wider attainment. The classroom at its best is hardly equal to a good +book; from its very nature it must address an abstract average rather +than the individual, while a good book startles us with the intimacy of +its revelation to ourselves. The student goes to college to study; he +has his name thence. But while the classroom is busied, patiently, +sedulously doling him out silver, he discovers that there is gold lying +all around, which he may take without asking. Twenty-five years after he +finds that the silver has grown black with rust, while the gold shines +on untarnished. Librarians are often besought for a guide in reading, a +set of rules, a list of books. But what is really needed, and what no +mentor can give, is a hunger and thirst after what is in books; and this +the student must acquire for himself or forego the blessing. Culture +cannot be vicarious. This is not to say that a list of books may not be +useful, or that one set of books is as good as another, but only that +reading is the thing, and, given the impulse to read, the how and the +what can be added unto it; but without this energizing motive, no amount +of opportunity or nurture will avail. + +But, having not the desire to read, but only a sense that he ought to +have it, what shall a student do? I will suggest three practicable +courses from which a selection may be made according to the needs of the +individual. The first is to sit down and take account of stock, to map +out one's knowledge, one's previous reading, and so find the inner +boundaries of the vast region yet to be explored. This process can +hardly fail to suggest not merely one point of departure, but many. The +second method is, without even so much casting about, to set forth in +any direction, take the first attractive unread book at hand, and let +that lead to others. The third course is intended for the student whose +previous reading has been so scanty and so perfunctory as to afford him +no outlook into literature, a case, which, it is to be feared, is only +too common. We will consider this method first. Obviously such a student +must be furnished with a guide, one who shall set his feet in the right +paths, give him his bearings in literature, and inspire him with a love +for the beauty and grandeur of the scenery disclosed, so that he shall +become not only able to make the rest of his journey alone, but eager to +set out. + +Where shall the student find such a guide? There are many and good at +hand, yet perhaps the best are not the professional ones, but rather +those who give us merely a delightful companionship and invite us to +share their own favorite walks in Bookland. Such a choice companion, to +name but one, awaits the student in Hazlitt's "Lectures on the English +Poets." Of the author himself Charles Lamb says: "I never slackened in +my admiration of him; and I think I shall go to my grave without +finding, or expecting to find, such another companion." And of his books +Stevenson confesses: "We are mighty fine fellows, but we cannot write +like William Hazlitt." In this little volume which the most hard-pressed +student can read and ponder in the leisure moments of a single term, the +reader is introduced at once into the wonderland of our English +literature, which he is made to realize at the outset is an indivisible +portion of the greater territory of the literature of the world. + +Hazlitt begins with a discussion of poetry in general, shows what poetry +is, how its various forms move us, and how it differs from its next of +kin, such as eloquence and romance. He then takes up the poetry of +Homer, the Bible, Dante, and Ossian, and sets forth the characteristics +of each. In his chapter on our first two great poets, Chaucer and +Spenser, he points out the great and contrasted merits of these two +writers who have so little in common except a superficial resemblance in +language. Hazlitt is fond of presenting his authors to us in pairs or +groups. His next chapter is devoted to Shakespeare and Milton; and we +may remark that, while the student is in no danger of forgetting the +existence of Shakespeare, he is likely to need just such a tribute to +the greatness of Milton as the critic here presents. The volume contains +later chapters of great interest on Milton's "Lycidas" and "Eve." It is +not necessary for us to mention here all the subjects treated; Dryden +and Pope, Thomson and Cowper, Burns and the Old English Ballads are +among them. In every case we are not tantalized with mere estimates and +characterizations, but are furnished with illustrative specimens of the +poems discussed. But the initiation into English literature which we +receive from Hazlitt does not end with the authors of whom he treats +directly. Resuming our figure of a landscape, we may say that he takes +us through a thousand bypaths into charming nooks and upon delightful +prospects of which he has made no announcement beforehand. + +I spoke of reading and pondering his book in a single college term. But, +while this may easily be done, it will be far more profitable for the +student, as soon as he feels drawn away from the volume to some author +whom it presents, to lay it aside and make an excursion of his own into +literature. Then let him take up the volume again and go on with it +until the critic's praise of the "Faerie Queene," or the "Rape of the +Lock," or the "Castle of Indolence" again draws his attention off the +essay to the poem itself. And as one poem and one author will lead to +another, the volume with which the student set out will thus gradually +fulfill its highest mission by inspiring and training its reader to do +without it. If the student has access to the shelves of a large library, +the very handling of the books in their groups will bring him into +contact with other books which he will be attracted to and will dip into +and read. In fact it should not be long before he finds his problem to +be, not what to read, but what to resist reading. + +Suppose, however, that the student finds himself already possessed of a +vague, general knowledge of literature, but nothing definite or +satisfying, nothing that inspires interest. He it is who may profitably +take up the first attractive unread book at hand; but he should endeavor +to read it, not as an isolated fragment of literature, but in its +relations. Suppose the book happens to be "Don Quixote." This is a work +written primarily to amuse. But if the reader throws himself into the +spirit of the book, he will not be content, for instance, with the mere +mention of the romances of chivalry which turned the poor knight's +brain. He will want to read about them and to read some of them +actually. He will be curious as to Charlemagne and his peers, Arthur and +his knights, and will seek to know their true as well as their fabulous +history. Then he will wonder who the Moors were, why they were banished, +and what was the result to Spain of this act in which even his liberal +and kindly author acquiesced. He will ask if antiquity had its romances +and if any later novelists were indebted to Cervantes. The answer to the +last query will bring him to Gil Blas in French literature and to the +works of the great English romancers of the eighteenth century. Fielding +will lead him to Thackeray, Smollett to Dickens, Dickens to Bret Harte, +and Bret Harte to Kipling. If he reads Cervantes in English, he will +have a choice of translations, and he will not fail to mark the +enormous difference in language, literary style, and ideals of rendering +between the three versions of Shelton in the seventeenth century, +Motteux in the eighteenth, and Ormsby in the nineteenth. If, like many +another, he becomes so interested in the great romance as to learn +Spanish for the sake of coming into direct communication with his +author, a whole new literature will be opened to him. Furthermore, in +the cognate languages which a mastery of Spanish will make easy for him, +a group of literatures will be placed at his command; and, while he +began with Cervantes, who threw open for him the portals of the middle +ages, we may leave him with Dante, looking before and after over all +human achievement and destiny. + +All this the student will not do in one term nor in one year, but he +will have _found himself_ in the library, he will have acquired a bond +to culture that will not break as he steps out of his last recitation, +that will not yield when time and distance have relegated his college +friendships, with his lost youth, to the Eden or the Avilion of memory. +And if afterwards he comes, with Emerson, to find the chief value of his +college training in the ability it has given him to recognize its little +avail, he will thus disparage it only in the spirit in which a more +advanced student of an earlier day, looking back upon the stupendous +revelations of his "Principia," likened them to so many pebbles or +shells picked up on the shore of the illimitable ocean of knowledge. + + + + +ORTHOGRAPHIC REFORM + + +Seldom have controversies brought out so much humor, on both sides, as +that over the reform of English spelling, and few have excited so little +interest in proportion to the energy expended. Both these results are +due perhaps to the fact that the subject, from its very nature, does not +admit of being made a burning question. Yet one has to look only a +little way into it to see that important interests--educational, +commercial, and possibly racial--are involved. Thus far the champions +have been chiefly the newspapers for spelling as it is, and scholars and +educators for spelling as it ought to be. But, in spite of the +intelligence of the disputants, the discussion has been singularly +insular and deficient in perspective. It would gain greatly in +conclusiveness if spelling and its modifications were considered broadly +and historically, not as peculiar to English, but as common to all +languages, and involving common problems, which we are not the first to +grapple with, but rather seem destined to be the last to solve. + +As is usually the case in controversies, the chief obstacle to agreement +is a lack of what the lawyers call a meeting of minds. The two sides are +not talking about the same thing. The reformer has one idea of what +spelling is; the public has another idea, which is so different that it +robs the reformer's arguments of nearly all their force. The two ideas +for which the same word is used are hardly more alike than mother of +pearl and mother of vinegar. To the philologist spelling is the +application of an alphabet to the words of a language, and an alphabet +is merely a system of visible signs adapted to translate to the eye the +sounds which make up the speech of the people. To the public spelling is +part and parcel of the English language, and to tamper with it is to lay +violent hands on the sacred ark of English literature. To the +philologist an alphabet is not a thing in itself, but only a medium, and +he knows many alphabets of all degrees of excellence. Among the latest +formed is that which we use and call the Roman, but which, though it was +taken from Italy, made its way back after a course of form development +that carried it through Ireland, England, and Germany. This alphabet was +originally designed for writing Latin, and, as English has more sounds +than Latin, some of the symbols when applied to English have to do +multiple duty; though this is the least of the complaints against our +current spelling. In fact any inventive student of phonetics could in +half an hour devise a better alphabet for English, and scores have been +devised. But the Roman has the field, and no one dreams of advocating a +new alphabet for popular use. Meanwhile, though the earliest English may +have been written in Runic, and the Bibles which our Pilgrim fathers +brought over were printed in Black-letter, still to the great +English-reading public the alphabet of current books and papers is the +only alphabet. Even this is a double alphabet, consisting as it does of +capitals and small letters; and we have besides Italic, Black-letter, +and Script, all in common use, all with double forms, and all differing +greatly from one another. At best the Roman alphabet, though beautiful +and practical, is not so beautiful as the Greek nor nearly so efficient +for representing English sounds as the Cherokee syllabary invented by +the half-breed, Sequoyah, is for representing the sounds of his mother +tongue. + +Let us now turn from the alphabet, which is the foundation of spelling, +to spelling itself. Given a scientific alphabet, spelling, as a problem, +vanishes; for there is only one possible spelling for any spoken word, +and only one possible pronunciation for any written word. Both are +perfectly easy, for there is no choice, and no one who knows the +alphabet can make a mistake in either. But given a traditional alphabet +encumbered with outgrown or impracticable or blundering associations, +and spelling may become so difficult as to serve for a test or hallmark +of scholarship. In French, for instance, the alphabet has drifted so far +from its moorings that no one on hearing a new word spoken, if it +contains certain sounds, can be sure of its spelling; though every one +on seeing a new word written knows how to pronounce it. But in English +our alphabet has actually parted the cable which held it to speech, and +we know neither how to write a new word when we hear it nor how to +pronounce one when we see it. Strangest of all, we have come, in our +English insularity, to look on this as a matter of course. But Germans +and Spaniards, Italians and Dutchmen, have no such difficulty and never +have to turn to the dictionary to find out how to spell a word that they +hear or how to pronounce a word that they see. For them spelling and +speech are identical; all they have to make sure of is the standard +pronunciation. They have done what we have neglected to do--developed +the alphabet into an accurate phonetic instrument, and our neglect is +costing us, throughout the English-speaking world, merely in dealing +with silent letters, the incredible sum of a hundred million dollars a +year.[5] Our neighbors look after the alphabet and the spelling looks +after itself; if the pronunciation changes, the spelling changes +automatically, and thus keeps itself always up to date. + +But this happy result has not been brought about without effort, the +same kind of effort that our reformers are now making for our benefit. +In Swedish books printed only a hundred years ago we find words printed +with the letters _th_ in combination, like the word _them_, which had +the same meaning, and originally the same pronunciation, as the English +word. At that time, however, Swedes had long ceased to be able to +pronounce the _th_, but they kept the letters just as we still keep the +_gh_ in _brought_ and _through_, though for centuries no one who speaks +only standard English has been able to sound this guttural. In the last +century the Swedes reformed their spelling, and they now write the word +as they pronounce it--_dem_. German spelling has passed through several +stages of reform in recent decades and is now almost perfectly phonetic. +Germans now write _Brot_ and no longer _Brod_ or _Brodt_. It must be +frankly confessed that the derivation of some words is not so obvious to +the eye as formerly. The appearance of the Swedish _byra_ does not at +once suggest the French _bureau_, which it exactly reproduces in sound. +But Europeans think it more practical, if they cannot indicate both +pronunciation and etymology in spelling, to relegate the less important +to the dictionary. Much, to be sure, has been made of the assumed +necessity of preserving the pedigree of our words in their spelling, but +in many cases this is not done now. Who thinks of _alms_ and +_eleemosynary_ as coming from the same Greek word? Scholars say that a +complete phonetic spelling of English would actually restore to the eye +as much etymology as it took away. + +But the most deep-seated opposition to changing our current spelling +arises from its association, almost identification, with English +literature. If this objection were valid it would be final, for +literature is the highest use of language, and if reformed spelling +means the loss of our literature we should be foolish to submit to it. +But at what point in the history of English literature would reformed +spelling begin to work harm? Hardly before Shakespeare, for the spelling +of Chaucer belongs to the grammatical stage of the language at which he +wrote, and Spenser's spelling is more or less an imitation of it made +with a literary purpose. Shakespeare and Milton, however, wrote +substantially modern English, and they are therefore at the mercy of the +spelling reformer--as they always have been. The truth is, Shakespeare's +writings have been respelt by every generation that has reprinted them, +and the modern spelling reformer would leave them at least as near to +Shakespeare's spelling as our current spelling is. The poet himself made +fun of his contemporaries who said _det_ instead of _debt_, but what +would he say of us who continue to write the word _debt_, though it has +not been so pronounced for three hundred years? In old editions (and how +fast editions grow old!) antiquated spelling is no objection, it is +rather an attraction; but new, popular editions of the classics will be +issued in contemporary spelling so long as the preservation of metre and +rhyme permit. We still occasionally turn to the first folio of +Shakespeare and to the original editions of Milton's poems to enjoy +their antique flavor, and, in the latter case, to commune not only with +a great poet, but also with a vigorous spelling reformer. Thus, whatever +changes come over our spelling, standard old editions will continue to +be prized and new editions to be in demand. But for the most part, +though we might not readily understand the actual speech of Shakespeare +and Milton, could we hear it, we like to treat them as contemporaries +and read their works in our everyday spelling. + +Our libraries, under spelling reform, will become antiquated, but only a +little faster than they are now doing and always have done. Readers who +care for a book over ten years old are few in number and will not mind +antiquated spelling in the future any more than they do now. The +printer, therefore, must not flatter himself with the prospect of a +speedy reprinting of all the English classics in the new spelling. +English is certain to have some day as scientific a spelling as German, +but the change will be spread over decades and will be too gradual to +affect business appreciably. On the other hand, he need not fear any +loss to himself in the public's gain of the annual hundred million +dollar tax which it now pays for the luxury of superfluous letters. Our +printer's bills in the future will be as large as at present, but we +shall get more for our money. + +It will indeed be to the English race a strange world in which the +spelling book ends with the alphabet; in which there is no conflict of +standards except as regards pronunciation; in which two years of a +child's school life are rescued from the needless and applied to the +useful; in which the stenographer has to learn not two systems of +spelling, but only two alphabets; in which the simplicity and directness +of the English language, which fit it to become a world language, will +not be defeated by a spelling that equals the difficulty of German +grammar; in which the blundering of Dutch printers, like _school_, false +etymologies, like _rhyme_, and French garnishes, as in _tongue_, no +longer make the judicious grieve; and in which the fatal gift of bad +spelling, which often accompanies genius, will no longer be dependent +upon the printer to hide its orthographic nakedness from a public which, +if it cannot always spell correctly itself, can always be trusted to +detect and ridicule bad spelling. But it is a world which the English +race will some day have, and which we may begin to have here and now if +we will. + + + + +THE PERVERSITIES OF TYPE + + +That searching analyst of the soul, Edgar Allan Poe, found among the +springs of human nature the quality of perverseness, the disposition to +do wrong because it is wrong; in reality, however, Poe's Imp of the +Perverse is active far beyond the boundaries of the human soul; his +disturbances pervade the whole world, and nowhere are they more +noticeable than in the printing office. This is so because elsewhere, +when things fall out contrary to rule, the result may often be neutral +or even advantageous; but in the printing office all deviations, or all +but a minute fraction, are wrong. They are also conspicuous, for, though +the standard is nothing less than perfection, the ordinary human eye is +able to apply the standard. These tricks of the malicious imp are +commonly called "misprints," "printer's errors," "errors of the press," +or, more impartially, "errata" or "corrigenda." In the first three names +there is a tinge of unfairness, because the printer is by no means +responsible for all the mistakes that appear in type. The author is +usually partly to blame and may be chiefly; yet when he suffers a lapse +of memory or knowledge, he usually passes it off as a "printer's error." +Sometimes the author's handwriting may mislead the printer, but when so +good a biblical scholar as Mr. Gladstone wrote of _Daniel_ in the fiery +furnace, there was no possibility that the single name could have stood +in his manuscript for the names of the three men whose trial is +mentioned in the _book_ of Daniel. Even here the submission of proof +fixes the final responsibility on the author. But, quite apart from the +responsibility for them, the mistakes embalmed in type are among the +most interesting of all literary curiosities. + +Misprints--to use the handiest term--range in importance from the +innocent and obvious, like a turned _a_, and the innocent and obvious +only to the expert, like a turned _s_, to a turned _n_, which may be +mistaken for a _u_, or the change or omission of a punctuation mark, +which may involve claims to thousands of dollars. Even the separation of +one word into two may reverse the meaning of the sentence, yet not +betray itself by any oddity of phrase, as when the atheist who had +asserted that "God is nowhere" found himself in print standing sponsor +for the statement that "God is now here." The same trick of the types +was played on an American political writer in his own paper regarding +his pet reform, which he meant to assert was "nowhere in existence." The +earliest printed books were intended to be undistinguishable from +manuscripts, but occasionally a turned letter betrayed them absolutely. +In the same way the modern newspaper now and then introduces an +unintentional advertisement of the linotype by presenting to its readers +a line upside down. Another trick is the mixing of two paragraphs, which +sometimes occurs even in books. The most famous instance of this blunder +is probably that which happened in the English "Men of the Time" for +1856, and which led to a serious lawsuit against the publishers. The +printer had mixed the biographies of the Bishop of Oxford and Robert +Owen the Socialist in such a way that Bishop Wilberforce was called "a +sceptic as it regards religious revelation." The mistake occurred in +locking up the forms. Doubtless both biographies had been approved by +their subjects, but apparently no proof was read after the fatal +telescoping of the two articles. + +The last instance is an example of the patient waiting as much as the +ingenuity of the Imp of the Perverse, but in pure ingenuity he is +without a rival in mere human inventiveness. It certainly was a +resourceful Frenchman who translated "hit or miss" as "frappe ou +mademoiselle," and it was inspired ignorance on the part of a student +assistant in a college library who listed "Sur l'Administration de M. +Necker, par Lui Meme" under "Meme, Lui," as if it were the name of the +author of the book instead of being the French for "himself." But the +Imp of the Perverse aims higher than this. He did not hesitate in an +edition of the Bible published in London in 1631 to leave the _not_ out +of the one commandment from which its absence would be the most +noticeable. This was much worse than leaving out the whole commandment, +for it transformed a moral prohibition into an immoral command. The +printer in this case was fined three hundred pounds, or five hundred +dollars for each letter omitted. It is curious that the _same_ omission +was made in an edition of the Bible printed at Halle. A Vermont paper, +in an obituary notice of a man who had originally come from Hull, Mass., +was made by the types to state that "the body was taken to Hell, where +the rest of the family are buried." In the first English Bible printed +in Ireland, "Sin no more" appears as "Sin on more." It was, however, a +deliberate joke of some Oxford students which changed the wording in the +marriage service from "live" to "like," so that a couple married out of +this book are required to live together only so long as they "both shall +like." An orator who spoke of "our grand mother church" was made to say +"our grandmother church." The public of Brown University was recently +greatly amused by a local misprint. The president of the university is +required by its ancient charter to be an "antipaedobaptist"; the types +reproduced the word as "antipseudobaptist," a word which would be a very +good Greek rendering of "hardshell." An express train at full speed +having struck a cow, the report was made to say that it "cut her into +calves." Sixty years ago the "London Globe" made the Registrar General +say that the city was suffering from a high rate of _morality_. The +ingenuity of our readers will supply the missing letter, as it also will +the the true reading of the following passage which appeared in an +English newspaper: "Sir Robert Peel has been out with a party of fiends +shooting peasants." It was an easy but astonishing blunder made in +German, in the substitution of "Maedchen" (girls) for "Maechten" (powers), +according to which Bismarck was asserted to be "trying to keep up honest +and straightforward relations with all the girls." + +The Imp of the Perverse, when he descends upon the printing office, +sometimes becomes the Imp of the Perverted. Here his achievements will +not bear reproducing. Suffice it to say that in point of indecency he +displays the same superhuman ingenuity as in his more innocent pranks. +His indecencies are all, indeed, in print, but fortunately scattered, +and it would be a groveling nature that should seek to collect them; yet +the absence of this chapter from the world's book of humor means the +omission of a comic strain that neither Aristophanes nor Rabelais has +surpassed. Even as I write, a newspaper misprint assures me that +typesetting machines are no protection against the Imp of the Perverted. +Perhaps we may be pardoned the reproduction of one of the mildest of +these naughtinesses. A French woman novelist had written: "To know truly +what love is, we must go out of ourselves" (sortir de soi). The +addition of a single letter transformed this eminently respectable +sentiment into the feline confession: "To know truly what love is, we +must go out nights" (sortir de soir). + +Sometimes the Blunder Sprite deliberately pits himself against author, +proof reader, and all their allies. The books printed by Aldus are +famous for their correctness, yet a few errors crept into them, so much +to the disgust of the great printer that he said he would gladly have +given a gold crown for each one to be rid of them. The famous Oxford +University Press is said to have posted up the first sheet of one of its +Bibles, with the offer of a guinea for every misprint that could be +found in it. None was found--until the book was printed. James Lenox, +the American collector, prided himself on the correctness of his reprint +of the autograph manuscript of "Washington's Farewell Address," which he +had acquired. On showing the book to Henry Stevens, the bookseller, the +latter, glancing at a page, inquired, "Why pap_a_r instead of pap_e_r?" +Mr. Lenox was overwhelmed with mortification; but Stevens sent for a +skillful bookbinder, who removed the objectionable _a_ and with a +camel's hair pencil substituted an _e_ for it, so that the demon was +conquered after all, but only through great trouble. How would it seem +possible to reissue a printed book, copy it exactly, and yet make an +atrocious blunder? The Type Spirit is equal to even this feat. The book +was a mathematical one, full of formulae. It was not reproduced page for +page, so it was perfectly easy for a signature mark to get printed and +appear in the middle of a page mixed up with an equation, to the +confusion of American mathematical scholarship. More tragic were the +misprints in a work by the Italian poet, Guidi, which are said to have +hastened his death. In an interesting volume by Henry B. Wheatley on +"Literary Blunders," the Tricksy Puck of the Press has revenged himself +on the author for his attacks by smuggling in a number of misprints, +among them one that he must have inspired in the mind of the author, the +spelling "Bride of Lammermuir," which has no warrant in Scott's novel +itself. In the same book is a reference to Shakespeare that diligent +search fails to verify. Thus no knowledge or skill avails against the +Kobold of the Case. The most baffling device of the imp is to cause a +new error in the process of correcting an old one. This residuary +misprint is one against which there is no complete protection. When +General Pillow returned from Mexico he was hailed by a Southern editor +as a "battle-scarred veteran." The next day the veteran called upon him +to demand an apology for the epithet actually printed, "battle-scared." +What was the horror of the editor, on the following day, to see the +expression reappear in his apology as "bottle-scarred"! + +Occasionally, however, the mischief maker takes a notion to improve the +copy set before him. The world will never know how often this has +happened, for authors are just as willing to take credit for +excellencies not their own as to lay on the printer the blame for their +own oversights. In one of Artemus Ward's articles he had spoken of a +starving prisoner as appealing for something to eat. The proof rendered +it something to _read_. The humorist accepted the substitution as an +additional absurdity. The French poet, Malherbe, once welcomed a +misprint as an improvement on what he had written. There can be no doubt +that, had there been no misprints in Shakespeare's quartos and folios, +half the occupation of Shakespeare scholarship would have been lacking. +Sometimes the original manuscript turns up--unfortunately not in +Shakespeare's case--to confute some or all of the ingenious editors. A +learned professor changed the word "unbodied" in Shelley's "Skylark" to +"embodied," and some critics approved the change; but the poet's +manuscript in the Harvard University Library makes the former reading +clear beyond question. One might say that in these cases the Imp of the +Perverse plants himself like a fatal microbe in the brain of the +unfortunate editor. When that brilliant work, "The Principles of Success +in Literature," by George Henry Lewes, appeared in the "Fortnightly +Review," the expression "tilt stones from a cart" (used to describe +careless writing) was printed with _l_ as the first letter. When the +chapters were reissued in America, the proofreader, warned by the +presence of numerous other gross misprints, naturally corrected the +meaningless "lilt" to the obvious and natural "tilt." This change at +first escaped the attention of the American editor, who in the second +edition insisted on restoring the original misprint and even defended +his misjudgment in a note. It is worth adding that the Oxford English +Dictionary takes the misprint as too obvious for comment and quotes the +passage under "tilt." + +The most daring feat of the typographic Angel of the Odd--to adopt +another of Poe's expressions--is the creation of what Professor Skeat +called "ghost words," that is, words that seem to exist but do not. A +misprint in Scott's "Monastery" of "morse" for "nurse" was accepted +without question by readers and gravely explained by scholars. Some of +these words, of which there are scores, are due to the misreading of +crabbed manuscripts, but not a few have originated in the printing +office. It must be remembered that they make their way into the +dictionaries. For another instance let the reader open Worcester's +Dictionary to the word _phantomnation_. He will see it defined as +"illusion" and referred to Pope. In Webster's Dictionary, however, he +will learn its true character, as a ghost word formed by running +together the two words _phantom nation_. + +The printing of poetry involves all the possible mistakes liable to +prose and, owing to the form of poetry, some new ones. Thus in +Pickering's Aldine edition of Milton, two words of one line in "Samson +Agonistes" are dropped down into the next, making the two lines of +uneven length and very much hurting the emphasis. The three-volume +reprint of this edition dutifully copies the misprint. In the Standard +edition of Dr. Holmes's "Works" printed at the Riverside Press, in the +unusual case of a poem in stanzas being broken up into a dialogue, the +end of one speech, carried over to the following page, has been assigned +to the next speaker, thus spoiling both the sense and the metre. The +most extraordinary instance that has ever come under my eye occurs in a +special edition of John Hay's "Poems," issued as a college prize volume +and very elegantly printed at a well-known press. One poem has +disappeared entirely except a single stanza, which has been attached to +another poem with which it has no connection, not even agreeing with it +in metre. + +The list of errata, the printer's public confession of fault, is rather +rare in modern books, but this is due as much to the indifference of the +public as to better proofreading. When Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia" +took the reading world by storm, a New York reprint was issued, which we +commend to anyone looking for classical examples of misprinted books. It +averages perhaps a gross misprint to every page. Possibly extreme haste +to beat the Boston edition in the market may have suggested dispensing +with the proof reader. Of course a publisher who could so betray his +customers would never offer them even the partial amends of a list of +errata. Sometimes the errors are picked up while the book is still in +press, and in that case the list of errata can be printed as an +extension of the text; sometimes the best that can be done is to print +it on a separate slip or sheet and either insert it in the book or +supply it to purchasers. Both these things happened in the case of that +early American book, Mather's "Magnalia." The loose list of errata was +printed on the two inner pages of one fold the size of the book. In the +two hundred years that have elapsed, most of these folded sheets have +been lost, with the financial result that a copy of the book with them +will bring twice as much as one without them, these two leaves weighing +as much in the scales of commerce as the other four hundred. Sometimes a +misprint establishes the priority of a copy, the error having been +silently corrected while the sheets were going through the press, and +thus adds to its value in the eyes of the collector. The extent of these +ancient lists of errata staggers belief. Cardinal Bellarmin was obliged +to issue an octavo volume of eighty-eight pages to correct the misprints +in his published works, and there is on record a still huger list of +errata, extending to one hundred and eleven quarto pages. + +But we must not suppose that misprints began with the invention of +printing. The name did, but not the thing named. In earlier times it was +the copyist who made the mistakes and bore the blame. It is easy to see +how in Greece and Rome, when one reader read aloud a book which perhaps +a hundred copyists reproduced, a great number of errors might creep into +the copies, and how many of these would result from confusion in +hearing. Every copy was then an edition by itself and a possible source +of error, calling therefore for its own proofreading. It is accordingly +no wonder that the straightening out of classic texts is still going on. +Had Chaucer, who wrote over a hundred years before printing was +introduced into England, been able to read once for all the proof of his +poems, he would not have had to write that feeling address to his +copyist, or scrivener, with which we may fitly take leave of our +subject. + + Adam scryveyne, if ever it thee byfalle, + Boece or Troylus for to wryten nuwe, + Under thy long lokkes thowe most have the scalle, + But affter my makyng thowe wryte more truwe; + So offt a daye I mot thy werk renuwe, + It to corect, and eke to rubbe and scrape, + And al is thorugh thy necglygence and rape. + + + + +A SECRET OF PERSONAL POWER + + +Greater efficiency is the watchword of the hour. The pages of every +technical and even educational magazine bristle with it. One is driven +to wonder whether the principle does not require that in every printing +office the word "efficiency" be stereotyped to save the cost of setting. +We are told how one manager of a creamery saved annually the amount of +his own salary to the company by having the dents in the supply cans +pounded out and so getting more milk from the farmers. But though the +lengths to which the insistence on efficiency is carried may sometimes +provoke a smile, we have no inclination to disparage it; we realize that +efficiency has far more than a mere money value to society; it is rather +our purpose in the present paper to ask whether the efficiency man has +ever thought to turn his searchlight in upon himself and discover +whether he has not latent and unexpected powers that may be evoked to +the great increase of his own efficiency. + +We have nothing historically new to offer, though the principle we are +to mention is practically unknown or at least unutilized. It is the +great, controlling principle of Forethought, the application of which is +far wider than thought itself, extending to all the functions of the +soul and even affecting bodily energy and health. The action of +Forethought is based on the fact that there is more to ourselves than we +are aware of. We are not ordinarily conscious of our past lives, for +instance, yet a supreme crisis, such as falling from a height, may make +a man's whole past in an instant flash before him in review. Under +sudden stress a man may develop powers of leadership or resolution that +nobody could have foreseen and that he himself cannot account for. Our +selves as we know them are, so to speak, only the top soil of our entire +natures. Every conscious personality is like a farm in an oil district. +It is underlain by an unrealized wealth that may never be brought to +light. Some accident may reveal the treasure, but if the owner suspects +its existence he may bore for it. To show how this boring may be done is +one of the purposes of the present paper. But let us first assure +ourselves further of the existence of this hidden fund of energy. + +If in the early fifties of the last century a vote had been taken on the +two men in America who ten years later would stand head and shoulders +above their countrymen in position and recognized ability, it is +probable that not one single vote would have been cast for a slouchy +Missouri farmer or a shabby Illinois lawyer, certainly not for the +former. Grant and Lincoln themselves would not have expected a vote. Yet +their powers existed then, unrealized by their owners, and only needing +the proper stimulus to bring them out. That stimulus was responsibility; +and, great as their achievements were under this stimulus, neither man +appears to have reached his limit; each apparently had still a fund of +reserve power to be expended on yet greater occasions had they arisen. +This is not to say that all men have an equal fund of unrecognized +ability. The experiences of the great struggle out of which Lincoln and +Grant came supreme are alone sufficient to show how unequal are men's +endowments. A McClellan proves himself an unsurpassed organizer, but no +fighter; a Burnside displays marked ability in leading fifteen or +twenty thousand men, but beyond this number he fails disastrously. +Neither Foresight nor any other device can _create_ ability. A gallon +can will hold only a gallon, no matter how carefully its sides are +rounded. But in the case of any given man no one knows his capacity +until he has had a chance to show it. His nature may hold only a pint, +or, as with the men who have mastered great occasions with still +unexhausted powers, it may seem like the horn which the god Thor tried +to drain but could not, for its base was connected with the ocean +itself. Not every man can hope to be called to a responsibility that +shall bring out his latent powers; most of us, if we are ever to get the +call, will first have to show the ability. + +How can a man tap the unknown resources, be they great or small, of his +unconscious self? The method here to be suggested has at least the merit +of great simplicity. I have called it Forethought; it might perhaps as +exactly be called Forewilling. The point is that this unconscious part +of a man's nature is not out of his control; he can send word to it and +direct it, even if he has to do so by a kind of wireless telegraphy. +However mysterious this may sound, there is nothing mystical about it, +neither is it something vague and indefinite, but a practice to be +applied to actual cases in hand. Suppose a business man is trying to get +an important contract, and is to have an interview on the morrow that +will decide the question. Let him, before he falls asleep at night, go +over the whole ground in his mind, set before himself clearly the thing +to be done with the particular difficulties to be met, and let him +_will_ himself to meet those difficulties, to carry his case. Let him +will that at that time he shall be cheerful and vigorous; and, having +given these instructions to his unconscious self--which has perhaps +been waiting years for just this chance to do its part in the common +endeavor--let him dismiss the whole matter from his conscious thought +and go to sleep. On awaking in the morning let him review the matter and +again dismiss it from his mind until the occasion arrives. If he will do +this faithfully, he may not succeed the first time in carrying his +point, but he will certainly feel a great increase of power, and +ultimately, if he persists in making his unconscious self an active +partner in his life, he will find himself far more successful than he +could have been while depending on a single side of his nature. The same +principle will hold, of course, in a myriad cases; if we have to-morrow, +or even at a later date, to plead a cause, to make an after-dinner +speech, to write a report or an article, to learn a lesson, to entertain +guests, to handle a difficult case of discipline, we have only to take +this counsel of our pillow, to reenforce it with our first morning +thought, and we shall find ourselves making a new record of success. + +It is obvious that a principle so effective cannot be limited to the +active or the intellectual life. If a man has a fault or a besetting +weakness or sin, here is a way out of it. How long will a bad habit +stand such an assault upon itself as the evening and morning practice of +Forethought? One will actually feel the new force within him, like a +gyroscopic stabilizer, holding him to his predetermined course. There is +literally a world of hope for mankind in the application of this +principle on its moral side. But the business of our article is with +other applications and we must dismiss this, the greatest of all, with a +mere mention. + +If anyone questions whether this principle is true or not, the best +answer will be to bid him test it. Though it be true universally, some +people may not easily apply it, and some may not have the patience to +subject themselves to such a discipline. But most will have no +difficulty, and many will succeed well enough to inspire themselves to +continue. Some, indeed, will say, and with perfect truth, that there is +nothing new in this doctrine, that they have long known and applied it. +The principle has doubtless been known for thousands of years, but it +has certainly not been widely taken up by our race, which is curiously +external in its notions of self-education and self-control. One American +writer, the late Charles Godfrey Leland, a man of the most varied powers +and accomplishments, has written in advocacy of it and gives us as his +own experience that after the age of seventy he was able to do a greater +amount of literary work, and with less fatigue, than ever before simply +by calling in the aid of his unconscious self. If one were to read the +lives and writings of eminent men with this principle of Forethought in +mind, one would find numberless instances of its more or less +unconscious practice. The best scholar in my own class, for instance, +applied it to his studies. Does anyone suppose that the old Puritan's +sweetening of his mind with a little Calvin before he went to bed was +without its effect on his devotion to Calvinism? Erasmus, the wittiest +of scholars, writing nearly four hundred years ago to his special +friend, Christian of Lubeck, recommends the practice both of the evening +instruction and the morning review as something that he himself has +followed from his childhood; and we cannot doubt that in it he reveals +one of the secrets of his world-wide influence. He says to his youthful +friend: "A little before you go to sleep read something choice and worth +remembering, and think it over until you fall asleep. When you awake in +the morning make yourself give an account of it." Though this is clearly +an application of the principle to study and the strengthening of the +memory, experiment will show that the potency of Forethought is not +limited to the memory or the intellect in general, but applies to man's +entire nature and equally to the least and the greatest of its +concerns. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + + +[1] The substance of an address delivered Nov. 18, 1909, in the Boston +Public Library, under the auspices of the Society of Printers. + +[2] The address here summarized was printed at the Chiswick Press and +published at Christmas, 1884. Mr. Stevens died early in 1886, leaving a +posthumous book entitled "Recollections of Mr. James Lenox," which was +printed in the same year at the Chiswick Press, and which is of great +interest to booklovers, especially Americans. + +[3] Mr. Edison's projected substitute for paper, sheets of nickel, +20,000 to the inch, may indicate the book material of the future, but at +present it is only a startling possibility. + +[4] The type in which this book is printed is a modern Bodoni, cut in +Italy, and was chosen for its elegance rather than to illustrate the +latest results in legibility of type design. + +[5] See "Simplified Spelling in Writing and Printing; a Publisher's +Point of View," by Henry Holt, LL.D., New York, 1906. About one half the +expense falls within the domain of printing. + + + + +INDEX + + + + +INDEX + + +ABILITY, cannot be created, 164. + +Accents, their help in reading poetry, 17, 18. + +AEschylus, as characterized by Mrs. Browning, 67. + +Aldine edition of the British Poets, by Pickering, 23, 24. + +Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, his "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book," 87, 88. + +Aldus, Alduses and Elzevirs contrasted, 23; + beauty in his work, 4; + bindings of, 100; + his characteristic book, 21; + his example followed by the Elzevirs, 22; + his italic type and its effect on the size and price of books, 20, 21; + Pickering and other followers of, 23, 24; + vexed by misprints, 156. + +Alphabet, Chinese, picture writing, 80, 81; + derivation from picture writing, 81; + scientific and actual, 147; + varieties in use, 146. + _See also_ Type. + +American Journal of Psychology, contains Sanford's study on "The + relative legibility of the small letters," 122. + +Arnold, Edwin, misprints in his "Light of Asia," 159. + +Art, art aspect of the book, 3, 49, 115; + shares the prehistoric background of the book, 79, 80. + +Artists not opposed to criticism, 62. + +Assyrian clay tablet, 4. + +Astor Library, size in 1875, 104. + +Audubon, John James, his elephant-folio "Birds of America," 55. + +Authors, reading by single authors and groups, 74-76; + spoilers of books, 40. + +Authorship, rules of, 44. + + +BABYLONIAN book, 82. + +Back numbers, unimportant contemporary works become, 77. + +"Background of the book," 79-86. + +Bacon, Francis, Lord, quoted, 106, 112. + +Baird, John Wallace, directs Clark University studies on legibility, 124. + +Ballads, Old English, Hazlitt on, 142. + +Balzac, Honore de, expanded his novels in proof, 15. + +Balzac, Jean Louis Guez de, acknowledged his indebtedness to the + Elzevirs, 22. + +Bamboo, source of Chinese paper, 85. + +Barlow, Joel, place of his "Columbiad" in modern printing, 10. + +Bartlett, John, quoted, 128. + +Baskerville, John, his smooth paper, 5. + +Beauty, _see_ Esthetics. + +Beecher, Henry Ward, his "Norwood" in three volumes, 12; + John Beattie Crozier on his sermons, 111. + +Beethoven, his Ninth Symphony as a product of genius, 65. + +Bellarmin, Cardinal, list of errata in his works, 160. + +Best books, need of provision for daily reading, 107. + _See also_ Books. + +Bible, Hazlitt on its poetry, 141; + influence on Bunyan, on Calhoun, 110; + misprints in, 154, 156; + various folio editions, 19. + +Bible of humanity, Socrates in, 68. + +Bigness, in books, 35, 36, 45, 47. + +Binder, a spoiler of books, 40, 42; + what the librarian asks of him, 48. + +Binding, as an element of the book, 6; + "The clothing of a book," 97-101; + of the book beautiful, 52-55; + of the Chinese book, 88, 89; + of the well-made book, 52; + "Parchment bindings," 102, 103; + unnecessary rebindings, 46. + +Bion, as characterized by Mrs. Browning, 68. + +Birch bark, used for book of India, 85. + +Bismarck, misprint concerning, 155. + +Blackmore, Richard Doddridge, tribute to Shakespeare, 110. + +Blue and Gold editions, a favorite book size, 24-26. + +Bodoni, Giambattista, his type commended, 58, 129, 130. + +Book, "The background of the book," 79-86; + "blown" books, 35; + "The book beautiful," 49-62; + "The book of to-day and the book of to-morrow," 33-37; + Chinese, 84, 85, 87-91; + "The clothing of a book," 97-101; + a constructive critic of the, 38-43; + elements of, 4-6; + "Fitness in book design," 9-13; + its structural contradiction, 52; + materials, 92; + of the future, 95, 96; + on its physical side an art object, 3; + pre-Columbian Mexican, 6; + printed, a "substitute" for manuscript, 4; + subject to laws of esthetics and economics, 115; + tests of its utility, 115; + well-made, not extremely costly, 7, + not identical with beautiful, 52; + worth writing three times, 44. + _See also_ Design; Size. + +Book buyers, how to educate, 37; + spoilers of books, 40, 42. + +Booklovers, "Books and booklovers," 3-8; + must first know books, 7; + service in improvement of books, 48, 61, 62. + +Book production, 105; + elements added by printing, 14. + +Books, as a librarian would like them, 44-48; + "Books and booklovers," 3-8; + the greatest, few, 66; + intellectual riffraff, 9; + learning to love, 7; + "Lest we forget the few great books," 104-114; + perishable, 34, 45, 46; + progress in legibility of, 132, 133; + small, commended by Dr. Johnson, 20; + "The student and the library," 139-144; + that are not books, 105, 106; + world's annual publication of, 105. + +Books of Hours, dainty volumes, 20. + +Boston Athenaeum Library, size in 1875, 104. + +Boston Public Library, Address in, 3, _footnote_; + size in 1875, 104. + +Brandes, Georg, his "Shakespeare: a critical study," 72. + +Brass, used for book of India, 85. + +British Poets, rival editions of, by Pickering and by Little and Brown, + 23, 24. + +Brown, Horatio Robert Forbes, on Aldus and his italic type, 20. + +Brown, John Carter, patron of Henry Stevens, 38. + +Brown University, misprint in quoting its charter, 154, 155. + +Browne, Charles Farrar, adopts a misprint, 157. + +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, her "Wine of Cyprus" quoted, 67, 68. + +Buchanan, George, his Latin poems, commended by Dr. Johnson, 23; + published by the Elzevirs, 23. + +Bulk, in books, 92-96. + +Bunyan, John, debt to the Bible, 110. + +Burma, book of, _see_ India. + +Burns, Robert, Hazlitt on, 142. + +Burnside, General Ambrose Everett, his limitations, 163, 164. + +Burton, Sir Richard, his "Kasidah" in Mosher's tribute typography, 137. + +Bury, Richard de, author of the "Philobiblon," 8. + +Byron, Lord, hated Horace, 68. + + +CAESURA, indication of, in print, 18. + +Calhoun, John Caldwell, reader of the Bible, 110. + +Calligraphy, _see_ Manuscript. + +Calvin, John, as a Puritan's spiritual nightcap, 166. + +Cambridge University, student groups in, 139. + +Capital letters, legibility, 121, 122, 126; + Roman in origin, 118; + Roman, superior to black-letter in combination, 57; + undersized, used by Aldus, 21. + +Carlyle, Thomas, on Goethe, 110; + rewrote his books in proof, 15. + +Caslon type, commended, 58, 117. + +Catchwords, usage of Aldus, 21. + +Cattell, James McKeen, his investigations of legibility, 121, 122. + +Cave men, pictures made by them, 79, 80. + +Centaur type, commended, 132. + +Century Dictionary, illustration of cerastes, 81; + a triumph of typography, 16, 135. + +Century types, commended, 127, 132. + +Cervantes, "Don Quixote," character and meaning of, 70, 71, + no final edition of, 11, + on reading, 143, 144, + translations of, 143, 144; + his character, 70; + later novelists indebted to, 143. + +Chaucer, Geoffrey, complaint of his scribe's errors, 160, 161; + Hazlitt on, 142; + his spelling, 149. + +Cheapness, _see_ Cost. + +Cheltenham type, commended, 132. + +Cherokee syllabary, 146. + +Children, increase of near sight among, 120; + legibility of books for, 5, 117. + +Chinese, alphabet, conventionalized picture writing, 80, 81; + book, 84, 85, 87-91. + +Chiswick Press, 38, _footnote_; + Pickering's books printed at, 41. + +Christian of Lubeck, letter of Erasmus to, quoted, 166. + +Cicero, did not write for children, 68. + +Clark University, studies on legibility, 124-127, 132. + +Classroom, not equal to a good book, 140. + +Clay tablet, and booklovers, 4; + described, 82. + +Clodd, Edward, on discovery of British prehistoric antiquities, 79. + +Cloister Oldstyle type, commended, 132; + a safe norm for poetry, 58. + +Cloth, used in binding, 53. + +"Clothing of a book," 97-101. + +Codex, Roman, form adopted for parchment books, 84; + original of modern book form, 19, 52, 90. + +Collins, Wilkie, tribute to "Robinson Crusoe," 110. + +Color, use of, 60. + +Columbian type, first used in Barlow's "Columbiad," 10. + +Columns, in wide pages, 47. + +Community, value of reading to the, 28, 29. + +Compactness and legibility, 117, 130, 131, 134, 135. + +Compositor, a spoiler of books, 40, 41. + +"Constructive critic of the book," 38-43. + +Consumers, _see_ Book buyers. + +Contemporary writers, on reading their works, 76, 77. + +Contrast of type, 16, 17. + +Copperplate printing, in connection with typography, 60. + +Cornell University Library, proof-sheets of the "Waverley Novels" in, 15. + +Corrigenda, 152-161; + lists of, 159, 160. + +Cost, the book of to-morrow will be cheaper, 36; + cheapened books, 45; + of beautiful books little more than of unsightly, 39; + relatively small, of well-made books, 7. + +Cowper, William, Hazlitt on, 142. + +Crabbe, George, a favorite edition of, 24. + +Criticism, "A constructive critic of the book," 38-43; + not opposed by artists, 62. + +Crozier, John Beattie, on reading, 111, 112. + +Culture cannot be vicarious, 140. + + +DANA, JOHN COTTON, his analysis of the elements of the book, 4. + +Dante, his "Divine Comedy," character of, 69, 70, 144; + "fly's-eye" edition of, 55; + Hazlitt on, 141; + privilege of reading, 64; + Professor Torrey on reading, 109. + +Decoration, in bindings, 6, 99-101; + use of color in, 60. + +Defoe, Daniel, tribute of Wilkie Collins to "Robinson Crusoe," 110. + +Democratization of learning, by the cheap books of Aldus, 21. + +De Morgan, William, quoted, 63, 72; + value of his novels, 77. + +De Quincey, Thomas, on possible amount of reading in a lifetime, 105. + +Design, "Fitness in book design," 9-13; + of type, 5, 117, 118. + +Diagonal of page, 57. + +Dickens, Charles, his works in illegible print, 130, + on Oxford India paper, 94, + on thick paper, 95; + on reading him, 143. + +Dickinson, Emily, quoted, 30, 31. + +Didot, Ambrose Firmin, his "microscopic" type, 131. + +Discovery of a great book, 108, 109. + +Distinctions, to the eye, in manuscript and print, 16-18. + +Don Quixote, _see_ Cervantes. + +Dordogne, France, its prehistoric pictures, 79, 80. + +Dowden, Edward, his "Shakspere: his mind and art," 72. + +Dryden, John, Hazlitt on, 142. + + +ECONOMICS, the book within the domain of, 115, 116. + +Edges, treatment of, 61. + +Edison, Thomas Alva, would substitute nickel for paper, 92, _footnote_. + +Editions de luxe, disapproved by Henry Stevens, 39. + +Education, in appreciation of beautiful books, 50; + of book buyers, 37. + +Efficiency, in modern life, 162; + of the book, 115. + +Egyptian, book, see Papyrus; + hieroglyphics, picture writing, 81. + +Elements of the book, 4-6. + +Elimination, test of, applied to reading, 63, 64. + +Eliot, Charles William, his Latin signature, 102, 103. + +Elzevirs, compared with Aldines, 23, + with Blue and Gold editions, 25; + described, 21-23. + +Emerson, Ralph Waldo, his life and works, 75, 76; + importance of his works, 112; + John Beattie Crozier on, 112; + quoted, 144. + +Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its two sizes of type, 135. + +English, alphabets, 117, 118; + book publication in 1913, 105; + books, criticised, 38-43; + literature as affected by reformed spelling, 149; + poets, Hazlitt's Lectures on, 141, 142; + romancers, of the 18th century, 143; + spelling, 145-151. + +Engravings, _see_ Illustrations. + +Erasmus, Desiderius, letter to Christian of Lubeck, quoted, 166. + +Errata, 152-161; + lists of, 159, 160. + +Errors of the press, 152-161. + +Essays, in a favorite book size, 24. + +Esthetics, beauty in typography, 136-138; + "The book beautiful," 49-62; + the book subject to the laws of, 115; + harmony between beauty and use in type design, 132; + in choice of type, 127, 131; + involves sacrifice of utility, 116; + its demands must be met in a favorite book, 24, + met by the Little Classic editions, 26; + of the book, 3, 9; + printer's duty, to, 18; + relation of thickness and thinness to, 23, 24; + sacrificed to legibility, 117. + +Etymology in spelling, 148. + +Eumenes II, originates parchment, 83, 84. + +Euripides, as characterized by Mrs. Browning, 68. + +Everyman's Library, in a favorite book size, 24. + +Eves, binders, their work, 100. + +"Exceptions to the rule of legibility," 134-138, 130, 131. + +Expression in typography, 9-13, 137, 138. + +Eyes, _see_ Sight. + + +F, the letter, origin and derivatives, 81. + +Fairy Queen, _see_ Spenser, Edmund. + +"Favorite book sizes," 19-27. + +Favorite literature, in appropriate typography, 137. + +Fielding, Henry, a favorite edition of, 24; + on reading him, 143; + an unattractive edition of, 12. + +Fields, Annie Adams, her "Beacon Biography" of Hawthorne, 75. + +Finishing, _see_ Binding. + +Fitness, between illustrations and type, 6; + in book design, 9-13; + in typography, 137, 138. + +Fitzgerald, Edward, at Cambridge University, 139. + +Forethought, "A secret of personal power," 162-167. + +Forewilling, "A secret of personal power," 162-167. + +Format, _see_ Size. + +Forwarding, _see_ Binding. + +Franklin, Benjamin, quoted, 35, 123. + +French, alphabet, 147; + book publication in 1913, 105; + type, faults of, 117, 120, 128. + +Frowde, Henry, publishes "The Periodical" in form of a Chinese book, 88, + 90. + + +GALILEO, acknowledged his indebtedness to the Elzevirs, 22. + +Garfield, James Abram, recommends reading of fiction, 107. + +Gems, in bindings, 6. + +Genius, its bad spelling, 150, 151; + its monuments in the various arts, 65. + +German, book publication in 1913, 105; + spelling reform, 147, 148, 150; + tribute typography, 137; + type, faults of, 117, 122, 128. + +Ghost words, 158, 159. + +Gilding, _see_ Binding; Edges. + +Gladstone, William Ewart, a literary blunder of, 152, 153. + +Goethe, Carlyle on, 110; + his greatness, 73; + John Beattie Crozier on, 112; + on Sir Walter Scott, 110. + +Goffered edges, 61. + +Goudy, Frederic W., his Kennerley type commended, 132. + +Grace before reading, 77. + +Grammar of book manufacture, 40, 42. + +Grant, Ulysses Simpson, his coat of arms, 30; + his greatness brought out by responsibility, 163. + +Gray, Thomas, small bulk of his work, 69. + +"Great books, Lest we forget the few," 104-114. + +Greek literature, masterpieces of, 66-68. + +Greeks, surpassed by moderns in knowledge, 30. + +Green, John Richard, quoted, 50. + +Grolier, Jean, bindings made for, 100. + +Groups, reading authors by, 74, 75. + +Guide, in reading, 140-142; + none to love of books, 7. + +Guidi, Carlo Alessandro, killed by misprints, 156. + + +HABIT, and forethought, 165. + +Haggard, Rider, his "Mr. Meeson's Will," 86. + +Hallam, Arthur Henry, at Cambridge University, 139. + +Handwriting, _see_ Manuscript. + +Harte, Francis Bret, on reading his works, 143. + +Harvard University, course in printing, 43; + Library possesses manuscript of Shelley's "Skylark," 158; + size of Library in 1875, 104. + +Hawthorne, Nathaniel, on reading him, 74, 75. + +Hay, John, his reading in college, 139; + a remarkable misprint in his "Poems," 159. + +Hazlitt, William, as a guide in reading, 141, 142; + Lamb and Stevenson on, 141. + +Headlines, Henry D. Lloyd on, 132. + +"Hibbert Journal," bulkiness of, 95. + +Hieroglyphics, _see_ Picture writing. + +Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, his life of Longfellow, 75. + +Holmes, Oliver Wendell, the Blue and Gold edition of his "Poems," 24, 25; + his life of Emerson, 75; + member of New England group of authors, 75; + a misprint in his "Works," 159; + quoted, 24, 80, 102, 106. + +Holt, Henry, on simplified spelling, 147, _footnote_. + +Homer, did not write for children, 68; + Hazlitt on, 141; + his works, 64, 66, 67; + Keats's sonnet on, 108, 109; + not out of date, 77; + why his works are divided into books, 83. + +Horace, hated by Byron, 68; + his works, 69; + in Bodoni's 1791 edition, 129, 130; + more modern than the Puritans, 69, + than Dante, 70. + +Houghton, Mifflin and Company, publish books resembling Chinese, 87, 88. + +Hours, books of, dainty volumes, 20. + +House of Representatives Library, size in 1875, 104. + +Hudson, Henry Norman, his edition of Shakespeare, 71, 72. + +Huey, Edmund Burke, his "Psychology and pedagogy of reading," commended, + 124. + +Hull, Mass., as misprinted, 154. + +Humanistic type, _see_ New Humanistic. + +Hunt, Leigh, his characterization of the "Divine Comedy," 70. + + +I, the letter, discussions regarding its dot, 61. + +"Idler," a favorite edition of, 24. + +Illumination, 51; + indication of initials for, 21. + +Illustration, as a feature of the book, 6; + of the book beautiful, 60. + +"Imitatio Christi," in Updike's specimen pages, 136. + +Incunabula, relatively cheap, 49. + +Indecency in misprints, 155, 156. + +Indenting, as affecting the book beautiful, 59. + +"Independent," compactly printed, 95. + +India, book of, 85, 86. + +Individual, value of reading to, 29-32. + +Initials, colored, 60; + spacing and mitering of, 59. + +Ink, best for the eye, 116, 120; + blue, for legibility, 5; + an element of the book, 5; + maker, a spoiler of books, 40, 42. + +Interpretative typography, 9-13, 137, 138. + +"Interpreter of meaning, Print as an," 14-18. + +Invention, in book production, 33, 34. + +Irving, Washington, book design in editions of his "Knickerbocker," 10, 11; + unfortunate use of his "Sketch Book" as a school book, 68, 69. + +Italic type, invention and use by Aldus, 20, 21. + +Italy, annual book publication, 105. + + +JAPAN, annual book publication, 105. + +Javal, Dr. Emile, his investigations of legibility, 120, 121, 123. + +Jenson, Nicholas, beauty and grandeur in his work, 4; + descendants of his types, 132; + facsimile page of, _frontispiece_. + +Johnson, Rossiter, his Little Classic editions described, 25, 26. + +Johnson, Dr. Samuel, commends small books, 20, 22, 23; + a favorite edition of his "Idler," 24; + his "Prayers" in tribute typography, 136; + on our knowledge of ancient Britain, 79. + +Josephus, Flavius, book form inappropriate to, 50. + +Justification, requirements of, 58, 59. + +Justinian, facsimile page of his "Digestum novum," _frontispiece_. + + +KEATS, JOHN, folio inappropriate to, 50; + inappropriate Forman edition of, 11; + "On first looking into Chapman's Homer," 108, 109; + small bulk of his work, 69. + +Kelmscott Press, _see_ Morris, William. + +Kennerley type, commended, 132. + +Kipling, Rudyard, on reading him, 143. + +"Knickerbocker," Irving's, book design in editions of, 10, 11. + +Knowledge, necessary to success in life, 30; + obtainable in its fulness only through books, 30; + progress possible only in, 29, 30. + +Kuran, sources from which it was compiled, 86. + + +LAMB, CHARLES, on grace before reading, 77; + on Hazlitt, 141. + +Large-paper copies, condemned, 56, 131. + +Latin literature, masterpieces of, 68, 69. + +Leadership developed under stress, 163. + +Leading, as affecting legibility, 120; + as affecting spacing, 58, 59. + +Leather, employment in binding, 52-54. + +Le Gascon, binder, his work, 100. + +Legend, of pictures, proper place of, 60. + +Legibility, elements of the book as related to, 116-118; + "Exceptions to the rule of legibility," 130, 131, 134-138; + influence on, of paper, type, and ink, 5; + "Types and eyes: The problem," 120-127, + ---- "Progress," 128-133. + +Leland, Charles Godfrey, on forethought, 166. + +Length of line, 117. + +Lenox, James, mortified by a misprint, 156; + patron of Henry Stevens, 38; + "Recollections of," by Stevens, 38, _footnote_. + +Le Sage, Alain Rene, his "Gil Blas," 143. + +"Lest we forget the few great books," 104-114. + +Letters, _see_ Capital letters; + Manuscript; + Minuscules; + Silent letters; + Type. + +Lewes, George Henry, a misprint in one of his works, 158. + +Librarians, "Books as a librarian would like them," 44-48; + a duty to their successors, 103; + meeting of British, in 1882, 38. + +Libraries, as affected by spelling reform, 150; + development in the United States since 1875, 104; + electrical batteries of power, 30; + put to needless expense for big books, 36, + for rebindings, 46; + "The student and the library," 139-144. + +Library Company of Philadelphia, size of library in 1875, 104. + +Library hand, Bodoni's italic resembles, 130. + +Library of Congress, size in 1875, 104. + +Lightness, in books, deceptive, 93, 94. + +Lincoln, Abraham, his greatness brought by responsibility, 163. + +Lincoln cent, lettering on, 134. + +Line, endings should not show too many hyphens, 59; + normal length for legibility, 117. + +Linnaeus, quoted, 33. + +Linotype, gives a turned line, 153. + +Literature, the book beautiful of service to, 62; + its treasures, 63-78; + print a contribution to, 15; + type appropriate to, 136-138. + +Little and Brown, publishers, their "British Poets" compared with + Pickering's "Aldines," 24. + +Little Classic editions, 20, 25, 26. + +Littre, Emile, typography of his "Dictionnaire," 135. + +Lloyd, Henry Demarest, on headlines, quoted, 132. + +Locker-Lampson, Frederick, inappropriate edition of his "My + Confidences," 12. + +London Registrar General, misprint, 155. + +Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, book design appropriate to his "Works," 11; + his "Michael Angelo," 87; + his sonnets on Dante, 70; + holiday edition of his "Skeleton in Armor," 137; + "Life," appropriate edition of, 12; + quoted, 68. + +Lowell, James Russell, member of New England group of authors, 75. + + +MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, knew "Paradise Lost" by heart, 73. + +McClellan, General George Brinton, his limitations, 163. + +Malherbe, Francois, welcomes a misprint, 157. + +Mammoth, picture of, a prehistoric book, 79. + +Manuscript, chief difference from print, 14; + distinctions in, 16; + importance to bookmaking, 51; + limitations of, 16; + Ruskin on, 51; + still used in private records, 15. + _See also_ Papyrus; Parchment. + +Margin, size and proportions of, 56, 57. + +Marriage service, misprint in, 154. + +Material of the book, changed twice in two thousand years, 92. + +Materials of writing, 86. + +Mather, Cotton, list of errata in his "Magnalia," 160. + +Mathews, William, as an author, 63; + his memory of choice passages, 63; + on reading ten pages a day, 108. + +Maxim, Sir Hiram, quoted, 92. + +"Meaning, Print as an interpreter of," 14-18. + +Mearne, Samuel, binder, 100. + +Memory, Erasmus on art of strengthening, 166, 167; + value of a well-stored, 63. + +"Men of the Time," famous misprint in, 153, 154. + +Menage, Gilles, acknowledged his indebtedness to the Elzevirs, 22. + +Mexican book, pre-Columbian, ornamented, 6; + described, 85, 86; + picture writing of, 81. + +Michelangelo, his "Moses" as a product of genius, 65. + +Milton, John, debt of Daniel Webster to, 110; + gave metric hints by spelling, 18; + Hazlitt on, 142; + his greatness, 72, 73; + his spelling, 149, 150; + Lamb would say grace before reading, 77; + a misprint in "Samson Agonistes," 159; + on the deprivation caused by his blindness, 63, 64; + a spelling reformer, 149. + +Minuscules, legibility, 122-124, 126; + of late origin, 118. + +Misprints, "The perversities of type," 152-161. + +Montaigne, "Journal of his travels," in three volumes, 12. + +Morgan, Lloyd, cited, 87. + +Morris, William, as printer, 33, 34; + confesses faults of ignorance in book making, 50; + his Kelmscott editions, "tribute typography," 137; + on shape of dot of _i_, 61; + on types, 5, 129, 130. + +Mosher, Thomas Bird, his "tribute typography," 137. + +Motteux, Peter Anthony, his translation of "Don Quixote," 144. + +Moulton, Charles Wells, "Library of Literary Criticism," its attractive + book design, 13. + + +NAMES, place of, in development of the alphabet, 81. + +Near sight, 120, 130. + +Necker, Jacques, student's blunder concerning, 154. + +New England, its communities of readers, 28, 29; + its group of authors, 75, 76. + +New Humanistic type, commended, 138; + special form of _a_, 123. + +New York Mercantile Library, size in 1875, 104. + +Newspapers, extraordinary development of speed and cheapness in, 14; + legibility, 5, 117, 132, 133; + opponents of spelling reform, 145; + place in reading, 106. + +Newton, Sir Isaac, quoted, 144. + +Nickel, as a substitute for paper, 92, _footnote_. + +Novels, in a favorite book size, 24; + in illegible type, 130; + on reading, 107; + three-volume, 12; + typical book of to-day, 35. + +"Nuremberg Chronicle," a characteristic folio, 19. + + +OCULIST'S tests of legibility, 120. + +Ormsby, John, his translation of "Don Quixote," 144. + +Ornamentation, in bindings, 6, 53, 100, 101; + in type, 121. + +"Orthographic reform," 145-151. + +Ossian, Hazlitt on, 141. + +Owen, Robert, a famous misprint concerning, 153. + +"Oxford Book of English Verse," thin-paper edition preferred, 95. + +"Oxford English Dictionary," corrects a misprint, 158; + its typography, 135. + +Oxford India paper, 92, 94, 95; + miniature editions on, 131, 132. + +Oxford students cause a misprint in the marriage service, 154. + +Oxford University Press, reward for misprints, 156. + + +PAGE, proportions of, 4, 42, 55-57. + +Palm leaves, used for book of India, 85. + +Pannartz and Sweynheym, grandeur in their work, 4. + +Paper, best for the eye, 116, 120; + buff tinted, for legibility, 5, 6; + determines the expression of the book, 4, 5; + introduced into Europe, 84; + of the book beautiful, 54; + of the Chinese book, 88-90; + "Thick paper and thin," 92-96; + three elements of, 5. + +Papermaker, a spoiler of books, 40, 42. + +Papyrus roll, and booklovers, 4; + described, 82-84. + +Parchment, origin, 83, 84; + "Parchment bindings," 102, 103; + parchment book and booklovers, 4. + +Payne, Roger, binder, 100. + +Peacock, Thomas Love, his novels in thick and thin paper, 94, 95. + +Peel, Sir Robert, misprint concerning, 155. + +Penmanship, _see_ Manuscript. + +Pergamum, origin of parchment in, 83, 84. + +"Periodical, The," resembles a Chinese book, 88, 90. + +"Personal power, A secret of," 162-167. + +"Perversities of type," 152-161. + +Philadelphia Mercantile Library, size in 1875, 104. + +"Philobiblon," by Richard de Bury, significance of the title, 8. + +Photogravures, in connection with type, 6. + +Pickering, William, a disciple of Aldus, 23; + his characteristic books, 23, 24, + compared with Little and Brown's "British Poets," 24, + their predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, 24; + his "diamond classics" on large paper, 131, 132; + method of book design, 41; + publisher, 38. + +Picture writing, 80, 81. + +Pictures, earliest books were, 79-81. + _See also_ Illustrations. + +Pillow, General Gideon Johnson, misprints concerning, 157. + +Pindar, as characterized by Mrs. Browning, 68. + +Plato, as characterized by Mrs. Browning, 68; + contributor to Bible of humanity, 68; + riches of, 68. + +Pocket editions, 22, 23. + +Poe, Edgar Allan, quoted, 28, 152, 158; + small bulk of his poetry, 69. + +Poetry, Hazlitt on, 141, 142; + print as an interpreter of its meaning, 17, 18; + type appropriate to, 137, 138. + +Pope, Alexander, a ghost word referred to him, 158, 159; + Hazlitt on, 142. + +Possessions, distinguished from Property, 31, 32. + +"Power, A secret of personal," 162-167. + +Powers of leadership developed under stress, 163. + +Pre-Columbian book, _see_ Mexican. + +Prehistoric background of the book, 79-81. + +Press, errors of, 152-161. + +Pressman, a spoiler of books, 40-42. + +Presswork, requirements of, 58. + +Prices, as affected by italic, 20, + by the small books of the Elzevirs, 22; + fancy, what they mean, 7; + of choice books compared with those of other art objects, 49; + of choice books not excessive, 7. + +"Print as an interpreter of meaning," 14-18. + _See also_ Typography. + +Printer, as affected by spelling reform, 150; + a spoiler of books, 40, 41; + what the librarian asks of him, 47, 48. + +Printer's errors, 152-161. + +Printing, added only speed and cheapness to book production, 14; + distinctions to the eye in, 16-18; + of Chinese books, 88; + "Printing problems for science to solve," 115-119; + would be benefited by contemporary calligraphy, 51. + _See also_ Typography. + +Privilege of the reader, 63-78. + +"Problems, Printing, for science to solve," 115-119. + +Progress, possible only in the field of knowledge, 29, 30. + +Proof, authors' additions in, 15. + +Proofreader, requirements of, 58; + a spoiler of books, 40, 41. + +Property, distinguished from Possessions, 31, 32. + +Proportions of the page, 4, 42, 55-57. + +Prosody, _see_ Poetry. + +Public, value of reading to the, 28, 29. + +Publication of books for 1913, 105. + +Publisher, librarian's grievance against the, 45-47; + a spoiler of books, 40, 41. + +Punctuation, and legibility, 121; + in poetry, 17-18. + +Puritans, less modern than Horace, 69; + a Puritan's devotion to Calvin, 166; + Shakespeare best reading for, 72. + +Putnam, George Haven, on the Elzevirs, 22. + + +RAPID reading, 14-17. + +Rare books, relatively cheap, 49. + +Readable print, _see_ Legibility. + +"Reader's high privilege," 63-78. + +Reading, aid of print to, 14, 17; + amount possible in a lifetime, 105; + Erasmus on art of, 166; + John Beattie Crozier on, 111, 112; + "Lest we forget the few great books," 104-114; + means intellectual effort, 74; + of contemporaries, 76, 77; + results of ten pages a day, 108; + "The student and the library," 139-144; + systematic, 74-76; + true end and aim of, 78; + value, to the public and to the individual, 28-32; + when travelling, 22, 23. + +Reading aloud, print as an aid to, 17, 18. + +Rebindings, costly, unnecessary, 46. + +Rebus, place in development of alphabet, 81. + +Reference books, 135; + effective typography of, 16, 17. + +Reformed spelling, 145-151. + +Registration, requirements of, 59. + +Rembrandt, his drawing of the elephant, 80; + his "School of Anatomy," as a product of genius, 65. + +Reprinting of perishable records, 46. + +Responsibility, a stimulus to greatness, 163. + +"Respublicae Variae," published by the Elzevirs, described, 22, 23. + +"Rhetoricorum ad C. Herennium Libri IIII," the Aldus edition of 1546 + described, 21. + +Roethlein, Barbara Elizabeth, on "The relative legibility of different + faces of printing types," 124-127. + +Rogers, Bruce, his Centaur type commended, 132. + +Roll, _see_ Papyrus. + +Roman alphabet, _see_ Alphabet. + +Roman codex, _see_ Codex. + +Roman literature, masterpieces of, 68, 69. + +Romance literatures, 144. + +Romans, surpassed by moderns in knowledge, 30. + +Royal octavo, pitfall of the book designer, 12, 13. + +Ruskin, John, editions of his works contrasted, 13; + on manuscript books, 51; + on reading Sir Walter Scott, 109. + +Russia, annual book publication, 105; + illiterate communities of, 28, 29. + + +SANBORN, FRANKLIN BENJAMIN, his "Beacon Biography" of Longfellow, 75. + +Sanford, Edmund Clark, on "The relative legibility of the small + letters," 122-124. + +Scaliger, Julius Caesar, his learning, 106. + +Schiller, cited, 52. + +School books, misfortune of treating classics as such, 68, 69; + type in, 5, 117. + +School children, increase of near sight among, 120. + +School of typography, proposed by Henry Stevens, 40-43. + +Science, "Printing problems for science to solve," 115-119. + +Scott, Sir Walter, alterations in the proof-sheets of his "Waverley + Novels," 15; + a ghost word in his "Monastery," 158; + Goethe on, 110; + Ruskin on, 109. + +"Secret of personal power," 162-167. + +Sequoyah, his Cherokee syllabary, 146. + +Serifs, necessary to prevent irradiation, 123; + source of confusion in types, 123, 124. + +Shakespeare, William, "Hamlet" preferred in youth, 111; + Hazlitt on, 142; + his "Apocrypha," on thin paper, 95; + his character and greatness, 70-73; + Lamb would say grace before reading, 77; + "Lear" preferred in old age, 111; + misprints in his works, 157; + privilege of reading, 64, 71, 72; + quoted, 9, 54; + reading, 77; + the spelling of his works, 149, 150; + tribute of Blackmore to, 110. + +Shelley, Percy Bysshe, an editor's error in his "Skylark," 157, 158; + inappropriate Forman edition of, 11; + read by young men, 111. + +Shelton, Thomas, his translation of "Don Quixote," 144. + +Sight, relation of the elements of the book to, 5, 6, 116-119; + "Types and eyes: The problem," 120-127, + ---- "Progress," 128-133. + +Sign language, 80. + +Silent letters, cost to English world, 147. + +Size, determines expression of the book, 4; + "Favorite book sizes," 19-27; + of books preferred by librarian, 47; + of letters and legibility, 134, 135; + question of an ideal size of type, 117; + standardization of book sizes, 26, 27. + _See also_ Bigness; Thickness; Thinness. + +Skeat, Walter William, on ghost words, 158. + +Smirke, Robert, illustrator of Barlow's "Columbiad," 10. + +Smollett, Tobias George, on reading him, 143. + +Society of Printers, address under its auspices, 3, _note_. + +Socrates, in a Bible of humanity, 68. + +Sophocles, as characterized by Mrs. Browning, 67, 68. + +Southey, Robert, a favorite edition of, 24. + +Spacing, between words, 121; + of letters in words, 120. + +Spain, illiterate communities of, 28, 29. + +Spanish, language, 144; + spelling, 147. + +Spectacles, a measure of civilization, 120. + +Spedding, James, at Cambridge University, 139. + +Spelling, Milton gave metric hints by, 18; + "Orthographic reform," 145-151. + +Spenser, Edmund, Hazlitt on, 142; + his spelling, 149; + Lamb would say grace before reading the "Fairy Queen," 77; + Milton's spiritual kinship to, 72. + +Standardization of book sizes, 26, 27. + +Sterne, Laurence, a favorite edition of, 24. + +Stevens, Henry, "A constructive critic of the book," 38-43; + detects a misprint, 156; + his "My English library," 39; + his "Recollections of Mr. James Lenox," 38, _footnote_. + +Stevenson, Robert Louis, on Hazlitt, 141. + +Stoddard, Richard Henry, on Cervantes and Shakespeare, 70. + +Storage of books, _see_ Bigness, Thickness, Thinness. + +Strassburg Cathedral, as a product of genius, 65. + +"Student, The, and the Library," 139-144. + +Study, art of, 166, 167. + +Success, won by knowledge, 30. + +Swedish spelling, 148. + +Sweynheym and Pannartz, grandeur in their work, 4. + + +TASTE, _see_ Esthetics. + +Tauchnitz editions, compared with Little Classic editions, 26. + +Tennyson, Alfred, and his brothers at Cambridge University, 139; + inappropriate edition of his "Life," 11; + a novel reader, 107. + +Tests, of the utility of the book, 115; + of type, 120-127. + +Thackeray, William Makepeace, at Cambridge University, 139; + on reading him, 143; + quoted, 11; + works in illegible print, 130. + +Theocritus, as characterized by Mrs. Browning, 68. + +Thickness, in books, esthetic effect of, 23, 25; + "Thick paper and thin," 92-96. + +Thinness, in books, esthetic effect of, 23; + "Thick paper and thin," 92-96. + +Thompson, Francis, indicated caesura by an asterisk, 18. + +Thomson, James, Hazlitt on, 142. + +Thoreau, Henry David, member of the New England group of authors, 75, 76. + +Thou, Jacques Auguste de, binding made for, 100. + +Title-page, problems of, 59. + +Torrey, Joseph, on reading Dante, 109, 110. + +Translations of "Don Quixote," 143, 144. + +Tribute typography, 9-13, 136, 137. + +Type, aims in its design, 5, 117, 118; + Chinese, 80; + contrast of, 16, 17; + "Exceptions to the rule of legibility," 130, 131, 135-138; + faults of German and French, 117; + in relation to the book beautiful, 57-59, 61; + page, 56, 57; + "Perversities of type," 152-161; + reform of, 118; + "Types and eyes: The problem," 120-127, + ---- "Progress," 128-133. + _See also_ Italic; Page. + +Typewriting, a form of print, 15. + +Typography, primarily a reduction of cost, 115; + school of, proposed by Henry Stevens, 40-43; + tribute typography, 9-13, 136, 137; + a triumph of, 16. + _See also_ Print. + + +UNITED STATES, annual book publication, 105; + library development since 1875, 104. + +Updike, Daniel Berkeley, his comic edition of Irving's "Knickerbocker," + 10, 11; + his specimen pages of the "Imitatio Christi," 136. + + +"VALUE of reading, to the public and to the individual," 28-32. + +Values, two great classes, 31, 32. + +Vergil, Dante's master, 69; + did not write for children, 68; + his Aeneid, 69; + scanty punctuation in earliest manuscript of, 17. + +Verse, _see_ Poetry. + +Vision, _see_ Sight. + + +WARD, ARTEMUS, _pseudonym_, adopts a misprint, 157. + +Webster, Daniel, debt to Milton, 110. + +Webster, Noah, his "Collegiate Dictionary" on thin paper preferred, 95; + his "Unabridged Dictionary" on large paper, 131. + +Wendell, Barrett, on Barlow's "Columbiad," 10. + +Wheatley, Henry Benjamin, on "Literary blunders," 156, 157. + +Whitman, Walt, on the world's greatest books, 113, 114. + +Whittier, John Greenleaf, member of New England group of authors, 75. + +Whittingham, Charles, method of book design, 41; + printer, 38. + +"Who spoils our new English books?" by Henry Stevens, 38. + +Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of Oxford, a famous misprint concerning, + 153, 154. + +Wordsworth, Dorothy, on favorite books, 3. + +Wordsworth, William, a favorite edition of, 24; + read by old men, 111. + +World Almanac, commended, 130, 131. + +Writing, _see_ Authorship; Manuscript; Materials. + + +XENOPHON, contributor to a Bible of humanity, 68; + did not write for children, 68. + + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Notes: | + | | + | Table of Contents: The chapter heading "The Value of | + | Reading" is an abbreviation of the chapter heading on page | + | 28. Left as is | + | | + | Page 31: Full stop added after "Was but a book" | + | | + | Page 62: techiness _sic_ | + | | + | Page 86: Kuran and Kuran _sic_ | + | | + | Page 108: Comma added after "daily" | + | | + | Page 157: Full stop added after "before him" | + | | + | Page 171: Ae in Aeschylus replaced with ae ligature to | + | match text in book | + | | + | Page 178: Page numbers for "Exception to the rule of | + | legibility" re-arranged into ascending order | + | | + | Page 183: ae in Respublicae Variae replaced with ae | + | ligatures to match text in book | + | | + | Page 185: Page numbers for "Exception to the rule of | + | legibility" re-arranged into ascending order | + | | + | Hyphenation has been standardised. 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