Note 183 — The Auction Room.

As a little essay, and a very curious one too, might be written upon the history of Book-Binding, I shall not attempt in the present note satisfactorily to supply such a desideratum; but merely communicate to the reader a few particulars which have come across me in my desultory researches upon the subject. Mr. Astle tells us that the famous Textus Sancti Cuthberti, which was written in the 7th century, and was formerly kept at Durham, and is now preserved in the Cottonian library, (Nero, D. iv.) was adorned in the Saxon times by Bilfrith, a monk of Durham, with a silver cover gilt, and precious stones. Simeon Dunelmensis, or Turgot, as he is frequently called, tells us that the cover of this fine MS. was ornamented "forensecis Gemmis et Auro." "A booke of Gospelles garnished and wrought with antique worke of silver and gilte with an image of the crucifix with Mary and John, poiz together cccxxij oz." In the secret Jewel House in the Tower. "A booke of gold enameled, clasped with a rubie, having on th' one side, a crosse of dyamounts, and vj other dyamounts, and th' other syde a flower de luce of dyamounts, and iiij rubies with a pendaunte of white saphires and the arms of Englande. Which booke is garnished with small emerades and rubies hanging to a cheyne pillar fashion set with xv knottes, everie one conteyning iij rubies (one lacking)." Archæologia, vol. xiii., 220. Although Mr. Astle has not specified the time in which these two latter books were bound, it is probable that they were thus gorgeously attired before the discovery of the art of printing. What the ancient Vicars of Chalk (in Kent) used to pay for binding their missals, according to the original endowment settled by Haymo de Hethe in 1327 (which compelled the vicars to be at the expense of the same—Reg. Roff., p. 205), Mr. Denne has not informed us. Archæologia, vol. xi., 362. But it would seem, from Warton, that "students and monks were anciently the binders of books;" and from their Latin entries respecting the same, the word "conjunctio" appears to have been used for "ligatura." Hist. of Engl. Poetry, vol. ii., p. 244. Hearne, in No. III. of the appendix to Adam de Domerham de reb. gest. Glast., has "published a grant from Rich. de Paston to Bromholm abbey, of twelve pence a year rent charge on his estates to keep their books in repair." This I gather from Gough's Brit. Topog., vol. ii., p. 20: while from the Liber Stat. Eccl. Paulinæ, Lond. MSS., f. 6, 396 (furnished me by my friend Mr. H. Ellis,[D] of the British Museum), it appears to have been anciently considered as a part of the Sacrist's duty to bind and clasp the books: "Sacrista curet quod Libri bene ligentur et haspentur," &c. In Chaucer's time, one would think that the fashionable binding for the books of young scholars was various-coloured velvet: for thus our poet describes the library of the Oxford Scholar: