t proportion is, this looks satisfactory, and that no other
does so look. But the modern printer, as a rule, dumps down the page in
what he calls the middle of the paper, which is often not even really
the middle, as he measures his page from the head line, if he has one,
though it is not really a part of the page, but a spray of type only
faintly staining the head of the paper. Now I go so far as to say that
any book in which the page is properly put on the paper is tolerable to
look at, however poor the type may be (always so long as there is no
"ornament" which may spoil the whole thing), whereas any book in which
the page is wrongly set on the paper is intolerable to look at, however
good the type and ornaments may be. I have got on my shelves now a
Jenson's Latin Pliny, which, in spite of its beautiful type and handsome
painted ornaments, I dare scarcely look at, because the binder
(adjectives fail me here) has chopped off two-thirds of the tail margin:
such stupidities are like a man with his coat buttoned up behind, or a
lady with her bonnet on hind-side foremost.

Before I finish I should like to say a word concerning large-paper
copies. I am clean against them, though I have sinned a good deal in
that way myself, but that was in the days of ignorance, and I petition
for pardon on that ground only. If you want to publish a handsome
edition of a book, as well as a cheap one, do so, but let them be two
books, and if you (or the public) cannot afford this, spend your
ingenuity and your money in making the cheap book as sightly as you can.
Your making a large-paper copy out of the small one lands you in a
dilemma even if you re-impose the pages for the large paper, which is
not often done, I think. If the margins are right for the smaller book
they must be wrong for the larger, and you have to offer the public the
worse book at the bigger price; if they are right for the large paper
they are wrong for the small, and thus spoil it, as we have seen above
that they must do; and that seems scarcely fair to the general public
(from the point of view of artistic morality) who might have had a book
that was sightly, though not high-priced.

As to the paper of our ideal book, we are at a great disadvantage
compared with past times. Up to the end of the fifteenth, or indeed, the
first quarter of the sixteenth centuries, no bad paper was made, and the
greater part was very good indeed. At present there is very little good
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