esent time, the inmates of
religious institutions occupy themselves with the same industry on a
less ambitious scale, and with infinitely less artistic and
picturesque results.

When Barclay wrote his English paraphrase of Brandt's _Stulltifera
Navis_ about 1508, it almost seems as if the type of connoisseur, who
understood the outside better than the interior of a book, was already
in evidence, for the writer says:--

"Still am I busy bookes assembling,
For to have plentie it is a pleasaunt thing
In my concept, and to haue them ay in hand:
But what they meane do I not vnderstand. . . .
Lo in likewise of bookes I haue store,
But fewe I reade, and fewer vnderstande,
I folowe not their doctrine nor their lore,
It is ynough to beare a booke in hande."

In Barclay's English _Ship of Fools_, 1509, it is stated that at that
time damask, satin, and velvet were employed as luxurious materials
for the covering of books, and it seems to have been usual to draw a
curtain before the case in which they were preserved. Showy or gay
bindings were approved, especially where the owner was not a reader,
but, to quote the Latin text, was "Viridi contentus tegmine libri."

The formation of Book-binding into a distinct employment and
organisation must have preceded any explicit evidence of the fact. The
gradual increase in the output of literature of all kinds from the
days of Elizabeth necessitated the surrender to an independent craft
of the envelopment of volumes in various liveries, more especially
when the French and Italians had set the fashion of elaborate
ornamental patterns and rich gilding. Already in the time of Edward
VI. the tariff chargeable for certain quasi-official publications,
such as the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, was fixed by Government,
and at a later date scales of prices for binding in different styles
or materials were periodically printed. That of 1646 is reprinted
entire in the _Antiquary_ for 1886.

The most usual styles were plain brown sheep or calf without any
lettering, a publisher's label inside the volume sometimes supplying
the latter deficiency, and communicating to a shelf of books an aspect
far from picturesque; but vellum or parchment of varying consistence
was also a favourite and inexpensive mode of covering the contents of
a library. Morocco and russia were later innovations, and the former
is not unusually found altogether free from decoration or